Kingdom of Northumbria

Northumbria was the English kingdom north of the Humber, forged about 654 from Deira in the south and Bernicia in the north and thereafter ruled by Bernician kings. Its name meant the people north of the Humber. At its height it ran from the Humber, the Peak and the Mersey to the Firth of Forth, and its monasteries at Lindisfarne and Jarrow, where Bede wrote, made it the lamp of the northern church. The royal seat stood at Bamburgh on its rock, with York as the southern city. Oswiu's victory in 654 sealed the union; Ecgfrith's fall against the Picts in 685 checked its northern tide. The Danish Great Heathen Army took York in 867 and made Deira the Norse kingdom of York, while the rump earldom of Bamburgh held Bernicia. The West Saxon kings pressed from the south: Aethelstan took York in 927, and when Erik Bloodaxe was driven out in 954, Eadred absorbed the kingdom into England. The Bamburgh earls lingered on, but Northumbria as a kingdom had ended after three hundred years.