Northumbria

Northumbria, the most northerly of the old English kingdoms, formed by the union of Bernicia and Deira through the conquest of the latter - by JSthelric, king of Bernicia about 590 A.D. The kingdom of Bernicia, which extended from the Tees to the Firth of Forth and was bounded west by Strathclyde, had been founded by Ida about 547, whilst Deira, situated between the Tees and the Humber with Cumbria on its west side, owed its origin to AElla (c. 560). The power of Northumbria increased'under Edwin, Oswald, and Oswy, who held the office of bretwalda (q.v.), but declined with the advance of Mercia ih the 8th century. It submitted to Wessex in 827, and became subject to the Northmen in 866. North-West Passage, The. The project of finding a passage by sea round the northern extremity of the American continent seems to have seriously originated with Sir Humphrey Gilbert, though such a passage is marked on some earlier maps of a speculative character and though a Mexican friar, named Urdarieta, claimed to have actually made it. It was successively attempted by Frobisher, Davis, Hudson, Baffin, and many more; but its discovery was reserved for Sir John Franklin, who did not live to announce the fact, and for Captain R. J. Maclure, who, in October, 1850, passed through Prince of Wales's Strait into Barrow Strait, which communicates, through Melville Sound, with the Arctic Ocean. Maclure had to abandon his ship, the Investigator, in the ice, but returned safely to England in 1854.