The section north of Morecambe Bay joined Westmorland and Cumberland to form the modern county of Cumbria.
[11] Official documents often called it the "County of Lancaster" rather than Lancashire; "Lancastershire" occurs in late 14th century, and Leland was still using it in 1540.
[13] The remains of Roman forts exist at Burscough, Manchester,[14] Lancaster,[15] Over Burrow,[16] Ribchester,[17] Kirkham[18] and Castleshaw.
[20] It is thought that a cluster of Romano-British farmsteads existed to the east of Burnley[21][22][23] The land that would become the ancient county of Lancashire had been part of the Kingdom of Northumbria.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that in 923, Edward the Elder brought an army to Mercia and ordered the repair of the defences at Manchester in Northumbria.
[26] After the Norman conquest, William the Conqueror gave to Roger de Poitou, lands spanning eight ancient counties, which included the area between the River Ribble and the Mersey and Amounderness.
The area in between the Rivers Mersey and Ribble (referred to in the Domesday Book as "Inter Ripam et Mersam") formed part of the returns for Cheshire.
Amounderness appears as a district, apparently stretching inland to the River Hodder, the hundred is thought to have been created shortly afterwards.
[35] The town of Lancaster itself was at this time apparently administratively united (to the extent it could be administered) with Kendal, Furness and Cartmell, but not with the area south of the Ribble river.
This contiguous area of relatively undeveloped highland was administered by men such as Ivo de Taillebois, and a local aristocracy which still included a relatively significant amount of Anglo-Saxons.
[36] After Domesday, Roger's lands were returned to him and in the early 1090s Lonsdale, Cartmel and Furness were added to Roger's estates to facilitate the defence of the area south of Morecambe Bay from Scottish raiding parties, which travelled round the Cumberland coast and across the bay at low water, rather than through the mountainous regions of the Lake District.
Henry de Lacy the Earl of Lincoln at this time held the baronies of Clitheroe, Penwortham and Halton and the lordships of Rochdale and Bury in this area.
With his death in 1311, ownership passed to Crouchback's son Thomas, 2nd Earl of Lancaster who had been married to Henry's daughter, Alice.
One of Henry's daughter's was married to John of Gaunt, the son of Edward III and the dukedom was recreated for him the next year.
In 1390 John obtained an extension of this grant from Richard II, enabling his male heirs to inherit control of the palatinate.
Henry IV maintained the duchy separately from the other possessions of the crown and the palatinate's independent judicial system continued, although administered consistently with the rest of the country.
[54] After November 1875 the palatinate consisted only of the Court of Chancery and the Chancellor's right to appoint justices of the peace and other local officers.
To the existing county boroughs of Barrow-in-Furness, Blackburn, Bolton, Bootle, Burnley, Bury, Liverpool, Manchester, Oldham, Preston, Rochdale, Salford, St Helens and Wigan were added Blackpool (1904), Southport (1905), and Warrington (1900).
[62] In 1998 Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen became independent of the county as unitary authorities, but remained in Lancashire for ceremonial purposes, including the provision of fire, rescue and policing.
In March 2005, under the Courts Act 2003, the power to appoint magistrates in Lancashire, Greater Manchester and Merseyside transferred to the Ministry of Justice.
Wulfric's estates remained grouped together after his death, when they were left to his brother Aelfhelm, and indeed there still seems to have been some kind of connexion in 1086, when south Lancashire was surveyed together with Cheshire by the Domesday commissioners.
Nevertheless, the two territories do seem to have been distinguished from one another in some way and it is not certain that the shire-moot and the reeves referred to in the south Lancashire section of Domesday were the Cheshire ones.The Domesday Survey (1086) included south Lancashire with Cheshire for convenience, but the Mersey, the name of which means 'boundary river' is known to have divided the kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia and there is no doubt that this was the real boundary.