BERNICIA  , the

northern of the two English kingdoms which were eventually united in the kingdom of Northumbria . Its territory is said to have stretched from the Tyne northwards, ultimately reaching the Forth, while its western frontier was gradually extended at the expense of the Welsh . The chief royal residence was Bamburgh, and near it was the island of Lindisfarne, afterwards the see of a bishop . The first king of whom we have any record is Ida, who is said to have obtained the throne about 547 . IEthelfrith, king of Bernicia, united Deira to his own kingdom, probably about 6o5, and the union continued under his successor Edwin, son of Ella or IElle, king of Deira . Bernicia was again separate from Deira under Eanfrith, son of lEthelfrith (633–634), after which date the kings of Bernicia were supreme in Northumbria, though for a short time under Oswio Deira had a king of its own . See Bede, Hist . Eccles. ii . 14, iii . 1, 14; Nennius, § 63; Simeon of Durham, i . 339 . (F .

G . M . B.) BERNICIAN

SERIES, in geology, a term proposed by S . P . Woodward in 1856 (Manual of Mollusca, p . 409) for the lower portion of the Carboniferous System,below the Millstone Grit . The name was suggested by that of the ancient province of Bernicia on the Anglo-Scottish borderland . It is practically equivalent to the " Dinantien " of A. de Lapparent and Munier-Chalmas (1893) . In 1875 G . Tate's " Calcareous and Carbonaceous " groups of the Carboniferous Limestone series of Northumberland were united by Professor Lebour into a single series, to which he applied the name " Bernician "; but later he speaks of the whole of the Carboniferous rocks of Northumberland and its borders as of the" Bernician type," which is the most satisfactory way in which the term may now be used (Report of the Brit . Sub-committee on Classification and Nomenclature, 2nd ed., Cambridge, 1888) . " Demetian " was the corresponding designation proposed by Woodward for the Upper Carboniferous rocks .