Holford Matthew, Stringer Keith. Border Liberties and Loyalties in North-East England, 1200-1400 (ENG)

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

regalian status.

Its precedent was certainly not followed on the seals of

Richard Kellawe, Lewis Beaumont, Robert Graystanes and Richard Bury.

Indeed, the inclusion of the arms of England on the seals of Bek, Beaumont

and Bury gestured towards the wider realm rather than to the liberty in

particular. And since these earlier seals were not used solely for business

relating to the liberty, as Hat eld’s great seal seems to have been, their ico-

nography was aimed at a more general audience.

Nevertheless the fact remains that it was the bishops’ seals, and not the

king’s, with which the inhabitants of the liberty would have been most

familiar, and which provided the principal symbol of political authority in

the liberty. It is signi cant that a new seal was created for the liberty when

it was taken into royal hands in 1302, and that a special seal was used by

the crown during vacancies: the usual insignia of royal authority could not

be applied without modi cation to the liberty.

 e distinctiveness of the

liberty was, furthermore, embodied in some of the seals used by the bish-

op’s o cers.  e surviving fourteenth- century seals of the liberty’s sheri s

(from 1313–14, 1339 and 1371) all show a mitre rising from a coronet,

accompanied by the sheri ’s name or initials.  is consistent iconography,

which may well have had earlier origins, clearly represented the bishop’s

dual temporal and spiritual roles, and suggested his regalian powers.

 e

seals of royal o cials showed no such consistency in their iconography:

the seals of royal sheri s, for example, generally include a castle, but ‘are so

varied that they were almost certainly procured by the sheri s themselves’.

 e Durham seals may have been subject to more central supervision, and

in this context the bishops perhaps showed more concern for the image of

their authority than did the crown.

For much of our period, the bishops also maintained a mint.

Durham was not unique in possessing this privilege: there were mints at

Canterbury and Bury St Edmunds in the thirteenth century, and at York

in the fourteenth.

Furthermore, the dies for the Durham mint were

G&B, no. 3125, and n. 37; J. Alexander and P. Binski (eds), Age of Chivalry: Art in

Plantagenet England, 1200–1400 (London, 1987), nos. 285–6.

For the 1302 seal, see DCM, Rep. Mag., f. 11r; Cart. III, f. 222r. Its design is unknown. For

vacancy seals, DCM, Misc. Ch. 7282; G&B, nos. 3044, 3048A; Storey, Langley, p. 52.

G&B, nos. 325, 1747, 2512; C. H. H. Blair, ‘The sheriffs of Northumberland’, AA, 4th ser.,

20 (1942), p. 21, with illustration. The seals of 1339 and 1371 are particularly close in

design. For similar iconography, see G&B, no. 3182; W. de Gray Birch, Catalogue of Seals

. . . in the British Museum (London, 1887–1900), i, no. 2521.

P. D. A. Harvey and A. McGuinness, A Guide to British Medieval Seals (London, 1996),

pp. 40–1; cf. Blair, ‘Sheriffs of Northumberland’, pp. 19–23.

M. R. Allen, ‘Ecclesiastical mints in thirteenth- century England’, TCE, 8 (2001), pp.

97–122; M. R. Allen, ‘The archbishop of York’s mint after the Norman Conquest’, NH, 41

(2004), pp. 25–38.

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strictly controlled by the crown (although uno cial dies were sometimes

used), and they carried the king’s name and image. Yet the coins issued

by the mint did carry symbols of successive bishops, especially from Bek’s

episcopate onwards.  e cross moline from Bek’s arms was replaced by

an episcopal crosier under Kellawe, which in turn gave way to a lion

and lis mark derived from Beaumont’s arms. A coin of Beaumont or

Bury showed a crown on the reverse, while Hat eld’s coins returned to

the crosier symbol.

 ere was little reference here (with the possible

exception of the crown) to the bishops’ regalian powers, nor was there

any continuity in the coins’ iconography. It is also clear that standard

royal coins also circulated in the liberty, possibly in greater numbers

than local ones. Nevertheless the circulation of episcopal coins, with their

distinctive imagery, did mean that royal coins, as what John Watts has

called ‘icons of central power distributed throughout the realm’, were not

unchallenged.

Furthermore, the liberty’s seals and writs were recognised as symbols of

its administrative integrity. As we have noted, when the liberty was taken

into royal hands in 1302 a new seal was specially created, an event that

received particular notice at Durham Priory.  e seal was intended and

recognised as a symbol of the liberty’s continued independence.

Royal

writs directed at the liberty were, on occasion, subject to violence: it was

understood that they presented a threat to the liberty’s autonomy.

And in

a  nal, telling example, in 1344 the freeholders around Hartlepool refused

to act on the basis of a royal writ.  ey belonged, they said, to ‘the liberty

of St Cuthbert of Durham, where a writ of the realm does not run’, and

would only answer a writ from the bishop’s chancery.

 e details of gov-

ernment – in whose name a commission was executed, and whose seal was

appended to the relevant writs – could be part of how local society de ned

itself, and the liberty’s structures of governance could provide some basis

for collective identi cation, even in the wapentake of Sadberge.

This is a crude summary of the very complex evidence, based on the comprehensive

discussion in M. R. Allen, The Durham Mint (British Numismatic Society Special

Publication, 2003), passim.

J. Watts, ‘Looking for the state in later medieval England’, in M. Keen and P. Coss (eds),

Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England (Woodbridge, 2002), p. 264.

Coins from the York mint seem to have been less distinctive: C. Caine, The Archiepiscopal

Coins of York (York, 1908), pp. 41–8.

The only surviving reference to the seal is its description in a priory repertory and cartu-

lary: above, n. 46.

RPD, iv, pp. 65, 73–4; JUST 1/226, m. 9; DCM, Loc.VII.45, art. 30; Fraser, Bek, p. 97.

CIPM, viii, p. 384.

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 e cultural and administrative distinctiveness of the liberty as a whole,

therefore, was o en more signi cant than its internal divisions.  e author-

ity of its lord and institutions was recognised, and also valued, both in

wapentake and in county, and the value placed on the liberty’s institutions

is most evident in the readiness of local people to purchase legal writs from

the episcopal chancery to sue civil actions in the bishop’s – or sometimes

the prior’s – court.

By the twel h century the bishop’s ‘free court’, as it

would be called in 1303, had already established considerable independence

from the institutions of royal justice, and it was accepted that – except in

default of justice – it should hear all pleas concerning the liberty, although

it is not entirely clear whether pleas were initiated by royal or episcopal

writ.

It is true that this court had some di culty in keeping pace with

royal justice, and that its independence was challenged around 1200. In a

case heard before the curia regis in 1204, because the grand assize was not

available in the liberty, Geo rey Fitzgeo rey invoked the principle that no

free man should be impleaded of a free tenement without a royal writ; and

he claimed that in the reign of Henry II (1154–89) only royal writs had been

pleaded in the liberty.  e outcome of Geo rey’s case is unknown, but in

1207, when the liberty court heard an assize of darrein presentment without

a royal writ, the bishop was called before the curia regis. And in 1208 ‘the

knights and free tenants of Haliwerfolk’ obtained a charter from King John

which, among other things, aimed to make Angevin justice fully available in

the liberty.  e charter stipulated that those knights and free tenants could

plead and be impleaded ‘according to the common assizes of the kingdom

of England’; that they should not be impleaded for their free tenements

except by a writ of the king or his chief justice, ‘as was customary in the time

of Henry II’; and all this notwithstanding ‘any custom or use in Haliwerfolk

that is not right and common in the realm’.

It is not fully clear how and why this charter was obtained, but it seems

that towards the end of Philip of Poitou’s episcopate (1197–1208), a group

For one example of the bishop’s writ of right sued in the prior’s court, see DCM,

1.9.Spec.19, 20. On the prior’s free court, which also had a significant criminal jurisdic-

tion, see C. M. Fraser, ‘The free court of the prior of Durham’, in C. D. Liddy and R. H.

Britnell (eds), North- East England in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2005), pp.

111–17; C. J. Neville, ‘The courts of the prior and the bishop of Durham in the later Middle

Ages’, History, 85 (2000), pp. 216–29.

Lapsley, Durham, pp. 161–3. For simplicity, in what follows references are to the bishop’s

‘court’, notwithstanding the judicial independence of Durham and Sadberge already

discussed.

CRR, iii, pp. 108–10; v, pp. 6–7; Rotuli Chartarum in Turri Londinensi Asservati, ed. T.

D. Hardy (London, 1837), p. 182; J. Scammell, ‘The origin and limitations of the liberty

of Durham’, EHR, 81 (1966), p. 460. It is unclear whether the Durham plea mentioned in

CRR, vi, p. 170, was begun by royal or episcopal writ.

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within the liberty attempted, without full success, to obtain royal common

law procedures in the bishopric. In August 1207 John allowed Bishop

Philip all the prerogatives he had enjoyed in his court ‘before the knights

of Haliwerfolk sought their rights from us’; and it was probably in this con-

nection that the Pipe Roll recorded a payment of 1,000 marks from the

bishop, ‘to have the king’s goodwill’, in Michaelmas 1207.

As the assize

of darrein presentment heard in 1207 indicates, Bishop Philip continued to

issue writs for his court; and it was only when the bishopric became vacant

in 1208 that the royal charter could be obtained, probably a er ‘the knights

of Haliwerfolk’ had paid handsomely ‘to have the assizes of the kingdom

of England, saving the rights of the bishopric of Durham’.

But the saving

clause, which also occurred in the charter itself, was signi cant; and if the

charter was intended to replace episcopal with royal writs it did not have

the desired e ect. Philip of Poitou’s successor, Richard Marsh (1217–26),

issued original writs from his chancery. His right to do so seems to have

been accepted in the liberty – witnesses in the 1220s had no doubt about

the validity of episcopal writs – and, a er 1224, it seems to have been tacitly

accepted by the crown, even if it never received explicit royal con rmation.

A writ of darrein presentment concerning the advowson of Kimblesworth

issued from the episcopal chancery in 1222 or 1233, and the plea was settled

by  nal concord in the bishop’s court; original writs of mort d’ancestor

issued by Bishop Poore (1228–37) were referred to in 1234–5.

In some ways the liberty continued to be integrated with royal justice.

 e evidence suggests that, as Jean Scammell argued, ‘an eyre could only

be held in Durham when the king’s eyre was in the vicinity’; and although

the crown’s itinerant justices did not enter the liberty, it was customary

for them to deliver the articles of the eyre to the bishop’s justices, who

would inquire accordingly in the liberty.  is probably occurred in 1235–6,

1241–2, 1256 and 1269, although plea rolls survive only for the  rst two

occasions; in 1279 Bishop Robert Lisle did not receive the articles as was

customary, but an eyre was nevertheless held by the bishop’s justices.

Outside the eyre, however, although the fragmentary evidence prevents

de nitive conclusions, it seems likely that the bishopric’s court was largely

independent of the crown’s judicial system.

RLC, i, p. 90; Pipe Roll 9 John, p. 70.

Pipe Roll 13 John, p. 37.

FPD, pp. 231ff.; RLC, i, pp. 631–2; Acta 1196–1237, nos. 287, 324–5.

Scammell, ‘Origin and limitations’, p. 464; ‘Durham assize rolls’; PQW, p. 604; JUST

1/225; Crook, General Eyre, p. 148. Pace Crook, crown pleas were held in 1279: see DURH

3/92, m. 16d; BL, MS Lansdowne 902, f. 359r.

For an assize of mort d’ancestor initiated by the bishop’s writ and heard at Sadberge

around 1283, see BL, MS Lansdowne 902, f. 74r.

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Nevertheless some historians have doubted the importance of this court,

arguing that it became ine ectual in comparison with royal justice. It is

certainly true that, from the late thirteenth century, men associated with

the royal courts had come to play an important role in hearing civil pleas in

the liberty.

Royal justices, and king’s serjeants and pleaders, were increas-

ingly prominent among the justices appointed by Bek; and, by Kellawe’s

episcopate (1311–16), such men were very o en present when civil pleas

were heard in the bishopric. William Deanham,  omas Fishburn, Hugh

Lowther and Lambert  reekingham, for example, were all professional

lawyers in the royal courts and in the king’s service.

Bury appointed,

among others, the lawyers and royal justices Richard Aldbrough, Roger

Blakiston and Robert Parving.

And since these men received fees from

Bury for their work, and the legal terms in the liberty seem to have been

organised to avoid clashes with the royal courts, we can conclude that they

were not merely appointed but acted.

 ere can be little argument that such appointments indicate the growing

in uence of the crown – the ‘law- state’ – on the governance of the liberty.

Whether they were made at the initiative of bishop, crown or local com-

munity, their aim was surely ‘to ensure a royal standard of justice’ in the

liberty.

But whether ‘the tacit introduction of royal justices’ was ‘a highly

dangerous expedient’, and a direct challenge to the liberty’s privileges, is a

very di erent question.

It is signi cant that any supervision of justice was

done informally; for Durham cannot be compared to those lesser liberties

whose courts required the presence of a royal justice acting speci cally in

that capacity.

It can also be argued that the presence of royal justices,

formal or informal, rather than posing a threat to liberty courts, indicated

and guaranteed their continuing vitality. If a ‘royal standard of justice’ had

to be maintained, this was because the liberty’s lord and community did not

want the major civil and criminal pleas to be heard by the crown’s justices

See in general ‘Office- holders’, i, pp. 97–8.

Fishburn and Lowther: The Earliest English Law Reports, ed. P. A. Brand (Selden Society,

1996–), ii, pp. xxxvi–xli, lxxxi–vii. Deanham: ‘Office- holders’, i, p. 98. Threekingham: C.

M. Fraser, ‘Officers of the bishopric of Durham under Antony Bek, 1283–1311’, AA, 4th

ser., 35 (1957), p. 37.

For these men, see E. Foss, The Judges of England (London, 1848–64), iii, pp. 390–1; J.

R. McGrath, ‘Sir Robert Parvyng’, TCWAAS, new ser., 19 (1919), pp. 30–91; J. H. Baker,

The Order of Serjeants- at- Law (Selden Society, Supplementary Series, 1984), index, s.v.

Aldburgh, Blaykeston, Parvyng.

For payments, see DCM, Loc.V.32; for dates, ‘Office- holders’, i, p. 98.

Emsley and Fraser, Courts, p. 30.

Scammell, ‘Origin and limitations’, p. 466.

Ibid., p. 465.

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elsewhere, or the competence of the liberty courts to become restricted to

lesser actions.

It is true that in the North- East, as in other parts of England, contempo-

raries appreciated the problems that the judicial independence of liberties

could cause for the maintenance of law and order. ‘ e people of the bisho-

pric of Durham’ as much as ‘the people of the county of Northumberland’

recognised that the liberty o ered opportunities for criminals from north

and south of the Tyne; and in 1341 the bishop of Durham arranged a form

of ‘extradition treaty’ with the liberty’s four neighbouring counties.

But if

much contemporary complaint focused on liberties as havens for county

criminals, for the local community itself it was the ability of Durham’s judi-

cial mechanisms to settle its disputes, protect landed rights and maintain

‘the bishop’s peace’ that was paramount. It is by no means simple to assess

the e ectiveness of these mechanisms: quite apart from methodological dif-

 culties, the paucity of records makes it impossible to gauge the extent of

disorder in the liberty.  at said, however, the liberty does not seem to have

witnessed the breakdown of law and order that a ected Northumberland in

the 1310s.  e schavaldours or bandits who ranged north of the Tyne did

not, on the testimony of a slightly later chronicler, trouble the bishopric

to any similar extent, due to the forceful action taken by Bishop Kellawe:

‘some he hanged, others he drove outside the bishopric’.

It is probably

also signi cant that Gilbert Middleton’s ‘rebellion’ of 1317–18, undoubt-

edly the most serious incident of local disorder in the early fourteenth-

century North- East, was very largely a Northumberland a air.

It is

true that the abduction of the bishop- elect Lewis Beaumont, and of the

cardinals who were accompanying him, took place in the bishopric, and

that the pro ts to be had from the temporalities of the liberty, while the

see was vacant, provided one of the reasons for delaying Beaumont’s con-

secration.

 e identi able participants in the rebellion, however, were

mostly from north of the Tyne.  e relatively few men from the liberty

who probably took part, such as Walter Selby and Marmaduke Basset, all

held property in Northumberland as well as in Durham, and the major

incidences of rebellion outside Northumberland were not in Durham but

Northumb. Pets, no. 102; RPD, iv, pp. 244–7. For earlier arrangements for the exchange

of criminals between Norhamshire and Northumberland, and between Durham and

Yorkshire, see Fraser, Bek, p. 93; Emsley and Fraser, Courts, p. 26.

Scriptores Tres, p. 94. See generally A. King, ‘Bandits, robbers and schavaldours: war and

disorder in Northumberland in the reign of Edward II’, TCE, 9 (2003), pp. 115–29.

A. E. Middleton, Sir Gilbert de Middleton (Newcastle, 1918), provides the fullest narrative

account.

Ibid., pp. 24–6, translating DCM, Misc. Ch. 4238.

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in north Yorkshire.

 ere is some evidence, therefore, that the ‘devolu-

tion’ of judicial authority to the liberty made not for lawlessness but for

good and e ective rule.  e liberty certainly did not o er ‘freedom from

law- enforcement’ in the ecclesiastical sphere, as Ranulf Neville found to his

cost under Bishop Kellawe when he was excommunicated for incest with

his daughter.

Nor is it likely to have done so in the secular sphere.

 e e ectiveness of the liberty’s judicial systems in securing and pro-

tecting the landed rights of its inhabitants is also di cult to assess, and it

must be admitted that some of the signs are not promising. Before 1345

‘the people of the liberty of Durham and Norhamshire’ petitioned the

crown because the liberty’s chancery o ered them only a limited number

of legal writs.  e same petition complained of ‘default of justice more

than elsewhere in the realm’; and there had been other complaints to king

and council, earlier in the fourteenth century, about the ‘disinheritance’ to

which the liberty’s judicial system had condemned its inhabitants.

 e

local community would seem to have found the liberty’s judicial machinery

wanting; and, in its default, we might suppose that the king’s courts were

the obvious alternative. If the judicial privileges of the bishopric meant

so little to its inhabitants, then the liberty had become little more than an

inconvenience to them.

 is argument was advanced by Jean Scammell in an in uential article

which considered the liberty’s legal system to be one of the most signi -

cant of its limitations in the later Middle Ages. Scammell argued that royal

intervention in the early thirteenth century restricted the Durham justices

to holding pleas initiated by writs used at that time.  e liberty thus lacked

‘a foundation on which a jurisdiction parallel and equal to the king’s might

grow’, and the bishops were able to increase their civil jurisdiction only with

explicit royal consent.  is ‘static infertility of franchise’ meant that, at least

by the time of Edward I’s reforming legislation, the liberty’s courts were

increasingly inadequate to meet the needs of local landowners, who turned

V. H. Galbraith, ‘Extracts from the Historia Aurea and a French “Brut” (1317–47)’, EHR,

43 (1928), p. 208. For these men’s lands, see Middleton, Gilbert de Middleton, Chapter

13. The participation of Geoffrey Henknowle, with holdings at Evenwood, Henknowle

and Middleton- in- Teesdale in the bishopric, and lands in Yorkshire, must be regarded as

unproven. He was later named as an insurgent; but he witnessed a charter of Beaumont

in 1320 (DCM, Reg. II, f. 71v), and it is difficult to imagine Beaumont’s associating with

one of his abductors in this way.

Scriptores Tres, p. 94; for further detail, see H. S. Offler, North of the Tees (Aldershot, 1996),

Chapter 14, p. 194.

Pace Scammell, ‘Origin and limitations’, p. 470.

Northern Pets, no. 175; cf. nos. 170–1, and no. 173, for which a date of c. 1327 is likely:

Rotuli Parliamentorum (Record Commission, 1783–1832), ii, p. 14, with PROME, iii, p.

459.

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instead to the royal courts.  e liberty was thus undermined from within as

its inhabitants looked to the king, rather than to the bishop, for the exercise

of justice.

It is a powerful argument; but a very di erent perspective has

been o ered by Tim  ornton. Examining the cases that reached the royal

equity courts of Chancery and Star Chamber in the   eenth and sixteenth

centuries,  ornton found only a trickle of cases from the bishopric.

Although he did not give  gures from the central courts of King’s Bench

and Common Pleas, the obvious inference is that most of the inhabitants

of the bishopric were satis ed with the justice available there in the period

concerned. At least in respect of equitable jurisdiction, the bishop’s justice

was as attractive as the crown’s.

Although Scammell and  ornton reached very di erent conclusions,

both recognised that the quality of justice in the liberty was of vital impor-

tance to local people. Extra- judicial dispute resolution was common and

important in late- medieval England, but its processes o en worked in

tandem with the courts, not as an absolute alternative to them.  e legal

system remained central to the stability of landed society, and it was crucial

for the bishop to o er adequate civil remedies if his ‘royal liberty’ was to

meet the needs of local society. Did it do so in the thirteenth and fourteenth

centuries? Scammell seems to have been correct in her claim that in the

thirteenth century ‘the bishop’s courts, unsupported by a royal eyre, had

only been able to hear such civil pleas as could be begun by the old execu-

tive type of writ, including writ of right, plus the petty assizes and possibly

a number of other writs which were commonly used either during John’s

reign or in 1227 when the eyre last came’.

 is situation, however, was

transformed when many new writs, including entry and formedon, became

routinely available in the liberty’s courts.  at had certainly happened by

1345.

So, for the period a er around 1345, Scammell’s argument loses

Scammell, ‘Origin and limitations’, pp. 461, 463.

T. Thornton, ‘Fifteenth- century Durham and the problem of provincial liberties in

England and the wider territories of the English crown’, TRHS, 6th ser., 11 (2001), pp.

83–100.

Scammell, ‘Origin and limitations’, p. 463 (her emphasis).

It is not fully clear when these writs became available. A significant reform apparently

occurred in 1345. In January entry and formedon seem to have been freely available from

the bishop’s chancery (DURH 13/221, passim); and in March Durham Priory was able

to recover three acres in Iveston by a writ of entry. It was explicitly said that such a writ

‘was lacking until now in the bishopric of Durham’ (DCM, 3.3.Sacr.14b). But Thomas

Blagrys had pleaded a writ of entry in the bishop’s court before 1342; formedon had been

pleaded in the liberty by 1337 (FPD, p. 202; Durham University Library, Archives and

Special Collections, SGD 54/20A; cf. CP 40/324, m. 318–318d; 40/333, m. 83d); and there

is nothing to suggest that these pleas were not begun by episcopal writs.

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much of its force. For the pre- 1345 period, its relevance hinges on how far

the limited repertoire of available writs hindered the operation of justice.

It is of course impossible to give a de nitive answer to this question. On

the one hand, the records of the central royal courts, and of the crown’s

itinerant justices, are of enormous bulk, and in large part unprinted; on

the other, the records of legal activity within the liberty are few and far

between. Nevertheless the weight of the evidence does powerfully suggest,

against Scammell and in favour of  ornton, that the liberty’s courts were

the  rst and natural recourse of the local community, as was implied by

those who gave evidence concerning the bishop’s rights around 1225.

A starting- point is provided by published and calendared records, which

strongly indicate that it was rare for cases from Durham to come before the

king’s courts.  e eyre records of Northumberland up to 1293 are in print,

as are pleas relating to Northumberland in the curia regis and assize rolls

up to 1272, and in the court of Common Pleas between 1272 and 1280.

All contain only a handful of cases relating to the bishopric.

 ere are no

Durham pleas in the roll of King’s Bench for Trinity term 1297, which has

been printed in full, and no Durham pleas were heard in Common Pleas

in 1327–8.

 e inhabitants of other liberties attempted to bring pleas in

the royal courts, only for jurisdiction to be claimed by liberty baili s; these

‘franchises’ may therefore have had di culties in satisfying local require-

ments for justice, but this does not seem to have been the case in Durham.

 e extracts of Northumberland entries on the rolls of Common Pleas and

King’s Bench, made for the duke of Northumberland in the nineteenth

century, reveal few pleas from south of the Tyne;

and, more particularly,

the few Durham cases that came before King’s Bench in Edward II’s reign

were all heard outside the liberty for exceptional reasons.

Again, when

royal justices held assizes at Newcastle in the fourteenth century, they heard

no pleas relating to the bishopric, and there is no evidence that the bishop

appointed attorneys to crave his liberty, as did the lord of Redesdale and

FPD, pp. 220–301, passim.

NAR; NER (civil pleas only); Northumb. Pleas; Northumb. PDBR. Individual cases are

discussed below.

Placita coram Domino Rege: Pleas of the Court of King’s Bench, Trinity Term, 25 Edward

I (1297), ed. W. P. W. Phillimore (British Record Society, 1898); Index of Placita de

Banco, 1327–28 (Lists and Indexes, 1909); cf. A. J. Lilburn, ‘Northumberland cases from

the De Banco Rolls 1–5 Edward III’, unpublished typescript, NCS, SANT/TRA/2/5.

Claims of jurisdiction are noted in Index of Placita de Banco; for some Yorkshire exam-

ples, see ibid., ii, nos. 733, 757, 762–3, 768, 771. See also below, Chapter 5, pp. 223–6

(Tynemouthshire); Chapter 8, pp. 370–1, 373–6, 395–6 (Redesdale).

Alnwick Castle, Northumberland Collections, vols 23ff.

Ibid., vol. 25; below, pp. 78–80.

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DURHAM: GOVERNMENT, ADMINISTRATION AND LOCAL COMMUNITY

the prior of Tynemouth.

Remarkable though it may seem, therefore, the

bishop of Durham does not appear to have found it necessary to prevent his

subjects from suing in the royal courts.

An examination of  nal concords – legal settlements used for the convey-

ance of land – likewise indicates that the liberty courts were actively used.

Granted, these concords do not conclusively demonstrate the e cacy of the

liberty’s courts as a means of dispute resolution, for while they purported to

record the settlement of a legal dispute, the great majority were collusive or  c-

titious.  at inhabitants of the liberty chose to raise concords in its courts does,

however, show that they trusted the ability of those courts to enforce such

agreements. For much of the thirteenth century, records are incomplete and

problematic, but from the episcopate of Anthony Bek (1283–1311)  nes from

the liberty typically outnumber those from Northumberland by a ratio of three

or even four to one. In Northumberland, the advantages of  nal concords were

o en outweighed by the inaccessibility of the king’s court; in Durham, there

were no such di culties, and the readiness of local people to raise  nes speaks

highly of the convenience and e ectiveness of the liberty’s courts.

It was also most unusual for concords to be made by inhabitants of the

liberty before royal justices. Examples from 1228, 1239 and 1240 were made

during vacancies of the see, and one reserved the privileges of the liberty.

Even during vacancies, in fact, it was usual for the jurisdictional integrity

of the liberty to be maintained, and the courts continued to be used by

the local community: the bishopric court heard pleas during the vacancy

of 1274, and  nal concords were still made at Durham in 1307 when the

liberty was in royal hands.

Even magnates who held most of their estates

outside ‘Tyne and Tees’ o en used the liberty’s institutions for lands within

the bishopric, including lands in Sadberge.  e Percies, for example, used

the court at Sadberge for  nal concords relating to their manor of Dalton

The following rolls have been examined: JUST 1/658–61, 1230C, 1238–9, 1254, 1265,

1268, 1271, 1274, 1277, 1283C, 1299, 1306, 1364, 1417, 1424, 1435, 1453, 1464, 1475,

1485. Thanks to the kindness of David Crook, it was also possible to sample Common

Pleas writs (CP 52) from Edward III’s reign while these were being listed. The bishops did

appoint attorneys to claim jurisdiction over clergy: NAR, pp. 125, 365, 368.

For legal records relating to Yorkshire, we are less well served by published materials or readily

available extracts; but similar conclusions can be drawn. See, for example, Three Yorkshire

Assize Rolls for the Reigns of King John and King Henry III, ed. C. T. Clay (YASRS, 1911).

The following two paragraphs are based on M. L. Holford, ‘Feet of fines for the liberty of

Durham, 1228–1457’, EHR (forthcoming). The bulk of final concords from the liberty do

not survive, but to a significant extent its archive of feet of fines can be reconstructed from

later indices and inventories, most notably IND 1/10151, ff. 4r–14v.

Northumb. Fines, i, nos. 272–81; Feet of Fines for the County of York from 1232 to 1246, ed.

J. Parker (YASRS, 1925), pp. 89, 174.

JUST 1/225, m. 3; Greenwell Deeds, no. 110; see also CR 1237–42, pp. 29, 203.

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