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

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Durham: Patronage, Service and Good

Lordship

Matthew Holford

iberties were typically distinguished from county society by their

structures of lordship. The independence of liberties from the normal

orbit of royal government went hand- in- hand with the intensification of

seigneurial authority, and the quality of that lordship was central to how a

liberty mattered in local society. Heavy lordship could provoke challenges

to a liberty- holder’s authority; conversely, good lordship could make a

liberty something more than an administrative and jurisdictional entity.

The opportunities for service and advancement in a liberty; the availability

of local office; the lord’s management of patronage – all these could deter-

mine whether or not a liberty became a focus for the aspirations and ambi-

tions of local society. Durham was no different, and this chapter explores

the workings of good lordship in the bishopric. It examines the bishop’s

servants and familiars, the patronage they received, and their place in local

society. It assesses the opportunities offered by the liberty to careerists from

within and beyond the bishopric; and it considers the bishops’ relations

with wider landed society by exploring how successfully they competed as

good lords with the Balliol and Bruce families in the thirteenth century, and

with the crown in the fourteenth century.

 e patronage available to the bishops of Durham was extensive. Naturally

lands could not be granted out on the same scale as they had been in the

twel h century, but the bishop remained overlord of most of the liberty’s

estates, and enjoyed correspondingly extensive powers of escheat, mar-

riage and wardship.  e lands in his gi became even more extensive as

episcopal claims to prerogative wardship and to lands forfeited for treason

developed in the thirteenth century. Local administration was under the

bishop’s control, and o ered a further store of patronage.  e bishop could

also grant pardons and o er his protection to men pursued in his court.

He could give exemptions from all the burdens that might fall on his sub-

jects and tenants, including reliefs,  nes and service on juries and assizes.

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DURHAM: PATRONAGE, SERVICE AND GOOD LORDSHIP

Such favours were not all of great worth: the wardships and marriages in

the bishop’s gi in 1242 ranged in value from forty marks to merely half a

mark.

But the range and scope of the bishop’s patronage was without rival

in the liberty.

 ere are, however, considerable di culties in determining how these

resources were distributed, and with what e ect. Even from the 1340s,

when a regular series of rolls from the liberty’s chancery survives, records

of the bishopric’s administration remain fragmentary: there are very few

account rolls for the liberty before the   eenth century, and the records of

the hallmote court – a signi cant source for the management of episcopal

lands – do not begin until 1348.  ese di culties are only partly o set, for

the 1310s, by the survival of Bishop Kellawe’s register, and for much of the

thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we must rely to a large extent on what

can be gleaned from other sources. Episcopal grants of land were likely to

be preserved in private and institutional archives, both as evidence of title,

and because they required the assent of Durham Priory. As a result they

are relatively well documented and can be discussed with some con dence.

But leases of episcopal property, vital though they could be in a ecting the

shape of landed society, are very poorly recorded. We know only a little

more about grants of wardships, and the lack of  nancial documentation

means that we can say little about how the bishops used their power of par-

doning amercements or  nes, or about the annuities or fees they o ered.

 ere are further di culties, common to much of the study of medieval

patronage.  e circumstances behind most grants are unknown to us:

some may have been paid for at market rates, and such payments are not

always recorded. When the wardship of the lands of  omas Eppleton was

granted to Walran Lumley in 1341, only a later note to the liberty’s chancel-

lor reveals that Walran paid at least £60 for it.

Lumley doubtless thought

he could turn a pro t from the transaction, but the grant was by no means

as generous as it appears at  rst sight. It must also be remembered that

patronage was not always dispensed at the bishop’s pleasure to reward his

personal servants and followers.

Early in the fourteenth century, Bishop

Kellawe was asked ‘by many friends’ to retain Simon Rothbury in a suitable

position.

All too o en such requests, and the identity of those who made

them, leave no trace in the surviving record, but it is clear that the resources

‘Durham assize rolls’, nos. 140–54.

RPD, iii, pp. 353–5.

The warrants recorded in Bishop Bury’s chancery rolls for 1343–5 do, however, suggest

that it was the bishop, and not his steward or council, at whose instance most patronage

was dispensed: RPD, iv, pp. 269–363, passim.

DCM, Loc.XXVIII.14, no. 7.

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

of episcopal patronage might be exploited by the crown and local magnates

as well as by the bishops of Durham.

 ese caveats must be born in mind throughout the following discus-

sion, but the problems are not insurmountable.  e surviving evidence

allows us to trace patterns of episcopal patronage with some con dence,

and although the importance of patronage in medieval political life has

sometimes been downplayed,

the patterns are well worth tracing. It is cer-

tainly possible to accept that, in the liberty as elsewhere, patronage was o en

routine and uncontroversial; nor was it always the only or even the most

important in uence on actions and loyalties. But it is di cult to deny the

importance that the use or abuse of patronage might have in local society.

In their distribution of favour and patronage the bishops of Durham faced

potentially con icting obligations.  ey were expected to advance their

personal servants and familiars; equally, they were rulers of the liberty as

a whole, and obliged as such to give good lordship to the entire local com-

munity.  ese responsibilities were di erent in degree and in kind, but ‘the

desire to reward and the obligation to govern’ could nevertheless come into

con ict.

As Simon Walker argued of John of Gaunt, in the palatinate of

Lancaster, ‘the more favour he showed towards his own followers, the more

disa ected would grow the rest of the county community’.

Furthermore,

any similar di culties the bishops of Durham may have faced were exacer-

bated by the fact that they o en came to the liberty from other posts.

 ey

might bring with them households of some size: the permanent household

or domus, primarily concerned with the bishop’s domestic needs, and the

extended household or familia, whose membership was not formalised

and could include a range of companions, associates and advisers.

Both

groups might include men from a variety of areas who had entered the

bishops’ service at earlier stages in their careers. Bishops might also bring

with them responsibilities to kinsmen from other parts of England. And

endowing such personnel with land or o ce in the liberty risked disrupting

and alienating local landed society.

See, for example, E. Powell, ‘After “After McFarlane”: the poverty of patronage and the

case for constitutional history’, in D. J. Clayton, R. G. Davies and P. McNiven (eds), Trade,

Devotion and Governance (Stroud, 1994), pp. 1–16.

R. A. Griffiths, King and Country: England and Wales in the Fifteenth Century (London,

1991), p. 166.

S. Walker, The Lancastrian Affinity, 1361–1399 (Oxford, 1990), p. 145.

Only three bishops were elected from Durham Priory in our period: Robert Stichill (1260–

74), Robert Lisle alias Robert of Holy Island (1274–83) and Richard Kellawe (1311–16).

For the distinction between domus and familia, see C. Given- Wilson, The Royal Household

and the King’s Affinity (London, 1986), p. 2.

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DURHAM: PATRONAGE, SERVICE AND GOOD LORDSHIP

In practice, however, it seems that such disruptions were rare.  e prob-

lems resulting from administration by ‘baili s from other parts’ were one

reason for the di cult relations between Bishop Anthony Bek (1283–1311)

and his tenants and Durham Priory.

But such di culties were apparently

unusual, even if the priory chronicler did complain about the expense of

the familia of Bishop Lewis Beaumont (1317–33).

Not all bishops seem

to have brought with them signi cant households from elsewhere: Walter

Kirkham (1249–60), for instance, did not do so.

When familiares from

outside the liberty did accompany bishops, clerics were prominent among

them; and since they could be endowed with ecclesiastical patronage, the

impact on lay society was relatively muted. Two examples concern John

Romsey, steward in the second quarter of the thirteenth century, who had

probably moved to Durham from Salisbury with Bishop Richard Poore

(1228–37); and William Boston, steward under Bek, who was from Bek’s

county of Lincolnshire. Both these men received bene ces in the liberty.

Moreover, when members of the bishops’ familia were clergy of some dis-

tinction, already bene ced elsewhere, their desire for local advancement

may not have been great. Of the eight scholars in Richard Bury’s familia

identi ed by his contemporary biographer, only two seem to have received

preferment in the liberty: Richard Kilvington, dean of Lanchester in 1339,

and rector of Gateshead in the same year; and John Mauduit, dean of

Auckland in 1343.

‘Outsiders’ in the bishops’ domus perhaps had a rather greater e ect

on lay landed society. Although little is known of most bishops’ domestic

households, episcopal grants allow us to identify a number of servientes,

valetti and domicelli.

Some, such as Geo rey the cook or Jordan the

barber in the mid- thirteenth century, were relatively menial servants;

others, such as Andrew ‘the messenger’, valettus of Bishop Robert Stichill

(1260–74) and attorney of Bishop Robert Lisle (1274–83), probably carried

out a variety of administrative work; and others still are likely to have

FPD, p. 192.

Scriptores Tres, p. 118.

Acta 1241–83, p. xlii.

Acta 1153–95, p. l; C. M. Fraser, ‘Officers of the bishopric of Durham under Antony Bek,

1283–1311’, AA, 4th ser., 35 (1957), p. 24; Fasti Dunelm., pp. 109, 112–13.

N. Denholm- Young, ‘Richard de Bury (1287–1345)’, TRHS, 4th ser., 20 (1937), p. 165; A.

B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to ad 1500 (Oxford, 1957–9),

ii, pp. 1050, 1243.

On the household, see Lapsley, Durham, pp. 99–103; G. V. Scammell, Hugh du Puiset,

Bishop of Durham (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 232–3; Storey, Langley, pp. 92–8; and, for an

illuminating incident in the later fourteenth century, C. J. Neville, ‘Homicide in the eccle-

siastical court of Durham’, Fourteenth Century England, 1 (2000), pp. 103–14.

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

100

provided more honourable personal attendance – men like Roger Pichard,

Bek’s domicellus, or Nicholas Skelton, valettus of Bishop  omas Hat eld

(1345–81).

All such men had a claim on episcopal patronage; and they

received it with some frequency throughout our period in the form of

grants of o ce, usually at the lower levels of liberty and estate administra-

tion. William Brown, a household servant of Bishop Beaumont, was made

gaoler of Durham castle; other servants of Beaumont were appointed

keepers of episcopal parks.

Many grants of parkerships and forest o ces

under Hat eld went to members of the bishop’s domus such as the valet of

his kitchen, Walter Brantingham.

Episcopal servants could also hold more

prominent positions. John Haldan, serviens of Bishop Kirkham, served for a

brief period as sheri of the liberty in the mid- thirteenth century; Nicholas

Skelton, valettus of Bishop Hat eld, was a coroner, and John Belgrave,

Hat eld’s chamberlain, was also his chief forester.

 e attractions of

such o ce were even greater when, as seems to have been the case by the

mid- fourteenth century, its duties could be assigned to deputies.

Although we can rarely be certain about men’s origins or account for their

associations with the bishops’ households, it is clear that a number came

from outside the liberty. Some, such as Walter Slater of Howden in the 1270s

or William Brown of Easingwold, near Crayke, in the 1320s, were drawn

from the vicinity of the bishops’ Yorkshire estates.

Other servants may have

moved with bishops from former sees; but some, equally, were taken over

from previous bishops of Durham,

or newly recruited from local society.

Bury’s serviens, John Ferrour, can be placed with some con dence in

Beaumont’s household.

Kirkham’s serviens, John Hollingshead (who took

his name from Hollingside in Whickham or Holmside in Chester), and

Acta 1241–83, nos. 85, 97, 117; DCM, Misc. Ch. 1816; Feet of Fines for the County of York

from 1272 to 1300, ed. F. H. Slingsby (YASRS, 1956), p. 39; Bek Recs, nos. 162–3; DCM,

Reg. II, f. 276v.

CPR 1321–4, p. 417; 1330–4, pp. 189, 307.

DURH 3/31, m. 12d (cf. m. 2–2d).

Acta 1241–83, no. 91; DCM, Reg. II, ff. 122r, 276v.

There is little evidence for the deputising of office before Hatfield’s episcopate (1345–81).

The oaths sworn by some of Hatfield’s coroners permitted them to appoint deputies

(DCM, Loc.XXVIII.2, nos. 16, 20, 22); references to under- coroners appear around the

same time; and in 1366 the chief forester of the liberty swore that he would not sell his

office without the bishop’s consent (DCM, Reg. Hatfield, f. 46v).

Acta 1241–83, no. 181 (Slater); CPR 1321–4, p. 417 (Brown). For Brown, see also Surtees,

iii, p. 403 (where his surname appears as ‘Grenne’).

P. Hoskin, ‘Continuing service: the episcopal households of thirteenth- century Durham’,

in P. Hoskin, C. Brooke and B. Dobson (eds), The Foundations of Medieval English

Ecclesiastical History (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 124–38.

For Bury’s ‘dilectus serviens’ Ferrour, see RPD, iii, pp. 342–3. His appearance as a witness

to DCM, Misc. Ch. 192, suggests an association with Beaumont’s household.

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DURHAM: PATRONAGE, SERVICE AND GOOD LORDSHIP

101

Stichill’s valettus, Lawrence Bearpark, were clearly local men; John Travers,

serviens of Beaumont and Bury, was from Girsby on the Tees.

 e patronage received by such men was relatively generous. Robert

Strig, Beaumont’s parker at Wolsingham, occupied a position that had

formerly gone to two men, and his daily salary of 4d. amounted to over £6

p.a.  is was little less than the fee of the liberty’s chief forester, and for a

position that must have been considerably less onerous. William Mackary

and William Belers under Bury occupied similar positions and received

the same fee as Strig.

But only a small number of men could bene t from

such appointments, because grants for life made by previous bishops were

usually respected: William Brown, appointed keeper of Durham gaol for

life by Beaumont, was still its keeper under Bury. Bury likewise con rmed

in o ce Adam Scott, forester of Lanchester ward, who had originally been

appointed by Kellawe; and Hat eld in turn kept in place Bury’s servant

William Belers.

 e supply of lucrative and undemanding o ce at the

disposal of any given bishop was somewhat limited.

Many of the bishops’ domestic servants had thus to be rewarded with

other forms of patronage, and in particular land and wardships. But while

grants of land to domestic servants were not infrequent, they were usually

modest. Kirkham conveyed forty acres of land in fee simple to Geo rey

the cook, while Jordan the barber received small amounts of property

in London and Durham.

Stichill’s valetti Andrew ‘the messenger’ and

Lawrence Bearpark received similarly minor endowments, as did Bek’s

domicellus Roger Pichard, and Bury’s serviens John Ferrour.

Bek’s butler,

John Winchester, gained land that had probably been held by another epis-

copal butler.

When Bury made a more substantial grant, in Howdenshire,

to his valettus (and later executor) William Ash, it was of land previously

held ‘at the bishop’s will’, probably by another episcopal servant, and the

grant was for the term of William’s life only.

Gi s of wardships may well

have been similarly restrained: Kellawe granted only one to a household

man, Nicholas son of William Holtby, domicellus.

In sum, then, the impact

Acta 1241–83, nos. 78, 118; M. Harvey, ‘Travel from Durham to York (and back) in the

fourteenth century’, NH, 42 (2005), p. 130.

CPR 1330–4, p. 189; 1343–5, pp. 41, 433–4.

Brown: CPR 1321–4, p. 417; DURH 20/1; DCM, Loc.V.32, m. 1. Scott: DCM, Reg. II, ff.

110v–11r. Belers: DCM, Reg. Hatfield, f. 50r.

Acta 1241–83, nos. 85 (cf. Bek Recs, no. 60), 97; DCM, Misc. Ch. 1816.

Acta 1241–83, nos. 117–18; Bek Recs, nos. 162–3; DCM, Misc. Ch. 7155; RPD, iii, pp. 342–3.

DCRO, D/Sa/D354.

RPD, iii, pp. 365, 376–7; DCM, Reg. II, ff. 120v, 127v–8r.

RPD, ii, pp. 1293–4; cf. VCH, Yorks., North Riding, i, p. 275, for Nicholas’s possible links

with Redmire in Richmondshire.

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102

of the bishop’s domus on local society was limited.  e bishop’s domestic

servants did occupy a number of lesser o ces, but the other patronage

they received was run- of- the- mill. Furthermore, the in uence of new arriv-

als from outside the liberty was tempered by survivals from earlier house-

holds and by recruitment into the domus from within the liberty itself.

Grants to the bishops’ lay kin and familiares were not always so moder-

ate. In the early thirteenth century the wardship of the valuable Escolland

manor of Seaham was conferred by Bishop Richard Marsh on Robert de

Mariscis, evidently a relative.

 e Henry Lisle to whom Bishop Lisle

granted the escheated manor of Langley, with free warren therein, and

probably the wardship of the heir of  omas Amundeville, can be identi-

 ed – albeit not with complete certainty – as the bishop’s brother.

the 1310s, similarly, Bishop Kellawe’s brother Patrick received the ward-

ship of Robert Hansard’s lands in Walworth, and of the lands of Roger

Romanby; and Kellawe’s sisters Alice and Cecily received other grants.

Bury’s kinsman, Roger Aungerville, is one of the few laymen known to have

received an annuity (£10) from the bishop.

Again, Bek’s most valuable

grants were probably those he made to Henry Percy, one of his close lay

associates: the manors of Langley and Whorlton, and most of the manor

of Westwick.

Here the potential for disruption in local society was surely

greater. But precisely because many of the bishops’ kin and familiares were

outsiders to the liberty, they might have little interest in maintaining a

landed presence there. Robert de Mariscis conveyed the Escolland wardship

to Nicholas Hadham (seemingly a servant of Bishop Marsh), whose family

apparently came to share the ownership of Seaham.

Henry Percy seems to

have granted Langley to his retainer Robert St Oweyn, who then alienated

it to Henry Scrope.

Again, Aimery Trew, a kinsman of Lewis Beaumont to

whom the bishop had granted the forfeited manor of Felling, conveyed it in

turn to  omas Surtees (d. c. 1345) of Low Dinsdale.

Manors thus passed

RLC, ii, p. 137. The Yeland moiety of Seaham was valued at £20 in 1281: C 133/27/15.

NYCRO, ZBO MG/1–4; JUST 1/225, m. 5d; Acta 1241–83, pp. xxxiii, liv.

RPD, ii, pp. 1215, 1303–4, 1306, 1309. Note also that the lands of Richard Harpin were in

the custody of William, Nicholas and John Kellawe (RPD, ii, p. 851), although no grant

of wardship survives; and that Patrick and Cecily Kellawe received, probably by episcopal

grant, forfeited lands of the Templars in Foxden: RPD, ii, pp. 857–8; BL, Egerton Ch.

550.

RPD, iii, pp. 374–5.

Percy Cart., p. 376; RPD, ii, p. 800; NYCRO, ZBO MG/5.

RLC, ii, p. 137; Surtees, i, p. 269; NCH, xii, pedigree following p. 272.

NYCRO, ZBO, MG/7a–b, 8, 9. Long- standing Percy interests in the liberty were limited

to Dalton Piercy: VCH, Durham, iii, pp. 255–6. For St Oweyn, see also CIPM, v, p. 411;

Percy Cart., p. 164.

DCM, Misc. Ch. 5858; CPR 1330–4, p. 240.

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from familiares to rising local families – and the real importance of such

episcopal grants probably lay in the opportunities for property speculation

they opened up.

It was only when generous episcopal patronage was combined with the

independent means and desire to accumulate holdings in the liberty that

familiars were able to make a signi cant local mark. One example is pro-

vided by the future bishop of Ely, William Kilkenny (d. 1256), an associate

of Bishop Poore, who received the manor of Stanley by episcopal grant,

acquired other property at Stotfold near Hartlepool and elsewhere in the

liberty, and was the founder of a gentry family which rose to a position of

some local importance in the fourteenth century.

But it was unusual for

this to happen when men’s main interests lay at some distance from the

liberty.  us Geo rey Russell of Milton (Northamptonshire) had only a

 eeting connection with the bishopric. Having entered Bishop Stichill’s

service, he was steward of the liberty between around 1269 and 1274.

He acquired Coatham Mundeville and Carlbury, but both were soon

alienated, Coatham to Bishop Lisle, and Carlbury, in the following gen-

eration, to the Fitzmarmadukes.

 e connection between the Russells

and the Fitzmarmadukes did prove to be enduring: they served together

in Scotland in 1303 and 1314, and it was perhaps as a result of Richard

Fitzmarmaduke’s links with the Russells that he developed signi cant

interests in Northamptonshire.

But the distance of Geo rey Russell’s

main interests from the liberty meant that his intrusion into local society

was short- lived.

All told, therefore, most episcopal patronage of household servants,

familiares and kin had, for the greater part of our period, relatively little

e ect on the traditional social order; and it was likewise rare for individuals

to monopolise favour to an extent that provoked local antagonism. Only an

isolated example is apparently o ered by Master Roger Seaton, of Seaton

in Rutland, who had entered the service of Bishop Kirkham by 1259, and

continued to serve his successor Robert Stichill.

Seaton received a good

deal of the bishops’ ecclesiastical patronage: he was master of Sherburn

Hospital, around the third quarter of the thirteenth century, and also had

Acta 1196–1237, no. 328; Lancashire Record Office, DDTO E 4/31–7; BL, Egerton Ch.

519; Acta 1241–83, nos. 23–4. VCH, Durham, iii, p. 240, deals briefly with the family in

the fourteenth century.

‘Office- holders’, i, p. 101; BL, Additional Ch. 66337; DCL, MS Randall 3, pp. 34–5; JUST

1/225, m. 3d; Notts. Archives, DD/FJ/1/114/1–5.

CDS, v, nos. 2406, 2983; cf. C 81/1726/65. For Richard’s Northamptonshire interests, see

H. S. Offler, North of the Tees (Aldershot, 1996), Chapter 14, pp. 200–1.

The Earliest English Law Reports, ed. P. A. Brand (Selden Society, 1996–), i, pp.

cxxv–vi.

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the valuable living of Egglescli e.

He likewise accrued several wardships:

he had custody of the lands of John Rounton, perhaps in the 1260s, and was

also granted, before 1274, custody of the lands of Humphrey Conyers, and

the marriage of Humphrey’s heir.

Around 1270 Seaton also claimed to

have possession of the manors of Blakiston, Fulthorpe, Grindon, Sheraton

and Wynyard. Sheraton was the seat of the Rountons; and it is likely that

the other manors were also Seaton’s by virtue of wardships.  ey were

subject to attacks, suggesting that Seaton’s in uence in local society and his

domination of episcopal patronage were resented.

Seaton’s case was unusual; but from the late thirteenth century episco-

pal servants from outside the liberty did make an increasing mark on

local society. Professional or semi- professional lawyers and administrators

with origins in Northumberland or Yorkshire became prominent in the

liberty’s government, and because their family interests lay close to the

bishopric, they were more likely to put down lasting roots there. In the late

thirteenth century there was Guichard Charon of Horton and Stickley in

Northumberland, who was steward of the liberty under Bishop Lisle.

the early fourteenth century William Deanham, a rising Northumbrian

lawyer, acted as chancellor of the liberty under Kellawe, and a justice under

Kellawe and Beaumont.

A contemporary of Deanham’s was Adam Bowes,

who seems to have originated in Richmondshire.  is man of law, who

acted as an attorney in Common Pleas by 1299, was retained by Bek, and

was sheri of the liberty under Kellawe, and a justice until the early 1340s.

In the following generation the outstanding example was John Meneville.

He was from a Northumberland family with roots in the Tyne valley, but

transferred the principal focus of his ambitions to the liberty, where he

was sheri from around 1339 to 1342, and a justice of oyer and terminer

between around 1336 and 1348.

DCRO, D/Sh.H 586; DCM, SHD 1/19; Acta 1241–83, p. xlvi.

DCM, 2.1.Elemos.26a; KB 27/15, m. 17.

Northumb. PDBR, nos. 82, 151, etc.; Northumb. Pleas, no. 822.

NCH, ix, pp. 251–8.

The best account remains HN, II, ii, p. 15.

CP 40/130, m. 374; Boldon Buke, ed. W. Greenwell (SS, 1852), pp. xxxv–vi. For his

origins, see Surtees, IV, i, p. 107; C. M. Newman, The Bowes of Streatlam, County Durham

(Durham County History Society Occasional Papers, 1999), p. 4.

B. A. Barker, ‘The Claxtons: A North- Eastern Gentry Family in the Fourteenth

and Fifteenth Centuries’ (unpublished Teesside University Ph.D. thesis, 2003), pp.

187–9, 249–50. For Meneville’s judicial appointments under Hatfield, see DURH 3/30,

mm. 3–4d, 5d, and also m. 8d, an inquisition of 1353 where he is styled bishop’s

justice.

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DURHAM: PATRONAGE, SERVICE AND GOOD LORDSHIP

105

All these men acquired signi cant interests in the bishopric by purchase,

marriage or episcopal grant. Charon obtained the manors of Beamish and

Tan eld, and land in the surrounding area; Bowes acquired the manors of

Streatlam and Stainton, and land around Barnard Castle and Durham.

Both Deanham and Meneville built up property in the neighbourhood of

Easington.

Charon’s estates went by marriage to another Northumbrian,

Bertram Monboucher; but the other families concerned survived for at least

a couple of generations. Deanham’s estates passed to his son William (d. c.

1350) and grandson Edmund (d. c. 1351). Adam Bowes’s son Robert was

sheri in the 1350s, and John Meneville’s son William was sheri in the

1360s: both were prominent  gures in local society, and the Bowes family

remained important until well a er the medieval period.

It thus seems

likely that the aspirations and identities of these families came to be shaped

by the opportunities available in the liberty.

Episcopal service was by no means the only thing that drew such men

to the liberty. Guichard Charon may well have acquired Beamish and

Tan eld before he entered Lisle’s service; similarly John Meneville had

married the daughter of William Silksworth, thereby obtaining interests

in the Easington area, before 1325.

But these men, newly established as

they were, were quick to see the opportunities o ered by local adminis-

tration in the liberty, and the rewards of service enabled them and other

incomers to consolidate their position in local society.  ey seem to have

done so smoothly enough, although it is perhaps signi cant that they

were rarely in demand as witnesses. It is true that when Robert Gernet

granted six marks’ annual rent to a chantry in Elwick church in 1327,

many episcopal servants and associates were witnesses, including William

Deanham, John his brother, Adam Bowes and John Meneville. But

their presence is explained by the fact that the incumbent of Elwick was

Streatlam and Stainton were gained through marriage to the Traynes heiress, which

according to a later pedigree took place around 1336–7: Durham Visitation Pedigrees

1575, 1615, 1666, ed. J. Foster (London, 1887), p. 34. For Adam’s other lands in the liberty,

see DCM, Misc. Ch. 6314; BL, Additional Ch. 66376, 66394; CIPM, v, no. 615; RPD, ii, p.

1132; iii, p. 358.

Deanham: RPD, ii, pp. 1307–8; Hatfield Survey, p. 127. Meneville’s acquisitions around

Hawthorn, Haswell and Easington are particularly well documented; see, for example,

DCM, 1.2.Finc.35–6; Misc. Ch. 5787, 5788b–c, 5794, 6160, 6175–9, 6264; Haswell Deeds,

passim.

Newman, Bowes of Streatlam, passim.

It is quite possible, for example, that the cross moline featuring in the arms of Adam Bowes

proclaimed his association with Bishop Bek: G&B, nos. 324, 3125.

Tanfield was granted by Philip Ley to Charon and his wife Isabel; they were married by

1270, while Charon was apparently lord of Beamish in 1268: NCS, Waterford Ch. 38;

Surtees, ii, pp. 223, 225. For Meneville, see NCH, vi, p. 192.

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