Holford Matthew, Stringer Keith. Border Liberties and Loyalties in North-East England, 1200-1400 (ENG)
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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES
106
Master Luke Perrers, Bishop Beaumont’s doctor.
56
Deanham, Bowes and
Meneville found it easy enough to marry into local families, but all were
more prominent as witnesses to episcopal charters than to the dealings of
their neighbours.
Only where the acquisitions of these arrivistes were at the expense of
established local families were they likely to have generated ill- feeling, and
there is little evidence of such di culties. A violent incident at Penshaw
in 1328 may re ect tensions over the acquisition of the nearby manor of
O erton by William Deanham’s brother and fellow lawyer, John Deanham
(d. c. 1327).
57
Otherwise, only a tantalising hint is o ered by the list of
knights of the liberty and their residences compiled for unknown reasons
in the early fourteenth century. is seems to go to some lengths to omit
Guichard Charon: his properties at Beamish and Tan eld are repre-
sented respectively by the earlier family of Ley and by the later family of
Monboucher.
58
Perhaps, then, some relatively recent arrivals, particularly
those who had acquired properties by purchase rather than by marriage,
were not fully accepted as part of the local community in conservative
circles.
Episcopal service probably made signi cant contributions to the advance-
ment of men like Bowes, Charon, Deanham and Meneville, for the rewards
of o ce could be considerable. By the fourteenth century, and very likely
earlier, almost all the o ces in the liberty were feed, some generously. In
the later fourteenth century the steward could expect £40 p.a., and the chief
justice £10, the same fee as that received by the sheri since at least the early
1300s.
59
e chief forester of the liberty received ten marks p.a., and some
of the parkers, as we have seen, could expect almost as much.
60
e wages
of other estate o cials and coroners are less well documented, and were
certainly less substantial; but for someone on the margins of gentility, they
could still be signi cant. O ce itself was therefore among the most impor-
56
DCM, Misc. Ch. 192; Fasti Dunelm., p. 100; R. Donaldson, ‘Patronage and the Church: A
Study in the Social Structure of the Secular Clergy in the Diocese of Durham (1311–1540)’
(unpublished Edinburgh University Ph.D. thesis, 1955), ii, p. 91.
57
DCM, Loc.V.33, m. 3, summarised in C. M. Fraser and K. Emsley, ‘Law and society in
Northumberland and Durham, 1290 to 1350’, AA, 4th ser., 47 (1969), pp. 62–3.
58
Hatfield Survey, pp. xiv–xvi; M. L. Holford, ‘“Knights of Durham at the battle of Lewes”:
a reconsideration’, NH, 46 (2009), pp. 190–1.
59
Hatfield Survey, p. 267; DURH 20/1; DCM, 1.5.Pont.16. The details of fees in the receiver’s
account of 1339–40 are unfortunately damaged (DCM, Loc.V.32, m. 1); and if there was
a section for fees in the account of 1306–7, it has also been lost (Boldon Buke, pp. xxv–
xxxix). Royal keepers’ accounts during vacancies of the see provide no sure guide to usual
episcopal practice.
60
The forester’s fee is apparently first documented in 1353: DCM, Reg. II, f. 122r.
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DURHAM: PATRONAGE, SERVICE AND GOOD LORDSHIP
107
tant patronage at the bishops’ disposal. Even if the lands of omas Surtees
(d. c. 1345) in the liberty were really worth 100 marks p.a., the £40 he prob-
ably received as steward would have been a very considerable addition to
his income.
61
Similarly, the lands of Simon Esh (d. c. 1360) were valued at
just over £4 in his inquisition post mortem; his sheri ’s fee of £10 was much
more valuable.
62
Fees were not always promptly paid, but nor were they the only bene t
of o ce, quite apart from the possibilities of corruption and extortion.
All bishops used other forms of patronage to reward their servants. ey
received wardships, as did John Romsey, steward (c. 1247) of Bishop
Farnham; Robert Burnigill, constable of Durham (c. 1261–7); and, as
already noted, Master Roger Seaton.
63
Bishop Kellawe made signi cant
grants to John Evenwood, steward of Evenwood and a favoured episcopal
o cer, and also to Walter Goswick, constable of Norham castle.
64
Again, in
all episcopates, o cers received a signi cant proportion of grants of land,
and these could be substantial and valuable. William Middleton, steward (c.
1252–4) of Bishop Kirkham, received in fee the manor of Little Haughton,
which Kirkham had recently repurchased for £60; Bishop Lisle granted
the manor of Hardwick- on- Sea to his sheri John Malton.
65
Most grants,
admittedly, were more modest – the y acres of waste granted by Bek to
Roger Esh, or the to and 127 acres of waste Bek gave to Walter Barmpton,
were more typical and not worth a great deal.
66
e manor of Harbour
House, which originated in a grant of waste made by Bishop Kellawe to his
brother Patrick, was unusually valuable when it was assessed at ve marks
in the early eenth century.
67
Nevertheless for lesser o cers such grants
could still mean a good deal. Episcopal service could therefore contribute
signi cantly to social mobility in the liberty.
Furthermore, the bishop’s patronage of familiars from outside the liberty
did not prevent him from being potentially the most important patron
and employer within local society itself. Inhabitants of the liberty might
61
The valuation was given to the lands of Nicholas Surtees in the liberty in 1279 (NAR, p.
354); the inquisition post mortem (1378) of Thomas’s son gave a value of only around £17
(DURH 3/2, ff. 101v–2r). The family’s Northumberland lands were worth (it was said in
1279) £21.13s.4d: NAR, p. 354.
62
M. L. Holford, ‘The Esh family: officeholding and landed society in the palatinate of
Durham in the earlier fourteenth century’, NH, 43 (2006), p. 233.
63
‘Durham assize rolls’, no. 426; DCM, 1.2.Finc.18; above, pp. 103–4.
64
RPD, ii, pp. 1179–80, 1259–61, 1293.
65
Acta 1241–83, nos. 101, 248.
66
Bek Recs, nos. 22, 41.
67
DURH 3/2, f. 182v; H. M. Dunsford and S. J. Harris, ‘Colonization of the wasteland in
County Durham, 1100–1400’, Economic History Review, 56 (2003), pp. 44–5.
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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES
108
nd employment in the episcopal domus; others, like Walter Barmpton,
Simon Esh, John Evenwood and omas Surtees, held signi cant o ce
in the liberty, and were rewarded accordingly. Although clergy, most of
whom were ‘outsiders’, inevitably loomed large in the administration of
an ecclesiastical liberty, local laymen were by no means excluded from its
opportunities. For some men from the liberty, therefore, episcopal service
o ered considerable attractions. Indeed, not only did they receive fees and
other rewards: o ces were typically held at the bishop’s pleasure, o en for
many years, and lengthy tenure of o ce a orded much local in uence.
e sheri s of Durham also carried greater clout than did their fellows
outside the liberty because they discharged tasks performed elsewhere by
escheators, most notably the holding of inquisitions post mortem. If these
men were more heavily burdened than most sheri s, by the same token
they were more powerful locally; and they were also likely to be appointed
justices in the liberty. All this could make o ce in the liberty appealing,
and its rewards are especially well illustrated by the case of John Gilet,
steward and sheri of the liberty around the mid- thirteenth century. He
hailed from Egglescli e near Stockton- on- Tees, acquired land throughout
the bishopric, and had assumed knighthood by 1259. His descendants
were much less eminent, and his own prominence derived very largely
from episcopal service and its pro ts.
68
In the fourteenth century there was
William Walworth (d. 1353), sheri for much of the period between 1320
and 1333, who came from a family with small holdings in Darlington and
nearby Walworth. William and his father were buying up small parcels of
land in Darlington from the beginning of the fourteenth century; but the
pace of William’s purchases there, and in Preston- le- Skerne, quickened
signi cantly a er around 1320.
69
In 1321 he acquired interests in Great
Burdon; later, in the 1330s, he obtained land worth rather more than £10
in Longnewton.
70
By his death he had accumulated a sizeable estate, and it
is little surprise to nd that his son omas assumed arms.
71
It is clear that
the most active period of William’s purchases coincided with his tenure of
o ce in the liberty, and that it was essentially the pro ts of episcopal o ce
that enabled the family’s transition from freeholders to gentry.
Service in local administration was therefore more closely related to
careerism and social mobility than was usually true of county government.
68
‘Office- holders’, i, p. 104.
69
DCM, Misc. Ch. 1564–5, 6344*; 1.5.Spec.43a–b, 44, 48, 50.
70
DCM, Misc. Ch. 318, 322, 5319a–b, 5474a–b. He also acquired lands in Mordon near
Sedgefield at an uncertain date: DCM, Misc. Ch. 5371.
71
G&B, no. 2561 (and cf. no. 2559). William himself used an armorial seal in 1334, but it
was not his, and its owner cannot be identified: G&B, no. 2565.
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109
It is also likely to have gured more prominently among the aspirations
and loyalties of local men. And in the lower ranks of the liberty’s adminis-
tration, loyalties to successive bishops are likely to have been particularly
strong. e bishop’s estate o cials, baili s, foresters and coroners – when
they were not familiars – tended to be drawn from the middling ranks of
freeholding society, and o en devoted themselves to episcopal administra-
tion. ey were men like Bernard rislington, who took his name from a
village near Ferryhill, where he quitclaimed rights of common to Durham
Priory in 1309.
72
He seems to have had some connection with episcopal
administration under Kellawe; under Beaumont he was established as one
of the liberty’s foresters, and was also baili of Darlington in 1327 or 1328.
73
It was partly as a result of such service that he was able to build up a modest
collection of lands in the vicinity of Bishop Auckland, and his career is likely
to have been typical.
74
It is paralleled a little later by that of John ropton,
who rst appears in about 1320 as coroner of Darlington ward, an o ce he
still held in the 1340s when he sat on Bury’s council. In 1339–40 ropton
also had a general responsibility for some of the bishop’s manors, and was
baili and approver of the borough and mill of Auckland; and he had similar
duties at the beginning of Hat eld’s episcopate.
75
His career seems to have
been spent in estate management for successive bishops, and probably
enabled him to rise from being a relatively minor landholder in the neigh-
bourhood of Auckland to leasing the borough and mill.
76
e Pollard family
of Pollard Hall provides other examples of episcopal estate o cers whose
service allowed them to build up their landed holdings.
77
e allegiances and
loyalties of such men may well have been more clear- cut than was true at the
higher levels of the bishopric’s administration. As will be seen in more detail
in the next chapter, on the relatively rare occasions when these loyalties were
put to the test, the liberty’s foresters, coroners and baili s were essentially
the bishop’s men, in a way that could not be said of some higher- ranking
o cers. Bek’s disputes with Durham Priory and with his tenantry reveal how
important such lesser o cers were in the enforcement of episcopal lordship;
72
DCM, 1.13.Spec.18; 4.12.Spec.11. See also JUST 1/226, m. 6d.
73
RPD, ii, pp. 1278–9; E 210/11277; DCM, Misc. Ch. 1328.
74
For the lands, see Hatfield Survey, pp. 47, 49, 50, 58.
75
DCM, Loc.V.32, mm. 1, 2, 6d; Loc.XXVIII.2, no. 6; Hatfield Survey, p. 207; RPD, iv, p. 349.
76
Thropton also gained the manor of Offerton around 1341, possibly by purchase: Greenwell
Deeds, nos. 163–4. For the inquisition post mortem of his son William (DURH 3/29, m.
9d), see DURH 3/2, f. 51v.
77
C. D. Liddy, ‘Land, legend, and gentility in the palatinate of Durham: the Pollards of
Pollard Hall’, in C. D. Liddy and R. H. Britnell (eds), North- East England in the Later
Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 78–86.
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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES
110
and in part it was because these men owed a great deal to Bek that he could
rely on their loyalties.
78
In the upper ranks of the liberty’s administration, loyalties may well have
been more complex, in large part because of the position of Durham Priory,
which distinguished the bishopric from several other ‘royal liberties’. e
bishop of Durham was not ‘e ectively . . . the only source of patronage and
employment’ in the liberty, as John of Gaunt perhaps was in Lancashire,
in part because his palatinate
did not possess a major religious house.
79
Durham Priory, in contrast, had been an important landowner in its own
right since around 1083 when ‘the patrimony of St Cuthbert’ was divided
into episcopal and monastic lands.
80
Its judicial lordship was considerable:
the priory’s ‘free court’ exercised a signi cant criminal jurisdiction over its
tenants, and also heard pleas concerning lands, even if these were initiated
by the bishop’s writ.
81
Moreover, while the resources of the priory’s patron-
age could not compete with those of the bishop, they were nonetheless
substantial, and the priory was a signi cant employer and retainer. It feed
a number of episcopal o cers: in the mid- thirteenth century one of the
men receiving a pension from the priory was William Middleton, who is
almost certainly to be identi ed with Bishop Kirkham’s steward (1252–4)
and justice (1256).
82
e priory o en appointed as its stewards men with
close connections to episcopal administration, such as John Romsey, John
Malton and Adam Bowes.
83
In part, no doubt, such appointments re ected
the priory’s desire to acquire the goodwill of the bishop’s o cers. But the
priory was also an important patron in its own right. For example, Richard
Chancellor was steward of the priory before he became prominent in the
bishopric’s government in the 1260s; William Walworth seems to have
been employed by the priory only in 1335–6, when he was no longer sheri ;
and John Meneville was also feed during a period, 1348–56, when he had
largely ceased to hold o ce in the liberty.
84
In other cases it seems likely that
the priory retained men before they became prominent in episcopal service.
omas Surtees was feed in 1325, before he was steward of the bishopric;
78
Below, Chapter 4, pp. 148–9, 156–7.
79
Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, pp. 141–2.
80
W. M. Aird, St Cuthbert and the Normans (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 145–7, 160–5.
81
See the references cited above, Chapter 2, p. 68, n. 55.
82
DCM, Cart. Vet., ff. 166v, 175v. Compare the list in Durham Annals and Documents of the
Thirteenth Century, ed. F. Barlow (SS, 1945), p. 87, and comment in J. R. Maddicott, Law
and Lordship: Royal Justices as Retainers in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth- Century England
(Past and Present Supplement, 1978), p. 6.
83
DCM, 4.9.Spec.50; 4.7.Spec.17; 3.11.Spec.5; Bursar’s Accounts, 1330–1, 1333–4.
84
DCM, 4.7.Spec.12 (datable 1244 × 1258); 1.8.Spec.40 (dated 1259); and Bursar’s Accounts,
for years mentioned in the text, in the ‘fees’ sections.
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Roger Blakiston was feed from 1331, and was active on the priory’s busi-
ness in the 1330s, but does not appear as an episcopal justice until 1339 at
the earliest.
85
e priory must have had an important claim on these men’s
loyalties, not least because they were sworn to aid and counsel it against all
men, usually without reservation.
86
e priory also o ered other checks and balances to episcopal lordship.
As we saw in an earlier chapter, it had a claim to St Cuthbert’s protection,
and to represent ‘the liberties of St Cuthbert’.
87
Its privileged position
within the liberty was recognised by the Convenit of 1229; and it was not
only the priory’s servants who pledged fealty to it. e bishop’s o cers, and
even members of the bishop’s household, also swore to keep the priory’s
privileges unharmed: John ropton, coroner and estate o cial, did so
in 1345.
88
Partly by reason of its position as landlord, and partly because
of its associations with Cuthbert, the priory thus had important claims on
the loyalties of local society.
89
Indeed when ‘the knights of the bishopric’
resisted an attack on local privilege in the late thirteenth century, it was to
defend the priory against a visitation by the archbishop of York.
90
It is on these ‘knights of the bishopric’ that we must now concentrate. e
bishop was obliged to be a good lord to his servants, familiares and o cers.
But as lord of ‘the royal liberty of Durham’, the bishop was also a natural
focus for the aspirations of a much wider local community, which might
look to him for patronage and lordship. What did this mean in practice for
local society?
In some areas of the liberty, in the thirteenth century at least, it is clear
that the lordship of the greater local families quite eclipsed that of the
bishops of Durham. Particularly important were the families of Bruce and
Balliol, based as their estates were in the wapentake of Sadberge, where
the bishop was by no means the leading landowner, and where his ‘royal
liberty’ and lordship were recently and imperfectly established. Such
was admittedly less true of the Bruce honour of Hartness, which became
increasingly integrated with the liberty ‘between Tyne and Tees’ in the
85
Surtees: DCM, Reg. II, ff. 89v–90r. Blakiston: ibid., f. 103; Bursar’s Accounts 1332–3,
1333–4; Misc. Ch. 2641. Blakiston, however, was acting as an attorney for Bishop
Beaumont by 1331: E 159/107, m. 229d.
86
For examples of such oaths, see DCM, Misc. Ch. 4047, 4585.
87
Above, Chapter 1, p. 35.
88
DCM, Loc.XXVIII.2, is a file of such oaths from 1345 onwards; Thropton’s is no. 6, dated
16 May 1345, shortly after Hatfield’s election. For the Convenit, see Acta 1196–1237, no.
282.
89
See further R. B. Dobson, Durham Priory 1400–1450 (Cambridge, 1973), p. 192.
90
Scriptores Tres, p. 60.
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112
thirteenth century, partly because of the bishops’ success in establishing
their jurisdiction along the coast and in the port of Hartlepool.
91
For the
inhabitants of the honour the pull of Bruce lordship might remain sig-
ni cant: the family’s foundation at Guisborough received some patron-
age from Hartness tenants, and it was the service of Robert Bruce the
Competitor (d. 1295), rather than of bishops Lisle and Bek, that was sought
by the local lawyer Geo rey Hartlepool.
92
Nevertheless there were strong
social and administrative links between Hartness and the wider liberty.
John Fitzmarmaduke married Isabel, Bruce’s daughter, and received a
grant of land in Stranton; both he and his son Richard also witnessed Bruce
charters concerning Hartness. But their main interests in the liberty were
elsewhere, around Horden, Ravensworth and, above all, Silksworth, where
John Fitzmarmaduke’s chief residence lay.
93
William Feugeres, a proprie-
tor in Brierton near Hartlepool and a Bruce charter witness, also held land
by episcopal grant near Whickham; Gilbert III Hansard, another charter
witness, frequently attested episcopal acta.
94
John Mason of Hartlepool
was Robert Bruce’s baili of Hartness in 1294; but John’s probable relative,
Richard Mason, was acting on Bishop Bek’s behalf in Hartlepool in 1299.
95
As for the Balliol lordship of Barnard Castle, it was incorporated into
the liberty’s jurisdiction over the rst half of the thirteenth century, despite
the tendency of successive Balliols to resist the overlordship of the bishops
of Durham. Episcopal jurisdiction over the area was thus real enough,
and the thirteenth- century plea rolls indicate that the local community
turned readily to the bishop’s court.
96
Even so, the bishops could not
usually compete e ectively with the Balliols in terms of securing the loyal
service of local society. Charter witness- lists suggest that the lordship was
cohesive and relatively self- contained in the thirteenth century; and its
most important external connections were not with the liberty, but with
adjoining areas of Yorkshire and with the Balliol barony of Bywell in south
Northumberland.
91
Above, Chapter 1, pp. 46–7, 49.
92
R. M. Blakely, The Brus Family in England and Scotland, 1100–1295 (Woodbridge, 2005),
pp. 138–9, 175; Earliest English Law Reports, ii, pp. lv–vii.
93
Offler, North of the Tees, Chapter 14, pp. 196–7; for the estate in Stranton, see DURH 3/92,
m. 17d; CCR 1389–92, pp. 428–9.
94
For the Bruce charters alluded to here, see Cartularium Prioratus de Gyseburne, ed. W.
Brown (SS, 1889–94), ii, p. 335; CDS, ii, no. 1606 (10); Bodl., MS Top. Yorks. e. 8, ff.
27r–9r.
95
DCRO, D/St/D13/1/2, p. 34; RPD, iv, pp. 50–1. Richard remained in Bek’s employment,
and served as bailiff of Hartlepool under Kellawe: Boldon Buke, p. xxxiv; Greenwell Deeds,
no. 127.
96
Above, Chapter 1, pp. 48–9; ‘Durham assize rolls’, passim; JUST 1/225, passim.
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e leading families of the honour can be identi ed from inquisitions of
the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.
97
e families of Surtees
of Low Dinsdale, and Traynes of Stainton and Streatlam, each owed the
service of a knight’s fee to Barnard Castle. Eggleston and Sledwich were
the seats of the families of Eggleston and Mauburn, each of which owed
half a fee; Langton and Summerhouse belonged to the families of Langton
and Wybers. All these houses were knightly in the later thirteenth century,
and their members were prominent witnesses to the surviving Balliol deeds
relating to Barnard Castle. For example, Robert Traynes, Ingram Mauburn,
Henry Eggleston and Ralph Langton witnessed the charter of John I Balliol
(d. 1268) to the burgesses of Barnard Castle; Traynes and Langton, together
with John Eggleston, attested a subsequent grant of Alexander Balliol (d.
1278).
98
Traynes was one of the men who entered into an obligation on
Alexander’s behalf in 1274; Langton used the ‘powerful visual medium’ of
heraldry to identify himself as a Balliol follower.
99
Henry Spring ( . c. 1280),
who also derived his arms from those of the Balliols, was John I Balliol’s
executor, and witnessed Alexander Balliol’s charter to Barnard Castle.
100
e Spring family apparently originated at High Cli e (in Winston), and
also had interests at Lartington (Yorkshire), two miles west of Barnard
Castle, from the early thirteenth century. An earlier Henry Spring of
High Cli e was granted the manor of Houghton- le- Spring by Robert
Fitzmeldred, lord of Raby, and a later member of the family was styled
Henry of Houghton. But there is no doubting the continued signi cance to
the family of Barnard Castle and the Balliols.
101
e knightly families of Eggleston, Langton, Mauburn, Spring and
Traynes also recur as witnesses to local gentry deeds from the mid-
thirteenth to the early fourteenth centuries.
102
In their company were the
97
In addition to references given below, see for what follows RPD, ii, pp. 795–802; CIPM,
v, pp. 411–13; CCR 1313–18, pp. 489–90; and the biographies in Holford, ‘“Knights of
Durham”’, pp. 201–18.
98
Surtees, IV, i, pp. 71–2.
99
J. R. Walbran, The Antiquities of Gainford (Ripon, 1846), Appendix, no. 30; C. H. H. Blair,
‘Early armorials of the North’, AA, 4th ser., 23 (1945), p. 36. The quotation is from D. A.
Carpenter, ‘The second century of English feudalism’, Past and Present, 168 (2000), p.
53.
100
Historical Manuscripts Commission, Fourth Report (London, 1874), Appendix, p. 444;
Blair, ‘Early armorials’, p. 36.
101
The Pudsay Deeds, ed. R. P. Littledale (YASRS, 1916), nos. 442–3; VCH, Yorks., North
Riding, i, p. 122; NCH, vi, p. 46, n. 3; G&B, no. 2286.
102
This charter evidence consists principally of the muniments of the Bowes family, which
were dispersed in the early twentieth century. Significant deposits are held at the British
Library (Additional Ch. 66317–488) and Durham County Record Office (D/St), and a
smaller collection is at the John Rylands Library (PHC/247–57). Other medieval deeds
catalogued in the nineteenth century (DCRO, D/St/D13/1/2) and copied by earlier
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prominent free tenants of the lordship and the surrounding area, men like
Adam Bart of Whorlton, Jocelyn Westwick of Westwick, and Gilbert, lord
of Greystone.
103
Bernard Langton attested a charter of Ranulf Neville, as
did Eudo Pyburn, a freeholder in Cleatlam, who witnessed many Barnard
Castle charters.
104
But most of the families associated with Barnard Castle
did not have extensive interests elsewhere in the liberty; nor did they
regularly supply witnesses to episcopal charters. Balliol lordship did,
however, attract knights from neighbouring areas of the liberty; and in
about 1200 omas Amundeville, of Coatham Mundeville and Tra ord,
seems to have been the steward of Eustace Balliol (d. c. 1209) at Bywell in
Northumberland.
105
Charters relating to the lordship of Barnard Castle were also witnessed by
men who did not bear local surnames, notably Adam, Nicholas, Robert and
William Hindley, and Robert and William Westbury.
106
Sometimes these
witnesses also held prominent positions in the thirteenth- century lordship.
Its recorded stewards include not only local men such as Adam Bart, Ralph
Surtees and (probably) Jocelyn Westwick, but William Hindley, William
Westbury, and William Sawcock of Sawcock near the Balliol lordship
centre of Stokesley in Yorkshire.
107
e presence of men like Sawcock sug-
gests the wide- ranging attractions of Balliol lordship; but more signi cant is
the occurrence of William Hindley, which testi es to the close connections
between the lordships of Bywell and Barnard Castle. William took his name
from a place between Bywell and Whittonstall in the Tyne valley, an area
where he and his relatives held land and were important charter witness-
es.
108
e Adam Hindley who held a fraction of a knight’s fee in Barnard
Castle in the late thirteenth century, and the William Hindley with land in
nearby Headlam in the early fourteenth century, were almost certainly his
antiquarians (DCL, MS Randall 3; MS Raine 52) cannot now be traced. The charters
copied in MS Randall 3, pp. 203–27, well illustrate the arguments made here.
103
See, for example, DCRO, D/St/D1/1/1, 5 (the latter dated 1286).
104
DCL, MS Randall 3, p. 98; E 210/9075. Both men are also prominent witnesses to a
Fitzwilliam charter concerning Coniscliffe: DCM, Misc. Ch. 510.
105
C. T. Clay, ‘Notes on the family of Amundeville’, AA, 4th ser., 24 (1946), pp. 69–70.
106
DCL, MS Randall 3, pp. 204–5, 210, 218–19, 225. The origin of the Westburys has not
been traced.
107
Surtees, IV, i, pp. 71–2; DCL, MS Randall 3, pp. 204, 210, 218–19, 225. The ‘Jocelyn’ who
was steward of the castle (ibid., p. 227) was probably Jocelyn Westwick. For Sawcock, see
also VCH, Yorks., North Riding, ii, pp. 29–30. Robert Skutterskelfe, constable of Barnard
Castle in 1272 (DCM, Misc. Ch. 6909a), was also named after a place near Stokesley, and
held lands at Faceby and Carlton in Cleveland: VCH, Yorks., North Riding, ii, pp. 233,
313.
108
NCH, vi, pp. 159, 182–5, 187, 199. For a confirmation by Hugh Balliol (probably the Hugh
who died in 1228) to Robert Hindley of lands near Broomley, see ibid., p. 254, n. 8.
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DURHAM: PATRONAGE, SERVICE AND GOOD LORDSHIP
115
descendants, owing their property in the district to the Balliols.
109
Similarly,
Robert Wybers drew an annuity from the Bywell estate of Newlands, and
was probably a descendant of the William Wybers who witnessed earlier
Bywell charters and was the steward of John I Balliol.
110
But Robert also
appears associated with Summerhouse in the list of knights of the liberty of
Durham, and was a regular witness to Barnard Castle charters in the later
thirteenth century. Robert’s nephew was Adam Meneville of Whittonstall,
who seems to have held Summerhouse in the 1310s.
111
Conversely, the
Alan Teesdale who witnessed charters relating to Whittonstall in the early
thirteenth century, and who was granted a small amount of land there,
surely originated from the Barnard Castle area.
112
Charter witness- lists
o er further evidence of the close connections between the two Balliol
lordships. e Barnard Castle families of Surtees and Traynes attested
late twel h- century Balliol charters concerning the Tyne valley; while the
steward William Sawcock is probably to be identi ed with the witness to a
Whittonstall charter.
113
Together the Bywell and Barnard Castle lordships
seem to have formed something of a composite honorial community which
– probably in contrast to lordships elsewhere in England – retained its vital-
ity throughout the thirteenth century.
114
More particularly, it says much
for the strength of the Balliols’ in uence that tenants and servants from the
Barnard Castle area might have weaker links with the rest of the liberty of
Durham than they had with Bywell. eir patterns of association, as much
as their choices of heraldry, reveal how far their lives and aspirations were
shaped by Balliol lordship.
115
e forfeiture of the Bruce and Balliol estates in the years around
1300 inevitably meant that the structures of lordship in the wapentake
of Sadberge would be profoundly altered. Hartness was nally forfeited
in 1306, while the liberty was in Edward I’s hands, and its control passed
immediately by royal grant to the Cli ord family, which retained it for
the rest of the medieval period. Until 1461 it was held of the crown, and
109
RPD, ii, p. 801; CIPM, v, no. 615; JUST 1/225, m. 5.
110
C 132/36/5; NCH, vi, p. 186, n. 1; DCM, Misc. Ch. 6909*; Pudsay Deeds, no. 443.
111
DCM, Misc. Ch. 5492; CIPM, v, no. 615; CCR 1313–18, pp. 489–90. The Menevilles of
Summerhouse are to be distinguished, sometimes with difficulty, from the Yorkshire
Meinills, with interests in Snotterton in Staindrop (NDD, pp. 262–3); and John Meneville
of Summerhouse, who also gained the manor of Sledwich, is to be distinguished from his
namesake and contemporary, the sheriff and justice: Bodl., MS Eng. c. 7032, f. 89r; RPD,
iv, pp. 271, 276.
112
NCH, vi, pp. 182, n. 3, 185, n. 3.
113
Ibid., p. 186, n. 1.
114
Cf. Carpenter, ‘Second century of English feudalism’, passim.
115
For the Surtees arms, which reflected Balliol associations, see below, p. 117.
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