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

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

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behind the community’s petition that lands should not be seized by the

bishop without a writ, except on the death of a tenant- in- chief.

 ese

scraps of evidence suggest that Bek exercised some control over the aliena-

tion of lands held in chief, and it is also likely that he was the  rst bishop to

do so, at any rate outside eyres.  e royal prerogative developed  tfully over

the thirteenth century, and became  rmly established only during the reign

of Edward I: Prerogativa Regis, from early in Edward’s reign, allowed for

the alienation of small parcels of land; the articles of the escheators, from

a er 1295, forbade any diminution of a tenement. Similar restrictions in the

liberty are unlikely to have preceded these developments.

Bek’s prerogative claim to the tithes of all assarted land in the liberty was

probably also a recent development. Bek’s steward asserted that the bishop,

as king and prince within his liberty, could act as the king of England did

elsewhere in claiming such tithes – and this was the context for the well-

known statement that there were two kings in England, the king himself,

and the bishop of Durham, wearing a mitre as symbol of his regality in

the bishopric of Durham.

 e claim was challenged by Durham Priory,

which had been active in the reclamation of waste from the later thirteenth

century, and hoped to keep the tithes for itself; and the priory’s complaints

suggest that the claim had been newly made by Bek and his administra-

tors, probably borrowing creatively from royal lordship. A er all, William

Boston, Bek’s steward, had previously been in royal service.

In several ways, therefore, the bishops’ powers in their ‘royal liberty’ were

becoming increasingly extensive in the later thirteenth century.  ey estab-

lished greater rights over forest, and expanded the area de ned as forest;

and they claimed common land as ‘waste’ to be granted out at will. Bek

pushed these claims further still; and, in addition, he claimed to restrict the

creation of private mills and mines, and exercised controls over the aliena-

tion of lands held in chief. All these developments increased the bishop’s

income at the expense of his subjects.

On the other hand, some of the bishop’s prerogatives which were the

object of complaint in 1302–3 were well established. Such was the case, for

RPD, iii, p. 43.

On the royal prerogative, see S. L. Waugh, The Lordship of England: Royal Wardships

and Marriages in English Society and Politics, 1217–1327 (Princeton, 1988), especially pp.

94–5.

JUST 1/226, m. 1d; Fraser, Bek, pp. 98–9.

The priory claimed to have been deprived of such tithes since Bek’s accession: DCM, Misc.

Ch. 5646; cf. DCM, Cart. II, f. 298r, and the now missing 3.13.Spec.39, as noted in Rep.

Mag., f. 96v. When Bishop Kellawe had granted the tithes of assarted land in St Andrew

Auckland to Kepier Hospital it was, significantly, with the priory’s consent: RPD, ii, pp.

1272–7. For Boston, see Fraser, Bek, pp. 100–1.

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example, with prerogative wardship.  is was also modelled on the crown’s

rights: although whereas the crown enjoyed the wardship of all the lands

of its tenants- in- chief by knight service, the bishop, it seems, claimed the

wardship only of lands held by knight service.

Like its royal counterpart,

the episcopal prerogative had a lengthy history. Bishops were certainly

attempting to exercise it in the  rst half of the thirteenth century, although

it was no more popular in the liberty than its royal equivalent was in the

kingdom at large.

A later tract described how, around the mid- thirteenth

century, Robert Fitzmeldred had forcefully taken from the bishop custody

of St Helen Auckland, Ralph Coatham had ejected the bishop’s o cers

from Coatham Stob, and Walter Egglescli e had kept them from Little

Stainton.

In 1269 Richard and Margery Gosbeck sued Bishop Stichill in

the king’s courts for the custody of the manor of Tunstall; but the bishops

were increasingly successful in defending their rights. When Stichill’s pre-

rogative right was disputed by Robert Neville in the 1270s it was upheld

by the crown, and before 1285 the bishops’ rights received semi- o cial

endorsement in the pseudo- statute Prerogativa Regis, according to which

the crown’s rights of wardship did not hold ‘between Tyne and Tees’.

 e bishops’ claims nevertheless remained contentious. In 1302 Ranulf

Merlay, a substantial freeholder in Hawthorn, sued Bek’s steward, coroner

and baili . In 1298 they had deprived Ranulf of the wardship of the heir of

Jollan Merlay, and of Jollan’s lands in Hawthorn, because Jollan also held

land in Broomy Holm in chief of the bishop.  e Hawthorn lands were of

some value, and the case illustrates the resentment that the bishop’s claims

could arouse among middling and lesser society in the liberty.

All the same, the community could not claim that prerogative wardship

was newly established, and objections to a payment called woodhire were

similarly ill- founded. Also known as forestagium, this was a customary

Bek Recs, p. 94; PROME, iii, pp. 230–5; RPD, iv, p. 136.

Waugh, Lordship, pp. 72–3, 234, 239, 255, 270.

DCM, 1.5.Pont.3, art. 12; printed from a different copy in Richardson, ‘Bek’, pp. 192–3,

n. 21. Although not confirmed by other sources, this account is largely credible, but its

accuracy is not beyond doubt: the claim that Bek and John Balliol had shared the wardship

of the Durham lands of William Surtees was clearly erroneous if William was the man of

this name who died around 1261.

NAR, p. 201; DCM, Loc.XXI.18, m. 4; BL, MS Stowe 930, f. 148r; KB 27/15, m. 17; CCR

1272–9, p. 109. For Prerogativa Regis, see above, Chapter 1, p. 44.

JUST 1/226, m. 8d. For Jollan Merlay, who had a son called Ranulf, see DCM, Misc. Ch.

5782, 5786; Greenwell Deeds, no. 146. In 1327 the various lands of this Ranulf in Hawthorn

were said to be worth twelve marks beyond due services, and the manor of Broomy Holm

was worth nothing beyond the services of 18s.: DURH 3/2, f. 4v. None of these lands was

held in chief of the bishop, so the tenure on the basis of which Bek’s claims were founded

is unknown.

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charge of money or hens for taking dead- wood from the bishop’s forest.

 e claim in 1303 that this payment was new was quite unjusti ed.  e

charge is well documented in the early thirteenth century, and it is not sur-

prising that Bek should have refused to relinquish it, and that later bishops

should have continued to collect it.

 e claim that the local community

was protesting against ‘new and unheard- of impositions’ cannot, therefore,

be taken wholly at face value.  e community’s protests encompassed not

simply Bek’s – admittedly rigorous – enforcement of his rights, but broader

developments in episcopal lordship which had come, over the course of the

thirteenth century, to increase the bishops’ powers at the expense of their

subjects.

‘ e community of the liberty’ has  gured prominently in the preceding

pages, largely because the language of community is so prominent in the

records of the dispute. We have seen in a previous chapter how this ‘com-

munity’ is o en nebulous and elusive; and to a signi cant extent this is also

true of the Bek dispute. But the dispute does allow us to trace more fully

than is usually possible the gestation and birth of collective action. As we

will see, the ‘oppressions’ of Bek’s regime, while widely felt, fell with par-

ticular intensity on certain social groups and geographical areas. By them-

selves such ‘oppressions’ might well have failed to stimulate communal

reaction. It was only a er the dual provocations, early in 1300, of enforced

military service and the assault on Durham Priory that ‘the community of

the liberty’ came to the fore.

Before we trace the emergence of this ‘community’, however, we must

remember that loyalties were more complicated than the language of collec-

tivity implies. Episcopal lordship before, during and a er the dispute relied

on the bishop’s o cers, many of whom were local men.  e importance of

these o cers in exacting Bek’s claims is everywhere clear from the pleas of

1302–3. Debts owed to the bishop were distrained by the liberty’s sheri

and coroners; the steward and coroner arrested Isolda Hamsterley when

she sought justice outside the liberty.

As a er the Black Death, the liberty’s

coroners were particularly prominent.  ey were the most frequent target

of complaints in the judicial proceedings brought against the bishop and his

men in 1302–3, and when Bek besieged Durham Priory in 1300, a leading

The charge features prominently in depositions of c. 1225 concerning the bishop’s forest

(FPD, pp. 232–3, 236, etc.). DCM, 2.6.Pont.13, art. 4 (c. 1345), describes woodhire as a

customary annual rent of one penny or three farthings, or of hens, paid by the priory’s

tenants for taking a cart- load of wood from the bishop’s forest. For complaints, see RPD,

iii, p. 44; and cf. iv, p. 66.

JUST 1/226, mm. 8, 9d.

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DURHAM UNDER BISHOP ANTHONY BEK

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part was taken by one of the coroners, who displayed his rod of o ce to

give legitimacy to the proceedings.

It was ‘the coroners and baili s of the

liberty’ who were singled out as the bishop’s principal agents, and whom

the steward was said to control; and the steward himself, as the other o cer

who most obviously combined ‘public’ and ‘private’ responsibilities, was

also a central target for complaint. His attempt to exploit the ambiguities

of his position by denying that he held any public o ce in the liberty was,

signi cantly, unsuccessful.

Certain areas of the liberty were particularly important recruiting-

grounds for these o cers. Weardale, where the most important epis-

copal forest was located, and where the bishop was the most signi cant

landowner, was an area where the bishop’s authority was well established

and where he could draw on trustworthy local agents. William Foxcotes,

apparently one of Bek’s forest o cials, held land in Bishopley and Rogerley

near Stanhope; Walter Barmpton, chief forester, held property in Witton-

le- Wear, in the adjacent village of Morley, and perhaps in Stanhope.

‘Foresters of Weardale’ provided much of the muscle for the siege of the

priory in 1300, as – to draw a later parallel – they did when Bek attacked the

earl of Warwick’s properties at Middleton- in- Teesdale in 1307.

Weardale abutted another major area of episcopal in uence around

Bishop Auckland, where many of the bishop’s most valuable and impor-

tant demesne manors were concentrated. It was around Auckland that the

coroner Peter Bolton held most of his land; here, too, that the holdings

of William Dodd, another coroner, seem to have been focused.

Walter

Barmpton also held land near Auckland, and at Barmpton, north- east of

Darlington; John Saundon, baili of Auckland and Darlington, was another

prominent minister of the bishop from this area.

And a  nal concentra-

tion of episcopal authority was in the bishop’s boroughs of Gateshead,

Darlington and Durham itself. Gilbert Gategang, baili of Gateshead, was

JUST 1/226, passim; Fraser, Bek, p. 143.

JUST 1/226, m. 8. William Boston admitted he was steward of the bishop’s lands, but

denied he held ‘regalis officium’.

RPD, ii, pp. 1202–3; DCM, Misc. Ch. 369. Foxcotes was one of three men who arrested

Hugh Fisher at Hamsterley: JUST 1/226, m. 4. For Barmpton, see Surtees, iii, p. 441;

DURH 3/2, f. 34v (the inquisition post mortem of his son Thomas); DCRO, D/Lo/F13 (a

grant by this Thomas of land in Stanhope).

Scriptores Tres, p. 76; Bek Recs, pp. 209–10.

Bolton: RPD, ii, pp. 1046, 1204, 1213, 1231, 1233; DURH 3/2, f. 16r (inquisition post

mortem of his granddaughter Alice); Hatfield Survey, p. 34. He also had land near Durham

(RPD, iii, p. 35). Dodd: RPD, iii, p. 33.

Barmpton: DURH 3/2, f. 34v; RPD, iii, p. 34. Saundon: JUST 1/226, mm. 4, 6; he paid £6

for the farm of the borough of Auckland in 1306–7 (Boldon Buke, p. xxxii). For his position

as bailiff of Darlington, see DCRO, D/Sa/D354.

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

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one of the men responsible for the (supposedly) wrongful arrest of William

Brackenbury at Gateshead in 1291.

John Saundon and William Rue,

baili s of Darlington, seized the goods of a York merchant there in 1295,

and they were assisted by other more or less prominent townsfolk. Various

other pleas were also brought in 1302–3 against William Rue and against

William, serjeant of Darlington. Even in Hartlepool, one of the bishop’s

servants, Richard Mason, was accused of seizing a shipment of the priory’s

wool in 1299.

In Durham, too, past and current episcopal o cers also supported Bek’s

regime.

John son of John Durham, prosecuted as a ‘minister of the bishop’

in 1302, had been baili of the bishop’s borough in the late thirteenth cen-

tury.

Again, John Colchester, who had been serjeant of the borough in

1275, was accused of taking the horses of John Burdon, a priory servant, at

Durham in 1300.

Similarly prominent in the pleas of 1302–3 were men

with responsibilities in Durham peninsula, which was under the jurisdic-

tion of the constable of Durham castle. Hugh, porter of the north gate of

Durham bailey, was arraigned for wrongfully arresting  omas Haswell at

Durham in 1299; John Whitwyn, keeper of the north gate, was accused of

acting similarly in 1298.

Weardale, Bishop Auckland and the bishop’s boroughs were zones

where the bishop’s authority loomed large and where he could rely on the

support of important members of local society. It is thus no surprise that,

in the pleas of 1302–3, they emerge as areas where ‘oppressions’ were rife.

Records of these pleas must be used with caution, as it is clear that not eve-

ryone with a grievance came to court.

Doubtless the impact of the bishop’s

lordship was more widely felt and resented than the surviving records

indicate. Nevertheless the roll and estreats do suggest that Bek’s regime

bore with special force on certain parts of the liberty and on particular

social groups.

A major concentration of pleas was drawn from Weardale:

JUST 1/226, m. 11d. Gilbert’s brother John Gategang received an episcopal grant of waste,

and subsequently disseised the prior of Durham in Heworth: DCM, Loc.VII.14; RPD, iv,

p. 56. For a pedigree of the family, see Surtees, ii, p. 116.

JUST 1/226, mm. 6, 9, 11, 12; RPD, iv, pp. 50–1. For Mason’s later connections with Bek,

see Boldon Buke, p. xxxiv; for his office in Hartlepool, Greenwell Deeds, no. 127.

See also below, pp. 157–8.

JUST 1/226, mm. 4d, 9d; DCM, 5.3.Elemos.20; Bek Recs, no. 127; Greenwell Deeds, no. 124.

Robert Paxton, farmer of the borough of Durham, was prosecuted together with John, but

the nature of the plea is unknown.

JUST 1/226, m. 3; Greenwell Deeds, no. 48.

JUST 1/226, mm. 3d, 10 (Whitwyn was acquitted by a jury).

For one grievance that came to light only later, see DCM, Reg. II, f. 91r–v.

The following sentences are based on JUST 1/226, passim, with the estreats of now lost

pleas in CCR 1302–7, pp. 153–9.

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DURHAM UNDER BISHOP ANTHONY BEK

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Hamsterley, Stanhope, Witton- le- Wear, Wolsingham and the forest of

Weardale itself.  ese disputes all turned on questions of forest jurisdiction

and the powers of the bishop’s forest o cers. An episode at Frankland Park

near Durham also involved the bishop’s forest; similarly, the con scation of

animals at Hamsterley was one of the incidents in which Isolda Hamsterley

fell foul of Bek’s o cers.  e bishop’s boroughs, especially Durham and

Darlington, were a further source of pleas. Another concentration was

around Auckland, with incidents at Binchester, Evenwood and Newbiggin

involving exactions by the bishop’s baili s. As we have seen, all these zones

were centres of episcopal power and authority: by a natural paradox, the

areas of the liberty where the bishop’s authority was particularly strong

were also those areas where opposition to his lordship was especially pro-

nounced. Conversely, there were signi cant parts of the liberty from which

pleas were not brought, and where Bek’s lordship may have borne more

lightly.  ese included the lordships of Barnard Castle and Hartness in

the wapentake of Sadberge. Pleas from the wapentake relating to Aislaby,

Egglescli e and Hartlepool were brought in 1302: signi cantly, though,

all concerned private disputes. From the evidence of the pleas, at least, the

wealthy lowlands of the southern and eastern areas of the liberty, where so

many of the local gentry were concentrated, seem to have played little role

in the opposition to Bek. Robert Hoton was arrested at Butterwick near

Sedge eld, but this was a direct result of his priory connections.

Socially the most prominent  gures in the pleas of 1302–3 were not the

magnates or knights of the liberty but its freeholders. Some were relatively

substantial men: Emery Kelloe, who had su ered from unjust distraint in

1293 and had been wrongfully imprisoned in Durham castle in the same

year, was lord of Old Park near Bishop Auckland; Peter Crook, who had

been disseised by Bek’s steward, was lord of Crookhall near Durham.

similar stature were  omas Auford, who protested against the exaction of

carriage at Willington; William Brackenbury, who had been arrested for

beating one of the bishop’s men; and Ranulf Merlay of Hawthorn, who (as

we have seen) had been deprived of a wardship.

Many other plainti s,

though, were lesser  gures. Richard Mainsforth, a middling freeholder at

Hett, complained about the seizure of his crops and animals there, and

other plainti s were pardoned their amercements ‘because they are poor’.

JUST 1/226, m. 3d. Robert was a stipendiary of the priory and probably a relative of Prior

Richard: DCM, Bursar’s Accounts, 1298–9, m. 3d.

JUST 1/226, mm. 6, 10d (Kelloe); CCR 1302–7, p. 157, with Surtees, IV, ii, p. 137

(Crook).

JUST 1/226, mm. 5d, 8d, 11d.

Ibid., mm. 9–9d, 11d; DCM, 4.13.Spec.45, 46, 50.

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In contrast, many of the liberty’s knightly families were not signi cantly

involved.  ese were men such as William Basset of O erton (who appears

in the records only in what seem to be private disputes), Hugh Burdon of

Grindon, John Conyers of Sockburn, Gilbert Heworth of Heworth, Philip

Ley of Pallion, Robert Lumley of Lumley and John Spring of Houghton-

le- Spring (who likewise appears only in a private dispute).

Similarly, a

lengthy list of other gentry who leave no trace in the pleas could readily be

compiled: it would embrace Jordan Dalden of Dawdon, Robert Hansard

of Walworth, and John Yeland of Seaham – all descendants of prominent

thirteenth- century families – and some of the witnesses to Bek’s charters

of the early 1300s, including Robert Eppleton, Hugh Escolland, William

Herrington, William Kilkenny and William Knitsley, several of whom were

also descended from knightly families.

We must be careful in drawing conclusions from this evidence –

not least because two of the liberty’s knights, Ranulf Neville and John

Fitzmarmaduke, were to lead the opposition to Bek, as we will see.

Nevertheless there is a suggestive correlation with the petition and charter

of 1303, in which, as Lapsley noted, the interests of ‘the smaller freemen

of the palatinate’ are well represented.

As has been found in an earlier

chapter, when decisions were taken by ‘the community of the liberty’ those

involved were not always the liberty’s landed elite.

 e dispute with Bek

is another instance where ‘behind the language of “community” aspiration’

we should not presume to  nd ‘the handiwork and ambitions of . . . the

leaders of the community’.

Whatever the extent of opposition to Bek before 1299–1300, there can be

no doubt that resistance was not only stimulated, but also widened and

transformed, by the events of those years.  ey saw the bishop’s mediation

of Edward I’s demands for military service in Scotland, demands which

were felt throughout the liberty as a whole and were widely resisted. In

1300 there occurred Bek’s enforced visitation of Durham Priory, which was

perceived as an attack on the privileges of the Church and St Cuthbert. Both

events struck at the heart of ‘traditional’ freedoms and were crucial to the

emergence of collective action.

For the priory chronicler, writing a little later, the immediate cause of

the ‘dissension between the bishop and the men of the bishopric’ was clear:

For Basset and Spring, see JUST 1/226, m. 2; CCR 1302–7, p. 156.

Lapsley, Durham, p. 133.

Above, Chapter 2, pp. 86–7; and see also below, p. 164, for pressure exerted in April–May

1303 by the inhabitants of the bishop’s forest.

Davies, Lordship and Society, p. 460.

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DURHAM UNDER BISHOP ANTHONY BEK

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Bek had twice forced them to go with him to Scotland ‘with horses and

arms’; and on the second occasion – the campaign of 1299–1300– they had

returned home without his leave and had been imprisoned by him. It was

then, famously, that they united against the bishop, ‘saying that they were

Haliwerfolk’, with no obligation to do military service outside the liberty.

 is resistance may have come as some surprise, since there is little evidence

that the campaigns of 1296–7 had prompted local opposition, despite the

complaints that would later be made by Durham Priory.

But the demands

made on the liberty in 1299–1300 were much greater. In November 1299

Edward I asked Bek to raise  ve or six thousand infantry from the bishopric

to serve at the king’s wages: a very substantial number, given the liberty’s

size.  e wardrobe account records the wages of only 940 footmen from

the liberty between 12 and 18 December, and by January 1300 many of

these had deserted.

Widespread opposition was aroused by Bek’s use of

distraint to compel service, together with imprisonment of defaulters and

deserters – who were understood locally to have come back for ‘default of

means’ when no money had been forthcoming from the bishop.

And since

Bek, in compelling military service, was thought to have violated the tradi-

tional privileges of the Haliwerfolk, there was a natural connection with the

bishop’s other supposed assaults on such customary rights.

 e next matter that played a crucial role in galvanising and broadening

opposition to Bek’s regime was the bishop’s visitation of Durham Priory in

1300.

A contemporary account written at the priory, which provides the

most important source for the events of that year, explains that the critical

moment was Bek’s excommunication of all those impeding his jurisdiction.

Soon a er the excommunication was read on 24 April 1300, ‘the knights

and free tenants’ of the liberty assembled in the priory, where complaints of

their individual grievances led somehow to a collective oath to defend the

privileges of the church of Durham.  ey swore, on St Cuthbert’s shrine,

to support the dignity of Mother Church and the res publica; and this was

the beginning of communal action against Bek.

 e visitation there-

Scriptores Tres, p. 76.

Halmota Prioratus Dunelmensis, ed. W. H. D. Longstaffe and J. Booth (SS, 1889), pp. 1, 3,

5; JUST 1/226, m. 5d; 1/227, m. 8; RPD, iv, pp. 67–9.

CCR 1296–1302, pp. 323, 382 (compare levies of 4,000 footmen from Yorkshire and the

same number from Northumberland in September 1299: CPR 1292–1301, p. 438); Liber

Quotidianus Contrarotulatoris Garderobae, 1299–1300, ed. J. Topham et al. (London,

1787), p. 243.

RPD, iii, pp. 45–6.

For a full account of the dispute over the visitation and its background, see Fraser, Bek,

pp. 123–75.

Gesta Dunelm., p. 12 (misdated 14 April); Bek Recs, no. 66.

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fore enabled individual grievances to become identi ed with the broader

defence of the liberty of the Church and the public good.  e priory’s inti-

mate connections with St Cuthbert added legitimacy and authority to the

community’s opposition to the bishop. It was also alleged a erwards, and

with some plausibility, that the prior had encouraged the lay community

to resist the visitation and had been the  rst to swear an oath on the body

of Cuthbert.

And a  nal stimulus to opposition was the violent and high-

handed treatment Bek in icted on the priory and its o cials. On the bish-

op’s orders, the priory was besieged from the end of May 1300, its property

was damaged, its servants and associates were threatened, and ultimately

its prior, Richard Hoton, was dragged forcibly from his stall.  ese actions

cost Bek a good deal of support not only among local society but even in the

ranks of his own o cers.

Early in 1300 Ranulf Neville and John Fitzmarmaduke emerged as the

principal representatives of the local community: it was Neville who  rst

presented the community’s grievances to Bek around April 1300, and

Fitzmarmaduke who urged the bishop to answer these grievances a few

months later.

Both had previously been regular witnesses to Bek’s char-

ters and may well have been close to him. In particular, Fitzmarmaduke

had been styled Bek’s ‘bachelor’, and had received a signi cant amount

of patronage from the bishop in the 1290s.

It is thus unlikely that either

man was moved by purely personal grievances in voicing opposition to

the bishop. Rather, as two of the most important landowners in the liberty,

Neville and Fitzmarmaduke saw it as their duty to represent the local com-

munity: they were the ‘natural leaders’ of local society.

Nor does it seem

that such roles led immediately to a breach with the bishop. Perhaps surpris-

ingly, both Neville and Fitzmarmaduke witnessed a charter of April 1301 in

which Bek granted land to a man who had been prominently involved in the

enforced visitation of the priory. It may be that reconciliation was then still

a possibility; but that was the last of Bek’s charters either man was to attest.

 eir witness- lists also suggest that other local gentry, at least from late 1301

until around 1309, had become alienated from the bishop.

 e knights

Bek Recs, no. 109.

For these events, see Richardson, ‘Bek’, pp. 146–67; Fraser, Bek, pp. 135–45.

Gesta Dunelm., pp. 13–14; Scriptores Tres, p. 76.

Above, Chapter 3, pp. 122–3.

Fraser, Bek, p. 180 (although a somewhat different argument is advanced at pp. 104, 178).

Conversely Walter Washington had been forced to pay twenty marks more than was rea-

sonable for relief (JUST 1/226, m. 8d), but he still assisted Bek during the priory’s initial

blockade.

In addition to Bek Recs, passim, see NYCRO, ZIQ 1080 (23 April 1301). The charter cited

in the text is Bek Recs, no. 77.

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DURHAM UNDER BISHOP ANTHONY BEK

155

with whom the bishop was associating at this time – Edmund Deyncourt,

Ralph Fitzwilliam, John Heslerton, Hugh Lowther and Henry Percy – had

interests largely outside the liberty.

In this period, in fact, in striking con-

trast to the late 1290s and to 1300–1, only one knight with signi cant con-

cerns in the bishopric witnessed Bek’s charters.

According to the Gesta Dunelmensia, some of Bek’s o cers were suf-

 ciently estranged from him, even before the siege of the priory, to take the

oath at Cuthbert’s shrine in April 1300 – even if they later thought better of

it. And therea er, some o cers who had been happy to back the bishop’s

claims against his subjects balked at the treatment to which he subjected the

priory.  e Gesta thus notes that Bek was forced to replace the keepers he

had appointed over the priory in May 1300 because they were too favour-

able to the monks.

One of these was probably Walter Washington, who

was made a keeper of the priory by Bek in that month, but who in 1303

represented the community of Durham on a commission to determine

encroachments.

Ralph Warsop, who had been sheri of Durham for most

of the 1280s and 1290s, also seems to have been alienated by Bek’s actions:

he was replaced around 1300. And with some of Bek’s higher- ranking o c-

ers angered by the siege of the priory, he was forced to place increasing

reliance on men from outside the liberty.  ey had always been important

to the bishop’s administration, as he admitted when he later referred to his

‘baili s from other parts’, who had been ignorant of local custom when

making some of their decisions.

Two members of Bek’s council, Walter

Friskney and Gilbert Tothby, were lawyers from the bishop’s native county

of Lincolnshire; the liberty’s steward, William Boston, was almost certainly

a Lincolnshire man, and was at the heart of the exactions complained about

in 1302–3. Whether or not the appointment of ‘foreigners’ was itself a

source of grievance, ‘baili s from other parts’ were not likely to be disposed

to respect the so- called ‘liberties’ of the local community. Feelings of local

solidarity were unlikely to moderate their actions; and it is thus no accident

that men from outside the bishopric assumed a particularly prominent role

KB 27/197, m. 34d; Bek Recs, nos. 118, 130. For accounts of these men, see C. Moor,

Knights of Edward I (Harleian Society, 1919–32), i, pp. 281–2; ii, pp. 69–70, 226–7; iii, pp.

63–4; iv, pp. 39–41.

The knight concerned is Guichard Charon (Bek Recs, no. 103). Charters of 25 June 1303,

attested by Walter Washington and Thomas Whitworth (ibid., nos. 86–7), are apparent

exceptions; but they were a response to the commission appointed to redress approve-

ments from common pasture, and their witness- lists reflect the local community’s repre-

sentation on that commission (RPD, iii, pp. 34–9).

Gesta Dunelm., pp. 12–13, 26.

Bek Recs, p. 207; RPD, iii, pp. 34–9.

FPD, p. 192.

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