Holford Matthew, Stringer Keith. Border Liberties and Loyalties in North-East England, 1200-1400 (ENG)
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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES
156
during and a er the siege of the priory. To the keepership of the priory,
and to the constableship of Durham castle, Bek had appointed by August
1300 the Lincolnshire knight Philip Darcy, who together with his brother
Hugh had served with Bek in Scotland and Flanders. Neither Philip nor
Hugh shared the compunctions of more local o cers; and both men were
to be heavily involved in the attacks on the priory.
92
Nor can it be coinci-
dence that John Creppings, a man with signi cant Lincolnshire connec-
tions, appears as a justice in the liberty in 1300–1 and as sheri in 1302;
Creppings, too, was involved in the assault on the priory, and represented
the bishop on commissions in 1303.
93
omas Richmond, appointed keeper
of the priory in June 1300, was another outsider to the liberty, whose prin-
cipal interests were in Yorkshire and Cumberland.
94
More basic manpower
from outside the bishopric also proved useful: forces from Tynedale under
the command of Hugh Walles had been used to blockade the priory.
95
Bek’s local supporters, in contrast, became fewer. Several were lesser
o ce- holders of middling or minor social status who owed much of their
lands and in uence to the bishop’s patronage. It was in their interest to
support his regime, and continuing support received further reward. us
the coroners Peter Bolton and Roger Esh took control of the temporalities
of the priory; Esh ransacked the priory’s manor of Pittington in August
1300; and Bolton was involved in the siege of the priory, and helped to
pull Prior Hoton from his stall.
96
Grants of land to both men in 1301 were
clearly rewards for their continuing loyalty.
97
e prospective rewards
of episcopal service were also attractive to John Shirlock, a prosperous
freeholder in Wolviston and Castle Eden. He had been associated with
Durham Priory in the 1290s; and in contrast with many of his peers, he
continued to serve under Bek’s appointee, Prior Henry Lusby, for whom
he acted as the priory’s steward. Inevitably he was deprived of o ce
when Prior Hoton was restored in 1302, but he was able to nd alterna-
tive opportunities in Bek’s household and administration. By October
1300 he was a lawyer and counsellor for the bishop; he was prominent
in the assaults on the priory in that year; and he was sheri of the liberty
92
C. M. Fraser, ‘Officers of the bishopric of Durham under Antony Bek, 1283–1311’, AA,
4th ser., 35 (1957), p. 28; Moor, Knights of Edward I, i, p. 266; CDS, v, no. 2104; Scotland
in 1298, ed. H. Gough (London, 1888), p. 43; C 67/12, m. 1; RPD, iv, pp. 19–30, 57–63,
73.
93
Fraser, ‘Officers’, pp. 30, 35–6, with DCM, Loc.VII.45, no. 27; Moor, Knights of Edward I,
i, p. 247; RPD, iii, pp. 33, 35; iv, pp. 32, 62.
94
RPD, iv, pp. 16–19, 47; Moor, Knights of Edward I, iv, pp. 120–1.
95
Fraser, Bek, p. 143.
96
Bek Recs, p. 206; RPD, iv, pp. 27, 49, 57–60.
97
Bek Recs, nos. 77–8.
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in 1304.
98
He also brought with him into Bek’s service William Hay, a
neighbour at Wolviston and formerly at Billingham.
99
Bek also enjoyed some support from those with grievances against
Durham Priory. e priory’s e orts to cultivate waste land and consolidate
its rights and holdings around Bearpark and Spennymoor had not endeared
it to its neighbours,
100
and the priory’s disputes with Hugh Gubion, lord
of Tudhoe, went back to the time of Prior Richard Claxton (1273–85).
101
ese probably explain the role of Hugh’s relative John Gubion, alongside
Roger Esh and others, in disseising the priory in Hebburn, Heworth and
Monkton.
102
It is true that John seems to have been unusual in so acting; but
important parallels are to be found in the city of Durham itself. Inhabitants
of Durham are prominent both in the charges brought by the priory in
1305, and in the lists of episcopal o cers who had usurped common land,
and who were ordered to account to Bek’s executors.
103
ese included
several tenants of the Old Borough, which was under the priory’s lord-
ship.
104
Richard Hornby and Walter Bra erton, notably, were among those
who forcibly shut the north gate of Durham bailey in May 1300, and Walter
was also one of the men who had imprisoned the priory’s messengers
in March of that year.
105
He held land in South Street and Milburngate;
while Richard was apparently the son of Henry Hornby, provost of the
Old Borough, and another tenant in South Street.
106
Walter, together with
several other tenants of the Old Borough, was also among those accused of
disseising the priory of common pasture on Bearpark Moor, and many of
the accused appear again in the list of Bek’s ministers who had encroached
98
DCM, Loc.IV.156; NER, no. 380; JUST 1/226, m. 1d; RPD, iv, pp. 25–7, 31–3, 38, 62–5
(but cf. JUST 1/227, m. 8d); Fraser, ‘Officers’, p. 30. For his lands in Wolviston and Castle
Eden, see DCM, 3.8.Spec.23, 26; 3.9.Spec.20–9.
99
For Hay’s lands, see DCM, Loc.IV.63, dorse (which concerns his son and heir John);
1.9.Spec.9, 10; for his career, JUST 1/226, mm. 6–6d, 9; DCM, Bursar’s Accounts, 1300;
Bek Recs, p. 209; Boldon Buke, pp. xxxiii, xxxvi.
100
Scriptores Tres, p. 74; cf. the now lost DCM, 3.13.Spec.38, as in Rep. Mag., f. 96: ‘The prior
and chapter of Durham ought to enjoy lands brought under cultivation in Spennymoor
without disturbance from the tenants of neighbouring vills.’
101
DCM, Cart. II, f. 228v (1279); 3.13.Spec.29 (1302); 4.12.Spec.17 (1303). See also Surtees,
iii, pp. 285, 297.
102
RPD, iv, pp. 9–12; DCM, Loc.VII.45, art. 37. John’s relationship to Hugh is unclear, but
he was later described as lord of Tudhoe: DCM, 3.13.Spec.21.
103
RPD, ii, pp. 1094–9, 1103–7; iii, pp. 33–9.
104
M. Bonney, Lordship and the Urban Community: Durham and its Overlords, 1250–1450
(Cambridge, 1990), p. 41.
105
RPD, iv, pp. 32, 42.
106
M. M. Camsell, ‘The Development of a Northern Town in the Later Middle Ages: The
City of Durham, c. 1250–1540’ (unpublished York University D.Phil. thesis, 1985), ii,
pp. 31, 113, 126, 166–7, 174, 178, 196, 201, 219–21, 263, 394.
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on common land.
107
As this suggests, the priory’s claims to common in the
Moor con icted with those of Old Borough, and created some resentment
there, a problem that was to are up again in the 1330s.
108
Despite these necessary quali cations, however, Bek’s actions, especially
from 1300, alienated wide sections of local society, and the bishop was
increasingly obliged to rely on o cers and associates drawn from outside
the liberty. In April 1300, as we have seen, opposition assumed commu-
nal form, when ‘the knights and free tenants’ of the bishopric swore their
oath. is was the start of the collective action that later led to ‘almost all
the knights and free tenants’ of the bishopric paying the costs of pursu-
ing their complaints in Parliament and the royal courts. ere was some
justice in the claim of two of Bek’s o cers, in 1302, that ‘the whole com-
munity of the county’ was united against them – even if a jury could still
answer that ‘many free tenants in the liberty’ were not involved.
109
e
collective face that opposition assumed was a distinctive feature of the
dispute with Bek, with no parallel in the con ict with Langley in 1433.
Collective action was stimulated by attacks on the priory, St Cuthbert
and ‘traditional’ rights; and those rights in turn gave strength to all who
opposed the bishop.
e evidence that the ‘traditional’ freedoms of the local community
became central to the opposition to Bek’s regime is sparse but persua-
sive. Walter Guisborough described how the inhabitants of the bishopric
revolted ‘in defence of their liberties’, but most telling is the claim of the
Gesta Dunelmensia that the demands of the bishop’s steward were unac-
ceptable to the people of the liberty, ‘called in English Haliwerfolk, who
before that time were always accustomed to be free’.
110
It is also clear that
King John’s charter of 1208 to the knights and free tenants of the liberty
assumed new importance around 1300, as the community sought his-
torical justi cation for resistance to Bek. e thirteenth- century history
of the charter is obscure, but the earliest known copies outside the royal
archives were made at Durham Priory in about 1300, both probably
107
RPD, iv, p. 7; iii, pp. 33–9. The tenements of the following can be identified: James
Spicer, Gilbert Goldsmith, Peter Bolton, William son of Ralph, Richard Chilton, Walter
Brafferton, Thomas formerly servant of Emery Kelloe, John son of John Bille, Margaret
wife of John Howden, and Imania wife of Robert Pockerley (Camsell, ‘Development of a
Northern Town’, passim).
108
DCM, Cart IV, ff. 94–6v; 2.6.Spec.58, partly printed from a different text in Richard
d’Aungerville of Bury: Fragments of his Register and Other Documents, ed. G. W. Kitchin
(SS, 1910), pp. 107–11.
109
Scriptores Tres, p. 76; JUST 1/226, m. 8–8d; above, p. 153.
110
Chron. Guisborough, p. 348; Gesta Dunelm., p. 11.
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from the same original, then in the possession of Ranulf Neville.
111
e
manuscript evidence suggests a urry of interest in the charter as the
dispute developed. It came to be perceived as a key document of ‘the liber-
ties and customs of the bishopric’ and of ‘the community of the liberty of
St Cuthbert’, and it is no coincidence that it was loosely copied alongside
Bek’s ‘charter of liberties’ shortly a er the resolution of the dispute in July
1303.
112
John’s charter was, furthermore, addressed to ‘the knights and free
tenants of Haliwerfolk’; and while, in its original context, there was nothing
remarkable in the use of the word Haliwerfolk, around 1300 it may have
helped to stimulate a sense of this entity as a distinctive community with
its own privileges.
e 1208 charter also stipulated that the knights and free tenants of
Haliwerfolk should not be restricted by ‘any custom or usage hitherto
used in Haliwerfolk which is not right and common in the realm’.
113
is
encouraged judgement of episcopal government in relation to national law
and custom; and it is signi cant that the rather loose copy of John’s charter
made in 1303 referred on three occasions to ‘communis lex’, a phrase not
used in the original document.
114
Certainly ‘common law’ was a standard of
reference used in 1303 to condemn aspects of Bek’s administration.
115
e
impleading of freemen in hallmote courts was ‘against the common law of
the realm’, as were prohibitions on mining. It was also argued that the bish-
op’s forest jurisdiction should be reformed to re ect practice ‘elsewhere in
free chase throughout the realm’, and that Bek’s exaction of carriage from
freemen was contrary to ‘the usage throughout the realm’. Custom outside
the liberty therefore provided a further reference point for the local com-
munity, and so did royal ordinances and statutes. Imprisonments carried
out by the bishop’s o cers were contrary to what had been ‘ordained by
our lord the king and his council’ and ‘otherwise than is the usage elsewhere
in the realm according to the form of the statute’. Protests against Bek’s
encroachments on common land invoked the statute of Merton (1236);
111
DCM, Cart. Vet., ff. 63r, 152r. I am grateful to Alan Piper for advice on the date of these
copies. Neville’s ancestors had probably been involved in obtaining the original charter:
H. S. Offler, North of the Tees (Aldershot, 1996), Chapter 13, p. 14.
112
DCM, 2.5.Pont.3, dorse. The phrases quoted are from the rubrics to the copies of John’s
charter in DCM, Cart. Vet., ff. 63r (‘carta regis Johannis super confirmacione libertatum
et consuetudinum episcopatus Dunelm.’), 152r (‘carta regis Johannis pro communitate
libertatis sancti Cuthberti’). These may be compared with the rubrics to the copy of the
charter in DCM, Cart. I, f. 194r, which describe it as ‘pro communitate libertatis sancti
Cuthberti’, and ‘super . . . libertate dicte communitatis de Haliwerfolk’.
113
Rotuli Chartarum, p. 182.
114
DCM, 2.5.Pont.3, dorse.
115
For what follows, see in particular RPD, iii, pp. 41–6.
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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES
160
the bishop’s claims of wardship, furthermore, were rejected as contrary to
Magna Carta.
116
Opposition to Bek’s regime therefore drew strength both from traditional
local privilege and from national law and custom. is might prompt the
suspicion that reference to local ‘liberties’ was merely opportunistic: that,
just as inhabitants of the liberty might sue in the local or the royal courts
depending on their interests, so the community appealed to local distinctive-
ness or to national law as it suited. But local privilege and national custom
were not necessarily contradictory. Well versed though ‘the community’
was in English legal practice, it did not present itself simply as one more
part of the king’s dominions. Despite some complaints about the abuse
of judicial process, there was no wider attack on the justice system of the
liberty; no objection, as there was to be in 1433, to the bishop’s claim to have
cognisance of all pleas touching the liberty of Durham, or to the use of styles
such as ‘against the bishop’s peace’. e dispute was thus not a challenge to
the fundamentals of the liberty’s privileged jurisdiction, and in this respect
the events of 1302–3 contrast strongly with those of 1433.
117
On the latter
occasion, driven by similar grievances to those motivating Bek’s opponents,
members of the local community presented the very existence of the liberty
as a usurpation of royal authority: in brief, it was alleged that Bishop Langley
had wrongfully usurped all royal prerogatives, except holding a Parliament,
to the great damage of the crown.
118
In a comparable case, in the early four-
teenth century, the tenants of William Braose in the lordship of Gower
had threatened to subdue his liberty to the authority of the county court of
Carmarthen. Similarly, certain tenants of the prior of Tynemouth sought
to purchase exemption from his liberty, or suggested that the king should
resume it into the geldable.
119
ere was nothing equivalent in the bishopric
in 1302–3: no wholesale objection to the bishop’s judicial powers or appoint-
ment of local o cers; no attempt to destroy the fabric of the liberty itself. Like
the community of Cheshire in the early thirteenth century, the community
of the bishopric wanted to limit the powers of the lord while con rming its
own ‘traditional’ rights.
120
e liberty mattered to the local community and
116
It would therefore appear that Magna Carta was assumed to operate in the liberty: cf. J.
C. Holt, Magna Carta, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1992), p. 380, n. 7. For the statute of Merton
and its background, see T. F. T. Plucknett, Legislation of Edward I (Oxford, 1949), pp.
84–6.
117
Storey, Langley, pp. 246–7, 257. For a different interpretation, see Liddy, Bishopric of
Durham, pp. 228–9, 234.
118
Storey, Langley, p. 260.
119
T. B. Pugh (ed.), Glamorgan County History, iii (Cardiff, 1971), pp. 240–1. For
Tynemouthshire, see below, Chapter 5, pp. 205–6, 219, 221–2.
120
VCH, Chester, ii, p. 4, and references there given.
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its members; it was the basis of their own privileges. ey had no interest in
its abolition.
is sense of local privilege may have been one reason why the objections
of the local community were not resolved, as they were in some other lib-
erties, by the grant of a ‘charter of liberties’ in return for payment.
121
e
Haliwerfolk may have thought it unnecessary and potentially dangerous to
purchase privilege in this way. It is equally likely, though, that any direct
negotiation with Bek proved impossible. ‘ e knights and free tenants of
the community’, represented by Ranulf Neville, did seek justice from Bek,
perhaps around the end of April 1300, by presenting him with a written
schedule of their complaints; three months later, a er another meeting,
the bishop appointed justices to hear these complaints. But the justices
claimed they could not take any action against the bishop or his steward.
122
e mechanisms for redress in the liberty had failed the local community,
and it was therefore necessary to turn to the crown. is had always been a
possibility: the oath sworn on Cuthbert’s shrine bound the community to
seek justice rst from the bishop, but in his default from the crown, and in
the event royal intervention proved relatively swi . By late February 1302
Edward I had visited Durham and made Bek promise to answer the com-
munity’s grievances.
123
In July 1302 the liberty was con scated, and this
enabled Edward to ensure that a settlement was reached between the bishop
and the local community. When the liberty was restored, on 8 July 1303,
it was on the grounds that most of the community’s complaints had been
settled, and on the condition that the ‘charter of liberties’ agreed between
bishop and community should be observed.
124
e king thus had a vital in uence on the development of the dispute;
and the dispute allows us to see closely how royal lordship could shape the
liberty. It was, we must note, a lordship that developed signi cantly during
Edward I’s reign. e crown’s right to intervene in default of justice was
well established, but the king’s duty to do right to all who complained to
him, even in places ‘where his writ does not run’, had been newly a rmed
in the rst statute of Westminster (1275). In 1302–3 the Durham commu-
nity reminded Edward I of his responsibility to act in the bishop’s default,
and in 1305 the king himself emphasised his duty to do swi justice within
121
T. Thornton, ‘Taxing the king’s dominions: the subject territories of the English crown
in the late Middle Ages’, in W. M. Ormrod, M. Bonney and R. Bonney (eds), Crises,
Revolutions and Self- Sustained Growth (Stamford, 1999), pp. 99–100.
122
Gesta Dunelm., pp. 13–14.
123
Fraser, Bek, p. 181.
124
CPR 1301–7, p. 149; RPD, iv, pp. 498–501.
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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES
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the liberty as well as outside it.
125
What was novel, furthermore, was the
emergence of Parliament as a venue not only where the king was readily
accessible to individual complaint, but where collective redress could be
sought.
126
It provided an important means of contact between Edward
and the liberty, for although Durham was not formally represented in the
commons, the local community saw Parliament as an important oppor-
tunity for petitioning the crown;
127
and some of the liberty’s magnates
received personal summonses. It was through Parliament that the com-
munity resolved in April 1300 to pursue its complaints. Ranulf Neville
and John Fitzmarmaduke were both at the Lincoln Parliament of January
1301, where they probably put forward the claims of the Durham com-
munity, as Fitzmarmaduke certainly did in the Parliament of July 1302;
and later, in 1307, the community again petitioned in Parliament.
128
In
fact, Fitzmarmaduke was already well known to Edward I on account of his
military service in Wales and Scotland, and his access to the king must have
helped the community’s cause.
129
Turning to the crown, however, was a
risky strategy; for there was no guarantee that the community’s complaints
would be upheld. e crown took seriously its duty to see that justice was
done to all; but it also took seriously the claims of a great liberty- holder like
the bishop of Durham, whose rights were founded on precedent, custom
and saintly power. e claims of the bishop as well as those of the local
community shaped the agreement that was hammered out in 1302–3.
Negotiations began shortly a er the con scation of the liberty in July
1302. In November Edward I informed the local community that Bek
was willing to come to terms, and invited it to appoint representatives; a
meeting was eventually arranged before the king on 24 February 1303.
130
It
was probably around this time that discussion between community, bishop
and king began in earnest, on the basis of a petition presented to Edward in
the name of the ‘bones gentes’ of the liberty of Durham between Tyne and
Tees. A preliminary agreement, modelled on this petition, was made soon
125
3 Edward I: Westminster I, c. 17; RPD, iii, p. 41; iv, pp. 1–2.
126
R. G. Davies and J. H. Denton (eds), The English Parliament in the Middle Ages
(Manchester, 1981), especially pp. 49–50, 62–71.
127
See, for example, Northern Pets, no. 179.
128
Gesta Dunelm., pp. 13–14; Scriptores Tres, p. 76; Fraser, Bek, pp. 180–1. Fraser’s edition
of SC 8/326/E770 in Northern Pets, no. 179, dates it to c. 1307, correcting her account in
Bek, p. 150, which placed it in 1301.
129
CCR 1279–88, p. 318; Chron. Guisborough, pp. 324–5; Offler, North of the Tees, Chapter
14, pp. 196–7.
130
Fraser, Bek, p. 185. Edward was at Walthamstow at the end of February 1303, and at
Westminster early in March; and in both places, to judge from the royal charter rolls, Bek
was in attendance: E. W. Safford, Itinerary of Edward I (List and Index Society, 1974–7),
ii, pp. 205–6; Fraser, Bek, pp. 246–7.
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a er.
131
e nal ‘charter of liberties’, however, was not issued by Bek until
early in May 1303, a er a further stage of negotiation which had begun
early in April, and took place in the liberty itself.
132
By comparing the agree-
ments of spring and May, and a contemporary memorandum of disputed
issues le unresolved,
133
we can follow in some detail how the competing
claims of bishop and local community were adjudicated by the crown.
In the earlier agreement Bek conceded the majority of the commu-
nity’s demands. Arbitrary imprisonment was renounced; free tenants were
granted power to establish mills and mines on their land; and concessions
were made on the number of episcopal o cers, on toll, on the independ-
ence of Durham and Sadberge, and on many other issues. e bishop
was, however, unwilling to forgo various rights in his forest. He limited
the beasts that could be hunted in the area called Akergart (unidenti ed),
and he refused to surrender woodhire. He gave no response to the demand
that the bounds of the bishop’s forest should be restored to their extent
under King John. Nor could agreement be reached over two aspects of
the bishop’s regalian claims: control over the alienation of lands, and pre-
rogative wardship. In the former case Bek may have made some concession,
although the relevant passage is not entirely clear.
134
In the latter the bishop
claimed to enjoy the same prerogative within the liberty as the king did
outside it. It was precisely on the more controversial aspects of episcopal
lordship that Bek was least willing to yield.
Two of these questions – the alienation of land and woodhire – remained
unresolved when the liberty was restored in July 1303. Further di culties
also emerged between spring and May, and two issues that had evidently
arisen during subsequent negotiations also proved irresolvable. ese
related to the bishop’s claim to wardship of lands held of him by socage
131
The only text of this agreement is preserved in Bishop Kellawe’s register: RPD, iii, pp.
41–6.
132
CDS, ii, no. 1356; CCW 1244–1326, p. 174; Scriptores Tres, Appendix, no. 80; Safford,
Itinerary of Edward I, ii, p. 208; Fraser, Bek, p. 186. The May charter is printed from a
later enrolment in Bek Recs, pp. 93–8, and from a copy in Kellawe’s register (of which the
ultimate source is unknown) in RPD, iii, pp. 61–7.
133
The relevant passage is as follows: ‘fait a remenbrer qe endroit de ceo qe les hommes
priount qil pussent doner, vendrer e lesser lour teres e lour tenementez a lour volunpte e
tenir de chefes seygnurages sencz meen; e qil ne fussent distreynt affere servisce en Escoce
ou ailliours hors de ewes de Tyn e Tese; e des gardes qe levesqe clayme aver des teres
tenues par socage, e partie de dringages, e auxi dedenz boundes de la franche chasce: ne
sount mye les choses terminez ne fynis au finez, sed par mandeynement le roy sont eles
mys a son prochein parlement. Levesqe respond a le article del wodhire qil trova sa eglisse
seisie, par ceo nest il pas termine’ (DCM, 2.5.Pont.3, dorse).
134
RPD, iii, p. 43: ‘gree soit faite pur l’entere, et ceo pour sa realtee’. This clause might be
translated ‘that payment be made (or, that permission be granted) for entry (or, on the
whole)’.
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and drengage tenures, and to wardship of lands within the bishop’s forest.
On the other hand, between spring and May the inhabitants of the liberty’s
forest won important concessions from the bishop. In the earlier agree-
ment, the bishop’s forest gured only insofar as it a ected those dwell-
ing outside its limits. By May the inhabitants of the forest itself had been
granted housebote and haybote, and exemption from pannage. ey also
won signi cant new restrictions on the number of foresters the bishop
could appoint, and on the charges these foresters could levy from the
country. e earlier petition from the ‘bones gentes’ of the liberty had been
presented by the community’s representatives while Edward I and Bek
were at Walthamstow and Westminster; subsequent discussion, held in the
bishopric itself, was clearly more accessible to local pressures.
Many of the other changes between spring and May, however, were in
the bishop’s favour. In particular, limitations were imposed on the local
community’s privileges in time of war. It had earlier been granted that no
carriage would be levied from freemen; now the proviso was added that
carriage might be levied in wartime, ‘as is done by the king and other lords’.
Similarly, whereas the bishop had earlier been ready to grant that ‘all men
of the bishopric should have free entry to and exit from the bailey gate of
Durham’ for access to St Cuthbert’s shrine, this access was now restricted
during wartime, and ‘other times of need’, to men of good reputation.
Finally there was the community’s claim that no freeman was obliged to
perform military service beyond the limits of Tyne and Tees. e bishop
had earlier seemed to acknowledge the basis of this claim by allowing it
‘except in case of great need for the defence of the liberty’. But no such grant
was to feature in the nal charter, and the question remained unresolved
when the liberty was restored.
e explanation for many of these changes is probably to be found
in the attitude of the king, which seems from the outset to have been
even- handed. Edward I announced neutrally in April 1303 that when he
had heard both sides, he would be displeased with those who were in the
wrong: faced with the competing claims of bishop and local community,
he seems to have done his best to achieve a working and enduring com-
promise.
135
It is clear that Bek had come under considerable royal pressure
to meet the community’s earlier complaints. Many responses to the peti-
tion’s articles begin ‘the king wishes, and the bishop grants’, and on one
issue where the bishop appeared unwilling to concede, Edward charged
him at his peril to do justice.
136
Again, it was speci cally at the king’s will
135
CDS, ii, no. 1356.
136
RPD, iii, p. 44.
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DURHAM UNDER BISHOP ANTHONY BEK
165
that approvements from waste land were to be redressed by a commis-
sion of eight men, four representing the bishop and four representing the
community.
137
But in delegating decisions to a local body drawn from
either side of the dispute, the king showed sensitivity to both parties; and
Edward was ready to uphold Bek’s rights as well as those of the com-
munity. Although the community had asserted that the bishop’s claim to
prerogative wardship was contrary to Magna Carta, Edward recognised
the bishop’s powers ‘by reason of his regality’. If the king took seriously
the community’s claims to its traditional rights, so too did he respect the
bishop’s claims to ‘royal liberty’ between Tyne and Tees. Edward adjudi-
cated carefully between the privileges of the local community and those
of the bishop, and the community was far from achieving all its wishes. It
was partly for this reason that the ‘charter of liberties’ was not referred to
during the dispute with Langley in 1433. It o ered no real support for any
challenge to the bishop’s prerogative rights.
Furthermore, in the May charter, as earlier commentators have noted,
‘royal pressure on the bishop is much less apparent’, and this largely
explains the rmer line Bek was able to take.
138
An improvement in the per-
sonal relationship between Edward I and Bek may have been partly respon-
sible for the change.
139
Probably more important, though, was the broader
political situation. Edward had been preparing since autumn 1302 for an
invasion of Scotland.
140
e liberty had supplied Edward with footmen
early in 1303 (subject to a reservation of its privileges), and in April another
summons, for 12 May, had been issued in the liberty.
141
In this context
Bek’s reconsideration of the community’s claim to exemption from mili-
tary service outside the liberty can hardly have met with Edward’s opposi-
tion; and nor can the bishop’s strengthening of his position on carriage. It
must be emphasised, though, that the demands of war were not allowed to
take complete precedence over the privileges of the liberty’s community.
Contrary to the suggestions of some earlier writers, in the end neither Bek
nor Edward I successfully ‘repudiated the suggestion that the men of the
commonalty were not bound to serve beyond Tyne and Tees.’
142
It seems, to
the contrary, that the community was able to retain this remarkable privi-
lege – at least in theory, and even if in practice there were some exceptions.
137
Ibid., p. 45 (and cf. pp. 33–9).
138
Fraser, Bek, pp. 186–7; cf. Richardson, ‘Bek’, p. 190, n. 12.
139
Fraser, Bek, p. 188.
140
M. Prestwich, Edward I (London, 1988), p. 498.
141
CPR 1301–7, pp. 112, 134.
142
Fraser, Bek, p. 187; cf. Prestwich, Edward I, p. 544: ‘this, unlike the majority of their
demands, was not acceptable’.
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