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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us in the later thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries many of the
liberty’s senior o cers – stewards/baili s, receivers and justices – were
men without local roots, o en ecclesiastical careerists associated with the
archiepiscopal household, and with administrative experience elsewhere
in the archbishopric of York.
66
In the later thirteenth century, o cers of
this kind included Roger Weighton (c. 1295) and probably Roger Saxton
(c. 1272).
67
In the early 1300s Richard Beverley was baili of Churchdown
in Gloucestershire (1300), baili of Hexhamshire (1302) and baili of
Ripon and Southwell (1303); Stephen Bellew was appointed justice in
the liberty of Ripon as well as in Hexhamshire (1306).
68
Bellew was an
attorney for Archbishop Green eld; Beverley was Archbishop Corbridge’s
chaplain, and his appointments suggest that Corbridge’s local origins did
not have much impact on his distribution of patronage. Again Richard
Langton, who held o ce as receiver in 1313 and again as baili and
receiver in 1320–1, seems to have been a clerk of Archbishop Green eld’s
household.
69
Clerics continued to o ciate as receivers in the liberty throughout the
fourteenth century, but the o ces of steward/baili and justice became
increasingly laicised.
70
ese o ces were regularly lled, though, by arch-
bishops’ familiars who lacked local interests. One of the more elusive is
omas Lealholm, who took his name from a place in north Yorkshire and
held land in that area.
71
He was by no means a substantial gure, and his
prominent role in the administration of Hexhamshire, where he was baili
and quorum justice for much of the 1320s and 1330s, was almost certainly
a result of his earlier service to Archbishop Melton.
72
William Hawsker,
brie y baili in 1343, was another obscure gure of Yorkshire origins who
seems to have owed his appointment to connections with the archiepisco-
pal household: he was a relation of Master Edmund Hawsker, a chaplain
66
For the structure of the liberty’s administration, see NCH, iii, pp. 26–30.
67
Weighton: Reg. Romeyn, i, nos. 49, 84; ii, no. 1179; Reg. Newark, ii, nos. 173, 193, 206, 235.
Saxton: Reg. Giffard, no. 581; Fasti Parochiales, iv: Deanery of Craven, ed. N. K. M. Gurney
and C. T. Clay (YASRS, 1971), p. 96.
68
Reg. Corbridge, ii, nos. 903, 977, 1014, 1021, 1028; Reg. Greenfield, i, no. 376.
69
CPR 1301–7, p. 305; Reg. Corbridge, ii, no. 962; Reg. Greenfield, i, no. 592; v, no. 2440; Reg.
Melton, ff. 20v, 486v.
70
The list of stewards in NCH, iii, pp. 64–5, must be used with caution, as it includes not
only stewards of the liberty, but overall stewards of the estates of the archbishops of York.
These latter officers were only rarely granted direct authority in the liberty: for example,
Reg. Melton, f. 541r.
71
CPR 1324–7, p. 242; Feet of Fines for the County of York from 1327 to 1347, ed. W. P.
Baildon (YASRS, 1910), pp. 64–5.
72
Reg. Melton, ff. 526, 531r–v, 535r, etc.; Hexham Priory, i, Appendix, no. 54; CCR 1333–7,
p. 321; cf. Lucy Cart., no. 49.
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and familiar of Archbishop Zouche.
73
Roger Zouche, baili in November
1344, was appointed because he was the archbishop’s ‘brother- german’.
74
Richard Ask, baili in 1355–69, was again a Yorkshire gure who probably
received o ce as a reward for services elsewhere.
75
Finally John Clavering,
appointed for life as baili in 1382, owed this position to a family connection
with Archbishop Neville.
76
ese men dominated the most important and
best- paid o ce in the liberty: the steward/baili received an annual fee of at
least £10.
77
ey also bene ted from other patronage. In 1327 Archbishop
Melton procured a pension for his ‘dear valet’ omas Lealholm from
Hexham Priory; in 1333 this was supplemented by a grant of waste land
at Nubbock and ‘Hughesfeld’.
78
John Clavering was granted the escheated
manor of Coastley by Archbishop Neville.
79
And little if any of the other
patronage available in the liberty went to local men. In the late thirteenth
century, the baili Robert Skipton received the only wardship Archbishop
Romayne is known to have granted in Hexhamshire.
80
One of Archbishop
Melton’s rare grants of land there went to his kinsman William Broom eet,
a cleric from the East Riding of Yorkshire.
81
It is true that Adam Beukley,
who must have been a local man, was brie y able to obtain the wardship of
the Vaux lands in Beukley for a very reasonable four marks a year in 1327;
but in the following year the estate of John IV Vaux, and the marriage of
John’s heir Adam, were granted to William II Deanham, son of one of the
liberty’s justices.
82
Admittedly, because these familiares were usually men
without long- standing interests in the liberty, their lands were soon sold
or leased to local men. Broom eet conveyed his estate in Fallow eld to the
Vaux family; omas Lealholm’s lands in Nubbock and ‘Hughesfeld’ even-
tually found their way to William Carnaby of Halton, who granted them to
73
Reg. Zouche, f. 291r; CCR 1339–41, p. 87; CPR 1343–5, pp. 327, 347, 386, 431, 436–7, 446;
Calendar of . . . Petitions to the Pope, ed. W. H. Bliss (London, 1896), pp. 5, 43.
74
Reg. Zouche, f. 291Av.
75
NCH, iii, p. 65. He was an esquire of Bishop Hatfield of Durham and of Edward III, and
was also closely associated with the Percies: CPR 1354–8, p. 416; 1358–61, pp. 11, 370;
1361–4, p. 408.
76
CPR 1381–5, p. 410.
77
The bailiff’s fee in 1314 and 1356 was twenty marks (Reg. Greenfield, v, no. 2442; Reg.
Thoresby, f. 301r). The steward’s fee in 1343 was £10 (Reg. Zouche, f. 291r); and the
payment of 100s. made to Thomas Featherstonehaugh, bailiff, in 1324 was perhaps half
this fee (Reg. Melton, f. 509v).
78
Hexham Priory, i, Appendix, no. 54; CPR 1330–4, p. 489; cf. NCH, iv, p. 18.
79
NCH, iv, p. 11, n. 6; ADM 75/150, Coastley, no. 7.
80
Reg. Romeyn, ii, no. 1262; cf. no. 1523.
81
NCS, ZBL/23/1/1 (cf. Reg. Melton, f. 503r). On Broomfleet, see also Reg. Melton, iv, no.
206.
82
Reg. Melton, ff. 527v, 534r.
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Hexham Priory in 1387.
83
But it is clear, all the same, that these patterns of
o ce- holding and patronage deprived the inhabitants of the liberty from
any direct bene t of the archbishops’ good lordship.
is is illustrated, paradoxically, by John II Vaux of Beaufront (d. c. 1322),
the only man with roots in the liberty who held its greater o ces in the four-
teenth century.
84
He was apparently the grandson of Peter Vaux; and in 1297,
as baili of Hexhamshire, he began an illustrious career in the liberty, where
he went on to serve as commissioner, justice and baili (1312–13, 1315–17
and 1318–21) until old age forced his retirement.
85
In contrast to his ances-
tor, though, he does not seem to have received other patronage in the liberty;
and while Beaufront continued to be the family’s seat, it is far from clear that
the liberty remained the focus of John’s aspirations. His principal property
acquisitions were outside Hexhamshire at Cowpen and Little Whittington,
and in particular at Whittonstall, where he built up holdings from 1293.
86
And the expansion of county government that resulted from the demands
of the Edwardian ‘war- state’ signi cantly extended the horizon of his ambi-
tions. From the end of the thirteenth century until around 1320, he made
a signi cant mark on the county stage, as commissioner of array, justice,
and assessor and collector of taxes; indeed, such was his prominence in
Northumberland a airs that he was elected as one of the knights of the shire
in 1306 and 1307.
87
His other ties were also shaped by war, and it was the
Umfraville lord of Redesdale whom he followed into Scotland: he had letters
of protection in 1309 with Earl Robert Umfraville, and performed the service
due from the earl in 1310.
88
Hexhamshire, where he was the dominant
tenant, must have remained important to John’s loyalties. But changing pat-
terns of lordship presented attractive opportunities outside the liberty; and,
as we will see, this became increasingly true later in the fourteenth century.
In summary, therefore, from the later thirteenth century the upper reaches
of the liberty’s administration were increasingly lled by archiepiscopal
83
NCS, ZBL/23/1/1, with C 145/140/7; ‘Visitation of Northumberland, 1615’, Genealogist, 2
(1878), p. 257; NDD, p. 12 (misdated); cf. HC, ii, p. 491, wrongly identifying ‘Hughesfeld’
as Highfield.
84
The Vaux pedigree in NCH, iv, p. 202, must be corrected with reference to NCH, x, p.
381, n. 2. John I Vaux (d. before 1292), the first in the latter pedigree, was presumably
the son of Peter Vaux: cf. A. J. Lilburn, ‘Pipe Rolls of Edward I’, AA, 4th ser., 34 (1956),
no. 153.
85
Reg. Newark, ii, nos. 157, 282; Reg. Greenfield, passim; Reg. Melton, ff. 482v, 486r–v, 488r,
491r–2r, 496r.
86
NCH, iv, pp. 199–200; vi, pp. 189–90; ix, p. 320; x, pp. 379–81; DCM, Misc. Ch. 6913, 6919,
6923. On Beaufront as the family’s residence, see CPR 1317–21, p. 289.
87
For a digest of many of his official appointments, see Parl. Writs, I, and II, iii, indices.
88
Rot. Scot., i, p. 75; Parl. Writs, II, ii, p. 406.
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servants who were ‘outsiders’; and the bulk of available patronage also
went to such men. However, the use of Hexhamshire to provide rewards
for archiepiscopal familiars was not necessarily incompatible with its good
governance. ere were, of course, dangers: the inhabitants of the liberty
might have to su er from the exactions of stewards/baili s who saw their
o ce in terms of the perquisites it o ered, and who lacked any local ties to
moderate their exactions. And although no records have survived from the
various inquiries into the liberty made by successive archbishops, there is
evidence of such abuses. In particular, several complaints were made about
Roger Saxton, baili under archbishops Geo rey Ludham (1258–65) and
Walter Gi ard (1266–79). It was Saxton and Ludham whom the abbot of
Holm Cultram accused in the mid- thirteenth century of denying him his
customary free passage across the bridge at Hexham, and it was Saxton
who gured prominently in the charges brought in the Hundred Rolls
of 1274–5. He and the later baili William Tolouse were both accused of
setting felons free in return for payments. It was in Saxton’s time, too, that
the men of Newcastle complained of toll exacted in the liberty, contrary to
their charters.
89
Many of these complaints were brought by those around
the liberty, and were not necessarily of concern to those within it; but it was
also complained that the archbishops’ baili s took the goods of slain men in
Hexhamshire and refused to deliver them to their wives and children. And
Saxton also introduced ‘baili - pot’, apparently a levy on brewing in the
liberty paid not to the archbishop but to the baili himself.
90
Despite these complaints, however, there are signs that successive arch-
bishops kept a reasonably tight rein on their o cials. e baili John de
Cimiterio was imprisoned by Archbishop Romayne’s justices, probably in
the eyre of 1293.
91
e ‘baili - pot’ came to light in 1320, when ‘the people
(gens) of Hexham’ presented a petition to Archbishop Melton which sought
its abolition. A er an inquiry had established that the levy had, as claimed,
been instituted by Saxton, it was indeed abolished.
92
If this was the worst of
local complaints, it looks as if the community of the liberty had relatively
89
Northumb. Pleas, no. 683; The Register and Records of Holm Cultram, ed. F. Grainger and
W. G. Collingwood (CWAAS, Record Series, 1929), pp. 129–30; RH, ii, p. 21; NAR, p. 84;
cf. H. H. E. Craster, ‘An unpublished Northumbrian Hundred Roll’, AA, 3rd ser., 3 (1907),
p. 189.
90
RH, ii, p. 21; Reg. Melton, f. 488r.
91
Reg. Romeyn, ii, no. 1325. See similarly Reg. Greenfield, i, no. 390; Reg. Zouche, f. 355r–v
(Archbishop Zouche’s treatment of his receiver, Thomas Fox); Reg. Neville, f. 91v
(Archbishop Neville’s inquiries into the liberty’s officers in 1378).
92
Reg. Melton, f. 488r, summarised in NCH, iv, p. 36. That the petition spoke for the liberty
as a whole, not just the town, is clear from the reference in the heading to ‘the tenants of
the lordship of Hexham’.
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little to protest about. And, for much of our period, the archbishops of York
did not let ‘the desire to reward’ take undue precedence over ‘the obligation
to govern’.
93
e archbishops’ familiars were doubtless, in many cases, able
administrators; and if they did not share their power, for the most part, with
men from the liberty, they o en worked alongside gentry and administra-
tors drawn from the areas around Hexhamshire, who may well have had a
closer interest in the liberty’s good governance.
ese neighbouring gentry were prominent in the upper reaches of
the liberty’s administration from at least the late thirteenth century.
94
While they rarely served as baili s, they were continuously appointed
justices of assize or gaol delivery. e families concerned included
Deanham of Deanham, Featherstonehaugh of Featherstone, Lisle of
Chipchase, Sweethope of Sweethope and ockrington, and Swinburne of
Capheaton. Members of lesser families – such as Buteland of Birtley and
Capheaton, Sha oe of Bavington, and Yetholm and Colwell of Colwell and
ockrington – were also frequently appointed justices. Nicholas Yetholm,
for example, was justice of assize and gaol delivery between 1291 and 1300;
his son, Adam Colwell, was justice of gaol delivery from 1311 to 1315.
95
Less is known about John and Adam Corbridge, prominent liberty justices
from the 1320s to the 1340s, but it is likely that both belonged to the class of
semi- professional local lawyers and administrators; John, at any rate, was
also a county coroner in about 1342.
96
ese men may well have appreci-
ated the power and in uence o ered by their o cial positions in the liberty;
but as far as we can tell they did not abuse their o ce to acquire interests in
Hexhamshire. Indeed, few troubled to obtain such interests. It is true that
the most valuable prize of the early fourteenth century, the wardship and
marriage of John II Vaux’s grandson and heir Adam, was snapped up by
William II Deanham in 1328 for £20, a good price, and that William’s uncle
John acquired some interest in Rowley Head.
97
But by the 1340s Rowley,
together with Aydon Shields, had passed to Robert II Ogle (baili in 1338
and later). Few of the liberty’s other o cers had any signi cant stake in
its landed society; and the centre of Robert’s own interests remained very
93
R. A. Griffiths, King and Country: England and Wales in the Fifteenth Century (London,
1991), p. 166.
94
Details of appointments have been drawn from the archbishops’ registers; it has not been
thought necessary, in all instances, to give full references.
95
Reg. Romeyn, ii, p. 49, n .1, nos. 1235–6, 1238; Reg. Newark, ii, nos. 168, 205, 233, 235; Reg.
Corbridge, ii, no. 899; Reg. Greenfield, i, nos. 559, 602, 651; NCH, iv, p. 292.
96
JUST 3/135, m. 7. For Adam as a feoffee and commissioner, see CPR 1327–30, p. 265;
1343–5, p. 393.
97
Reg. Melton, f. 534r; NCH, iv, pp. 70–1. In 1326 the wardship and marriage of John IV
Vaux had been sold to Robert Oliver for fifty marks: Reg. Melton, f. 703r.
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much around Ogle near Morpeth, where his acquisitions from the mid-
1330s were concentrated.
98
From about the 1340s gentry from west Northumberland played a lesser
part in the governance of the liberty, partly because some families had
come into di culties: the Sweethopes’ fortunes seem to have declined even
before the family’s lands were forfeited in 1358.
99
Accordingly, from the
episcopate of William Zouche (1342–52) onwards, outsiders from farther
a eld came to play an increasingly prominent role in the liberty’s adminis-
tration. eir appointments, however, might illustrate a very real concern
for Hexhamshire’s good rule. In January 1343, following complaints from
the people of Cumberland and Northumberland, the crown ordered the
owners of the major Northumbrian liberties to deal immediately with
criminals operating from within their territories; and in May of that year
the archbishop received a further royal mandate. In response, Zouche
arrayed on 20 June a ‘great commission’ of justices headed by Ralph
Neville and Henry Percy.
100
It was presumably felt that the more local
men who had previously been involved in the government of the liberty
were either implicated in its problems or lacked su cient clout to deal
with them. And signi cantly it was also on 20 June that the Yorkshireman
William Hawsker, who had been baili since January, was replaced by
Richard Donnington. Hawsker was a familiar of the archbishop who
probably lacked the necessary authority to carry out his o ce e ectively;
Donnington, rector of Haversham in Buckinghamshire, and later auditor of
Hexhamshire and steward of Beverley, was presumably considered a safer
pair of hands. But Donnington’s appointment in turn lasted only until 2
August 1343, when he was replaced by Nicholas Gower.
101
Gower, another
Yorkshireman, was a man of some experience and considerable ability, and
he kept his post for over a year before he was replaced by Roger Zouche,
the archbishop’s ‘brother- german’, in November 1344.
102
Zouche was then
himself replaced by Robert II Ogle, who served as steward/baili in 1346–9
98
C 145/140/7; below, Chapter 7, p. 344. Rowley Head was included in a royal grant of free
warren of 1341, but was not mentioned in a list of Ogle’s lands produced in relation to
distraint for knighthood in 1334: CChR, v, p. 4; E 159/117, m. 195d.
99
NCH, iv, pp. 333, 409.
100
CPR 1343–5, pp. 67, 88; Reg. Zouche, f. 291v; Northern Pets, no. 67, from the endorsement
to which the quotation is taken; Neville, Violence, p. 31.
101
Reg. Zouche, ff. 291v, 291Ar, 292v.
102
Ibid., f. 291Av. Gower, under- sheriff of Yorkshire around 1341–2, represented that
county in Parliament and general councils in 1338 and later. He was a member of
Zouche’s council in 1350, and was created chief justice of King’s Bench in Ireland in
1356: CCR 1341–3, p. 699; A. Gooder, The Parliamentary Representation of Yorkshire,
1258–1832 (YASRS, 1935–8), i, pp. 90–2; Reg. Zouche, f. 296v; J. H. Baker, The Order of
Serjeants- at- Law (Selden Society, Supplementary Series, 1984), p. 157.
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and 1350–5.
103
Only Ogle, it would seem, provided su cient local weight
to restore real stability to the liberty. Ogle and his immediate predecessors
were all in some sense outsiders to Hexhamshire; but Ogle was at least a
Northumbrian and, as has been seen, he had also acquired landed interests
in the liberty. Under Archbishop Zouche the liberty’s justices were also
drawn from a wider range than had previously been usual – Ralph Neville
was appointed frequently, as were Peter Richmond, omas Seaton and
John Mowbray.
104
ough these were not local men, they were nevertheless
professionals who were familiar gures on the northern judicial circuits;
and while there are fewer records of commissions in later years, this pattern
seems to have continued under archbishops oresby and Neville.
105
Until around 1350, therefore, the liberty was not used excessively as a reward
for archiepiscopal familiars, and for the most part the archbishops success-
fully balanced ‘reward’ and ‘government’. Hexhamshire was thus able to
emerge relatively unscathed from the Scottish raids of the 1310s. True, the dis-
ruption caused by such raiding was severe, especially in 1312 and 1314–15.
106
In 1315–17 receipts throughout the liberty were a fraction of what they had
been in 1304; the canons of Hexham Priory were dispersed; and many of the
archbishop’s own tenants le their holdings.
107
e liberty’s administration
naturally su ered. Its justices of assize did little business in 1313–14, although
– perhaps tellingly – the liberty’s gaol continued to be delivered. In 1315 it was
discovered that the liberty had no coroners, and new ones had to be elected,
while between November 1314 and March 1315 no fewer than four baili s
were appointed in rapid succession.
108
is level of disruption was short-
lived, though, and the liberty’s courts and administration seem, before long,
to have returned to normal. ere were complaints in 1343 about lawlessness
in the liberty;
109
but, again, the situation appears to have improved in the fol-
lowing decades, not least because of diminishing Scottish raids. So it was that
the liberty’s judicial systems remained vigorous and e ective for most of the
fourteenth century. Its gaol seems to have been regularly delivered;
110
under
103
Ogle was briefly replaced as steward by William Greystoke in 1349: Reg. Zouche, ff. 292v,
296r, 296Av, 297v; Reg. Thoresby, ff. 299r, 300r.
104
For example, Reg. Zouche, ff. 294r, 296v. Richmond was a member of Zouche’s council:
ibid., ff. 295r–6v.
105
Reg. Thoresby, ff. 299v–300v; Reg. Neville, ff. 91v–2r.
106
C. McNamee, The Wars of the Bruces (East Linton, 1997), pp. 56, 78–9.
107
SC 6/1144/3; Reg. Melton, f. 516r; Northumb. Pets, nos. 159–60.
108
Reg. Greenfield, i, nos. 576, 602, 611, 628, 631, 638, 651, 654.
109
Above, p. 191.
110
Justices of gaol delivery were usually appointed at intervals of several months, but these
intervals do not always reflect the frequency with which the gaol was delivered, since
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Archbishop oresby justices of the peace, and for the Statute of Labourers,
were appointed; pardons issued by archbishops reveal that appeal and out-
lawry took place in the liberty’s court; and wide- ranging commissions of oyer
and terminer could be appointed, as in 1311, 1343, 1347, 1355 and 1378.
111
ere is no way of knowing how e ective such commissions were; but they at
least provided a forum for grievances to be articulated.
For civil pleas, too, the liberty seems to have met local needs. Admittedly
we have no extant plea rolls from which to assess the question in full. In the
surviving accounts, the pro ts of the liberty’s courts were insubstantial, and
a large part of these pro ts would have come in any case from manorial- type
jurisdiction over copyhold estates and ‘exchequer land’.
112
And the arch-
bishops’ registers contain a relatively small number of enrolled writs and
special commissions of assize, perhaps on average only three or four a year –
although justices appointed by general commissions may have heard many
more pleas. Nevertheless there is no doubt that the liberty’s inhabitants did
use its court. Writs were sued by most of Hexhamshire major freeholders as
well as by many lesser gures: it was in the liberty’s court, for example, that
possession of the manor of Bing eld was disputed, even though one of the
plainti s was a Newcastle man; and it was before the archbishop’s justices
that a nal concord concerning the manor was raised in 1324.
113
Hexham
Priory did not disdain to sue in the court; and when William Redshaw
carved out a place for himself in the liberty from the mid- 1330s, it was
with the assistance of the same court.
114
For reasons that are unclear, the
liberty does not seem to have experienced Durham’s di culties in keeping
pace with developments in royal justice: the writ of entry, which could not
be used at Durham outside of an eyre until around the 1340s, appears in
Hexhamshire as early as 1324.
115
And in cases where the common law did
not provide a remedy, the inhabitants of the liberty could petition the arch-
bishop, to whom di cult cases may also have been referred.
116
some commissions empowered justices to act ‘whenever there should be need of a deliv-
ery’: Reg. Zouche, f. 291r.
111
Reg. Thoresby, f. 299r–v; Reg. Greenfield, i, no. 558; Reg. Zouche, ff. 291v, 294r–v; Reg.
Neville, f. 91v.
112
SC 6/1144/1, 3; C 145/140/7. ‘Exchequer land’ probably represented tenements recently
approved from the waste (cf. VCH, Durham, ii, pp. 183–4); for its transfer in the liberty’s
‘manorial court’, see NCS, ZSW/165/1–5; 166/1, 2.
113
Reg. Melton, ff. 486r, 492v, 497v, 509v; NCS, ZSW/169/7.
114
Reg. Melton, ff. 492r, 547r, 552v; Reg. Zouche, ff. 291Ar, 295r–v, 296Av, 297v.
115
Above, Chapter 2, pp. 73–4, 76–7; Reg. Melton, f. 514r (cf. f. 538v). See also Reg. Melton, f.
486r, for the pleading in 1320 of a writ cui in vita (introduced by the statute of Westminster
II in 1285), and ff. 492r, 536r, for writs of cessavit (introduced by statute in 1278).
116
Reg. Corbridge, ii, no. 942; Reg. Melton, f. 516r (an inquest bound into the register
endorsed ‘coram archiepiscopo’).
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194
For all these reasons, the liberty’s inhabitants do not seem to have found it
necessary to turn to the royal courts. e archbishops are not known to have
craved cognisance of pleas from royal justices, as they did for their Yorkshire
liberties of Beverley and Ripon. Precedents for the allowance of those liber-
ties were collected; but in Hexhamshire’s case this does not seem to have
been necessary.
117
We have found virtually no evidence of pleas relating to
the liberty in records of the central or itinerant royal courts, and there is little
other evidence of challenges to the archbishops’ legal jurisdiction.
118
Only
very rarely was it necessary to prevent pleas relating to the liberty from being
heard by royal writ or in royal courts;
119
and there is no surviving evidence
that tenants were punished for suing outside the liberty. e liberty’s court
seems, therefore, to have satis ed the expectations of local society.
e liberty’s legal system thus acted to some extent as a force for local
cohesion. Some of the archbishop’s judicial powers, as we have seen, were
shared with Hexham Priory.
120
But it was the archbishop’s justices who
heard the chief civil and criminal pleas in the fourteenth century; and the
three- weekly court of the liberty, probably held before the steward/baili
in the Moot Hall at Hexham, must also have provided an institutional and
social focus for local society.
121
e business of this court seems to have
been varied: it was a ‘court baron’ for copyhold land, and also had the func-
tions of a comitatus or county court.
122
It was there, for example, that the
liberty’s coroners seem to have been chosen;
123
and a good number of the
surviving inquisitions from the liberty were held at Hexham, quite possibly
in the court.
124
It was there that pardons were proclaimed;
125
and perhaps
sessions of assize and gaol delivery took place there, too.
117
For Beverley and Ripon, see inter alia Reg. Melton, ff. 484v, 510v.
118
For the sources consulted, see above, Chapter 2, pp. 74–5, and the references cited. A
writ of novel disseisin concerning Portgate brought against the archbishop of York at the
1279 Northumberland eyre was not prosecuted (NAR, p. 241). In 1353 a charter dated at
Beaufront was adduced in a plea in Common Pleas concerning Capheaton; the jury was
to be drawn from the neighbourhood of Capheaton because Beaufront ‘is in the lordship
and liberty of Hexham where the king’s writ does not run’: CP 40/375, m. 138.
119
For isolated examples, see Reg. Greenfield, i, no. 247; Reg. Melton, f. 492v.
120
Above, p. 182.
121
In the fifteenth century this court could be held in Allendale Town as well as in Hexham:
NCS, ZSW/166/2.
122
Records of the ‘court baron’ are extant from 1390: NCS, ZSW/165/1–5; 166/1, 2.
123
For the ‘election’ of coroners, who may sometimes have been selected by the steward/
bailiff, see Reg. Greenfield, i, nos. 510, 536, 654; Reg. Melton, ff. 504r, 541r.
124
Two inquests are specifically said to have been held in the archbishop’s court at Hexham:
Reg. Melton, f. 516r; NCS, ZSW/165/1. See otherwise Reg. Melton, ff. 509r, 513r, 517v;
Reg. Zouche, f. 296v; ADM 75/150, Coastley, no. 7; Hexham Priory, ii, pp. 130–2 (in the
chapter- house of Hexham Priory).
125
Reg. Thoresby, f. 299r.
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HEXHAMSHIRE AND TYNEMOUTHSHIRE
195
ere is a little evidence that this institutional integrity and cohesiveness
shaped something of a local community. In 1320, as has been seen, ‘the
people of Hexham’ complained about ‘baili - pot’; in 1376 John V Vaux
styled himself ‘of the county of Hexham’, which suggests a clear sense
of, and identi cation with, the liberty.
126
It must be admitted that these
examples almost exhaust the direct evidence for ‘identity’ and ‘commu-
nity’; but it is not unreasonable to suggest that the absence of ‘community’
is explained, at least in part, by the good governance the liberty normally
received from York. ere is no indication of signi cant tensions between
the archbishops and the local community in the archiepiscopal records
or in those of the central government; and relations between the liberty’s
freeholders, its administrators and its lord do generally seem to have been
cooperative. If the archbishops enjoyed rights of prerogative wardship
in the liberty, no protests about their exercise have survived.
127
Nor have
complaints about default of justice in the liberty’s courts. And no real
conclusions can be drawn from the few references to assaults on the arch-
bishops’ property found in the royal chancery records.
128
Justice was readily
available; peace was normally maintained; and there were, therefore, no
grounds for such collective petitions as emerged from fourteenth- century
Tynedale.
129
Melton’s abolition of ‘baili - pot’ shows how local problems
could be dealt with swi ly; and, similarly, the archbishops seem to have
responded promptly to the damage caused by Scottish raids in the 1290s
and 1310s by reducing tenants’ rents.
130
We might well conclude, therefore,
that it is simply the absence of grievance that makes collective activity in the
liberty so di cult to nd. But while such an explanation does carry some
weight, it must be admitted that it is not wholly convincing. e ‘commu-
nity of the liberty’ is exceptionally elusive; and, in particular, it is striking
that Hexhamshire, in contrast to so many other northern liberties and com-
munities, was unable to make a collective truce- payment to the Scots at any
point in the fourteenth century.
131
As we will see, the liberty’s institutional
and administrative cohesiveness may have provided some focus for iden-
ti cation; but such identi cation was not supported by historical culture,
social networks or the structure of lordship.
126
Reg. Melton, f. 488r; CCR 1374–7, p. 342.
127
The scope of the archbishops’ ‘feudal’ rights is uncertain; but they claimed wardships
from drengage tenures in the liberty (Reg. Melton, f. 509r) and primer seisin (ADM
75/150, Coastley, no. 7).
128
For example, CPR 1266–72, p. 716; 1281–92, p. 143.
129
Below, Chapter 7, pp. 323–4, 330–1.
130
Reg. Newark, no. 193; Reg. Greenfield, i, no. 616 (cf. no. 611).
131
Cf. McNamee, Wars of the Bruces, pp. 133–9.
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