Holford Matthew, Stringer Keith. Border Liberties and Loyalties in North-East England, 1200-1400 (ENG)
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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES
206
prior of Tynemouth had come to an arrangement with Henry III’s chancel-
lor, Richard Middleton (1269–72). e prior granted an annual pension
of six marks to Richard’s sister, who was a recluse in Newcastle; in return
Richard ensured that the vills would be recognised as part of the liberty
of Tynemouthshire. Bewick’s claims are all too plausible – we know that
Richard Middleton worked for the priory on other occasions
181
– and they
correspond to some extent with what is known of the liberty’s development.
e priory had acquired West Chirton from William Heron only in 1256;
Backworth was a much earlier possession, but it may have been withdrawn
from ‘the body of the county’ relatively recently.
182
Even at the end of the
thirteenth century, the priory was suspected of attempting to expand its
jurisdiction. In 1291 Prior Simon Walden refused ‘to name vills or places
where he ought to have his liberty’, so that, according to the crown’s attor-
ney, ‘he could attract to the liberty lands outside it’.
183
Partly as a result of its aggregation of franchisal privileges, the priory
had, by the mid- thirteenth century, become a signi cant power in local
society; and its power was well illustrated during a dispute over the ward-
ship of the daughter of Simon I Welton of Welton.
184
is was acquired by
Robert Cambo, deputy sheri of Northumberland in the 1240s;
185
and he in
turn granted it to the rising family of Middleton of ornbrough. But the
wardship was also claimed by two successive priors of Tynemouth, Richard
Park (1244–52) and Ralph Dunham (1252–c. 1267). e manor of Welton
was held of the priory in socage by a rent of £40, so these claims were rela-
tively weak: in 1264 Walter Scott of Welton was one of the few tenants who
did not acknowledge the priory’s rights of wardship.
186
Nevertheless both
priors had to be bought o , on the later occasion for the sum of ten marks.
In the words of the memorandum drawn up by Robert Cambo, ‘it was
better policy to yield to the abbot [of St Albans] and prior to prevent greater
181
For Middleton’s connections with Tynemouth, see J. R. Maddicott, Law and Lordship:
Royal Justices as Retainers in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth- Century England (Oxford,
1978), pp. 7–8.
182
For the priory’s acquisition of these vills, see NCH, viii, p. 336; ix, p. 32.
183
Gibson, Tynemouth, ii, p. lxxvii. Another late thirteenth- century petition, SC 8/112/5573,
is badly damaged, and even with the aid of the nineteenth- century transcript (PRO
31/7/138, p. 130) its sense is often unclear; but it is evidently a complaint to the king and
his council about the prior of Tynemouth’s appropriation of various ‘franchises’.
184
For much of what follows, see F. W. Dendy, ‘Wardship in tenure by socage’, AA, 3rd ser.,
8 (1912), especially pp. 10, 18.
185
HN, II, i, p. 284.
186
On the tenures from which wardship could be claimed, see F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland,
The History of English Law, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1968), i, p. 321, which notes exceptions
which might be justified by prescription. For 1264, see Registra Quorundam Abbatum
Monasterii S. Albani, ed. H. T. Riley (RS, 1872–3), ii, p. 322.
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HEXHAMSHIRE AND TYNEMOUTHSHIRE
207
expense and charge in time to come’. Well connected as he was, Cambo
could not ignore the force of the priory’s lordship, to which its franchisal
jurisdiction was undoubtedly a vital buttress.
Nonetheless the priory’s privileges, as in the case of Redesdale,
remained both limited and somewhat fragile in comparison to those of the
Northumbrian regalities.
187
Fundamentally it was the king’s writ that ran
in the liberty, even if royal mandates were executed by the priory’s o cers;
and, to a much greater extent than the ‘royal liberties’, Tynemouthshire was
part of the machinery of royal government. e judicial competence of the
liberty’s court, like that of Redesdale, was also limited by the fact that many
pleas could not be initiated without a royal writ. As will be discussed in
more detail below, numerous tenants found it equally convenient to sue in
the king’s courts, and preventing such actions required continual vigilance
from the priory’s baili s. It is true that cognisance of pleas seems generally
to have been granted; but it was not automatic, was beset with procedural
pitfalls, and could require a representative of the priory to petition the king
in person.
188
ere was, moreover, always the possibility that the liberty’s
title would be denied.
In addition, a more profound uncertainty about the status and legitimacy
of the liberty resulted from its con scation by the crown in 1291, following
complaints about the maladministration of justice. Documentary evidence
of its jurisdiction was found wanting by the king’s court; such records as
existed were commandeered; and the liberty was judged to be ‘in contempt
of the royal dignity’ and ‘against the custom of the realm’.
189
In the circum-
stances of the late thirteenth century, Richard I’s charter was no longer an
adequate foundation; and when the priory petitioned for the restoration of
its ‘franchises’ in about 1299, it was obliged to ask Edward I to clarify the
terms of this charter by specifying the territorial extent of the liberty, and
by adding stipulations for the appointment of liberty justices and a coroner.
In fact, however, the royal charter of February 1299 simply restored the
franchises ‘as they were held on the day on which they were taken into the
king’s hands’.
190
is did nothing to clarify the ambiguities of Richard I’s
187
On Redesdale, see below, Chapter 8, especially pp. 368–72.
188
Pitfalls included claiming the liberty too late in pleadings: CP 40/86, m. 56d. For a per-
sonal approach to the king in 1280, see below, p. 223.
189
Gibson, Tynemouth, ii, p. lxxvii; also NER, no. 603. The records were placed in the custody
of the royal chief justice Gilbert Thornton: Crook, General Eyre, pp. 121, 138, 147.
190
Northumb. Pets, no. 10; CChR, ii, p. 475. The prior’s claim to appoint a coroner ‘by himself
and his court, without a writ of the king’ was one of the aspects of the liberty judged ‘not
consonant with right, and in prejudice of the king’, in 1291: Gibson, Tynemouth, ii, p.
lxxvii.
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208
grant, and when the new charter was cited by the priory in 1300, it was with
inconclusive results.
191
Di culties were compounded by the natural caution of the crown’s
justices – probably heightened in the wake of the Quo Warranto inquiries
– and by the con scation of the priory’s archives. In the Parliament of 1305
the priory complained that royal justices required speci c authorisation
before they would grant cognisance of pleas to the liberty; in fact, even
given such warrant, the justices demanded precise evidence of how pleas
had been heard in the liberty before its con scation. In 1306 a search of
the royal archives produced only a record, from 1279, of the delivery of the
articles of the eyre to the prior’s baili ; and since this did not relate speci -
cally to the justices of assize, it was not considered su cient. Fortunately
a jury from the county was able to specify two occasions on which the
liberty court had been allowed, under the supervision of an assigned royal
justice.
192
is, however, was not the end of di culties. In 1309 Edward
II had to intervene when the prior once more proved unable to provide
a su ciently detailed record of the liberty’s court. On this occasion, the
royal archives produced not only the evidence of the 1279 eyre, but a royal
mandate of 1285 for the transfer of an assize of novel disseisin to the prior’s
court.
193
Nevertheless problems continued. In 1330 a further royal writ
was issued because the prior had been unable to show how pleas had been
allowed before the liberty’s con scation. Rather than clarifying the priory’s
royal charters, though, the writ simply directed the justices to consider the
‘general words’ used in Richard I’s grant and to allow the priory appropriate
rights without harming it in any way.
194
Even so, this writ nally provided a
rmer precedent for subsequent years, and on its basis the priory’s o cers
successfully claimed pleas on later occasions.
195
But their allowance never
became automatic: in 1344, despite several writs from the king himself
commanding respect for the prior’s rights, the justices of assize remained
‘uncertain about the craving of the liberty’.
196
191
JUST 1/658, m. 3d: ‘They offer a charter of the present king by which he confirmed . . . all
the liberties previously granted to them by his progenitors, and thence they claim their
court.’ There is no record of whether or not the claim was allowed.
192
PROME, ii, p. 92; JUST 1/659, m. 5d. The petition of 1305, or another petition on very
similar lines, was copied in Tynemouth Cart., f. 217v, with the note that ‘this petition is
not yet granted’ (ista supplicatio nondum est expedita).
193
C 255/12/2/46; 260/20/20A.
194
CP 40/280, m. 279.
195
See, for example, CP 40/303, m. 166d; 40/306, m. 229; 40/311, m. 42. The precedent of
1330, and subsequent allowances of the liberty, were collected in Tynemouth Cart., ff.
195r–200v.
196
JUST 1/1435, m. 53–53d (‘curia nondum avisatur ad libertatem istam calumniandam’).
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Tynemouthshire, therefore, cannot be compared to the ‘royal liberties’ of
the North- East, with their long- standing traditions of independence from
royal government. e king’s writ ran in Tynemouthshire, as it did in
Redesdale, and as in Redesdale, the administration of justice was depend-
ent to a signi cant extent on royal writs and royal o cers. Nevertheless the
administrative integrity and autonomy of the liberty were real enough, and
in practice royal o cers did not intermeddle as frequently in the liberty as
they might have done. ey recognised that using its structures of govern-
ance was o en more e ective than direct intervention; and so, for example,
when the sheri of Northumberland was commanded to arrest John Irish
and his followers early in 1316 ‘within or without liberties’, he delivered the
writ to the liberty baili for execution.
197
e liberty’s governmental status
therefore provided something of a force for the ‘drilling’ of a community
out of the scattered townships of Tynemouthshire; and this was true not
only in the thirteenth century, when the liberty’s independence was prob-
ably at its height, but also in the fourteenth century, when its government
was bolstered, as much as challenged, by the demands of the ‘war- state’.
e centre of the liberty was, of course, the priory at Tynemouth itself.
As the home of the relics of the Northumbrian king St Oswin, the priory
was the spiritual and cultural heart of the liberty; it was also its administra-
tive focus. A very large number of documents relating to various parts of
the liberty were witnessed at Tynemouth; and while this is certainly not
a guarantee that the relevant parties were always assembled at the priory,
it is likely that much business did take place there, drawing tenants from
throughout the liberty.
198
In 1337, for example, it was at Tynemouth that
men from Backworth, Bewick and Welton were listed as attesting a charter
relating to Seghill. It was also at the priory that tenants did homage, both to
the prior and to the abbot of St Albans when he visited Tynemouth.
199
Most importantly, it was at the priory that the principal court or courts
of the liberty – the ‘free court’ and/or the comitatus – seem most o en to
have been held.
200
Although there is relatively little evidence of the court’s
business, it is likely to have been central to the liberty’s government, for
197
NCH, viii, p. 87, n. 1. On Irish, see A. King, ‘Jack le Irish and the abduction of Lady
Clifford, November 1315’, NH, 38 (2001), pp. 187–95.
198
Tynemouth Cart., passim; NCH, v, p. 276, n. 4.
199
Tynemouth Cart., ff. 35v, 97; Registra Quorundam Abbatum, ii, pp. 318–24; Bodl., MS
Dodsworth 78, ff. 98v–9r; BL, MS Cotton Tiberius E.VI, f. 164v.
200
These were often probably identical, and seem usually to have been held on Saturdays, in
theory every three weeks (NCH, viii, p. 221; ix, p. 35, n. 4; CP 40/303, m. 166d; 40/306, m.
229; 40/311, m. 42). We hear also of the ‘curia senescalli’ (NCH, ix, p. 38, n. 2). It should
be noted that in principle the free court could be held anywhere in the liberty (Tynemouth
Cart., f. 52r; NCH, ix, p. 36, n. 1), and that there are records of pleas at Elswick and
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reasons quite apart from its judicial aspects. e liberty’s coroners were
elected in the court, and other matters a ecting the public interest of the
liberty may well have been decided there.
201
And while the court is never
formally described as representing ‘the community of the liberty’, it did
provide some kind of forum for the articulation of collective interest and
communal judgement. When a tenant refused to pay ‘recognition’ in 1306,
he was initially distrained by the priory, but was at length able to have his
case decided by inquisition in the ‘free court’ of the liberty.
202
From the 1270s or thereabouts, Tynemouthshire almost always shared
in the scal- military burdens imposed by the crown on Northumberland,
and there were only isolated exceptions. us in 1381 an assessment for the
expenses of Northumberland’s knights of the shire exempted the liberty, and
thereby showed unusual respect for its privileges – in other counties it seems
to have been expected that the inhabitants of liberties would contribute to
such payments.
203
More surprisingly, Tynemouthshire seems largely to have
escaped assessment for the aid of 1346, and does not appear in the extant
Northumberland assessments for the poll tax of 1377.
204
Otherwise, however,
the institutional solidity of the liberty may well have been strengthened as
a result of the ‘state’s’ demands, for they were usually mediated through
Tynemouthshire’s o cers. And, by the same token, such demands prob-
ably reinforced awareness of the liberty’s collective identity and tightened
its o cers’ control over its inhabitants. us Tynemouthshire was subject
to most parliamentary taxation, but it generally retained a separate identity
as a ‘tax community’ distinct from the county of Northumberland. For the
subsidy of 1275, royal taxers made no attempt to enter the liberty, but ordered
Backworth on various days of the week (Tynemouth Cart., ff. 178v, 207r; NCH, viii, p.
211, n. 1).
201
Gibson, Tynemouth, ii, p. lxxv. But ‘de comitatu dicte libertatis’ in NCH, viii, p. 213, n. 6,
where a document relating to the 1275 subsidy is printed from Tynemouth Cart., f. 215v,
is a misreading of ‘de communitate dicte libertatis’.
202
NCH, ix, p. 37, n. 1; the outcome is not recorded. ‘Recognition’, the payment made by
customary tenants on the succession of a new lord, was made to each abbot of St Albans
on his first visit to Tynemouth. It was probably distinct from the ‘abbot’s welcome’ of 40s.
paid on such occasions by certain tenants in Tynemouth: Tynemouth Cart., f. 51v; NCH,
viii, pp. 112–13.
203
J. Wallis, The Natural History and Antiquities of Northumberland (London, 1769), ii,
Appendix, p. 4; H. M. Cam, Liberties and Communities in Medieval England, new edn
(London, 1963), especially pp. 240–5.
204
Poll Taxes of 1377, 1379 and 1381, ii, pp. 256–71; iii, pp. 545–50. For 1346, see FA, iv, pp.
61 (where the prior of Tynemouth is assessed for Flatworth and Chirton), 76 (where the
collectors do not answer for the liberty of ‘Tynby’, a corruption of Tynemouth, because
of a writ of supersedeas). The Northumberland assessment does not seem to have taken
place until c. 1360: NDD, p. 54.
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211
its baili to elect local assessors.
205
For the eleventh and seventh of 1295,
and the twel h and eighth of 1296, the liberty was assessed with the rest of
Northumberland, but appeared as an individual unit with its own jury. In 1336
the liberty was again taxed with the county, but the prior compounded for a
sum that was assessed and raised by his o cers rather than by the crown’s.
Later eenths and tenths taxed the liberty separately and not as part of one of
Northumberland’s wards.
206
e ninth of 1340–1, in which the parish churches
of Tynemouth and Eglingham were directly assessed, o ers an exception. But
in 1360, when the counties north of Trent granted a eenth and tenth for local
defence, the liberty again seems to have had some recognition of its integrity,
and collectors were appointed for, inter alia, ‘the parts of Tynemouth’.
207
Commissions of array did not identify Tynemouthshire as an independ-
ent unit, and in this respect, again, the liberty could not compare with the
Northumbrian regalities. Nevertheless the liberty’s status did have some
impact on the way in which it contributed to the royal war- e ort, because
the crown’s local representatives relied on the liberty’s baili to raise troops.
In 1304 John Segrave ordered the baili to assemble 100 footmen and a
mounted constable, and in 1308 Gilbert Clare similarly ordered the baili
to array the men- at- arms and footmen of the liberty. In 1311 there are
records for the payment of archers from the liberty of Tynemouthshire.
208
It seems, then, that men were in practice recruited and organised using the
liberty’s administrative structures, even if this was not re ected in commis-
sions of array; and the other demands of warfare were similarly met by the
liberty as a unit. Local men and liberty o cials were appointed to assess
carriage for royal supplies from the liberty in 1307 and before, and the
liberty provided victuals for royal forces in 1314.
209
us the ‘war- state’, even as it sought to incorporate liberties into the
community of the realm, could strengthen their sense of individual identity.
It must still be emphasised, though, that in Tynemouthshire any ‘liberty
community’ remained nebulous and inchoate. No ‘community of the liberty’
205
Tynemouth Cart., f. 215v; NCH, viii, p. 213, n. 6.
206
NLS, pp. 98–108; E 179/158/9–11, 15–17A, 19–21, 23–7. The Northumberland roll
for 1295 is incomplete and dispersed; two membranes from ‘the roll of the liberty of
Tynemouth’ are now E 179/242/80, m. 1; 179/240/295. The Dissington or Dissington
Delaval, taxed with the body of the county in 1295 (E 179/158/6, m. 17) and later, was
North Dissington (NCH, xiii, pp. 172–3), not South Dissington as in The Lay Subsidy of
1334, ed. R. E. Glasscock (London, 1975), p. 221.
207
E 179/158/14; CPR 1358–61, p. 348; CCR 1360–4, p. 56.
208
NCH, viii, p. 214, n. 4; Tynemouth Cart., ff. 213v–14r; Bodl., MS Tanner 197, f. 46v.
209
Tynemouth Cart., ff. 214r–15v (partly printed in Gibson, Tynemouth, i, p. 131), also
referring to ‘arrears from the liberty for carriage already done’ according to an account
made in the county court; BL, MS Cotton Nero C.VIII, f. 156v.
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protested against taxation or military service, or defended the liberty’s rights
against royal o cers. As will also become clear, many of the liberty’s inhabit-
ants had little reason to identify with it or to uphold its institutions. For some,
it was little more than an oppressive manifestation of the priory’s lordship;
for others, its courts were partial and lacking in authority. In consequence,
much of local society had relatively little to gain from the liberty’s privileges,
which functioned largely as an adjunct of the priory’s power and control.
Before we turn to such issues, however, we must consider the attitudes of
neighbouring county society towards the liberty. ese were, in general,
more positive; and such attitudes, as much as those of the crown and its
o cers, were crucial to the establishment of the liberty’s authority in the
thirteenth century, and its re- establishment in the early fourteenth century.
When the priory’s judicial privileges were rst recorded at a royal eyre, in
1256, they were attested by a county jury; in 1306, similarly, the crucial
verdict was not that of the crown or its ministers, but that of jurors. e
liberty developed with the tacit acceptance of at least part of county society,
and local society similarly gave support for its reinstatement.
Robert Bewick’s petition of about 1272 reveals, of course, that the prio-
ry’s rights did face some opposition in local society; and, as with so many
other liberties and lordships, the priory had intermittent disputes with its
neighbours.
210
Real and persistent opposition was nevertheless essentially
con ned to the town of Newcastle, which faced signi cant economic and
commercial challenges from the priory’s claims to markets at Tynemouth
and North Shields, and to rights in the River Tyne. In 1218–19 Newcastle
prevented the priory from establishing a market at North Shields; in 1263
the prior complained that men of Newcastle were preventing him from
buying freely in the ‘port of Tyne’; and, from the later thirteenth century,
disputes between priory, town and townsfolk could fairly be described as
endemic.
211
Newcastle rarely opposed Tynemouthshire’s privileges directly;
and we should also note that some Newcastle men were among the priory’s
benefactors.
212
But the town was nevertheless responsible for ongoing juris-
dictional skirmishes, and represented a signi cant threat to the priory and
its lordship throughout the period.
210
Examples include Tynemouth Cart., f. 122r–v; NCH, viii, p. 90; NER, no. 334.
211
For example, Northumb. Pleas, no. 682; NAR, pp. 162–3; RH, ii, p. 18; PROME, i, pp. 198–
205, 258, 276–7; Gibson, Tynemouth, i, p. 130; CIMisc., viii, no. 199. When the abbot of St
Albans wished to proceed against a rebellious prior in the late thirteenth century, he turned
naturally to the mayor of Newcastle: Thomas Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum Monasterii
Sancti Albani, ed. H. T. Riley (RS, 1867–9), ii, pp. 21–2; NCH, xiii, p. 238; M. Heale, The
Dependent Priories of Medieval English Monasteries (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 98–9.
212
Gibson, Tynemouth, i, pp. 149–50.
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213
e favourable attitudes more typical of county society can be explained
in several ways. First, the liberty o ered opportunities for neighbouring
gentry to consolidate their wealth and status. Some, like Robert Raimes,
sheri of Northumberland (1347–8), were retained with fees; others held
o ce in the liberty. e precise rewards of the di erent levels of o ce are
not known; but they were su ciently attractive for a man as successful and
as widely employed as omas Fishburn to consider it worthwhile to serve
as steward/baili in about 1312.
213
Nor was Fishburn the only professional
to nd his way into the priory’s employment, or to appear among its retain-
ers: his fellow Durham lawyers, Geo rey Hartlepool and William Kelloe,
were also feed.
214
Fishburn had been preceded as baili by Nicholas Vigars,
attorney for the prior in 1293, and baili in 1294–5; and Nicholas, too, was
a man of considerable experience, who had followed his father into the
service of the Bertrams of Bothal, and is recorded as the baili of Robert
Fitzroger at Corbridge in about 1290.
215
Again John Duddo, baili of
Tynemouthshire around 1302, was also baili of the Greystokes at Morpeth
in the late thirteenth century, and of the Vescies at Alnwick at about the
same time. He likewise had some prominence in county government,
acting as mainpernor for knights of the shire in 1298 and 1305, serving as
sub- escheator for the shire in 1306, and being elected MP in 1306, 1307 and
1309.
216
William Hepscott, baili in 1351, MP in 1348, and quite active on
royal commissions in the county, is a comparable gure.
Opportunities in the liberty’s administration were, however, probably of
still greater signi cance in its immediate neighbourhood. e priory’s jus-
tices in particular – unfortunately they are only documented in any detail
around the end of the thirteenth century – were drawn in large part from
neighbouring gentry, men like Adam Baret and omas Cli on, justices
in 1280 and 1282 respectively. Baret was lord of Walker, and Cli on had
lands around Killingworth and Longbenton, both a short distance from
Tynemouth. Ralph Ashington, justice in 1283–4, and John Widdrington,
justice in 1284, came from the neighbourhood of the priory’s estates at
213
JUST 1/1435, m. 4; NCH, viii, p. 215, n. 3 (where references to all the priory’s stewards/
bailiffs may be found); J. Hodgson, ‘Antient charters . . . in the possession of William
John Charlton, of Hesleyside’, AA, 1st ser., 2 (1832), pp. 410–11. For Fishburn’s career,
see above, Chapter 3, pp. 128–9.
214
NCH, viii, p. 216, n. 2; BL, MS Cotton Tiberius E.VI, f. 150r–v (printed, from a later copy,
in Gibson, Tynemouth, ii, pp. lxxix–lxxx).
215
JUST 1/653, m. 22; NER, no. 1283; Parl. Writs, I, p. 73; NCH, x, p. 114, n. 3; Brinkburn
Cart., pp. 20–1, and passim. He can be identified with the Nicholas Viger’ assessed for
£2.2s. at Embleton in 1296: NLS, no. 271.
216
HN, II, ii, pp. 484–6; Percy Cart., p. 320; Parl. Writs, i, pp. 73, 148; CDS, v, no. 429. See
also HN, II, ii, pp. 286–7.
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214
Amble, Hauxley, Bebside and Cowpen. Another justice, John Farnacres
of Farnacres near Gateshead, was drawn from the south bank of the Tyne
in the liberty of Durham.
217
omas Cli on, the justice, was also baili in
1276; and several of the priory’s other baili s were men of similar origins
and standing. William Hazlerigg, baili in 1291, was the chief taxpayer in
Hazlerigg in 1294, and held land in Weetslade and West Brunton; Henry
Harden, baili in 1319, seems to have had interests in Tritlington north
of Morpeth.
218
Robert Soreys, baili for much of the 1330s and 1340s, was
almost certainly from a Newcastle burgess family.
219
It is not clear how much administrative experience these men had
outside the liberty. Some acted in the crown’s central courts, where William
Hazlerigg was an attorney, and others were appointed royal justices in the
localities: Adam Baret and John Widdrington were justices of gaol delivery
at Newcastle.
220
Nevertheless it is probable that the liberty’s administration,
and in particular the exercise of justice, o ered such men power and status
not readily available elsewhere, and it therefore seems likely that they had a
stake in the liberty’s continuing operation. Liberty and priory were, in fact,
the focus of some men’s careers. Before Henry Harden became baili in
1319, he had been clerk to the prior in 1293; he was also appointed to crave
the priory’s ‘liberties’ in 1302, and acted as an assessor for carriage in the
liberty in 1307. Elsewhere he was only a relatively minor gure in county
society.
221
All these factors help to account for the goodwill of part of local
society towards the priory and its liberty. Indeed, it seems signi cant that
three of the jurors who con rmed the priory’s judicial privileges in 1306
were probably descended from men who had served as its justices.
222
In addition, the personal connections and charisma of individual priors
were undoubtedly important. In theory, because the priory was a depend-
217
Baret: NCH, ix, p. 56, n. 1. Clifton: Tynemouth Cart., f. 177; NCH, xiii, pp. 418–19;
Northumb. PDBR, nos. 167, 199, etc.; NCS, Waterford Ch., nos. 29–30. Ashington and
Farnacres: NCH, viii, p. 211, n. 1; KB 27/83, m. 16. Widdrington: Tynemouth Cart., f.
180v.
218
Hazlerigg: E 179/242/80, m. 3; NER, nos. 86, 88; NCH, xiii, p. 432. Harden: NLS, no. 189;
Northumb. Fines, ii, no. 176; JUST 1/1299, m. 22.
219
Cf. C. H. H. Blair, ‘Members of Parliament for the boroughs of Northumberland, 1295–
1377’, AA, 4th ser., 13 (1936), p. 71.
220
Hazlerigg: Northumb. PDBR, no. 534; Northumb. Fines, ii, no. 149. Baret and Widdrington:
Reports of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records (London, 1838–1958), xlv, Appendix 2,
p. 259; xlviii, Appendix 1, p. 133; xlix, Appendix 1, p. 125; l, Appendix 1, p. 164. Baret was
also assigned by royal justices to supervise a plea heard in the prior’s court: JUST 1/659,
m. 5d.
221
NCH, viii, p. 220; JUST 1/658, m. 8d; Gibson, Tynemouth, i, p. 131. Harden was a frequent
juror on royal inquisitions: for example, C 134/30/4, m. 11; 134/36/5, m. 4.
222
These jurors were Walter Brunton, John Cambo and John Ogle.
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HEXHAMSHIRE AND TYNEMOUTHSHIRE
215
ent cell of St Albans, its priors’ freedom of action was restricted; but in
practice they seem to have enjoyed considerable autonomy and local
clout.
223
Prior omas Delamare (1340–9), for example, was the confes-
sor of Mary, daughter of Earl Henry of Lancaster and wife of Henry Percy.
Her help proved instrumental in defeating Gerard Widdrington’s attempt
to wrest the manor of Hauxley from the priory.
224
More generally, the
priory was one of the wealthiest and most prestigious religious institutions
in Northumberland. It could boast considerable spiritual and cultic sig-
ni cance, partly because of its celebrated mother- church of St Albans, and
partly because it housed the relics of St Oswin. Admittedly the local impor-
tance of Oswin’s cult is unclear. e only accounts of his life and miracles
which seem to have circulated were partisan twel h- century productions,
which had relatively little to say about the liberty itself, and it is unknown if
the cult took popular root.
225
It was almost certainly overshadowed by that
of St Cuthbert, on whose feast the monks of Tynemouth performed plays
for the local populace in the early eenth century – much to the anger of
the abbot of St Albans.
226
Nevertheless Oswin’s spiritual power should not
be underestimated. Several kings o ered at his shrine; and the notorious
Gilbert Middleton did penance to the saint for the wrongs he had done the
priory in Edward II’s reign. In the mid- fourteenth century Prior omas
moved the shrine, apparently to make access easier for pilgrims, and rebuilt
it at considerable expense.
227
e priory appealed to the saint in petitions;
kings alluded to him in grants; and the liberty was undoubtedly strength-
ened by the priory’s ability to invoke a heavenly patron, one who might
even, according to a vita, protect the liberty’s tenants from the exactions
of neighbours such as Odinel II Umfraville (d. 1181).
228
If Oswin could not
match Cuthbert’s appeal, he nevertheless gave Tynemouthshire a spiritual
potency unique among the greater liberties of Northumberland.
223
For relations between priory and abbey, see NCH, viii, pp. 52–114; Heale, Dependent
Priories, pp. 98–9.
224
The story is told in Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum, ii, pp. 375–8, although the nature of
Gerard’s claim, and of the ‘pleas’ he brought against the prior, remains unclear.
225
P. A. Hayward, ‘Sanctity and lordship in twelfth- century England: Saint Albans, Durham
and the cult of Saint Oswine, king and martyr’, Viator, 30 (1999), pp. 105–44. None of
the extant manuscripts is later than the early thirteenth century.
226
John Amundesham, Annales Monasterii S. Albani, ed. H. T. Riley (RS, 1870–1), i, p.
214.
227
Gibson, Tynemouth, i, pp. 121–2, 132; John Trokelowe and Henry Blaneforde, Chronica
et Annales, ed. H. T. Riley (RS, 1866), p. 101; Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum, ii, p. 379.
228
Northumb. Pets, no. 10; Tynemouth Cart., f. 217v; CChR, ii, p. 475. For Oswin’s miracles
in and around the liberty, see Miscellanea Biographica, ed. J. Raine (SS, 1838), pp. 1–59;
Thomas Walsingham, Ypodigma Neustriae, ed. H. T. Riley (RS, 1876), p. 339; William
Rishanger, Chronica et Annales, ed. H. T. Riley (RS, 1865), p. 414.
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