Holford Matthew, Stringer Keith. Border Liberties and Loyalties in North-East England, 1200-1400 (ENG)
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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES
216
Within the liberty itself, too, the priory made as much as it could out of the
cult of St Oswin. e liberty’s courts were sometimes held on or around
the saint’s feasts, which were also terms for leases and rent payments, and the
services owed by the priory’s tenants included stewardship on Oswin’s feast-
day and the payment of wax to his shrine.
229
And, as will be seen, there is some
evidence that the spiritual power of the priory gave it a hold on its tenants’
loyalties. But the priory’s temporal lordship was probably more important to
the tenants of the liberty. In the fourteenth century the priory commanded
one of the greatest castles in its vicinity, which had been strengthened in
the late thirteenth century, and could play a signi cant role in local defence.
When the Scots attacked Northumberland in 1315, the priory was one of the
few places where ‘Englishmen could hide safely’.
230
e castle was success-
fully defended during Gilbert Middleton’s ‘rebellion’ in 1317–18, albeit alleg-
edly at the costs of the local knight Robert Delaval; and in 1380 the priory was
described, accurately enough, as ‘one of the strong fortresses of the North’.
231
Prior Adam Tewing (1315–40) won contemporary praise for maintaining
eighty men in the priory and keeping it safe at a time when ‘no sower dared
sow for fear of the enemy’; and in 1322 the priory may have been defended
by over forty men.
232
Nor was the priory’s protection of its tenants and neigh-
bours evident only in such extreme circumstances. When the possession of
Seghill was disputed between William Delaval and John Selby in 1390, the
cellarer of Tynemouth was one of those who bought o Selby’s claim and
released William from imprisonment at the hands of his rival.
233
O ce in the liberty also o ered power and authority to at least some
of the priory’s own tenants. It was uncommon for such men to be bail-
i s, although Gilbert Daudre, baili in 1293, and assessed for £1.4s.2d.
at Whitley in 1294, can be identi ed with Gilbert Whitley, who seems to
have acted as baili in 1305, and was assessed for £1.4s.10d. at Whitley
in 1296.
234
All the coroners for whom there is evidence, however, were
chosen (the o ce was, at least in theory, elective) from the mediocres of the
liberty.
235
Two coroners who o ciated before 1293 were Adam Pickering,
229
Tynemouth Cart., ff. 59r–v, 175, 177, 180v, 205r; NCH, xii, p. 214; CIMisc., ii, no. 365.
230
Trokelowe and Blaneforde, Chronica et Annales, p. 91.
231
NCH, viii, pp. 87, 97; Northumb. Pets, no. 122. See A. Emery, Greater Medieval Houses
of England and Wales, 1300–1500 (Cambridge, 1996–2006), i, pp. 141–3, for the late
fourteenth- century gatehouse.
232
NCH, viii, pp. 86, 89; CCR 1318–23, p. 621.
233
CPR 1389–92, p. 340, and KB 27/518, rex, m. 25d, as cited in NCH, ix, p. 64.
234
NCH, viii, p. 218 (reading Audre or Daudre for Andrew); JUST 1/659, m. 3d; E
179/242/80; NLS, no. 233.
235
Roger Mauduit, coroner for Northumberland, also acted in the liberty, but only while it
was in royal hands in the 1290s: NCH, viii, pp. 218–20; JUST 1/653, m. 1.
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HEXHAMSHIRE AND TYNEMOUTHSHIRE
217
a middling landholder in Backworth, and William Stiward alias William
‘the steward’, who was assessed for £1.1s.6d. at Backworth in 1296.
236
John
Horton, coroner in 1314, and in receipt of a pension from the priory in
about 1306, seems to have held a small amount of land in Tynemouth and
Bebside.
237
Although their o cial duties are not always clear, these men had a signif-
icant role in upholding the priory’s authority: it was William Stiward who
arrested a recalcitrant tenant in 1290.
238
And the rewards of o ce, while
not well documented, surely existed: of the nine men whose holdings from
the priory were valued in 1307, only Adam Pickering paid anything like a
preferential rent.
239
Indeed, for some of the middling tenants of the liberty,
administrative service may have o ered tangible rewards that, together
with the priory’s spiritual signi cance, could foster genuine loyalty. It was
Tynemouth Priory, a er all, to which Adam Pickering granted his lands
before his death.
240
Such sentiments, however, are not easy to identify among many of the lib-
erty’s other tenants; rather, the oppressive exercise of lordship all too o en
created resentment. e liberty allowed the priory to exert its manorial and
‘feudal’ lordship with particular force by exacting heavy services from some
tenants, exploiting to the full its claims to wardship and marriage, and even
exercising some control over the alienation of land.
241
ese tenants in turn
resisted the priory’s demands as best they could, o en by turning to the
superior lordship of the crown.
e liberty’s greater tenants, for most of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, comprised the families of Selby, Welton and Whitley. e
Selbies, who were the liberty’s only knightly family, held the manor of
Seghill, said to be worth over £20 p.a. before its devastation by the Scots;
their other principal estate, until its forfeiture in 1318, was at Felling in
Durham, which was valued at £5.6s.8d. p.a. in peacetime.
242
e Weltons,
who were armigerous from at least the mid- fourteenth century, held the
manor of Welton, and also (from the later thirteenth century) had impor-
tant interests outside the liberty at Belsay and ornbrough. e Whitleys
236
NCH, viii, pp. 115, 215, n. 1, 219–20; ix, pp. 37–8; NLS, no. 236.
237
BL, MS Cotton Nero C.VIII, f. 156v; NCH, viii, pp. 115, 216, n. 2, 256.
238
Below, p. 219.
239
Pickering held his lands in Backworth, said to be worth 15s.2d., for 8s.1½d.; in contrast,
for example, Robert Cheval held his lands in West Hartford, worth 19s.11¼d., for 19s.6d.:
C 143/65/10, m. 2.
240
NCH, viii, p. 219; ix, pp. 37–8.
241
NER, no. 316.
242
CIMisc., ii, nos. 365, 880.
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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES
218
could boast a forti ed manor- house from around the mid- fourteenth
century; but Whitley was their only signi cant estate. ere were also
signi cant di erences in the services by which di erent estates were held.
Seghill was held by knight service (the seventh part of a fee), and by stew-
ardship in the prior’s hall on the feast of St Oswin.
243
ese services were
relatively light and, partly as a result, relations between the priory and the
Selbies were generally tranquil. Military tenure did mean that the family
was vulnerable to the priors’ rights of wardship; but these rights do not
seem to have led to dispute.
244
In contrast, the manor of Whitley owed
fairly heavy services, which included providing hospitality for the prior and
his household, ploughing, repairing the mills at Tynemouth, and paying
merchet. e services were set out in 1224–6 in a plea brought by the prior
against Ralph Whitley, who had attempted to avoid them on the basis that
he held his land freely and not as a villein. Although Ralph acknowledged
the priory’s claim in 1226, the onerous and servile nature of these services
is one obvious explanation for the long- standing ill- feeling between the
priory and the lords of the manor.
245
e other is that the family did not
hold signi cant estates outside the liberty and was thus particularly vulner-
able to the priory’s lordship.
is animosity was strongest under Ralph Whitley’s grandson John, who
had particularly close experience of how the priory’s rights allowed it to
intensify its lordship. He was under- age when his father Henry died, and
became a ward of the prior contrary (or so John claimed) to the service by
which the manor was held.
246
When he came of age, he had to pay relief
amounting to two years’ value of the manor before he was given seisin. Even
a er he had received seisin, the prior continued to interfere with the manor
by preventing John from distraining his villeins for their rents or services.
Since the greater part of the manor was held in service by these villeins, such
interference was highly damaging. But John’s attempt to distrain the prior
was foiled: he was ned £10 and, furthermore, his servant was imprisoned
by the prior’s baili .
247
A few years later, the prior again tried to use the judicial machinery of
243
NCH, ix, p. 55; CIMisc., ii, no. 365.
244
Cf. Registra Quorundam Abbatum, ii, p. 320; NCH, ix, p. 55, n. 4.
245
Northumb. Pleas, nos. 273, 286, 294; NCH, viii, pp. 390–1, 395–6; Gibson, Tynemouth, ii,
Appendix, no. 131.
246
In fact Henry had acknowledged the priory’s rights of wardship in 1264: Registra
Quorundam Abbatum, ii, p. 320.
247
The details are reported in John’s petition to king and council, SC 8/146/7286, printed
in NCH, viii, p. 391, n. 3. According to this petition, John’s bondsmen held 254 acres; he
held in demesne only one messuage, one carucate of land, eight acres of meadow and sixty
acres of pasture.
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the liberty against John – although on this occasion the attempt back red
when royal justices became involved, with events culminating in the for-
feiture of the liberty.
248
In November 1290 William Stiward, the liberty
coroner, imprisoned John Whitley, Gilbert Daudre alias Whitley, and
William Cowpen on an appeal of robbery. e prisoners petitioned for
a royal commission of oyer and terminer, but the priory’s baili s refused
to hand them over to royal justices. When the priory’s gaol was delivered
by the liberty baili , in January 1291, reasons were found for denying the
accused a jury, and they were only released from prison some three months
later, by royal command.
249
William Cowpen died immediately a er his
release, but John and Gilbert were acquitted of robbery, and the jury stated
that they had been maliciously accused in collusion with men and o c-
ers of the priory. As a result of the prior’s misadministration of justice,
the liberty was taken into the crown’s hand – where, as has been seen, it
remained until 1299.
Given John Whitley’s experiences, it is hardly surprising that he should
have resented the priory’s ‘franchises’ as a tool of oppression: in a peti-
tion of about 1280 he complained of the ‘great disinheritance’ done by
Tynemouthshire to the crown and the local community.
250
e con scation
of the liberty – a profound illustration of the potential consequences of the
priory’s heavy lordship – must have given him considerable satisfaction;
but it by no means put an end to tensions. In the 1293 Northumberland
eyre John brought two unsuccessful actions against the priory; and he later
claimed that in 1297 documents kept in his house in Tynemouth had been
deliberately burned by the prior.
251
In 1306 John declined to pay ‘recogni-
tion’; and in 1310 his attempt to settle the manor of Whitley on Henry
Newnham was challenged and perhaps thwarted by the prior.
252
John Whitley’s con ict with the priory and its ‘franchises’ appears to
have been exceptionally strongly felt, and its intensity was not matched
among his descendants or other families in the liberty. Nevertheless there
is no denying the frequency of disputes between the priory and its more
substantial tenants. As far as we can tell, these disputes seem to have owed
little to the temper and policies of individual priors, and they occurred
248
For what follows, see especially Gibson, Tynemouth, ii, Appendix, no. 91; NCH, viii, pp.
216–18.
249
For the oyer- and- terminer commissions of January and April 1291, both issued ‘on peti-
tion of the appellees’, see CPR 1281–92, pp. 453, 455.
250
This statement appears in the endorsement to SC 8/146/7286, made by the clerk who
drew up the petition, not in the royal chancery.
251
NER, nos. 168, 299; KB 27/202, m. 77, summarised in NCH, viii, p. 393. The documents
included John’s charters of feoffment for the manor of Whitley.
252
BL, MS Cotton Tiberius E.VI, f. 164v; Northumb. Fines, ii, no. 156.
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220
throughout the liberty. In Woolsington, in 1281, the priory was sued for a
wardship. In Bewick, in the early fourteenth century, there were disputes
over the priory’s right of tallage and attacks on its property.
253
In East
and West Backworth, the leading families of Backworth and Fawkes were
more or less continuously in dispute with the priory.
254
John Backworth
refused to pay ‘recognition’ in 1306, a case that was referred to the liberty’s
free court. He was probably the John son of Nicholas who, together with
Hugh Backworth and Nicholas Fawkes, had been prosecuted by the prior
in Common Pleas in 1295 for neglecting suit to Backworth mill. e same
Nicholas Fawkes was forced to come to terms with the priory over a pastur-
age dispute in 1310 a er a suit in King’s Bench. ere are, it is true, signs
of better relations in the next decade. In 1320 Henry Fawkes, ‘for a ection
to the person of Prior Richard Tewing’, granted way- leave to the priory’s
quarries in West Backworth;
255
and in 1323 he and John Backworth were
pardoned a hospitality service owed to the priory. In the 1330s, however,
Henry Fawkes and his son William entered into bonds for their good
behaviour. e services owed by Henry were commuted in 1339; but in
1352 William was being sued in Common Pleas by Prior omas Delamare
for a debt of twenty marks. It was perhaps in settlement of this debt that in
1353 William and his wife Maud granted land in Backworth to the priory,
and were admitted in return into its ‘bene ts and prayers’.
256
But the grant
may also indicate that, for all the grudges born against the priory, its reli-
gious weight allowed it to retain a signi cant hold on its tenants’ loyalties. A
comparable case concerns the Scott family of Newcastle and Benwell, which
held land by the priory’s grant in Elswick. Nicholas Scott sued the prior
before the royal justices of assize in 1305–6, and Richard Scott and others
assaulted priory servants in 1337 and 1338; but the same Richard gave land
in Elswick to the priory in 1348.
257
ere were, therefore, signi cant ambiguities and tensions in the priory’s
relations with its more important tenants; and if the priory’s exactions did
not lead to any collective resistance in the name of ‘the community of the
liberty’, this was not only because of the liberty’s dispersed geography. e
exactions themselves did not compare in scale or scope with those that
253
NCH, xiii, p. 205 (the Woolsington plea was heard by royal writ in the prior’s court; the
writ was eventually withdrawn); xiv, pp. 427–8, 430; CPR 1330–4, pp. 389, 444.
254
For what follows, see especially NCH, ix, pp. 34–7.
255
Brand, Newcastle, ii, p. 90.
256
CP 40/368, m. 54; 25/1/181/12/99. In 1351 William had been in the Fleet prison, follow-
ing his outlawry pursuant to an action of account by John Berrington, probably acting on
the prior of Tynemouth’s behalf: CPR 1350–4, p. 114, with JUST 1/1435, m. 53d, where
Berrington is the prior’s attorney.
257
JUST 1/659, m. 5d; NCH, xiii, pp. 238–9.
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characterised Bishop Bek’s regime in Durham. Acts of resistance to the
priory’s lordship are best seen as the attempts of assertive individual tenants
to escape from the constraints under which the liberty placed them, and to
secure greater status and freedom of action for themselves. Nor was con ict
endemic, even if it was common. Moreover, the priory sometimes needed
its greater tenants for the running of the liberty. John Whitley served as a
juror in the liberty court and for tax assessments in the 1290s, and acted
with Henry Harden as an assessor of carriage in 1307.
258
e Backworths
and Fawkes, similarly, were frequent witnesses to deeds relating to the
priory and liberty, and also acted as liberty jurors.
259
In the nal analysis, however, the involvement of greater freeholders
in the liberty’s administration remained limited. ese men did not hold
the more important o ces, and may have seen service in the liberty as a
burden as much as an opportunity.
260
In 1276 two leading tenants, Walter
Scott of Welton and Adam Selby, were chosen to assess a royal subsidy.
ey refused to accept the o ce, and because of their in uence with the
sheri of Northumberland, liberty o cials were unable to coerce them
e ectively, so that royal intervention was necessary.
261
Indeed, like others
mentioned above, the lords of Welton seem to have done their best to out
and escape the priory’s lordship. In 1291 Walter Scott apparently refused
to pay ‘recognition’ to the abbot of St Albans. Walter’s descendant, Simon
II Welton ( . c. 1324), did witness charters relating to the liberty; but that
was the limit of his involvement in its business.
262
He, or his son, was lax
in paying the rent owed for the manor of Welton – £10 and two pounds of
wax o ered to St Oswin’s shrine.
263
In 1335 he received an acquittance for
all arrears, and the payment of wax was said in 1338 to be in arrears by a
period of twenty- two years. It was Simon IV Welton (d. 1424), however,
who decisively altered his family’s relationship to the priory when in 1380
Prior Clement Wheathampstead released all claim to Welton and West
Welton. Simon was to o er 12d. or two pounds of wax yearly to Oswin’s
shrine, for which payment he received ‘freedom from [the] franchise and
liberties of St Oswin’. e manor of Welton did appear among the members
258
NCH, viii, p. xiii; NLS, p. 108; Gibson, Tynemouth, i, p. 131.
259
See, for example, the following deeds: Tynemouth Cart., ff. 80, 97v–8, 102v–3; NCH, viii,
pp. 248, n. 3, 394, n. 4; ix, p. 38, n. 1; Gibson, Tynemouth, i, p. 138. For lists of liberty
jurors (1293–6, 1307), see NCH, viii, pp. xiii, 215, 218; NLS, pp. 107–8; C 143/65/10.
260
Gilbert Daudre alias Whitley, bailiff in 1293 and 1305, was apparently not related to the
lords of the manor of Whitley: NCH, viii, p. 395.
261
Ibid., p. 213, n. 6.
262
Bodl., MS Dodsworth 78, f. 96v; NCH, viii, p. 394, n. 4; ix, pp. 38, n. 1, 62, n. 1.
263
For what follows, see NCH, xii, pp. 214–15, where the relevant documents are
summarised.
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222
of the liberty in 1381, but it was recognised as distinct in 1428. Welton and
Seghill were then listed in association with ‘the liberty of Tynemouth and
Tynemouthshire’, but separately from the main entry; and only Seghill was
explicitly said to be ‘parcel of the liberty and within it’.
264
e full details of the transaction of 1380 are not known; but in addi-
tion to the yearly o ering then speci ed, it is likely that Simon made a
further and more substantial payment to secure his exemption, as did some
manorial lords in the bishop of Worcester’s liberties.
265
Such payments
indicate a keen desire to avoid the real challenges to manorial lordship and
authority that a liberty could pose. But Simon’s behaviour seems to have
been unique in Northumberland, and it is indicative of the negative attitude
towards the liberty shared by many of Tynemouthshire’s tenants. Far from
providing a robust framework for the articulation of identities and loyalties,
the liberty was something against which these tenants de ned themselves.
And even if matters cannot always be put so strongly, it is clear that in
almost every way Tynemouthshire had little in uence on the identities of
its greater tenants. e geographical dispersion of the liberty meant that
many tenants held land outside it: ties of landholding and neighbourhood,
therefore, associated them with other lords and communities. e Selbies
of Seghill o er an example. In the thirteenth century the family’s interests
seem to have centred on its manor of Felling in Durham: Walter Selby was
a frequent witness to charters of bishops Richard Poore (1228–37) and
Nicholas Farnham (1241–9), and to private charters issued between Tyne
and Tees.
266
His descendant Adam, the recalcitrant tax assessor of 1276,
hardly appears at all in documents relating to Tynemouthshire; but he regu-
larly attested charters concerning Horton and Stickley, a few miles north of
Seghill.
267
Adam’s grandson, Walter Selby (d. 1346), married into the family
of Delaval of Seaton Delaval near Seghill; and Tynemouthshire had little
hold on his loyalties. He was a prominent member of Gilbert Middleton’s
‘rebellion’ in 1317–18, when he attacked the priory’s properties, and he
later fought alongside the Scots from 1318 to 1321. Imprisoned until 1327,
264
Wallis, Natural History and Antiquities of Northumberland, ii, Appendix, p. 4; FA, iv, p.
79.
265
C. Dyer, Lords and Peasants in a Changing Society: The Estates of the Bishopric of
Worcester, 680–1540 (Cambridge, 1980), p. 77.
266
FPD, pp. 11, 122, 148–9, 162, etc.; Acta 1241–83, passim.
267
For example, NCH, ix, pp. 244, n. 2, 245–6, 248, n. 7, 252, n. 4, 253, n. 1; NCS, Waterford
Ch., passim. See also DCM, SHD 1/17, 18, for some of his activities between Tyne and
Tees.
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223
he was then pardoned and served with some distinction in Scotland and
France.
268
No other inhabitant of the liberty seized quite so fully the opportuni-
ties o ered when Northumberland became a ‘land of war’. But William
Fawkes had letters of protection in Scotland in 1303; Simon II Welton
had similar letters in 1301, was again serving in Scotland in 1311–12, and
was summoned in 1324 as one of the men- at- arms in Northumberland.
His coat of arms, with its cinquefoil, also suggests some association with
the Umfravilles, from whom Welton had once been held.
269
Finally John
Whitley’s son Gilbert irted with Middleton’s rebellion, but was pardoned
for his good service in Scotland; and he later became ‘an expert military
architect’, in charge of works at Newcastle castle in 1356.
270
It would seem
that the crown, and lords and neighbours outside the liberty, were the chief
in uences on these families’ aspirations and associations.
For many tenants, therefore, the liberty was an instrument of exploitation,
intensifying the priory’s hold over them and o ering few bene ts; and such
conclusions are reinforced by a more detailed analysis of the liberty’s ‘free
court’. e admittedly limited sources suggest that this, too, was successful
as a tool of lordship, but of much less importance to tenants themselves. In
the rst place, inhabitants of the liberty could expect little redress locally of
any grievances against the priory. Very few successful pleas were brought
against the priory – if indeed a plea could be brought at all.
271
John Whitley
claimed that when he had purchased a writ of mort d’ancestor in the 1279
Northumberland eyre, Prior William Bernard claimed cognisance of the
plea, and then suppressed the writ, so that the case could not proceed.
272
Robert Bewick was driven at around the same time to complain to the king
because the prior had refused to do him justice, and was ‘so enfranchised’
that no plea could be brought against him without royal assistance.
273
Some
tenants also assumed that a plea in the liberty court would automatically
go against them. In 1280 Adam Selby, objecting to the storage of tithes on
his lands, sued a novel disseisin in the king’s court against the prior, who at
rst failed to get the case transferred. But when one of the monks put the
268
NCH, ix, pp. 58–63, 168; CPR 1324–7, p. 289 (which, despite its date, relates to events of
1317–18).
269
CDS, v, nos. 2425, 2309; Bodl., MS Tanner 197, f. 31r; G&B, no. 2600.
270
CPR 1317–21, pp. 211, 397; NCH, viii, p. 395. He must be distinguished from Gilbert
Daudre alias Whitley, the bailiff of 1293 and 1305.
271
For a rare case when the priory failed to prove that a tenant was a villein, see Tynemouth
Cart., f. 177.
272
NCH, viii, p. 391, n. 3.
273
SC 8/33/1636.
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224
priory’s case to Edward I in person and was able to obtain the plea, Adam
promptly withdrew his writ.
274
Priors themselves naturally recognised the advantages their own court
o ered them. ey were happy to use the royal courts to pursue cases
against their tenants, without ever nding it necessary (as did, for example,
the abbot of Ramsey) to obtain guarantees that this would not prejudice
the liberty.
275
But they seem to have allowed the royal courts to proceed
only where they felt assured of success, and to have attempted, in more
delicate cases, to have pleas removed to their own jurisdiction. In 1332 the
prior used Common Pleas to bring a plea of trespass against John Little of
Bewick. But in the same year, in a plea brought by the prior against Walter
Selby concerning land in Tynemouth, the prior’s court was craved by his
baili .
276
Again, in 1344 and 1345, the royal justices of assize at Newcastle
heard ve pleas of novel disseisin concerning Hauxley, in all of which the
prior was victorious. But two cases concerning Tynemouth were claimed by
the prior’s attorney: both involved disseisin by Robert, Alice and Richard
Tewing, presumably relations of Prior Tewing, and it would seem that the
prior was less con dent of the outcome.
277
Many tenants, for their part, preferred to bring actions against the prior
in the royal courts. William Cokeman, a tenant in West Chirton, brought a
plea before the justices of assize in 1285, a er an earlier action in the liberty
had failed and he had been forced to admit to being a villein.
278
Other
tenants seem to have gone straight to the royal courts, as did Nicholas Scott,
who held land in Elswick, before the justices of assize in 1305. Similarly,
it was in King’s Bench in 1310 that Henry and Robert Fawkes sued Prior
Simon Walden for intruding on their land in West Backworth.
279
It was much the same story with pleas brought by the liberty’s inhabit-
ants against each other. e liberty court did hear some such cases: a plea of
trespass, brought without royal writ, was heard there in the late thirteenth
century, although it was later transferred to Common Pleas.
280
But while
274
NCH, ix, p. 56, n. 1.
275
From many examples, see CP 40/280, m. 176d; CPR 1307–13, pp. 475, 542; 1330–4, pp.
389, 444. For the abbot of Ramsey, see W. O. Ault, Private Jurisdiction in England (New
Haven, 1923), p. 124.
276
CP 40/282, m. 220; 40/287, m. 227. It is unclear why the prior initiated the latter case in
Common Pleas: perhaps simply to inconvenience Walter?
277
JUST 1/1435, mm. 49, 50–50d, 53–53d, 54.
278
JUST 1/1268, m. 8d; Tynemouth Cart., ff. 178v–9r. The prior was able to have the case
transferred back to his court: C 260/20/20A; Tynemouth Cart. f. 179r–v. For earlier
process, see KB 27/83, m. 16.
279
JUST 1/659, m. 5d; KB 27/201, mm. 25, 49d, 66d. For analogous actions, see Northumb.
PDBR, nos. 19, 411.
280
CP 40/141, m. 159d.
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HEXHAMSHIRE AND TYNEMOUTHSHIRE
225
the evidence makes it impossible to o er even a rough guess as to how fre-
quently plainti s used the prior’s court rather than the king’s courts, it is
nevertheless clear that, at least from Edward I’s reign, it was by no means
unusual for both lesser and greater tenants to sue one another in the central
courts.
281
If it was ever an ‘ancient custom’ that the liberty was the automatic
court of rst resort for its inhabitants, as a writer at the priory thought in
the fourteenth century, the custom cannot have lasted long.
282
ere were several reasons for this. e geographical dispersion of the
liberty counted for much. Many of the liberty’s tenants held land of other
lords, were accustomed to pleading in the royal courts, and may not have
wished to do otherwise for their lands in the liberty. Nicholas Scott, for
example, sued a single plea in Common Pleas in 1335 concerning lands in
Elswick and Newcastle.
283
Furthermore, many of the liberty’s inhabitants
were subject in some way to the authority of the priory’s neighbours. In
one instance, as the result of an early thirteenth- century agreement, the
priory’s tenants at Amble and Hauxley owed suit to the mill of the lord
of Warkworth at Warkworth.
284
Again, South Dissington, acquired from
the Delaval family before 1158, formed part of the liberty, and one of the
priory’s more important tenants there in the later thirteenth century was
William Russell. But Robert Delaval, lord of the neighbouring vill of North
Dissington, also had seigneurial claims over Russell, who owed him suit of
mill, for which Delaval successfully sued in the Northumberland eyre of
1293.
285
For such reasons, several of the priory’s tenants were familiar with
the royal courts, and perhaps readier to bring pleas there themselves.
Most fundamental, however, was the need for a royal writ to com-
mence the most important actions in the liberty court.
286
is consider-
ably reduced its convenience, and thus the appeal of following the ‘ancient
custom’ of the liberty, by obtaining a royal writ ordering the prior to do
justice in his court, before impleading a fellow tenant before royal justices.
It is true that the liberty court still o ered some attractions: even if a writ
281
In addition to the references given above, see Reports of the Deputy Keeper, xlii, Appendix
1, p. 677; xliv, Appendix 1, p. 274; Rotulorum Originalium . . . Abbreviatio, ed. H. Playford
and J. Caley (Record Commission, 1805–10), i, p. 130; Northumb. PDBR, nos. 36, 41,
115.
282
NCH, viii, p. 210, n. 2: ‘The ancient custom was that no neighbour would bring any
royal writ to implead his neighbour, without first bringing a writ directed to the prior to
implead in his own court.’
283
CP 40/303, m. 166d. For Scott’s relations with the priory, see also Tynemouth Cart., f.
175r–v.
284
NCH, v, pp. 271, 274–6; Percy Cart., pp. 327–31.
285
NER, no. 412; NCH, xiii, p. 172.
286
See below on Redesdale, Chapter 8, pp. 373–4.
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