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

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noble standing derived very largely from estates outside the liberty, but

they nevertheless held extensive property within it. Much of upper north

Tynedale, ruled from Tarset, was the Comyns’ preserve, though a tract

of high moorlands, approximating to the modern parish of Greystead,

was controlled by the Lindsays from their headquarters at Dally, the only

other focus of lordship above Wark and Bellingham.  e Comyns, clearly

the liberty’s biggest landowners, also had in Wall country the manors of

Henshaw,  ornton and Walwick, later called ‘the barony of  ornton’.

 e Graham manor of Simonburn lay a little north of this cluster. Another

concentration of manors – Haltwhistle, Bellister, Plenmeller and Coanwood

– was held by the two Ros lines, which represented the main landed inter-

est in south Tynedale.  e ‘second- tier’ tenants belonged to the knightly

or ‘greater gentry’ class: among others, Denton (with lands in Haughton),

Lisle (Knarsdale), Pratt (Haughton, Knarsdale), Vaux (So ley), Vipont

(Alston, Elrington, Kirkhaugh) and Whit eld (Whit eld). All had annual

incomes in the range of £20 or more; some – Pratt, Vipont and Whit eld

– had the means to sustain knighthood from their Tynedale estates alone.

 en, towards the bottom of the hierarchy, came a large number of ordi-

nary ‘parish gentry’ such as Bellingham, Grindon, Haughton, Nunwick,

Ridley, Russell, Tecket,  irlwall and  orngra on.

In 1249 a sizeable number of families – perhaps thirty to forty all told

– therefore had some kind of role in local political society. Most had

been established in the liberty for at least two generations; some, includ-

ing Comyn, Pratt, Vipont and Whit eld, had been part of its history

for a century; others, the survivors of an old ministerial class of drengs,

belonged to native Northumbrian families of ancient origin. Nor were

there radical changes in personnel during Alexander III’s reign (1249–86),

though special mention must be made of two incomers from south- west

Northumberland, who used the same surname but represented di erent

families: John of (Little) Swinburne and William of (Great) Swinburne. We

must not jump to the conclusion that a traditional, self- perpetuating society

of this sort was automatically a cohesive society. But its stability mirrored

the continuity of lordship provided by the Scots kings from reign to reign;

and it is under such conditions that distinctive solidarities might  ourish.

 ere was, however, another group connected with Tynedale in 1249,

and its in uence on the liberty as a ‘community’ was ambiguous at best.

Tynedale had no monastic foundation of its own to focus local piety and

identities. Accordingly monasteries from near and far had freely competed

for the laity’s support; and, generally speaking, their successes (largely

CIMisc., i, no. 1764.

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achieved by about 1230) denote a world of pluralistic socio- religious alli-

ances and attachments.  e list of bene ciaries includes the cathedral

priories of Carlisle and Durham, Arbroath Abbey, Blanchland Abbey,

Hexham Priory, Jedburgh Abbey and Rievaulx Abbey.

Rarely did monas-

tic wealth in Tynedale amount to much. Arbroath held the church of

Haltwhistle, and the abbot of Jedburgh enjoyed manorial lord status in

Ealingham and Lee Hall near Bellingham. Blanchland, though, received

from the Grahams a modest annual rent of  ve shillings from the mill of

Simonburn. Similarly the Comyns had conveyed to Rievaulx a small farm

in Stonecro near Newbrough; they also expressed their devotion to St

Cuthbert by o ering a stone of wax annually to light Durham Cathedral on

his translation feast.

Endowments of this order serve to underscore that

Tynedale was primarily a district of secular lordship and landholding; but

there was one major exception to the norm.

 us by 1249 Hexham Priory had achieved a notable position within

the liberty. Its supporters in north Tynedale included the Grahams and

Teckets; it had important assets beside the Wall thanks mainly to Comyn

grants; its gains also extended to Whit eld and Whitley Common; and it

owed to the Viponts a valuable stake in Alston, including the advowson

and Priorsdale south of Flinty Fell.

 is more localised pattern of pious

donations is indicative of the liberty’s importance to its society, so that even

noble families might seek to root themselves into Tynedale by association

with the nearest monastery at hand. It is also signi cant that, in the twel h

century, the Scottish royal house had aided the priory, whose promotion of

St Andrew’s cult had presumably encouraged such aid.

Yet on no account

can Hexham be regarded as an ecclesiastical appendage of Tynedale. A

network of ties thus linked parts of the liberty to a power- centre with

its own distinct values, priorities and traditions, and whose social and

religious favours had to be shared with a large cohort of benefactors in

English Border society. Moreover, if the canons of Hexham felt any special

Moore, Lands of the Scottish Kings, pp. 23–4, 44, 104, gives some useful details.

NCH, xv, p. 194; Cartularium Abbathiae de Rievalle, ed. J. C. Atkinson (SS, 1889), nos.

305–6. The grant to Durham, by William Comyn, future earl of Buchan (d. 1233), was

confirmed by John I Comyn, perhaps on the occasion of Alexander III’s pilgrimage to

Cuthbert’s shrine in 1272: Raine, North Durham, Appendix, nos. 175–6; CDS, ii, no. 1. For

twelfth- century evidence of the observance of Cuthbert’s cult in Bellingham, see Reginald

of Durham, Libellus de Admirandis Beati Cuthberti Virtutibus, ed. J. Raine (SS, 1835), pp.

243–7; and, for his translation feast as a rent- term in Tynedale deeds, Hartshorne, p. xxiv;

NCS, ZSW/2/1; HN, III, ii, p. 27; PROME, ii, p. 542.

CChR, i, p. 171; HN, II, iii, pp. 17–18; Hexham Priory, ii, pp. 27, 84–8, 113–14, 116–17,

120–1.

The Charters of King David I, ed. G. W. S. Barrow (Woodbridge, 1999), nos. 236, 238; Reg.

Regum Scott., ii, nos. 79, 538.

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

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attachment to the liberty, it was no doubt measured by the length of their

rent- rolls. Indeed, the priory regularly requested English royal con rma-

tions for its properties in Tynedale; it also had a history of impleading other

Tynedale landowners before English royal justices.

Nor were these the

only ways in which Hexham directly threatened the liberty’s integrity, for

its manorial court of Anick in Hexhamshire claimed suits from a number

of Tynedale tenants, most notably the Whit elds for the lands they held of

the priory in Whit eld.

Lay- religious interactions thus had few, if any, real bene ts for local

cohesion; and it was of course in this respect that Tynedale and Durham

contrasted most sharply. Given Tynedale’s other attributes as a source of

identi cation, the absence of a liberty- based spiritual power- house was

perhaps not a major disadvantage. But it remains the case that the liberty

could not de ne, fortify and defend itself by means of a coherent religious-

cultural identity; on the contrary, the lack of correspondence between

its structures and those of the monastic landscape could have negative

implications for its social de nition and governmental authority.

Much therefore turned on the nature of relationships and attitudes in

the liberty’s predominantly secular arena; and a crucial part of the setting

is provided by the Scottish crown’s use of Tynedale as a store of political

patronage. As has been indicated, it expressed its lordship and power over

the liberty in partnership with some of its greatest subjects.  e Comyns

had been one of its  rst bene ciaries in Tynedale in the twel h centu-

ry.

In 1183 William I granted Haltwhistle and neighbouring manors to

his son- in- law Robert Bruce; and in 1191 the king allied himself with a

leader of the Northumbrian baronage by giving Bruce’s widow, with the

Haltwhistle estates and the barony of Sanquhar in Nithsdale, to Robert I

Ros of Wark- on- Tweed and Helmsley.

Other royal favourites, including

William I’s chamberlain Walter Barclay, appear as Tynedale landlords in

the 1180s or thereabouts; while the Lindsays owed their entrance to a grant

made around 1230 by Alexander II’s sister Marjorie.

By the same date, the

Grahams had been rewarded with Simonburn, and the Comyns had added

Tarset to their original patrimony based on  ornton. Mention might also

Northumb. Pleas, nos. 575–9, predate the case prompting Alexander III’s reprimand

of 1279 (above, p. 243). Otherwise see CChR, i, p. 171; Hexham Priory, ii, pp. 108–21,

passim.

Reg. Regum Scott., ii, nos. 100, 172; cf. Hexham Priory, ii, pp. 18, 19, 116–17.

Charters of King David, no. 277.

R. M. Blakely, The Brus Family in England and Scotland, 1100–1295 (Woodbridge, 2005),

pp. 40–1; Stringer, ‘Kingship, conflict and state- making’, p. 105.

G. W. S. Barrow, The Anglo- Norman Era in Scottish History (Oxford, 1980), pp. 102, 174;

CChR, i, p. 446.

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TYNEDALE: POWER, SOCIETY AND IDENTITIES

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be made of Richard Siward, lord of Tibbers (Dumfriesshire), who by 1279

had married into the Comyns and thereby gained Lewisburn (in Falstone),

and of Robert Bruce, father of King Robert I, whose (unspeci ed) Tynedale

estate was referred to in 1296.

 us was the liberty’s political identity

deeply in uenced by the policies and interests of Scottish kingship and

court society.

Royal patronage in the political- cum- religious sphere tells a similar story.

William I made an important statement when he used Haltwhistle church

to link Tynedale to Arbroath Abbey on its foundation in 1178.

 e rich

living of Simonburn, the religious ‘capital’ of Tynedale insofar as it had one

– the rectory was worth 400 marks in 1293 – remained in the crown’s gi ,

and Alexander II’s nominee in 1229 was his chancellor Master Matthew

Scott. Scott’s successor by 1231 was the king’s clerk Master Abel Gullane (d.

1254), who became bishop of St Andrews in the year of his death.

True,

men of this stamp were not the only ones to win bene ces in Tynedale.

 e English curialist and arch- pluralist Bogo Clare held Simonburn by

1261, and he retained it until he died in 1294.

Walter Merton, chancellor

of England (1261–3, 1272–4) and bishop of Rochester (1274–7), was the

incumbent at Haltwhistle by 1262.

But all these appointees, Clare and

Merton included, were foisted on Tynedale to serve Scottish concerns; they

supplied a further reminder, if one were needed, that the liberty was  rmly

within the orbit of Scottish royal policy, patronage and power.

Yet the main point is that thirteenth- century Tynedale’s lay elite com-

prised men who were in essence the Scots king’s friends and could normally

be relied on to represent and promote his interests.  ey might well hold

major o ce in Scotland as justiciars of Scotia, Lothian or Galloway; one,

William Comyn, was earl of Buchan (1212–33). During Alexander III’s

minority, John I Comyn (d. c. 1277) and Robert II Ros sat on the Comyn-

dominated regency council of 1251–5; David Lindsay was a member of the

rival council that supplanted it and acted as the young king’s chamberlain.

Hartshorne, p. lix; HN, II, ii, p. 250; Rot. Scot., i, p. 30.

Haltwhistle had been fully appropriated to Arbroath by 1283 at the latest: CIMisc., ii, no.

1038.

D. E. R. Watt, A Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Graduates to ad 1410 (Oxford, 1977),

pp. 225–7, 489–90, with JUST 1/657, m. 9d; NCH, xv, pp. 175–6, 186.

A. B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to ad 1500 (Oxford,

1957–9), i, p. 423; JUST 1/657, mm. 1, 9d.

CR 1261–4, p. 50. Merton’s predecessor at Haltwhistle in 1254, Ralph Boyce, occurs as

parson of Woolmet (Midlothian) by 1240: HN, II, iii, p. 424; Watt, Dictionary, p. 57.

Clare was presumably presented to Simonburn in 1255, when his father Earl Richard of

Gloucester was sent to Scotland by Henry III to assist in reforming Alexander III’s minor-

ity council. Merton’s acquisition of Haltwhistle (1254 × 1262) is also best explained by the

needs of Scottish diplomacy during Alexander’s minority.

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Admittedly the Ros lords served the English crown as far a eld as Brittany

and Aquitaine. Since their main English lands were more valuable than

their holdings in Tynedale and Scotland, so much was only to be expected.

An analogous example, drawn from the gentry, is provided by Ivo Vipont

of Alston (d. 1239): his estates extended to Galloway and Lauderdale, and

he attended William I’s court; but he road on the coat- tails of his brother

Robert Vipont, lord of Appleby, into King John’s personal service.

In 1262,

when John Comyn’s political star temporarily waned in Scotland, he took

a similar route, and was received into Henry III’s military household. Yet

Comyn soon regained his position in the front rank of Scottish courtiers;

nor, despite Henry’s undertakings, did he ever bene t signi cantly from

English royal favour.

Vipont, for all his attachment to King John, had

taken the Scottish side in 1215–17; the same applies to Robert I Ros, who

as a baron of Magna Carta naturally allied himself with his brother- in- law

Alexander II.

Robert II Ros was reared in Alexander’s court; he retained

close connections with it; and shortly a er his death in about 1274 two of

his progeny were born in Scotland.

Against this backdrop, Tynedale has the appearance of a colonial projec-

tion of the kingdom and community of Scotland; and that indeed was how

it must have looked to many contemporaries.  e density of cross- Border

landholding and Scottish allegiances thus served to emphasise the liberty’s

segregation from adjoining English territory, socially, culturally and politi-

cally; it was no less likely to bene t Tynedale’s institutional status as a dis-

crete local jurisdiction. But the integration of frontierlands into a medieval

ruler’s patronage system also risked fracturing the cohesion of local society

by jeopardising its own needs and opportunities. Tynedale, however, fol-

lowed a di erent story- line, and many were the ways in which the relation-

ship between lordship and ‘community’ reinforced the liberty as a focus of

loyalty and identity.

How far the Scots king’s barons, in person or by proxy, assumed local

leadership roles naturally varied from family to family and from lord to

Stringer, ‘Kingship, conflict and state- making’, p. 106.

Young, Comyns, pp. 81, 138. The annual fee John took from Henry III in 1262 was appar-

ently last paid in 1266: Calendar of the Liberate Rolls (London, 1916–), v, pp. 90, 198, 275.

Henry did not fulfil his promise in 1266 of escheats worth £300 north of the Trent; and

while in 1271 he awarded to John £200 from the issues of the next Cumberland eyre, the

Comyns did not receive any payment until 1296: CPR 1258–66, p. 551; 1266–72, p. 535; E

159/70, m. 81.

Stringer, ‘Kingship, conflict and state- making’, passim.

CIPM, v, no. 396. Robert II, who became lord of Wark- on- Tweed, Sanquhar, Bellister and

Plenmeller in 1226–7, regularly witnessed Alexander II’s charters at earlier dates; he also

attested the king’s acts from 1229, occasionally with other Tynedale landowners.

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TYNEDALE: POWER, SOCIETY AND IDENTITIES

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lord. Yet many maintained their chief residences in Scotland south of the

Forth, and most had Scottish homes in or near the Borders. For example,

the castles controlled by the Comyns at Dalswinton in Nithsdale and,

more especially, at Bedrule in Teviotdale (twenty- three miles from Tarset)

brought Tynedale easily within their range. It has also to be noted that the

death of Earl William Comyn in 1233 removed the ‘Tynedale’ Comyns

from northern Scotland’s power- structure, and that they did not return

to it until John I Comyn inherited the Highland lordships of Badenoch

and Lochaber in 1258. Moreover, the family anchored itself locally by

building a substantial hall- house at Tarset; likewise the Lindsays raised a

stone mansion at Dally.

With the possible exception of Bellister, there

were apparently no new works by Graham and Ros on their manors in the

liberty, whose ‘seats’ – like the castle at Wark itself – seem not to have pro-

gressed beyond earth- and- timber structures.

But by 1279 Henry Graham,

a younger son, was the immediate lord of Simonburn; and though he had

Dumfriesshire interests, it was from Tynedale that he would have secured a

large proportion of his income.

 e Ros family, which in 1226–7 divided

into separate Northumbrian and Yorkshire branches, had mixed relations

with the liberty. In about 1274 the manors of Bellister and Plenmeller

were su ciently dispensable to be allocated by the Wark- on- Tweed line

to a youthful dowager (she lived until 1307).

On the other hand, by 1260

Haltwhistle and Coanwood had been assigned to the Yorkshire knight

Alexander Ros of Youlton, and his ties with Tynedale were strong enough

for his sister Alice to become John I Comyn’s second wife.

Such families, therefore, were not devoid of some sense of ‘Tynedale

identity’; they might indeed have a real commitment to the district and

its a airs as a liberty and a society. Much the same can be said of some of

the bene ced clergy mentioned earlier. Whereas the ‘Lanercost’ chronicler

NCH, xv, pp. 246–7; A. Emery, Greater Medieval Houses of England and Wales, 1300–1500

(Cambridge, 1996–2006), i, pp. 74–5.

D. J. C. King, Castellarium Anglicanum (London, 1983), ii, pp. 327, 334, list a motte

at Bellister and a likely ringwork at Haltwhistle; Emery, Greater Medieval Houses, i, p.

48, notes a possible thirteenth- century stone hall at Bellister. The Graham residence at

Simonburn, referred to in 1293 (NCH, xv, p. 191), cannot be seen today. Wark’s substan-

tial motte now supports a housing estate; for lodgings in Wark used by Alexander III’s

knight Guy Balliol, see Exch. Rolls, i, p. 23.

NCH, xv, p. 194; CDS, ii, p. 203. The focus of the English interests of Henry’s older

brother Nicholas, Alexander III’s tenant- in- chief for Simonburn, had shifted to north

Northumberland, where he was lord by marriage of part of Wooler barony.

JUST 1/657, mm. 4, 9d; PROME, ii, p. 212.

Northumb. Pleas, no. 631. Young, Comyns, p. 72, assumes that John’s second wife was

Alice Lindsay of Lamberton, but the identification with Alice Ros is established in GEC,

xi, p. 94, n. (i).

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excoriated Bogo Clare for his neglect of Simonburn church, Abel Gullane

was no stranger to Tynedale, and must be given some of the credit for

Simonburn’s remodelled nave and choir. Certainly Abel, and Matthew

Scott, earned the accolade of having their names entered in the Liber Vitae

of Durham.

Walter Merton repaired Haltwhistle’s fabric; the poor of the

parish bene ted from a legacy of twenty-  ve marks in his will.

Yet, in the

thirteenth century, it was unmistakably the Comyns who played the most

prominent and sustained role as members of Tynedale society.  eir local

in uence can  rst be measured (as they would have  rst measured it) in

terms of their personal power and wealth.  eir hall at Tarset was the chief

symbol and tool of noble authority in Tynedale, and gave the lie to any

notion that their governorship was inevitably absent or distant.  e manor

of Tarset itself was easily the largest unit of territorial lordship inside the

liberty. Now represented by the parishes of Tarset, Falstone and Kielder

(about 90,000 acres overall), it embraced almost the entire valley and water-

shed of the North Tyne between Hareshaw Common and the Border.  e

Comyns also turned exploitation of its hill pastures into a highly pro cient

and lucrative enterprise. It guaranteed them an annual income of £200 or

more, which was drawn mainly from the shieling grounds extending across

the fells from Carriteth Moor to Bells Moor. To this rich yield was added

a yearly return of some £100 from their other Tynedale manors, including

 ornton where they consolidated their economic position by establishing

a ‘new borough’ (Newbrough).

Yet the Comyns’ relationship with the liberty had deeper dimensions

than these.  eir lordship was far from replacing Scottish royal lordship

save perhaps during Alexander III’s minority (1249–58), when their con-

trolling hand would have represented valuable continuity. Otherwise they

may sometimes have resented the lord/king’s oversight; but their natural

role was that of local leadership within a single hierarchy of authority

and allegiance linking the liberty to the Scottish crown.  ey understood

Chron. Lanercost, p. 158; Hexham Priory, ii, p. 99; NCH, xv, p. 176; G. W. S. Barrow,

‘Scots in the Durham Liber Vitae’, in D. Rollason et al. (eds), The Durham Liber Vitae

and its Context (Woodbridge, 2004), p. 110. The possibility that Simonburn church was

dedicated to St Mungo (Kentigern), noted in NCH, xv, p. 175, is strengthened by the fact

that Abel was a long- serving canon of Glasgow.

CR 1261–4, p. 50; The Early Rolls of Merton College, Oxford, ed. J. R. L. Highfield (Oxford

Historical Society, 1964), p. 80.

The incomes quoted are based on valuations made in 1279–1326: Hartshorne, p.

lvii; Stevenson, Docs, ii, no. 359; CDS, iii, no. 512; NCH, xv, pp. 244–5. See further

A. Rushworth, I. Roberts and R. Carlton, Droving in Northumberland National Park

(Northumberland National Park Authority, 2005), pp. 17–22; M. W. Beresford, New

Towns of the Middle Ages (London, 1967), p. 473.

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Tynedale society: a er all, they were in no sense foreign lords, but men who

had been a key part of its fabric since the 1140s and claimed descent from

Waltheof of Tynedale, a leader of the old Northumbrian nobility.  ey had

thus developed close relations with local families based on ties of service

and reward; and they could, and did, open doors to Scottish royal favour.

 e Comyns, then, were in important respects the power behind the throne

in at least much of north Tynedale, just as they were o en so regarded in

Scotland itself.  ey took their duties seriously, and met many of local soci-

ety’s aspirations and expectations; they regularly complemented the lord/

king’s lordship and governance over that society; and, as power- shapers

and power- brokers, they played a fundamental part in de ning the liberty’s

distinctive political culture and identity.

For all the prominence of the Comyn grandees, however, the stalwarts

of Tynedale society were its gentry families.  ey were almost all local or

locally based, and much of the power exercised in the liberty on a day- to-

day basis lay in their hands.  eir Tynedale lands might be con ned to a

single locality; but some held estates up to   een or twenty miles apart. So it

was, for instance, that the Bellinghams of Bellingham were also established

in Ouston and Parmentley near Whit eld; that the Whit elds of Whit eld

took over property reaching to Hetherington (in Wark) and Cragshield

Hope (in Greystead); and that the Pratts of Haughton were the Whit elds’

near- neighbours in Knarsdale and Slaggyford.

Such men might contrib-

ute much to the liberty’s substance as a local polity, and it is time that their

lives and relationships came into clearer view.

An informed observer from Scotland in about 1280 would have regarded

many of the gentry, even residents, as members of the wider Scottish

community. He would have noted the correspondence in family names

– Colville, Gourlay, Malherbe, Mowbray, Renfrew, Rule, Vaux, Vipont –

between parts of Tynedale and parts of southern Scotland. Had he visited

Whit eld, he would have found the Whit elds not only boasting of their

kinship with the powerful Frasers of Tweeddale, but blatantly exploiting it

to entrench their local in uence; at Alston he would have seen the Viponts

asserting themselves in alliance with William Sinclair of Roslin, a leading

royal familiar and close Comyn associate.

Such an observer might also

have noted that the Anstruthers of Fife held land in Hetherington; that

the Rutherfords of Roxburghshire had interests in Moralee (in Wark);

As is discussed more fully below, pp. 254, 263–4, 269–70.

Hartshorne, pp. xvi, xx; CIPM, ii, no. 825; JUST 1/657, m. 9d.

CDS, ii, no. 290; JUST 1/135, m. 26d.

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that John Shitlington of Shitlington (in Bellingham) was a landowner near

Edinburgh; that the Pratts were associated with Manuel near Linlithgow;

and that Nicholas II Vipont had recently married into Edinburghshire

society and endowed Soutra Hospital with his wife’s dowry in Swanston

beside Sinclair’s Roslin seat.

On such a view, the gentry did not inhabit

a separate world from that of the greater families.  ey were in important

senses part of the same trans- frontier culture and society, and no less set

apart from the English ‘community of the realm’.

Nor could any observer have failed to appreciate the importance to local

gentry society of the authority and power exercised over it by Scottish

noble and royal lordship, or how e ectively that lordship might tie identi-

ties to the liberty itself. For now, even a cursory survey (from our perspec-

tive) con rms that those living directly under Comyn auspices included

the Charltons, Kirklands (of Charlton), Rules (of Stonecro ), Teckets

and Walwicks. By about 1220 Adam Rule and Adam Tecket were clerks

in Comyn service; in 1280 John and Joan Tecket expressed their respect

for the family by declining to sue against it at the Tynedale eyre.

From

time to time, neighbouring landowners such as the Bellinghams, Haltons

and Haughtons, and south Tynedalers such as the  irlwalls and Viponts,

gravitated into the Comyns’ orbit.

 e Swinburne newcomers – John of

Little Swinburne and William of Great Swinburne – were, moreover, very

much their protégés. And, perhaps most strikingly, the value men placed

on membership of the Comyn a nity le such an imprint on local heraldic

culture that the adoption of the Comyn garbs is better attested for south-

west Northumberland than it is for Scotland itself.

At root, however, it was the king of Scots who dominated local politi-

cal society and thus had even greater relevance for the liberty’s ability

to shape and claim people’s loyalties. Not only did his powers of justice

and government touch all who belonged to Tynedale, but ties of tenure

and clientage brought a large group of gentry from many parts of the

Stevenson, Docs, i, no. 33; ii, no. 359; CDS, ii, p. 207; NDD, p. 199; PROME, ii, p. 147; JUST

1/657, m. 9d. Vipont’s charter to Soutra is witnessed by Sinclair as sheriff of Edinburgh:

Charters of the Hospital of Soltre, etc. (Bannatyne Club, 1861), pp. 27–8.

Liber Cartarum Prioratus Sancti Andree in Scotia (Bannatyne Club, 1841), pp. 250–4;

Hartshorne, p. x.

For example, Ranulf Haughton and Ivo Vipont (grandson of King John’s servant) were

supporters with John I Comyn, and the Graham lord of Simonburn, of Earl Walter Comyn

of Menteith in 1244; while Nicholas II Vipont is a witness to charters of John II Comyn

issued at Findo- Gask (Perthshire) in 1278: CDS, i, no. 2672; Charters . . . relating to the

Abbey of Inchaffray, ed. W. A. Lindsay et al. (Scottish History Society, 1908), nos. 108–9.

See further Hartshorne, pp. xi–xii.

B. A. McAndrew, Scotland’s Historic Heraldry (Woodbridge, 2006), p. 45, n. 23; and

below, pp. 258, 263, 267.

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TYNEDALE: POWER, SOCIETY AND IDENTITIES

255

liberty into a common relationship with him. Numerous local families,

including Bellingham, Haughton, Nunwick, Pratt,  irlwall,  orngra on

and Vipont, held their lands in chief of the lord/king. Even small fry such

as Richard Wray of Hetherington owed their obligations directly to him

as their immediate lord; and Richard, moreover, belonged to the class of

king’s drengs, as did the Grindons, Ridleys and some others. Such men now

counted as free tenants, and no systematic attempt was made to discrimi-

nate against them by exacting the bondage works characteristic of ancient

drengages.

Reference is nonetheless made to burdens ranging from mar-

riage, wardship and relief to cornage, toll, watch and ward, army service

and scutage;  nes were also levied for the remarriage of widows.

Yet, in

e ect, none of the lord/king’s vassals, whether the tenure was drengage,

serjeanty or knight service, could ignore the penetrative force of his author-

ity or the importance of the liberty itself for organising people’s a airs and

lives. When it was found at the 1257 Tynedale eyre that Reginald Pratt had

sold to William Swinburne estates in Haughton and elsewhere without

Alexander III’s consent, the baili seized them, and Swinburne had to pay

twenty marks for the king’s goodwill and his charter of con rmation.

the 1279–81 eyre, lands in Bellingham, Haughton, Ouston and  irlwall

were also con scated because of unlicensed alienations; Bartholomew Pratt,

Robert Vipont and Matthew Whit eld were  ned for evading knighthood;

and  ve widows were distrained for the  nancial value of their marriages

because they had married without warrant.

But the lord/king did not simply impose demands and exactions; he

also dispensed favour and protection, so that gentry traditions of service

to the Scottish monarchy remained strong.  e liberty clearly provided

fewer opportunities for signi cant land grants than it had done in the

twel h century, when the Bellinghams, Pratts, Viponts and Whit elds had

all risen to local prominence through royal generosity. Nonetheless it was,

for example, on Alexander III’s nod that Robert and William Bellingham,

Adam Gourlay and Reginald Haughton received gi s of property from

Tynedale’s demesne or a pro table custody.

And the liberty continued

to supply other patronage, notably in o ces, which were o en used to

strengthen the crown–gentry connection in Tynedale.

Men were also

See, for example, Hartshorne, p. lx (concerning a hunting service of feeding the lord/king’s

hounds).

Reg. Regum Scott., ii, no. 143; CDS, ii, no. 557. Richard Wray’s property, worth two marks

yearly, was in wardship in 1279: Hartshorne, p. lvii.

NCS, ZSW/1/12; HN, III, i, pp. 11–12.

Hartshorne, pp. lvii–viii.

Ibid., p. xxvi; JUST 1/657, mm. 2, 4–4d, 9; NCS, ZSW/1/43; HN, III, i, p. 19.

For local office- holding patterns, see below, pp. 270–4.

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