Holford Matthew, Stringer Keith. Border Liberties and Loyalties in North-East England, 1200-1400 (ENG)
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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES
276
us Comyn secured his con rmation of 1262 when he was an exile at
Henry’s court. Similarly, when in 1255 David Lindsay was ousted from
Scotland by the Comyn- led government, he took the precaution of obtain-
ing Henry’s con rmation of Chirdon. Otherwise Ivo Vipont, while in King
John’s service, reinforced his title to Alston, Elrington and Kirkhaugh with
charters from both the Scottish and the English chanceries; Robert I Ros
acquired John’s grant of a market in Haltwhistle in 1207; and Earl William
Comyn, on attending Alexander II’s marriage to Joan of England at York in
1221, gained Henry III’s approval for a temporary market in ornton.
180
Later, in 1277, John Swinburne relied on Edward I for a grant of warren:
the Scots king’s right to issue such licences for Tynedale was normally
secure; but Swinburne also wanted warren for lands outside the liberty, and
appears to have included Haughton and Humshaugh to avoid having to
pay a separate fee to the Scottish chancery.
181
Such occurrences, then, o en
arose from exceptional circumstances. ey did not provide the English
crown with a major channel through which to enforce its authority; nor did
they amount to a serious lack of commitment to the liberty. e Comyns,
for example, seem never to have invoked Henry III’s charter to remove
their lands from the jurisdiction of the liberty court.
is prepares the ground for a closer analysis of the speci c role of the
liberty’s institutions and ‘regal rights’ in mobilising or rea rming common
attitudes and identities; and that role indeed had multiple aspects to it.
O ce- holding not only strengthened the social dimensions of community;
it also allowed many local men to develop a strong awareness of, and attach-
ment to, the liberty and its privileges. e vigilance of senior o cers might
falter, as in the case of the unfortunate John Wily, who in about 1270 was
arrested in Tynedale by the baili of Hexhamshire and summarily killed in
Hexham gaol.
182
More typical, however, was their swi action in alerting
Alexander III when Edward I’s taxers tried to impose the lay subsidy of 1283;
and John Swinburne, in his o cial capacity, was a notable defender of the
lord/king’s jurisdiction.
183
Such men de ned themselves by shared vested
interests in Tynedale’s regality status: in fact, just as the liberty brought
them personal power, so did they embody its authority and traditions. But
nor were they alone, for ordinary tenants might champion the customs and
rights on which both their and the liberty’s independence rested. An early
example concerns those Tynedalers who in 1166 were amerced (and sub-
sequently excused) for refusing to appear before Henry II’s eyre justices in
180
CChR, i, p. 446; Ragg, ‘Mauld’s Meaburn’, pp. 271–2; RLC, i, pp. 77, 462.
181
NDD, p. 243. Cf. Hartshorne, p. xxvi; NDD, p. 203; PQW, p. 604; NER, no. 641a.
182
RH, ii, p. 21.
183
CDS, ii, no. 241; cf. nos. 162, 164.
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TYNEDALE: POWER, SOCIETY AND IDENTITIES
277
Northumberland.
184
In 1232 freeholders in Alston resisted attempts by the
sheri of Cumberland to make them answer for the pro ts of the mine.
185
Likewise Tynedale’s independent standing and identity as a ‘royal liberty’
intensi ed people’s self- de nition as members of a distinct territory and
society. It was not just that allusions were made to ‘the country (patria)
of Tynedale’; that in about 1210 John Pratt conveyed lands in So ley ‘as
freely . . . as any marriage portion can . . . be given or held by any knight in
Tynedale’; or that John’s brother Reginald called himself ‘of Tynedale’ in
a charter he issued in Scotland relating to Muiravonside (Stirlingshire).
186
In 1272 William Swinburne informed Henry III that Staward manor was
‘within the liberty of my lord the king of Scotland in Tynedale’, whereas
Langley manor was ‘within your county of Northumberland’. In 1279
jurors found in a case of drowning that the boat could not be claimed as
a deodand because it had dri ed across the South Tyne to ‘the land of the
king of England in the county of Northumberland’.
187
e North Tyne
below Bellingham also had a well- recognised jurisdictional and symbolic
importance as the Tynedale–Northumberland border.
188
Grindon, where
there were no natural boundaries, was understood to be ‘on the con nes
of the county of Northumberland and the liberty of Tynedale’.
189
And, cer-
tainly, Tynedalers saw a real di erence between themselves and their unen-
franchised neighbours: in a Nunwick deed of around 1240, for instance,
a witness is styled ‘of the county’.
190
us might the liberty provide an
institutional basis for both autonomy and community.
e liberty, it must be stressed, was also more than simply an instrument
of superior authority, signi cant though experience of its governance powers
and mechanisms was for perceptions of collective cooperation and de nition.
Its libertates regales were no less important to common values and loyalties
because they involved personal rights and advantages that directly bene ted
a rich variety of local interests in ways not readily available to other people.
All leading tenants could expect to be assigned lesser jurisdictional rights,
184
Pipe Roll 12 Henry II, p. 76; Pipe Roll 15 Henry II, p. 132. At the 1176 Northumberland
eyre, Richard Comyn was fined £100 for default on summons: Pipe Roll 22 Henry II,
p. 138. Such evidence does not prove that Henry II’s justices actually visited Tynedale,
despite the comments in G. W. S. Barrow, ‘Northern English society in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries’, NH, 4 (1969), p. 27.
185
Memoranda Rolls 16–17 Henry III, ed. R. A. Brown (London, 1991), no. 2936.
186
JUST 1/657, m. 4d; NCS, ZSW/1/26; HN, II, iii, pp. 89–90; W. Fraser, The Melvilles Earls
of Melville and the Leslies Earls of Leven (Edinburgh, 1890), iii, no. 8.
187
SC 1/5/52; CDS, v, no. 31; Hartshorne, p. xlii.
188
For example, in 1260 Peter Lisle was careful to obtain Alexander III’s permission for work
on the mill- dam at Chipchase: NDD, p. 110 (misdated).
189
At any rate in 1307: CPR 1307–13, p. 40.
190
NDD, p. 203.
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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES
278
including gallows, infangthief and the chattels of felons condemned in their
courts, ‘by the charters of the kings of Scots’.
191
Moreover, freedom from
national taxation was a communal asset of no little consequence in an age
when the English crown was periodically exing its scal muscles. Some evi-
dence possibly suggests that local society also enjoyed immunity from military
service outside Tynedale, even for Scottish war- making.
192
And all members
of the liberty shared in its privileges according to their individual needs and
priorities. us they might well value, and capitalise on, their local independ-
ence from English royal justice. When in 1271 Adam Boltby appealed to the
English crown against William Swinburne over contested common land
on the county- liberty boundary, there was no question of William’s having
to submit to normal judicial process and the verdict of an unsympathetic
neighbourhood. Rather, he was able to insist (with Alexander III’s backing)
on a perambulation by a mixed jury of liberty and county men.
193
An order
to Edward I’s sheri of Cumberland for distraint on the lands of Elizabeth
Vipont, in respect of money she owed to an in uential creditor, could not be
enforced since Alston ‘was not in Cumberland but in the liberty of Tynedale’.
Conversely the liberty’s authority enabled the Comyns to distrain with impu-
nity the goods of Newcastle merchants for debts owed by fellow traders.
194
John I Comyn also presumed to levy tolls at Henshaw and Newbrough on the
burgesses of Corbridge and Newcastle, and no action could be taken against
him because ‘this o ence was committed outside the county . . . in the king
of Scotland’s liberty’.
195
Similarly the Whit elds, in a protracted local dispute
with Roger rector of Whit eld, relied on the liberty not only to withhold
secular remedies from their adversary, but to shield them from arrest and
imprisonment when signi cations of excommunication were sent to Henry
III and Edward I by successive bishops of Durham.
196
Tynedalers might also
enjoy through the liberty an e ective immunity from being tried in the English
royal courts for wrongs done beyond its bounds. In 1275, for example, Robert
Whit eld and two accomplices were sued in Common Pleas by Adam Boltby
for trespass in Langley, but they could not be brought to account because ‘they
abide in Tynedale . . . where the king of England’s writ does not run’.
197
191
JUST 1/657, m. 5.
192
In 1288 land in Hetherington was held by the service of one archer in wartime, ‘and this
within Tynedale’: Stevenson, Docs, i, no. 33.
193
Royal Letters, ii, no. 681.
194
F. W. Ragg, ‘Early Lowther and de Louther’, TCWAAS, new ser., 16 (1916), p. 119; NAR,
pp. 296–7; KB 27/55, m. 10.
195
H. H. E. Craster, ‘An unpublished Northumbrian Hundred Roll’, AA, 3rd ser., 3 (1907),
p. 189; NAR, pp. 75–6; JUST 1/653, m. 6.
196
CDS, ii, no. 290; Acta 1241–83, nos. 153, 228–30.
197
Northumb. PDBR, no. 257.
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Yet again, the relevance of Tynedale’s ‘regal jurisdiction’ to its tenants,
and to their concerns and culture, is encapsulated in the Viponts’ campaign
to bring under their control the inhabitants and upland wastes of Ousby,
Gamblesby and Alston Moor.
198
It centred on removing them from the
county jurisdiction of Cumberland, and to that end the Viponts and their
agents armed themselves with the liberty’s rule- enforcing powers. In 1234 it
was said that four men of Ousby had been sent to the liberty gaol for resist-
ing occupation of the hamlet’s common grazings. Gamblesby, also on the
edge of the Pennines below Alston, gured at the 1278–9 Cumberland eyre,
where Robert Vipont ‘of Tynedale’ was accused of invading its pastures and
interning its baili at Wark. On Alston Moor the miners were ejected from
the commons, and the mine itself was subtracted from Cumberland: such is
the story revealed by records of 1224, 1245 and 1278–9; and nowhere else
did Vipont aggrandisement make more systematic and successful use of
the liberty’s disciplinary tools. Evidently local ambitions always came rst;
but there was nevertheless an identity of interests between the Viponts and
the liberty, especially vis- à- vis the Alston miners, whose ‘freedoms’ repre-
sented an a ront to the authority of both. e mining community knew the
score well. It told how the Viponts had suppressed its court at Ameshaugh
by destroying the gallows and diverting pleas to their own court; how the
coroners of Tynedale had arrived to enforce the liberty’s judicial rights; and
how a miner had been gaoled at Wark for refusing to recognise Alexander
III as his liege lord. We also learn that when Alston was formally in Edward
I’s hands (1278–9), Robert Vipont depended on the liberty to prevent the
king’s ministers from o ciating and to mount fresh attacks on the miners’
customs. Furthermore, when Nicholas II Vipont was authorised to hold
Alston manor, but not the mine, by Edward’s grant of 1282, he revoked
their rights in concert with Tynedale’s o cers, who entered the mine’s pre-
cincts to appropriate felons’ chattels, make arrests and dispatch a thief for
execution at Wark. In such ways, the liberty reinforced ideas of common
interests and allegiances because its monopolies were basic to its own needs
and to those of its tenants alike.
But in no arena were solidarities with the liberty expressed and strength-
ened more completely than through collective participation in a single
‘juridical community’. A number of tenants were naturally familiar with
English royal justice through litigation unconnected with Tynedale; some
became all too well acquainted with its ‘sti ing bureaucracy’ and ‘hazardous
198
For Ousby and Gamblesby, see CRR, xv, nos. 960, 1259; CDS, ii, no. 133. The main
sources used for Alston Moor are RLC, ii, p. 8; CRR, xvii, no. 1721E; CDS, ii, nos. 146–7,
224; NAR, p. 266; JUST 1/143/1; 1/135, mm. 25, 26–26d; Stevenson, Docs, i, no. 299.
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280
and expensive’ procedures.
199
In 1278 William Swinburne had to go to the
expense of retaining for life two Common Pleas serjeants, William Kelloe
and John Lisle, who received annuities of £1 apiece from his manor of
Haughton; in 1285 John Swinburne secured legal counsel at Westminster
on similar terms.
200
But the critical issue is whether or not litigants took
liberty suits to the English crown’s courts; and a search of their records
up to Alexander III’s death leaves no doubt that Tynedale was essentially
a discrete judicial zone.
201
Instances to the contrary are rare and concern
atypical cases. at three examples are advowson pleas probably shows that
the liberty had no jurisdiction in such suits, thus forcing plainti s to sue by
writ out of the English chancery.
202
When, in the 1270s, Beatrice Whit eld
went to the Northumberland county court to appeal omas Whitwell of
Newcastle of sending men to burgle her house in Whit eld, it was presum-
ably because she believed that no alternative route to justice existed.
203
Nor,
unlike Prior Henry of Hexham, was Beatrice punished by Alexander III
for contempt of his court, which suggests that it was legitimate to sue in
another jurisdiction as long as the defendants were not under the liberty’s
authority. Unsurprisingly the hapless Roger rector of Whit eld eventually
petitioned Edward I in council. In 1286 he complained to the king that
Andrew and Simon Fraser had engineered his abduction into Scotland; that
their kinsfolk, Beatrice and Robert Whit eld, had appropriated the rev-
enues of Whit eld church; and that he had received no redress in Tynedale
because William Fraser (brother of Andrew and Simon) was chancellor of
199
A. H. Hershey, ‘Justice and bureaucracy: the English royal writ and “1258”’, EHR, 113
(1998), pp. 829, 839.
200
‘Private indentures for life service in peace and war, 1278–1476’, ed. M. Jones and S.
Walker, in Camden Miscellany, xxxii (Camden Fifth Series, 1994), pp. 35–6; Year Books
of Edward II, xii, ed. W. C. Bolland (Selden Society, 1916), p. 8. The editors of the 1278
indentures, and J. M. W. Bean, From Lord to Patron (Manchester, 1989), pp. 42–3, did
not appreciate that these were retainers of attorneys: cf. Earliest English Law Reports, ii,
pp. lxv–ix, lxxvii–lxxxi. Kelloe’s clients in the English royal courts included Alexander
III, William II Tyndale and Bogo Clare: CDS, ii, no. 133; Northumb. PDBR, no. 210;
M. S. Giuseppi, ‘The wardrobe and household accounts of Bogo de Clare, 1284–6’,
Archaeologia, 70 (1920), p. 34.
201
All relevant printed sources have been consulted, as well as unpublished King’s Bench
rolls, and the main unpublished plea rolls for the Border counties listed in D. Crook,
Records of the General Eyre (London, 1982).
202
Patent Rolls, 1225–1232 (London, 1903), p. 525 (Kirkhaugh, 1232); CDS, i, no. 1509
(Haltwhistle, 1240); Northumb. PDBR, no. 159 (Haltwhistle, 1274). Even in the Welsh
March, advowson disputes were successfully claimed for the crown in the thirteenth
century: Davies, Lordship and Society, pp. 253–4.
203
NAR, p. 365. In 1276 John I Comyn obtained an oyer- and- terminer commission from
Edward I to investigate his complaints against Whitwell; but this case apparently involved
victuals from Comyn’s Tynedale manors already freighted onto a ship at Newcastle: CPR
1272–81, p. 178.
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Scotland.
204
But this is the only known instance of a plainti from the body
of the liberty resorting to the English crown on default of justice.
Otherwise demand for English royal justice in Tynedale suits remained
muted at best: local society used the legal services on its doorstep; there
was in practice no competing or rival justice system to undercut the liberty
court’s prestige and its integrating role. No doubt simple pragmatism
was important. Liberty justice was, it seems, not only more accessible
but swi er and cheaper than its English royal counterpart. Plainti s had
also to recognise the liberty’s power over them: a er all, in 1286 Edward
I referred back to Alexander III the rector of Whit eld’s petition.
205
But,
more positively, the liberty court may be regarded as a vital focus for the
people of Tynedale, meeting through its own rights of royal justice virtually
all their legal needs and expectations and acting as their preferred judicial
forum – not least because it was there that local issues could be dealt with
free from the English crown’s scrutiny, and in ways more attuned to local
values and customs. Here, as elsewhere, the liberty and its society de ned
and reinforced one another. ey formed, or might be seen as, a self- reliant
and distinct local polity and community.
e validity of such statements is strengthened by what can be learned from
the 1279–81 eyre roll. is crucial source captures the governmental and
socio- political relevance of ‘the royal liberty of Tynedale’ in many dimen-
sions.
206
From Alexander III’s viewpoint, the eyre’s main purpose was to
uphold his local hegemony and foster a social order that identi ed itself
by obedience to his authority. Indeed, its power in these respects is amply
con rmed by the wide range of business investigated under its articles – the
much- expanded new articles of 1278 drawn up for Edward I to enforce his
rights and peace elsewhere in the kingdom. But the eyre was also a commu-
nal court where local society engaged collectively in its governance. And it
is by approaching the eyre roll from this perspective that we get the fullest
measure of the liberty’s ability to coordinate itself as a community, and to
shape a polity de ned by its own socio- legal consciousness and culture,
Westminster maxims notwithstanding.
e eyre began on 18 November 1279; the justices sat again on three
occasions in 1280 and completed their duties in January 1281.
207
It
204
CDS, ii, no. 290.
205
Ibid.
206
Hartshorne’s edition of JUST 1/649 can be broken down as follows: civil pleas, pp.
ix–xxxi, xxxii–viii, xl–i; attorneys, pp. xxxi–ii; kalendar, pp. xxxviii–xl; crown pleas, pp.
xli–lxi; fines and amercements, pp. lxi–viii. The commentary in E. Charlton, Memorials
of North Tyndale, 2nd edn (Newcastle, 1871), pp. 15–24, is rudimentary.
207
The dating of the eyre in Crook, General Eyre, p. 147, is incorrect.
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demanded large- scale participation; and, what is more, its protocols and
rituals provided and prescribed myriad opportunities for community-
based cooperation and regulation. Only seventeen tenants missed the rst
day, and six defaulters eventually turned up. Smallholders such as omas
Templeman of Alston stayed away throughout, but merely two important
tenants did so: Alexander Ros of Haltwhistle and (needless to say) the abbot
of Rievaulx.
208
irty- six men made up the presenting juries for Haltwhistle,
Newbrough and the body of the liberty; twelve persons who had been bail-
i s or coroners since the 1269 eyre came to assist the justices. We know the
names of a further ninety or so who appeared for civil pleas and of another
eighty or so who participated at crown pleas. All told, therefore, a minimum
of some 220 people attended; many others who remain nameless would
have been present as recognitors, trial jurors or in other capacities. It was
indeed a major event, which ‘brought together all the constituent parts of
local society’.
209
Nineteen Tynedale tenants employed attorneys. Robert Lisle and the
prior of Hexham appointed Robert Buteland of Capheaton, a semi-
professional pleader from outside the liberty. Normally, though, attorneys
were found locally among relatives, neighbours or tenants, as when John II
Comyn empowered John Swinburne to conduct his business for the eyre’s
duration.
210
e evidence for personal pledging points to a reinforcement
of broader ties of social interdependence criss- crossing the liberty.
211
In
pleas against the prior of Hexham, Robert Vipont went surety for Hugh
Grindon, William Bellingham for Richard orngra on, Alan Vipont
for Bellingham, and Bellingham for Vipont. In other examples, Gilbert
Belles, now Bells Moor above Kielder, was surety for omas irlwall;
while Walter Beufrere, a peasant who sought to prove free status, found as
pledges Simon Palmer of Haughton and Matthew Whit eld. As for local
tenurial relationships, their relevance was underlined by the regularity with
which landlords were called on to ful l their duties of warranty, including
208
Templeman had interests in Farlam (Gilsland) and Hilton near Appleby: Castle Howard,
A1/28, 136; CRO (Carlisle), D/Wyb/2/35, 39. Ros, however, was a knight of the grand
assize at the 1293 eyre: JUST 1/657, m. 4d.
209
Quoting J. R. Maddicott, ‘The county community and the making of public opinion in
fourteenth- century England’, TRHS, 5th ser., 28 (1978), p. 30, where it is suggested that
attendance at thirteenth- century shire courts averaged about 150.
210
Lisle and Comyn came in person at the start of the eyre to make their appointments (cf.
NCS, ZSW/1/27; HN, III, i, p. 18 [misdated]), and fifteen other principals apparently did
so. Nor did these tenants necessarily take no further part in the proceedings: two, for
example, were presenting jurors. On Buteland, see especially Northumb. Pleas, nos. 705,
708, 721, 731.
211
The only important rider is that one prominent pledge, John Tecket (sometime bailiff),
was possibly paid for his services as a ‘professional’ bondsman.
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on occasion the obligation to give compensation for land lost in pleading.
John Comyn was thereby reminded of his lordly duties by Adam Charlton;
Hugh Nunwick by William Swinburne; Bartholomew Pratt by John Halton;
Halton by omas irlwall; and so we could continue. At another level,
communal cooperation in local peacekeeping was writ large in the policing
tasks of the liberty’s townships – though (as in any eyre) court orders might
be necessary to remind them of their onerous responsibilities in society’s
service.
212
e sheer volume and range of the eyre’s legal work attest to the many
needs vital to community cohesion that Tynedale’s justice system served.
Likewise the list of the court’s clients shows that its multiple forms of redress
exercised a broad appeal throughout the liberty. On the civil pleas side, the
court was kept busy by the possessory assizes, with twenty- ve actions of
mort d’ancestor and novel disseisin accounting for about one- third of the
caseload. Less frequent pleas included trespass, debt, dower, entry and quod
permittat (an action for the recovery of common rights). Most of the civil
litigation related to north Tynedale; but this pattern is largely explained by
the sizeable number of northern suits speci c to the combative economic
policies of William Bellingham and William Swinburne, notably as regards
pasture rights in Hesleyside, Nunwick and Haughton. Otherwise use of the
court was evenly spread among plainti s from both parts of the liberty.
As a court of record, it also played an important role in ordinary property
conveyances and provided for the enrolment of recognisances of debt.
As for crown pleas, the eyre roll’s 150 or so crime- related entries name
about 180 felons or accused. Larceny, robbery, housebreaking and burglary
generated two- thirds of the criminal business; the thirty cases of homicide
or murder account for one- h of it. Eighty- two persons who had ed were
found guilty and ordered to be exacted and outlawed, sixty- one for the
and twenty- one for homicide; seventy accused, including sixteen reputed
killers, were present for trial, and all save six were acquitted – a phenom-
enon whose signi cance will be clari ed later. For now these bald gures,
though restricted to criminal activity people chose to report, scarcely
suggest that (relative to contemporary norms) the liberty had experienced
a major crime wave since the previous eyre in 1269;
213
but they do testify to
212
Thirty- nine townships were put in mercy, mainly for failure to arrest criminals. Twelve
defaulted once in raising the hue and cry, and three were disciplined twice on this score;
none was penalised for harbouring felons. Vills such as Alston, Bellingham, Newbrough,
Simonburn and Whitfield collected more orders than others; but no clear geographical
pattern emerges.
213
Cf. H. Summerson, ‘Peacekeepers and lawbreakers in medieval Northumberland, c.
1200–c. 1500’, in M. Prestwich (ed.), Liberties and Identities in the Medieval British Isles
(Woodbridge, 2008), p. 60.
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the eyre’s importance to local society as a means of controlling wrongdo-
ing according to its needs. In general north Tynedale seems to have been
more prone to misbehaviour than south Tynedale. Yet even in the remotest
hamlets or farmsteads, transgressions did not escape scrutiny; and the eyre
was used to address misconduct that threatened the common good of the
liberty as a whole.
It is more problematic to establish the quality of justice and its precise value
to communal well- being and cohesion. But the jurors appear to have been
men of ‘good character’; nor were they necessarily in awe of in uential local
landowners.
214
Civil remedies were readily accessible to the liberty’s poorer
residents – as when Alice Harelaw, a widow, recovered part of one messuage
and een acres of arable in Simonburn; Roger son of Walter, a minor,
successfully claimed against his uncles nine and a half acres in Shitlington;
and Alice Carraw regained her dower in Grindon on her plea that her late
husband had unlawfully alienated it. Nor as a rule were defendants unduly
favoured, so that all who went to the expense of suing out writs had reason-
able prospects of getting their money’s worth. Even the lord of Langley could
rely on the court’s help to recover fugitive villeins, some of whom were under
Comyn protection. Moreover, civil litigation was rarely stalled by postpone-
ments of the sort characteristic of the English general eyre; the only excep-
tion, in fact, was one case referred to Alexander III and his council.
Royal justice in Tynedale was also a major resource for the community
in broader senses. It was not enforced in a void; rather, its services were
used to supplement and reinforce customary local modes of arbitration and
social regulation. is is well seen in the eyre’s mediational function in civil
disputes, a good half of which did not go to trial: indeed, six of the eleven
suits involving William Swinburne were agreed and the rest dropped. Non-
prosecution may indicate out- of- court accommodations, and that the mere
threat of legal action in the eyre was su cient to defuse local quarrels. As
regards suits resolved before the court, some were undoubtedly collusive
or non- contentious; but others fall into a di erent class and illustrate the
court’s active peacemaking role. For example, it facilitated a settlement
of several actions and cross- actions between William Bellingham and the
abbot of Jedburgh over their respective rights in Bellingham, Ealingham
and Hesleyside. It was also with the court’s assistance that mutually
214
There was no involvement in reported anti- social activity by known jurors; on only four
occasions were juries put in mercy for concealing or not presenting; none was cited for
false presentment; and only two jurors failed to serve. In civil actions, one party chal-
lenged a jury’s verdict by process of attaint, but he did not prosecute the case; jurors also
checked the power of gentry such as William Bellingham and John Halton by sometimes
finding against them in favour of smallholders.
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TYNEDALE: POWER, SOCIETY AND IDENTITIES
285
acceptable terms were negotiated between John II Comyn and his brother
over the manor of ornton; that Bartholomew Pratt released to William
Swinburne his claim to a rent of £10 in Haughton for a consideration of
forty marks; that Eda Renfrew surrendered to Adam Bellingham her rights
to land in Bellingham and Charlton for £6; and that Nicholas Whit eld
quitclaimed to Matthew Whit eld property in Whit eld for ten marks.
215
ese and other compromised suits were not, by and large, untypical
of practices elsewhere; nor was the court’s custom of underwriting such
agreements by authorising the liberty’s baili to distrain for payments
arising from them in the event of default. But they nevertheless epitomise
the advantages and attractions of the liberty court; and it becomes easier
to understand why people had so little inclination or need to turn to the
English crown for remedies. Besides convenience and e ciency, the key-
notes were reconciliation and (it seems) even- handed justice. A balance was
thus struck between formal and informal legal principle and process, and it
served to underscore the court’s signi cance as a forum where local needs
could be met and community values upheld.
e same was true of criminal justice. For here the eyre roll reveals the
court’s usefulness whenever social equilibrium needed to be stabilised by
the common law’s quota of penalties, though not necessarily according to
the full force of that law. Crimes by strangers, who were immune to local
communal sanctions, were routinely reported to the eyre; and Tynedale
was certainly no secure refuge for villainous outsiders. Much concern was
expressed about ‘unknown evildoers’; some named suspects were aliens from
Redesdale, Galloway, Clydesdale and other areas, including Ireland. Nor
does it surprise that neighbourhoods on the Newcastle–Carlisle road such as
Newbrough, Henshaw, Melkridge and Haltwhistle were especially anxious
about the criminal proclivities of transients. Such persons were rarely
caught; but known culprits who absconded were automatically outlawed.
e limitations of ‘popular’ justice in upholding collective norms of social
conduct, and the eyre’s value as an enforcing agency, are also re ected in
the reported felonies attributed to Tynedalers, perhaps two- thirds of the
total. Again, such data should not lead us to suppose that the liberty was
a land of serious unrest; still less was a gang culture institutionalised in or
condoned by local society. A fair number of suspects were accused of acting
with accomplices, but normally in twos or threes – sometimes members
of the same family involved in petty crime. e most notable exception
concerns the prosecution of sixteen persons outlawed in Hexhamshire for
215
For two private deeds recording settlements in eyre, but for which the roll has no match-
ing entries, see NCS, ZSW/1/27, 32; HN, III, i, pp. 15, 18.
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