Holford Matthew, Stringer Keith. Border Liberties and Loyalties in North-East England, 1200-1400 (ENG)
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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES
286
killing men of the archbishop of York in his vill of Ninebanks: their names
denote an extended social network reaching from Kirkhaugh to Chirdon;
but few, if any, seem to have been hardened criminals.
When local self- regulation failed, however, royal justice could be used
by the community against its members in various ways. It did not hesitate
to arraign freeholders and simple villagers; it cited William II Tyndale for
arson – though, in crown pleas, he was the only gentleman of note whose
actions had caused disquiet. It could confront those who appeared to be
preying on other communities; and, in particular, the Ninebanks case sug-
gests a consensus that Tynedale’s judicial autonomy was not to be defended
at the cost of good order in the region. But common law was an unforgiv-
ing code which, if rigorously interpreted, might well cut across community
customs, values and sentiments. is helps to explain the low conviction
rate – all but one of the Ninebanks sixteen, for example, were acquitted.
Clearly what local leaders appreciated was the discretion they were allowed
to exercise according to their perceptions of criminality and ‘good neigh-
bourhood’. ey could, and did, invoke capital punishment if a malefactor
was felt to be beyond the pale: a er all, there had been twelve executions in
Tynedale since 1269.
216
Yet the law was used selectively. Flight was a litmus
test of guilt, and outlawry – virtually standard in such cases – indicates the
community’s concern and ability to purge itself of ‘ungovernable’ neigh-
bours, including those o ending outside the liberty.
217
Otherwise, though,
the eyre was employed to encourage future good conduct. e acquitted had
o en been accused of simple larceny and might be rehabilitated; they were
thus allowed to remain in the community by its representatives, the trial
jurors, whose investigation of their behaviour would in itself have delivered
a salutary warning. In such ways, recourse to the eyre enabled local society
both to maintain its standards and to retain its cohesion. Of course, a local
legal culture accommodating redeemable o enders or ‘acceptable misbe-
haviour’ was not unusual for the times.
218
Nonetheless the seventy accused
who came for trial is a remarkably high gure, not least in relation to the
216
Five felons were hanged in Wark gaol deliveries; two killers and five thieves were
beheaded by the hue and cry.
217
Significantly, while the 1279 Northumberland eyre rolls contain complaints about the
harbouring of felons in liberties, no such references are made to Tynedale. Richard Smith
of Simonburn killed David Graham in Corbridge (NAR, p. 339); but the Tynedale roll
shows that Smith, Graham’s nephew, was banished from the liberty. One of the Ninebanks
accused, and three others indicted for homicide in Hexhamshire or the county, were also
outlawed.
218
Recent studies include A. Musson, ‘Twelve good men and true? The character of early
fourteenth- century juries’, Law and History Review, 15 (1997), pp. 115–44; Summerson,
‘Peacekeepers’, pp. 62–6.
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TYNEDALE: POWER, SOCIETY AND IDENTITIES
287
1279 Northumberland eyre. Part of the explanation for this may be that
the community- based system of attachment and bail was more e cient in
the liberty. Yet, in broader terms, it may serve to con rm that mercy was a
well- recognised part of the currency of liberty society and one of its strong
bonds.
219
In sum, the eyre was an occasional visitation and only one part of
Tynedale’s legal system; but here was a jurisdiction whose ‘regal rights’ of
justice and governance had a discernible relevance for mobilising a ‘com-
munity of the liberty’. us its prerogatives did not merely make local society
more aware of its obligations and impose a sense of collectivity on it. ey
enabled it to settle its a airs and problems through a court where its common
interests and rights were articulated and heeded. Likewise they allowed
it to set its own socio- cultural agenda according to shared notions of law
and good rule; they entitled it to decide between social inclusion and social
exclusion, and thereby to de ne its membership by controlling access to the
liberty and its privileges. According to English royal paradigms, any manipu-
lation of judicial process to satisfy community needs created a deplorable
‘justice gap’; and communal judgements came under special threat from the
king’s justice. Indeed, when Edward I’s eyre justices sat in Tynedale in 1293,
another thirteen men were implicated in the Ninebanks a ray, and seven
were sent to the gallows.
220
Yet from a Scottish perspective, how Tynedale
society interpreted its ‘liberties’ was sanctioned by Alexander III’s less intru-
sive style of rulership, one in which ‘love’ (compromise) complemented ‘law’;
and omas Randolph, the justice who presided in 1279–81, was himself ‘a
man of great humanity and wisdom’.
221
e lord/king’s judicial lordship
represented just one aspect of his superiority, and of a political culture in
Tynedale more typical of lowland Scotland than of England. But because it
was responsive to local needs and customs, it had deep meanings for the lib-
erty’s independence and its unity. us it was that loyalties and solidarities
were shaped and fostered in the context of communal autonomy and identi-
cation. And, above all, we are now better placed to appreciate how ‘the royal
liberty of Tynedale’ was able to project such an image of itself as a local polity
that, in contemporary Northumbrian circles, it could be assumed to belong
to a separate country and realm, the regnum Scotie.
222
219
At the Northumberland eyre only half as many accused felons submitted to justice; the
acquittal rate (66 per cent) was also much lower than that for Tynedale (91 per cent):
NAR, pp. 312ff.
220
Also, one acquitted in 1279 was retried and hanged: JUST 1/657, m. 8.
221
Above, p. 243; Walter Bower, Scotichronicon, ed. D. E. R. Watt et al. (Aberdeen, 1987–98),
v, p. 374.
222
Above, p. 245.
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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES
288
Yet some ve years a er the eyre’s close, Scottish control over Tynedale was
e ectively extinguished. When Alexander III died without surviving chil-
dren in 1286, the liberty was taken into Edward I’s hands; he likewise deter-
mined its descent when, as superior lord of Scotland, he adjudicated in the
Great Cause in John Balliol’s favour in 1292. King John was given seisin of
Tynedale in December 1293; but he would be its lord in name alone: in June
1294 he assigned to Bishop Anthony Bek land there worth £50 yearly and
the advowson of Simonburn; in July 1295 he granted to Bek and the church
of Durham the entire liberty in perpetuity.
223
en, on the outbreak of war
in 1296, Tynedale was forfeited to Edward I, whose o cers also seized all the
mesne tenancies of those in Scottish allegiance. Tynedale, in a word, proved
to be no less vulnerable to dynastic accident and political calamity than
other secular jurisdictions were. But rarely can ‘events’ have impacted more
spectacularly on a medieval liberty and community; and, furthermore, the
years 1286–96 were merely a prelude to an era of even greater change.
Most obviously, this transitional decade saw an altogether unprecedented
extension of English royal power into Tynedale. e liberty was continu-
ously in Edward I’s custody for a full seven years from 1286. Times had pat-
ently changed when in 1293 the hearing of liberty suits could be adjourned
from Wark to Westminster Hall, and (it might be added) when in 1289
venison was sent from Wark Park to Westminster Palace.
224
Even more of
a new world had begun when a speci cally English o cialdom arrived to
direct the liberty’s a airs. e royal keepers in 1286–93 were successively
omas Normanville, escheator north of the Trent, and Bishop Bek; their
deputies included Robert Pistor, king’s serjeant, and Walter Rothbury,
constable of Norham. e eyre of spring 1293 was held in Edward I’s name
under the auspices of Walter Cambo and Guichard Charon, former sheri s
of Northumberland.
225
In such ways, the year 1286 did indeed mark the end
of an epoch.
True, Tynedale retained its distinctive rights and structures of local gov-
ernance. Edward I himself, far from seeking to suppress the liberty, showed
his respect for its privileges when he insisted in January 1293 that ‘the
liberty should remain in the same state as before’.
226
Nonetheless, even prior
to war with Scotland, liberty–community interactions did enter a di erent
phase, so that by 1296 Tynedale was less of a cement for its political society.
223
Balliol was repaying Bek for his support during the Great Cause: Fraser, Bek, p. 90.
224
JUST 1/657, mm. 2, 4; Stevenson, Docs, i, no. 119.
225
JUST 1/657, mm. 1, 7. On Pistor, formerly Edward I’s pantler, see also CIMisc., i, no. 1077;
CPR 1281–92, pp. 346, 376. Charon was an assize justice in Tynedale in 1286; Cambo and
Rothbury served as such in 1291: C 66/105, m. 8d; NDD, p. 111.
226
NER, no. 287.
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289
e several changes of lordship underscored that the old certainties under-
pinning local solidarities were gone for good. ose who held Scottish lands
had to deal with the increasingly vexed questions posed by the hitherto
unfamiliar problem of dual allegiances. All the liberty’s tenants came under
new lines of authority not necessarily sensitive to local interests; some,
however, might nd that a change of regime o ered alternative opportu-
nities for advancement. ese considerations, and others besides, le a
deep imprint on people’s lives and behaviour. At the 1293 eyre, a litigant
dutifully pleaded that the evidence of Alexander III’s charters was inadmis-
sible because the king of Scots no longer had any authority in Tynedale,
which was ‘within the metes and bounds of the kingdom of England’ and
‘of the regality of its king’.
227
Conversely, suspected felons were less likely
to submit to the law, and with good reason, for all who did so in 1293 were
more likely to be convicted and hanged – clear con rmation that this eyre
was conducted under Westminster rules.
228
Around the same time, Richard
son of Richard Wray protested that the baili of Tynedale was preventing
him from entering his inheritance in Hetherington; the Ridleys accused the
baili of depriving them of property in Melkridge; and Nicholas II Vipont
was pursued over his title to Alston by the Cumberland eyre justices.
229
Other tenants retreated to concentrate more exclusively on their Scottish
concerns, as when Henry Graham leased to Bogo Clare all his lands in
Simonburn and then, in about 1291, settled the manor on his sister Idonea
in marriage with John Swinburne’s son Adam.
230
e Comyns likewise, and
even more understandably, gave increasing paramountcy to their political
and governmental responsibilities in Scotland.
231
But nor did they neglect to
pro t from Edwardian patronage, and the marriage of John II Comyn’s son
and heir to Edward I’s cousin, Joan Valence, would have important implica-
tions for the nature of fourteenth- century Tynedale as a ‘community’.
232
Among the local gentry, identi cations with the liberty did retain some
strength. William Swinburne served as a gaol delivery justice; and John
Swinburne not only consolidated his family’s local standing through the
Graham marriage, but acted as Balliol’s baili in 1294.
233
Nevertheless John
227
JUST 1/657, m. 4d.
228
Space cannot be spared here for a full analysis of the 1293 eyre roll since the circumstances
were untypical of thirteenth- century Tynedale’s experiences.
229
Stevenson, Docs, i, no. 257; CCR 1288–96, p. 239; Ragg, ‘Mauld’s Meaburn’, pp. 285–6.
230
NCH, xv, p. 191.
231
They secured acquittances from attending the 1293 eyre: CCR 1288–96, p. 313.
232
The couple had taken possession of Henshaw, Thornton and Walwick by April 1293: Cat.
Ancient Deeds, iii, A.4766; cf. JUST 1/657, mm. 3d, 5d. See further below, Chapter 7, pp.
307–8.
233
C 66/105, m. 11d; JUST 1/657, m. 12; CPR 1327–30, p. 427.
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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES
290
also promoted his career through numerous appointments to royal com-
missions in the county of Northumberland, and by securing his election
as its MP in 1294. Similarly William Halton was returned as a knight of
the shire to the Parliament of 1295; William II Tyndale became a county
coroner.
234
Even the Bellinghams were now developing landed interests
in Northumberland villages as far from Tynedale as Abberwick, Akeld
and Whittingham.
235
ese men, like others, were repositioning them-
selves in ways that at once loosened their local ties and diluted the liberty’s
traditional cohesion and culture.
But the signi cance of the years 1286–96 for our understanding of
power, society and identities in thirteenth- century Tynedale scarcely ends
here. By May 1296 thirty Northumbrian properties had been con scated
by the English crown as war- forfeits. In due course, the issues of all but
six of these properties were accounted for, and those in Tynedale (exclud-
ing Wark itself) supplied some two- thirds of the total. e Comyns, along
with Anstruther, Graham, Lindsay, Rutherford and Siward, had naturally
followed Scottish allegiance. Even the so- called ‘pure Englishman’ Robert
IV Ros, of Wark- on- Tweed and Bellister, ‘feloniously and treacherously
[adhered] to the party of the Scots’. More striking still, in the same camp
are found local men such as William Bellingham, omas Moralee, John
Shitlington and Adam Swinburne.
236
It has to be acknowledged that in 1296
most Tynedale landowners remained in Edward I’s obedience, or at least
escaped o cial displeasure. But the list of those who did not encapsulates
the contemporary limitations of the English ‘state’ in directing identities
and allegiances in its northern marchlands; it likewise provides a stark
insight into the fate of a community denied clear pathways of lordship,
service and loyalty. Yet, in the last analysis, it also supplies an index of the
authority that the kings of Scots had once aspired to and asserted in ‘the
royal liberty of Tynedale’. And so it was that, despite a lengthy Scottish
interregnum and English power, old loyalties and values died hard, even
within local gentry society.
234
CIMisc., i, nos. 2401, 2403.
235
CIPM, iii, nos. 63, 562; NCH, xi, p. 230; NCS, ZMI/B1/II/3.
236
Stevenson, Docs, ii, nos. 358–9; CIMisc., i, no. 1764; iii, no. 892; CCR 1354–8, p. 177;
PROME, ii, p. 361; CDS, ii, no. 1481. Of the local men, only Shitlington held property in
Scotland. John Pratt’s lands in Knarsdale were also seized because he was in the wardship
of the Scottish knight John Wishart. Even John Swinburne was forfeited in 1296, his past
record being sufficient to make his loyalty suspect – though Edward I quickly accepted
that John had remained faithful and reinstated him: Rot. Scot., i, p. 30. William Swinburne
had died in 1289.
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291
7
Tynedale: A Community in Transition,
1296–c. 1400
Keith Stringer
U
nder the good lordship of the kings of Scots, so it has been argued in
the previous chapter, the liberty of Tynedale played a self- assured and
potent role as a focus for the organisation of government, loyalty and com-
munity. Yet fourteenth- century Tynedale inhabited a very different uni-
verse. Indeed, during the Anglo- Scottish hostilities from 1296 and largely,
though not exclusively, because of them, the liberty’s position on the map of
power, identities and allegiances was reconfigured in multiple ways.
Continuities there were. A er 1296 the documentation for both liberty
and ‘community’ becomes sparser – virtually all the fourteenth- century
court records are lost – but that Tynedale retained much of its traditional
autonomy as a ‘royal liberty’ cannot be gainsaid. Its lord, so a Newcastle
jury was to nd in 1402, ‘has a chancellor, justices, baili s and other o c-
ers [with] pleas of the crown and all manner of other pleas from time
immemorial’.
1
We will likewise see that the liberty’s owners and tenants
might vigilantly defend its rights, and that the English crown o en accepted
that local governance was a matter for the liberty- owners or their o cers.
True, if control of forfeitures is ‘the “acid test” of palatine privilege’, the
liberty fell short of this touchstone.
2
But it belonged with Cheshire, Durham
and Hexhamshire to that select group of liberties normally shielded from
the growing tax- burden imposed by the crown on the rest of England, so
that in this respect its privileges arguably became more distinctive and
important. Lawsuits did go from the liberty to the royal courts, though
apparently with no regularity; and there is concrete evidence that its own
judicial system was valued by the ‘community’. It will also be seen that
the liberty was sometimes instrumental in structuring patterns of military
recruitment and service, and – more signi cantly – in mobilising collective
political action, notably in 1314–15 and around 1370.
1
CIPM, xviii, no. 642.
2
Storey, Langley, p. 53; below, pp. 296, 298–9.
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Much of this suggests that, as we proceed, we should be careful not to
underrate the implications of Tynedale’s ‘regal rights’ for local identity
and solidarity. Yet from the standpoint of its former power, individuality
and coherence as a Scottish- ruled liberty in England, there is no mistak-
ing how signi cant the transformations actually were, both institutionally
and – above all – socially, culturally and politically. One big in uence on
the customary order was, quite simply, a loss of continuity within local
landed society due to failures in the male line. But even more critical were
shi s in the hierarchy of authority and its modalities. At one extreme,
there was a profound expansion of the English monarchy’s involvement
in Tynedale’s a airs and in ordering people’s lives and political conscious-
ness; but, at the other, the English ‘war- state’ failed to provide the ten-
antry with governance, security and protection. As one lord of Tynedale,
Andrew Harclay, was himself said to have concluded in 1322, ‘the king
of England neither knew how to rule his realm nor was able to defend
it against the Scots, who year by year laid it waste’.
3
e English crown’s
relationship with and impact on Tynedale were therefore ambiguous.
According to the context, it might meddle in the liberty’s business, show
regard for its privileges or merely leave it to its own devices. It imposed
war- demands; but its requests, especially for money, were not sustained
enough to ensure regular communal activity. It might still prompt some
sense of liberty identity; but it also drew people into ‘national society’. It
displayed its mastery in 1296 by severing any ties between the liberty and
the Scottish crown; but it elected to replace Tynedale’s traditional leader-
ship with liberty- owners who, for all their rights and ‘rule’, remained and
behaved as outsiders. Most of all, English kingship and lordship assumed
responsibility for the liberty, and then largely failed to ful l the obligations
that this responsibility entailed.
ere is no easy way of navigating between the poles of experience to
which fourteenth- century Tynedale was subjected, let alone of plotting
the shi ing patterns of identity as they accommodated themselves to
novel conditions and problems. But what is beyond doubt is that the par-
adoxes of English kingship/lordship were such that people o en lost, or
did not gain, a strong sense of belonging to a distinct liberty community.
So it came about that the lack of a focus of authority attuned to inter-
acting with and aligning local solidarities deeply a ected the liberty’s
socio- political identity and cohesion. ere was no full- scale retreat into
disorder – though north Tynedale adapted less successfully than the rest
of the liberty, and developed conventions akin to those of volatile frontier
3
Chron. Lanercost, p. 248.
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293
societies. But we will also nd that there emerged a social order whose
ethos and practices were brought into much closer correspondence
with those of the wider English world, and primarily with the culture
and norms of the county of Northumberland itself. In the process, the
liberty and allegiances to it were by no means superseded. Yet the older
pattern of community was overlaid by new layers of regnal and provin-
cial loyalties; and its fresh emphases and dimensions can be appreciated
only by taking a broad view of Tynedale society, and by acknowledging
the increasingly variegated nature of its aspirations, relationships and
identi cations.
4
To say that the year 1296 marked a radical departure in the liberty’s for-
tunes would be to ignore the changes already set in train by Alexander
III’s death. But the onset of war undoubtedly accelerated those changes
and gave them much more of a transformative stamp. e emergence of a
militarised Border reworked the dynamics of all northern communities by
opening up new routes to English royal service and reward.
5
e ‘war- state’
also staked claims to a greater share of local resources and local jurisdiction;
and, not least, the March warden- conservators introduced a novel tier of
military- cum- judicial power, thereby raising the question of how liberties
related to it.
6
In such ways, war meant that the English king’s authority in
the North- East became less remote and more exacting, and all the region’s
liberties were in varying degrees brought into closer contact with crown
governance. Yet Tynedale had also to adjust to a singular set of circum-
stances. In 1296, on John Balliol’s forfeiture, the liberty ‘was rejoined to the
crown’;
7
and it might be held by the monarch himself or granted to whom
he pleased. Here indeed were unique opportunities to bring Tynedale more
rmly under English royal control. e crown was now in a position to
clarify its supremacy by imposing well- de ned terms of tenure (notably
knight service and provision for reversion); when the liberty- owner died
– or was forfeited – it might choose not to grant the liberty out again for
lengthy periods (1314–22, 1323–8, 1369–73); and it naturally demonstrated
its superiority by deciding disputes over the liberty’s descent, as when it
4
Cf. C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401–99
(Cambridge, 1992), p. 37: ‘It is quite easy to show the existence of a “county community”
once one has excluded all landowners with major interests elsewhere.’
5
See most recently A. King, ‘Best of enemies: were the fourteenth- century Anglo- Scottish
Marches a “frontier society”?’, in A. King and M. A. Penman (eds), England and Scotland
in the Fourteenth Century (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 116–35.
6
Neville, Violence, passim; and, for Tynedale, see below, pp. 311–13.
7
Regis Edwardi Tertii a primo ad decimum (inclusiue) anni omnes, ed. R. Tottell (London,
1562), f. 273r (a Year Book report of 6 Edward III).
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294
quashed the claims made by successive bishops of Durham a er 1311.
8
In
terms of overlordship as well as of direct rule, it could – and did – exercise
in the liberty prerogatives of the sort it enjoyed elsewhere, including rights
to levy troops, take forfeits of war, and pardon traitors and felons. It like-
wise had a greater say in ordinary local litigation, so that by about 1330
none of its central courts was unacquainted with Tynedale pleas.
9
Other evidence, to be sure, indicates a di erent story- line: that the exten-
sion of ‘state’ power into Tynedale was o en patchy and limited, and that
even the crown’s immediate lordship was never as secure as Alexander III’s
mastery had been. Yet by comparison with the pre- 1286 period, the English
king played a much larger role, and this becomes clearer still if we recognise
that the crown’s relationship with liberties depended only partly on ques-
tions of formal prerogatives and rights. Its wider political in uence might
well be more important for a liberty’s workings and signi cance. And so it
was to be in Tynedale’s case. e regnal frame of reference had categorically
altered: the fate of the liberty and its tenants now rested, as it had not rested
before, on the power, policies and whims of a single, English monarchy.
When Tynedale lay in the king’s hands, its distinctive institutional iden-
tity was normally respected; but as crown territory it nevertheless experi-
enced direct English kingship in action. To examine a single year, 1307,
the king recruited infantry into his army for Scotland; he also required the
liberty to contribute to the twentieth and eenth. While separate com-
missions were announced, the Tynedale taxers were the same men as the
Northumberland county taxers, and identical keepers of the peace were
also appointed for county and liberty.
10
Such interventions might be inter-
mittent and ine ective, especially in the scal sphere. But if on occasion
the crown’s demands of society in ‘the king’s liberty of Tynedale’ made it
more conscious of itself as a community, so likewise did they qualify that
identity- a rming sense of independence from the authority of the monarch
and his agents. Indeed, as ‘mere’ overlord of Tynedale, Edward I displayed
his supremacy by demanding (albeit without much success) contributions
to the lay subsidies of 1295–6 and 1306; by levying archers for his Scottish
campaign in 1301; and by residing in the liberty for ve weeks in 1306.
11
8
For the actions concerning Durham’s rights to or in Tynedale based on Balliol’s grants of
1294–5, see most conveniently Northumb. Pets, nos. 49, 54–5.
9
More or less routine instances include CCR 1327–30, p. 372; CP 40/275, m. 191; 40/283,
m. 388; 40/286, m. 287; PROME, ii, pp. 66, 474, 481, 496, 513–14.
10
Parl. Writs, I, p. 380; CPR 1307–13, pp. 4, 24.
11
E 372/166, m. 32 (‘libertas regis de Tyndale’); E 159/117, m. 162; CPR 1301–7, p. 491;
CDS, ii, no. 1229. See, however, C 260/62/4, dorse, for Tynedale’s failure to pay the
1295 subsidy; similarly J. F. Willard, Parliamentary Taxes on Personal Property, 1290 to
1334 (Cambridge, MA, 1934), pp. 29–30, concerning the 1306 subsidy. Edward stayed
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TYNEDALE: A COMMUNITY IN TRANSITION
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Moreover, for all that Tynedale had its own special keepers while in
crown hands, the king asserted his superiority by routinely appointing
royal servants from outside the liberty; and o en its custody was assigned
to northern household retainers: men such as Robert Barton (1307,
1311) and Robert Wells (1314), king’s clerks, and William Felton (1324),
William Washington (1327) and omas Featherstonehaugh (1327),
king’s esquires or yeomen.
12
As Featherstonehaugh expressed it, his com-
mission was a reward ‘for his service to the king . . . in the Scottish war’;
13
and in a much fuller sense the liberty became a staple resource of English
royal favour. Merely to list the names of those to whom Tynedale was
entrusted in lordship is to compile an outstandingly impressive roll- call
of leading gures in fourteenth- century English society. It was regranted
to Bishop Bek in 1296, and it was held by him until 1307 and in 1308–11;
by Piers Gaveston, earl of Cornwall, in 1311–12; by Edmund Mauley,
steward of Edward II’s household, in 1312–14; by Andrew Harclay, earl
of Carlisle, in 1322–3; and by John Darcy le cosyn, justiciar of Ireland,
in 1328–35. e liberty then became one of the appanages of the king’s
closest kin. Purchased from Darcy under Edward III’s direction, it was at
once assigned to his queen Philippa of Hainault (d. 1369). In 1373–98 its
lord was their fourth surviving son Edmund Langley, earl of Cambridge
and (from 1385) duke of York, and in 1398 it passed to Langley’s son
Edward, duke of Aumale.
14
Nor can it be doubted that the liberty- owners outed the king’s author-
ity at their peril. Bek’s estrangement from Edward I culminated in the con-
scation of all his ‘franchises’, and in the case of Tynedale, as of Durham,
royal lawyers condemned him for acting ‘in prejudice of the king [and]
the right of his crown’.
15
ough reinstated by Edward II, Bek had to settle
at Newbrough, Grindon, Bradley, Henshaw, Haltwhistle, Melkridge and Thirlwall (16
August–21 September 1306). Presumably purveyance was then levied on the liberty.
12
CFR, i, p. 550; ii, pp. 7, 106; iii, p. 297; iv, pp. 16, 63–4; RPD, ii, pp. 1015–16. On Barton,
for example, see G. S. H. L. Washington, Early Westmorland M.P.s, 1258–1327 (CWAAS,
Tract Series, 1959), pp. 5–9.
13
Northumb. Pets, no. 146; cf. SC 8/84/4168.
14
The liberty’s descent as given in NCH, xv, p. 284, cannot be relied on. Most notably, it
ignores the fact that Mauley was killed at Bannockburn; dates Langley’s tenure from 1375
rather than 1373 (CPR 1370–4, p. 288); and overlooks Langley’s life- grant to Aumale in
1398 (CIPM, xviii, no. 642). For Philippa’s acquisition of Tynedale from Darcy in April
1335, see C 47/9/58, m. 12d. Technically she did not hold it directly of the crown: cf.
CIMisc., iii, no. 892.
15
PROME, ii, p. 370. The charges against Bek as lord of Tynedale focused on the legality of
its acquisition for the bishopric by Balliol’s grant of 1295; but, in Edward I’s eyes, Bek’s
interpretation of his privileges had also been provocative: Fraser, Bek, pp. 90–1, 204–6,
221.
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