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

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

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for a life- interest in Tynedale, and a  rm message had been sent that the

lord’s title, prerogatives and power were ultimately subject to the crown’s

goodwill and control. More dramatic and  nal was Harclay’s downfall.

Rewarded with Tynedale for his role at Boroughbridge, he lost both his

lands and his life barely twelve months later for brokering his own peace

with the Scots. Telling in another way is the termination of Gaveston’s lord-

ship on his execution in 1312 – a spectacular instance of how fourteenth-

century Tynedale’s history might intersect with the narrative of English

national history. On such views alone, the world Tynedale now inhabited

was palpably the world of English royal patronage, power and politics.

Yet nothing registers the local impact of that world more clearly than

Edward I’s dealings with the liberty’s internal power- map. In 1296 crown

o cers con scated the estates of Scottish adherents and made all free

tenants swear fealty to the king; therea er, the royal right to retain control

of forfeits was largely upheld, despite Bek’s protests, and some passed

into the custody of Edward’s cousin Aymer Valence.

War thus forced

the question of political allegiances; the crown likewise saw to it that local

society was restructured according to the new imperatives of national

power and loyalty. Moreover, it was Edward I who presided over the res-

toration of Scots reverting to his allegiance; and, in fact, sooner or later

nearly all those forfeited did come to terms with him.  e sole important

exception was Robert IV Ros (of Bellister), ‘a traitor who never returned

to the king’s peace’;

otherwise even the Comyns submitted in 1304. Such

capitulations arose less from betrayal of a country’s cause and more from

the hard choices that had to be made in the context of English advances and

a divided Scottish polity.

But no one could doubt that Edward I eventually

won the battle for the loyalties of Tynedale society. English royal displeas-

ure could fracture the community at a stroke; even more revealing of the

king’s might was his ability to reunite it.

 us did the liberty enter a universe constructed on entirely di erent

terms from those that had guaranteed its special ‘trans- national’ status as

a Scottish- controlled part of the English kingdom. By the same token, it

could no longer underpin itself as a unit of governance and identi cation

by drawing on the paradigms and traditions of Scottish political society

and culture. ‘ e national shutters’, so it must have seemed, ‘had come

PROME, ii, p. 372; CIMisc., i, no. 1764; CDS, ii, no. 963; Stevenson, Docs, ii, no. 359; CIPM,

iii, no. 479; and, for Valence, see CFR, i, p. 470; CIPM, vii, no. 165.

CCR 1354–60, p. 177.

Instructive here is A. Young, ‘The Comyns and Anglo- Scottish relations (1286–1314)’,

TCE, 7 (1999), pp. 207–22.

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down  rmly’;

and Tynedale was exposed to the authority and ideology of

‘royal England’, its socio- political and cultural norms, and its capacity to

command loyalty and reward service. Needless to say, it is only by focusing

on fourteenth- century liberty society that we can begin to do full justice

to the consequences of these changes; but  rst we must clarify some basic

facts.

Save notably for much of Edward II’s reign (1307–27), the liberty was

not a crown estate. It served, so to speak, as a  efdom of members of the

English ruling class (namely, for our purposes, the liberty- owners); and the

lines of contact between Tynedale and the crown were contingent on the

substance of the liberty- owners’ rights and on their ability to win obedi-

ence and support. But on both these counts, and chie y the latter, an e ec-

tive hub of local lordship did not develop.

 e crown, therefore, could

take a stronger grip on the liberty’s social order and its loyalties; nor was it

unassisted by ‘natural’ shi s in landed society, which further weakened the

liberty as a unifying agent and force.  e Comyns failed in the male line

(1316); so likewise did the senior branch of the Swinburnes of Haughton/

Little Swinburne (1326), the Ros lords of Haltwhistle (1344) and the

Haltons of Sewing Shields (1345). Most of their Tynedale lands, includ-

ing the Comyn power- base, were partitioned, and the estates concerned

went to a large group of ‘new’ families.  e main successor landlords

were Heron of Ford, Ogle of Ogle and Widdrington of Widdrington, all

from east Northumberland; Musgrave of Hartley (Westmorland); Talbot

of Goodrich Castle (Herefordshire); and more or less anglicised Scottish

exiles: the Strathbogies, titular earls of Atholl, and John Stirling (d. 1378).

For Tynedale this was an exceptionally high rate of turnover, and in 1369

the Strathbogies also failed, leaving a gap that would partly be  lled by

the Percies. In addition, minor families such as Grindon, Nunwick and

Tecket vanish from sight in unrecorded circumstances; while, in Edward

II’s reign, Graham, Lindsay and Pratt did revert to Scottish obedience for

good. Accordingly Tynedale’s old noble elite disappeared from the scene,

and the ranks of the established gentry were diluted, leaving a core whose

chief representatives were members of the knightly houses of Swinburne

of Haughton/Capheaton, Swinburne of Knarsdale, Tyndale of Kirkhaugh,

Vipont of Alston and Whit eld of Whit eld.

Even more signi cantly,

much territory – in particular, almost the whole of north Tynedale –

A phrase taken from R. R. Davies, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the

British Isles, 1093–1343 (Oxford, 2000), p. 185.

For a full discussion, see below, pp. 310–17.

For the various Swinburne lines, and Heron, Stirling and Widdrington, see the family

tables at the end of this chapter (pp. 356–8).

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

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passed to families lacking any previous association with the liberty. And

not only did this impact on and dislocate the internal dynamics of local

society: inevitably the ties between Tynedale and the outside world, and

o en an explicitly English world, were extended and reinforced; and the

liberty could not be, nor was it, a distinct community that stood apart

from the social and political orbit of the wider realm and the authority of

its king.

More speci cally, Edward I’s applications of royal prerogative in

Tynedale set precedents that at times allowed for signi cant control over

the local tenurial landscape. Such was only to be expected when the liberty

was directly managed for the king. In 1369, for example, the royal keeper’s

letter of appointment reserved to Edward III all wardships, marriages,

escheats and forfeitures.

But from 1307 the crown persisted in laying

general claim to forfeits for rebellion; indeed, it might also regard them,

even a er they had been restored in some form, as subject to its immedi-

ate jurisdiction. So, by one means or another, crown power and govern-

ment retained the ability to interact at  rst hand with the organisation of

Tynedale’s landed society, and in ways that might well undermine the lib-

erty’s integrity, be it socially, politically or institutionally.

How such matters could work out on the ground is indicated by Edward

II’s rewards to favoured Border captains, as when he made a life- grant of

the manor of Grindon to his banneret Anthony Lucy.

 en in 1329–31,

when the crown belatedly took charge of the redistribution of the Comyn

lands, John Darcy and his baili were bombarded with royal injunctions: a

keeper commissioned by the king was to manage the property as a separate

unit, save for one manor subject to litigation in Chancery; co- heirs were to

receive the purparties assigned to them by the crown, reserving its rights of

homage; one co- heir was to be allowed to sue for a larger share ‘in Chancery

or otherwise as should seem appropriate to the king’; a widow’s dower lands

were to be resumed into royal hands, and Darcy was not to meddle with

them; the same lady was to be reinstated on account of her petition to the

king in Parliament.

So, on this occasion, English royal authority asserted

its rights in order to determine the tenurial and political geography of much

of north Tynedale. Darcy himself was throughout a mere onlooker; and

CFR, viii, pp. 33, 148–9.

CPR 1321–4, p. 328. Edward II’s household knight, Hugh Lowther, occurs briefly as lord

of a moiety of Staward: CPR 1324–7, p. 261; H. Summerson, Medieval Carlisle (CWAAS,

Extra Series, 1993), i, p. 251.

CCR 1327–30, pp. 481–2, 548, 582–3; 1330–3, pp. 16, 34–5, 51–2, 102, 122, 132, 189; CFR,

iv, pp. 186–7; CIPM, vii, no. 252.

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therea er it seems that, technically, Edward III continued to regard the old

Comyn estates as directly dependent on the crown.

Another revealing illustration of the possible e ects of crown

interference on landholding within the liberty is the case of Bellister

manor, forfeited by Robert IV Ros in 1296.

It had passed  rst, by Bishop

Bek’s grant of 1297, to Brian Fitzalan of Bedale and his wife Maud. Edward

I, however, overrode Maud’s rights – and the claims of Ros’s daughters –

and gave Bellister for life to his household knight Robert Bures in 1307,

‘with reversion to the king and his heirs’. Maud recovered the manor by a

novel disseisin brought before Bek’s justices in the liberty court in 1310; but

then came a series of royal interventions whereby Edward II awarded pos-

session to Ros’s son- in- law, John Salvin, in 1312, and Edward III restored

Bellister to Maud in 1339, con rmed it to Salvin’s son Gerard in 1348, and

deprived Gerard of it in 1355. And perhaps nowhere is the detailed interest

the crown might take in the liberty’s social structure better shown than by

two vignettes connected with those interventions: in 1339 the king’s chan-

cellor accidentally dislodged the seal from Bek’s deed of 1297 as he scruti-

nised it at the chancery table; in 1355 it was over the same table that John of

Gaunt sued for Edward III against Gerard Salvin.

Admittedly crown policy towards forfeitures in fourteenth- century

Tynedale was o en less intrusive than evidence of this sort suggests.

 ough we will encounter other cases not unlike that of Bellister, such

assertions of royal superiority were clearly infrequent. Nor can we always

be sure of their e ectiveness: a er all, in 1312 the forester of Bellister, ‘with

others unknown’, prevented Edward II’s sub- escheator from executing his

o ce on behalf of John Salvin.

And, earlier, Bek did have some success in

resisting royal claims to forfeited estates, as his grant of Bellister implies.

In broader terms, moreover, forfeits remaining in crown custody were

usually assigned to the liberty- owner, though the principle of ultimate royal

control was reiterated.

Advowsons might be reserved, as when in 1332

Edward III upheld his rights of presentation to Knarsdale (forfeited by the

Pratts) in a suit of quare impedit against John Darcy in Common Pleas.

Yet by 1339 the advowson of Knarsdale was in Queen Philippa’s hands.

 us, while there was undoubtedly a direct expansion of the king’s political

Cf. CCR 1354–60, p. 130; CPR 1377–81, p. 391.

This paragraph draws on CDS, iv, no. 1835; SC 8/238/11870; CPR 1301–7, p. 515; 1338–40,

pp. 323, 326–7; 1348–50, p. 221; CIPM, v, no. 396; CCR 1354–60, pp. 176–8.

CIPM, v, no. 396.

See also CDS, ii, no. 1892; CIPM, iii, no. 611.

See especially CIMisc., iii, no. 892; CPR 1370–4, p. 408; 1374–7, p. 490; 1399–1401, p.

151.

Regis Edwardi Tertii, etc., ff. 272v–3v; RPD, iii, p. 234.

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300

power into the liberty, it remains important not to overstate the extent of

such power.

 at said, however, account must also be taken of crown authority in

wider ways; for across the fourteenth century the aspirations and a li-

ations of Tynedale’s tenantry – ‘old’ and ‘new’ alike – were shaped by it

at numerous turns. Above all, few of the forces making for change had

more signi cance than the monarchy’s expanded military role, the greater

claims it made on men’s service and allegiances, and the many novel open-

ings for promotion it entailed. So far were traditional norms overturned

that warfare against the Scots had a major in uence on people’s lives and

outlook. It could turn a pro t, make a name, and even win the king’s per-

sonal attention and favour; a heightened sense of Englishness was no doubt

another outcome, especially if note is taken of the casualty lists.

 at the

liberty- owners (and not just Queen Philippa) gave little or no leadership

to Tynedale’s ‘military community’ has a more speci c importance.  e

only noteworthy exception, atypical in more senses than one, was when

Bek levied archers from north Tynedale for the siege of Durham Priory in

1300.

Here indeed, Tynedale was quite unlike Cheshire under the Black

Prince, when the cohesion of its society was strengthened through war-

service to a common local lord.

Rather, Tynedale’s tenants and inhabit-

ants came routinely within the compass of the military lordship of the king

or his noble captains, and o en with far- reaching consequences for men’s

experiences, careers and loyalties.

One knightly family’s record in the Scottish wars of the  rst two

Edwards provides a good starting- point. John Swinburne of Haughton/

Little Swinburne, formerly Alexander III’s household retainer, campaigned

regularly in Scotland between 1296 and 1304. John’s elder son Adam, a

Scottish adherent in 1296, became one of the English crown’s more notable

military servants. He was constable of Dumfries (1306) and Rutherglen

(1308–9); he received from Edward II in 1308 a letter of commenda-

tion for loyal service in Scotland; and he bore heavy responsibilities for

Northumberland’s defence as its sheri in 1315–17. Adam’s younger

brother, Robert I Swinburne, undertook many tours of duty north of the

Border between 1296 and 1311, and helped to defend Carlisle (1315) and

A fair number of Tynedale landowners feature in A. King, ‘“According to the

custom used in French and Scottish wars”: prisoners and casualties on the Scottish

Marches in the fourteenth century’, Journal of Medieval History, 28 (2002), pp.

263–90.

Fraser, Bek, p. 143.

P. Morgan, War and Society in Medieval Cheshire, 1277–1403 (Chetham Society, 1987),

Chapter 3.

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Alnwick (1322).

Men like these did not necessarily live for war. Yet the

impact of the English ‘war- state’ on their behaviour and attitudes is not in

doubt; and such were its dimensions that skills honed in Anglo- Scottish

warfare found ready outlets elsewhere. Adam Swinburne’s son- in- law, John

Stirling, rea rmed his fame as a paladin by service on Edward III’s overseas

expeditions, including Cambrai (1339), Sluys (1340), Brittany (1342–3) and

Crécy- Calais (1346–7).

 irlwall campaigning – Paris (1360), the Pays de

Caux (1369), Gascony (1370) and St Malo (1378) – tells a similar story.

Robert I Swinburne’s second son Adam was none other than the English

army’s sub- constable at Crécy.

Robert himself was on Edward II’s service

in Gascony as captain of St Macaire and mayor of Bordeaux (1324–5); his

grandson and namesake went to Gascony with the Black Prince; and his

great- grandson,  omas II Swinburne, brought the mayorship of Bordeaux

back under Swinburne control (1405–11). Indeed, so wide were  omas’s

horizons that, a er serving as sole keeper of Roxburgh castle (1386–90), he

was in successive command of Guînes, Calais and Hammes.

Much of this already suggests that men’s military service was unlikely to

consolidate their allegiances within local society. It cannot be said, however,

that there was no correlation between the king’s wars and the reinforce-

ment of liberty- based solidarities. When the crown called out Tynedale’s

rank and  le against the Scots, arrays and musters o en remained under the

liberty’s exclusive control.  e king’s keeper was charged with ‘the ruling,

arraying and leading of all men in the liberty . . . in peace and war’; and

when Tynedale was not in royal custody, troops were levied by writs issued

to the liberty, at any rate up to the mid- 1340s.

In such contexts, then,

crown demands at once emphasised the liberty’s institutional substance

and provided for the literal regimentation of its inhabitants on a scale not

seen before. For instance, 264 archers served with Edward I in Tweeddale

and Clydesdale for eleven weeks in 1301, and 300 archers campaigned

C. Moor, Knights of Edward I (Harleian Society, 1929–32), iv, pp. 321–2, supplemented

by various sources, including Scotland in 1298, ed. H. Gough (London, 1888), pp. 36, 47;

CDS, iv, p. 389; v, nos. 1140, 1256, 2144, 2199, 2393; Parl. Writs, II, ii, p. 372; E 43/668;

Society of Antiquaries, MS 120, ff. 45r, 70v, 74v; Northern Pets, no. 80.

CCR 1339–41, p. 93; 1341–3, p. 460; The Wardrobe Book of William de Norwell, ed. M.

Lyon et al. (Brussels, 1983), p. 387; C 76/17, m. 27; A. Ayton and P. Preston, The Battle of

Crécy, 1346 (Woodbridge, 2005), p. 218.

The Controversy between Sir Richard Scrope and Sir Robert Grosvenor, ed. N. H. Nicolas

(London, 1832), i, pp. 181–2; Ayton and Preston, Crécy, pp. 188, 206.

The War of Saint- Sardos (1323–1325), ed. P. Chaplais (Camden Third Series, 1954),

passim; HC, iv, pp. 545–50, with CDS, v, no. 4455.

CFR, viii, pp. 33, 149. William Felton recruited in Tynedale as keeper in 1324 and appar-

ently as bailiff in 1335, when the county arrayers were specifically excluded from the

liberty: Parl. Writs, II, ii, p. 672; Rot. Scot., i, p. 327.

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in Carrick and Galloway for about four weeks in 1307. Sometimes, as in

these cases, the contingents were deployed as distinct squadrons; they

might be o cered by local gentry, and one of their regular captains was

Hugh Walles ‘of Tynedale’.

In 1317 Hugh, described as an esquire, also

attended Edward II at York with  ve other men- at- arms and   y- four foot

of Tynedale; in 1319 he reinforced the king’s army with forty- three hobelars

and eleven archers of Tynedale; and in 1327 he led forty hobelars from the

liberty during the Weardale campaign.

Clearly such forces would not have

had the same resonance for communal awareness. But all the liberty’s able-

bodied men remained liable to collective service, and in the period 1324–37

they were mobilised on at least six separate occasions.

Nevertheless we must not exaggerate the importance of the king’s

war- demands for ‘community’ or even for local self- identi cation. Since

the liberty was normally untroubled by royal taxation, it had little need

to organise itself other than as a recruiting zone. Furthermore, while the

crown’s requests for manpower were at times persistent, they did not

prompt Durham- style protests, and seem to have been readily met.  us,

whereas in the thirteenth century there had been some freedom from

obligations to perform military service outside Tynedale,

priority was

now given to the war- needs of the English ‘state’. And not only are levies

found serving under the king’s personal standard and at his wages.  ey

might also be amalgamated with other units;

and, what is more, from the

mid- fourteenth century recruitment did come under the jurisdiction of the

Northumberland county arrayers or (more especially) the March wardens.

It was apparently accepted that such arrangements required the liberty-

owner’s permission, at least in 1346 and 1359;

and in practice, no doubt,

men continued to be raised through the liberty’s own mechanisms. Even

so, the loyalties of local troops were claimed as much by English kingship

CDS, ii, nos. 1229, 1923; Parl. Writs, I, p. 380. Hugh, who also commanded the north

Tynedale archers at Durham in 1300, is wrongly described as Bek’s bailiff of Tynedale in

Fraser, Bek, p. 143, n. 3. He forfeited land in Chipchase for his Scottish loyalties in 1296

(Stevenson, Docs, ii, no. 359); but his Tynedale property cannot be traced. In 1309, 200

troops with captains were to be levied in the liberty, but the summons was cancelled: CDS,

v, no. 1643; Rot. Scot., i, p. 74.

Society of Antiquaries, MS 121, f. 43r; E 101/378/4, m. 35d; 101/18/9.

Parl. Writs, II, ii, pp. 672, 744; Rot. Scot., i, pp. 213–14, 226–7, 327, 495 (and see also p.

389: writ of 1335 for levying men- at- arms, hobelars and archers).

Above, Chapter 6, p. 278.

Parl. Writs, II, ii, p. 744; Rot. Scot., i, pp. 213–14. For an agreement in 1296 between

William of Tynedale and two Corbridge men about division of spoils, see ‘A plea roll of

Edward I’s army in Scotland, 1296’, ed. C. J. Neville, in Miscellany of the Scottish History

Society, xi (Edinburgh, 1990), no. 60.

Rot. Scot., i, pp. 652, 669–71, 839.

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as by the liberty itself; and to that degree the crown’s war- making served to

blur the boundaries between the locality and broader society. Indeed, so far

were such troops from being ‘the lord’s proprietary army’ or a communal

defence force that to soldier as individuals under great royal captains was

not uncommon.

As for members of the liberty’s o cer class, their local ties were on

occasion strengthened by the comradeship of active service. Certainly the

earl of Northampton’s castle at Lochmaben in Annandale loomed large

in the campaigning of some Tynedale gentry. In 1346 Richard  irlwall

took command of Lochmaben for one year; in 1351 William Heron (of

Simonburn) and Gerard Widdrington (of Haughton) obtained protections

for service in the garrison; and in 1357, when  irlwall was once more its

keeper, so did a contingent from Alston led by William Vipont.

We also

see that John  irlwall was an esquire to Adam Swinburne in Scotland in

1298 and 1307, and that Hugh Walles was with Adam in 1316.

In 1310–11

Adam and two other Tynedale knights, his brother Robert I Swinburne and

Nicholas II Vipont, fought in Robert Cli ord’s company.

Again, in 1302

Robert Swinburne served with Richard Siward of Tibbers in Annandale and

Nithsdale; and, perhaps signi cantly, it was around this time that Siward

granted his property near Falstone in north Tynedale to Robert’s father

John Swinburne.

Overall, however, war- service by both gentry and nobility (including

the Strathbogies) rarely re ected or fostered local bonds of support and

loyalty; and in essence military careers and networks had their own dis-

tinct structures, with potentially broad implications for the liberty’s tra-

ditional social and political importance. Take, for example, John Stirling’s

  y- strong retinue in Flanders in 1346–7: about ten English shires were

represented; Yorkshiremen formed the largest group; and while some men

Indicative examples are CPR 1358–61, p. 374 (John Forester of Newbrough and John

Stokoe of Gofton: service with John of Gaunt in France, 1359–60); John of Gaunt’s

no. 1190 (Adam Mennie of ‘Selleworth’ in Tynedale: service with Gaunt on the Borders,

1381). The quotation is from Davies, Lordship and Society, p. 81.

R. C. Reid, ‘Edward I’s pele at Lochmaben’, Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and

Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society, 3rd ser., 31 (1954), pp. 67–8; CDS, v,

nos. 3856, 3859, 3926; Rot. Scot., i, p. 796.

Scotland in 1298, p. 195; CDS, ii, no. 1923; v, no. 3054.

J. E. Morris, ‘Cumberland and Westmorland military levies in the time of Edward I and

Edward II’, TCWAAS, new ser., 3 (1903), pp. 312–14; CDS, v, nos. 2799, 2919. Vipont

was in Clifford service from 1298: Scotland in 1298, p. 198; CDS, v, nos. 402, 2583. One

Thirlwall, whose first name is unrecorded, was Clifford’s captain of Douglas castle in 1307:

John Barbour, The Bruce, ed. A. A. M. Duncan (Edinburgh, 1997), pp. 212–13, 242–5.

CDS, ii, no. 1334; HN, II, ii, p. 250.

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were Northumbrians, none was recruited from Tynedale.

Also, Stirling’s

garrison at Edinburgh in 1335 included only two identi able Tynedalers;

while  omas II Swinburne’s garrison at Roxburgh in the later 1380s

was drawn from counties outside the Borders as far-  ung as Sussex and

Cornwall.

More notably, in the absence of any cohesive ‘Tynedale a n-

ity’, some gentry regularly took service with the king’s chief captains.  is

much is amply con rmed by the soldiering of Robert I Swinburne, who

from 1298 was retained by, among others, Ralph Monthermer,  omas

Vere, Bartholomew Badlesmere, John St John of Basing and Edmund

Fitzalan.

Similarly Gerard Widdrington fought in Scotland in 1333–6 in

the companies of Henry Percy, Ralph Neville and William Bohun. From

1338 he accompanied Bohun (now earl of Northampton) for service in the

Low Countries and France; in 1342 his brother and heir Roger attended

Richard Fitzalan with ten men- at- arms in the Borders; and in 1359–60

Roger served in the Reims campaign under John of Gaunt.

Here again

Tynedale was scarcely a liberty where only the liberty- owners controlled

the military allegiances of its men.

For additional reasons also, the in uence of the ‘war- state’ thinned out

the liberty’s customary signi cance for loyalties and identities. At any stage

the martial reputations of knights and men- at- arms could bring them

directly within the crown’s sphere of clientage and patronage. Some were

recruited into the royal military household, and the king naturally had  rst

call on their service whether or not the liberty was in his hands. Even if we

exclude royal retainers whose associations with Tynedale were short- lived,

it is still possible to compile a sizeable list. Robert I Swinburne’s son and

heir  omas was a scutifer hospitii regis from about 1322; William Heron

and Richard  irlwall were Edward III’s esquires by 1340. Adam Swinburne

served as a knight of Edward I’s household by 1298, and was admitted to

fees and robes as a knight of Edward II at Durham in 1312. He had been

promoted to the rank of king’s banneret by 1315; while John Stirling

received the same award from Edward III in 1335, and Richard Talbot (of

G. Wrottesley, Crecy and Calais (London, 1898), pp. 222ff.

E 101/19/24, m. 12 (Robert Gofton and Thomas Thirlwall, hobelars); CDS, v, from no.

4201 onwards.

Scotland in 1298, p. 36; CDS, v, nos. 3076, 3176; CPR 1321–4, pp. 67, 198; BL, MS Stowe

553, f. 56r; SC 8/346/E1379.

CDS, v, nos. 3295, 3365, 3534; A. Ayton, ‘Edward III and the English aristocracy at

the beginning of the Hundred Years War’, in M. Strickland (ed.), Armies, Chivalry

and Warfare in Medieval Britain and France (Stamford, 1998), pp. 174 (and refer-

ences at n. 12), 198; S. Walker, The Lancastrian Affinity, 1361–1399 (Oxford, 1990), p.

62.

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TYNEDALE: A COMMUNITY IN TRANSITION

305

Walwick) had been similarly honoured by 1338.

Moreover, there were

no important crown o ces in the Marches that Tynedale tenants did not

hold, and this applies especially to the new military or war- related posts.

In the 1340s the keepership of Berwick castle was e ectively monopolised

by men with Tynedale connections; in 1351 and 1355 Richard  irlwall

was the town’s mayor.

Stirling’s service as sheri of Edinburgh (1335–8)

reminds us of the broader range of assignments experienced soldiers

might undertake.  ose commissioned to array shire levies or to keep

Anglo- Scottish truces are too numerous to note; some had responsibilities

for coastal defence. But the March wardenships were, of course, the most

in uential commands on the Borders; and in this arena, too, Tynedale

landowners were well represented. David III Strathbogie was warden of the

East March in 1322–3.  omas Musgrave (d. c. 1385), the  rst Musgrave

lord of Haltwhistle, served regularly as a warden- conservator in the West

March; William Heron, Roger Widdrington and John  irlwall the elder

all received at least one commission for the East March between 1369 and

1379; and  irlwall also acted as co- warden and deputy warden in the

West March. It is another impressive inventory, and a clear indication of

the power and status in the regional hierarchy that Tynedale’s propertied

class, even ‘lesser gentry’ like the  irlwalls, might now aspire to and attain

through English royal service.

To  ght with distinction for the king or his lieutenants was also a well-

recognised path to territorial reward; and, in particular, men who sought

Scottish lands were drawn  rmly, or more  rmly, within the structures

of crown patronage and power. Adam Swinburne owed to Edward I a

grant of forfeited Ayrshire property in 1298. It was likewise Edward who

was petitioned when in 1306 Swinburne and John  irlwall requested

Dumfriesshire and Perthshire estates respectively.

Edward III granted to

Richard  irlwall land in Edington (Berwickshire) in 1336, and he later

bestowed protection on John  irlwall the elder and his tenants in Roughley

Esquires: BL, MS Stowe 553, f. 104r; E 101/68/3/56; CPR 1338–40, p. 453; CFR, v, p. 66;

CChR, iv, p. 468. Also, Robert II Ogle (d. 1362) may have continued to serve as Edward

III’s esquire after becoming a Tynedale landholder (cf. CChR, v, p. 4). Adam Swinburne:

Scotland in 1298, p. 195; BL, MS Cotton Nero C.VIII, f. 91r; E 101/378/6. Stirling and

Talbot: CDS, iii, no. 1194; CCR 1337–9, p. 439.

J. Scott, Berwick- upon- Tweed (London, 1888), p. 478; CIPM, x, no. 276. Keepers of

Berwick: Richard Talbot (1337–41), John Stirling (1344–5), Thomas Musgrave (1347–9;

also 1373–7), William Heron (1349–50). Another Richard Thirlwall was customer of

Berwick (1333–9): Rot. Scot., i, pp. 256, 271, 276, 379, 560; E 122/193/8.

CDS, ii, no. 1183; Documents and Records Illustrating the History of Scotland, ed. F.

Palgrave (London, 1837), no. 142. See further SC 8/346/E1379: undated petition from

Robert I Swinburne for Ayrshire lands.

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