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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in Liddesdale.

It was also in 1336 that the king granted to John Stirling

the baronies of Bathgate and Ratho near Edinburgh; less precarious were

John’s gains in the 1340s in Berwickshire and Roxburghshire. Moreover,

John obtained patronage in Scotland from Edward III’s puppet Edward

Balliol, who also brought into his orbit David IV Strathbogie and Richard

Talbot. Strathbogie claimed the earldom of Atholl, and was co- claimant

with Talbot to the vast Comyn domains. His priorities are well seen in

the vigour with which, in 1333–4, he stamped his authority on Atholl and

Badenoch; but when he took Scottish allegiance in September 1334, all his

English estates were automatically forfeited, and he returned to Edward

III’s service in the following year.

Again, it was only when Strathbogie’s

servant,  omas Aumfrais, reverted to Edward’s peace that he recovered

his lands in Yetholm (Roxburghshire) and, by the king’s express order to

Queen Philippa, his property in Wharmley in Tynedale.

Any involve-

ment in cross- Border landholding now depended on the English crown’s

pleasure;

and that was indeed a far cry from the era when the kings of

Scots had brought the liberty and its tenants within one main circuit of

political authority and favour.

So, from yet another angle, Tynedale’s world no longer centred on

the liberty- owner as the chief focus of lordship and obedience: power,

loyalties and identities were organised on new and very di erent lines.

In England itself, John Stirling secured from Edward III the reversion of

the Northumbrian manors of Belsay and Newlands in 1335, and of the

Yorkshire manor of Fax eet in 1343.

But how far service in the king’s

wars could lead to a reordering of men’s territorial and other attachments,

at the speci c expense of local ties, is perhaps best seen in the case of the

Swinburnes of Knarsdale. Robert I Swinburne extended his reach to Little

Horkesley (Essex), Wiston (Su olk) and Woodmancote (Gloucestershire),

partly by investing his pro ts of war, and partly through the favour of

the war- captain John Botetourt, under whom he had  rst campaigned

CDS, iii, pp. 325–6; Rot. Scot., i, p. 896.

Stirling: CDS, iii, nos. 1209, 1330, 1515; Northamptonshire Record Office, Stopford-

Sackville Muniments, no. 2851. Strathbogie: A. Ross, ‘Men for all seasons? The Strathbogie

earls of Atholl and the Wars of Independence, c. 1290–c. 1335. Part 2: Earl David IV

(1307–1335)’, Northern Scotland, 21 (2001), pp. 1–15.

CDS, iii, p. 374; C 143/238/19; cf. CCR 1333–7, p. 442: writ of seisin to the liberty’s officers

on Strathbogie’s behalf.

In terms of their longevity, the chief links were Stirling and Thirlwall ties to Berwickshire

(CFR, ix, p. 153; CDS, iv, no. 105); and connections with some former Comyn lands in

south- west Scotland: A. B. Webster, ‘The English occupations of Dumfriesshire in the

fourteenth century’, Trans. Dumfriesshire and Galloway Nat. Hist. and Antiq. Soc., 3rd

ser., 35 (1958), pp. 74–5.

CPR 1334–8, p. 168; 1343–5, pp. 158–9.

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in 1304.

 e comforts of southern living proved irresistible to Robert’s

son Adam, who became lord of Duxford (Cambridgeshire);

and even

more did they appeal to his grandson, another Robert, on whose second

wife – Botetourt’s great- granddaughter – had devolved two large inherit-

ances by 1384.  is Robert thereby became a major landowner in Essex,

and the axis of his activity shi ed decisively to the South- East. His son

and successor,  omas II, married another metropolitan heiress, Elizabeth

Trivet, the widow of one of Richard II’s inner clique; and while  omas

was more closely associated with the North than his father had been,

the trajectory of his military career, in the Borders and elsewhere, owed

much to the patronage of  omas Mowbray, earl of Nottingham. Likewise

 omas Swinburne’s brief appearance in Tynedale as baili for Edmund

Langley, around the time that Mowbray was made warden of the East

March in 1389, is best explained by his court connections; and home he

went (when not on crown service overseas) to follow in his father’s foot-

steps as MP for Essex and sheri of Essex and Hertfordshire. All told, it

seems only appropriate that these Swinburnes, father and son, were buried

in Little Horkesley Priory, and in a tomb modelled on the royal tombs in

Westminster Abbey.

More generally, the story of how, and how far, Tynedale’s landed class could

be subsumed into the English body politic takes us back to the extinction of

the Comyn male line. One of the two Comyn co- heirs was given to Richard

Talbot, presumably by Queen Isabella, in 1326 or 1327; and Richard, as lord

of Goodrich Castle, was to remain  rmly tied to Herefordshire.  e Talbots’

in- laws, the Strathbogies, were less self- consciously part of English politi-

cal society; but they also prized English estates far from Tynedale, and had

recovered their ancestral lands in Kent by Edward II’s favour in 1321.  e

initial Strathbogie stake in the liberty, gained by 1314, comprised the manor

of Henshaw and the Forest of Lowes (now Henshaw Common); in 1329–30

the rest of the Comyn property was divided into moieties, with their nodes

at Tarset (Strathbogie) and Walwick (Talbot).

What truly transformed the

Below, p. 358; CCR 1346–9, p. 575; and, for service with Botetourt, see Palgrave, Docs Hist.

Scot., no. 126; CCW 1244–1326, p. 331; CPR 1317–21, p. 245; CDS, v, nos. 3011, 3176; SC

1/37/5; 8/346/E1379.

VCH, Cambs., vi, pp. 205–6.

HC, iv, pp. 545–7, with A. Goodman, The Loyal Conspiracy: The Lords Appellant under

Richard II (London, 1971), p. 162. For a fine set of deeds concerning the Swinburnes’

London property (1378–97), see Guildhall Library, MS 31302/114–28.

CCR 1327–30, p. 548; 1330–3, pp. 51–2; CFR, iv, p. 186. For the support given by Richard

Talbot’s father to Queen Isabella in 1326, see N. Fryde, The Tyranny and Fall of Edward

II, 1321–1326 (Cambridge, 1979), p. 187.

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landed fortunes of the Strathbogies and Talbots alike, however, was the fact

that the Comyn ladies, as co- heirs of their uncle Aymer Valence (d. 1324),

also brought to each family one- quarter of the vast Pembroke inheritance.

To note the main Strathbogie acquisitions alone, these were Mitford and

Ponteland (Northumberland), Gainsborough (Lincolnshire), ten manors

in Buckinghamshire, Kent, Norfolk, Su olk and Wiltshire, and various

estates in Ireland. David IV Strathbogie mortgaged many of these proper-

ties to subsidise his Scottish expeditions; but it was Gainsborough, by far

the family’s richest asset, that became its main seat.

Such families operated on a genuinely national stage. Ultimately Richard

Talbot – and William Heron,  omas Musgrave and John Stirling – gained

from Edward III the accolade of promotion to the peerage, largely for

their military exploits in his service. Talbot was also steward of Edward’s

household from 1345 to 1349.  omas II Swinburne was one of Richard

II’s chamber knights; he acted for Henry IV on embassies to the European

courts and was rewarded with estates in Picardy and Périgord.

Against

such a background, it hardly surprises that Edward II’s half- brother

Edmund Woodstock, and men such as John Bromwich of Herefordshire,

John Malwain of Wiltshire, John Halsham of Sussex, John Scrope of

Yorkshire, John Grey of Rother eld and Miles Stapleton of Bedale became

part of the liberty’s history, however marginally, through marriages to well-

born ‘Tynedale’ ladies;

that private deeds concerning estates in the liberty

were sealed in London, York, Brabourne (Kent), East Mersea (Essex),

Eccleswall (Herefordshire) and Kenilworth (Warwickshire); that trustees

for Tynedale manors included the future Henry IV; or that a map of the

tenantry’s burial- places would have to embrace not only Little Horkesley

but Ashford (Kent), Flanesford (Herefordshire), West Grinstead (Sussex)

and Westminster.

Finally we may turn to Tynedale’s ecclesiastical history for another

CCR 1330–3, pp. 456–7, 584–5; CIPM, vi, no. 759; vii, no. 713; xiv, nos. 317, 346.

HC, iv, pp. 548–9. Another Tynedale landowner, John Widdrington, was retained by

Richard II as an esquire of the royal body in 1394: ibid., p. 854.

Woodstock, Bromwich and Malwain married respectively the widows of John Comyn (d.

1314), Richard Talbot (d. 1356) and David V Strathbogie (d. 1369); Halsham and Scrope

were among the husbands of Strathbogie’s daughters and co- heirs. For the Tynedale proper-

ties of these ladies, see CIPM, vii, no. 252; xiv, no. 86; CPR 1370–4, p. 279. Grey and Stapleton,

sons- in- law of Brian Fitzalan, jointly controlled Bellister in 1343–6: SC 6/950/14.

Deeds: Greenwell Deeds, no. 189; CCR 1343–6, p. 487; 1360–4, p. 137; 1381–5, p. 408;

1392–6, p. 101; NCS, ZSW/1/83; E 159/102, m. 117. Trustees: Bolingbroke was feoffee

to Hugh Waterton, chamberlain of the duchy of Lancaster, for the Talbot/Bromwich

estates (CPR 1399–1401, p. 94). Burial- places: see, for example, M. Stephenson, A List of

Monumental Brasses in the British Isles (London, 1926), pp. 206, 509 (the Ashford and

West Grinstead brasses of David V Strathbogie’s widow and younger daughter).

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TYNEDALE: A COMMUNITY IN TRANSITION

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graphic index of how far the liberty’s socio- political coherence was a ected

by its novel connections with the centres of English power and culture.

Arbroath Abbey regained the church of Haltwhistle from Edward III in

1329, but not for long: Queen Philippa became its patron; and in 1385 it was

annexed to Tynemouth Priory on the urging of Richard II and his uncles

John of Gaunt and  omas Woodstock.

Even more strikingly, in 1351

Edward III gave the advowson of Simonburn to his college of St George at

Windsor, the spiritual home of the Order of the Garter.

Some Tynedale

bene ces were also regularly used to reward the English crown’s close serv-

ants.  e presentees to Knarsdale included Edward III’s chaplain, David

Wooler, and the king’s clerk, John Beverley, as well as Philippa’s chancel-

lor, John Clixby.  e pre- 1351 tally for Simonburn is yet more imposing:

Edward I’s controller of the wardrobe, Robert Cottingham; Edward II’s

treasurer and chancellor, John Sandal; Edward II’s escheator north of

the Trent, John Lowther; and Edward III’s clerk, William Neville.  ese

worthies were o en pluralists on a heroic scale, and few had any personal

involvement with the liberty. Nonetheless they may serve to underscore

how far the registers of ‘society’ and ‘community’ had been transformed.

So it was that Tynedale and its community (broadly construed) came more

 rmly within the ambit of English kingship and the wider polity. At no

period in the liberty’s past had identities de ned themselves exclusively

in terms of local loyalties and attachments; but from 1296 the overlapping

ties and associations represented more than just a change of format and

orientation.  ey were more intensive, more extensive in their geographi-

cal range, and more likely to undermine the cohesion of liberty society. In

Partly because of the crown’s claims to advowsons, the history concerned is a complex

one; and we cannot enter into all the details here. For Simonburn, a specially tangled case,

see A. K. B. Roberts, St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, 1348–1416 (Windsor, 1947), pp.

20–2.

CDS, iii, nos. 984–5; C 47/9/58, m. 13; DCM, Reg. Hatfield, ff. 52r, 65v. The original

deed of appropriation by Bishop Fordham is DCM, 1.3.Pont.7. Gibson, Tynemouth, ii,

Appendix, no. 129, and HN, III, ii, pp. 95–6, print the cartulary copy in DCM, Reg. II, ff.

63r–4v.

Simonburn was appropriated to St George’s by Bishop Hatfield in 1360: DCM, Reg.

Hatfield, ff. 40v–1r; HN, III, ii, pp. 101–2; and the original deed, St George’s Chapel

Archives and Chapter Library, XI.K.1.

R. Donaldson, ‘Patronage and the Church: A Study in the Social Structure of the Secular

Clergy in the Diocese of Durham (1311–1540)’ (unpublished Edinburgh University

Ph.D. thesis, 1955), ii, pp. 145, 181, 260–1. From 1342 Clixby held both Knarsdale

and Simonburn for almost twenty years. Unsurprisingly Sandal assigned custody of

Simonburn to a monk of Newminster Abbey in 1314: CPR 1313–17, p. 184. Beverley and

Lowther, however, were feoffees for Tynedale landowners: NCH, x, p. 394, n. 1; NCS,

ZSW/1/60; HN, III, i, pp. 21–2.

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particular, north Tynedale was deeply a ected by the fact that none of the

Comyns’ successors developed a special relationship with the liberty: for

example, the Talbots had leased out all their local property by 1355; the

Strathbogies had similarly disposed of the bulk of theirs by 1362; and then,

by the mid- 1370s, the Talbots had sold up to John Bromwich, whose links

with Tynedale continued to be purely formal.

At lower levels, an eloquent

case is that of Andrew Tyndale, a cadet of the Tyndales of Kirkhaugh. He

was appointed county crier for Kent in 1355, rose to become one of Edward

III’s serjeants- at- arms, and remained an exile from the North until his

death ‘in parts far distant from Newcastle’ in 1378.

As for the Essex- based

Swinburnes, the course of their disengagement from the Borders can be

followed in some detail; and though they retained the manor of Knarsdale,

their grip on it was tenuous at best.

 ere were about twenty gentry families whose outlook was more

restricted and from which the leaders of local society might be drawn. But to

understand this society’s behaviour and identi cations, fuller account must

be taken of Tynedale’s experiences and setting. Part of the story will help

to clarify the nature of the liberty’s relations with the ‘state’ and how far,

and why, it maintained a separate institutional identity. But most crucial,

especially from the gentry’s viewpoint, were the changing character of

lordship and Tynedale’s problems within a marchland at war – two closely

linked themes.  e good stewardship of the Scots kings had given unity

and coherence to liberty society; yet a er Alexander III’s death the ‘system’

broke down. For all the necessary quali cations, Tynedale was transformed

from a Scottish- ruled appendage into an outpost on the margins of English

power. By the same token, good rule, justice and protection played much

more limited roles in the liberty; nor were secure bases laid for a cohesive

local social order and community.

 us fourteenth- century Tynedale might  nd itself, and o en was, rel-

egated to the status of a far-  ung accessory of territorial units anchored

in England’s heartlands. From local society’s perspective, lordship was

essentially remote and impersonal; and, aside from that, the liberty’s seesaw

passage through the hands of eight di erent English owners (excluding

Notts. Archives, DD/4P/52/134; Laing Chrs, no. 49; NDD, p. 113; W. H. D. Longstaffe,

‘Local muniments’, AA, new ser., 1 (1857), p. 23; CPR 1370–4, p. 279; 1377–81, p. 391.

CPR 1354–8, p. 275; 1370–4, p. 268; CIPM, xv, no. 61.

NCS, ZSW/1/83. For the family’s withdrawals from Westmorland, Cumberland and parts

of Northumberland, see F. W. Ragg, ‘Helton, Flechan, Askham and Sandford of Askham’,

TCWAAS, new ser., 21 (1921), pp. 176–8, 180; CRO (Carlisle), D/Lons/L5/1/3/27–9,

38–9; Levens Hall, Medieval Deeds, Box A/64; The Duke of Norfolk’s Deeds at Arundel

Castle: Dacre Estates in Northern Counties, ed. H. Warne (Chichester, 2006), p. 33; NCS,

ZSW/4/26, 59; ‘Ancient deeds relating to Gunnerton’, AA, 2nd ser., 25 (1904), pp. 107–8.

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the crown) no doubt removed from the content of lordship much of its

authority and e ectiveness. Gaveston, Mauley, Harclay and Aumale were

mere ciphers;

and only Anthony Bek (1296–1307, 1308–11), John Darcy

(1328–1335), Queen Philippa (1335–69) and Edmund Langley (1373–98)

had any lasting connections with Tynedale. But all except Bek ruled at a

considerable distance. Nor was Tynedale seen as a major source of income;

and while Darcy and Langley were acquainted with the liberty, they made

only one recorded visit apiece.

Lordship on such terms was unlikely to be

masterful or reassuring. Indeed, it points to a debilitating vacuum of power

at the heart of the liberty and its government.

It will soon be seen that the position was not quite as straightforward

as these comments indicate. But, in broad outline, they are not contra-

dicted by the fact that Tynedale and its society experienced, and to a

degree invited, more active crown interference. Even in Bek’s day, the

lord’s authority was curtailed by the king’s prerogative of forfeiture and

(unlike in Durham) by his general power of pardon.

We must also

recall that Darcy’s rights of territorial lordship did not extend throughout

the liberty to include the Comyn lands; nor, largely as a consequence,

could he keep royal justice at arm’s length.

And, what is more, the

crown’s superiority was to become more formalised because of Edward

III’s concern about Border lawlessness and Scottish war- mongering.

In 1343 he assigned his own justices to Tynedale for the investigation

and punishment of truce- violations.  en in 1346, and similarly in 1359,

the warden- conservators in the East March were given authority over

Tynedale, along with Durham, Norhamshire and Hexhamshire, ‘for the

urgent need of our kingdom’s defence’. On both occasions, the wardens

were ordered to array the men of each liberty, to bring deserters, rebels

and truce- breakers to royal justice, and to seize fortresses harbouring

wrongdoers. Edward III conceded that these were emergency measures

and would not become precedents; but in 1362 Tynedale and other

Gaveston did not even have time to appoint his own officers: cf. E 372/166, m. 32.

For the spread of Philippa’s, and Langley’s, lands in England, see B. P. Wolffe, The Royal

Demesne in English History (London, 1971), pp. 237–9, 242–3. From 1369 the liberty

had a relatively low estimated annual value of 200 marks, ‘rather more in peacetime and

rather less in wartime’: CFR, viii, p. 33; CPR 1408–13, p. 383. Darcy returned from Ireland

to campaign in Scotland in 1333, and visited Tynedale during a lull in the fighting (CPR

1334–8, p. 331); Langley was in Wark on 20 October 1386 and back in London eight days

later (HN, II, iii, pp. 21–2; CPR 1385–9, p. 302).

The reference in N. D. Hurnard, The King’s Pardon for Homicide before ad 1307

(Oxford, 1969), p. 56, n. 6, relates to Penrith, not to Tynedale as stated; but see below,

p. 319.

Above, p. 298.

The remainder of this paragraph is based on Rot. Scot., i, pp. 644, 669–71, 839, 862.

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north- eastern liberties, though not Durham, were brought explicitly

under the wardens’ jurisdiction.  e crown was taking seriously its duty

to guarantee justice and peace for all subjects, and it was made clear

that the liberty’s o cers and residents were accountable not only to the

liberty- owner but also to the king’s ministers.

 is was indeed a di erent world from that in which Tynedale had devel-

oped as a liberty and a community before 1286; but there are nevertheless

good reasons for taking a more nuanced view. Absenteeism did not neces-

sarily prevent the liberty- owners from stressing Tynedale’s traditions as a

distinct local polity. In 1331 John Darcy asserted that only his writs ran in

the liberty; that he had cognisance of all pleas; and – even more majestically

– that he enjoyed the prerogatives of an ‘earl palatine’ (counte paleis).

Such claims ran counter to some fundamental facts, but Darcy needed

no lessons when it came to invoking Tynedale’s ‘regal rights’. Yet more

telling is the zeal with which those rights were on occasion defended by the

king’s immediate kin. In 1346 and 1359 Queen Philippa insisted on written

assurances of non- prejudice when Tynedale was included in the wardens’

commissions.

Furthermore, Philippa championed the liberty’s right to

exemption from crown taxation, as when – so Edward III’s collectors for

Northumberland informed the exchequer in 1341 – she refused to allow its

inhabitants to be taxed for   eenths and tenths on the grounds that com-

missions ‘within and without liberties’ did not apply to Tynedale, which

was a ‘royal liberty’ where ‘the king’s writ does not run’.

Edmund Langley

could argue as strongly for ‘the privileges of his liberty’; and in about 1398

he wrote sternly from London to remind its chancellor of his duties ‘for the

. . . maintenance of our franchise and of the common law within it’.

In such ways, the liberty- owners appreciated the importance of their

jurisdiction and its capacity to organise people’s lives; they likewise upheld

the liberty’s customs and rights as far as circumstances allowed. Of course,

account had ultimately to be taken of crown policies; but the liberty was

also given signi cant o cial recognition as a discrete governmental unit.

Indeed, especially as a royal appanage from 1335, it enjoyed some measure

of the king’s respect and goodwill. His sheri s and justices usually received

no (or little) encouragement to meddle with the liberty; and he might step

in to support its privileges, as when in 1388 Richard II rebuked his shire

Regis Edwardi Tertii, etc., f. 229r. Darcy was attempting, unsuccessfully, to remove from

Common Pleas a suit brought against him by Bishop Beaumont for the advowson of

Simonburn.

Rot. Scot., i, pp. 671, 839.

E 159/117, m. 162; cf. 179/158/7, m. 7d.

CCR 1385–9, p. 411; Hexham Priory, i, Preface, pp. clxviii–ix.

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o cials for arresting fugitive felons inside Tynedale.

Similarly the crown

was in general reluctant to intervene unless regional security was at stake:

in 1343, for example, Edward III had initially referred complaints about

the men of Tynedale to Philippa and her council.

And even the threat

posed by the warden- conservators to the liberty’s independence was more

apparent than real.  eir judicial authority was geared to tackling cross-

Border brigandage according to the laws of the Marches. It was therefore

meant to supplement rather than to reduce the common- law jurisdiction

of the liberty court, which could not o er redress for truce- related o en-

ces.

Moreover, regard was paid to the liberty’s rights in 1362, when it was

accepted that the wardens could enter Tynedale only if its o cers refused to

deliver o enders to justice. In 1381 Tynedale was automatically deemed to

be under the wardens; but in 1386 essential truce- keeping duties were allo-

cated by Richard II’s writ to the baili , albeit as if he were a crown agent.

Likewise other evidence broadly con rms that the wardens were obliged

to work with and through the liberty’s administration.

 us Tynedale’s

status as a ‘royal liberty’ continued to entail signi cant local autonomy. In

fact, if the apparatus of the ‘war- state’ was becoming more visible, such pro-

vision as the crown made for the liberty to manage its own a airs arguably

served to reinforce its distinct authority and identity as a power- structure.

All told, therefore, the liberty- owners retained important rights of

control with which to coordinate local society and its loyalties. But how

e ectively in practice did they enforce their will and meet their obliga-

tions of rulership? Again, the evidence is not without its paradoxes.  e

voluminous records of the crown’s courts are mainly unpublished for the

fourteenth century; but enough sampling has been undertaken to warn

against supposing that routine Tynedale pleas were withdrawn from the

liberty’s jurisdiction in any systematic way. Indeed, despite the dubious

nature of John Darcy’s power in key respects, he seems to have o ered ade-

quate legal remedies to most local complainants.

Other sources indicate

The crown’s rights of extradition were, however, affirmed; while in 1399 Richard II

appointed a commission to investigate a homicide in Tynedale, and it tried the accused in

Corbridge: CCR 1385–9, pp. 410–11; CIMisc., vi, no. 408.

CPR 1343–5, p. 67; Northern Pets, no. 67.

Cf. Neville, Violence, pp. 59–60, 84–6.

Rot. Scot., i, p. 862; ii, pp. 41, 84.

Cf. ibid., i, pp. 670, 839, for the bailiff’s powers of arrest in 1346 and 1359. Relatedly see

CDS, v, no. 816; Rot. Scot., i, pp. 875–6: royal writs to the bailiff prohibiting illicit trade

with Scots (1353) and raids on Annandale (1363).

Of the local gentry, only Gerard Widdrington brought a Tynedale suit in Common Pleas

during the first three years of Darcy’s lordship (1328–31): CP 40/283, m. 388; cf. A. J.

Lilburn, ‘Northumberland cases from the De Banco Rolls 1–5 Edward III’, unpublished

typescript, NCS, SANT/TRA/2/5.

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that, at least in 1347–8, the liberty court kept to a schedule of three- weekly

meetings on Mondays, thus bringing people together on a regular basis

for justice and social regulation.

Queen Philippa appointed experienced

men as justices, including Roger Blakiston, one of her serjeants- at- law, and

Richard Ravenser, her receiver- general.

No doubt writs for local litigation

had still to be obtained from the queen’s household chancellor; but Edmund

Langley made such writs more accessible by ensuring that the liberty had

its own chancellor and keeper of the seal.

In addition, Philippa’s success

in defending Tynedale’s  scal independence is exempli ed by Edward

III’s concession of 1355 exempting the liberty (and Hexhamshire) from

the wool tax of 1347; and in 1358 the government admitted that no parlia-

mentary taxes had been raised there since 1327. Similarly, though Langley

was required to appoint collectors of the 1379 poll tax, no payments

are recorded; and it was apparently not until 1436 that the crown again

attempted to levy taxation in Tynedale.

On this view, it seems that lordship could demonstrate its power and

underwrite the liberty’s importance as a unifying force. In particular,

freedom from national taxes was presumably prized by local people: a er

all, most of Tynedale’s residents appear to have opposed the ninth of 1340–

It is unknown if resistance in this case involved Philippa; but we can

assume some degree of solidarity between the queen and local society based

on a shared commitment to the liberty’s privileges. Furthermore, notions

of ‘community’ may also have acquired a certain reality at those junctures,

rare though they seem to have been, when the demands of lordship obliged

people to negotiate collectively and levy common purses.  us in 1356 a

subsidy was granted to Philippa by ‘the community of the liberty’; in 1364

a common  ne of £200 was made by ‘the community’ with the liberty’s

justices.

Nonetheless a fuller assessment leaves no room for doubt that beneath

the liberty- owners’ assertions and actual powers lay awkward realities

that gravely undermined the basic principles on which Tynedale’s gov-

ernmental e ciency and socio- political integrity had been founded. Every

DCM, Misc. Ch. 5254; HN, II, iii, pp. 59–60; NDD, pp. 112–13.

NDD, p. 112; SC 6/952/11; with John Rylands Library, Latin MS 236, f. 8r (for Blakiston,

a prominent Durham lawyer and royal justice, as Philippa’s serjeant- at- law).

Below, p. 339.

CFR, vi, p. 431; CCR 1354–60, p. 457; The Poll Taxes of 1377, 1379 and 1381, ed. C. C.

Fenwick (Oxford, 1998–2005), i, p. xxii. Admittedly the poll tax records are incomplete for

Northumberland; but Tynedale does not appear in the detailed assessments for the 1377

tax: ibid., ii, pp. 256–71; iii, pp. 545–50. For 1436, see CFR, xvi, p. 262.

Below, p. 330.

CCR 1354–60, p. 281; SC 6/1092/3.

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TYNEDALE: A COMMUNITY IN TRANSITION

315

allowance made, the provision of justice did not run as it had operated

under Alexander III; nor in fact could it have done so, because the general

eyre’s suspension in 1294 removed from the liberty a vital source of com-

munal discipline and cohesion. Yet little suggests that serious e orts were

made to  ll the gap. We hear of justices of assize; but justices of oyer

and terminer, and of the peace, do not  gure among the liberty’s regular

quota of o cers. People still had high expectations of its legal system;

but paradoxically this becomes clear since it was not a system they could

necessarily rely on.  ere are strong hints that Bishop Bek, whose grip

on Tynedale was tighter than the norm, dispensed justice chie y in his

own interests; indeed, he used his ‘regal jurisdiction’ to block attempts

to secure local remedies against him for lost lands or rents.

Edmund

Langley’s high-  own words of around 1398 about the ‘maintenance of

our franchise’ came in response to a bill from  omas Claxton complain-

ing that the baili had unjustly evicted him from Kirkhaugh, and that the

chancellor had denied him redress by refusing to issue writs and assign

justices. Nor could Langley impose his authority and give Claxton jus-

tice.

Also revealing are the liberty’s fullest surviving fourteenth- century

account rolls, for 1362–73, which mention only three sittings by justices in

Tynedale, in 1361, 1364 and 1366, and show that the baili answered for

the goods of merely four felons.

100

 is represents a major contrast with

Durham, where assizes could be held several times a year and gaol deliver-

ies every two or three weeks.

101

Furthermore, for all that local society was

insulated from some forms of royal interference, individual gentry (as will

shortly be underlined) could not count on the liberty- owner’s lordship to

uphold justice by protecting their landed rights against the crown. Edward

III’s law- enforcement programme also demonstrated the de ciencies of

that lordship. Not only did they justify an extension of the king’s author-

ity over Tynedale; the necessity for such con rmed that it was not in the

liberty- owner’s power to maintain social peace. Queen Philippa acknowl-

edged as much in 1357 when, waiving her jurisdiction, she harnessed

crown support in the form of a general oyer- and- terminer commission

to deal with crime throughout her northern lordships and liberties.

102

even the liberty- owner might have to invoke alternative power- sources;

See in particular PROME, ii, pp. 212, 539, 547.

NCH, x, p. 258, n. 1; below, pp. 351–2.

100

SC 6/952/11, partly engrossed in E 358/17, m. 7d.

101

Cf. Storey, Langley, p. 64; DCM, 1.5.Pont.16.

102

CPR 1354–8, p. 613. Similarly in 1376 Langley secured a royal commission to discipline

felons in Tynedale, though its jurisdiction was restricted to crimes committed when the

liberty had been in Edward III’s hands (1369–73): CPR 1374–7, p. 318.

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