Holford Matthew, Stringer Keith. Border Liberties and Loyalties in North-East England, 1200-1400 (ENG)
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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES
316
and, without good rule, the gentry of Tynedale might well have to do the
same.
On a wider view, moreover, lordly absenteeism or even indi erence
had a major e ect on the liberty’s traditional importance for local society.
Neither militarily nor politically did lordship (as opposed to kingship) ever
signi cantly channel people’s hopes and loyalties. It needs to be stressed
that no lord of Tynedale can be found leading its men to war, even in the
liberty’s defence. ere are likewise very few signs that its lords or lady culti-
vated the support of the local gentry through membership of their personal
a nities. Philippa took into her household Andrew, John and William
Tyndale. Andrew, a valet of the queen’s chamber, collected various rewards;
and Philippa’s service was his stepping- stone to service as Edward III’s
serjeant- at- arms.
103
Otherwise we have drawn a blank.
104
Equally it appears
that hardly any of the patronage at the liberty- owners’ disposal within
Tynedale was used to strengthen local allegiances. It does not surprise that
Philippa foisted a farmer on the liberty in 1338 by leasing her demesne
for seven years, or that the man to pro t thereby was William Felton of
Edlingham near Alnwick, a soldier- administrator who had recently become
the king’s household knight.
105
Nor was it just the case that, generally speak-
ing, o ce within ‘royal liberties’ now o ered fewer openings to local gentry
than the expansion of shire governance. In fourteenth- century Tynedale
the liberty- owner barely employed such men at all. Not even a single baili
or receiver is known to have been recruited from their ranks: omas II
Swinburne, baili around 1390, was much more an Essex knight than a
local gure, as has been noted. William Felton was baili to John Darcy
in the earlier 1330s;
106
while Philippa and Langley also relied primarily on
careerists who, like the long- serving baili Alan Strother, were experienced
Northumbrian county administrators. Again, such policies were typical of
absentee lordship and only to be expected; but they nevertheless broadcast
the liberty- owner’s disregard of local sensibilities. at the coroners con-
tinued to be appointed by election (at least in 1324) probably allowed for
103
E 101/395/2/236; John Rylands Library, Latin MS 236, f. 6v; SC 6/952/11; CPR 1354–8, p.
275; 1364–7, pp. 101, 313; 1367–70, p. 342.
104
For example, no Tynedalers occur in a study of Darcy’s affinity in Ireland; and none is
known to have received a protection for Langley’s expedition to Portugal (1381–2): R.
H. R. Mortimer, ‘Lordship and Patronage: John Darcy and the Dublin Administration,
1324–47’ (unpublished Durham University M.Phil. thesis, 1990); C 76/65, passim.
105
CPR 1338–40, p. 109; SC 6/1091/3, 4; BL, MS Cotton Nero C.VIII, f. 225r. In 1337
Philippa’s receiver of Tynedale absconded to London to evade his account: E 368/110, m.
27d.
106
CIMisc., iii, no. 892. Felton also served as Edward II’s keeper of Tynedale: above,
p. 295.
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317
some local participation in governance;
107
and three identi able justices did
hold land in the liberty. None of these justices, though, belonged to an old
Tynedale family. More will later be said of the administrative personnel.
But clearly intruders took control of much of Tynedale’s government, and
in that sense opportunities for power and engagement in its a airs were
removed from local reach. e liberty- owners’ appointees, for lack of local
roots and close supervision, could also jeopardise Tynedale’s good manage-
ment and its landowners’ concerns and rights. Indeed, their failings ranged
from the incapacity or slackness of omas Swinburne to the inclination of
other o cers to prioritise private interests over both the liberty’s authority
and local expectations and requirements; and omas Claxton was just one
casualty of such shortcomings.
For all these reasons, the liberty- owners’ superiority must be seen as
deeply awed: it was, in short, unable to guarantee the old norms and values
that had been the liberty’s strengths as both a source of justice and govern-
ment and a focus of service, reward and loyalty. Nor do we have to look far
for local discontent. Only under Bishop Bek was there any potential for a
clash between the power of lordship and the rights of ‘community’; but col-
lective protest did not materialise as it did in Durham, perhaps because (so far
as can be judged) ordinary local society in Tynedale was less harshly treated.
Nonetheless some gentry did express their dissatisfaction, as when William
Ros (of Haltwhistle) and John Swinburne resorted to Edward I’s Parliaments
by private petitions stressing how Bek had refused them justice; they thereby
provide clear- cut examples of how inadequate lordship might easily erode
people’s identi cation with a liberty by forcing them to turn to the crown.
108
Similarly omas Claxton would later seek redress outside Tynedale. But
a er Bek’s time the main target was baili Strother, who from 1356 seems to
have run the liberty much as he pleased, and evidently overreached himself
at the expense of its political and governmental cohesion.
109
Viewed in these terms, then, the liberty lost much of its relevance as the
primary framework for local society and identities. e gentry might look
for alternative aristocratic leadership, as many of them indeed did, notably
in their military careers. Yet, as for regular service and lordship, there was
no obvious focus of noble authority around which gentry loyalties could
coalesce. e Swinburnes of Haughton/Capheaton adopted the arms of the
Umfravilles, lords of the barony of Prudhoe and the liberty of Redesdale.
107
CCR 1323–7, p. 240. Unfortunately none of the coroners’ names is recorded.
108
PROME, ii, pp. 474, 496, 539, 547. Bek’s rule of Tynedale is, of course, much less well
documented than his rule of Durham.
109
Below, pp. 322, 340–2, 352.
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318
But no other Tynedale landowners followed suit; nor were the Swinburnes
closely connected with the Umfraville a nity a er the mid- 1340s.
110
More
importantly, there was no sustained source of power and loyalty within
the liberty itself to ll the void le by the demise of the old Comyn inter-
est. Even the magnetic reach of the Percies must not be overstated. ey
controlled Corbridge from 1332 and Langley and Prudhoe baronies by the
1380s; Tynedale also gured on their agenda from the 1370s, but until 1399
their territorial presence there was weaker than has been thought.
111
In any
event, by the time of the Percy arrival on the Tynedale scene, the gentry
had learned the arts of self- reliance. A model case is that of William IV
Swinburne (d. 1404), who from 1384 moved between the orbits of Henry
Percy and John of Gaunt, and ‘played one lord o against another . . . to
secure his own independence of action’.
112
at such ties existed at all is not without signi cance for any assessment
of ‘liberty identity’, and we must return to this issue in due course. Yet, in
the last analysis, the gentry’s world was one where English kingship had
the greatest political in uence. Certainly the crown had unprecedented
scope to shape people’s lives and loyalties, and we have already seen some-
thing of how gentry identities were thereby rede ned: indeed, William
Heron, omas Musgrave and John Stirling have all been ranked among
Edward III’s ‘new men’.
113
As well as relying on the crown for general
career- advancement, royal servants like these might expect to pro t from
its support in Tynedale; and when the liberty was in its possession, all local
families were theoretically under the king’s special protection. So the crown
had its opportunities to act as a local good lord; yet the growth of royal
involvement with Tynedale and its internal politics rarely had bene cial
e ects.
On the one hand, crown service and reward occasionally did strengthen
the gentry’s local power and their attachment to the liberty. is is sug-
gested, in general terms, by the sturdy tower- house erected beside the
110
On Swinburne–Umfraville ties, see below, Chapter 8, pp. 386–8; E 101/15/26; 101/19/36,
m. 5; CDS, v, no. 3817.
111
J. M. W. Bean, The Estates of the Percy Family, 1416–1537 (Oxford, 1958), p. 10, corrects
the suggestion in NCH, xv, p. 247, that the Percies controlled the Talbot moiety of the
Comyn inheritance from c. 1373, by showing that it remained beyond their grasp until
1399. Moreover, while Henry Percy had bought from Edward III the marriages of the
Strathbogie co- heirs in 1373, and married them to his younger sons Thomas and Ralph
by 1377, this did not lead to a strong or continuous Percy lordship in Tynedale: cf. J. A.
Tuck, ‘The emergence of a northern nobility, 1250–1400’, NH, 22 (1986), p. 12.
112
Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, p. 110. In 1389 Swinburne was also retained by another of
Percy’s rivals, Thomas Mowbray: below, p. 332, n. 164.
113
J. S. Bothwell, Edward III and the English Peerage (Woodbridge, 2004), passim.
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Wall by the irlwalls in the mid- fourteenth century.
114
It is con rmed
by Edward I’s life- grant to John Swinburne of Grindon manor, and by
Edward II’s gi to John’s son, Robert, of Chirdon and Knarsdale man-
ors.
115
Both grants were made when Tynedale was in crown hands; it was
also normally at such times that rights of warren and other routine favours
were conceded on demand.
116
But other claims on the king’s benevolence
limited the local patronage in o ces, lands and bene ces available to local
men;
117
while in broader respects the crown’s lordship, and its overlord-
ship, caused signi cant complications. It was not just that in uential
tenants might seek personal advantages by requesting royal intervention
regardless of Tynedale’s privileges.
118
e main problem concerned the
liberty as a source of governance that local society could depend on and
readily identify with. A er Queen Philippa’s death in 1369, Edward III had
to be reminded in forthright terms of his duty to renew the liberty’s judicial
administration; yet no justices seem to have o ciated in Tynedale until
1376.
119
Moreover, the crown’s authority and rights could be exploited
locally, sometimes even with the liberty- owner’s apparent connivance, for
purposes that directly damaged the liberty’s good order as a local polity. e
ease with which royal pardons were secured in return for military service
tended to undermine local peace and justice, as when in 1303 Edward I
pardoned at one go seven Tynedale felons – including the captain Hugh
Walles, whose criminal record was second to none.
120
John Swinburne
obtained his charter of Grindon to the detriment of John II Halton, against
whom Swinburne was accused in 1307 of leading a small army to raze his
house in the manor.
121
e complex history of Bellister, which has already
been referred to, reveals that judgement for Edward III in 1355 overturned
judgement for Gerard Salvin in the liberty court in 1347, and that the king
swi ly granted Bellister to Queen Philippa, who may well have invoked his
aid to evict Salvin.
122
Yet the cause célèbre involved the king’s escheator, William Nes eld, who
114
A. Rushworth and R. Carlton, ‘Thirlwall castle. A gentry residence in medieval Tynedale’,
in P. Frodsham (ed.), Archaeology in Northumberland National Park (Council for British
Archaeology, 2004), pp. 272–83.
115
PROME, ii, p. 451; CPR 1301–7, p. 517; 1313–17, p. 281; NCS, ZSW/1/25; HN, III, i, p. 21;
NCH, xv, p. 277.
116
CChR, ii, p. 465; iii, pp. 84, 88, 361; but see differently CPR 1334–8, p. 550.
117
Above, pp. 295, 298, 309.
118
For a good illustration involving William Heron in 1371, see below, p. 341.
119
Below, p. 330; NCS, ZSW/4/54.
120
CPR 1301–7, pp. 173, 175, 177–9. Walles was pardoned for multiple homicides.
121
CPR 1307–13, pp. 39–40.
122
CPR 1348–50, p. 221; 1354–8, p. 327; cf. SC 6/950/15.
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320
was Philippa’s former servant and an ally of her baili , Alan Strother.
123
In
1358 Nes eld seized all the Tynedale lands of the late Adam Swinburne (d.
1318) on the grounds that he had adhered to Edward I’s Scottish enemies,
and that in Edward II’s reign he had supported the Scots and the traitor
Gilbert Middleton. ese charges, though not pure ction, gave a distinctly
one- sided view of Adam’s career. And, once more, the liberty was unable
to defend local property rights from crown authority; nor did it safeguard
men’s identity and honour, for Swinburne’s grandsons and son- in- law
were branded by association with the stigma of treachery. us William
Heron was ousted from Simonburn; Gerard Widdrington lost his prop-
erty in Haughton, Humshaugh, and Stonecro (in Newbrough); and John
Stirling was deprived of his lands in Bradley (in Henshaw), the Huntland,
and Lewisburn (in Falstone). All petitioned Edward III for remedies and
their estates were restored – though only a er they had reminded the king
of their good names, and Heron and Widdrington had agreed to pay he y
nes.
All this is another way of saying that there was no authority in or over
fourteenth- century Tynedale capable of supporting the liberty by regularly
satisfying local expectations and aspirations. But we have still to address
what lay at the heart of the problem for liberty and ‘community’: the failure
of English rulership to protect local society from the shocks of warfare. e
Tynedale evidence broadly supports the view that Scottish attacks repre-
sented not the only, or necessarily the most important, check to the socio-
economic well- being of the English Borders, and that their impact varied in
scale and duration.
124
But if any district in the fourteenth- century Marches
is to be called a ‘land of war’, then Tynedale, or at least north Tynedale,
must be considered a prime candidate. Such a conclusion is indicated by the
melancholic litanies found in inquisitions post mortem of diverse dates;
125
and by the provisional valuations ‘in time of peace’ assigned to Tynedale
properties.
126
It is more amply supported by the inclusion in locally
123
For this episode, see M. C. Dixon, ‘Retrospective treason?: the Nessfield escheats’, AA, 5th
ser., 29 (2001), p. 259; CPR 1358–61, pp. 22, 140–1; CFR, vii, p. 67; and further discussion
below, pp. 340–1.
124
See most recently C. Briggs, ‘Taxation, warfare, and the early fourteenth century “crisis”
in the North: Cumberland lay subsidies, 1332–1348’, Economic History Review, 58 (2005),
pp. 639–72; B. Dodds, Peasants and Production in the Medieval North- East (Woodbridge,
2007), Chapter 3.
125
For a sample highlighting ‘waste’, ‘lack of tenants’ and ‘the poverty of the district’ – and
laying the blame squarely on the Scots – see CDS, iii, no. 886; CIPM, xviii, no. 642; NCH,
xv, p. 277.
126
Instances include CDS, iii, nos. 886, 993; CIPM, vii, no. 252; CPR 1401–5, p. 254.
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321
contracted leases of clauses of indemnity in the event of Scottish raids or
‘general war’;
127
and by the entries for Simonburn rectory in the account
rolls of St George’s, Windsor.
128
Especially during the Scottish incursions
of 1311–23 and from the mid- 1370s, Tynedale was in the front line of
major hostilities; and at other times lesser inroads were commonplace.
Local people could su er much hardship, as is vividly attested by the case of
Nicholas Swinburne. Around 1320 he petitioned to be taken into Edward
II’s household, or into an abbey near London, because the Scots had held
him to ransom and ravaged his estates, while the king’s garrison in Staward
peel had lived o them for the past six years. On this and other occasions,
Nicholas pursued conventional channels of authority, and it brought some
compensation. Edward II thereby expected Nicholas to feel ‘content’;
129
yet it is unlikely that he did. His lands in Staward, Greenlee (in Henshaw)
and Middleburn (in Wark) were under threat of distraint for debt by 1323;
he had to sell his interest in Staward to Queen Philippa in 1341; and he
surrendered the remnants of his property in 1344.
130
Border con ict thus
highlighted in stark terms the lack of e ective rule, royal or otherwise,
nourished senses of alienation and resentment, and powerfully reinforced
the divorce between lordship and local society.
at society had in sum to recognise some harsh truths. It might hope to
adapt by drawing on its bonds of mutual support; but overall this was not
an environment where the liberty itself could easily meet people’s common
concerns or make sustained claims on communal allegiances. In e ect, the
initiative passed to more independent- minded gentry, and their politi-
cal behaviour and culture had a profound e ect on the internal life of the
liberty, on the face or, rather, faces it presented to the outside world, and
on interactions and associations with that wider society. To a remarkable
degree, these men and their dependants operated within accepted, and
acceptable, norms of conduct, but they might also have to help themselves;
and all told the consequences for liberty loyalties were multiple, complex
and o en contradictory.
127
For example, CPR 1338–40, p. 109; DCM, Misc. Ch. 5255; Greenwell Deeds, no. 183; Laing
Chrs, no. 49; NCS, ZSW/1/90; 4/77; Notts. Archives, DD/4P/52/134.
128
In 1369–70 Simonburn yielded a return of some £143. But by 1377–8 the rectory was
farmed at £10 p.a., and the anticipated annual income did not rise above £20 for the rest
of the century. This protracted decline is not paralleled in the receipts from St George’s
other churches – all were in southern England – and the chief cause was no doubt exten-
sive Scottish raiding. See Roberts, St. George’s Chapel, pp. 23, 239.
129
Northumb. Pets, no. 133; cf. SC 8/343/16198. In 1319 Nicholas – the younger son of
William Swinburne, Queen Margaret of Scotland’s treasurer – was at the English queen’s
urging presented by Edward II to St John’s church, Perth: CPR 1317–21, p. 382.
130
NCS, ZSW/1/59; SC 6/1091/4; CCR 1343–6, p. 487.
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322
To itemise some of a long list of possible examples: in 1331 the sheri of
Northumberland was ordered to proclaim that Tynedalers might attend
Corbridge market and fair without fear of arrest for wrongs committed in
wartime; in 1348 nine Tynedalers were accused of adherence to the Scots;
in 1351 omas Vipont of Alston, with men from Gilsland, assaulted
the warden of the West March; in 1363 two Tynedalers, with other
Northumbrians, were implicated in the murder of John Coupland, a leader
of county society; in 1366 John irlwall the younger, with supporters from
Cumberland, raided into English- held Annandale; and in 1369 the same
John was suspected of harbouring cross- Border criminals.
131
Or take the
career of William IV Swinburne of Haughton/Capheaton. In 1381 he and
another Tynedale landowner, Robert IV Ogle, settled old scores by plun-
dering the possessions of Alan Strother; simultaneously both he and Robert
were being pursued by the March wardens for Border- related o ences.
132
In about 1390 William also allied himself with Northumbrian gentry such
as omas Gray of Heaton for an uno cial chevauchée against the Scots; in
1398 Richard II pardoned him for any misdeeds excluding treason, murder,
rape and felony; and in 1400 he was back to his old ways and holding to
ransom William Moscrop of Teviotdale, a retainer of omas Reed of
Redesdale.
133
Such a catalogue embodies the staple features and practices of a military-
frontier society: uctuating allegiances, a taste for violence and ‘private’
warfare, and assaults on enemy and neighbour alike. It is a catalogue that
could be replicated for other districts in the late- medieval Borders; but, in
Tynedale’s case, it would be hard to argue that there was not a real di er-
ence between thirteenth- and fourteenth- century patterns of discipline and
order, especially among the gentry class. On one view, we see how external
forces of political and socio- economic change might a ect a liberty by
thrusting on it habits of association, and a code of values, that could have
important implications for local perceptions of community. Yet, on any
assessment, the absence of an e ective focus of superior power, protection
and governance is fundamental; and nowhere are the consequences for
Tynedale more starkly revealed than during the Scottish resurgence a er
Bannockburn when, in omas Walsingham’s words, ‘Northumberland,
131
CPR 1330–4, p. 62; 1348–50, pp. 20–1; 1350–4, p. 202; JUST 1/661, mm. 4d–5, 7; CDS, iv,
no. 128; CIMisc., iii, no. 734.
132
KB 27/481, m. 31d; NCS, ZSW/1/101–2, 107; HN, II, iii, p. 130.
133
J. A. Tuck, ‘Richard II and the Border magnates’, NH, iii (1968), p. 31; NCS, ZSW/1/95,
110. Robert Ogle, who would also receive a royal pardon in 1398, was placed under a
bond of £1,000 in 1394 to appear before the king’s council to answer for contempts and
misprisions: C 67/30, m. 7; CCR 1392–6, p. 261.
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323
ravaged by the Scots and ruined by its own outlaws, lay between the
hammer and the anvil.’
134
From 1314 a large part of the liberty came under King Robert I’s domin-
ion; it was ruled through his own lords, successively William Soules and
Philip Mowbray; and it remained outside the ambit of English sovereignty
for a good ten years. e Scots o en enjoyed at least the covert support
of Earl omas of Lancaster; their inroads facilitated the Northumbrian
‘rising’ led by the Middleton brothers – indeed, Richard Middleton raised
his standard in Tynedale itself, where he forti ed Houxty near Wark – and
banditry promoted by disa ected English soldiery was widespread. Yet
the Scots did not have a completely free hand in west Northumberland.
e liberty was clearly the more vulnerable to a Scottish occupation
because Edmund Mauley and his leading tenant, John Comyn, had fallen
at Bannockburn, and its new English lord was the ine ectual Edward II.
But Edward did appoint his banneret Anthony Lucy ‘captain’ of the men of
Tynedale and Hexhamshire in December 1315; and Lucy, whose barony of
Langley controlled the Tyne Gap, also took command of Staward peel.
135
Nevertheless the military- political context had been transformed, and
Tynedalers structured their behaviour and delity accordingly. e Historia
Aurea, written around 1350, carefully speci es that it was ‘the people of
north Tynedale who, deserting the king of England and his obedience,
submitted themselves entirely to the king of Scotland’. To set beside this
is a petition from ‘the people of south Tynedale’ to the English Parliament
early in 1315, which stated that in July 1314 they had paid William Soules
£175 to remain outside his lordship for eight months; that he would soon
require them to submit to his authority on pain of forfeiture; and that the
men of Cumberland and Westmorland were raiding against them – pre-
sumably in retaliation for attacks from (north?) Tynedale on Gilsland and
other areas. What they wanted from Edward II was an end to the raids and,
more particularly, permission to resettle in Cumbria.
136
is was the world
of people living in a severely fractured political landscape: a liberty without
a common focus of governance and divided even in its national allegiance.
e north Tynedalers had gone their own way voluntarily or under duress.
By contrast the south Tynedalers, or their leaders, had found the corporate
134
Thomas Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ed. H. T. Riley (RS, 1863–4), i, p. 153. For the
context, see C. McNamee, The Wars of the Bruces (East Linton, 1997), Chapters 3–4; A.
King, ‘Bandits, robbers and schavaldours: war and disorder in Northumberland in the
reign of Edward II’, TCE, 9 (2003), pp. 115–29.
135
Rot. Scot., i, p. 152; Summerson, Medieval Carlisle, i, p. 224; cf. CPR 1313–17, p. 373.
136
V. H. Galbraith, ‘Extracts from the Historia Aurea and a French “Brut” (1317–47)’, EHR,
43 (1928), p. 209; PROME, iii, pp. 64–5. For raids into Cumbria, see Chron. Lanercost, p.
229.
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324
will and ability to buy immunity from Scottish rule and, no doubt, harry-
ings of the sort the liberty had experienced in 1311–12.
137
ough the spur
to collective action was the contraction of Edward II’s authority, they had
nonetheless kept faith with him as their lord and king. ey now decried the
abeyance of his protection; but they still wanted to remain within the realm,
even if that meant abandoning their lands and homes inside the liberty.
Such views, it must be stressed, cannot have owed much if anything to
Anthony Lucy: captured by the Scots at Bothwell in June 1314, he did not
return to Northumberland until January 1315 at the earliest.
138
So, at least
in south Tynedale in 1314–15, leadership came from within the liberty
itself, which likewise provided a forum for communal consultation and
a framework for revenue- raising. is is therefore a striking insight into
the role a liberty might play as a source of collective action and political
self- determination. Here, however, was a community capable of imagining
a future for itself outside Tynedale. So far had the boundaries of author-
ity and obedience been redrawn since 1286 that English regnal loyalties
now counted for more than liberty loyalties, or so the petition’s sponsors
proclaimed. It also remains the case that the liberty did not negotiate or
petition as a collectivity. In 1314 the Scots were under no obligation to
accept a truce for the entire district; yet it is possible that communal bonds,
without lordship to align them, were not strong enough for Tynedale to
present a united front and purchase a full peace. Whatever the position,
from 1314 the liberty could not be, nor was it, a unitary community.
139
Moreover, on closer inspection a highly complex jigsaw of attachments and
loyalties emerges. One aspect of it is that individuals from both parts of the
liberty could follow the Scots, adhere to omas of Lancaster, side with the
Middletons, or join opportunist gangs whose allegiance no one controlled.
Another is the apparent ease with which men moved between the roles of
English loyalist and dissident, or simply combined soldiering with brigand-
age. In short, the failures of the English king’s lordship had plural implica-
tions for identity and association, with the result that the liberty entered a
multi- centred world of relationships and alliances.
We know the names of some forty Tynedalers who fell foul of the English
authorities during these crisis years. Well represented are the ordinary folk
137
Chron. Lanercost, pp. 216–17, 219–20, with E 372/166, m. 32, which confirms that in
1311 the Scots attacked Tynedale twice, and refers to an exodus of tenants from Wark.
138
Chron. Lanercost, pp. 228–9. Also seized by the Scots in 1314 was Tynedale’s sub- bailiff:
RPD, ii, p. 1016.
139
Significantly, too, the men of Alston were not among the petitioners in 1315 – they had
combined with groups in Cumberland to buy peace in 1313–14: C. McNamee, ‘Buying
off Robert Bruce: an account of monies paid to the Scots by Cumberland communities in
1313–14’, TCWAAS, new ser., 92 (1992), p. 87.
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325
of north Tynedale: men such as the three orneyburns who by 1320 were
Philip Mowbray’s retainers, or John Elder, Adam Greenhead, Nicholas
Simonburn, the Spences of Charlton, John Stokoe of Go on and John
Younger, all of whom would also be accused of aiding the Scots. Of the
northern gentry, John II Halton was arrested in Newcastle in 1314 for his
pro- Scottish sympathies, while Adam Shitlington was later denounced for
deserting English allegiance.
140
e south Tynedalers include John Pratt of
Knarsdale, another Scottish partisan; William son of Brice irlwall, who
with comrades from Langley barony looted farms east of Hexham; and a
notable Haltwhistle contingent, four of whom embarked on a crime- spree
embracing Newcastle and north Yorkshire.
141
Especially telling are the cases of Richard irlwall (another south
Tynedaler), Adam Swinburne and Hugh Walles. irlwall served in the
garrisons of Carlisle and Warkworth in 1314–16; but he needed the earl of
Pembroke’s support in 1318 to obtain a royal pardon for all crimes except
involvement in Gilbert Middleton’s infamous attack on the cardinals.
He next appears in 1322 as a go- between in negotiations with the Scots
on behalf of Lancaster’s ally Ralph Neville; and in 1324 Neville rewarded
him with the Yorkshire manor of Snape.
142
By 1315 Adam Swinburne’s
loyalty to Edward II had secured his appointment as king’s banneret and
sheri of Northumberland, but in 1317 he was imprisoned for denouncing
Edward about the state of the Marches. It was Adam’s arrest that evidently
triggered the assault on the cardinals; and, having relied on Lancaster
to secure his release, Adam then joined the Middletons and eeced the
bishopric of Durham of protection money.
143
Unsurprisingly his son Henry
displayed his Lancastrian colours at Boroughbridge – though in 1324 he
sought to rehabilitate himself by service in Gascony with his uncle Robert I
140
CDS, iii, nos. 675, 724; CPR 1324–7, p. 245; 1358–61, pp. 140–1; CFR, iii, p. 35; DURH
3/30, m. 13; SC 1/45/210; NCH, x, p. 392, n. 2. Halton, however, fought in defence of the
March in 1316: CDS, v, no. 3094.
141
CPR 1313–17, p. 281; 1317–21, pp. 289, 359; CCR 1323–7, p. 2; CP 40/276, m. 145d;
40/286, m. 339.
142
Morris, ‘Cumberland and Westmorland military levies’, p. 317; CPR 1313–17, p. 597;
1317–21, p. 117; Foedera, II, i, p. 474; E 329/43. No subsequent Thirlwall link with Snape
is traceable; but Richard and his nephew belonged to Neville’s military retinue in 1336–7:
E 101/19/36, m. 4; 101/20/17, m. 6.
143
J. R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, 1307–1322 (Oxford, 1970), p. 206; DCM, Misc. Ch.
4581; NCH, ix, pp. 373–4. An unduly rosy view of Adam’s conduct in 1317 is taken in A.
E. Middleton, Sir Gilbert de Middleton (Newcastle, 1918), pp. 78–85. The opinion that
he was not related to the Middletons, restated in King, ‘Bandits’, p. 126, is unwarranted:
his daughter Barnaba had married Gilbert Middleton’s brother John as her first husband
(CP 40/275, m. 134d; cf. CCR 1327–30, p. 8). See also CDS, iv, no. 2, for Barnaba at the
Scottish court, presumably after John’s execution in 1318.
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