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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estates in Elsdon: Ingram petitioned Edward I for the property in 1279; he

then tried to bring a mort d’ancestor in the 1293 royal eyre.

Furthermore,

between 1275 and 1285 at least  ve litigants turned to the crown for justice

against Gilbert himself.  e background to every case is not clear; but the

sources are unusually full regarding two of Gilbert’s adversaries.

When in 1281 William Umfraville, another of the earl’s cousins, received

Edward I’s permission to have in Elsdon a  ursday market and a fair in

late August, ‘with all rights and free customs’, Gilbert’s indignation knew

few bounds.

In 1279 he had claimed a market in Elsdon by prescription;

in 1293 he would likewise claim a Sunday market and a fair in mid- August.

William, moreover, had the temerity to gain rival monopolies through the

king’s authorisation. As far as Gilbert was concerned, he enjoyed the sole

right to regulate, and pro t from, commercial activity within the liberty:

thus William was strictly disciplined; and the consequences were predict-

able. It was in 1283 that William obtained a royal commission of oyer

and terminer to deal with his plea that twenty- six men had attacked his

servants in Elsdon and removed the new market’s pillory and tumbrel. In

1285 he acquired another royal commission concerning similar o ences

and assaults on traders, and on this occasion he accused Earl Gilbert of

being the prime mover. Meanwhile, in 1284, William had brought into the

Northumberland assizes a novel disseisin against Gilbert for the site of the

market- place. Gilbert reacted to this challenge by asserting the right to hear

pleas concerning himself, and cognisance was conceded to the liberty. But

two proxies were appointed ‘on the king’s part to see . . . that full justice is

done’, and on any default William was urged to return to the assizes.

 e relationship between Earl Gilbert and his sometime baili Walter

Sweethope supplies a no less bleak insight into the tensions of contempo-

rary Redesdale society.

When Adam Bing eld sued Walter in the liberty

court for property in Low Leam, Adam had not secured a royal writ, and

Walter pleaded that without the required writ the court could not proceed.

But the earl ignored this basic principle of law, and Walter lost his free-

hold. Subsequently, in 1275, Walter compiled a devastating indictment

of local injustice. Gilbert, he claimed, had imprisoned him in Harbottle

castle until he had paid 100 marks; the earl had also extorted £10 from him,

destroyed his house in Durtrees (in Otterburn) and impounded his mares

in Redesdale Forest. Unsurprisingly Walter appealed to Edward I, and had

his lands and person taken under royal protection. He went on to seek

CDS, ii, nos. 155–6; PQW, p. 600; NER, no. 628.

For this paragraph, see CChR, ii, p. 257; NAR, p. 373; PQW, p. 593; NER, no. 604; CPR

1281–92, pp. 65, 206–7; JUST 1/1265, m. 7d.

See RH, ii, p. 22; CPR 1272–81, p. 109; Northumb. PDBR, no. 265.

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redress in Common Pleas; he was also supported by an oyer- and- terminer

commission – though, as in the case of William Umfraville, it is not known

if justice was upheld.

In Earl Gilbert II’s day, therefore, the liberty’s powers were perceived to

be more tools of seigneurial coercion than an assurance of good governance

for its ‘community’. But liberty, lordship and local society were mutually

dependent; and how they interacted was crucial, not least for a jurisdiction

like Redesdale, which had notable institutional  aws as well as strengths.

Without a local consensus, it could not be a signi cant common focus for

cooperation with the lord in support of its privileges, and its problems in

sustaining a well- grounded sense of local autonomy and collectivity would

become increasingly pronounced.  e patchy sources, and their o en par-

tisan nature, may serve to distort the level of discontent within Redesdale:

a er all, the liberty was not con scated by the crown for misgovernment,

and there were no group protests based on people’s ‘liberties’. So Redesdale

avoided the fate of Tynemouthshire in 1291; still less did Earl Gilbert’s rule

provoke the kind of communal resistance experienced by Bishop Bek in

Durham. Yet in Redesdale there was no historic culture of political solidar-

ity to draw on such as the concept of the Haliwerfolk. Nor was the liberty’s

identity as a community a rmed by institutional maturity or, necessarily,

by its encounters with central authority. It was thus denied the opportu-

nity of making collective presentments by a separate return at the 1274–5

inquest: the Hundred commissioners investigated Redesdale as part of

Tynedale ward, whose jury presumably reported on the basis of testimony

taken from each vill.

In any event, the liberty cannot be seen as much of

a corporate world in the period 1266–1307. It was an era characterised less

by community cohesion than by disruption and division; it was likewise a

time when individuals were compelled to defend their interests and rights

by invoking the ‘universal jurisdiction’ of the crown.

 e preceding analysis needs to be expanded from other vantage points,

because the liberty’s in- built limitations, and Earl Gilbert II’s failings, are

not the only explanations for its weaknesses as a local polity. It must be

underscored that Redesdale was not a separate node of governance for

Umfraville power; rather, the exercise of that power tended to overlap and

blur administrative boundaries, thereby reducing the liberty’s potential to

in uence local society by providing it with a distinct institutional context

As for William Umfraville, however, it must be added that the only market and fair at

Elsdon in the later Middle Ages were those Earl Gilbert had claimed in 1293: see, for

example, C 139/83/57 (1437).

Cf. L. E. Scales, ‘The Cambridgeshire Ragman Rolls’, EHR, 113 (1998), pp. 562ff.

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

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and identity. Prudhoe barony, the main additional component until the

1380s, scarcely o ered the same measure of formal autonomy to its lord

or tenants; yet it was su ciently privileged to exclude some of the county’s

jurisdiction.

Moreover, the lord might well behave as if he ruled a uni ed

power- structure. Richard Umfraville (d. 1226) conducted Redesdale busi-

ness in his court of Kirkwhelpington, just as he used his court of Prudhoe

for Kidland a airs.

Earl Gilbert II’s assertion of his jurisdictional suprem-

acy might see him claim as baron of Prudhoe an authority hardly less

exalted than that he aspired to as lord of Redesdale. He insisted on his right

to reset felons in Prudhoe castle as well as in Harbottle, to amerce men for

non- appearance at the tourn whether they belonged to the liberty or not,

and to take distraints at will wherever he pleased.

For its purposes, the

crown itself might emphasise the interconnected character of the family’s

power- centres, as when Redesdale and Prudhoe were placed under one

royal keeper during Gilbert III Umfraville’s minority (1325–8).

In the later fourteenth century, we also  nd explicit references to ‘the

lordship of Redesdale and Coquetdale’.

Too much should not be read

into the signi cance of this formulation: for example, the Border survey

of 1604 relates that the men of the ‘ten towns’ were bound by ‘ancient

custom’ to serve in Harbottle castle; but there is no clear evidence that such

an arrangement existed under the Umfravilles, and some indication that it

did not.

Nevertheless the inhabitants of Redesdale and Coquetdale shared

the same meeting- place at Gamelspath for settling cross- Border disputes;

while the ‘Lanercost’ chronicler regarded the two dales as one ‘country’

(patria).

More revealingly, in 1284 the tenant of Ingram owed suit of court

to Harbottle, and in 1307 this obligation was attached to all the ‘ten towns’.

Other sources indicate that they were later served by their own independent

court(s), for Biddlestone paid suit to Peels in 1325, and Ingram to Alwinton

in 1353 and to Peels in 1388.

But under Earl Gilbert II the liberty and the

‘ten towns’ were evidently linked together for purposes of judicial

PQW, p. 593; NER, nos. 308, 604.

Liber S. Marie de Calchou (Bannatyne Club, 1846), ii, no. 328; Newminster Cart., p. 77.

RH, ii, pp. 21–2; CIMisc., i, no. 1079; CPR 1272–81, p. 176; 1301–7, p. 280; Northumb.

PDBR, no. 254; Northumb. Pets, no. 101; Northumb. Pleas, no. 808; cf. Hexham Priory, ii,

p. 37.

CFR, iii, p. 359; iv, p. 12.

Below, pp. 402, 406. For the forest of Redesdale and Coquetdale, see above, p. 366.

Alwinton, Northumberland: An Archaeological and Historical Study of a Border Township

(unpublished report, The Archaeological Practice Ltd, Newcastle, 2004), pp. 31–2.

G. W. S. Barrow, The Kingdom of the Scots, 2nd edn (Edinburgh, 2003), p. 127; Chron.

Lanercost, p. 292.

CIPM, ii, no. 524; v, no. 47; vi, no. 607; x, no. 113; xvi, nos. 592–3.

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REDESDALE

379

administration, though the exact implications of this coupling remain

uncertain.

 e Umfraville supremacy was thus a quasi- unitary network of lands,

lordship and governmental authority; and so far was Redesdale from being

a fully di erentiated entity that even attendance at the liberty court, and its

business, might assume a heterogeneous character.

Nor is such terminol-

ogy inappropriate when we take fuller stock of the associations and prac-

tices of the liberty’s landholders in the Umfraville era; for such an appraisal

will serve to con rm the absence of a regular ‘Redesdale community’ whose

identity, culture and behaviour were ordered by the liberty, still more of a

close- knit community separated socially and distinguished politically from

neighbouring communities.

We may begin with aspects of the relationship between Church and

society.  e Umfravilles founded the hospital of Elishaw; more notably,

they were patrons of the Augustinian priory of Holystone near Harbottle,

whose sisterhood claimed a special bond with the liberty as a whole by

calling themselves ‘the nuns of Redesdale’.

Yet this small nunnery could

not have been expected to, nor did it, play through its rituals and alliances

a powerful role in the liberty’s spiritual or secular life; and a er 1296 the

modest importance it had as a focus for local culture and identity would in

any case be compromised by the impact of Anglo- Scottish hostilities.

did o er status and a vocation to some local women. Its prioresses included

Sibyl Battle (elected in 1283) and her long- serving successor Margery

Horsley, both from families with a Redesdale/Coquetdale base; but it was

one Elizabeth Sussex who was elected in succession to Horsley in 1342.

Signi cantly, too, a list of seven nuns compiled in 1432 contains only two

local names, Alice Butticumbe and Margery Harbottle; while four of the

nuns were evidently Scots.

Furthermore, though Holystone’s possessions in Redesdale from 1312

embraced the rectories of Holystone and Corsenside, it by no means

monopolised local lay piety and patronage. Accordingly the liberty did

not provide the only basis for people’s religious associations. Rather, such

allegiances were also shaped by monasteries beyond its bounds, and the

monastic landowners in thirteenth- century Redesdale included Alnwick

Notts. Archives, DD/4P/21/121, dated at Harbottle in 1310, is a quitclaim by Earl Robert

of property in Farnham in Coquetdale.

Liber S. Marie de Dryburgh (Bannatyne Club, 1847), no. 148; Registrum Episcopatus

Glasguensis (Bannatyne and Maitland Clubs, 1843), i, no. 109.

Below, pp. 396–7.

The Heads of Religious Houses: England and Wales, ii, 1216–1377, ed. D. M. Smith and V.

C. M. London (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 572–3; NCH, xv, p. 465.

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

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Abbey, Hexham Priory and Jedburgh Abbey. Small gains were the norm;

but Kelso Abbey took a tithe of the foals from the Umfraville horse- stud in

Cottonshope Forest, an interest of su cient note to bring Redesdale within

the jurisdiction of the papal Curia in 1228.

Holystone’s limited in uence

in the liberty is further indicated by its dependence on support outside

it, so that by 1300 it had accumulated endowments both in the county of

Northumberland and in south- east Scotland, where its reach extended to

Berwick and Roxburgh.

Clearly Holystone’s cultivation of plural links

with wider society was fundamental to its fortunes, and it was increasingly

absorbed into that world.

Turn to Redesdale’s bene ced clergy and much the same picture emerges.

Few were local men and none took a leadership role in the liberty. A rep-

resentative case is supplied by the Lincolnshire cleric John Pickworth, who

from 1360 was successively rector of Alwinton in Coquetdale, Elsdon in

Redesdale and Ovingham in Prudhoe barony. Pickworth owed these livings

to his service to the Umfravilles outside Northumberland, and he probably

never set foot in the Borders.

Similarly the mastership of the hospital of

Elishaw was to pass to clerks of Lincoln diocese in the early   eenth cen-

tury.

So, overall, local society was not strongly represented among the

liberty’s ecclesiastical personnel. Nor in broader ways did the Church sig-

ni cantly re ect or reinforce the liberty’s identity, still less underpin a sense

of ‘liberty community’. Redesdale indeed was not another Durham.

As for the lay tenantry, a fair number of families have le adequate evi-

dence for analysis;

and much of this evidence suggests that the liberty had

little direct relevance for identities and solidarities in the secular domain as

well. Secure foundations for a coherent community were in fact never laid,

not least because the Umfravilles regularly used the liberty as a source of

patronage in order to ally themselves with ‘county gentry’.  us nine of the

twenty lay tenants in Redesdale listed for the 1242 scutage held their main

lands of other lords. Such tenants included prominent Northumbrians like

the Bertrams of Mitford, the Delavals of Callerton and the Morwicks of

West Chevington. By 1226, for instance, Richard Umfraville’s son- in- law,

Hugh Morwick, had taken possession of Hudspeth, the Leams and exten-

sive forest grazings, though his core concerns remained focused on the

NCH, xv, p. 462; CChR, iii, p. 86; Hexham Priory, ii, p. 111; BF, ii, p. 1122; Kelso Liber, ii,

nos. 325–31.

NCH, xv, pp. 459–62; Dryburgh Liber, no. 148.

DCM, Reg. Hatfield, ff. 43v, 51v, 68r, 76v, 77v; CIPM, xvii, nos. 1243–4.

Reg. Langley, i, no. 38; ii, no. 241.

Indispensable for the basics are NCH, iv, xii, xiv and xv, which contain the fullest, though

by no means comprehensive, commentary on the tenurial structure of the Umfravilles’

Northumbrian estates.

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REDESDALE

381

Warkworth area.

 e Morwicks, and the main Bertram line, had ceased

to be Redesdale landowners by the 1270s; but among the well- connected

county families to make their appearance in the fourteenth century were

Felton of Edlingham, Heron of Ford, Horsley of Farnham, Tailboys of

Hepple and Widdrington of Widdrington. In addition, there were those

Redesdale tenants who occupied intermediate positions between the most

in uential gentry and the (to us) semi- anonymous smallholders. Yet while

their horizons were narrower, most of them also had more important

county estates. Examples from the mid- thirteenth century include Walter

Battle of Linshiels, also a tenant of the barony of Alnwick; Peter Gunnerton

of Chesterhope, William Mickley of Little Carrick and Walter Sweethope of

Low Leam, also tenants of the baronies of Bywell and/or Prudhoe; and John

Harle of Heatherwick, also a tenant of the baronies of Morpeth, Prudhoe

and Whalton.

All told, therefore, the obvious focus for the gentry’s rela-

tionships and loyalties was the county of Northumberland rather than the

liberty itself. Indeed, just as they were bound to the county by signi cant

landed interests, so might they advance themselves through its governance,

notably in the fourteenth century when, among others, the Horsleys and

Widdringtons became sheri s and MPs.

A brief examination of one knightly family, the Lisles, may serve to

underscore the liberty’s limitations as a socio- political force. In 1241

Othuel Lisle settled on his son- in- law and daughter, Michael and Juliana

Bay eld, an estate comprising property in Troughend (in Otterburn) and

on the outskirts of Newcastle.  e deed was attested by eight Northumbrian

knights who were not associated with the liberty, and the sheri , Hugh

Bolbec, was the chief witness. In about 1274 Juliana released the same estate

to her brother, Robert Lisle of Woodburn (in Corsenside), under deeds

witnessed by the sheri , Robert Hampton, and a former sheri , Guichard

Charon.

Around 1290 Robert Lisle and his tenants in Woodburn obtained

a grant of rights of marl on Ray Fell in Prudhoe barony: the witness- list

of this deed names three Redesdale landowners, William Battle,  omas

Clennell and John Gunnerton; but all held fees outside the liberty.

 en,

in about 1298, Robert Lisle conveyed to his grandson John ‘all his lands

in Northumberland and Redesdale’ by a deed whose attestors included

Robert Balliol, the sheri , and William Halton, MP for Northumberland

BF, ii, pp. 1121–2; NCH, xii, p. 89, n. 2; CIPM, iii, no. 461.

BF, ii, pp. 1115, 1118, 1121–2; NCH, xii, pp. 168, 243; xiii, pp. 343, 419.

NDD, pp. 124–6.

NDD, p. 126. Battle was of Great Bavington, Prudhoe barony; Clennell, whose Redesdale

fee lay in Woodburn, was of Clennell in the ‘ten towns’; Gunnerton was of Gunnerton,

Bywell barony: NLS, pp. 20, 176; Northumb. Fines, ii, no. 134; NCH, iv, p. 320.

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

382

in 1295; two others were Lincolnshire men, for Lisle interests spread into

the north Midlands.

John Lisle was su ciently prominent in Umfraville

service to act with Earl Robert as a mainpernor for the earl’s mother in

1323; but he was also one of the knights and serjeants of ‘the community of

the county of Northumberland’ who presented a petition to the crown in

1346. He was indeed a natural leader of this community.  ough he styled

himself ‘of Woodburn’, his estates extended to Hawkwell, Newton Hall,

Bearl and South Gosforth in south Northumberland, as well as to Sawcli e

near Barton- upon- Humber.

He was also regularly employed on crown

commissions in Northumberland, and served as sheri in 1327.

Properly speaking, moreover, Redesdale did not have much of a ‘landed

society’ at all. As a district where high pastures and moorland predomi-

nated, it contained few manors worthy of the name.  e Horsleys of

Farnham held the manor of Quickening Cote and founded a chantry there

in 1317; the Swinburne manor of Raylees, however, had little if any arable

demesne. Chesterhope was perhaps another manorial centre; but for most

of the fourteenth century it was divided into thirds among the Grays,

Herons and Widdringtons.

Its fragmentation brought it  rmly into line

with other mesne tenancies in Redesdale, which were based mainly in and

around Elsdon, Otterburn and Woodburn, and typically comprised second-

ary units of small farmlands and large tracts of rough grazing. Indeed, of the

twenty lay tenants named in 1242, nine held their properties for pepper-

corn rents, and six for tiny fractions of a knight’s service, of which the most

common was one- twentieth of a knight. Again, of the six fees in the liberty

subject to the 1346 aid, three were speci cally described as shielings.

And,

of the sixty- seven people assessed in Redesdale for the 1336 lay subsidy,

only nine had taxable wealth set at £5 or more, while the highest taxpayer,

Walter Russell of Otterburn, had personal property valued at £10.  e vast

majority were small freeholders – and even at this level it is notable that

some were also taxed outside the liberty.

Redesdale, then, was not a major zone for the development of gentry

estates. Nor, by the same token, could it rely on in uential resident families

to assert its unity and identity as a local polity. It says much for the liberty’s

lack of social substance and political de nition that, in the later thirteenth

NDD, pp. 126–7.

CDS, iii, no. 818; C 49/7/20 (where the name Robert Lisle of Woodburn is a mistake for

John Lisle of that ilk); NDD, p. 127; CIPM, ix, no. 534.

CPR 1317–21, p. 28; FA, iv, p. 73.

BF, ii, pp. 1121–2; FA, iv, p. 73.

NLS, pp. 183–5. Of Russell’s fellow taxpayers in Otterburn, for instance, Simon Bell was

also rated in Humbleton near Wooler, Thomas Bell in Thornton near Bolam, and John

Chaytor in Scrainwood near Netherton: E 179/158/7, mm. 4, 5d–6.

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REDESDALE

383

century, the tollgate for taxing Scots was at Elishaw, twelve miles south of

the Carter.

Turning to the 1415 list of Northumbrian forti cations, we  nd

that just four of the 115 structures mentioned were located in Redesdale:

the castle of Harbottle and the tower- houses of Otterburn, Elsdon and

Troughend.

Since Harbottle and Otterburn were Umfraville strongholds,

and Elsdon belonged to the rector, only Troughend falls into the category

of a local gentry seat. It was owned by an old Redesdale family, whose most

important member,  omas Butticumbe (Butencumbe, Butecom, etc.), had

made his reputation in the 1310s by campaigning in Umfraville service in

Scotland and the Borders.

He invested forty marks in consolidating his

patrimony in Troughend in 1316, and endowed Newminster Abbey with

land in Farnham in the ‘ten towns’. He also had su cient wealth to take

knighthood, and it was as Sir  omas that he executed Earl Robert’s will.

But no other Butticumbe is recorded as a knight, and the family returned to

relative obscurity, though it remained one of the few resident houses of any

note in the liberty.

Redesdale’s governance provided a basis for local association and

involvement; yet the surviving evidence, for the thirteenth and four-

teenth centuries alike, gives little indication that the liberty’s landowners

had or actively sought opportunities to identify with it as major o ce-

holders. Exceptions must be made of John Harle,  omas Harle and

Walter Sweethope, baili s under Earl Gilbert II; William son of Ralph, the

earl’s chief forester; and Richard I Horsley, a justice in 1310.

In general,

however, the Umfravilles appear to have employed Northumbrian tenants

or clients previously unconnected with the liberty. It was no doubt di cult

to  nd power- brokers within Redesdale through whom they could assert

their authority; while, for leading non- resident gentry, county administra-

tion was o en a more obvious and important route to service and reward.

Nonetheless even the Butticumbes, who might arguably have expected to

bene t from prominent roles in liberty governance, seem to have been

denied senior o ce: they served as jurors and as tax- assessors in Elsdon;

but Roger Butticumbe, Sir  omas’s father or older brother, had to make

his career in Cumberland, as baili of the lord of Greystoke and one of

NAR, p. 373.

C. J. Bates, The Border Holds of Northumberland (London, 1891), pp. 14, 18, 19.

CCW 1244–1326, p. 327; E 101/15/26; cf. CPR 1321–4, p. 189. There is no modern form

of the surname, which was probably taken from Buttercombe near Barnstaple, close to

estates held by the Devon family of Umfraville.

Northumb. Fines, ii, no. 161; Newminster Cart., p. 159; CP 40/269, mm. 23d, 55. Alice

Butticumbe became prioress of Holystone in 1432: NCH, xv, p. 465.

RH, ii, p. 22; JUST 1/659, m. 3; NAR, p. 369; NCS, ZSW/1/50; 4/75; HN, II, i, p. 33; III, ii,

p. 13. William son of Ralph was of Monkridge (in Otterburn): Northumb. Pleas, no. 829.

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

384

Alexander III’s agents in the liberty of Penrith.

 e predominance of

‘alien’ administrators is well seen in the fact that Earl Gilbert II’s baili s

for Redesdale also numbered  omas Fishburn, William Fawns, Hugh

Hartington, Richard Rudchester, John Sturdy and John Widdrington.

Fishburn held various lands outside the liberty, including property in

Netherton in the ‘ten towns’; the others hailed from the baronies of Styford,

Prudhoe, Bywell and Whalton.

Richard Horsley’s fellow justices in

1310 were Adam Meneville of Whittonstall in Bywell barony, and Walter

Burradon of Burradon in the ‘ten towns’. Gilbert Burradon of Foxton and

Sharperton, also in Coquetdale, appears to have been Redesdale’s baili in

1335.

100

 omas Horsley, constable of Harbottle in about 1360, was not a

Horsley of Farnham: he held the manor of Longhorsley in Morpeth barony

and land in Ingram in the ‘ten towns’.

101

Finally we must mention Adam

Whalton, Richard Rowland,  omas Hexham and Hugh Westwick, who in

the 1350s or 1360s performed the baili ’s duty of claiming Redesdale pleas

from the royal courts. Whalton was a landowner in  ornton near Bolam;

Rowland came from Corbridge; and Hexham and Westwick, probably

professional lawyers, were more closely connected with the bishopric of

Durham than with Northumberland.

102

All these men shared in, and pro ted from, the authority of the liberty. To

one degree or another, their a liations and outlook were thus in uenced

by it; and they no doubt had a keen interest in upholding its rights and

powers:  omas Fishburn, for instance, supported the liberty by endors-

ing the taking of an assize without a royal writ.

103

Yet it is clearer still that

the liberty was rarely the sole focus for their service and loyalty. Of those

who were tenants in Redesdale, Walter Sweethope was also a gaol delivery

E 179/158/14, m. 2; JUST 1/132, m. 33; CDS, ii, p. 38; E 32/5, m. 35d; cf. NER, nos. 436,

440, 517. For jury service by the Butticumbes concerning Redesdale, see CDS, i, no.

1667; C 133/83/18; 136/67/17; 139/83/57; Reg. Langley, iii, no. 820; below, p. 408. Walter

Sweethope’s son William was also a bailiff of Penrith for Alexander III, as well as bailiff

for John Swinburne in Tynedale: E 32/5, m. 12; Hartshorne, p. xxxvi.

RH, ii, p. 22; JUST 1/653, m. 21; 1/659, m. 3; 1/1265, m. 7d; CP 40/86, m. 261d; NLS,

pp. 19, 32, 65, 76, 83. Fishburn’s biography is in The Earliest English Law Reports, ed. P.

A. Brand (Selden Society, 1996–), ii, pp. xxxvi–xl, though without any reference to his

Umfraville service. In the thirteenth century, the Umfravilles also employed as stewards/

bailiffs John Halton, William Mickley (a Redesdale tenant) and Simon Rudchester (NDD,

p. 244; Newminster Cart., p. 81; CRR, v, pp. 59–60); but their areas of responsibility remain

unclear.

100

NCS, ZSW/1/50; HN, II, i, p. 33; CIPM, vi, no. 607; Rot. Scot., i, p. 389.

101

NDD, p. 17 (misdated); CIPM, x, no. 550; NCH, xiv, p. 475.

102

JUST 1/1453, mm. 3, 5d; 1/1460, m. 4; 1/1464, mm. 22, 39; NDD, p. 96; NCH, x, p. 94;

Fasti Dunelm., pp. 61–2, 136.

103

Albeit at the expense of an earlier bailiff, Walter Sweethope: RH, ii, p. 22; above, p. 376.

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REDESDALE

385

justice for Hexhamshire;

104

Richard Horsley was an experienced MP for

Northumberland and its sheri in 1309–10. Nor was the liberty’s importance

for career- advancement particularly signi cant in other cases. For example,

John Widdrington was a justice for Tynemouthshire and a royal justice;

and Adam Meneville was steward of Corbridge.

105

 omas Fishburn, who

was extensively employed elsewhere in the North- East, went on to become

a serjeant in the royal courts; Walter Burradon was Edward I’s justiciar of

Galloway in 1305–6; Gilbert Burradon was sheri of Northumberland in

1323–4; and Adam Whalton was clerk of the statute merchant in Newcastle

in 1349–60.

106

Moreover, o ce- holding in Redesdale did not automati-

cally lead to continued associations with the liberty in other ways. John

Widdrington was rewarded for his service with a life- grant of land in Ingoe;

Adam Meneville also received property in Prudhoe barony.

107

In sum, the evidence hitherto discussed serves to underwrite the dangers

of assuming that a liberty necessarily played a focal role in the organisa-

tion of people’s interests and loyalties; it might be, and doubtless o en was,

only one of a number of diverse sources of allegiance and identi cation.

In the present case, in fact, the broader framework of Umfraville lord-

ship and authority seems to have been much more of a binding force than

the liberty itself. First of all, there was some signi cant correspondence

between patterns of liberty–county landholding and the overall distribution

of the lord’s estates. Gentry such as Battle, Felton, Gray, Harle, Sweethope

and Swinburne also held fees in Prudhoe barony; while, among others,

Butticumbe, Clennell, Delaval, Heron and Horsley also controlled property

in the ‘ten towns’. Such men, it is true, might still move in circles outside the

Umfraville orbit. For example, William II Swinburne and William Heron

were among those who supported the 1346 petition from the knights and

serjeants of the Northumbrian county community. Swinburne, who held

Raylees and the Prudhoe manors of Capheaton and Chollerton, was also

a substantial proprietor in Tynedale. Heron had one- third of Chesterhope

and estates in Netherton in Coquetdale; but his interests spread into

Tynedale and across the county, and the family seat at Ford was in the

far north of Northumberland.

108

Nonetheless the geography of gentry

104

NCH, iv, p. 409.

105

Above, Chapter 5, pp. 213–14; Brinkburn Cart., no. 207. William Fawns was another

royal justice (CPR 1292–1301, p. 516), and MP for Northumberland in 1300.

106

English Law Reports, ii, pp. xxxvi–xl; G. W. S. Barrow, Scotland and its Neighbours in the

Middle Ages (London, 1992), pp. 169–70; C 241/128/97; 241/164/66.

107

NDD, p. 252; DCM, Misc. Ch. 6563; NCH, xii, p. 169.

108

C 49/7/20; FA, iv, p. 73; NCH, xv, p. 443. On Heron and Swinburne, see also above,

Chapter 7, passim.

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