Holford Matthew, Stringer Keith. Border Liberties and Loyalties in North-East England, 1200-1400 (ENG)
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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES
386
landowning, if by no means con ned to Umfraville territory, inclined
towards the zone between the mid- Tyne valley and the Border where the
family was traditionally dominant.
Consequently Umfraville leadership might, and o en did, provide a
regional focus of some importance for people’s social interactions and
political alignments. Battles, Clennells, Harles, Lisles and Sweethopes were
witnesses of the family’s charters, together with tenants or well- wishers who
had no roots in Redesdale;
109
various Clennells, Horsleys and Normanvilles
(of Hudspeth and Bywell barony), along with some Burradons, pro ted
directly or indirectly from Umfraville favour in Scotland prior to 1296.
110
In
the absence of a good set of family deeds, however, the evidence is slanted
towards the military retinues of the earls, especially during the years 1298–
1336, when they were among the more prominent of the English crown’s
northern captains.
111
Some of their retainers came from Angus, Yorkshire
and even Hampshire, but the main recruiting ground was naturally
Northumberland itself. us at least thirteen Northumbrian knights and
forty- ve local esquires served in the earls’ companies in the period under
review. Relationships of this sort were o en transient; yet some instructive
conclusions can nevertheless be drawn.
Just over half the Northumbrians concerned were linked to the
Umfravilles by landed ties, sometimes involving the liberty itself. At the
knightly level, Redesdale was represented by John Lisle of Woodburn;
Redesdale with Prudhoe by William II Swinburne; and Redesdale with the
‘ten towns’ by omas Butticumbe, omas Clennell and Richard I Horsley.
Of the lesser gentry, John Heatherwick, John Mumby, John Normanville,
John Ravensburn, Walter Russell and omas Troughend were Redesdale
landowners; and omas Harle, William Harle and John Tosson held prop-
erty in both liberty and barony.
112
Accordingly the relationship between
Redesdale and Umfraville recruitment cannot be ignored – even if wages
were needed to guarantee service, as when in 1334 Earl Gilbert III retained
109
For example, BL, Harley Ch. 57.D.6; CChR, ii, p. 166; iii, p. 86; Hexham Priory, ii, pp.
xvi–xvii; Kelso Liber, ii, nos. 325–7, 329; NCH, xii, p. 89, n. 2; NDD, pp. 110, 210, 252.
110
Rot. Scot., i, p. 15; CDS, ii, pp. 213–14; Liber Sancte Marie de Melros (Bannatyne Club,
1837), i, nos. 338–44; D. E. R. Watt, A Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Graduates to
A.D. 1410 (Oxford, 1977), pp. 55–6.
111
The following analysis is based mainly on retinue- lists of 1319–20 and 1336 (E 101/15/26;
101/19/36, m. 5), and C 81/1719/6, 9, 11; CCW 1244–1326, pp. 351, 362–3; CDS, iii, no.
192; iv, p. 477; v, nos. 2844, 2870; Parl. Writs, II, ii, p. 406; Rot. Scot., i, p. 75; Scotland in
1298, ed. H. Gough (London, 1888), pp. 30–1; Society of Antiquaries, MS 121, f. 24v.
112
For their Redesdale tenements, see CPR 1343–5, p. 356; 1358–61, p. 492; Greenwell Deeds,
no. 35; NDD, p. 187; NLS, pp. 184–5; for the Prudhoe properties, CDS, iii, no. 835; NCH,
xii, p. 383; NLS, pp. 22, 27.
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387
William Swinburne at a fee of twenty marks to attend him with two esquires
for nine months.
113
Yet the Umfravilles also relied on tenants who had
no lands in Redesdale, including men from Coquetdale such as Richard
Berghalgh and Richard Sharperton, and men from Prudhoe barony such as
omas Bavington, Robert Buteland, omas Ingoe and John Rudchester.
Indeed, Walter Russell is the only taxpayer in Redesdale in 1336 to appear
on Earl Gilbert III’s retinue- list of that year. Of the knights, omas
Butticumbe and Richard Horsley were prominent at times; but the earls’
most loyal retainer was probably Gilbert Burradon from the ‘ten towns’,
for he became Earl Robert’s son- in- law and was Earl Gilbert’s chief lieuten-
ant in Scotland in 1336.
114
Mention might also be made of John Redesdale,
Earl Robert’s esquire in 1311: despite his name, he was a tenant of Prudhoe
barony in ockrington, and held land elsewhere in the county, including
the manor of Benridge near Morpeth.
115
Yet again, the earls were far from relying for service merely on their
own tenants; and, in particular, a signi cant element came from locali-
ties close to the family’s power- centres. Its control of the ‘ten towns’
explains the presence of two knights, Robert Glanton of Glanton and Luke
Tailboys of Hepple, in Earl Gilbert II’s retinue for the Falkirk campaign of
1298 – that is, some eight years before Tailboys secured much of the old
Morwick interest in Redesdale.
116
A more important area of support was
the Prudhoe–Hexham district, whence came the knights John Fishburn of
Great Swinburne, John II Halton of Halton and John II Vaux of Beaufront,
as well as esquires such as Robert (later Sir Robert) Raimes of Aydon,
Gilbert Vaux of ornbrough and Richard Vaux of Fallow eld.
us the gentry who served the Umfravilles in war between 1298 and
1336 comprised a very mixed group; nor likewise did such service depend
on or reinforce a distinct liberty identity. ere are hints that it was a dif-
ferent story for ordinary soldiers and their o cers: in 1301 Earl Gilbert II
campaigned in Scotland with 200 archers from the liberty; in 1303–4 he was
supported by similar numbers of archers ‘from the earl’s land in Redesdale’
led by William Harle and John Heatherwick.
117
Otherwise, though, the
main sense of unity and common loyalty was provided by membership
of the Umfraville a nity; and any connection with the liberty was simply
113
NCS, ZSW/1/58.
114
For Horsley’s Umfraville service, see also Northumb. Pets, no. 139; Society of Antiquaries,
MS 120, f. 44r. Burradon’s probable brother, John Burradon of Burradon, was constable
of Prudhoe in 1327: E 101/18/9.
115
BL, MS Cotton Nero C.VIII, f. 87v; NLS, pp. 28, 85; CIPM, iii, no. 490.
116
NDD, pp. 186–7.
117
CDS, ii, no. 1229; BL, MS Additional 8835, ff. 73v, 75v. Harle was styled ‘of Redesdale’ in
1319: Northumb. Pets, no. 161.
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388
part of a larger network of relationships structured by the lordship that the
earls exercised within their ‘country’ of mid- Northumberland as a whole.
Nor is such a conclusion contradicted by the fact that Burradon, Horsley,
Swinburne and (possibly) Clennell – collectively representing Coquetdale,
Redesdale and Prudhoe – all took arms modelled on the Umfraville
cinquefoil.
118
It is doubtless merely a truism that whenever a liberty was part and parcel
of a magnate’s wider regional power- base, it was less likely to be a de ning
focus for gentry identities. Put another way, however, the lines of Umfraville
authority did have some ability to restrict the involvements of Redesdale’s
tenants to a narrower eld than might otherwise have been the case; and,
on further re ection, this perhaps made their ties with the liberty more
relevant. First, as long as Umfraville lordship was e ective, such men were
arguably less prone to seek alternative noble patrons, and more disposed
to recognise and uphold the lord’s prerogatives and rights. Second, it is
one thing to stress that Redesdale lacked a resident gentry with the critical
mass to build a strong local community; quite another to suppose that non-
residence precluded any concern with the liberty’s a airs and its good rule.
A er all, families such as Clennell, Harle, Heron, Horsley and Swinburne
developed estate- centres and kept houses in close proximity to Redesdale, as
did the Tailboys family and its Ogle successors. Additionally a series of deeds
relating chie y to Biddlestone (c. 1280–1432) con rms that the Clennells,
Delavals, Herons and Horsleys were active in upper Coquetdale.
119
e
liberty was thus an adjacent neighbourhood in whose routines such families
might easily share; they might also value its institutions for protecting their
interests against perceived threats, including lawlessness and any overspill
onto their own patches, and generally support its authority as a governmen-
tal unit. On this view, then, there was perhaps rather more to Redesdale as
an agency of ‘community’ than appears at rst sight.
Such propositions must not be pressed too far, if only because Umfraville
lordship might well be awed as a source of authority and a liation.
But, like the Butticumbes, the Clennells, Delavals, Harles, Herons, Lisles
118
C. H. H. Blair, ‘The armorials of Northumberland: an index and ordinary to 1666’,
AA, 3rd ser., 6 (1910), pp. 187–8; cf. B. A. McAndrew, Scotland’s Historic Heraldry
(Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 99, 101.
119
A. Tempest, ‘Selby charters and deeds’, Genealogist, new ser., 7 (1891), pp. 21–3, 90–2.
By 1415 significant residences had been built in Biddlestone (Delaval?), Capheaton
(Swinburne), Farnham (Horsley), Great Swinburne (Widdrington), Hepple (Tailboys/
Ogle), Simonburn (Heron) and West Harle (Harle), all within six miles of Redesdale:
Bates, Border Holds, pp. 15, 16, 18, 19. For the descent to the Ogles of Tailboys properties
in Redesdale and elsewhere, see CIPM, xix, no. 734.
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389
and Normanvilles were jurors in inquests concerning the liberty, though
scarcely on a regular basis.
120
Evidence of some identi cation with the
liberty is also provided by various gentry deeds in which lands were speci -
cally said to be located ‘in Redesdale’.
121
True, the gentry’s local business
could be conducted outside the liberty in Chollerton (Swinburne), Farnham
(Horsley), Halton and Newton Hall (Lisle), as well as in Newcastle, which
was an important venue for the Widdringtons and some others.
122
But
there are occasional snapshots of a ‘real’ Redesdale world. e witness- list
of a deed by Robert Delaval (d. 1353) granting to John Usworth a tenement
in Woodburn is dominated by local landowners, including Henry Acton,
omas Butticumbe, Peter Graper, William Harle, William Kemsing,
John Lisle and omas Woodburn. Similarly, an early fourteenth- century
conveyance concerning Highleam is attested by Nicholas Acton, William
Kemsing, John Lisle, William II Swinburne, Robert Usworth and omas
Woodburn.
123
Both deeds probably passed in Redesdale’s court; and they
give notice that the liberty was not entirely devoid of social signi cance. Yet,
equally, these deeds may serve to underline the complexities of men’s iden-
tities and, in particular, the density of their wider ties with Northumbrian
society. For example, Peter Graper gured in the Woodburn transaction in
his capacity as a tenant in Broomhope, but he was also a Newcastle burgess
and represented the borough in Parliament; the Actons, who controlled
the shieling of Highleam, were lords of Acton near Felton; and omas
Woodburn was another landowner in Northumberland’s coastal plain, at
Seaton and Tritlington.
124
So far, then, it seems clear that the liberty played only a limited role,
socially, politically and even governmentally. Was its position further
weakened in the fourteenth century by the power of the Edwardian ‘war-
state’? e evidence is uneven and di cult; but we may start with some
comments on the general status of the jurisdiction under Earl Robert (d.
120
CDS, i, no. 1667; C 133/83/18; 135/29/8; 136/17/1; 136/48/5; 136/67/17; below, p. 408.
121
For example, BL, Egerton Ch. 567; Laing Chrs, no. 53; NCS, ZSW/1/78; HN, III, ii, p. 34;
NDD, p. 126; Tempest, ‘Selby charters’, p. 91; W. H. D. Longstaffe, ‘Local muniments’,
AA, new ser., 1 (1857), p. 30.
122
See, further to references in the previous note, NCS, ZSW/4/76; HN, III, ii, p. 15; NDD,
pp. 16, 125, 127.
123
NCH, x, p. 33, n. 6; Greenwell Deeds, no. 35 (misdated). Delaval’s war- retinue in 1319–20
included John Usworth and Thomas Woodburn: E 101/15/26.
124
CIPM, vi, no. 607; FA, iv, p. 73; CPR 1358–61, p. 117. Other Actons connected with
Redesdale were the Actons of Newcastle, whose association with Hudspeth (and
Farnham) arose from investments made by William Acton, MP for Newcastle in 1346
and 1348: NDD, p. 187; Notts. Archives, DD/4P/21/125–6.
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390
1325) and Earl Gilbert III (d. 1381). On one assessment, the Umfravilles
and their liberty were rmly subject to English royal authority and control.
e king’s escheator naturally took possession of Redesdale on the lord’s
death, surveyed his properties, and made provision for his widow. During
Gilbert’s minority (1325–31), Edward II rst entrusted the administration
of the whole Northumbrian inheritance to his household knight, Roger
Mauduit of Eshott. Mauduit went on to marry Earl Robert’s widow Eleanor;
but since he did so without royal licence, he was superseded as keeper by
Gilbert Burradon, recently sheri of Northumberland.
125
It was also by
royal command that in 1328 Gilbert Umfraville, while still a minor, was
granted livery of his inheritance, though not in its entirety. Similarly, when
dispute arose between the new earl and Roger Mauduit over Eleanor’s
dower, the matter was settled in Chancery; the escheator then made a new
extent, and in 1332 he delivered to Roger and Eleanor the ‘lands assigned
to them by king’.
126
Nor did Earl Gilbert fail to acknowledge that he needed
royal authorisation to transfer estates within the liberty.
127
In more speci c terms, the ‘war- state’s’ enlarged role in the Borders
brought the liberty’s o cers and tenants into closer contact with the
demands and agencies of crown government. Royal taxation was imposed
with unprecedented frequency. Redesdale had thus to contribute to virtu-
ally every grant of a eenth and tenth made to Edward III; and, to take
the period 1336–54, such taxes were levied there on thirteen di erent occa-
sions.
128
From the mid- fourteenth century, the liberty was also under the
military- judicial authority of the warden- conservators of the East March;
nor, in their commissions of 1346 and 1359, did Redesdale – unlike Durham,
Hexhamshire, Norhamshire and Tynedale – merit special mention in the ‘no
prejudice’ clauses.
129
is would indicate that the crown was less sensitive to
the liberty’s rights because of its lack of ‘royal’ standing; and it raises the
possibility that when, from Edward I’s reign, crown o cers were appointed
to act ‘within and without liberties’, Redesdale normally came under their
supervision. If the liberty’s baili executed action as their agent, then such
supervision was indirect, with a limited impact on local privileges and power.
Yet the liberty seems to have coped more e ectively in some spheres than it
did in others. It therefore cannot be assumed that all governmental duties
were devolved, or that the right to return of writs automatically excluded
125
NCH, xii, p. 100, with Society of Antiquaries, MS 120, f. 80v.
126
CPR 1327–30, p. 330; CIPM, vii, no. 390; CCR 1330–3, pp. 454, 552.
127
CPR 1343–5, p. 451; 1345–8, p. 364.
128
NLS, pp. 182–5; E 179/158/8–11, 15–17A, 19–21, 23–6; 179/364/17/14; CPR 1358–61, p.
348.
129
Rot. Scot., i, pp. 670, 839.
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all royal o cers. e liberty had at best little control over the king’s taxers,
who now regularly exercised their o ce within it. Its relationship with other
royal ministers is o en obscure. In 1335 the liberty’s men- at- arms, hobelars
and archers are known to have been summoned by special writ;
130
otherwise,
however, they presumably came under the authority of the king’s arrayers,
who may or may not have levied them through the baili .
Certainly, despite the vagueness of some of the evidence, it would be
wrong to underestimate how far crown authority might penetrate into
the liberty’s internal a airs and thereby shape local perceptions of power,
obedience and identity. As regards taxation, in 1336 each ‘community’
in Northumberland liable to the lay subsidy agreed on its quota with the
king’s taxers, and the sums due were apportioned and collected by local
men.
131
But Redesdale, unlike Tynemouthshire or even the minor liberty of
Embleton, was no longer recognised as a distinct scal community separate
from the county. Its taxpayers were treated as members of seven individual
townships, which were dealt with directly by the royal taxers under the
assessment of the vills of Tynedale ward. e same method was apparently
used for subsequent eenths and tenths other than in 1360;
132
and the
quotas were normally xed, so that there was limited scope for collective
negotiation even at township level. us, in these respects, royal policies
and procedures did little to promote speci c liberty- based solidarities apart
from, perhaps, some sense of ‘the community of the vill’.
133
is, then, amounted to a signi cant erosion of the liberty’s traditional
rights and its relevance for identities; and a closer look at the roles of
the king’s escheators is also instructive. In the fourteenth century it was
their standard practice to take single inquisitions post mortem into the
Northumbrian estates of the Umfravilles and their widows, and at county
venues of their choosing: Kirkwhelpington (1307) and Ovingham (1325,
1331) in Prudhoe barony, and Bywell (1329), Newcastle (1368), Morpeth
(1381, 1399), Corbridge (1387) and Alnwick (1391).
134
ere was, in
130
Ibid., p. 389.
131
Cf. The Lay Subsidy of 1334, ed. R. E. Glasscock (Oxford 1975), pp. xiv–xvi.
132
In 1360 the liberty received some recognition from the crown when it issued distinct
commissions for Tynedale ward and ‘the parts of Coquetdale and Redesdale’: CPR 1358–
61, p. 348. Otherwise, for the post- 1336 period we have had to rely on the semi- fossilised
E 179 tax documents cited above in n. 128.
133
Cf. C. Dyer, ‘Taxation and communities in late medieval England’, in R. Britnell and
J. Hatcher (eds), Progress and Problems in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1996), pp.
168–90. It can be added that fees in Redesdale came under the assessment of Coquetdale
ward for the aid of 1346: FA, iv, p. 73.
134
C 134/2/21; 134/90/12; 135/15/26; 135/29/8; 135/203/8; 136/17/1; 136/48/5; 136/67/17;
136/106/3. The corresponding calendars, largely inadequate for present purposes, are
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other words, no acknowledgement that Redesdale should be served by
its own juries, or of any right of its landowners not to be placed on juries
outside it. Such disregard for the liberty represented a departure from
thirteenth- century norms.
135
It therefore serves as another index of the
growth of crown authority at the direct cost of both local privilege and
communal cohesion: indeed, in this context, royal government drew men
from the liberty, notably lesser tenants such as the Dunns of Elsdon and
the Reeds of Otterburn, and obliged them to act collectively with persons
from Coquetdale and the Morpeth–Hexham region, whence most of the
jurors were drawn.
136
Moreover, the escheators intervened in the liberty
to uphold the crown’s political authority at the expense of local inter-
ests, as when Jedburgh Abbey was deprived of its Troughend estate as a
war- forfeit, and William U on, an adherent of Roger Mortimer, secured
custody of the property by Edward III’s grant of 1327.
137
Again, in the
1350s the escheator William Nes eld con scated the Redesdale lands
of seven men on the grounds that they or their predecessors had sup-
ported the Middleton ‘rebellion’ (1317–18). John Woodburn was able to
redeem his estate for £20; but John Usworth’s tenements in Coldtown
and Woodburn were given by Edward III to one of Nes eld’s associates,
omas Birkby, for his good service in the Scottish wars. Nes eld also
enforced the crown’s right of prerogative wardship by seizing lands in
Broomhope and Woodburn from the son of the Lincolnshire tenant- in-
chief, John Lisle.
138
But, without question, the most dramatic way in which ‘state’ interven-
tion a ected the liberty in the fourteenth century concerns the institutional
focus of its authority and identity: Harbottle castle. Captured by the Scots
in 1318, Harbottle was surrendered to English commissioners in 1319 on
condition that it should be returned or razed if no nal peace was made by a
speci ed date. It remained under the control of Edward II’s envoys, includ-
ing the king’s chancellor and Bartholomew Badlesmere, who appointed
Badlesmere’s retainer John Penrith to serve as constable in the crown’s
name and at its wages.
139
In 1321 Penrith received orders to level the castle,
and he acted on them with the assistance of the sheri of Northumberland
CIPM, v, no. 47; vi, no. 607; vii, nos. 208, 390; xii, no. 250; xv, no. 434; xvi, nos. 470, 1043;
xvii, no. 1246.
135
Cf. CDS, i, no. 1667 (1245); CIPM, iii, no. 461 (1298).
136
Thus, apart from Dunn of Elsdon, the main families represented at the inquests –
Bavington of Bavington, Berghalgh of Clennell, Lawson of Stocksfield and Whelpington
of Kirkwhelpington – were all from outside the liberty.
137
CFR, iv, p. 27; SC 8/145/7231.
138
CPR 1358–61, pp. 117, 135–6, 140–1, 357, 491–2; E 40/311–12.
139
CPR 1317–21, p. 416; E 43/395; 101/378/4, m. 21d.
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393
and the men of the county ‘within and without liberties’. e crown also
commissioned Gilbert Burradon to expedite matters, partly because of his
local connections, but mainly because he was a trusted royal servant.
140
e circumstances were altogether exceptional; yet on Edward II’s mere
nod, the royal will struck at the very core of the liberty and its structures of
lordship and governance.
us might the crown’s prerogative rights and powers easily jeopardise
the liberty’s governmental and socio- political authority; and, by such
measures, Redesdale’s relationship with the ‘war- state’ was unlike that
of the Northumbrian regalities, whose traditions of independence were
less seriously curtailed. Even Tynemouthshire, as has been indicated, was
more successful in preserving its institutional autonomy and identity.
141
Conversely, however, we must not overstate the degree of external scrutiny
and interference; for it is far from clear that, at least as a normal course,
Redesdale was conspicuously more subject to royal government than it
had been in the thirteenth century. ere is evidence that the Umfravilles
remained committed to defending their rights; nor was the crown’s attitude
to the liberty necessarily an antagonistic one: indeed, the king was prepared
in certain contexts to respect its privileges. Earl Robert, for instance, con-
tinued to challenge the competence of royal courts to hear Redesdale cases,
and when he claimed his ‘ancient franchises’ in 1311, Edward II ordered
the justices of Common Pleas to allow them ‘as used reasonably’.
142
Also,
in terms of regional governance and defence, the crown o en recognised
the need to work with the grain of Umfraville power, and this was a policy
with notable rami cations for the liberty. Arguably neither its privileges
nor local loyalties were compromised by commissions of array in and out
of liberties when Earl Gilbert III was himself a member of such commis-
sions, and thereby had the authority to ensure that separate levies were
elded under their own captains.
143
Or take the commissions appointed by
Edward III in 1343 to combat Border- related crime and truce- violations. In
the rst instance, Earl Gilbert was instructed to arrest and judge felons who
consorted with Scots and were found in Redesdale, including those com-
mitting o ences elsewhere; but it was also stipulated that if persons indicted
inside the liberty were captured outside it, they would not be extradited to
its jurisdiction. us the crown both underwrote Redesdale’s jurisdictional
140
Foedera, II, i, p. 455. Burradon was then a truce- conservator in Northumberland: CPR
1317–21, p. 586.
141
For a full discussion, see above, Chapter 5, pp. 209–11.
142
CCW 1244–1326, p. 336.
143
Instances include Rot. Scot., i, pp. 565, 588, 594–5, 662–3, 775.
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rights and emphasised their limitations. Yet Gilbert was swi ly appointed a
royal justice to try suspects arrested in the counties of Northumberland and
Cumberland, and he then became a truce- conservator in the Marches, with
powers that ultimately embraced truce- breakers sheltering in Hexhamshire,
Tynedale and Berwick.
144
Here was a form of lordship, albeit partly ad hoc
and not purely ‘franchisal’, that the liberty’s tenants and inhabitants might
respect and bene t from.
It can likewise be argued that the emergence of the March wardenships
had more or less neutral consequences, and perhaps even positive advan-
tages, for the liberty. Edward III implicitly acknowledged its distinctness
by appointing Earl Gilbert a warden- conservator for the East March on
nine occasions between 1352 and 1372.
145
Periodically, therefore, Gilbert
– though never sole warden – was well placed to protect the liberty from
any loss of jurisdiction; he might also support it through his authority as
the king’s military governor and enforcer of truces. In any case, even for
Redesdale the rule of the wardens does not t neatly into any model of
‘crown centralisation’. In 1356 the commission for the East March had to
be supplemented with a writ ordering Redesdale’s o cers to arrest wanted
men and hand them over for punishment; and the wardens, it seems,
might come into the liberty to negotiate with their Scottish counterparts,
but otherwise had no right of entry unless its o cials outed their orders.
Here, unlike in other contexts, the evidence does indeed point to a power-
sharing arrangement whereby, for the most part, the king’s agents did not
deal directly with the local population, but worked through the liberty’s
mechanisms. Edward III accepted, moreover, that its cooperation was not
guaranteed: in 1356 the liberty was formally threatened with forfeiture; in
1362 the wardens were authorised if necessary to apprehend and punish
both truce- breakers and liberty o cers. Set against this backcloth, royal
authority depended on the Umfravilles’ local jurisdiction and power; and
by no one were such realities better appreciated than by Henry Percy, who
in 1346 criticised the crown for expecting a commission of joint warden-
ship, without Earl Gilbert’s name on it, to operate e ectively.
146
On this view, the liberty did have some capacity to in uence people’s lives
and identi cations, even if in practice the results were variable. Judicially,
for example, the lord failed on occasion to prevent parties from suing or
being sued in the royal courts, so that tenants such as Butticumbe, Clennell,
144
CPR 1343–5, p. 67; Rot. Scot., i, pp. 638, 640, 644.
145
That is, in 1352, 1359, 1367, 1369, 1370, 1371 and 1372. Gilbert was also a co- warden for
the West March (1370–3).
146
CDS, v, no. 801. Other essential references are Rot. Scot., i, pp. 794 (1356), 862 (1362); ii,
pp. 85–6 (truce concluded at Billsmoor near Elsdon, 1386).
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REDESDALE
395
Horsley, Tailboys, Usworth and Woodburn were sometimes removed from
his jurisdiction.
147
Yet we cannot conclude that the king’s justice had a
serious impact on the liberty’s integrity. If anything, the evidence for legal
recourse to the crown indicates a decrease on pre- 1307 patterns: in the
period 1327–31, in fact, merely three out of some 300 Northumbrian suits
heard in Common Pleas were Redesdale actions.
148
And when cognisance
was enforced, there could be no mistaking the liberty’s relevance for regu-
lating local a airs. In 1309 Ingram Umfraville obtained powerful backing
from Edward II for prosecuting his hereditary claim to property in Elsdon
against Alexander Swinburne. Royal justice was to ‘make all the grace and
favour for him’ it could o er, and a commission was duly appointed. But
Earl Robert nevertheless had the action transferred, and both parties came
before the liberty court in 1310.
149
Similarly, when in 1342 a novel disseisin
concerning estovers in Elsdon was taken to the Northumberland assizes
by John Lisle against William II Swinburne and others, the defendants did
not appear and relied on Earl Gilbert to claim jurisdiction for the liberty.
It involved a lengthy wrangle; but a er close scrutiny of the earl’s dossier
of precedents, the crown ruled in his favour.
150
In 1354 inspection of the
record of this allowance prompted Edward III to order his assize justices
to remit a novel disseisin sued by Robert Bertram of Bothal against Walter
Cli on for lands in West Woodburn.
151
In 1357 a writ brought at the assizes
by Elizabeth Gunnerton against William Heron and Gerard Widdrington
for part of Chesterhope was returned ‘in accordance with the franchise
in the parts of Redesdale from time immemorial’.
152
Earl Gilbert likewise
pleaded his liberty at the assizes in 1355, 1359, 1362 and 1364; and he could
also exclude the jurisdiction of the central courts. In 1344 there was a suit
before Common Pleas between John Tosson and John Mumby relating to
premises in Otterburn. Both recognised the court; but Gilbert, who had
a claim to the property against Tosson, demanded the plea. is request
was also referred to the king’s council, and some ve months later it was
147
Northumb. Fines, ii, no. 161; CP 40/270, m. 49; 40/273, m. 132; 40/299, m. 210; 40/438,
m. 138.
148
As is evidenced by A. J. Lilburn, ‘Northumberland cases from the De Banco Rolls 1–5
Edward III’, unpublished typescript, NCS, SANT/TRA/2/5. Moreover, two of the three
actions were prosecuted when Redesdale was in royal custody because of Gilbert III’s
minority: CP 40/270, m. 49; 40/273, m. 132; 40/287, m. 557d.
149
CCW 1244–1326, p. 286; NCS, ZSW/1/49, 50; HN, II, i, p. 33. For this case’s antecedents,
see above, pp. 375–6.
150
JUST 1/656B; 1/1435, m. 50d.
151
JUST 1/1453, m. 3; C 260/78/16.
152
JUST 1/1453, m. 5d; Rotulorum Originalium . . . Abbreviatio, ed. H. Playford and J. Caley
(Record Commission, 1805–10), ii, p. 252.
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