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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Redesdale and Tynemouthshire, whose powers of government and justice

were automatically more dependent on the structures of crown superior-

ity and administration. Nonetheless the lord of Redesdale and the prior of

Tynemouth guarded their rights as keenly as did the bishop of Durham,

the archbishop of York or the king of Scots. Nor should we underestimate

the levels of local control they achieved. In fact, when Edward I’s o cers

intervened in the a airs of Redesdale and Tynemouthshire, they generally

did so in reaction to the concerns of tenants about the unfettered nature of

the jurisdiction their lords exercised over them. And so it was that, overall,

there were clear limits to crown government in the thirteenth- century

North- East, where the king’s writ was rarely executed between Tees and

Tyne, and his o cials were usually excluded from about half the area of

modern Northumberland. It was not so very di erent in the North- West,

where Allerdale, Copeland, Penrith and other liberties con ned the sheri

of Cumberland’s bailiwick to the Carlisle plain and parts of the Eden valley;

while Yorkshire was (and long remained) such a land of liberties that the

sheri was directly in charge of only about one- third of the county.

Here

as elsewhere even Edward I ‘could not cancel the past’; or rather he ‘was a

master who was content with the acknowledgement of his mastery’.

 e fourteenth- century ‘war- state’ did pose new challenges. Its assert-

iveness was revealed in increased demands, in the proliferation of royal

commissions, and in a general strengthening (for all the necessary reser-

vations) of ‘regional integration’. In particular, whereas for most of the

thirteenth century the north- eastern liberties had seldom been a ected by

aids or lay subsidies, from the 1290s a more exacting tax- system put their

prerogatives rigorously to the test. Furthermore, the crown’s war- making

entailed demands for troops and purveyance ‘within and without liberties’.

E orts were also made to lay claim to all forfeitures of war; while strategic

imperatives could lead to the commandeering of a liberty’s key fortress,

as in the case of Harbottle in 1319. And, certainly, even the North- East’s

‘royal liberties’ found that in some respects their freedom from the king’s

mandates and exactions did become compromised. Durham’s location

outside the Marches largely removed it from the jurisdiction of the warden-

conservators; and its inhabitants were able to obtain some exemption from

military duty beyond the liberty. But the lords of Durham, Hexhamshire

and Tynedale were all ordered at various points to levy their men for service

in the king’s wars, and without doubt many such requests were willingly

PQW, pp. 112–31; A. J. Pollard, North- Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses

(Oxford, 1990), p. 145.

Select Pleas in Manorial and other Seignorial Courts, ed. F. W. Maitland (Selden Society,

1888), p. xxi; Davies, Lordship and Society, p. 267.

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CONCLUSIONS AND WIDER PERSPECTIVES

417

met. Indeed, as Archbishop Corbridge reminded the men of Hexhamshire

when Edward I instructed him to levy them in 1303, it was vital to reinforce

royal armies in defence of the Border before the Scots arrived on the lib-

erty’s doorstep.

Yet the view that ‘national security was no great respecter of franchise’,

as Rees Davies expressed it,

does require a measure of quali cation, espe-

cially as regards the ‘royal liberties’.  eir right to conduct independent

arrays and musters was o en recognised.  e March wardens were rarely

given authority over Hexhamshire and Tynedale before 1362, and it seems

that such powers as they exercised in either liberty depended on working

through its o cers. Even more striking lessons are to be drawn from war-

 nance. Whereas Lancashire remained liable to direct taxation a er its

elevations to a county palatine in 1351 and 1377, the traditional  scal inde-

pendence of much older liberties could not easily be overridden – partly

because in the  nancial sphere the needs of ‘national security’ were less

immediately pressing, and the impositions of the ‘state’ could more readily

be refused.  us the north- eastern regalities all established a broad right not

to contribute to parliamentary taxation: Durham and Tynedale had claimed

such a dispensation before 1296, and it gained increasing solidity in the

fourteenth century; more signi cantly, Hexhamshire, which appears to have

contributed to the   eenth of 1275, went on to secure a comparable exemp-

tion. In this light, the ‘war- state’ was as far from undermining these liber-

ties as it was from jeopardising the institutional independence of Cheshire

and the Welsh Marcher lordships. Indeed, its demands might serve not

only to clarify but to augment a liberty’s distinct status and privileges. And

to turn from war to law, much of the evidence suggests that Durham and

Hexhamshire retained and maintained vigorous judicial systems with no

loss of jurisdiction to the crown. Remarkably, even in fourteenth- century

Tynedale, where a rather di erent tale unfolded, there is no indication that

pleas were routinely heard outside the liberty, and its court seems to have

remained basic to its institutional authority and autonomy.

By comparison, Redesdale and Tynemouthshire continued to have less

freedom from the crown, whose military-  scal requirements inevitably

made their presence more strongly felt. Nonetheless Tynemouthshire

retained a separate identity for virtually all lay taxation, and may well

have avoided contributing to some taxes. Similarly the other demands of

the ‘war- state’ appear to have been mediated through its structures; and

– more broadly – its experiences suggest that it was not just at the level of

Hexham Priory, Preface, i, pp. lxxxvii–viii.

Davies, Lordship and Society, p. 255.

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

418

‘royal liberties’ that such demands might consolidate a liberty’s institu-

tional integrity by acknowledging its governmental role. In the legal arena,

too, Tynemouthshire had signi cant successes in claiming pleas from the

crown’s courts.  e nature of fourteenth- century Redesdale’s encoun-

ters with ‘state’ power was at once analogous and very di erent; but the

main contrast is as revealing as are the parallels.  us the absorption of

Redesdale’s townships into the county’s  scal structures has to be seen as

anomalous, especially since Tynemouthshire was but one of numerous tax-

paying liberties in England, from Cockermouth or Richmondshire to the

Isle of Wight, that were recognised as distinct tax- assessment units by the

king’s collectors.

Moreover, it seems certain that Redesdale’s exceptional

‘demotion’ in this regard resulted not from any coherent policy of crown

centralisation, but from the disruption of the liberty’s institutional mecha-

nisms and unity due to Scottish attacks.

It can thus be concluded that the expanding medieval English ‘state’,

whether its resources were mobilised for law or for war, did not have a com-

prehensive programme – let alone the ability – to eradicate local privilege.

Over- zealous crown lawyers might believe otherwise;

but when central

and local authority came into direct con ict, the rights of liberties might

o en remain intact. On Bishop Bek’s refusal to appear before Edward

I’s eyre justices to crave his ‘franchises’ in April 1293, the justices took

Durham into crown hands; yet the liberty’s claims to be treated as a self-

regulating entity, separate from the king’s local administration, were swi ly

acknowledged, and the con scation was reversed in Parliament in October

of the same year.

Similarly the con scations of Durham in 1302–3 and

1305–7 had only a limited impact.  e repercussions of Edward I’s seizure

of Barnard Castle and Hartness were more far- reaching; yet, as in the

Welsh March, such cases must not be allowed to obscure the less dramatic

but arguably more important processes of crown cooperation and accom-

modation with respect to liberties.

For fourteenth- century Durham,

For the ninth of 1340–1, for instance, Richmondshire and other liberties in the North

Riding of Yorkshire, including Allertonshire, Scarborough and Whitby, were taxed

separately: E 179/211/16. The crown also cooperated with Yorkshire liberties for raising

troops; see M. Prestwich, ‘“Tam infra libertates quam extra”: liberties and military recruit-

ment’, in Prestwich, Liberties and Identities, pp. 115–16.

Cf. F. R. H. Du Boulay, The Lordship of Canterbury (London, 1966), p. 287: ‘the archbishop

had to struggle at times, not so much for privileges from a king who was probably a politi-

cal friend . . . as for interpretations of privilege that the king’s acute ministers sought to

narrow in his interest’.

C. M. Fraser, ‘Edward I of England and the regalian franchise of Durham’, Speculum, 31

(1956), pp. 329–32.

Cf. Davies, Lordship and Society, p. 257: ‘Acquiescence and respect certainly describe the

normal attitude of the kings of England to the liberties of the March.’

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CONCLUSIONS AND WIDER PERSPECTIVES

419

explanations of this phenomenon have drawn on the concept of reciproc-

ity: the king recognised the liberty’s traditional autonomy in exchange

for the bishop’s serving royal needs, notably in regional governance and

Border defence.

Or, to alter the emphasis slightly, the crown depended

on collaboration and compromise with other power- sources for its own

‘infrastructural power’, especially towards the periphery where it could not

of itself provide e ective rule.

But in reality speci c ‘frontier’ considera-

tions take us only so far. A er all, in the fourteenth century even the minor

liberty of Havering in metropolitan Essex remained ‘free from most forms

of central government or county administrative authority’.

A better view

is that the crown’s exercise of its sovereignty over liberties was quali ed not

merely by pragmatism but by the force of law and custom. Prescription or

grant provided liberties with a lawful basis that the crown was bound to

acknowledge, just as it had a wider duty to uphold the law with due regard

to all rights.

Account had likewise to be taken of the support for liber-

ties within local society, as expressed not only whenever collective action

was applied to defend their freedoms and traditions, but in the legitimacy

accorded to them by county juries. In 1279, for example, Northumbrian

jurors from south of the Coquet had no hesitation in testifying that in

Hexhamshire, as well as in Tynedale, only ‘the lord’s writ runs’.

Nor, over

a century later, did jurors meeting in Newcastle in 1402 and 1437 have any

doubts about the legal status of Tynedale and Redesdale as alternative agen-

cies of local governance. So liberties were and remained integral parts of

the governmental landscape of north- east England: here as elsewhere there

was limited integration of central and local jurisdictions; and then as now

‘polities co- exist and overlap in territories’.

 us the north- eastern liberties were in essence powerful institutional enti-

ties; and to say so is to raise the issue of their strengths (and weaknesses) for

This argument reappears in a more nuanced form in C. D. Liddy, ‘The politics of privilege:

Thomas Hatfield and the palatinate of Durham, 1345–81’, Fourteenth Century England, 4

(2006), pp. 61–79.

The concept of ‘infrastructural power’ figures prominently in the social theory of Michael

Mann, on which see now J. A. Hall and R. Schroeder (eds), An Anatomy of Power

(Cambridge, 2006).

M. K. McIntosh, Autonomy and Community: The Royal Manor of Havering, 1200–1500

(Cambridge, 1986), p. 72.

Cf. J. V. Capua, ‘Feudal and royal justice in thirteenth- century England: the forms and

the impact of royal review’, American Journal of Legal History, 27 (1983), pp. 55–6: ‘The

. . . constitutional realities . . . required that the Crown exercise its judicial primacy within

carefully circumscribed bounds.’

NAR, p. 358.

S. Walby, ‘The myth of the nation- state: theorizing society and politics in a global era’,

Sociology, 37 (2003), p. 540.

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

420

the organisation of lordship and local society. Within the English ‘state’ as

a whole, lordship in the greater liberties – to some extent, in fact, in most

liberties – was likely to be more tightly woven than a magnate’s overall

authority in ordinary county society.  e county or gentry studies for medi-

eval England have shown that magnates had their ‘countries’ where their

main seats lay and where they hoped to master political power and relation-

ships.

 ey sought to assert their lordship over tenants and non- tenants

alike by retaining and patronage, brokering crown favour and in uencing

the outcome of lawsuits; but in practice there were many limits to magnate

ambitions in the king’s shires.  e estates of most lords were dispersed and

fragmented, and in most counties spheres of noble lordship were overlap-

ping and contested. Crown control had also to be reckoned with: it was of

course the crown that shaped local political society by appointing sheri s,

escheators and increasing numbers of commissioners; its courts played the

dominant role in county litigation, if not necessarily in settling disputes;

and it might compete with magnates by retaining local gentry.  e work-

ings of shire governance could still be swayed by a lord’s personal con-

nections, but typically such in uence was restricted. It therefore required

unusual circumstances for a single magnate to dominate county politics,

and o en such supremacies were fragile and short- lived. Indeed, patterns

of power and loyalty were in general ‘kaleidoscopic’; and there was no such

thing as ‘uniform magnate rule in the shires’.

 us counties were rarely

unitary political frameworks; and this is one reason (there are many others)

why historians have found it so di cult to agree about the notion of ‘county

communities’.

 e structures of lordship in liberties were, however, less complex and

more concentrated, as was recognised in England by the 1250s, when

‘liberty’ became the accepted term to denote ‘the basic unit of magnate

power in the localities’.

 ere were important variations from one corner

of the English ‘state’ to another. But, as in north- east England, liberty-

owners were o en ‘universal landlords’ within whole districts.  eir

authority was also institutionalised into local society, so that they might

govern what were e ectively their own counties, as in much of Yorkshire

Important syntheses of such studies include C. Given- Wilson, The English Nobility in

the Late Middle Ages (London, 1987), pp. 69–83, 160–79; G. Harriss, Shaping the Nation:

England, 1360–1461 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 187–206.

D. A. Carpenter, ‘Debate: bastard feudalism revised (II)’, Past and Present, 131 (1991), p.

184.

See, for example, R. Virgoe, East Anglian Society and the Political Community of Late

Medieval England (Norwich, 1997), pp. 96–7.

D. A. Carpenter, ‘The second century of English feudalism’, Past and Present, 168 (2000),

p. 69.

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CONCLUSIONS AND WIDER PERSPECTIVES

421

or English Ireland. Royal authority had limited scope for sustained

intervention at the expense of the lord’s monopolies and power. He had

jurisdiction not merely over his own tenants but over ‘all and singular’.

He chose o cers who elsewhere would have been crown appointees; his

authority was sometimes augmented by powers such as broad rights of

wardship or escheat and superiority over forests. Moreover, such pre-

rogatives gave him an enviable fund of renewable patronage; he could also

guarantee to local society distinctive collective freedoms and customs.

And if good lordship might prevail, so might heavy lordship.  e lord’s

rights of ‘public’ administration and justice could be used to serve ‘private’

interests by subduing the recalcitrant; and his criminal jurisdiction,

even without crown pleas, ‘buttressed the lord’s powers considerably’.

So liberties, especially the greater ones, might well attain more political

cohesion than that of many a magnate’s ‘country’ and most standard

counties.

Broadly speaking, this assessment holds good in practice for the lib-

erties we have considered, though there were di erences of degree and

di erences over time. It would be risky to argue more strongly because of

a range of issues, both general and more speci c. First, nowhere save argu-

ably in Scottish- ruled Tynedale was lordship as all- embracing as it was in

the liberties of the Welsh March.  ey had the kind of tenurial coherence

that was o en lacking in the north- eastern liberties.

 e fact that, by 1242,

about half of Redesdale’s lay tenants had alternative ties of lordship was

no doubt atypical; but nor should we forget the thirteenth- century power-

blocks consolidated in Durham by the Balliols and Bruces, whose rule

(unlike that of the Comyns in Tynedale) diluted rather than complemented

the liberty- owner’s authority. Furthermore, whereas the Welsh March

remained largely una ected by the rival attractions of the English crown’s

protection and patronage, in the North- East competition from the king’s

superior lordship was a growing problem for most liberty- owners. It could

be invoked at any stage in local disputes; the mushrooming of opportunities

for royal service in government and in war created something of a crown

interest among local gentry similar to that elsewhere in fourteenth- century

England; and the king might well intervene in a liberty’s a airs on behalf of

his servants.

For these reasons in particular, it was harder for a liberty- owner in the

CCR 1374–7, p. 428 (concerning Bishop Hatfield, 1376).

R. H. Hilton, A Medieval Society: The West Midlands at the End of the Thirteenth Century

(London, 1966), p. 229.

Cf. B. Holden, Lords of the Central Marches: English Aristocracy and Frontier Society,

1087–1265 (Oxford, 2008), Chapter 3.

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

422

North- East to act as ‘the natural focus of loyalty and service for . . . indi-

viduals and communities’.

Tynedale was, and in part remained, a special

case; and in some respects the appropriate comparison is with Cheshire,

where the earl – as an English royal prince or the king himself – did have

the means to bring the liberty and its society within ‘one main channel of

political power, patronage and judicial favour’.

But what made the di er-

ence for Tynedale was that a er Alexander III’s death nothing of this sort

was achieved in practical e ect under Edward II (as king and lord), Queen

Philippa or Edmund Langley. It is thus one thing to stress that the lord (or

lady) of a north- eastern liberty had considerable authority to command;

quite another to suppose that local landholders necessarily had, or were

likely to have, an exclusive attachment to lord or liberty. And, unsurpris-

ingly, it was a liberty’s greater gentry who tended to have the more active

involvements in wider society.

What then of the speci c styles of lordship? We have seen that these

were at least as important to a liberty’s socio- political relevance as were

its institutional forms and processes.  e ruled expected their interests

to be protected, defended and advanced; or, as Bishop Beaumont put it

in 1327, the liberty- owner had a duty ‘to serve the people and deliver

justice’.

But policy and practice o en varied from one liberty to another

and from lord to lord; and such di erences a ected local societies in highly

complex ways. Certainly the close- knit loyalty fostered in Tynedale by the

Scottish kings was exceptional, so that even in Durham the cohesive e ects

of the good lordship of successive bishops were less apparent, thanks

partly to the prominence of clergymen in their households and service. In

other respects, too, the impact of lordship brought mixed results. On the

one hand, it is evident that resident gentry normally had some access to

employment and favour under the liberty- owners; that such bene ts could

be central to men’s prospects and allegiances; and that routine liberty

governance o en provided in itself signi cant scope for local participation

and in uence. On the other hand, in no north- eastern liberty was there a

pattern of increasing ‘local control of local o ces’ comparable with that

among the gentry in the king’s shires.

 e reasons for this were varied;

but clearly the lord o en preferred to recruit o cers, and retainers, from

R. R. Davies, The Age of Conquest: Wales, 1063–1415 (Oxford, 1991), p. 394.

P. H. W. Booth, The Financial Administration of the Lordship and County of Chester,

1272–1377 (Chetham Society, 1981), p. 7.

Cf. C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401–99

(Cambridge, 1992), p. 310: ‘regions containing numbers of families of middle rank and

below . . . were likely to contain the most effective local networks’.

PROME, iv, p. 40.

Given- Wilson, English Nobility, p. 79.

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CONCLUSIONS AND WIDER PERSPECTIVES

423

beyond the jurisdiction, thereby weakening the traditional unifying force

of lordship for the liberty’s tenants, and perhaps encouraging them to seek

advancement elsewhere. Whatever the case, liberties in the North- East did

not always provide the only or even the chief routes through which the

local gentry ‘rose’.

 is is not to suggest that a liberty- owner’s ability to shape local loyalties

is to be measured solely in terms of patronage and clientage, still less that

his authority was otherwise insigni cant for a liberty’s political de nition.

But if the cohesion of local society at large depended ultimately on the lord’s

good government, such was not automatically forthcoming even in the

thirteenth century. When the liberties of Redesdale and Tynemouthshire

were  rst formalised, their lords concentrated on maximising their power

and incomes by subjecting people to their governance in novel and unwel-

come ways; and the aggrieved promptly took the royal road to justice. Nor,

of course, was aggressive rulership unknown in Durham and Tynedale, as

Bishop Bek’s regime shows. In other circumstances, however, the status

and prestige of the ‘royal liberties’ facilitated less divisive styles of lord-

ship. Since these power- structures had stronger traditions of authority,

the rights and claims of the liberty- owners were in general more readily

accepted, and there was less need for forceful assertions of their mastery.

Exceptions serving to prove the rule concern Sadberge wapentake in

Durham and Alston Moor in Tynedale, where the lords’ prerogatives were

newly established, and sometimes contested by local interests. Even in

Sadberge, though, the bishop’s courts were widely used a er its acquisition

around 1189; while, by the mid- thirteenth century, men such as John Gilet

of Egglescli e were drawn to the opportunities of episcopal service and

pro ted accordingly.

 us modes of lordship, and their consequences for local unity and

loyalties, conformed to no simple paradigm. In the last analysis, the main

successes were realised in Durham and Hexhamshire, whose lords merited

support and respect because they normally did ‘serve the people and deliver

justice’; and, what is more, they could o er leadership and continuity from

one generation to the next.  e chief failures resulted from a retreat or semi-

retreat of lordship, combined with the transformation of the Borders into

a military fault- line experiencing degrees of instability quite unparalleled

anywhere else in fourteenth- century Britain. Alexander III’s childless death

provides a sharp reminder that liberties such as Tynedale were as prey to

dynastic mishaps as were lay estates as a whole.  at was why many liberties

in English Ireland lacked resident lords by the 1330s; in the Welsh March,

too, most liberties were ultimately transmitted to lords who were absentees.

Accordingly power o en devolved to largely autonomous o cers and local

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

424

strongmen;

and much the same occurred in Tynedale, where absenteeism

likewise ensured that alternative networks of authority, service or association

became increasingly important to its tenants. By contrast the Umfravilles

lasted; but they could not, and did not, o er sustained good rule to Redesdale.

Border hostilities had placed a premium on lordship; they also highlighted

its failings, partly because power- vacuums outside the king’s counties were

less likely to be  lled by crown authority.  us Redesdale and Tynedale, and

especially Tynedale north of the Wall, assumed some of the features of Irish

liberties, which o en shaded into disputed marchlands characterised by gov-

ernmental incoherence, self- help and violence.

All told, there can indeed be

few more striking illustrations of how far the actual performance of liberties

as local polities rested on the character and context of the lord’s lordship.

 e lordship–liberty relationship was therefore crucial; and, in general, a

liberty’s political and social capital varied according to the dynamics of that

relationship. Yet lordship was not everything. In Durham and Tynedale,

Bishop Bek was heavy- handed and unwilling to redress complaints, but

local opposition took very di erent forms.  e same is true if the response

to Bek’s policies in Durham is compared with the reactions to the con-

temporary oppressions of Earl Gilbert II and the prior of Tynemouth. In

Tynedale, as in Redesdale and Tynemouthshire, people sought to protect

their rights by appealing to the crown as individuals on their own accounts.

In Durham, of course, resistance was collective, and much more e ective

for that reason. No doubt the levels of injustice and extortion were far from

identical in every case; yet there is a sense in which broadly similar styles

of lordship were interacting with contrasting cultural and socio- political

traditions and frameworks.

Such interactions, we might well conclude, were key to the relationships

between liberty, identity and ‘community’; but these relationships are

naturally hard to assess. Individual and collective identities are always

ambiguous, elastic and elusive. Paradoxically, moreover, liberties not

only assisted processes of ‘community’ but set certain limits to the scope

of such processes. We have found no close parallel to the expansion and

‘gentri cation’ of o ces that allowed shire gentry bigger says in their gov-

ernance. Furthermore, royal impositions could spur ‘county communities’

into action;

and, signi cantly, one of England’s best documented ‘liberty

For discussion, see R. Frame, English Lordship in Ireland, 1318–1361 (Oxford, 1982),

Chapter 2; Davies, Age of Conquest, Chapter 15.

See especially R. Frame, Ireland and Britain, 1170–1450 (London, 1998), Chapter 11.

A classic study is J. R. Maddicott, ‘The county community and the making of public

opinion in fourteenth- century England’, TRHS, 5th ser., 28 (1978), pp. 27–43.

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CONCLUSIONS AND WIDER PERSPECTIVES

425

communities’ in a legalistic sense is the royal appanage of Cheshire.

But,

generally speaking, a liberty’s relative insulation from royal demands meant

less need for corporate activity at the centre–locality interface than was

the case elsewhere.  is is far from saying that the king’s counties had sole

rights in political consciousness and ‘community- mindedness’ – or, we

must add, in ‘communities’ that may o en have been ‘ephemeral, speci c to

and dependent on particular contexts and activities’.

In fact, throughout

the Welsh March, ‘community’ regularly appears as the ‘essential counter-

weight to lordship’.

Equally, however, to assess how far liberties might (or

might not) have provided a strong alternative basis for identities to that of

the county or the ‘state’ involves more than just computing public expres-

sions of communitas in response to ‘top–down’ pressure. Community

awareness and values were also determined by a broader range of relation-

ships, interests and circumstances; yet this is a world that o en remains (to

us) semi- hidden.

It is therefore at least as di cult to pin down liberty identities as it is to

categorise or de ne other identities. Nor can we pretend that it has proved

to be otherwise for north- east England, and the point cannot be put too

strongly.  us we have encountered a daunting range of variables in pat-

terns of local identi cation and cohesion, partly because those patterns

could  uctuate, as they did in fourteenth- century Tynedale, thanks not only

to changes in the nature of lordship but to signi cant demographic shi s

within a liberty’s political society.  ere were likewise seemingly in nite

variations in the extent of the gentry’s internal and external involvements

and attachments; and, by such measures, our  ndings serve merely to

con rm the dangers of underestimating the complex workings of medieval

English provincial society and its ‘teeming mass’ of attitudes, commitments

and loyalties.

Some substantive issues can nevertheless be highlighted.  e  rst is that

while none of the north- eastern liberties was ever a closed social world, all

became more integrated into the broader English mainstream a er 1296,

largely though not exclusively as a result of war.  e scale of change varied

considerably, from Tynedale at one extreme to Durham at the other; but all

liberties saw an increase in the gentry’s links with adjacent county society

See, for instance, P. H. W. Booth, ‘Taxation and public order: Cheshire in 1353’, NH, 12

(1976), pp. 16–31.

V. Amit and N. Rapport, The Trouble with Community (London, 2002), p. 5. Cf. P. Coss,

The Origins of the English Gentry (Cambridge, 2003), p. 214: ‘Actual political solidarity

may have been achieved only sporadically at county level.’

Davies, Lordship and Society, p. 461.

D. Crouch, ‘From Stenton to McFarlane: models of societies of the twelfth and thirteenth

centuries’, TRHS, 6th ser., 5 (1995), p. 199.

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