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Durham: History, Culture and Identity

Matthew Holford

urham was by some distance the largest of the north- eastern liberties,

even not counting its detached members of Crayke (Yorkshire) and

Bedlingtonshire, Islandshire and Norhamshire (Northumberland). Its core,

‘the bishopric of Durham between Tyne and Tees’, covered almost 1,000

square miles; and in terms of privileges, as well as of size, Durham was pre-

eminent. By the beginning of the thirteenth century, it was well established

as an area where ‘the king’s writ does not run’; by the end of that century,

the bishops claimed even more substantial privileges. They were accorded

by 1293 the exalted, if ill- defined, style of ‘earl palatine’, and thereafter the

title of ‘county palatine’ continued to be brandished.

As early as 1352, and

throughout the fifteenth century, Durham, alongside Cheshire, was under-

stood to represent the most highly privileged liberty in England.

Partly because of its importance, Durham has been by far the most

studied of the north- eastern liberties; and, since Lapsley’s pioneering work

at the beginning of the last century, it has been central to modern discus-

sions of liberties and their place in the medieval ‘state’. Study of the liberty

has also been stimulated by its extensive surviving documentation, now

largely shared between  e National Archives and the Dean and Chapter

Muniments of Durham Cathedral. Both the copious evidence and the

volume of earlier writing on the liberty make a detailed chronological

narrative at once impractical and super uous; and the four chapters on

Durham in this book therefore adopt a largely thematic approach. Naturally

they explore the same key questions as those addressed elsewhere in the

PROME, i, p. 591; D. J. Seipp, ‘An Index and Paraphrase of Printed Year Book Reports,

1268–1535’ (www.bu.edu/law/seipp/index.html, accessed 18 May 2007), 1321.034; Year

Books of the Reign of King Edward the Third: Year XVII, ed. L. O. Pike (RS, 1901), pp.

472–5. On the origin and meaning of these expressions, see J. W. Alexander, ‘The English

palatinates and Edward I’, JBS, 22 (1983), pp. 1–22; J. Scammell, ‘The origin and limita-

tions of the liberty of Durham’, EHR, 81 (1966), pp. 450–2.

CCR 1349–54, p. 461; Seipp, ‘Index’, 1440.049; 1441.073; 1452.015.

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

Map 2 The Liberty of Durham ‘between Tyne and Tees’

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DURHAM: HISTORY, CULTURE AND IDENTITY

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

present study: the liberty’s position in relation to the crown, the strength of

its institutions, the structure of lordship and society, and the impact of the

‘law- state’ and ‘war- state’. But they also attempt to do justice to the features

that distinguished Durham from the other north- eastern liberties – notably

its well- developed cultural traditions, and the prominence of what contem-

poraries called ‘the community of the liberty’.  is  rst chapter outlines the

liberty’s privileges, the structure of its landed society, and its relations with

the ‘state’; it then focuses on the historical traditions associated with the

liberty, the ‘imagined communities’ they nurtured, and how they helped the

liberty’s privileges to be maintained and developed.  e second chapter on

Durham looks in more detail at ‘the community of the liberty’, particularly

in relation to the liberty’s institutions and government; the third examines

the sources of good lordship in the liberty, and the shi ing opportunities

that law and war came to o er within and outside it; and the fourth is a

detailed study of the regime of Bishop Anthony Bek (1283–1311).  is  nal

chapter is, in part, a study of heavy lordship, that is, the development and

exploitation of the bishops’ powers over their subjects. It also reveals the

strength of local community, and the increasing reach of the crown, and

thus draws together the conclusions of the preceding chapters.

 e focus throughout is on the liberty ‘between Tyne and Tees’, which is

referred to variously as the liberty of Durham or the bishopric of Durham,

following contemporary usage.

In some ways Crayke, Bedlingtonshire,

Islandshire and Norhamshire were integral parts of this liberty, and

shared its privileges. But their geographical separation from the liberty

gave them their own distinctive histories; and this was particularly true of

Norhamshire and Islandshire, which were exposed to unique pressures by

their position on the Scottish Border.  e outlying members of the liberty

will therefore receive only incidental mention; like the lesser Yorkshire

liberties of the bishops of Durham, Allertonshire and Howdenshire, they

require independent treatment.

Because a narrative thread is not always prominent in these chapters, a brief

sketch of the liberty’s history from around 1200 to 1350 will be helpful. At

the beginning of our period, the liberty had assumed its fullest territorial

extent, essentially that of pre- 1974 County Durham; for the wapentake of

Sadberge, on the north bank of the Tees, had been acquired from the crown

The ‘bishopric’ must be distinguished from the diocese of Durham, which covered – with

some exceptions – the modern counties of Durham and Northumberland.

For Norhamshire, with Islandshire, see M. L. Holford, ‘War, lordship, and community in

the liberty of Norhamshire’, in M. Prestwich (ed.), Liberties and Identities in the Medieval

British Isles (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 77–97.

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DURHAM: HISTORY, CULTURE AND IDENTITY

by the bishop of Durham in about 1189. However, episcopal rights in this

wapentake were not fully established, and had to compete with the claims

of local magnates, notably the families of Balliol and Bruce of Barnard

Castle and Hartness respectively.  e thirteenth century, broadly speak-

ing, saw the expansion of episcopal lordship in Sadberge and in the liberty

as a whole, as the bishops’ powers as ‘lords royal’ became increasingly well

de ned and elaborated. To review some key achievements, the right to

initiate legal pleas by writs from the episcopal chancery was established,

a er challenges in the early 1200s, under bishops Richard Marsh (1217–26)

and Richard Poore (1228–37). In 1267 Henry III, acknowledging the ‘royal

rights’ that the bishops enjoyed in Durham, released to Bishop Robert

Stichill (1260–74) his claim to the manor of Greatham, forfeited by Peter

Montfort for rebellion against the king. Bishop Robert Lisle (1274–83)

obtained royal con rmation of his claim to prerogative wardship in the

liberty, and under Edward I this claim became more  rmly established,

with the recognition that the crown’s rights of prerogative wardship did

not extend ‘between Tyne and Tees’. Finally, under Bishop Anthony Bek

(1283–1311), it seems that the bishops established the right to restrict alien-

ation of lands held of them in chief, as the king did outside the liberty.

 ese developments in episcopal lordship were one of the factors leading

to the rebellion of ‘the community of the liberty’ against Bishop Bek in the

early years of the fourteenth century, which formed a pivotal period in the

liberty’s history. Edward I became involved in the dispute between bishop

and community; he took the liberty into royal hands, and con scated

the lordships of Barnard Castle and Hartness because they were held by

Scottish rebels.  e lordships were granted to royal followers, to be held of

the crown, and despite the best e orts of bishops Richard Kellawe (1311–

16), Lewis Beaumont (1317/18–33) and Richard Bury (1333–45), they

stayed only partly under the liberty’s jurisdiction. In this respect Anglo-

Scottish war dramatically heightened royal interference in the liberty. But

other e ects of war, while equally profound, were more complex. On the

one hand, service to the crown became increasingly important for the

liberty’s gentry, and this sometimes meant that the crown’s in uence in

the liberty was increased. Conversely, the crown’s demands for men and

resources from the bishopric prompted unprecedented action from ‘the

community of the liberty’, the Haliwerfolk, which was able to establish its

immunity from compulsory military service.  is ‘community’ became a

real force in the  rst half of the fourteenth century, in response not only

For these developments, see below, pp. 40, 46–52; Chapter 2, pp. 68–9; Chapter 4, pp.

145–7.

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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES

to royal demands, but to the recurrent threat of Scottish attack. It was also

‘the community’ that took action, around the 1340s, to reform the liberty’s

legal system.

By 1345 the liberty looked very di erent from its predecessor of 1200,

not only because of war, but because of legal and administrative develop-

ments. Paradoxically Durham’s governmental structures were becoming

increasingly aligned with those of the wider realm; but its privileges were

also becoming increasingly well de ned, and perhaps even more substan-

tial, and its local community remained assertive. On the one hand, the

years around 1345 saw the liberty’s legal system reformed, with the assent

of the king in Parliament, to bring it into closer alignment with the royal

courts. On the other, they saw the development of the so- called ‘palatinate

seal’ of the liberty, which was modelled on the royal great seal to emphasise

the bishop’s regalian powers; and they saw ‘the community of the liberty’,

the Haliwerfolk, refusing to act on the basis of a royal writ. Aspects of the

liberty had been transformed, and loyalties had been reshaped; but the

‘royal liberty’ remained an area where ‘the king’s writ does not run’, and a

powerful focus for identities.

It is also necessary to introduce at the outset the liberty’s aristocratic fami-

lies.

At the top of the liberty’s political society was a handful of magnate

families with substantial interests in the bishopric. In the early thirteenth

century, the greatest powers were the cross- Border families of Balliol

of Barnard Castle and Bruce of Hartness, and the families of Bulmer of

Brancepeth and Fitzmeldred of Raby. Less powerful, but still of consid-

erable importance within the liberty, were the Amundevilles, with lands

scattered around the south and west of the bishopric; the Daudres, whose

principal properties lay at Coxhoe, Croxdale, and Mordon near Sedge eld;

and the Hansards, with estates around Evenwood and Walworth.

By the end of the thirteenth century, the picture was very di erent.  e

families of Amundeville and Hansard had declined in importance: the

former remained lords of Witton- le- Wear, but had alienated Coatham

Mundeville and Stillington, while the Hansards had sold the barony of

Evenwood.  e family of Daudre ended with Walter (d. before 1260), most

of whose estates were inherited by his son- in- law Roger Lumley (d. 1279).

Below, pp. 28, 38, 42–3; Chapter 2, pp. 73, 81–95; Chapter 3, pp. 122–35; Chapter 4.

Below, pp. 43, 51–2; Chapter 2, pp. 73, 81.

The structure of landed society in the liberty (c. 1345–1437) is described in much greater

detail in C. D. Liddy, The Bishopric of Durham in the Late Middle Ages (Woodbridge,

2008), Chapter 2.

See the map in W. M. Aird, St Cuthbert and the Normans (Woodbridge, 1998), p. 210.

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DURHAM: HISTORY, CULTURE AND IDENTITY

Meanwhile the most powerful magnate in the liberty had probably become

Robert Neville (d. 1282), lord of Brancepeth and Raby, who had united

the inheritances of Bulmer and Fitzmeldred.  e Nevilles continued their

ascendancy in the fourteenth century, joined by the newly prominent fami-

lies of Hilton and Lumley: it was at Brancepeth, Raby, Hilton and Lumley

that the liberty’s most imposing castles were built or rebuilt in the later

fourteenth century.

 e families of Balliol and Bruce, which had remained

signi cant throughout the thirteenth century, forfeited their estates in the

years around 1300 as a result of Anglo- Scottish hostilities.  eir places were

taken by the Beauchamps, earls of Warwick, at Barnard Castle, and by the

Cli ords at Hartness.

 ese magnates were at the apex of local society; beneath them was a

signi cant number of gentry families associated more or less closely with

the liberty. Some sense of their changing composition over the course of

the thirteenth century is given by a near- contemporary list of ‘knights

dwelling in the liberty of Durham between Tyne and Tees’, which names

about seventy knightly families active between around 1200 and 1310.

Several of these families, like the Harpins of  ornley and the Ludworths

of Ludworth, restricted their activities largely to the bishopric. Richard

Harpin, active around 1260, was succeeded by William and Richard; their

fourteenth- century descendant was John (d. 1349). Walter Ludworth,

active in the mid- thirteenth century, had been succeeded before 1296

by Hugh Ludworth, who in turn was followed, before 1317, by Walter

Ludworth (d. c. 1348).

John Harpin and Walter Ludworth were both well

established among the liberty’s lesser gentry: John was armigerous, bearing

like his ancestors an eagle displayed; and both he and Walter were com-

missioners of array in Easington ward in 1343, alongside Simon Esh.

Esh

was from a rising family, newly prominent in the  rst half of the fourteenth

century, but like Harpin and Ludworth his interests were largely con ned

A. Emery, Greater Medieval Houses of England and Wales, 1300–1500 (Cambridge,

1996–2006), i, pp. 59–60, 107–9, 117–21, 123–36.

Balliol and Bruce: below, pp. 46–9; Chapter 3, pp. 111–17. Hilton (alias Hylton) and

Lumley: see the articles in GEC. Neville, Bulmer and Hansard: H. S. Offler, North of the

Tees (Aldershot, 1996), Chapter 13. Daudre: Aird, St Cuthbert, p. 215; Greenwell Deeds,

nos. 16, 38; DCRO, D/St/D7/119, 123. Amundeville: C. T. Clay, ‘Notes on the family of

Amundeville’, AA, 4th ser., 24 (1946), pp. 60–70.

The earliest version of the list is edited in Hatfield Survey, pp. xiv–xvi; for discussion, see

M. L. Holford, ‘“Knights of Durham at the battle of Lewes”: a reconsideration’, NH, 46

(2009), pp. 185–218. My figure excludes the magnate families discussed above.

Harpin: DURH 3/2, f. 47v; BL, MS Stowe 930, f. 129r; DCM, 2.3.Finc.14; Surtees, I,

i, p. 84. Ludworth: DURH 3/2, f. 32v; DCM, 1.2.Finc.18; BL, Additional Ch. 62689,

62693.

G&B, nos. 1194–5; RPD, iv, pp. 269–71.

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to the bishopric.

 ese were all men whose world was essentially bounded

by Tyne and Tees, although some of the liberty’s gentry families (as will be

seen more fully below) were ranging more widely a eld in the fourteenth

century.

Even at the beginning of the thirteenth century, however, the liberty’s

tenurial structure was less self- contained than, say, Tynedale’s.

First,

the wapentake of Sadberge had formerly been part of Northumberland,

and its two most important magnate families, Balliol and Bruce, held or

had held important estates in Northumberland and Yorkshire respec-

tively.

 ere were thus signi cant tenurial connections with those

counties. To give only two examples, the family of Feugeres were lords

of Castle Levington in north Yorkshire, which was held of the Bruces

in the twel h century; they were also Bruce tenants at Brierton in

Hartness. Robert Gower, who was a Bruce tenant at Faceby in Yorkshire

in the mid- thirteenth century, also had interests at Elton in Hartness.

And there were, in addition, many other connections with neighbour-

ing counties, notably but by no means exclusively at the edges of the

liberty. For example, the Spring family, with lands in Winston near

Barnard Castle, also held Lartington a few miles away in Yorkshire; the

Bassets, lords of O erton in Durham, also held property in Bebside,

Cowpen and Eachwick in Northumberland; and the Washingtons of

Washington acquired scattered estates in south Northumberland in

the thirteenth century.

Again, the families of Hadham and Yeland,

which shared the manor of Seaham, also held the serjeanty of Na erton

in Northumberland; Hugh Gubion, lord of Tudhoe around the end

of the thirteenth century, was also lord of Shilvington and Whalton

in Northumberland; and Tunstall (in Stranton) was part of the

Northumbrian barony of Bolam.

Several men named in the list of

Durham knights, in fact, had only peripheral connections with the liberty

since the bulk of their estates lay elsewhere. William Vavasour (d. 1313)

held the manor of Cock eld, which his father John had acquired by

marriage. But the family’s principal seat was at Hazelwood in Yorkshire,

M. L. Holford, ‘The Esh family: officeholding and landed society in the palatinate of

Durham in the earlier fourteenth century’, NH, 43 (2006), pp. 229–35.

Below, Chapter 3, pp. 127–35.

Below, Chapter 6, pp. 257–8.

The Bruce family had divided in c. 1140 into the separate branches of Bruce of Annandale

(which held Hartness) and Bruce of Skelton in Cleveland.

VCH, Yorks., North Riding, ii, pp. 260, 313; VCH, Durham, iii, pp. 232–3, 366.

VCH, Yorks., North Riding, i, p. 122; NCH, ix, p. 319; W. P. Hedley and G. Washington,

‘The early Washingtons of Washington’, TCWAAS, new ser., 64 (1964), pp. 108–23.

NCH, xii, pp. 272ff.; NLS, nos. 140, 164; BF, ii, pp. 1114, 1123; HN, i, p. 287.

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where William had licence to crenellate in 1290, and where he desired

to be buried.

Similarly Adam Boltby (d. 1281) held the Durham manor

of Bolam near Bishop Auckland, also acquired by marriage; but he had

more important properties not only in north Yorkshire, where his family

originated, but in Northumberland, because his father Nicholas had

married the heiress to the barony of Langley.

Naturally the liberty’s magnate families, too, o en had important inter-

ests outside the bishopric.  e Hansards had estates near Northallerton

in Yorkshire, and at South Kelsey in Lincolnshire; the Hiltons of Hilton

held, in addition to Swine in Yorkshire, Rennington and Shilbottle in

Northumberland, acquired by marriage in about 1200 and valued at 100

marks in 1289.

Brancepeth and Raby were at the heart of the Nevilles’

interests, but they also had extensive estates in Yorkshire, centred on

Sheri Hutton and Middleham. Other magnate families, conversely, had

estates in the bishopric that were of very little signi cance in comparison

to their other properties.  e Percy manor of Dalton Piercy was peripheral

to that family’s concerns.

Ralph Fitzwilliam (d. 1317) had the manor

of Coniscli e from 1306; but he also held the Cumberland barony of

Greystoke, in addition to estates in Northumberland and Yorkshire.

For all these reasons, Tyne and Tees did not neatly delimit a landed

society. Most of the liberty’s magnates, and a number of its gentry, were

accustomed to moving between di erent social and jurisdictional worlds.

 eir ties of neighbourhood could be far- ranging.  ey sued in the crown’s

courts as well as the bishop’s; they were accustomed to seeking the king

and other lords, as well as the bishop, for favour. We cannot assume that,

in consequence, the liberty was necessarily of less importance to such

men. But their possession of estates outside the bishopric could induce an

apparent indi erence to its privileges, both on the part of the crown, and

on the part of landholders themselves. Gilbert II Hansard’s con rmation

charter from King John in 1199 included his Durham estates; and when

Robert Hilton (d. c. 1310) obtained a charter of free warren from Henry III,

it extended to Hilton in Durham as well as to Rennington and Shilbottle

in Northumberland. Similarly Robert II Ogle’s charter of free warren,

obtained from Edward III in 1341, included Hurworth- on- Tees as well as

Early Yorkshire Charters, vii, ed. C. T. Clay (YASRS, Extra Series, 1949), pp. 170–1; RPD,

i, pp. 331–5.

Early Yorkshire Charters, ix, ed. C. T. Clay (YASRS, Extra Series, 1952), pp. 160–5; NDD,

pp. 36–7.

In addition to GEC, see W. H. D. Longstaffe, ‘The church of Guyzance’, AA, new ser., 3

(1859), pp. 134–45.

VCH, Durham, iii, p. 255.

GEC, v, pp. 513–16.

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