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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according to another, the con rmation was prompted by demonstrations of
the saint’s power.
90
Nor were these the only occasions when Cuthbert was
presented as a vigorous defender of the liberty, its people and their rights.
e locus classicus was Symeon of Durham’s account of Ranulf, a man sent
by the Conqueror ‘to compel the people of St Cuthbert to pay tribute to
the king’, and whom the saint a icted with a crippling illness that remit-
ted only when he crossed the borders of the liberty. e story was retold in
a late- medieval life, which called on Cuthbert to protect his people from
similar exactions in the present: ‘Now, Cuthbert, be a shield and sword for
the people of Durham; be a shield to the country, and drive away taxation
(tributum).’
91
roughout the Middle Ages, in fact, Cuthbert was widely recognised in
the bishopric as the liberty’s patron. Together with St Oswald, he regularly
appeared on episcopal seals from the mid- thirteenth century onwards;
92
and it was customary for these seals to be broken and o ered at Cuthbert’s
shrine on a bishop’s death. According to a eenth- century source, it was
also usual on such occasions for the keys to Durham castle to be placed on
Cuthbert’s shrine.
93
Both traditions suggested that individual bishops were
ultimately only representatives of the saint, who remained the true keeper
of see and liberty. Naturally the episcopal chancery referred o en to the
liberty of St Cuthbert, as when a servant of Ranulf Neville o ended against
the rights of Durham and St Cuthbert, or as when a proclamation forbade
tournaments at Darlington or elsewhere in the liberty of St Cuthbert
between Tyne and Tees.
94
Such almost casual allusions to the saint were not
wholly typical, though. Cuthbert’s name carried special weight, and it was
normally used only on occasions when such special weight was necessary.
us a dispute over a wardship with omas, earl of Lancaster (d. 1322),
led Bishop Kellawe to appeal forcefully in the name of St Cuthbert, while
it was threats to episcopal rights of forfeiture that led Lewis Beaumont to
petition Edward III in the name of ‘the honour of the corpseint St Cuthbert
of Durham’. Similar threats led Bishop Fordham (1381–8) to dwell on
90
Symeon, Libellus, pp. 197–201 (essentially followed in BL, MS Harley 4843, f. 248v);
H. H. E. Craster, ‘The Red Book of Durham’, EHR, 40 (1925), p. 528 (followed in John
Wessington’s De Exordio, Bodl., MS Laud Misc. 748, f. 24r).
91
Symeon, Libellus, pp. 196–9; BL, MS Harley 4843, ff. 248v, 251r.
92
G&B, nos. 3122ff. Cuthbert also appeared on the seals of the bishop’s ecclesiastical officers:
G&B, nos. 3177–8, 3183–6.
93
Bodl., MS Laud Misc. 748, f. 52r; the story prompting the comment derives from Roger
Howden, Chronica, ed. W. Stubbs (RS, 1868–71), iii, pp. 284–5. See also Scriptores Tres,
pp. 15–16, 63. Durham Annals and Documents of the Thirteenth Century, ed. F. Barlow
(SS, 1945), pp. 15, 54, state that the seals of Kirkham and Lisle were broken ‘in capitulo’.
94
RPD, i, pp. 107–8, 295–6.
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the miracles Cuthbert had worked in favour of earlier kings, and the
misfortunes that had befallen those who had harmed the liberty.
95
Such appeals o en had the desired e ect, and respect for Cuthbert was
undoubtedly an important factor in the maintenance and indeed devel-
opment of the liberty’s privileges.
96
Edward II, for example, ordered his
household o cers not to intermeddle between Tyne and Tees ‘as the king
wishes to preserve the liberty of St Cuthbert’, and the same king showed
concern for the liberty’s legal privileges ‘on account of his great devotion to
St Cuthbert’. It was similarly ‘for favour to the liberty of St Cuthbert’ that a
woman arrested at Darlington by o cers of the royal household had been
delivered to the bishop’s coroner in the 1290s.
97
e clearest expressions of
royal regard for the saint, though, must surely be Edward I’s claim in 1302
that he saw himself as simply ‘the minister and maintainer of the liberty of
St Cuthbert’, and his assurance that God and Cuthbert would come to the
aid of those who desired the welfare of the liberty. No doubt the military
signi cance of the saint’s banner was an important in uence, especially
on Edward I; and Edward III speci cally allowed the revival of any lapsed
liberty in 1335 because of his a ection for Cuthbert, whose banner had
been brought out against the Scots.
98
Nevertheless these kings recognised
that Cuthbert was the bishopric’s patron, and consequently they respected
the liberty’s privileges.
Cuthbert’s patronage of the liberty mattered equally to the local com-
munity. In 1344 the freeholders of the area around Hartlepool claimed that
they were people ‘of the liberty of St Cuthbert’, who feared ‘the excom-
munication of God and St Cuthbert brought upon those doing anything
against the said liberty’.
99
e saint provided a sanction that helped to
maintain the liberty’s privileges. It was right that when William Scrope did
penance in 1390 for ‘certain trespasses’ committed against the bishop and
his o cers, it was by o ering a ‘notable jewel’, to be worth not less than
£500, to Cuthbert’s shrine.
100
Equally, however, the local community also
used Cuthbert to support their own privileges. is was the case in 1311
when ‘the magnates, knights and free tenants of the bishopric’ argued that
if they were forced to do military service beyond the limits of the liberty
95
RPD, iv, pp. 408–9; PROME, iv, p. 42; Rotuli Parliamentorum (Record Commission,
1783–1832), iii, p. 177. See also Northern Pets, nos. 180–1; RPD, iv, p. 130.
96
For earlier comment along these lines, see C. M. Fraser, ‘Prerogative and the bishops of
Durham 1267–1376’, EHR, 74 (1959), p. 474; Scammell, ‘Origin and limitations’, p. 452.
97
CCR 1318–23, p. 16; CCW 1244–1326, p. 336; JUST 1/226, m. 9d.
98
SC 1/12/155; Fraser, Bek, pp. 184–5; DCM, 2.3.Reg.3a–b.
99
CIPM, viii, p. 384.
100
Raine, St Cuthbert, Appendix, pp. 9–10; cf. CCR 1389–92, p. 64; C 81/507/5667; Durham
Account Rolls, ii, p. 451.
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it would be to ‘the damage of the liberty of St Cuthbert’.
101
But this inci-
dent was little more than an echo of the momentous events of 1300, when
compulsory military service outside the liberty had been comprehensively
rejected by ‘the men of the bishopric’, who claimed their own privileges as
Cuthbert’s tenants and servants:
the men of the bishopric . . . united against the bishop, saying that
they were Haliwerfolk, who held their lands by the service of defend-
ing the body of St Cuthbert, and did not have to go forth beyond the
boundaries of the bishopric, that is the Tyne and Tees, either for king
or for bishop.
102
Who were the Haliwerfolk? e term has only recently been explored
in any detail, and in many ways its meaning and development remain
mysterious.
103
It is clear, though, that Haliwerfolk developed out of the
concept of ‘the people of the saint’, used by eleventh- and twel h- century
writers to describe various communities associated with St Cuthbert. By
the early twel h century the word had become rmly identi ed with the
liberty between Tyne and Tees, although between around 1100 and 1225
Haliwerfolk occurs only in relation to an area of land rather than a group of
people.
104
In the later thirteenth century the term developed a closer asso-
ciation with the privileges of the liberty, and perhaps of its inhabitants, and
in the fourteenth century it emerges as a term used by the local community
to claim its own privileges.
As Lapsley was the rst to show, Haliwerfolk should be interpreted as
‘the people of the holy man (halig wer)’ or ‘the people of the saint’. e
term is clearly related to the Latin expression populus sancti or populus
sancti Cuthberti, used by the eleventh- and twel h- century historians of
Durham, although it is impossible to pin down precisely the identity of this
populus.
105
In Symeon of Durham ‘the people’ occur in an attempt to cross
with Cuthbert’s body into Ireland, and they accompany his body during its
wanderings until all but seven of them leave. ‘ e people of St Cuthbert’ are
101
DCM, Loc.XXVIII.14, no. 15.
102
Scriptores Tres, p. 76.
103
See now V. Watts, The Place- Names of County Durham (Nottingham, 2007–), i, pp. 2–4;
Liddy, Bishopric of Durham, pp. 186–97. Of older discussions, by far the best remains that
of Lapsley, Durham, pp. 22–4, and n. 6.
104
The ‘knights’ or ‘men of Haliwerfolk’ might be referred to; but in such phrases (as in ‘men
of Northumberland’) Haliwerfolk itself has a territorial reference.
105
Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, p. 59; ‘De Miraculis’, in Symeon, Opera, i, p. 235 (and cf. p.
239).
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molested by the pagan king Onla all in the early tenth century and are later
ruined by Bishop Uhtred (944). ‘ e people’ again accompany Cuthbert’s
body to Ripon, Durham and Lindisfarne. Finally Symeon describes how
William the Conqueror was miraculously prevented from harming ‘the
people’, and how Ranulf the tax- collector was prevented from imposing
tribute on ‘the people of the saint’.
106
No one meaning will t all these uses
of the expression, whose reference seems to have changed with changing
circumstances: the group that accompanied Cuthbert to Lindisfarne was
not the same community that Ranulf attempted to tax. e best explanation
is that the term was used in a shi ing way to describe the wider community
– that is, beyond the bishop and monks themselves – associated with the
body and estates of St Cuthbert. In the words of a eenth- century writer:
That people properly
That dwelt in country Cuthbert by
His own people was called,
Because he kept them oft from care.
107
Symeon was writing in the opening decades of the twel h century, but by
this time the vernacular term for ‘the people of the saint’, Haliwerfolk, had
undergone an important shi in meaning. As also happened with the words
‘Norfolk’ and ‘Su olk’, a term describing a community came to identify a
territory – in the case of Haliwerfolk, the liberty between Tyne and Tees.
In charters of around 1114–19, for example, Haliwerfolk is distinguished
from Yorkshire and Northumberland, and in documentary sources of the
twel h and thirteenth centuries Haliwerfolk seems to be used only in this
geographical sense.
108
In about 1225 witnesses referred to the bishop of
Durham’s exclusive rights to markets and fairs ‘between Tyne and Tees in
Haliwerfolk’, and to the exclusive right to wreck which resulted from his
‘regality in Haliwerfolk and in Norhamshire’.
109
By this date, clearly, the
usual territorial reference of Haliwerfolk was to the liberty between Tyne and
Tees, and this also seems to have been true in the early twel h century.
110
e association of Haliwerfolk with a clearly de ned area was closely
106
Symeon, Libellus, pp. 114–17 (with important comment at n. 66), 130–3, 140–1, 144–5,
148–9, 186–7, 196–9.
107
The Life of St Cuthbert in English Verse, ed. J. T. Fowler (SS, 1891), p. 136 (lines
4614–17).
108
Durham Episcopal Charters 1071–1152, ed. H. S. Offler (SS, 1968), pp. 72, 75; FPD, p. 140;
RLC, i, p. 446; Lapsley, Durham, pp. 22–4, and n. 6.
109
FPD, pp. 230, 238, etc.
110
A forged charter of the twelfth century describes Norham and Holy Island as in
‘Norhimbria’, not in Haliwerfolk: Durham Episcopal Charters, p. 56.
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related to the development of what was later called ‘the royal liberty between
Tyne and Tees’. While the pre- Conquest status of the liberty is not fully
clear, it has been convincingly argued that its independence from royal writ
originated in the earliest grants to the church of St Cuthbert, and was well
established by the eleventh century.
111
Certainly by Symeon of Durham’s
day, as we will see, the rivers Tyne and Tees formed the boundaries of a
privileged area;
112
while Symeon’s account of Ranulf the tax- collector’s
imposing unheard- of exactions on ‘the people of the saint’ clearly implies
the liberty’s usual exemption from royal demands. Signi cantly this is the
only occasion when ‘the people of the saint’ can plausibly be identi ed with
what came to be called ‘the community of the liberty’. e establishment
of the liberty and its identi cation with a xed area gave the Haliwerfolk a
geographical solidity that the term had not previously possessed, and as the
people of the saint became identi ed with the liberty, the primary sense of
Haliwerfolk became the territory of the liberty itself. e term has an almost
purely geographical sense throughout the twel h and thirteenth centuries.
It was never the only way of referring to the liberty as an area, however, and
from around 1225 it virtually disappeared, to be replaced by ‘the bishopric
of Durham’ or ‘the liberty of Durham’.
113
Paradoxically the period from around 1225 to 1300, when Haliwerfolk
very rarely appears in written sources, may well have seen important
developments in the meaning of the term. On the few occasions when
Haliwerfolk does appear in this period, it is usually in close association with
the privileged status of the liberty. Henry III’s letters patent of 1267, revok-
ing his grant of Greatham to omas Clare and representing a key acknowl-
edgement of the bishop’s right to lands forfeited for treason, referred to
‘the liberty of the bishop of Durham of Aliwarcfolk’;
114
and in 1275 a plea
concerning the bishop’s powers of prerogative wardship referred to his
regality ‘in the liberty of Haliwerfolk’.
115
Perhaps when Haliwerfolk ceased
to be a routine way of referring to the liberty, the word became particularly
associated with Durham’s privileged status, aided by its archaic avour and
its associations with St Cuthbert. e need to defend the liberty’s privileges
111
D. J. Hall, ‘The Community of Saint Cuthbert: Its Properties, Rights and Claims from
the Ninth Century to the Twelfth’ (unpublished Oxford University D.Phil. thesis, 1983),
Chapter 9.
112
Below, p. 45.
113
Examples include RLC, i, p. 131; ii, pp. 144, 174.
114
CPR 1266–72, p. 63. I have emended the calendar, which prints Aliwartfolk; another
version, in a 1327 petition of Lewis Beaumont, reads (or, at least, is printed) Aliwarthfolk:
PROME, iv, p. 41. The significance of such spellings is discussed below.
115
KB 27/15, m. 17; Fraser, Bek, pp. 85–6.
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against the king and others may have led to the re- emergence of the concept
of Haliwerfolk in local culture.
In the late thirteenth century the term is known to have been used only
by the bishops of Durham to justify their privileges. ere is some evi-
dence, though, that in this period Haliwerfolk was also coming to be asso-
ciated again with the local community, and that its use by the community
did not emerge ex nihilo around 1300. e evidence, admittedly slender,
consists of the changing spellings of the word, and in particular forms
such as Haliwarkfolc, where the Old English element wer, ‘man’, seems
to have been replaced by forms deriving from weorc, ‘work’. Such spell-
ings seem to originate in the mid- thirteenth century and are also found in
early fourteenth- century documents, and it is di cult to know how much
weight to place on them.
116
First, such spellings are relatively rare; second,
Haliwerfolk clearly caused clerks di culty, particularly in the royal writing
o ces, and was commonly emended to more familiar forms. us a royal
con rmation of 1253, referring to grants in Haliwarfolk, was copied onto
the charter roll with the more comprehensible spelling Haliwellefolk.
117
It
is possible, however, that the ‘work’ spellings indicate a new interpreta-
tion of the liberty’s identity based around the idea of ‘holy work’. It is,
unfortunately, impossible to be more precise, but the claim of 1300 that
the Haliwerfolk ‘held their lands by the service of defending the body of
St Cuthbert’ makes it tempting to associate this work with service for land
tenure. e Haliwarkfolk may then have been imagined as a people distin-
guished by the privileges and responsibilities that resulted from holding
their land of St Cuthbert. It was, perhaps, the result of trying to make sense
of the ancient term for the liberty, and this might suggest that the term had
become newly signi cant to the liberty community as well as to its lord. e
‘work’ spellings may, therefore, provide some context for the claim of 1300
that the Haliwerfolk ‘did not have to go forth beyond the boundaries of the
bishopric, that is, the Tyne and Tees, either for king or for bishop’.
118
It is clear, though, that this statement was also a reinterpretation of
Haliwerfolk in the light of novel demands for military service. Neither the
claim that land was held by the service of defending Cuthbert’s body, nor
116
They occur in the patent roll text of Henry III’s revocation of his grant of Greatham; in
inspeximuses of this revocation, including one in Kellawe’s register; and in copies in that
register of documents relating to the bishop’s rights in the Tyne: CPR 1266–72, p. 63;
RPD, i, p. 8; iii, p. 8; iv, p. 137.
117
DCM, 1.2.Reg.1; CChR, i, p. 432; and, for another example of this spelling, see CRR, vi, p.
344.
118
Relatedly the particular interpretation of the Haliwerfolk as defenders of St Cuthbert may
have arisen from a perception that the wer element derived from Old and Middle English
werian, werien, to defend.
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the assertion that the community’s military service was restricted to the
area between Tyne and Tees, is documented before 1300.
119
But the latter
claim did have signi cant roots in local custom, and was not wholly an
invented tradition. e idea that the two rivers set limits to the demands
that could be made on the local community, and that these limits were
related to holding land in the liberty, was a natural deduction from some
of the bishopric’s distinctive tenures. e rst survey of the liberty, made
around 1183, recorded that the villeins of West Auckland were obliged to
cart three loads between Tyne and Tees, and that various other tenants were
bound to go on missions for the bishop between Tyne and Tees (at their
own expense, speci es one entry).
120
Similar services are described in early
fourteenth- century inquisitions post mortem. At Shadforth, for example,
Maud, the widow of omas Teesdale, and her fellow parceners owed the
service of carrying a tun of wine, once a year, ‘wherever the bishop should
wish to have it in the bishopric of Durham’, and this was probably the same
service as that owed ‘between Tyne and Tees’ at Middleham by omas
Middleham.
121
Nor were such tenures con ned to land held directly of the
bishop. In the twel h century the tenant of Woodstone was obliged to ride
at his own expense on his lord’s business ‘between Tyne and Tees’; and in
1279 land in Stranton was granted for the service of providing an archer
for forty days between Tyne and Tees.
122
It is easy to see in such tenures the
source of the conviction that the local community could not be required to
perform military service beyond the limits of the liberty, even if the expla-
nation of Haliwerfolk in terms of this conviction was a novel reaction to
novel demands.
123
Whatever the origins of the 1300 claim, however, the key point is that
the attempt to associate a hitherto unrecorded privilege with the tradi-
tional identity of the liberty proved, at least in part, successful. Durham’s
exemption from enforced military service was con rmed by Edward I in
February and April 1303, in a dramatic illustration of how the crown could
be prepared to accept privileges without any basis in royal grant or written
charter.
124
Since ‘the community of the liberty’ did agree in that year to
119
R. K. Richardson, ‘The bishopric of Durham under Anthony Bek, 1283–1311’, AA, 3rd ser.,
9 (1913), p. 140, n. 31, stated that the latter claim could be traced to 1297; but he was misled
by the erroneous dating of Stevenson, Docs, ii, nos. 438–9, which belong to April 1303.
120
Boldon Book, ed. D. Austin (Chichester, 1982), pp. 36–7.
121
DURH 3/2, ff. 7v, 17r; cf. Hatfield Survey, pp. 23, 29, 30, 167, etc.
122
The Priory of Finchale, ed. J. Raine (SS, 1837), p. 76; DURH 3/92, m. 16d.
123
Possibly, furthermore, the claim was influenced by a privilege (confirmed in 1215–16) of
the ‘barons’ of Cheshire, who could not be compelled to do military service beyond the
River Lyme: VCH, Cheshire, ii, p. 4.
124
DCM, 2.2.Reg.12; CPR 1301–7, pp. 112, 134 (but cf. p. 426).
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provide troops willingly, it could be argued that the privilege was worth
little, but this is unlikely to have been the local view. In 1311, as we have seen,
‘the magnates, knights and free tenants of the bishopric’ refused to provide
military service for Edward II, and the privilege was soon defended by the
bishops of Durham. Bishop Bury, in 1341, called it an ‘ancient privilege’ of
his liberty.
125
In 1322 Edward II had granted that Bishop Beaumont’s provi-
sion of soldiers should not prejudice the liberty; in 1333 Edward III made a
similar grant, which in turn was understood as a grant to the community: it
was described as ‘Edward III’s charter, that the men of the bishopric should
not go outside it to ght’.
126
Bishop and local community alike recognised
the signi cance of the privilege they had won.
e concept of Haliwerfolk appears very rarely in other contexts, but
it does seem to have remained part of the ‘popular culture’ of the liberty,
at least in the fourteenth century – surprisingly the concept was hardly
referred to at all during the dispute between Bishop Langley and his ten-
antry in the early eenth century.
127
Around 1300, the chronicle known
as the Gesta Dunelmensia referred to the people of the liberty, ‘called in
English Haliwerfolk’, ‘who were accustomed to be free’, indicating that
the term was associated, perhaps rather vaguely, with the privileges of the
local community. It was in a similar sense that eenth- century historical
tradition at Durham Priory asserted that ‘royal liberty’ had been granted
to Cuthbert, his bishop, the ministers of his church, ‘and the people
called Haliwerfolk’.
128
Most signi cant, though, was the appearance of the
Haliwerfolk before a royal commission in 1344. Summoned to value the
lands around Hartlepool of the recently deceased Robert Cli ord, the local
free tenants refused to do so, claiming that they, ‘like the other men of those
parts, were Haliwerfolk, and of the liberty of St Cuthbert of Durham’, who
would only answer a writ from the bishop’s chancery.
129
Again, Haliwerfolk
is a vernacular expression for the privileged community of the liberty.
Little could illustrate the power of the concept more strongly than its use
by freeholders, in an area that had only become part of the liberty relatively
recently, and where the bishop’s jurisdiction had been signi cantly chal-
lenged. For it is by no means obvious that Hartlepool belonged to what wit-
nesses in about 1225 had called Haliwerfolk ‘between Tyne and Tees’.
130
125
Above, pp. 37–8; C 81/280/14468.
126
CPR 1321–4, p. 191; Surtees, I, i, Appendix, p. cxxix. See also below, Chapter 4, pp. 165–6.
127
The dispute is discussed by Storey, Langley, pp. 116–34, but the suggestion that ‘the tra-
ditional liberties of the “Haliwerfolk”’ were involved seems unfounded.
128
Gesta Dunelm., p. 11; DCM, Cart. III, f. 1r, and in a deleted passage in Loc.XXI.4.
129
CIPM, viii, p. 384.
130
Above, p. 39.
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e area ‘between Tyne and Tees’ has its own importance in any account
of the liberty of Durham. It was, rst of all, one of the most common ways
of referring to the heartland of the liberty, pre- 1974 County Durham. e
register of Bishop Kellawe alone provides numerous illustrations.
131
‘ e
bishopric’, the usual way of referring to the liberty in the later medieval
period, almost invariably denoted the lands between Tyne and Tees.
132
So
prominent, in fact, were the two rivers as ways of identifying the liberty
that reference could be made simply to the area ‘between the waters’ (inter
aquas); and it was ‘within the waters’ of the bishopric that the bishop’s regal-
ity extended, according to one of Anthony Bek’s retainers.
133
e commu-
nity of the liberty, similarly, was o en imagined in terms of the two rivers.
It was ‘the good men of the liberty of Durham between Tyne and Tees’ who
petitioned against Bishop Bek; most strikingly, it was ‘the community of the
bishopric of Durham between Tyne and Tees’ that negotiated throughout
the 1310s and 1320s with the Scots.
134
e crown and others recognised the
area as one that was particularly privileged: as the late thirteenth- century
pseudo- statute Prerogativa Regis acknowledged, the king’s right of pre-
rogative wardship did not apply ‘between Tyne and Tees’.
135
Rather like
the Haliwerfolk, though, this apparently straightforward concept proves
di cult to de ne precisely. e area included ‘inter aquas’ was by no means
as clear as it appeared, and varied considerably from one period to another.
e actual extent of the bishops’ jurisdiction and lordship was hardly as
comprehensive as the phrase implied; yet, conversely, the phrase itself
became an argument for the extension of that jurisdiction. e changing
meaning of the expression therefore repays detailed investigation.
e coherence of the liberty ‘between Tyne and Tees’ was founded on the
historical tradition that all the land between the rivers, together with royal
rights therein, had been granted to the church of St Cuthbert in the late
ninth century. e grant was described in the history of the see written in
the eenth century by Prior John Wessington, and also formed the basis of
131
For instance, RPD, i, p. 296; ii, p. 858.
132
For example: ‘the boundaries of the bishopric, that is the Tyne and Tees’; ‘all placez bitwix
the waters of Tyne and Tyse, commonly callyd the bisshopryke of Duresme’ (Scriptores
Tres, pp. 76, ccccxlix). For a rare exception, in which ‘the bishopric’ includes the bishops’
lands in Yorkshire, see CRR, xx, no. 797.
133
Fraser, Bek, p. 98, n. 3. Similar examples include DCM, Bursar’s Accounts, 1298–9, m. 2;
1300–1, m. 3d; 1313–14(A), dorse; 1334–5, m. 1; Scriptores Tres, p. 46; Priory of Finchale,
pp. xxiii, xxvii, xliv.
134
RPD, iii, p. 41; below, Chapter 2, pp. 84–94.
135
Prerogativa Regis, ed. S. E. Thorne (New Haven, 1949), pp. 159–60, for the ‘statute’, and
ibid., p. 26, for late fifteenth- century commentary. Some versions of the text do also refer to
the Northumbrian members of the liberty: cf. Registrum Roberti Winchelsey, Cantuariensis
Archiepiscopi, ed. R. Graham (Canterbury and York Society, 1952–6), ii, pp. 878, 1255.
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DURHAM: HISTORY, CULTURE AND IDENTITY
45
many of the shorter tracts produced by Wessington and his circle to defend
the rights of priory and bishopric. Imagery in the cathedral church also
re ected the tradition. Statues of King Alfred and King Guthred in front of
the choir commemorated their grants of the lands between Tyne and Tees,
and Tyne and Wear, grants which were also depicted in stained glass.
136
e earliest description of the grants was in a passage of around 1104–28
in the Historia Regum of Symeon of Durham, which related how Guthred
and Alfred had granted ‘all the land between Tyne and Tees’ to St Cuthbert
‘to increase the earlier bishopric’.
137
ese were not, however, the earliest
terms in which major royal grants of land to Cuthbert had been described. In
the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, probably from the mid- eleventh century,
the only grant made by Guthred is of all the land between Tyne and Wear.
is is also the only grant referred to in Symeon of Durham’s Exordio; and it
does indeed seem that the acquisition of lands south of the Wear was a more
gradual and piecemeal process.
138
Nevertheless the early tradition that all
the land between Tyne and Tees had been granted to Cuthbert embodied
the belief that the area and its inhabitants were in some way distinctive;
and by at least the eleventh century, the rivers Tyne and Tees had become
established as the liberty’s boundaries.
139
Gillo Michael, a Northumbrian
whose persecution of the community of St Cuthbert was said to have been
punished by the saint himself, was described by Symeon of Durham as from
‘beyond the River Tyne’, and Symeon describes an assembly of ‘all the elders
who lived beyond the Tyne’ in his account of Bishop Walcher’s death. He
also implies strongly that the Tyne divided the jurisdictions of the bishops of
Durham and the earls of Northumbria.
140
He twice portrays the River Tees
as a major boundary, and its signi cance was dramatically demonstrated
when William the Conqueror presumed to question the incorruptibility of
Cuthbert’s remains. e king was a icted with a burning fever from which
he could have no relief until he had crossed the river.
141
By the late twel h century, as we have seen above, some services in the
136
Bodl., MS Laud Misc. 748, ff. 14v–15r, 17v; DCM, Loc.XXI.18; Cart. III, f. 1r; Rites of
Durham, pp. 50, 137, 139.
137
Symeon, Opera, ii, p. 115. For the date, see Symeon, Libellus, pp. xliv–l. The grant was also
described in the Chronica Monasterii Dunelmensis reconstructed by Craster and dated by
him 1072 × 1083: ‘Red Book of Durham’, pp. 524, 529–31. But because the chronicle has
been reconstructed from late sources it is impossible to be sure that the account of the
Tyne–Tees grant was originally this early: cf. Symeon, Libellus, p. lxxiv.
138
Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, Chapters 9, 13, and comment; Symeon, Libellus, pp. lxxiii,
124–5; E. Craster, ‘The patrimony of St. Cuthbert’, EHR, 69 (1954), pp. 188–90.
139
See also Hall, ‘Community of Saint Cuthbert’, pp. 153–66.
140
Symeon, Libellus, pp. 188–9, 200–3, and n. 77, 216–17.
141
Ibid., pp. 148–9, 156–7, 196–7.
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