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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liberty had come to be restricted between Tyne and Tees. e rivers had
become key boundaries not just for cultural identi cation, but for local
social and political life. But what, at this date, did ‘between Tyne and Tees’
mean in practice: what was the geographical area referred to? It is o en
impossible to be sure; but in the late twel h century there can have been
no implication that the whole area between the two rivers was understood.
As John Wessington later recognised, the loss of Hexhamshire to the see
of York in about 1100 meant that the north- west boundary of the liberty
became the River Derwent, and not the Tyne.
142
Towards the south of the
liberty, similarly, signi cant areas north of the Tees – some of which had
earlier been owned by the see of Durham – were under other jurisdiction.
e most important of these were the lordships of Hartness and Barnard
Castle (the latter including Gainford and associated estates earlier pertain-
ing to Durham), which belonged a er the Conquest to the families of Bruce
and Balliol respectively.
143
For the purposes of royal administration these
lordships were included in the wapentake of Sadberge, part of the county of
Northumberland.
144
Around 1189, however, the wapentake was acquired from the crown
by Bishop Hugh du Puiset, and the grant was con rmed to his successor,
Philip of Poitou. is acquisition was a signi cant step towards giving fuller
geographical reality to the expression ‘between Tyne and Tees’, but the
incorporation of the wapentake into the liberty’s administration and juris-
diction was not straightforward.
145
In some ways the extension of episcopal
jurisdiction was swi and e ective. Cognisance of pleas was claimed with
some success as early as 1200, and assize and eyre rolls survive from 1235–36
and 1242 respectively, while it was partly through the courts at Sadberge
that Bishop Richard Poore (1228–37) was able to establish episcopal rights
to wreck in Hartness against the claims of Peter Bruce.
146
A er one dispute
with Bruce, the sheri of Sadberge created symbols of episcopal jurisdic-
tion from the disputed wreck: a cross, set up near Sadberge on the road
142
DCM, Loc.XXI.18, m. 2, art. 6, quoting Richard of Hexham (Hexham Priory, i, pp. 1–2).
But for Wessington’s claim to Hexham on the grounds that it lay south of the Tyne, and
thus ‘within the land of St Cuthbert’, see Hexham Priory, i, pp. 219–20.
143
NCH, vi, pp. 14–18; R. M. Blakely, The Brus Family in England and Scotland, 1100–1295
(Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 17–18, 94–6.
144
See generally C. M. Fraser and K. Emsley, ‘Durham and the wapentake of Sadberge’,
Trans. Archit. and Archaeol. Soc. of Durham and Northumberland, new ser., 2 (1970), p.
73; HN, i, pp. 273–88. For the extent of the wapentake, see VCH, Durham, iii, pp. 191–4.
145
For the acquisition of the wapentake, see G. V. Scammell, Hugh du Puiset, Bishop of
Durham (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 49, 187–9; Acta 1153–95, pp. xxviii, xxxiii.
146
CRR, i, p. 249; Blakely, Brus Family, pp. 51–2; ‘Durham assize rolls’, passim; Fraser and
Emsley, ‘Sadberge’, pp. 74–6.
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towards Hartlepool; and a candle- stick used in Sadberge church.
147
ese
symbols suggest something of the changes in mentality that the change of
jurisdiction required. Nor was this the only challenge the bishops faced.
eir claims of wardship in the wapentake were disputed by the crown in
1243, and their jurisdiction over Tunstall (in Stranton) was challenged in
1256 and 1269. Royal inquisitions post mortem for Hugh Balliol (1271)
and Walter Surtees (1279) included estates in the wapentake alongside
Northumberland properties, and as late as 1279 it could be suggested that
homage for Barnard Castle might pertain to the crown, not to the bishop.
But a vital acknowledgement of the bishops’ regalian rights was obtained
in 1267, a er Peter Montfort forfeited the manor of Greatham for involve-
ment with the baronial cause. Bishop Robert Stichill successfully claimed
the forfeit, a er Henry III had revoked his initial grant to omas Clare.
148
Nevertheless, for some time a er the acquisition of Sadberge, distinctions
continued to be drawn between the wapentake and the liberty ‘between
Tyne and Tees’, sometimes with the implication that the full extent of the
bishop’s rights was con ned to the latter. Royal administrators, during the
vacancy of 1208–10, distinguished the wapentake from Haliwerfolk; in a
list of knights’ fees due from the bishopric, compiled in the mid- thirteenth
century, the fees ‘between Tyne and Tees’ were still listed separately from
those in Sadberge. In 1266, again, the bishop of Durham was accused of
‘exceeding the bounds of his liberty between the rivers of Tyne and Tees’
by distraining tenants of Tynemouth Priory in Carlbury and Morton
Tinmouth.
149
e bishop’s claims in Sadberge were more recent, and there-
fore potentially more fragile, than his claims elsewhere in the liberty. In
wider local society, too, the wapentake was only gradually identi ed as part
of the liberty. In 1242 the burgesses of Durham claimed that no one could
buy or sell without their licence between Tyne and Tees – except in the
wapentake of Sadberge. ey apparently considered the wapentake to be
geographically, but not jurisdictionally, between Tyne and Tees.
150
How the acquisition of the wapentake a ected the interests and identities
of local families is o en di cult to say. Durham Priory had attracted the
religious patronage of some families earlier in the twel h century: omas
Amundeville issued a quitclaim to the priory before the transfer of the
147
RPD, iii, pp. 46–8, 60.
148
CRR, xvii, no. 1978; NAR, pp. 58–9, 201; CIPM, i, no. 773; ii, no. 339; CCR 1272–9, p. 579;
VCH, Durham, iii, p. 243; Fraser and Emsley, ‘Sadberge’, pp. 75–6.
149
BF, i, pp. 23–31 (and, for similar distinctions, cf. Pipe Roll 10 John, p. 174; Pipe Roll 14
Henry III, p. 260); Surtees, I, i, Appendix, pp. cxxvii–viii; Gibson, Tynemouth, ii, p. lvi;
Northumb. Pleas, no. 793.
150
‘Durham assize rolls’, no. 285.
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wapentake, and his successor John (d. before 1236) made a small grant to
the priory in Coatham Mundeville.
151
Also before the transfer of Sadberge,
Ralph Surtees had granted to Durham Priory the churches of Rounton
(Yorkshire) and Low Dinsdale (Durham), and lands in those places, to
establish a light at the altar of St Cuthbert. His son Richard joined in the
grant and con rmed it a er his father’s death, and Richard’s brother Ralph
(d. 1257) made further con rmations.
152
e family was not, in this respect,
following the example of its overlords, the Balliols, whose most substantial
grants were made to St Mary’s Abbey, York, and Rievaulx Abbey.
153
Yet,
as will be seen more fully in a subsequent chapter, Balliol lordship was
undoubtedly more attractive and important to local families than episcopal
lordship.
154
Ralph Surtees is not known to have witnessed episcopal char-
ters or to have been in episcopal service, but he was active as a witness in
the Barnard Castle area in the mid- thirteenth century, and was the Balliol
steward there.
155
For several Bruce tenants in Hartness, too, immediate ties
of lordship seem to have been paramount, notably for those who continued
to patronise the family’s priory at Guisborough.
156
Although there was a certain degree of jurisdictional dispute in Hartness,
it was the Balliols who did most to obstruct episcopal authority in Sadberge.
In the 1230s and 1240s John I Balliol (d. 1268) baulked at doing homage to
the bishops of Durham for his knights’ fees in the wapentake; in 1255 there
was a violent dispute over the church of Longnewton, and con ict arose
again in 1269, when Alexander Balliol (d. 1278) sent his steward to seize
some of Robert Stichill’s goods. In 1241 John Balliol had also attempted
to avoid the jurisdiction of the bishop’s court;
157
but a key acknowledge-
ment of its authority was to take place the following year. In 1242 the
abbot of St Mary’s, York, attempted to enforce, in the bishop’s court at
Sadberge, a nal concord drawn up at Westminster in 1200 concerning the
advowson of Gainford. But John Balliol countered with a fulsome appeal
to the privileges of the liberty ‘between Tyne and Tees’. He argued that the
151
Clay, ‘Family of Amundeville’, pp. 68–70.
152
H. Conyers- Surtees and H. R. Leighton, Records of the Family of Surtees (Newcastle,
1925), pp. 169–71; DCM, 1.11.Spec.7, 8.
153
NCH, vi, pp. 14–75, passim. On tenants’ patronage of their lords’ foundations, see E.
Cownie, Religious Patronage in Anglo- Norman England, 1066–1135 (Woodbridge, 1998),
pp. 172–84; and, for Low Dinsdale’s tenure from the Balliols, CIPM, ii, no. 339; cf. DURH
3/2, f. 101v.
154
Below, Chapter 3, pp. 112–15.
155
DCL, MS Randall 3, pp. 202, 219; MS Raine 52, p. 1.
156
Blakely, Brus Family, pp. 138–9, 175.
157
Acta 1196–1237, nos. 182, 291; Fraser, Bek, p. 92, n. 1; HN, i, p. 279; JUST 1/225, m. 1;
NCH, vi, pp. 41–3, 45; A. Beam, ‘John Balliol, the bishops of Durham and Balliol College,
1255–1260’, NH, 42 (2005), pp. 239–56; above, p. 29.
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abbot’s writ, which had been obtained from the king during the vacancy
of 1237–41, should no longer be valid, since the king’s writ ought not to
run in the liberty except during a vacancy. He asserted that the abbot, in
bringing his writ before royal justices in eyre at York, had defrauded the
bishop of Durham, because inhabitants of the liberty should not ‘go beyond
Tyne and Tees’ for any pleas concerning the liberty. And nally he argued
that the ne itself had no validity since it had been drawn up when Bishop
Philip of Poitou was still living, at a time when no plea could or should have
been summoned outside the liberty. Even though the abbot was almost
certainly right when he said that Hugh and Eustace Balliol had chosen to
use the royal courts, John’s manoeuvring brought some success: a new ne
was drawn up in the bishop’s court, which allowed John to present to the
church of Middleton- in- Teesdale in return for the grant of Gainford and its
dependent advowsons.
158
In this context, John acknowledged the authority
of the bishop’s court, and there do not seem to have been any subsequent
Balliol challenges to that authority. In 1279 the dower claim of Eleanor
Balliol was settled in the bishop’s court; and, in the same year, it was before
the bishop’s justices in eyre that John II Balliol con rmed Great Stainton
to Richard Hay. In 1293 the ‘franchises’ of Barnard Castle were de nitively
stated to be within the bishop’s liberty.
159
By a process of jurisdictional expansion and cultural assimilation in the
thirteenth century, therefore, ‘the liberty of Durham between Tyne and
Tees’ came to acquire a fuller geographical meaning. A list of Durham
Priory muniments, compiled around 1250 and entitled ‘a roll of charters of
Haliwerfolk, that is between Tyne and Tees’, included documents relating
to Hartness and elsewhere in Sadberge; in 1269 orpe Bulmer, though in
Hartness, was described as ‘in the liberty of the bishop between Tyne and
Tees’. By 1279 the concept of ‘the regality between Tyne and Tees’ formed
the basis of the bishop’s claim to pre- emption in Hartlepool.
160
When the
list of ‘knights dwelling in the liberty of Durham between Tyne and Tees’
was drawn up in the early fourteenth century, it ranged over the whole area
between the rivers, with Hartness and Gainford well represented. Indeed,
158
DURH 3/92, m. 16d, summarised in Lapsley, Durham, p. 165; BL, MS Lansdowne 902,
f. 358v (dated 16 June 1242, and exemplifying different pleadings in the same case);
MS Additional 28024, ff. 178v–9r (dated 23 April 1243). In accordance with this fine,
Alexander Balliol presented to Middleton in 1274 (NCH, vi, p. 52), and his successors
followed suit (York Minster Library, MS XVI.A.1, ff. 314v–15v). For the original fine of
1200, see Pedes finium Ebor. regnante Johanne, ed. W. Brown (SS, 1897), p. 5.
159
JUST 1/225, m. 2d; W. H. D. Longstaffe, ‘Stainton in the Street’, AA, new ser., 3 (1859),
p. 78; Bek Recs, p. 38; and see also NER, no. 1122.
160
DCM, Misc. Ch. 5678; CPR 1266–72, pp. 389, 473; Fraser, Bek, p. 86. Pre- emption was
the right of buying in preference to others.
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this list illustrates that the liberty ‘between Tyne and Tees’, in its full extent,
had assumed a precocious cultural coherence and identity. As a record of
local knights and their residences, the list had no practical function – not
even a heraldic one, as no arms are recorded. It was essentially an exercise
in local history or antiquarianism, and it is a remarkably early example of
such an exercise, suggesting a self- consciousness and even local pride that
would be di cult to parallel elsewhere at this date.
161
By the early fourteenth century, then, ‘the liberty between Tyne and Tees’,
in the various contexts in which the phrase was used, usually included the
wapentake of Sadberge. Indeed the expression itself became a powerful
argument for the bishops’ jurisdiction over Hartness and Barnard Castle
following their forfeiture by Robert Bruce and John II Balliol. Bishop
Kellawe, in 1316, complained that the seizure of these lordships by royal
o cers was contrary to the ‘royal franchise’ that he had enjoyed ‘from
time immemorial between Tyne and Tees’. Lewis Beaumont petitioned
Edward III in exactly the same terms in 1327, and his petition was the basis of
Edward III’s writs ordering the restoration of the estates, ine ectual though
these proved to be.
162
e concept of royal liberty between Tyne and Tees
was a powerful one. e bishops’ claims remained vulnerable, however,
because there was good evidence that their jurisdiction in Sadberge was only
recently established. is was perhaps why Walter Fauconberg, disputing
Kellawe’s jurisdiction in Hartness, noted that it lay ‘in the wapentake of
Sadberge’. It was certainly on such grounds that Bishop Beaumont’s claims
were refuted by the owners of Hartness and Barnard Castle, Robert Cli ord
and the earl of Warwick. Beaumont claimed, they argued, to have royal
liberty and rights of forfeit ‘between the two waters of Tyne and Tees’, but in
truth Haliwerfolk, where the bishop had royal liberty, was only a part of the
area between the rivers. e remnant was the wapentake of Sadberge, which
belonged from time out of mind to the crown, and in which the bishop did
not enjoy royal rights.
163
It is tantalising to speculate about where Cli ord
and Beauchamp obtained this information, and whether it re ects a linger-
ing dissociation from the liberty in the wapentake itself. It certainly seems
likely that the attempts of the Cli ords and Beauchamps to evade episcopal
jurisdiction fostered a sense of the area’s separateness.
164
161
Hatfield Survey, pp. xiv–xvi; Holford, ‘“Knights of Durham”’, pp. 185–218.
162
Kellawe: PROME, iii, pp. 230–5; RPD, iv, pp. 129–39, 183–5 (for the correct date of
which, see Northern Pets, no. 180); cf. RPD, iii, pp. 1–9. Beaumont: PROME, iv, pp. 40–2;
Northern Pets, no. 194; CCR 1327–30, pp. 48–9, 55–6, 132, 144; CPR 1330–4, p. 360.
163
PROME, iii, pp. 157–8; SC 8/149/7437, 7443.
164
For Robert Clifford’s attempts to escape the jurisdiction of the bishop’s courts over
Hartness, see CCR 1330–3, p. 372; 1333–7, pp. 8, 130; C 260/42/51.
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e bishops’ di culties in establishing control over Hartness and
Barnard Castle also came to be compounded by a renewed emphasis on
Sadberge’s earlier association with Northumberland. Edward I had no dif-
culty in admitting that Hartness and Barnard Castle were ‘in the bishopric
of Durham’, but from the mid- fourteenth century they came increasingly
under the purview of royal institutions and o cials said to be acting ‘in
Northumberland’.
165
William Eure’s challenge to the bishopric’s rights in
1433 argued that Sadberge should properly be considered as part of that
county, and John Wessington, prior of Durham, thought it necessary to
refute such claims in one of his tracts.
166
It was even possible for the fragil-
ity of the connection between Durham and Sadberge to be exploited by the
bishops themselves. One of the most remarkable twists in the history of the
wapentake was Bishop Bek’s argument of 1307 – in an attempt to minimise
the impact of Edward I’s con scation of the liberty – that Sadberge was a
‘new purchase from the king’s ancestors and quite separate from the royal
franchise of the bishopric’.
167
If a bishop himself could make such a claim,
it is no surprise that the wapentake did maintain a certain separate identity
in the fourteenth century and beyond.
168
Nevertheless the ability of the wider liberty between Tyne and Tees to
incorporate this independent identity is compellingly documented. Among
those of ‘the community of the franchise of the bishopric of Durham’ acting
against Bek in 1302 was Alan Teesdale, a Balliol retainer with lands around
Barnard Castle. Hartlepool was among the liberty ports refusing to answer
Edward I’s demands for naval service in 1303, and in 1323 we nd men of
Barnard Castle and Middleton- in- Teesdale described as ‘of the bishopric of
Durham’.
169
e most compelling illustration of how the liberty’s cultural
identity could overcome the challenges to episcopal authority and lord-
ship in the wapentake, however, is the inquisition post mortem of Robert
Cli ord in 1344, referred to above. As we saw, the free tenants of the area
around Hartlepool who should have formed the jury for the inquisition
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
165
RPD, iii, pp. 55, 58; E 42/501; CP 25/1/287/41/334; CIPM, xii, p. 304; M. A. Hicks, ‘The
forfeiture of Barnard Castle to the bishop of Durham in 1459’, NH, 33 (1997), pp. 224–5,
227.
166
Bodl., MS Laud Misc. 748, ff. 69r–71v. For Eure, see Storey, Langley, pp. 116–34.
167
Fraser, Bek, p. 207.
168
See further below, Chapter 2, pp. 58–65.
169
Fraser, Bek, p. 215, n. 5; Northern Pets, p. 227, comment; CCR 1302–7, p. 76; E 101/16/26/8,
19, 37, 60, 72. Alan Teesdale, it must be conceded, may also have had property in Durham
and around Hulam and Kelloe: DCM, 3.2.Elemos.8; Misc. Ch. 6229, 6231; Greenwell
Deeds, nos. 70, 137.
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answer a writ from the bishop’s chancery.
170
is is a complex situation to
interpret, for the royal commissioners, Adam Bowes and omas Lambard,
were also inhabitants of the liberty who would have been aware of its
privileges – although both men had seen royal as well as episcopal service,
Lambard precisely because he was a leading burgess of Hartlepool.
171
Clearly respect for the liberty’s privileges was not universal; but if Bowes
and Lambard were prepared to ignore such privileges, local freeholders
were not, and in the face of their opposition nothing could be done.
172
By around 1300, therefore, the liberty of Durham had become associated
with powerful ‘imagined communities’, and it was widely accepted that the
lands between Tyne and Tees formed a particularly privileged area, distin-
guished by the protection and patronage of St Cuthbert. As we have seen,
such claims had their dissenters, but nevertheless these traditions were
central to the development of the liberty over the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries. We still need to ask, though, what such ‘imagined communi-
ties’ really meant on the ground, and how they related to other aspects of
social identity. At a general level, this question is at the heart of the follow-
ing chapters, but it can also be considered in a speci c context, by looking
at the boundaries of the liberty in the rivers Tyne and Tees. e question
of exactly where the liberty and its privileges ended, although it involved
much historical argument, was far from being of merely antiquarian inter-
est. It determined precisely who had access to the liberty’s privileges, and
the de nition of the bishopric’s boundaries illustrates the very real signi -
cance the liberty could have for its inhabitants.
e boundary in the River Tyne was in practice the most signi cant and
the most contested. ere is relatively little evidence of dispute as regards
the Tees, although the bishop’s courts did impose a substantial ne on
the abbot of Rievaulx for his shery there, and it is clear that the bound-
ary of the liberty in the river was well known and widely recognised.
173
In
contrast, the boundary of the liberty in the Tyne was frequently contested
170
Above, p. 43.
171
CPR 1343–5, p. 298. For Bowes, see also below, Chapter 3, p. 104; for Lambard, CPR
1338–40, pp. 257, 392, 423.
172
On 18 August 1344 Bishop Bury was ordered to issue the relevant writ, and the inquisi-
tion duly took place on 15 September: CIPM, viii, p. 384. This followed an earlier inquisi-
tion of 26 June 1344, which had been held before the liberty’s sheriff/escheator by virtue
of an episcopal writ of 20 May: RPD, iv, p. 326; DURH 3/2, f. 26v.
173
DURH 20/1, dorse; M. Harvey, ‘Travel from Durham to York (and back) in the four-
teenth century’, NH, 42 (2005), pp. 125–6; C. D. Liddy, ‘Land, legend, and gentility in
the palatinate of Durham: the Pollards of Pollard Hall’, in C. D. Liddy and R. H. Britnell
(eds), North- East England in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 75–6.
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both by the crown and by the citizens of Newcastle, on the opposite bank
of the river. Indeed the claims of Newcastle, the crown, and the liberty
were fundamentally incompatible. In the late thirteenth century, when
Newcastle had quashed the rival market established by Tynemouth Priory
at North Shields, the burgesses successfully claimed for themselves and for
the crown ‘totum portum in aque de Tyne’. is included a monopoly on
loading and unloading goods in the river, on their sale (at Newcastle), and
on the ensuing tolls and customs.
174
Jurisdiction over the whole water of
Tyne, from Hedwin Streams to the sea, was basic to Newcastle’s claims in
the fourteenth and eenth centuries.
175
In contrast, the bishop and prior
of Durham, and the inhabitants of the liberty, believed that the southern
third of the Tyne belonged to the bishopric. eir claim was supported
by a document which purported to record twel h- century customs in the
river, and stated that the southern third had always belonged to the bishops
and St Cuthbert, and the northern third to the county of Northumberland
(previously the earldom of Northumbria); while the middle third had
been free and common to all ships.
176
e origins of this document are a
mystery, but it rst seems to have reached Durham in the late thirteenth
or early fourteenth century as a copy from the Red Book of the Exchequer;
it was, unsurprisingly, also of considerable interest to Tynemouth Priory,
which had a copy made.
177
In the early fourteenth century, versions were
copied into Bishop Kellawe’s register, and various copies were later made
by Durham Priory. e document’s circulation – it was certainly one of the
more widely copied items in later medieval Durham – gives some idea of
its signi cance.
178
Disputes over the river were endemic. In 1243 Durham eyre justices
investigated nuisances in the south part of the Tyne; complaints about sh-
eries erected in the river were made by Newcastle jurors in the royal eyre of
1256; in 1293 there was a royal inquiry into the bishop of Durham’s rights
in the river. In 1314 Newcastle men prevented goods from being loaded and
unloaded on the south bank of the Tyne, leading Edward II to intervene in
favour of Bishop Kellawe; again, in 1336 the people of Newcastle prevented
174
PROME, i, pp. 198–205; Gibson, Tynemouth, ii, pp. lxviii, lxx–i.
175
R. Welford, History of Newcastle and Gateshead (London, 1884–7), i, p. 203; CCR 1381–5,
p. 573; CIMisc, viii, p. 199; Surtees, ii, p. 111.
176
Printed in Brand, Newcastle, ii, pp. 6–7, from BL, MS Stowe 930 (a Durham Priory reg-
ister), f. 116.
177
Brand, Newcastle, ii, p. 6; cf. Red Book of the Exchequer, ed. H. Hall (RS, 1896), iii, pp.
1070–1.
178
Other copies are noted in Durham Episcopal Charters, pp. 62–3, to which may be added
DCM, Misc. Ch. 6588; Loc.II.3; Bodl., MS Laud Misc. 748, f. 34v (and also the other copies
of Wessington’s De Exordio); E 36/173, f. 120 (somewhat abbreviated).
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inhabitants of the liberty from landing on the south bank of the river to sell
coal and sh.
179
Signi cantly, when Edward III restored the privileges of the
city in 1342, he had to promise Bishop Bury that his own rights would su er
no harm.
180
ere were also further disputes about sheries. Around 1329
‘the common people dwelling by the water of Tyne in Northumberland’
asked the king to assign conservators to remove newly erected weirs; one
of the men recommended for the positions, John Meneville, was accused
of attacking the bishop’s sheries in that year.
181
Again, in 1344 weirs and
kiddles in the Tyne were surveyed by royal commissioners. Risking Edward
III’s wrath, Bishop Bury initiated proceedings against the commission-
ers in the liberty courts. He also prosecuted over forty men, all probably
from Newcastle, for damaging the liberty’s weirs and preventing boats
from unloading on the south bank of the Tyne. One was the then mayor of
Newcastle, Richard Galway; thirteen others had served as baili or mayor
in the 1330s or early 1340s.
182
Tyne bridge, which linked the liberty and Newcastle, and where ‘the
metes and bounds between the county and liberty of Durham and the
vill of Newcastle’ were located, was also the scene of signi cant disputes.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the exact location of the boundary was contested
and is now unclear: it was to the middle of the bridge that the market and
fairs of Gateshead were said to extend in 1336, and the bishops of Durham
seem to have claimed half of the bridge, but a jury in the early eenth
century allowed them only one- third.
183
At one of these points the bound-
ary markers between Newcastle and the liberty were located, and from
there they were removed by the men of Newcastle in the late fourteenth
century. Newcastle men had been accused of building ‘at the end of the
bridge’ in 1336, but it was the trespass of the late fourteenth century that
precipitated the most prolonged and signi cant con ict over the bridge
and its boundaries. e dispute lasted from around 1383 to 1416, and
demonstrates clearly how con ict over jurisdictional boundaries could
179
BL, MS Lansdowne 902, f. 41r; NAR, p. 81; J. Spearman, An Enquiry into the Ancient
and Present State of the County Palatine of Durham (Edinburgh, 1729), p. 9; RPD, ii, pp.
1014–15; Brand, Newcastle, ii, p. 10.
180
Scriptores Tres, Appendix, p. cxxix.
181
Northumb. Pets, no. 218; Bodl., MS Laud Misc. 748, f. 74.
182
CPR 1343–5, pp. 392–3; CCR 1343–6, pp. 465–6, 554; RPD, iv, pp. 334–6, 353; and see also
DURH 3/2, f. 28v. The men from Newcastle were prosecuted for offences committed in
1339: C 260/128/1, 3, 5; DURH 13/226.
183
Bishop Langley apparently claimed half of the bridge, even though he recovered only one-
third (defined as two parts of a moiety) in 1417: KB 27/614, m. 13(5)d; Scriptores Tres, pp.
ccvii–viii. For the boundary disputes of 1336 referred to here and later in this paragraph,
see Brand, Newcastle, ii, p. 10.
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DURHAM: HISTORY, CULTURE AND IDENTITY
55
sharpen the discrete identity of the communities on either side of the River
Tyne.
184
e dispute over the bridge was largely a question of symbolism and
jurisdiction, but elsewhere powerful economic interests were involved.
Both Newcastle and the crown faced the loss of valuable toll and customs
from goods sold in the liberty rather than in the city. Conversely Bishop
Bury could claim that the restriction of trade to Newcastle led to the liber-
ty’s being impoverished.
185
e sheries in the river could form a nuisance
by obstructing the free passage of goods down the Tyne, but they could
equally be a source of no little pro t for their owners. Most of the sheries
on the south bank of the Tyne were usually described as belonging to the
bishop or the prior; but some were leased out, and others were privately
owned. Individuals therefore had their own incentives to maintain the lib-
erty’s rights in the southern part of the river. William Sire paid over £8 to
lease eight sheries from the priory in 1340–1. He also possessed his own;
and in 1348 he contributed to a payment of £62.13s.4d. for a two- year lease
of the bishop’s shery at Gateshead.
186
In this respect, at least, bishop, prior
and local community had common interests. It is no surprise that Bishop
Hat eld, in 1352, supported the rights in the Tyne of the priory’s tenants,
or that Prior Wessington in the eenth century should have demonstrated
that keepers of the south part of the Tyne should be appointed by the
bishops of Durham.
187
It is clear, then, that the boundaries of the liberty of Durham in the river
were real enough, and – where possible – clearly marked, and that their
signi cance was continually rea rmed in the face of challenges from rival
jurisdictions. It must nevertheless appear implausible that the river acted as
a fundamental in uence on social identities and networks, to the extent that
(to quote Tony Pollard writing of the Tees) it was a ‘barrier’ determining
‘marriage and friendship, service and clientage’.
188
It was indeed rare for
a county boundary to act as a ‘barrier . . . to social and cultural networks’,
184
Liddy, Bishopric of Durham, pp. 182–6. See also Storey, Langley, p. 54; Newcastle Deeds,
pp. 64–5; Welford, Newcastle and Gateshead, i, pp. 246–7, 257–60.
185
RPD, iv, pp. 334–6; cf. CChR, v, pp. 290–1; CCR 1381–5, p. 349; Northern Pets, no. 127.
186
Durham Cathedral Priory Rentals: Bursars Rentals, ed. R. A. Lomas and A. J. Piper (SS,
1989), pp. 35, 66; DCM, 1.4.Spec.2–10; Cart. I, f. 216r (the payment was made jointly
with William Enocson). See also DCM, Loc.V.32, for the lease of the bishop’s fishery at
Gateshead for twenty marks in 1339–40.
187
DCM, Reg. Hatfield, f. 11v; 1.3.Spec.38; R. B. Dobson, ‘The Priory of Durham in the time
of John Wessington, Prior 1416–1446’ (unpublished Oxford University D.Phil. thesis,
1962), pp. 580–6, no. 29. Wessington’s tract does not appear to survive, but some of the
evidence gathered for it is probably preserved in DCM, Loc.V.42.
188
A. J. Pollard, North- Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses (Oxford, 1990), pp. 11–12.
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