The Bishopric of Durham in the Late Middle Ages: Lordship, Community and the Cult of St Cuthbert (Regions and Regionalism in History)

Regions and Regionalism in History

10

THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES LORDSHIP, COMMUNITY AND THE CULT OF ST CUTHBERT

Regions and Regionalism in History ISSN  1742–8254 This series, published in association with the AHRB Centre for North-East England History (NEEHI), aims to reflect and encourage the increasing academic and popular interest in regions and regionalism in historical perspective. It also seeks to explore the complex historical antecedents of regionalism as it appears in a wide range of international contexts. Series Editor Bill Lancaster, University of Northumbria Editorial Board Dr Richard C. Allen, University of Newcastle Dr Barry Doyle, University of Teesside Bill Lancaster, University of Northumbria Bill Purdue, Open University Professor David Rollason, University of Durham Dr Peter Rushton, University of Sunderland Proposals for future volumes may be sent to the following address: AHRB Centre for North-East England History 5th Floor Bolbec Hall Westgate Road Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 1SE Previously published volumes are listed at the back of this book.

Conyers Falchion (mid thirteenth century)

the bishopric of durham in the late middle ages lordship, community and the cult of st cuthbert

Christian D. Liddy

THE BOYDELL PRESS

©  Christian D. Liddy 2008 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Christian D. Liddy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2008 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN  978–1–84383–377–2

The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This publication is printed on acid-free paper Printed in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

Contents List of Illustrations

viii

Acknowledgements

ix

List of Abbreviations

xi

1 Introduction

1

2 Land and Power

25

3 Lordship and Society

76

4 Office-Holding

124

5 The Haliwerfolc and the Politics of Community

174

6 Epilogue

236

Bibliography

245

Index

261

List of Illustrations Plates Frontispiece  Conyers Falchion, mid thirteenth century (Durham Cathedral Treasury): reproduced by permission of Durham Cathedral Library 1 Reverse of Bishop Hatfield’s great seal (DCM, 2.3.Pont.1): 179 reproduced by permission of Durham Cathedral Library Maps 1 2 3 4 5

18 The Palatinate of Durham Ancient Parishes in the Bishopric of Durham: after H.M. Dunsford 36 and S.J. Harris, ‘Colonization of the Wasteland in County Durham, 100–1400’, Economic History Review 56 (2003), p. 37 Physiographic Units in the Bishopric of Durham: after R.I. Hodgson, 38 ‘Coalmining, Population and Enclosure in the Seasale Colliery Districts of Durham (Northern Durham), 1551–1810: A Study in Historical Geography’, 2 vols (Ph.D. thesis, University of Durham, 1989), Vol. II, p. 98 The Team Valley 118 Ward Boundaries in the Bishopric of Durham: after S.J. Harris, 156 ‘Wastes, the Margins and the Abandonment of Land: The Bishop of Durham’s Estate, 1350–1480’, North-East England in the Later Middle Ages, ed. C.D. Liddy and R.H. Britnell (Woodbridge, 2005), p. 200

Figures 1 2 3

‘Well-Wishers’ of John Lord Neville (d. 1388) in South-East Durham Familial Relationships between the Gentry of the Team Valley The Senior and Junior Lines of the Nevilles

90 120 214

Tables 1 Distribution of Manors among Durham Lay Landholders, 1345 2 Distribution of Manors among Durham Lay Landholders, 1381 3 Distribution of Manors among Durham Lay Landholders, 1434

65 66 68

Acknowledgements The research for this book began with my appointment as a researcher in the AHRC Centre for North-East England History. I am deeply grateful to the members of the appointing committee, chaired by David Rollason, who had faith that an urban historian could learn quickly the intricacies of enfeoffments and entails which governed the descent and conveyance of property. I hope that the gamble has paid off. Among those who helped to make the transition from urban to landed society as smooth as possible, I should mention Simon Harris, Peter Larson, Brian Barker, Mark Arvanigian, Lynda Rollason and Michael Prestwich. In Durham, Alan Piper, Michael Stansfield and Joan Williams were expert guides through the various collections of archival material relating to the bishopric. Jonathan Mackman helped to track down several manuscripts in the National Archives. I should also thank the Right Hon. Earl of Scarbrough for access to the Lumley archive at Sandbeck Park. I have learned much from conversations with scholars in related fields of research. Brian Roberts provided authoritative advice on landscape and settlement in the North East. Melanie Devine, in the early stages of her own career, clarified many points of detail about developments south of the river Tees in Richmondshire. Ben Dodds shared the fruits of his groundbreaking study of the economy of the Tyne-Tees region in advance of publication. Rob Bartlett was a generous source of information on the prince bishops of medieval Germany. Len Scales asked characteristically searching questions about collective memory and identity. In the latter stages of the book, Matthew Holford’s forthcoming work on the thirteenth-century palatinate provided an invaluable point of comparison. I completed the book as a full-time lecturer in the Department of History at Durham. Without a period of AHRC Research Leave to release me from the demands of teaching and administration, the book would not yet have been finished. But it perhaps would not have started without the input of Tony Pollard, who has been a sounding board for ideas throughout the research and who kindly read the manuscript in draft. Special thanks should also go to Chris Given-Wilson and Richard Britnell, who acted as readers of the manuscript. Their suggestions have helped to make this a much better book. Whatever faults remain are naturally my own. Lisa has been, as ever, a constant source of encouragement, support and advice, but the book is dedicated to my father, Edward: still my mentor and my sharpest critic in matters of style and syntax, he also spent the happiest period of his professional life in the North East. Durham, August 2007

Editorial Note All unpublished documents cited here are in the National Archives: Public Record Office, unless otherwise stated. All place names have been modernised, as have locative surnames, with one or two exceptions (e.g. Prior Wessington rather than Prior Washington) where the individual concerned is better known by another name.

List of Abbreviations AA AHR Bek BIHR BIHR BL CChR CCB CCR CDS CFR CIM CIPM CP CPR DAR DCL DCM DEC DRO DUL EcHR EHR Feudal Aids FPD Greenwell   Deeds Greenwell   Seals

Archaeologia Aeliana American Historical Review Records of Antony Bek, Bishop and Patriarch, 1283–1311, ed. C.M. Fraser (SS 162, 1947) Borthwick Institute of Historical Research (York) Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research British Library Calendar of Charter Rolls Church Commission Bishopric Calendar of Close Rolls Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland, ed. J. Bain et al., 5 vols (Edinburgh, 1881–8) Calendar of Fine Rolls Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem The Complete Peerage, ed. G.E. Cokayne, 12 vols (London, 1910–59) Calendar of Patent Rolls Durham Account Rolls, ed. J.T. Fowler, 3 vols (SS 99–103, 1898–1900) Durham Cathedral Library Durham Cathedral Muniments Durham Episcopal Charters, 1071–1152, ed. H.S. Offler (SS 179, 1968) Durham Record Office Durham University Library (Archives and Special Collections) Economic History Review English Historical Review Inquisitions and Assessments Relating to Feudal Aids, 1284–1431 Feodarium Prioratus Dunelmensis, ed. W. Greenwell (SS 58, 1871) Calendar of the Greenwell Deeds, ed. J. Walton (Newcastleupon-Tyne, 1927) Catalogue of the Seals in the Treasury of the Dean and Chapter of Durham, ed. W. Greenwell and C.H. Hunter Blair, 2 vols (Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1911–21)

xii HR HS

ABBREVIATIONS

Historical Research Bishop Hatfield’s Survey: A Record of the Possessions of the See of Durham, ed. W. Greenwell (SS 32, 1856) IPM Inquisition Post Mortem JBS Journal of British Studies Lumley MSS Lumley Family and Estate Collection (Sandbeck Park) MED Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor, 1956–) NH Northern History Northern Northern Petitions, ed. C.M. Fraser (SS 194, 1981)   Petitions NYCRO North Yorkshire County Record Office P&P Past and Present PPC Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council of England, ed. N.H. Nicolas, 7 vols (London 1834‑7) PROME The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England 1275–1504, ed. C. Given-Wilson, 16 vols (Woodbridge, 2005) Return of Return of the Name of Every Member of the Lower House of   Members Parliament … 1213‑1874, 2 vols (London, 1878) Rot. Scot. Rotuli Scotiae, ed. D. MacPherson et al., 2 vols (London, 1814–19) RP Rotuli Parliamentorum, 6 vols (London, 1783) RPD Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense: The Register of Richard de Kellawe, Lord Palatine and Bishop of Durham, 1311–1316, ed. T.D. Hardy, 4 vols (RS, 1873–8) RS Rolls Series Scriptores Tres Historiae Dunelmensis Scriptores Tres, ed. J. Raine (SS 9, 1839) SS Surtees Society Symeon Symeon of Durham, Libellus de Exordio atque Procursu istius, Hoc est Dunhelmensis, Ecclesie, ed. and transl. D. Rollason (Oxford, 2000) Test. Ebor. Testamenta Eboracensia, ed. J. Raine et al., 6 vols (SS 4, 30, 45, 53, 79, 106, 1836–1902) Thomas The Register of Thomas Langley, Bishop of Durham, 1406–   Langley 1437, ed. R.L. Storey, 6 vols (SS 164–82, 1949–67) TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society VCH Durham The Victoria History of the County of Durham, ed. W. Page, 3 vols (London, 1905–28) VCH North The Victoria History of the County of York: North Riding, ed.   Riding W. Page, 2 vols (London, 1914–25) Wills and Wills and Inventories, Part I, ed. J. Raine (SS 2, 1835)   Inventories YAJ Yorkshire Archaeological Journal YASRS Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series Yorkshire Yorkshire Deeds I, II, III, IX, ed. W. Brown et al. (YASRS 39,   Deeds 50, 63, 111, 1907–46)

1 Introduction

The historic city of Durham has long had its notable admirers, seduced by that familiar tendency: the veneration of the ancient. James Boswell, a guest in the ‘Old Castle’ in 1788, was inspired to comment about the majesty of the bishop of Durham who, in a previous age, had ruled as a ‘prince of an independent palatinate’. Regrettably, Boswell did not reflect further upon the nature of the palatinate and treated his readers instead to a lengthy description of the plentiful food and drink he consumed at the bishop’s residence. It was left to the modern editors of his journal to add helpfully, although not altogether accurately, a note to the effect that the medieval bishops of Durham had the authority ‘to create barons, appoint judges, convoke parliaments, raise taxes, coin money, and grant pardons of all kinds’. When Daniel Defoe visited in the 1720s, he was also struck by the antiquity of Durham and was moved to write that ‘the Bishop of Durham is a temporal prince, that he keeps a court of equity, and also courts of justice in ordinary causes within himself. The county of Durham, like the country about Rome, is called St. Cuthbert’s Patrimony.’ Few historians today would share Daniel Defoe’s conviction that the palatinate of Durham, lying between the rivers Tyne and Tees, was comparable to the Papal State in Italy. But Defoe was not alone in seeking to understand the history of Durham in relation to continental exempla. When E.A. Freeman came to discuss the palatinate in his monumental six-volume History of the Norman Conquest of England, published between 1867 and 1879, he chose the term ‘prince bishop’ to describe the temporal powers of the bishop of Durham who ruled his own independent territory in the middle ages. ‘Durham alone among English cities, with its highest-point crowned not only by the minster, but by the vast castle of the Prince-Bishop,’ wrote Freeman, ‘recalls to mind those cities of the Empire, Lausanne or Chur or Sitten, where the priest who bore alike the sword and the pastoral staff looked down from his fortified height on a flock which he had to guard no less against worldly than against ghostly foes.’

  

For this and what follows, see Boswell: The English Experiment, 1785–1789, ed. I.S. Lustig and F.A. Pottle (New Haven, 1986), p. 242. D. Defoe, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, 1724–6, published as A Tour through England and Wales, 2 vols (London, 1928), Vol. II, p. 248. E.A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England: Its Causes and Results, 6 vols, 2nd edn rev. (Oxford, 1867–79), Vol. I, p. 291.



THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

The observations of Defoe and Freeman alert us to the difficulties which English historians have faced when writing about Durham. Given profoundly held and often deeply cherished beliefs in the precocious power of the English state, it is perhaps no surprise that Durham, an apparent oddity in an English context, could only be explained within a European perspective. In the case of Freeman, this perspective assumed a greater importance. Like many of his contemporaries who were insistent upon the Anglo-Saxon roots of the English nation, Freeman’s interest in, and romanticism of, a shared Germanic past led him to place the palatinate of Durham within a wider European framework of state formation and dissolution. Specifically, he saw in the extensive autonomy exercised by the bishops of Durham ‘some faint shadow of the sovereign powers enjoyed by the princely churchmen of the Empire’. Whether the cathedral-castle complex on the Durham peninsula in the loop of the river Wear actually does evoke the hill-fortress of Sitten in the valley of the river Rhone depends, of course, upon the imagination of the observer. Freeman’s view that the city of Durham was comparable to Lausanne, Chur or Sitten did, however, have a serious purpose. The term ‘prince bishop’ did not exist in medieval England. It is a literal translation of the German compound Fürstbischof. And if the German term Fürstbischof – a compound word to denote a princely bishop, that is, one who was invested with princely status – was not in general use in the medieval period, being of comparatively late development, perhaps of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the concept was certainly familiar. The term ‘prince’ had a technical meaning in medieval Germany as a title with which certain powerful lords were invested from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The medieval bishops of Lausanne, Chur and Sitten were ecclesiastical figures who, in addition to their spiritual authority, held temporal power within the Holy Roman Empire and were indeed princes of the Empire. While the powers of such bishops varied from principality to principality, these bishops, almost all of whom were princes, ruled semi-autonomous territorial states with supreme rights over their subjects in law and finance. The medieval bishops of Durham, Freeman believed, administered similarly extensive powers, which in other parts of the kingdom of England were held by the crown. Such a state of affairs was extremely problematic to Freeman. His Germanophile instincts were tempered by a perception of what he saw as the main themes of the history of the Holy Roman Empire: at best, localised rather than centralised government; at worst, fragmenta 

 

For all subsequent references to Freeman, see his History of the Norman Conquest, Vol. I, pp. 291–2. Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm (Leipzig, 1878), Band 4.1 (1), p. 851. The Grimms’ dictionary does not give the date of the earliest usage of the term, but refers instead to the example of the contemporary Prince Bishop of Breslau. I would like to thank Rob Bartlett for discussion of this point. For an English study of one late medieval German territorial principality, see H.J. Cohn, The Government of the Rhine Palatinate in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford, 1965).



INTRODUCTION 

tion, division and disorder. To Freeman, with a view of ‘English history as a progress towards the triumphant emergence of the “English nation” ’, the palatinate of Durham occupied an anomalous position in relation to a more general tendency towards centralisation that separated England’s historical development from that of Germany. If Durham had been the norm rather than the exception, the history of England would have followed a different path and the kingdom would have ‘fallen in pieces in exactly the same way that the Empire did, and from essentially the same cause’. In this respect, Freeman’s interpretation of Durham was just as much an ‘exercise in historical pathology’ as that of contemporary views of the Welsh marcher lordships, whose history demonstrated ‘the ills which would have befallen the body politic of England had it succumbed to the fragmentation of authority which prevailed in the March’. Freeman did not seek to explain Durham’s peculiarity, its Sonderweg, since he saw the particularism of the palatinate as a threat to the making of the English nation-state. In a typically evocative passage on the state of England before the Norman Conquest, Freeman considered the significance of the year 995 in the history of the church of Durham. It was in this year that the community of St Cuthbert, led by Bishop Ealdhun, transferred the body of the saint to what became its permanent resting-place in Durham. The year 995 was also a ‘turning-point’ in the history of the northern diocese because Ealdhun’s successors gradually acquired a temporal authority which differentiated the holders of the see from their episcopal colleagues. Like the bishop of Ely on his island in the Fens, the bishop of Durham ‘possessed powers which no other English ecclesiastic was allowed to share’. In contrast to the eremitical existence of St Aidan and St Cuthbert on Lindisfarne, their successors at Durham became the ‘Lords of a Palatinate’ in which it was the bishop’s peace rather than the king’s that was upheld. And in respect of the bishop’s secular powers, Freeman observed that the translation of the body and community of St Cuthbert to Durham had a wider relevance to the history of England, which was, of course, his main theme. The events of 995 marked the foundation of ‘a state of things which in England remained exceptional, but which, had it gained a wider field, would have made a lasting change in the condition of the country’. The bishop of Durham’s palatinate evolved as the spiritual counterpart to the temporal palatinate of Chester, ruled by the earls of Chester, and both ‘stood alone in the possession of their extraordinary franchises’. Durham, however, was even more unusual because the palatine earldom of Chester ‘so early became an apanage of the heir of the Crown’. Indeed, from 1254, when Edward, son and heir of Henry III, became earl of Chester, the palatine earldom of Chester was routinely invested in the

 

M. Chibnall, The Debate on the Norman Conquest (Manchester, 1999), p. 59. R.R. Davies, Lordship and Society in the March of Wales, 1282–1400 (Oxford, 1978), p. 6.



THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

heir apparent.10 Freeman saw in the development of the palatine jurisdictions of the bishop of Durham and the earl of Chester an alternative and more troubling history of his beloved England, in which local particularism would have rendered asunder the progress of national unification under a single ruler. ‘Had all Bishopricks possessed the same rights as Durham, had all Earldoms possessed the same rights as Chester’, Freeman concluded, ‘England could never have remained a consolidated monarchy.’ It was left to Freeman’s friend, the great Whig historian, William Stubbs, who shared Freeman’s belief in the essential continuity of the English constitution from the Anglo-Saxon period, to explain Durham’s distinctive character. Although Stubbs only devoted four pages in his three-volume Constitutional History of England to the palatinate of Durham (which is itself instructive),11 his views helped to formulate an approach to the history of Durham which has remained influential. Discussing William the Conqueror’s policy towards his magnates in the aftermath of the Conquest, Stubbs saw the king as driven by a concern to uphold the ‘unity of the royal authority’, to which there were only two key exceptions: the earldom of Chester and the bishopric of Durham. Crucially, Stubbs justified their continued existence in terms of the wider development of England, within a British rather than European context. Like ‘the later lordships of the marches’, wrote Stubbs, the earldom and bishopric were ‘a part of the national defence’. If the logic of Cheshire’s creation could be accounted for by the need to keep ‘the Welsh marches in order’, then Durham operated as a buffer zone against Scottish invasion, as ‘a sacred boundary between England and Scotland’. To Stubbs, Durham’s exceptionalism was not so much an intractable problem as a neat solution: the palatinate had a more constructive role in the formation of the nationstate in which the bishop of Durham was allowed to rule independently in the north of England so long as he maintained the region’s security on behalf of the crown. A quarter of a century later, G.T. Lapsley published a history of Durham whose title, The County Palatine of Durham: A Study in Constitutional History, echoed directly Stubbs’ constitutional history of England and whose approach and conclusions also owed much to the earlier work. Lapsley was primarily interested in the longue durée rather than the ebb and flow of dayto-day politics, tracing the development of the palatinate from its somewhat shadowy existence before the Norman Conquest until its final demise in the nineteenth century, when Durham’s palatine jurisdiction was transferred to the crown by an 1836 act of parliament, leaving Durham as a mere county. Lapsley’s energies were devoted to delineating the main features of the machinery of palatine government. Underpinning his book was a particular 10 11

P.H.W. Booth, The Financial Administration of the Lordship and County of Chester, 1272–1377 (Manchester, 1981), p. 50. W. Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development, 3 vols, 5th edn (Oxford, 1891), Vol. I, pp. 294–5, 392–3.



INTRODUCTION 

view of the palatinate as ‘a microcosm of the kingdom’, whose constitutional structure reproduced ‘all the essential characteristics of the central government’, including a chancery, which issued writs in the bishop’s name, an exchequer, which collected the bishop’s revenue, and a network of local courts, which upheld the bishop’s peace.12 To Lapsley, the institutions of the palatinate were imitative of the organs of national government at Westminster, and thus he approached the constitutional history of the palatinate using Stubbs’s model of national political development. For instance, just as Stubbs had argued that English history in the later middle ages was the story of the emergence of the English parliament and its subsequent struggle for supremacy with the crown, so Lapsley sought evidence of a representative assembly within the palatinate with tax-granting powers. He argued that it was in this institution that periodic conflict between the bishops of Durham and their subjects was played out.13 In essence, Lapsley’s palatinate was a type of state in which the king’s writ did not run, a ‘sovereign state’14 whose bishop raised his own taxes and assembled his own army, appointed the same kinds of officers within Durham that the king did elsewhere, and exercised a right of pardon in cases of both manslaughter and homicide. Yet this ‘state’ was also a failed one. It was a state which did not, and could not, equal the evolving English nation-state. On the one hand, Lapsley believed that the lack of hereditary succession in the palatinate undermined the development of a strong central government within Durham. In a situation in which the bishop was invariably an outsider, with no strong roots in the area over which he ruled, Durham existed as ‘a tiny feudal England’ where the bishop had to compete for power with ‘his feudatories, who struggled for and obtained a high degree of local independence’. On the other hand, the autonomous position of the bishop vis-à-vis the king could not be tolerated by a Whig historian like Lapsley who was anxious above all to explain how the palatinate came to be assimilated into the English nation-state. Thus, according to Lapsley, if the period up to the episcopate of Antony Bek (1283–1311) was one of ‘growth’ and ‘maturity of the Bishop’s regality’, the crown’s attitude towards the palatinate during the fourteenth century was one of ‘perplexed toleration’. In the fifteenth century, once the crown was no longer distracted by the Wars of the Roses, the Tudors were able to introduce a ‘vigorous policy’ of centralisation, and ‘summarily dealt with’ the palatinate once and for all, leaving only the ‘form and dignity of the institution’ to survive into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a curious anachronism.15 To a subsequent generation of historians concerned with the evolution of medieval English liberties – areas of ‘private’ jurisdiction which were not

12 13 14 15

G.T. Lapsley, The County Palatine of Durham: A Study in Constitutional History (London, 1900), pp. 2, 1. Lapsley, County Palatine, p. 128. Lapsley, County Palatine, p. 76. Lapsley, County Palatine, pp. 75–6, 2.



THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

directly administered by the king or his officials – Durham was a particular kind of liberty known as a regality, whose holder enjoyed similar rights to the king. But here again, debate focused on the related questions of the decline of feudalism and the process of state formation. If Durham was ‘the greatest liberty long-established in private hands in medieval England’, then its significance lay primarily as a test-case with which to examine ‘the effectiveness of monarchy and the possible extent of immunities in medieval England’.16 Durham’s import lay only insofar as the bishop’s palatine jurisdiction illuminated the nature and extent of royal power. The work of Helen Cam, notably her 1940 article ‘The Decline and Fall of English Feudalism’, was extremely influential in this respect.17 If royal charters throughout the thirteenth century placed increasing emphasis upon the ‘administrative responsibilities’ of the holders of liberties, in whose ‘private hands’ were now ‘public duties’,18 Cam attached primary importance to Edward I’s quo warranto proceedings in the story of franchisal development: these inquiries did not amount to an attack on liberties per se, but rather were an attempt to establish the idea of obligation in return for privilege.19 In other words, Edward I sought to remind the holders of liberties that they had important functions to perform on behalf of the crown. ‘The palatinate of Durham could serve his purpose as well as the palatinate of Chester’, wrote Cam. ‘Even the Welsh Custom of the March might be useful.’20 The fourteenth century, however, saw the crown’s relations with the greater franchises enter a difficult phase, exemplified by the emergence of the term comes palatinus to describe the holders of the liberties of Durham, Chester and the newly created county palatine of Lancaster. ‘The mere existence of the generic term’, wrote Cam, ‘helped to strengthen the self-assertion of the great franchise-holders and diminish the sense of responsibility which Edward I’s quo warranto policy had inculcated.’ In admonitory tones, Cam saw such regalian franchises as an invidious threat to the greater public project: the construction of the English nation-state. In the north of England, moreover, the advent of war in the 1290s with Scotland helped to encourage the franchisal pretensions of the lords of Durham, Tynedale, ­Redesdale and Hexhamshire inasmuch as their strategic significance as a defence against the Scots gave them greater leverage with the crown. In this respect, the greater franchises became a threat to the exercise of royal authority, and so it was left to the Tudors to ‘resume regalities which, like the privileges and alien loyalties of the church, endangered the unique sovereignty of the crown’. The Tudors pursued two policies: first, under Henry VII and with the assistance of the infamous common lawyer and royal minister, 16 17 18 19 20

Both quotations are from J. Scammell, ‘The Origin and Limitations of the Liberty of Durham’, EHR 81 (1966), pp. 449, 452. H.M. Cam, ‘The Decline and Fall of English Feudalism’, History 25 (1940), pp. 216–33. N. Denholm-Young, Seignorial Administration in England (London, 1937), p. 88. H.M. Cam, ‘The Evolution of the Medieval English Franchise’, Speculum 32 (1957), pp. 427– 42. Cam, ‘Decline and Fall of English Feudalism’, p. 219.



INTRODUCTION 

Edmund Dudley, the Tudors implemented ‘a stricter interpretation of the legal theory of quo warranto’ and in the court of king’s bench actions were heard for ‘the forfeiture of liberties for non-use, for abuse, for non-claim, for false claim, for failure to prove prescription for one type of liberty, to produce a charter in another’; secondly, in the reign of Henry VIII, under the guiding hand of Thomas Cromwell, the Tudors launched a legislative assault upon all jurisdictional franchises in the parliament of 1536. The ‘First Act of Union’ of Wales with England and the act ‘for recontinuing Liberties in the Crown’ were of fundamental importance in reconfiguring the relationship between English liberties and the crown and led, in Cam’s words, to ‘the abolition or absorption of those franchises which sheltered lawlessness or opposed a barrier to the effective sovereignty of the crown’. More recent work has modified aspects of Cam’s thesis. Particular attention has been paid to the relationship between the palatinate and the crown. R.B. Dobson and A.J. Pollard have argued that the inherent nature of this relationship meant that, despite the potential constitutional autonomy of the palatinate, politically at least Durham could never be independent of royal authority. If, theoretically, the bishop was in possession of several regalian rights, in practice, the bishop was a crown appointee who owed his position to royal favour.21 Indeed, more than that, precisely because the bishop had at his disposal such quasi-regal rights, it was of significance to the crown how this power was deployed; in particular, whether in or against its interests.22 Every bishop, from Richard Bury in 1333 to Thomas Langley in 1406, had previously served the crown as the keeper of the privy seal. Since the bishop was, at the time of his appointment at least, a loyal servant of the crown, Pollard has gone so far as to suggest that the palatinate of Durham ‘provided, therefore, at one remove, an important extension of royal authority into the far north-east of the realm’.23 Strategically vital as Durham was from the early fourteenth century, the crown appointed senior civil servants to the see of Durham: bishops who owed their very appointment to royal patronage could not and would not pursue policies separate from or inimical to the interests of the crown. In normal circumstances, the financial and military resources of the palatinate were placed at the disposal of the crown. Viewed from the perspective of the bishop’s subjects, the independence of the palatinate has also appeared an illusion. According to Jean Scammell, the inhabitants of the palatinate had nothing to gain from the liberty’s immunity from royal taxation (since the purchase of exemption from taxation was ‘more expensive 21

22

23

B. Dobson, ‘The Church of Durham and the Scottish Borders, 1378–88’, War and Border Societies in the Middle Ages, ed. A. Goodman and A. Tuck (London, 1992), pp. 130–1; A.J. Pollard, ‘The Crown and the County Palatine of Durham, 1437–94’, The North of England in the Age of Richard III, ed. A.J. Pollard (Stroud, 1996), pp. 71–2. A.J. Pollard, ‘Provincial Politics in Lancastrian England: The Challenge to Bishop Langley’s Liberty in 1433’, People, Places and Perspectives: Essays on Later Medieval and Early Tudor England, ed. K. Dockray and P. Fleming (Nonsuch, 2005), p. 70. Pollard, ‘The Crown and the County Palatine’, p. 72.



THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

than the tax’) and preferred the benefits of central justice to the corruption and inadequacies of the local court system.24 Specifically, the demands of the bishop’s own subjects for new legal procedures hitherto unavailable within the liberty were instrumental in denuding the palatinate of its jurisdictional autonomy. ‘The record of Edward I’s Quo Warranto proceedings’, Scammell wrote in respect of Durham, ‘is a tale of a battle already won’. But such revisionism has not altered the overriding picture. In his detailed study of Durham during the Wars of the Roses, A.J. Pollard argued that the appointment of Robert Neville to the episcopate in 1438 marked the crown’s surrender of control over the liberty to the junior branch of the Nevilles. Their position, as overmighty subjects, was greatly strengthened by having the financial and military resources of the palatinate put at their disposal. Such a collapse of royal authority, of course, formed a necessary prelude to the restoration of central control over the palatinate by the early Tudors.25 Rees Davies’s typically penetrative observation, that the study of Welsh marcher lordships has suffered from their being ‘cast into the oubliette as anomalous appendages of the English state or as seignorial units caught in a time-warp and awaiting absorption into the English/British state’,26 also applies to the study of Durham. Cam’s allusive reference to the ‘feudal irresponsibility’ of the liberties in the fifteenth century, which had to be corrected by the Tudors, is thus given substance. Early modern historians, however, have tended to downplay the inevitable logic and centrist direction of Tudor policy towards liberties such as the palatinate of Durham by drawing a distinction between the attitudes of Henry VII and his ministers and the work of Thomas Cromwell in the 1530s. They have argued, contra Cam, that the Cromwellian-inspired parliamentary legislation did not represent a continuation of a policy begun under Henry VII but was ‘a new development in changed circumstances’ created, according to one scholar, by the Reformation and, according to another, by ‘new thinking about the nature of sovereignty’.27 Most significantly, sixteenth-century historians have begun to emphasise the more piecemeal nature of the changes which the greater liberties, such as Durham and Chester, underwent in the 1530s and 1540s. The language which historians have employed to describe these changes is revealing: instead of suppression and destruction, there is integration and absorption. Thus, Christopher Kitching, in a welcome change of perspective which considered the palatinate of Durham in respect of the needs of the local community rather than of the crown, pointed out that the 1536 act did not end palatine independence, but retained and incorporated 24 25 26 27

Scammell, ‘Origin and Limitations’, pp. 470–1. Pollard, ‘The Crown and the County Palatine’, pp. 67–87. R. Davies, ‘The Medieval State: The Tyranny of a Concept?’, Journal of Historical Sociology 16 (2003), p. 294. S.G. Ellis, ‘The Destruction of the Liberties: Some Further Evidence’, BIHR 54 (1981), p. 161; T. Thornton, ‘The Integration of Cheshire into the Tudor State in the Early Sixteenth Century’, NH 29 (1993), p. 63.



INTRODUCTION 

palatine courts within a national framework of law enforcement. Local courts continued to flourish because they offered the attraction of justice close to home, and only gradually did the courts of Westminster see an increase in Durham business.28 New work on the palatinate of Chester in the sixteenth century has gone further in suggesting the ‘limited integration’ of Cheshire ‘into the Tudor nation state’.29 Instead of Cam’s image of a ‘battle’ between a progressive Tudor state and the ‘feudal irresponsibility’ of the liberties, Tim Thornton has argued for a new paradigm to explain the process of Tudor state building, at the heart of which was a concept of devolution, or in his words, ‘an easy tension between centralised monarchy and territorial autonomy’, an ambiguity which allowed the palatinate of Chester to thrive in the sixteenth century and which, he argues, allowed Durham to flourish in the same period.30 Palatinate jurisdiction was perceived by contemporaries as a solution to, rather than a problem of, government. Thornton’s nation-state is a composite rather than a centralised, unified and monolithic entity. Instead of an older view of the process of state formation which was determined by an anachronistic notion of remorseless centralisation producing conflict and competition between the crown and the provinces, Thornton has provided a more nuanced appreciation of the essentially pragmatic nature of relations between local elites and crown ministers, in which the centre did not dominate and ultimately control the locality but accepted and supported the principle of local self-determination. Instead of a predestined and linear process of state building, instead of absorption, integration and uniformity, Thornton has demonstrated the continuing power of local difference and regional diversity in the composition of the pre-modern English state. Thornton’s territorial view of Tudor governance has also offered an important revision of the core-periphery concept of state building, namely the process by which the periphery becomes subordinate to the political domination of the core, in this case, Westminster. The territories of interest to Thornton were those geographically distant from south-east England such as the palatinates of Durham and Chester, Ireland, Wales, the Isle of Man and Calais, which also were governed separately from Westminster through their own jurisdictional franchises.31 But the core-periphery paradigm has been most explicit in Steven G. Ellis’s studies on the Tudor state, in which the palatinate of Durham and other liberties are mentioned, albeit more tangentially and in a less positive light. Ellis’s main interest has been the relative 28

29 30

31

C. Kitching, ‘The Durham Palatinate and the Courts of Westminster under the Tudors’, The Last Principality: Politics, Religion and Society in the Bishopric of Durham, 1494–1660, ed. ­D. Marcombe (Nottingham, 1987), pp. 49–70. Thornton, ‘Integration of Cheshire’, pp. 40–63 at 63. T. Thornton, Cheshire and the Tudor State, 1480–1560 (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 256, 243–4; ‘Fifteenth-Century Durham and the Problem of Provincial Liberties in England and the Wider Territories of the English Crown’, TRHS, 6th series 11 (2001), pp. 83–100. Thornton, Cheshire, pp. 243–5.

10

THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

strength of the Tudor state which, he has argued, can best be tested by an examination of the enforcement of royal policy in the localities and, in particular, in outlying territories such as the ‘far north’ (including the palatinate). Viewing their forms of governance in a comparative British context, these borderlands – the north, the marches of Calais, Wales and Ireland – appear the norm rather than the exception in the Tudor state.32 Unlike Thornton, Ellis has endorsed an older view of the ultimate objective of the Tudor regime – the extension of royal authority through the destruction of local autonomy – and has argued for a strategy of ‘political centralization, administrative uniformity, and cultural imperialism’ devised to achieve this aim. In Ellis’s analysis, Tudor policy was a failure.33 Liberties in the ‘far north’ of England, such as the palatinate of Durham, were ‘an anachronism and an obstacle to law and order’ because their lords possessed extensive jurisdiction in which the king’s writ did not run and exercised their own ‘quasi-royal power’.34 The strategy of centralisation and uniformity could only work in the core region of the Tudor state (‘lowland England’), but it was a manifest failure in the ‘more remote, predominantly upland territories which were more difficult to rule’ and which constituted the largest territory of the Tudor state.35 Ellis’s state is, therefore, fragmentary and incomplete, in which central power is projected unevenly in the provinces. Whether viewed as a virtual state, a liberty, a core or peripheral territory, a special case in an English context or a more characteristic form of institutional arrangement within a British perspective, the dominant narrative of state formation has reduced the palatinate of Durham to the status of, at best, a case-study from which to observe a much larger process of state building and to test the power, intensity, reach and sophistication of the premodern state. In this, Durham is not alone. Comparable peripheral and highly autonomous territories have experienced a similar fate. For instance, the premise of James Given’s State and Society in Medieval Europe: Gwynedd and Languedoc under Outside Rule was to use the absorption of these two regions into the kingdoms of England and France respectively as a device ‘with which to analyze the dynamics of the process of “state-building” in medieval Europe’.36 Perversely, Lapsley’s view that the palatinate can only be understood in relation to central government remains intact. Consequently, historians of Durham have only considered the political life of the palatinate in the monotonous language of autonomy and the restraints imposed on such

32 33 34 35 36

S.G. Ellis, Tudor Frontiers and Noble Power: The Making of the British State (Oxford, 1995), p. 16. S.G. Ellis, ‘The Limits of Power: The English Crown and the British Isles’, The Sixteenth Century, 1485–1603, ed. P. Collinson (Oxford, 2002), pp. 47–80 at 79. Ellis, Tudor Frontiers, pp. 34–5. Ellis, Tudor Frontiers, pp. ix–x. See also S.G. Ellis, ‘Civilizing Northumberland: Representations of Englishness in the Tudor State’, Journal of Historical Sociology 12 (1999), pp. 103–27. J. Given, State and Society in Medieval Europe: Gwynedd and Languedoc under Outside Rule (Ithaca, 1990), pp. 1–2.



INTRODUCTION

11

independence by the crown,37 thereby obscuring the potential vitality and diversity of local political culture. Lapsley’s narrative has also received support from another direction in the form of Marxist historiography. Here, Marx’s notion of capital as an homogenising and centralising force has helped to explain the decline and destruction of a regional pattern of life.38 Framed within a particular debate about the transition from feudalism to capitalism in the early modern period, Mervyn James’s Family, Lineage, and Civil Society traced the changing economic and political orientation of the Durham hinterland between 1500 and 1640 as market forces finally broke down local particularism and led to the region’s absorption into a nationally based market. According to James, local rebellions such as the 1536 Pilgrimage of Grace and the Northern Rising of 1569 were the response of the region to Tudor centralisation in religious and political affairs, but both were defeated, and the failure of the Northern Rising, in particular, led to the collapse of the traditional pattern of regional politics based upon the power of the great magnates such as the Nevilles of Raby. Royal patronage and market forces, notably the development of the coal trade, saw the emergence of a new kind of society in the region, in which the gentry became an important economic and political force in their own right. As the gentry were absorbed in the national economy, they sought to participate in the national political system based at Westminster, lobbying successfully for the enfranchisement of the county of Durham in the mid seventeenth century. And as the region orientated itself politically towards the capital and its freeholders secured the right to elect MPs for the county, the bishop lost his role as the representative of the palatinate within parliament.39 In this teleological understanding of the development of a regional society and polity, the palatinate served as a prelude to the real story: what a recent historian has referred to as ‘the unification of England under the crown’.40 Too much attention has been paid to the nature of the palatinate’s relationship with the crown. It is now generally accepted that the origins of the palatinate of Durham did not lie in either ‘post-Conquest grant or the hoary myth of border defence’ and that the growth of the bishop of Durham’s temporal jurisdiction between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries was organic and piecemeal, developing largely though prescription rather than charter, as and when opportunities arose.41 The palatinate of Durham was not the creation 37 38 39 40 41

See, for example, Pollard, ‘The Crown and the County Palatine’, p. 6, and Thornton, ‘FifteenthCentury Durham’, p. 98. Cf. N. Thrift, ‘Taking Aim at the Heart of the Region’, Human Geography: Society, Space and Social Science, ed. D. Gregory et al. (Basingstoke, 1994), pp. 211–16. M. James, Family, Lineage and Civil Society: A Study of Society, Politics, and Mentality in the Durham Region, 1500–1640 (Oxford, 1974), pp. 189–90. S.J. Gunn, Early Tudor Government, 1485–1558 (Basingstoke, 1995), p. 175. G.V. Scammell, Hugh du Puiset, Bishop of Durham (Cambridge, 1956), p. 189.

12

THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

of the crown: it grew gradually out of the privileges associated with the preConquest church of Durham known as the community of St Cuthbert and its territorial power developed from the patrimony of St Cuthbert, that is, the lands acquired by the community of St Cuthbert following Cuthbert’s death in 687.42 But it is also agreed that the beginning of the Anglo-Scottish war in 1296 – a conflict which continued periodically for the next two hundred years – marked a decisive turning point in the history of the palatinate. From 1296, Durham acquired a strategic significance as a defence against the Scots. Of real importance here was the bishop of Durham’s lordship of Norhamshire and Islandshire at the northernmost point of the county of Northumberland. This was a lordship symbolised by the bishop’s possession of the castle of Norham, the largest and probably the strongest English fortification on the south bank of the river Tweed. We might, from the perspective of the nationstate, view the military role of the bishop of Durham as a source of political weakness to the crown. National problems of defence in the northern border region forced the crown to concede power to the periphery and to consolidate the autonomy of the palatinate of Durham. According to the modern biographer of Thomas Langley, the fifteenth-century bishop of Durham, ‘the extensive privileges of Durham were tolerated because they gave stability and strength to a vital frontier district.’43 Financial, administrative and judicial autonomy were the political cost of the royal enterprise of war in the north. We might, on the other hand, view the relationship between the palatinate and war as evidence not of the considerable independence enjoyed by the bishop of Durham, but of precisely the opposite: of the extension to the palatinate of a notion of reciprocity which characterised relations between centre and locality in late medieval England and which was enshrined in the familiar concept of ‘self-government at the king’s command’. In other words, the constitutional autonomy of the palatinate was conceded by the crown so long as the bishop fulfilled his responsibilities as a royal minister in the waging of war. If the requirements of border defence did not explain the origins of the palatinate, the foreign policy of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English kings helped to explain the survival of Durham in the late middle ages. Historians of Durham have thus tended to approach the palatinate primarily as a form of devolved government. Though the king’s writ did not run in Durham, the bishop was still the king’s servant and minister. Evidence to support this concept of devolution might be found in the quo warranto proceedings of 1293 involving the palatinate of Durham, which were conducted on the basis that the bishop of Durham’s liberty was ‘within the body of the county’ [of Northumberland].44 A similar rhetoric coloured the crown’s later 42

43 44

For the territorial expansion of the patrimony, see E. Craster, ‘The Patrimony of St Cuthbert’, EHR 69 (1954), pp. 177–99; W.M. Aird, St Cuthbert and the Normans: The Church of Durham, 1071–1153 (Woodbridge, 1998), Ch. 1. R.L. Storey, Thomas Langley and the Bishopric of Durham, 1406–1437 (London, 1961), p. 144. My emphasis. Bek, p. 40.



INTRODUCTION

13

relations with Durham. In 1376, for instance, when Edward III declared his support for Bishop Hatfield in his dispute with the archbishop of York, he did so on the grounds that the disturbances which the archbishop of York’s actions would likely inflame could not be tolerated, since ‘the king will not endure such things, being bound to cherish peace and quietness everywhere in his realm.’45 There could be no clearer statement of the crown’s view of Durham as an integral part of the body politic of England. The king’s peace, in this sense, was universal. In fact, whatever the legal theories of the quo warranto proceedings and whatever the practical realities of war, the crown also recognised that the legitimacy and power of the bishops of Durham was grounded not in royal sanction, but in another source of authority, namely the traditions associated with the church of Durham and with the figure of St Cuthbert, in particular. Most explicitly, the royal charter of 1383 to the bishop of Durham was justified primarily because of the king’s ‘devotion to St. Cuthbert patron of the church of Durham’.46 Whatever the bishop’s status as a royal minister, the bishop was also the chief custodian of the church of Durham and the infringement of his privileges was to the disinheritance of his church. It was certainly in this language that Bishops Hatfield, Fordham, Skirlaw and Langley most frequently couched the defence of their privileges from encroachments by others. And these privileges, whilst they could be buttressed by royal charter, were claimed primarily ‘from time out of mind’. Commentary on the interaction and reciprocal relationship between centre and periphery is very much in vogue, but in the case of Durham, the notion of reciprocity is extremely problematic. On occasion, the crown did deploy the rhetoric of military service in its dealings with the bishop of Durham. In 1318, on the election of Bishop Louis Beaumont to the see of Durham, Edward II asked the pope to confirm the appointment on the grounds that Beaumont would be a ‘brazen wall’ (aeneus murus) against the Scots.47 Five years later, the king instructed Beaumont to return to his diocese in order to supervise the defence of the border, where he would act as a ‘stone wall’ (murus lapideus) against the Scots. In 1376, when Edward III came to the defence of Bishop Thomas Hatfield in his conflict with the new archbishop of York, Alexander Neville, the king told Neville that he should abandon immediately his intended visitation of the Durham diocese, since the protests it would engender north of the Tees might ‘comfort or encourage the king’s enemies of the marches of Scotland bordering upon that bishopric and diocese’.48 In November 1437, when Henry VI wrote to the prior and chapter of Durham cathedral priory recommending that they elect Robert Neville,

45 46 47 48

CCR, 1374–7, pp. 427–8. CCR, 1381–5, p. 349. For this and what follows, see Scriptores Tres, p. 98; Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae, et … Acta Publica, ed. T. Rymer, 4 vols in 7 (London, 1816–69), Vol. II/i, p. 506. CCR, 1374–7, pp. 427–8.

14

THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

bishop of Salisbury to the see of Durham, he did so on the basis that the church of Durham is ‘oon of the grettest and moost notable churches of oure patronage within this oure Royaume as for hit is nygh unto the marches of Scotland’, for which reason, it is ‘right necessare and expedient both for the wele of that countrey and of the said Church to set and pourvey of suche a notable and myghty personne to be heed and Bisshop therof as can and may puissantly kepe thayme best to the honnour of god and defence of this oure Royaume’.49 Increasingly in practice, however, the crown acknowledged that the defence of the northern border was a Northumberland rather than Durham responsibility. Even from the very beginning of the conflict, it was specifically by virtue of his possession of Norham castle, immediately adjacent to the Scottish border, that the crown saw the bishop of Durham as a central figure in border defence.50 Periodically from the mid 1350s until the mid 1370s, Bishop Hatfield spent extended periods of residence, accompanied by his household and retinue, at Norham castle, where he was personally involved in military affairs at the behest of the crown.51 But it was a military role that was gradually assumed by the wardens of the march, and from the mid 1380s, the bishops of Durham no longer served as wardens of the east march.52 Indeed, if we examine more closely the crown’s justification of the privileges of the palatinate, we can see that the ties which bound, such as they were, were not based upon the expectation of military service. The culture of military and financial obligation and necessity made considerably less impact upon Durham than upon its neighbours in the north of England, especially north of the river Tyne. In Northumberland, the notion of reciprocity shaped, to a considerable extent, the county’s collective response to the demands of the war state. From the 1370s and 1380s and continuing throughout the period, the involvement of the people of Northumberland in the front-line of defensive efforts to meet Scottish incursions – and the suffering inflicted as a consequence – became the basis of petitions from the ‘community’ of Northumberland seeking exemption from the payment of direct taxation.53 Military participation was the trade-off for financial immunity. This argument was never made in relation to Durham.54 Current opinion views Durham within the framework of a descending model of power, in which the palatinate was subject to the king as its superior 49 50 51 52 53

54

DCM, Loc.XXV:96, transcribed in The North of England in the Age of Richard III, pp. 192–3. A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses: Lay Society, War, and Politics 1450–1500 (Oxford, 1990), p. 150. CPR, 1354–8, p. 347; CPR, 1358–61, pp. 322–3; Rot. Scot., Vol. I, pp. 841, 856, 896, 909–10, 952; CCR, 1369–74, pp. 18–19, 361, 464; CCR, 1377–81, p. 6. See below, pp. 166–7. See, for example, SC 8/19/916; SC 8/129/6439; SC 8/22/1090. See also C. Briggs, ‘Taxation, Warfare, and the Early Fourteenth Century “Crisis” in the North: Cumberland Lay Subsidies, 1332–1348’, EcHR 58 (2005), pp. 639–72. Cf. the different view of D. Loades, ‘Introduction’, The Last Principality: Politics, Religion, and Society in the Bishopric of Durham, 1494–1660, ed. D. Marcombe (Nottingham, 1987), p. 1.



INTRODUCTION

15

and ultimately sovereign ruler, with the bishop an agent of crown authority exercising delegated royal rights. But this is not what Bishop Robert Neville told King Henry VI at the parliament of 1453, when he was informed that he was to provide a quota of 300 archers from Durham as part of a nation-wide parliamentary grant of 13,000 archers for the defence of England.55 Reacting angrily to the demand for military service, Neville reminded Henry VI that, from time out of mind (both before and after the Conquest), he and his predecessors had been in possession of a county palatine and all manner of royal prerogatives between the rivers Tyne and Tees and in Norhamshire and Bedlingtonshire within the county of Northumberland and in Crayke within the county of Yorkshire.56 According to the bishop, his palatine authority was exercised by a chancellor, justices, sheriffs, escheators, coroners, bailiffs and other ministers such as the king and his predecessors had elsewhere within the kingdom, but they served at the bishop’s ‘fredame and election distincte and separate frome you and your shires thayne next adioinynge’. And the bishop’s subjects had always been quit of all kinds of subsidy – fifteenths, tenths, scutages or tallages – whether granted by parliament or on any other authority. In this light, the parliamentary quota of 300 archers was ‘utterly’ against the privileges, immunities and franchises of the church of Durham and of the county palatine ‘and agains lawe faith and good conscience’. Neville’s perception of the palatinate – as a form of regalian jurisdiction which was not brought into being by, or delegated from, the centre, but whose origins and growth were much more organic, located as they were in the pre-Conquest period – was shared by the local community, which did not see palatine autonomy as bestowed by, or dependent upon, royal sanction, but rather upon Durham’s own cultural traditions, notably the concept of the Haliwerfolc. This concept, which literally meant the ‘people of the saint’ (St Cuthbert), evolved from the pre-Conquest patrimony of the church of Durham: this patrimony did not simply belong to the bishops of Durham, but was also an entity over which the Haliwerfolc enjoyed collective rights.57 There were alternative ideological sources of power, which were independent of the crown and derived from the symbiotic relationship between the bishop and the church of Durham. This power was available to the bishop of Durham in respect of his role as head of the northern church. Bishops were able to enforce ecclesiastical sanctions to augment their temporal authority when the occasion demanded. Thus, in 1378 Bishop Thomas Hatfield, at the request of one of his sub-foresters of Weardale, ordered his archdeacons to issue in all the churches of the diocese an admonition that those unknown malefactors responsible for the theft of birds of prey within the bishop’s forest, who might not otherwise be identified by the normal legal channels,

55 56 57

‘Henry VI: Parliament of 1453, Text and Translation’, PROME, Vol. XII, pp. 238–9. For this and what follows, see SC 8/85/4208. Aird, St Cuthbert, pp. 5–8. 231. See also below, Ch. 5.

16

THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

should restore the birds to his chief forester or else face excommunication.58 At the same time, the bishops of Durham saw themselves as the direct successors of St Cuthbert and the custodians of the church of Durham, a role which might lead them to act as the defender and representative of palatine privileges and traditions against the depredations of the crown. This was a potent form of power based upon tradition, custom and spiritual sanction which the crown was conscious to respect.59 It was also a type of power which might be contested within Durham, as the bishop’s subjects appropriated these same cultural traditions, based upon identification with St Cuthbert, to assert their own claims and to seek their own privileges vis-à-vis their local lord.60 In Lapsley’s conception, power within the palatinate flowed downwards through a bureaucratic administration. Although he struggled sometimes to distinguish between the different roles performed by the bishop’s ministers, whose spheres of competence were not as clearly demarcated as he would have wished,61 Lapsley believed that, in order to understand the day-to-day operation of government in Durham, it was essential to delineate the formal structures of power, or what Tim Thornton has referred to as the ‘physical apparatus’ of power.62 Following Lapsley’s lead, historians have indeed revealed much about the administrative and judicial functions of the various organs of palatine government.63 But the thrust of Lapsley’s book, conceived in a firmly constitutional tradition, runs counter to much more recent work on the exercise of political power in pre-modern England, in which it is now generally agreed that, in the absence of anything approaching a professional bureaucracy, rulers were reliant upon local elites for the regulation of local society.64 These elites were essential in the processes of command and enforcement because they possessed land, and land, as a recent commentator has pointed out, was the basis of power in late medieval England. This was a world in which governmental authority could only work through the existing social structure.65 Without a standing army or a permanent police force, rulers had no choice but to turn to local landholders, with private resources of manpower at their disposal, to provide the coercive force required to implement their rulers’ will. Current understanding of the political history of Durham is, therefore, partial and incomplete.

58 59 60 61 62 63

64 65

DCM, Hatfield’s Register, fol. 142v. For a similar case involving the destruction of the bishop’s park of Wolsingham, see DCM, Hatfield’s Register, fol. 141r. Thornton, ‘Fifteenth-Century Durham’, p. 100. See below, pp. 186–235. Lapsley, County Palatine, Ch. 3. Thornton, ‘Fifteenth-Century Durham’, p. 85. Among the more recent studies of the local courts, see: K. Emsley and C.M. Fraser, The Courts of the County Palatine of Durham (Durham, 1984), and C.J. Neville, ‘The Courts of the Prior and the Bishop of Durham in the Later Middle Ages’, History 85 (2000), pp. 216–31. G. Harriss, ‘Political Society and the Growth of Government in Late Medieval England’, P&P 138 (1993), pp. 28–57; Davies, ‘Medieval State’, p. 289. C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401–1499 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 283–5; Davies, ‘Medieval State’, pp. 290–1.



INTRODUCTION

17

The aim of this book is to write a history of the palatinate which studies Durham in its own right and which does not see it as subordinate to more general questions about the development of the nation-state. What follows is a regional study, focusing upon the territory which was known throughout the later middle ages and into the early modern period as the ‘bishopric’ of Durham. This was not the same as the ‘diocese’ of Durham between the rivers Tees and Tweed over which the bishop exercised his spiritual authority as diocesan. The bishopric was the core of the bishop’s secular franchise – the palatinate of Durham – and stretched between the rivers Tyne and Tees, although strictly speaking, after the grant of Hexhamshire to the archbishopric of York in the late eleventh century, the liberty lay between Derwent, Tyne and Tees. The palatinate encompassed the bishopric and the three shires of Bedlington, Norham and Island north of the river Tyne (known to historians anachronistically as North Durham) and the manor of Crayke some twentyfive miles south of the river Tees.66 Also south of the Tees were the bishop’s Yorkshire manors of Northallerton in the North Riding and Howden in the East Riding, but here, despite episcopal aspirations, the bishop enjoyed only manorial jurisdiction with the additional franchises of rights of free warren and return of writs, though even the latter was called into question when the crown ordered the sheriff of Yorkshire to summon parties from Howden and Northallerton before the king’s courts in the fourteenth century.67 It was the bishopric of Durham which constituted the heartland of the palatinate: geographically, but also, as we shall see, administratively, politically and culturally. The bishopric of Durham was a territory with an institutional centre at Palace Green in the city of Durham, around which were clustered the chief organs of palatine government: the chancery, the exchequer and the law courts. Such institutional apparatus of power is duly impressive.68 But what was it actually like to be governed by the bishop and his ministers?69 How did palatine government really work? In exploring the relationship between local landholders and the formal administration of the bishop, this book follows in the tradition of the ‘county community’ studies of pre-modern England. In their meticulous analysis of county society, historians saw the shire as a social unit within which the gentry of late medieval England dominated local office, controlled county politics, monopolised landed wealth and intermarried and socialised with each other, forming themselves into self-contained

66 67

68 69

See Map 1. C.M. Fraser, A History of Antony Bek, Bishop of Durham, 1283–1311 (Oxford, 1957), pp. 109– 10; Pollard, North-Eastern England, p. 146; K. Emsley, ‘The Yorkshire Enclaves of the Bishops of Durham’, YAJ 47 (1975), p. 106. Thornton, ‘Fifteenth-Century Durham’, pp. 84–5. Cf. T.N. Bisson’s review of J.A. Green, The Government of England under Henry I (Cambridge, 1986), Speculum 64 (1989), pp. 436–8 at 438.

18

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THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

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B I S HOPRIC OF DURHAM Bishop Auckland

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YORKSHIRE

Map 1.  The Palatinate of Durham



INTRODUCTION

19

county communities.70 The historians who developed this model of late medieval society wrote a form of regional history in which the purpose of their detailed local studies was not to explore ‘events and issues within a regional context’ but to emphasise ‘a distinctive intra-dependence within the region’: the county was a region that was both an administrative unit and what might be described as a zone of ‘human activity’ structuring social as well as political action.71 The problem with the late medieval county studies, as a recent critic has pointed out, is that they followed a model of society which had initially been developed in relation to seventeenth-century England. Medievalists, it has been claimed, ‘have accepted too readily that there was a real county community in the early modern period and that their counties are somehow working towards this’.72 Most significantly for our purposes, this teleological view of pre-modern English society had a political dimension in that, in a seventeenth-century context, it served as the basis of a very different interpretation of English history from the Whig notion of inexorable centralisation: in this formulation, the English polity disintegrated in the civil wars from the particularist forces of localism. And, though the theme was fragmentation rather than unification, it was nonetheless an evolutionary meta-narrative of national historical development. However, whilst the notion of the ‘county community’ no longer commands the scholarly respect it once did, the insights provided by this approach to pre-modern English society and politics are vital for a new understanding of the late medieval bishopric of Durham. Although much is now known about the institutional framework of power between the Tyne and the Tees, comparatively little has been written about the people whose lives connected with these formal structures. Instead, historians seeking to adopt such a perspective have been forced to turn to scholarship of a firmly antiquarian nature. First-rate antiquaries though they were, the late-eighteenth- and earlynineteenth-century works on the palatinate of William Hutchinson, Robert Surtees and James Raine were largely a series of detailed family histories tracing the descent and possession of property, which were embedded within a parochial framework that inevitably precluded the development of a more thematic and synthetic approach to the subject.73 This is in sharp contrast to 70

71

72 73

C. Carpenter, ‘Gentry and Community in Medieval England’, JBS 33 (1994), pp. 344–65; D. Crouch, ‘From Stenton to McFarlane: Models of Societies of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, TRHS, 6th series 5 (1995), pp. 187–9. J.D. Marshall, The Tyranny of the Discrete: A Discussion of the Problems of Local History in England (Aldershot, 1997), p. 2; E. Royle, ‘Introduction: Regions and Identities’, Issues of Regional Identity, ed. E. Royle (Manchester, 1998), pp. 2–3. Carpenter, ‘Gentry and Community’, p. 380. W. Hutchinson, The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham, 3 vols (London, 1785–94); R. Surtees, The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham, 4 vols (London, 1816); J. Raine, The History and Antiquities of North Durham (London, 1852). The first volume of Hutchinson’s History was very much the exception, presenting the history of Durham through the lives of its bishops.

20

THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

the historiography of the palatinate of Chester, for instance, where, in addition to the work of Tim Thornton, there have been notable studies of the nobility and gentry by Michael Bennett and Philip Morgan.74 In some ways, there are sound empirical reasons for this relative neglect of lay landed society within the bishopric. The participation of the Nevilles of Raby and Brancepeth in the Northern Rising of 1569 against the government of Elizabeth I led to the confiscation of the family’s estates and the destruction of a large proportion of the family’s archive. The lacuna created by the loss of their records is reflected in Charles R. Young’s collective biography of the family, which stops in 1400 and has very little to say about the administration of the Neville estates, the pattern of Neville retaining or the position of the Nevilles within Durham society.75 The medieval history of lordship in Durham has been mainly concerned with large ecclesiastical estates. The extremely rich archives of the medieval church of Durham, the custody of which was shared between the bishop and cathedral priory of Durham, have generated a steady stream of historical studies. Most relevant in this context are the biographies of two late medieval bishops of Durham, Antony Bek and Thomas Langley, and an outstanding study of the corporate life of the fifteenth-century cathedral under its industrious and committed prior, John Wessington.76 But we should also acknowledge the existence of a fruitful and productive tradition of economic history at Durham stretching from the 1950s to the present and encompassing, in roughly chronological order, the work of E.M. Halcrow, R.B. Dobson, R.A. Lomas, T. Lomas, R.H. Britnell and, more recently, M. Threlfall-Holmes, B. Dodds and P. Larson, all of which has drawn principally upon the archive of the cathedral priory.77 The records of these two great ecclesiastical institutions can tell us considerably more about lay landholders within the bishopric. Certainly, the institutions of the bishop’s palatine regime were integrated fully into local society and were not simply the instruments of lordly power and coercion. The rolls of the bishop of Durham’s chancery, for instance, which survive as a continuous sequence from the episcopate of Richard Bury (1333–45), contain abundant evidence of the way in which the Durham chancery was used extensively by the local gentry and nobility to register their own deeds and to enter bonds called recognisances to keep the peace within the bishopric.78 The periodic rentals and surveys of the landed properties of the prior and bishop of 74

75 76 77 78

M. Bennett, Community, Class and Careerism: Cheshire and Lancashire Society in the Age of Gawain and the Green Knight (Cambridge, 1983); P. Morgan, War and Society in Medieval Cheshire, 1277–1403 (Manchester, 1987). C.R. Young, The Making of the Neville Family in England, 1166–1400 (Woodbridge, 1996). Fraser, History of Antony Bek; Storey, Thomas Langley; R.B. Dobson, Durham Priory, 1400–1450 (Cambridge, 1973). For this literature, see A.J. Pollard, ‘Use and Ornament: Late-Twentieth-Century Historians on the Late Medieval North-East’, NH 42 (2005), pp. 66, 70–4. The extant chancery rolls begin with DURH 3/29. From the episcopate of Thomas Langley, the rolls followed royal practice of a division between letters patent and close: DURH 3/34, m. 1r, 3/35, m. 1r.



INTRODUCTION

21

Durham, which have tended to be read within that well-established genre of writing on late medieval England – the socio-economic study derived from the estate records of major ecclesiastical institutions in the mould of Edward Miller’s work on Ely or Edmund King’s on Peterborough – can also be read in other ways. While it is true that these estate records were compiled in the first instance for the benefit of their lord, the use to which they were later put could not be so easily controlled. These were documents with which members of lay society within the bishopric were extremely familiar, reflecting their engagement with lordship on all levels, both figurative and real. When ‘a certain old esquire of the bishopric of Durham’ (quidem senex armiger istius episcopatus Dunelmensis) by the name of John Killerby,79 the head of a submanorial gentry family of no particular distinction, petitioned the bishop of Durham in the second half of the fourteenth century to complain about the activity of certain of the bishop’s ministers who had distrained him for a larger annual rent than he was accustomed to pay, Killerby asserted knowledgeably that this sum was ‘against the tenor of your rental called Boldon Book’ (encontre la tenore de votre Rentale appelle Boldonboke), a survey of the bishop’s landed estate dating from the 1180s.80 Significantly, too, the record of Killerby’s petition, which is actually a draft document containing deletions and amendments, is to be found among the muniments of Durham cathedral priory. And it is within the archive of the priory that a large number of gentry deeds and estate papers have survived, particularly among the class of Miscellaneous Charters, as several local families, most notably the Claxtons, looked upon the cathedral as a more effective safe-deposit box than their own domestic archive.81 At the same time, the local production of a sequence of historiographic texts from the eleventh century about the church of Durham made the priory very much the guardian and repository of the memory and counsel of the bishopric. These texts took the form of a regional narrative which was of relevance not only to the monastic community at Durham, but to the wider community in the land between Tyne and Tees.82 The combination of a rich archive and substantial manuscript library at Durham gave Prior Wessington considerable narrative and documentary material out of which he was able to fashion legal defences of the rights, privileges and corporate identity of the priory, bishop and local community in the first half of the fifteenth century.83 Rather than approach Durham either as a state, albeit an aborted one, 79 80 81 82 83

DCM, Misc.Ch. 7243. DCM, Misc.Ch. 5251. The Claxton material is the subject of B.A. Barker, ‘The Claxtons: A Northern Gentry Family in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Teesside, 2003). See below, pp. 189–96. These libelli, listed in R.B. Dobson, ‘The Priory of Durham in the Time of John Wessington, Prior 1416–46’ (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1962), pp. 580–6, are the subject of a forthcoming edition by Margaret Harvey and R.H. Britnell.

22

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which lacked permanence because of the elective rather than hereditary nature of the bishop’s rule, or as a liberty, that is, a juridical unit devolved from and legitimated by the crown, this study examines the bishopric through the relationship between lordship and community. The bishop was a temporal lord whose lordship was grounded in his status as a major landholder in his own right and as the supreme landlord within the palatinate from whom all freeholders ultimately held their land. Allied to this potentially formidable territorial position was the possession of what might be described as a public authority comprising quasi-regal rights derived from the highly autonomous nature of the jurisdictional franchise over which he presided. The essential nature of the bishop’s lordship has sometimes been neglected by those historians who have ventured into Durham landed society and who have deduced the existence of ‘independent’ county gentry on the basis of participation in the bishop’s palatine administration.84 In Thomas Hatfield (1345–81) and Thomas Langley (1406–37), the pre-Reformation church of Durham possessed two of its longest serving bishops – only Hugh Puiset (1153–95) held office for longer – and it is their episcopates which provide the chronological framework of the book. It was also in this period, between roughly the mid fourteenth and mid fifteenth centuries, that the Nevilles of Raby and Brancepeth established themselves as the major landed family within the bishopric, before the bifurcation of the line in 1425 on the death of Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland and the outbreak of the Neville family feud. This is a story which, in its local context and in its implications for local society and local politics, has still not yet been properly told. Current debate about the structure of landed society in late medieval England has polarised around what have been taken to be dichotomous concepts of lordship and community.85 The study of Durham offers an opportunity to explore the operation and, most importantly, interaction of a range of overlapping lordships varying widely in character and intensity – palatine, royal, ecclesiastical and lay – in an area where the phenomenon of lordship was undeniably prevalent and yet where the framework of political power was also shaped by horizontal associations and a notion of community which periodically acquired a quasi-institutional character in the form of the ‘community of the bishopric of Durham’. This was a community, in both its associative and institutional sense, which developed in the context of rather than in opposition to lordship. Absent from the plethora of studies of the county community in late medieval and early modern England has been a consideration of the cultural and ideological foundations of community.86 How, and on what occasions, did

84 85 86

For example, M. Arvanigian, ‘The Durham Gentry and the Scottish March, 1370–1400: County Service in Late Medieval England’, NH 42 (2005), pp. 257–73 at 263, 265. The tenor of this debate is conveyed in C. Carpenter, The Wars of the Roses: Politics and the Constitution in England, c. 1437–1509 (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 54–9. Cf. the comments of Thornton, Cheshire, p. 41.



INTRODUCTION

23

local society within the bishopric of Durham imagine itself collectively? A new history of Durham must consider the collective mentality of local landed society and, in particular, its sense of place and its identification with the traditions of palatine autonomy. It should look more directly for what J.G.A. Pocock has described as ‘an awareness of shared membership’,87 which might be articulated in local tradition, myths and history and in the rhetoric which local society employed to express and assert its commonality. Existing work on this subject (slim though it is) has tended to assume a strong correlation between immunity, privilege and identity formation, in which the palatinate’s separate institutional apparatus underpinned and heightened a sense of belonging.88 This is an assumption which needs to be examined much more fully in the wider context of palatine political culture, especially since it seems to run counter to the prevailing notion in the county studies that the crucible of local communal solidarity and collective identity was the engagement of local elites with the institutions of central government, specifically parliament.89 Chapter two charts the changing balance of landed power within the bishopric in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, whilst chapter three explores the strength of lordship in the land between the Tyne and the Tees through analysis of the various social networks to which Durham’s gentry and magnates belonged. Chapter four focuses upon the operation of the formal structures of power within the bishopric and considers the influence of lordship upon the pattern of local office-holding. Finally, chapter five examines more fully the political life of the bishopric. This is a subject which is of no little significance in the current debate about the essential character – indeed, meaning – of politics in late medieval England. In recent years, historians of national politics have argued that political ideas and the contemporary discourse of political debate mattered. National politics were informed as much by political ideas and constitutional principles as the politics of self-interest.90 Yet where has this left the study of local politics? To historians of the late medieval and early modern county communities in the 1970s and 1980s, politics constituted something which happened outside the shire, at Westminster, whilst the sources of friction within local societies were the ownership of land, the feuds within kin groups which this generated and the distribution of patronage.91 ‘Of what, indeed, did local politics consist? Undoubtedly of the private warfare, feuds, ambushes and forcible entries so often recounted.’92 Routine government in this view was 87 88 89 90 91 92

J.G.A. Pocock, ‘The Politics of Historiography’, HR 78 (2005), p. 12. Pollard, North-Eastern England, pp. 153–4; Thornton, ‘Fifteenth-Century Durham’, pp. 84–5. Carpenter, ‘Gentry and Community’, pp. 377–8, with references. This historiography is reviewed briefly in M. Hicks, ‘Cement or Solvent? Kinship and Politics in Late Medieval England: The Case of the Nevilles’, History 83 (1998), pp. 31–2. Cf. D.H. Sacks, ‘The Corporate Town and the English State: Bristol’s “Little Businesses” 1625– 41’, P&P 110 (1996), pp. 69–73; Carpenter, ‘Gentry and Community’, pp. 356–7, 363. M. Hicks, Bastard Feudalism (London, 1995), p. 177.

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not a political issue, other than competition for office. In these county studies, analysis of local politics took the form of delineating the administrative and judicial careers of particular gentry: serving as sheriff or escheator and sitting on the various commissions of local government, most notably the commissions of the peace. Individual gentry rivalries over office and land were the stuff of local politics.93 In this formulation, the local and the national were entirely separate worlds. Did the bishopric of Durham form such a sub-political world, given its highly autonomous position in administration and justice, its lack of parliamentary representation and its exemption from parliamentary taxation? Did the bishop’s distribution of office, land, money and favour become a political issue and lead to charges of mismanagement and misgovernment? Or were the politics of Durham ‘enmeshed in the politics of the whole realm’?94 The bishopric was not an enclosed and self-contained political environment. It did exist within a wider political world, a world focused not upon parliament, but upon the royal court. Leading Durham landholders were from time to time significant players on the national stage, none more so than successive heads of the Nevilles of Raby and Brancepeth. It is doubtful whether John and his son, Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland, could have been such good lords in the bishopric if they had not been so close to successive heads of the house of Lancaster and at times highly influential at court in the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.95 It is surely no coincidence that John Neville’s most intensive period of estate acquisition within Durham occurred in the late 1360s and early 1370s, precisely when he was a key figure at court in the last years of Edward III.96 Relationships between bishop and crown and between the crown and the bishop’s subjects did shape politics in the bishopric. This was certainly true of the period 1369–81, as I have shown elsewhere.97 But if we look at Durham from the inside rather than privilege the notion that politics were bound up inextricably in the mechanisms of central government, another focus of local politics was the relationship between the bishop and the bishop’s subjects. A much more fundamental feature of political life in the bishopric was the local community’s role as the guardian of local custom, tradition and identity.

93 94 95

96 97

S.M. Wright, The Derbyshire Gentry in the Fifteenth Century (Chesterfield, 1983), p. 93. Pollard, ‘Provincial Politics’, p. 76. M. Arvanigian, ‘A Lancastrian Polity? John of Gaunt, John Neville and the War with France, 1368–88’, Fourteenth Century England III, ed. W.M. Ormrod (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 121–42, and ‘Henry IV, the Northern Nobility and the Consolidation of the Regime’, Henry IV: The Establishment of the Regime, 1399–1406, ed. G. Dodd and D. Biggs (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 117–37. See below, pp. 66–7. C.D. Liddy, ‘The Politics of Privilege: Thomas Hatfield and the Palatinate of Durham, 1345–81’, Fourteenth Century England IV, ed. J.S. Hamilton (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 61–79.

2 Land and Power

It is a truth universally acknowledged that land was the basis of social and political power in late medieval England. The power of the bishops of Durham was certainly founded upon the possession of land. The origins of the palatinate lay in the pre-Conquest piecemeal acquisitions of property by the church of Durham, principally but not exclusively between the rivers Tyne and Tees. Custody of this property was vested in the church and the quasi-monastic community of St Cuthbert over which the bishop of Durham presided. To this lordship was later added – in the local context of the Viking invasions of the late ninth century – jurisdictional privilege and immunity. After the Conquest, the division of the patrimony of St Cuthbert to form separate estates for the bishop and the newly constituted Benedictine cathedral priory reduced the property under the bishop’s direct control. But the process of enfeoffment for knight service simultaneously enhanced the bishop’s territorial rights over the land between Tyne and Tees. In the first half of the twelfth century, as Bishop Ranulph Flambard (1099–1128) granted land predominantly in the heartland of the palatinate to an incoming Norman nobility, a baronial elite emerged between Tyne and Tees comprising about ten individuals who were known collectively as the barones et fideles sancti Cuthberti and who owed the bishop the service of more than one knight. These barons were the principal tenants-in-chief of the bishop and held their land of him. Their settlement in ‘the land of St Cuthbert’ (terra Beati Cuthberti) by the mid twelfth century helped to consolidate the idea that, like the king in the rest of England (saving the palatinate of Chester), the bishop was the ‘universal landlord’ within the palatinate: all land was held, directly or indirectly, of the bishop. In the feudal hierarchy the bishop was himself a subject of the king and a tenant-in-chief who owed military service, as the bishop’s return to the crown’s 1166 inquiry into knight service demonstrated. Within the palatinate, however, the bishop was not only a major landholder in his own right, but he was also the sole landowner: all those in possession of land in Durham, including the prior, were, ultimately, his tenants.    

D. Rollason, Northumbria, 500–1100: Creation and Destruction of a Kingdom (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 244–6. For what follows, see W.M. Aird, St Cuthbert and the Normans: The Church of Durham, 1071– 1153 (Woodbridge, 1998), Ch. 5. G.T. Lapsley, The County Palatine of Durham: A Study in Constitutional History (London, 1900), pp. 54–5. The lords of the Welsh March held a comparable position as feudal tenants of the king and

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The bishop’s unique position in relation to landownership meant that his was, in theory at least, a potentially vigorous lordship. Crucially, the bishop was no ordinary landlord, for he exercised a special right, which he shared with the crown, of prerogative lordship. Three aspects of this prerogative deserve particular attention. First, the bishop enjoyed the right of primer seisin, which meant that, when a tenant-in-chief of the bishop died, his lands escheated automatically to the bishop, who could continue to hold them until the name of the next heir had been identified by an inquisition post mortem, homage had been performed and a relief paid. Secondly, the bishop possessed the right of prerogative wardship, which meant that, on the death of a tenantin-chief holding by military tenure, the bishop was able to assume guardianship of all the lands held by the tenant, including those held of others as well as of the bishop in chief, a right which was a recurring source of friction between the bishop and his tenants-in-chief. And thirdly, the bishop, unlike mesne lords, had the right to licence alienations and enfeoffments of land by tenants-in-chief and to take possession of all those lands not duly licensed, only returning them to the tenant once a fine had been paid, thereby guaranteeing the bishop’s access to the incidents of feudal tenure. Land, and the rights of lordship associated with it, provided, therefore, the basic framework of power in the bishopric of Durham. Only on the boundaries of the bishopric did the bishops of Durham face competition from the crown in the exercise of their lordship. Hugh Puiset’s acquisition in 1189 of the wapentake of Sadberge – previously a detached portion of the county of Northumberland within which the crown had enjoyed rights of superior lordship – promised to provide the bishop’s lordship with a greater measure of ‘tenurial and territorial unity’ than it had hitherto possessed. Sadberge was an area in the south of the bishopric, whose precise geographical limits, although never fully and definitively established – certainly not in the royal charter of 1189 – appeared to follow the course of the river Tees, stretching from Barnard Castle in the west to Hartlepool in the east. Significantly, the grant of the wapentake was not accompanied by the crown’s withdrawal of interest from Sadberge. Successive kings sought to retain their own prerogative rights in the wapentake, notably in relation to





  

universal landlords within their lordships: R.R. Davies, ‘Kings, Lords and Liberties in the March of Wales, 1066–1272’, TRHS, 5th series 29 (1979), p. 41. The king’s position in this respect is summarised very usefully in S.L. Waugh, ‘The Fiscal Uses of Royal Wardships in the Reign of Edward I’, Thirteenth Century England I, ed. P. Coss and S.D. Lloyd (Woodbridge, 1986), pp. 54–5. See, for example, the case in 1350 involving the disputed wardship of a tenant of the bishop holding in socage, according to his guardian, but by military tenure, according to the bishop’s ministers: DURH 3/30, m. 6r. M. McGlynn, The Royal Prerogative and the Learning of the Inns of Court (Cambridge, 2003), p. 27. G.V. Scammell, Hugh du Puiset, Bishop of Durham (Cambridge, 1956), p. 187. C.M. Fraser and K. Emsley, ‘Durham and the Wapentake of Sadberge’, Transactions of the Architectural and Archaeological Society of Durham and Northumberland 2 (1970), pp. 71–81.



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the major baronial estates belonging to the lords of Barnard Castle and Hart. The barony of Hart and Hartness, consisting of two knights’ fees, and the two baronies of Barnard Castle and Gainford, comprising a total of five knights’ fees, had been granted by the crown in the first half of the twelfth century and were held of the king.10 With the advent of Anglo-Scottish war in the 1290s, the three baronies were declared forfeit because of the Scottish allegiance of their lords.11 In 1306 Edward I granted the barony of Hart to one of his most trusted advisers, Robert Clifford, in whose family the possession of the two knights’ fees remained. A year later, the king gave the baronies of Gainford and Barnard Castle to one of his main captains in the war with Scotland, Guy Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, and the Beauchamp earls of Warwick retained hold of these two large estates throughout the period of this book. Thomas Beauchamp saw fit to acknowledge this act of royal beneficence when, in October 1399, he conveyed to Richard, his son and heir, the castle and lordship of Barnard Castle ‘within the wapentake of Sadberge which is within the body of the county [quod est infra corpus comitatus] of Northumberland’.12 But in practice, such rhetorical niceties aside, the bishops of Durham were able to resist challenges from the crown and to retain their lordship in Hart and Barnard Castle.13 Important questions remain concerning the exercise of the bishop’s landed power between Tyne and Tees. Beyond the holdings of the bishop and prior of Durham, very little is known about the precise distribution of landed power within the bishopric. The view that Durham contained an unusual power structure based upon a high concentration of landed power in the hands of a primarily, but not exclusively, ecclesiastical nobility is well-established and not without substance.14 Yet the tenurial profile of the county as a whole has never been established, with the result that a rather monolithic picture of the structure of power within the bishopric has emerged which all too easily lends itself to tendentious generalisations about the distinctive character of the region and which overlooks the conduits through which power flowed. Study of the structure of wealth and power within the bishopric requires a detailed examination of the pattern of landholding. At first glance, the sources for such an enterprise are not obvious. One unfortunate result of Durham’s palatine status is that the materials upon which comparable studies of other regions have been conducted do not exist. Durham’s exemption from direct parliamentary taxation, including the poll taxes of 1377, 1379 and

10 11 12 13

14

Aird, St Cuthbert, p. 192; DUL, Mickleton and Spearman MS 1, fol. 13r. For what follows, see C.M. Fraser, A History of Antony Bek, Bishop of Durham, 1283–1311 (Oxford, 1957), pp. 203–8. E 40/658. See below, pp. 222–3; T. Thornton, ‘Fifteenth-Century Durham and the Problem of Provincial Liberties in England and the Wider Territories of the English Crown’, TRHS, 6th series 11 (2001), pp. 97–8. M. James, Family, Lineage and Civil Society: A Study of Society, Politics, and Mentality in the Durham Region, 1500–1640 (Oxford, 1974), pp. 29–30.

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1380 and the income taxes of 1412, 1436 and 1451, means that there are no easily accessible statistics about the distribution of landed wealth in the bishopric of the sort which have been used so profitably by historians studying other counties such as Simon Payling on the gentry elite of fifteenth-century Nottinghamshire.15 In 1436 the crown ordered Bishop Thomas Langley to appoint tax assessors and collectors of the income tax, but resistance from the inhabitants of the bishopric led to the latter making a communal fine of £100 for their manors, lands and tenements in place of the subsidy.16 Similarly, there is no evidence for distraint of knighthood in Durham. Royal attempts to enforce this practice within Durham were vigorously resisted by bishops of Durham as an infringement of their own palatine powers. In 1337, for example, Bishop Richard Bury petitioned the king and council to complain that he had received a writ from the exchequer ordering him to distrain certain men of his franchise of Durham for not assuming knighthood, a writ which he claimed was contrary to his own franchise since it was in his sole power to enforce, although there is no evidence that either he, his predecessors or successors did so.17 On the other hand, the consequence of Durham’s peculiar tenurial structure, in which all land was held of the bishop rather than of the king, means that a record of landholding by the bishop’s tenants-in-chief is available from the inquisitions post mortem taken upon their death by the bishop’s escheator. In the late 1410s, on the instruction of Thomas Langley, the bishop’s administrators produced a register of abstracts of inquisitions post mortem, ex officio and ad melius inquirendum dating from the episcopate of Bishop Bury (1333–45).18 This continuous series of inquisitions forms the basis of the systematic survey of landholding which follows, mapping the changing balance of landed power within the bishopric. The Durham inquisitions post mortem provide essential details on the nature, size and location of property and enable a study of the acquisition and loss of land from family to family over time. IPMs have been seen as a notoriously unreliable source in relation to the valuation of landed property, since, for a variety of reasons, they generally underestimated the value of land.19 Indeed, hard evidence of this discrepancy has been found in instances where historians have been able to compare the figures given in IPMs with those in private estate records of landholders.20 Unfortunately, with one exception – a rental of Sir Robert Colville’s manor of St Helen Auckland for March 1398 –21 there are no extant estate records 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

S.J. Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian England: The Greater Gentry of Nottinghamshire (Oxford, 1991), Ch. 1. See below, pp. 207–8. SC 8/43/2147. R.L. Storey, Thomas Langley and the Bishopric of Durham, 1406–1437 (London, 1961), p. 70. N. Saul, Knights and Esquires: The Gloucestershire Gentry in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1981), pp. 206–7. C.D. Ross and T.B. Pugh, ‘Materials for the Study of Baronial Incomes in Fifteenth-Century England’, EcHR, 2nd series 6 (1953–4), pp. 187–8. NYCRO, ZFL 129, m. 1r.



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for lay society in the bishopric in this period. In the absence of lay valors, rentals and manorial account rolls, the IPM is the main source for gauging the approximate total net income of a landholder’s estate.22 Yet there are strong grounds for thinking that the figures given in Durham IPMs might be more accurate than those recorded in inquests taken in other parts of England. As we shall see, the bishop of Durham was almost entirely dependent upon his estates for his income. He was, therefore, particularly concerned with maximising his revenue from land and exploiting fully his feudal rights regarding property. This, after all, was the reason Thomas Langley ordered the compilation of a register of IPMs in the first place, in stark contrast to the rest of England where the landed estate of the crown made a relatively small contribution to the state of royal finances in the late middle ages.23 The IPMs, moreover, provide, at the very least, an indicator of the relative rather than absolute wealth of landholders and permit comparisons of income levels between members of lay landed society, which is the most significant since it is only in relation to each other that conclusions about the balance of power between landholders are meaningful. For a more dynamic view of the sale and purchase of land, historians of other counties have tended to rely upon the evidence of property transactions in the series of feet of fines preserved among the records of the Westminster court of common pleas. In the bishopric of Durham final concords for the transmission of freehold property were made before a group of justices assembled in the bishop’s court at Durham. Copies of these conveyances were kept in a separate file in Durham, but unfortunately this no longer exists, and only a few final concords from Durham are now extant, preserved among the private records of Durham landholders.24 But if this tenurial survey of the bishopric is in some ways a more difficult enterprise than for other counties of England, in other ways, it is a much more complete one. Alongside the evidence of the IPMs we can place the records of the ecclesiastical estates of the prior and bishop. These include the estate survey of Thomas Hatfield, which was probably compiled originally between 1377 and 1380, but which also betrays signs of later amendment, and of Thomas Langley, which was put together on the bishop’s command in 1418.25 Whilst primarily records of the revenue accruing from the bishop’s demesne estates, that is, the rents and services due from the lands under his direct control, the estate surveys

22 23 24

25

The valuations in IPMs represented an estimate of the clear income expected from a property once costs had been deducted. C. Carpenter, ‘General Introduction to the New Series’, CIPM, Vol. XXII, p. 4. For the file, see the reference at the bottom of a final concord enrolled in the chancery rolls of Bishop John Fordham: DURH 3/32, m. 2r. The extant Durham final concords include: DRO, D/ Lo/D 428; DCM, Misc.Chs 5800, 5809, 6211, 6213; Lumley MSS, MTD/A8/1; NYCRO, ZDV I/70, ZFL 63. HS; SC 12/21/29 (Bishop Langley’s survey). For evidence of later interlineation in Hatfield’s survey, see the description of Ralph Neville as earl of Westmorland, a title which he only acquired in 1397: HS, p. 117.

30

THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

also yield considerable information about the identity of those free tenants holding of the bishop and the nature of their properties. It is not enough simply to address the question of who held the land in the bishopric. We need to consider what kind of land they held. Historians of late medieval English landed society have tended to analyse the pattern of landholding based upon a straightforward manorial count, even when they acknowledged that the manor was not always the main unit of landholding and that manorial structures were not well established in particular parts of a county.26 Did different parts of the bishopric of Durham contain different power structures based upon the topography of the region? The Geography of Lordship It is logical to begin with the holdings of the church of Durham, the custody of which, from 1083, was divided between the bishop of Durham and the cathedral priory. In terms of overall landed wealth within the bishopric, the bishop and prior of Durham were pre-eminent. It has been estimated that Bishop Langley enjoyed an average annual income of nearly £4,000, which made him ‘one of the five richest landowners in England’.27 The bishop’s estate was not only one of the largest in England, but also one of the most compact, located almost entirely between the rivers Tyne and Tees. In 1430 the yearly income of Durham priory, excluding the nine priory cells, amounted to £2,000, drawn mainly from temporal sources of revenue. The net annual receipts of the bursar, who oversaw the main priory estate, equalled £1,500. In the words of the distinguished historian of the fifteenth-century priory, ‘North of the Tees such an income could only be matched by that of the bishop of Durham himself.’28 In this sense, the power structure of Durham was very different from other areas of England, where there were few ecclesiastical institutions of any substantial size and wealth. In Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Cheshire and Lancashire clerical wealth was of little relevance and ecclesiastical estates were generally small and a relatively insignificant feature of the landscape.29 Eric Acheson’s description of the tenurial profile of fifteenth-century Leicestershire positively extolled the virtue of the fact that this was a county in which ‘there were no great monasteries to dominate, and therefore complicate, local society and politics.’30 The great wealth of the bishop and prior of Durham places the bishopric in stark contrast to this picture of lay landed dominance, but when the landed power of the prior and 26 27 28 29 30

See, for example, M. Bennett, Community, Class and Careerism: Cheshire and Lancashire Society in the Age of Gawain and the Green Knight (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 67–8. Storey, Thomas Langley, p. 68. R.B. Dobson, Durham Priory, 1400–1450 (Cambridge, 1973), p. 250. S.M. Wright, The Derbyshire Gentry in the Fifteenth Century (Chesterfield, 1983), p. 12; Bennett, Cheshire and Lancashire, p. 68. E. Acheson, A Gentry Community: Leicestershire in the Fifteenth Century, c.1422-c.1485 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 27–8



LAND AND POWER

31

bishop is considered in more detail, the geographical distribution of their lordship reveals a less hegemonic pattern of landholding. The lands held directly of the bursar of Durham priory consisted of twenty-one estates between Tyne and Tees.31 There were several clusters of priory demesne lands: one concentrated around the city of Durham, another in the north-east corner of the bishopric immediately south of the river Tyne, whilst a further collection of properties was located in the south east of the county, notably in the parish of Billingham. All of these lands lay in central, and especially in southern and eastern, parts of Durham. The evidence of Bishop Hatfield’s estate survey reveals a similar geographical concentration. The bishop held twenty-seven demesne estates between Tyne and Tees.32 Like the bursar’s estate, these episcopal properties formed distinct clusters, such as the one in the southern part of the county which included Beaumont Hill, Coatham Mundeville, Darlington and Haughton-le-Skerne, or the nucleus of lands in a more central portion of the bishopric including Coundon Grange, Bishop Auckland and Middridge. Yet the most important feature of the location of the bishop’s demesne estates was their uneven distribution in the bishopric. With one or two exceptions, such as the manor of Wolsingham in Weardale, the episcopal estates were also to be found in the eastern half of the county. This is unsurprising. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries one of the major roads in the county was the highway running from Barnard Castle through Bishop Auckland, Durham and Gateshead to Newcastleupon-Tyne.33 This road, Roman in origin, marked a nodal point between two main topographical zones into which physical geographers have divided the county.34 East of the Barnard Castle-Bishop Auckland-Durham-Gateshead line was a landscape of comparatively low-lying champion lands characterised by superior soil to that on the higher lands in the west. William Camden, writing in the late sixteenth century, described the bishopric of Durham as ‘a triangle’ of sorts, whose base, stretching down the North Sea coast, consisted of ‘well manured’ and ‘very fruitfull’ ground, ‘well garnished with meddowes, pastures, and corn-fields’.35 The demesne estates of the bishop and prior lay largely on the best agricultural land in the county, ideal for intensive arable agriculture. Thus, the landed power of the prior and bishop in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was grounded in their direct control over the richest farming areas of the county.36 31 32 33 34

35 36

R.A. Lomas, ‘The Priory of Durham and its Demesnes in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries’, EcHR, 2nd series 31 (1978), p. 341. R.A. Lomas, ‘Durham Cathedral Priory as a Landowner and a Landlord, 1290–1540’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Durham, 1973), p. 288. The road is mentioned in a commission of oyer and terminer of 1383: DURH 3/32, m. 3d. These two landscape zones are the subject of B.K. Roberts et al., ‘Framing Medieval Landscapes: Region and Place in County Durham’, North-East England in the Later Middle Ages, ed. C.D. Liddy and R.H. Britnell (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 221–37. See also Map 3. W. Camden, Britannia (London, 1590), p. 599, transl. P. Holland in W. Camden, Britain (London, 1610), p. 735. Dobson, Durham Priory, pp. 279–80.

32

THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

These demesne lands were managed on the basis of a pre-Conquest multiple estate structure. In a seminal article, J.E.A. Jolliffe argued that the manor did not exist in the pre-Conquest kingdom of Northumbria, that the vill provided the basic framework of landholding and that the pre-eminence of the vill over the manor continued into the thirteenth century.37 These vills were essentially economic units that might include scattered farmsteads and nucleated villages and had no internal arable demesne as was found on a manor: instead, they were grouped together into shires around separate estate centres, which would contain the lord’s demesne, quite separate from the holdings of tenants in the individual vills. This external demesne, according to Jolliffe, was worked only periodically by the tenants, who performed seasonal service in the spring or at harvest time, and the lord’s income was derived not from services but from rents, both in kind and in money. Jolliffe’s view of the pre-Conquest organisation of the land in north-east England has not gained universal acceptance. In his study of the impact of the Norman Conquest, William E. Kapelle argued that Jolliffe’s picture of northern society was ‘oversimplified’, that ‘a mild form of manorialism had existed throughout Northumbria in 1066’ and that the Normans had introduced ‘a different manorial regime’ north of the river Tees based upon the extension and more intensive cultivation of the demesne in individual villages.38 Notwithstanding Kapelle’s powerful critique of Jolliffe’s work, signs of the continuity of this older, pre-Conquest estate structure are not difficult to find in the form of episcopal estates such as Aucklandshire and Quarringtonshire, which are mentioned in the episcopal estate survey known as Boldon Book dating from the early 1180s.39 To be sure, episcopal grants of formerly dependent vills to the bishop’s vassals did help to undermine the shire structure in economic terms, but as late as the 1430s, the services owed by these mesne lordships continued to reflect an older multiple estate structure. Thus, for instance, the manor of Lutterington Hall was held of the bishop by the head of the Bowes family by knight’s service in return for performing three boon-services at harvest time at the bishop’s manor of Coundon with all his men (except for the men of his own household), going on the bishop’s embassies, carrying the bishop’s wine with four oxen from Bishop Auckland to Weardale, accompanying the bishop on his great chase and rendering 20s per annum to the bishop at the usual four terms.40 Similarly, in 1362 the lord of the manor and village of Little Usworth in the parish of Washington was expected not only to pay fealty to the bishop, but to provide the bishop with one man accompanied 37 38 39

40

J.E.A. Jolliffe, ‘Northumbrian Institutions’, EHR 41 (1926), pp. 1–42. W.E. Kapelle, The Norman Conquest of the North: The Region and its Transformation, 1100–1135 (London, 1979), pp. 78, 161, 189. B.K. Roberts, The Green Villages of County Durham (Durham County Library Local History Publication 12, 1977), pp. 13–18; R. Britnell, Britain and Ireland 1050–1530: Economy and Society (Oxford, 2004), p. 61. DURH 3/2, fols 267v–269r (1432). See also DURH 3/2, fol. 101v (1379).



LAND AND POWER

33

by two greyhounds for his great chase.41 Moreover, as a unit of jurisdiction, the concept of multiple estates continued to underpin the lordship of the episcopal and priory lands in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The individual demesnes of the bishop and prior were not treated as separate manorial units.42 Rather, on the ­ bishop’s estate the vills were grouped together around ten estate centres, referred to as manors, for the purposes of manorial jurisdiction. On the priory estate there were six such central places. On each of the ecclesiastical estates there was only one court, known as the halmote, which moved from one demesne property to another throughout the year. Here, then, was a type of extensive lordship based on vills organised around central manors to form a large estate. How were lay estates structured, and what was the pattern of land use among lay landholders in the bishopric of Durham? How did lay estates fit around this pre-existing ecclesiastical estate structure? There was only one comparable lay estate in the bishopric, and this belonged to the Nevilles of Raby and Brancepeth. Raby, on the road between Barnard Castle and Bishop Auckland, was their principal residence within Durham in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Indeed, in 1378 John Lord Neville was granted a licence, by Bishop Thomas Hatfield, to hear masses in his private chapel at Raby castle because of the distance between the church of Brancepeth, of which John was a parishioner, and Raby, in which he lived.43 The estate of Raby or Staindrop (as it was originally termed) had originally been donated to the church of Durham by King Cnut in the early eleventh century.44 After 1083, when the patrimony of St Cuthbert bifurcated, Staindrop became a possession of Durham priory. In March 1132 the prior of Durham granted the estate at Staindrop to Dolfin, son of Uhtred, but the evidence suggests that the grant was simply a confirmation of an existing tenurial situation and that Dolfin’s family had held the property since the eleventh century, perhaps soon after Cnut’s original gift.45 The family of Dolfin son of Uhtred held Staindrop from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries when the property passed to the Nevilles through the marriage of Isabel Neville and Robert FitzMeldred, lord of Raby. It was Isabel and Robert’s son and heir, Geoffrey, and his descendants who dropped his patronymic in favour of his mother’s surname.46 The estate at Staindrop was never subject to military service and, throughout the fourteenth century and beyond, the property continued to render a money rent of £4 per annum to its overlord, the prior of Durham.47 But if the later rentals

41 42 43 44 45 46 47

DURH 3/2, fol. 67v. P.L. Larson, ‘Local Law Courts in Late Medieval Durham’, North-East England in the Later Middle Ages, ed. C.D. Liddy and R.H. Britnell (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 100–1. DCM, Hatfield’s Register, fol. 136r–v. Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, ed. T. Johnson South (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 68–9, 114–15. H.S. Offler, ‘Fitz Meldred, Neville and Hansard’, North of the Tees, ed. A.J. Piper and A.I. Doyle (Aldershot, 1996), p. 3. Offler, ‘Fitz Meldred, Neville and Hansard’, pp. 12–13. See, for example, DURH 3/2, fols 79r–v, 110r–111r.

34

THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

and surveys of the Durham priory estate consistently referred to the Neville lands at Staindrop as Rabyshire or Staindropshire,48 the name only served to disguise the major changes which the estate had undergone by the late medieval period. According to Cnut’s grant, Staindrop with its dependencies was a twelve-vill estate. By the time of Boldon Book, three vills had been lost to the bishop’s demesne and another granted to a member of the bishop’s affinity. On the death in 1425 of Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland, the Neville lordship of Staindrop was valued at £100 per annum and was said to comprise the castle and manor of Raby and Staindrop with its members and appurtenances, only seven of which were the original vills in Cnut’s donation.49 Evidence of the operation of a central manorial court at Raby to which the free tenants of Staindropshire owed suit relates only to one of the original vills.50 The post-Conquest baronies represented a different kind of multiple estate structure within the bishopric. Yet the evidence of the longevity of these ­baronies is also fitful, and their coherence and ultimately significance should not be exaggerated. Durham antiquaries, from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, saw in the baronies the basis of a mini-house of lords within the late medieval bishopric, as is readily apparent from the very heading – ‘Concerning the Barons of the Bishops of Durham, and their Council and Parliament’ – of chapter one of the Liber primus of Mickleton and Spearman’s seventeenth-century compilation of the temporal office-holders of the palatinate.51 In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries only five of the twelfthcentury baronies were still in existence, four of which were no longer in the hands of the original families, and three of which were held by absentee lords. The Tees valley, the area of the bishopric containing the most fertile land with the best agricultural potential, was ringed by three large composite lordships: these were the barony of Hart and Hartness and the baronies of Barnard Castle and Gainford. The manor of Hart was said to be worth £100 annually in 1344:52 the property included the town and port of Hartlepool, from which the lords of the manor were entitled to receive tolls on ships loading and unloading in the port as well as the profits of a fair held twice a year.53 The lords of the manor were also overlords of several substantial estates in the adjacent parishes of Hart and Stranton: the manor of Brierton, worth £20 per annum, the manor of Stranton, regularly valued at £40 per annum, and the manor of Elwick, worth around £50 per annum.54 The Beauchamp estate 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

DCM, Bursar’s Book A, fols 35v (1340–1), 139v (1346–7); Bursar’s Book D, fol. 18v (1382); FPD (1430), p. 89. DURH 3/2, fols 230r-232r. Free tenants of Wackerfield: DURH 3/2, fols 128r–v, 290r–v. DUL, Mickleton and Spearman MS 1, fol. 13r. See also R. Surtees, The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham, 4 vols (London, 1816), Vol. II, p. 36. DURH 3/2, fol. 24v. See also the evidence of the 1293 quo warranto proceedings concerning the bishopric: Bek, p. 39. DURH 3/2, fols 62r-v, 107r, 263r-v. For the parishes, see Map 2.



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centred upon Barnard Castle, held of the crown from the early fourteenth century, was the single most valuable lay property in the land between Tyne and Tees. It was also one of the most geographically compact. It comprised the barony of Barnard Castle, which included several sub-manors such as Marwood, Middleton in Teesdale, Westwick and Whorlton, all on the north bank of the river Tees, and the barony of Gainford, which itself was composed of a number of subsidiary properties at Piercebridge, Langton and Headlam. In 1397, when a series of inquisitions were held concerning the forfeiture of Thomas Beauchamp, earl of Warwick for his role as a lord appellant some ten years earlier, the entire estate was said to be worth around £500 per annum. A late-fourteenth-century receiver’s account shows that the estate at Barnard Castle and Gainford was the second most valuable property of the earls of Warwick after the lordship of Gower in South Wales.55 The rights of the Beauchamp earls of Warwick were also formidable. According to the 1293 quo warranto proceedings, the lord of Barnard Castle enjoyed commercial privileges such as possession of a market and fair, as well as criminal powers, namely gallows, pillory and tumbrel and infangenetheof, in order to execute felons condemned in his courts, while the lord of Gainford held similar jurisdiction.56 For all these theoretically extensive powers, however, the lords of Hart and Barnard Castle did not reside within the bishopric and their main landed interests lay elsewhere: in the case of the Cliffords of Skipton-inCraven, in Westmorland and the West Riding of Yorkshire, and in the case of the Beauchamps, essentially in the midlands counties of Warwickshire and Worcestershire. The Neville barony of Brancepeth was a more meaningful entity within the bishopric since it constituted one of the family’s two caputs in Durham, in which they took an active and sustained interest. The Nevilles were not the original holders of the barony, which had been granted to the Bulmers of Wilton in the North Riding of Yorkshire in the first half of the twelfth century. It was the marriage of Geoffrey Neville of Burreth in Lincolnshire to Emma Bulmer in the later twelfth century which brought the Bulmer barony to the Nevilles in the first decade of the thirteenth century. When Geoffrey and Emma’s son and heir, Henry Neville, died in 1227, Henry’s sister, Isabel Neville, wife of Robert FitzMeldred, inherited the Brancepeth estate.57 In the mid twelfth century the Bulmer estate at Brancepeth had comprised five knights’ fees, making it the joint largest in dominico beati Cuthberti.58 By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, however, a considerable amount of subinfeudation of the Neville patrimony of Brancepeth had taken place, for the main estate in the parish of Brancepeth comprised only two knights’ fees.59 55 56 57 58 59

SC 6/1123/5. Bek, p. 39. C.R. Young, The Making of the Neville Family in England 1166–1400 (Woodbridge, 1996), pp. 14–15, 49. Aird, St Cuthbert, p. 186. DURH 3/2, fol. 79r–v.

36

THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

1 Gateshead

6 Pittington

2 Witton Gilbert

7 Castle Eden

3 Kimblesworth

8 Cockfield

4 Durham St. Oswald

9 Middleton St. George

5 Durham St. Giles

Jarrow

Gateshead Ryton Whickham

10 Low Dinsdale

Whitburn

Heworth

1

Boldon

Winlaton

Monk Wearmouth Washington

Chester-le-Street

Hunstanworth

Bishop Wearmouth

Chester-le-Street

Edmondbyers

Lanchester

Muggleswick

2

Houghtonle-Spring

3

4 5

Brancepeth

Wolsingham

7

Kelloe

Whitworth

Bishop Middleham Merrington

Auckland St. Andrew

Easington

6

Durham Stanhope

Seaham Daltonle-Dale

Trimdon

Monk Hesledon

Middleton-in-Teesdale

Bishop Auckland

Sedgefield

Auckland St. Helen

8 8

Heighington

Gainford Winston

Barnard Castle

Gainford Coniscliffe Heighington

0 0

miles kilometres

Grindon Billingham Great Stainton Norton Redmarshall Bishopton StocktonElton upon-Tees HaughtonLong le-Skerne Newton

Darlington

Hurworth 10

5 10

Stranton Greatham

Aycliffe

Staindrop

N

Elwick Hall

Hart

9

Egglescliffe

Sockburn

Map 2.  Ancient Parishes in the Bishopric of Durham

Without a doubt, the Brancepeth estate remained a vast territorial complex centred upon the castle of Brancepeth, immediately adjacent to which were 400 acres of arable and forty acres of meadow, in addition to 2000 acres of moorland and pasture in the forest of Brancepeth.60 It was presumably in the forest of Brancepeth that the Nevilles enjoyed the rights of free chase and free warren, as noted in the 1293 quo warranto proceedings.61 Beyond the immediate environs of the castle were also five sub-manors – East Brandon, Tudhoe, Holywell and Wooley Hill in the parish of Brancepeth and Helme Park in the neighbouring parish of Wolsingham – which made up the manor of Brancepeth and which, in 1432, helped to produce a total annual income from the Brancepeth estate of £100.62 But only a shadow of the barony’s existence is preserved in the sources: the IPMs record that the free tenants of estates not only in the parish of Brancepeth (Billy Hill, Burnigill and East Brandon), but also in the southern parish of Aycliffe (High Grindon and Preston le Skerne) and the east-coast parish of Easington (Haswell) owed suit 60

61 62

DURH 3/2, fols 230r–232r. It is important to note that these acreages, like those in other episcopal records of the period, are likely to have been given in ‘Durham acres’, each of which was equivalent to one and a half statute acres: Roberts, Green Villages, p. 7. Bek, p. 39. DURH 3/2, fols 264r–265r.



LAND AND POWER

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of the court of Brancepeth.63 Beyond this, it is impossible to comment upon the nature and extent of this superior jurisdiction. It is, however, interesting to note that the 1293 quo warranto inquest into the privileges held by landholders within the bishopric of Durham did not mention the possession of criminal jurisdiction on the Neville estate of Brancepeth, although it did in relation to the baronies of Hart, Barnard Castle and Gainford. The Hyltons of Hylton in the north-east corner of the bishopric could trace their descent from one ‘Romanus’ Hylton, who held three knights’ fees of old enfeoffment in dominico beati Cuthberti by 1166.64 On his death in 1435, William Hylton continued to hold the same three knights’ fees, the caput of which was Hylton itself. This estate, comprising the cheek-by-jowl manors of Hylton, Grindon, Ford and Clowcroft in the parish of Bishop Wearmouth, Newton-by-Hylton in the parish of Monk Wearmouth, and Barmston in the parish of Washington, was valued at £120 per annum in 1376, and contained a court at Hylton which the free tenants of the entire Hylton patrimony were expected to attend.65 Indeed, the Hylton estate had retained enough of its territorial and jurisdictional coherence by the later fourteenth century for the head of the family, William Hylton, to claim the title Baron Hylton in deference to his status as the direct heir to a long-established and largely well preserved barony.66 Baron Hylton, however, was very much the exception in the period, both among his own family and among the descendants of the twelfth-century baronies. Tim Thornton has recently emphasised the ‘remarkably long-lasting’ nature of the Cheshire baronies, whose courts remained active into the late fifteenth century and beyond, but in Durham evidence of the operation of the baronial courts is weak.67 With the exception of the baronies of Hart and Hartness, Barnard Castle and Gainford, the 1293 quo warranto proceedings do not reveal the possession of extensive judicial rights by the heirs to the earlier baronies, nor should we simply assume their continued existence.68 In this respect, the structure of Durham landed society was very different from that of Cheshire. The main unit of landholding on lay estates in the land between Tyne and Tees was the single manor. But the manor took different forms in different parts of the bishopric. Here, an understanding of the topography of Durham is imperative. The land between Tyne and Tees consists of five physiographic units.69 Furthest west are the High Pennines, an area of mountainous moorland, divided by the river valleys of the Wear and Tees, parts of which are over 2,000 feet above sea level, with a high rainfall and inferior soil quality, more 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

DURH 3/2, fols 37r–v, 39v, 42v, 62v–63r, 77v, 156r. Aird, St Cuthbert, p. 186. DURH 3/2, fols 274v–276r. See, for example, Feudal Aids, Vol. VI, p. 260; DURH 3/2, fols 258v–259v. T. Thornton, Cheshire and the Tudor State, 1480–1560 (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 50–4. Cf. R.R. Reid, ‘Baronage and Thanage’, EHR 35 (1920), pp. 193–9. For what follows, see Roberts et al., ‘Region and Place in County Durham’, pp. 224–6. See also Map 3.

38

THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM Land above 2000 feet

r Tyne

S

Gateshead

D

Rive

Land above 1000 feet

iver

L O W L A N

R Land above 400 feet

Te

t

EAST

Chester-le-Street

W E A R

en

S

rw

Durham

P L AT E A U

E

r

T Y

N

er

Skerne

Ri

v

Bishop Auckland

E

N

N

I

N

River Wea

E

S

HIGH PENNINES

DURHAM

A N D

P

U

R

e River D

am

Boundary of physiographic units

P

TEES LOWLANDS

N

Barnard Castle

0 0

miles kilometres

Rive

r T ees

5 10

Map 3.  Physiographic Units in the Bishopric of Durham

suited to pastoral than arable farming. Moving eastwards are the Pennine Spurs, the foothills of the Pennine mountain range lying between 400 and 1,000 feet above sea level, some of which was still heavily wooded when the Tudor antiquary, John Leland, visited Durham in the 1530s. Running through the middle of the county, between Barnard Castle and Gateshead, is a strip of relatively low ground, following the Wear valley and forming the Tyne and Wear Lowlands, which divides the region into two. To the east of this topographical boundary line is the East Durham Plateau, a zone of gradually undulating land, rising east of Durham to over four hundred feet, before falling down again to the North Sea coast, whose loam and boulder clays above the magnesian limestone make the land ideal for arable farming. And finally, in the south east of the county, are the Tees Lowlands, an area of open countryside where the drier climate and deeper soils produce a land more fertile and more suited to arable farming than the higher lands in the region. William Camden, writing in the late sixteenth century, presented a more simplified picture of the bishopric, emphasising the sharp contrasts between the topography of the west and the east. The further west he travelled, the more Camden observed a landscape in which ‘the fields are naked and barraine, the woods very thinne, the hilles bare without grasse.’70 This 70

Camden, Britannia, p. 599, in Camden, Britain, p. 735.



LAND AND POWER

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terrain, as Brian Roberts has shown, greatly influenced the chronology and pattern of settlement, which occurred later than in other parts of England, continued into the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries and was geographically uneven within the bishopric. The evidence of Boldon Book demonstrates that, by the late twelfth century, the southern and eastern areas of Durham had been colonised earlier and more intensively than the north and west of the bishopric. By the time of Hatfield Survey, two hundred years later, though the north and west remained a region of comparatively low population density and land cultivation, they had experienced a greater level of colonising activity. In fact, three quarters of the new settlements lay in the foothills of the Pennines.71 East of the Barnard Castle-Bishop Auckland-Durham-Gateshead line was a lowland zone most conducive to arable farming.72 It was this land that was colonised first when, in the first half of the twelfth century, particularly under the patronage of Bishop Ranulph Flambard, Norman knights were settled in the bishopric. Virtually all of these incomers were given knights’ fees on the most productive arable land, as William Aird’s map of the location of the estates of the bishopric’s twelfth-century baronial elite demonstrates.73 Here, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, running down the eastern seaboard of the bishopric and through the Tees valley, was a series of wellendowed manorial estates with large arable demesnes. Most notable were the Greystoke properties of Coniscliffe, Neasham and Brierton, all located in parishes immediately adjacent to the river Tees and said to comprise over 900 acres, over 600 acres and 450 acres of arable respectively in 1436.74 Other substantial properties included the Neville estate of Elwick in the parish of Hart, worth £49 per annum in 1425 and composed of 600 acres of arable, and the Claxton manor of Burn Toft in the neighbouring parish of Elwick Hall, containing 500 acres of demesne arable. Hindered as we are by the absence of lay estate documentation, it is hard to comment with conviction upon the nature of the seigneurial regimes in the south and east of the bishopric. Certainly, the evidence of the imposition of labour services on lay estates in the fourteenth century is slim. When a manorial extent of the manor of Horden, in the parish of Easington, was completed in 1335, there was no mention of labour services by the customary tenants of the manor. Much more valuable was the redditus villenagii amounting to £7 3s ½d per annum, an indication perhaps that here at least the obligations of the customary tenants had been commuted to a money rent.75 If large demesnes were one feature of manorialism in medieval England, the posses71

72 73 74 75

P. Dickinson and W.B. Fisher, The Medieval Land Surveys of County Durham (Department of Geography, University of Durham, Research Papers Series 2, 1959), p. 15; Roberts, Green Villages, pp. 8–10. Scammell, Hugh du Puiset, pp. 211–12. Aird, St Cuthbert, p. 210. For this and what follows, see DURH 3/2, fols 280v–281v, 263r–v, 256v–258v. DURH 3/2, fol. 9r.

40

THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

sion of a manorial court was another. After all, it was through the manor court that a lord exercised seigneurial rights over his tenants, both free and customary, and certainly by the fifteenth century the presence of a court was central to contemporary definitions of a manor.76 In this respect, it is perhaps significant that almost all of the evidence relating to lay manor courts comes from the area of the bishopric east of the Barnard Castle-Bishop AucklandDurham-Gateshead boundary line. There are references in the IPMs to manor courts at Hylton in the parish of Bishop Wearmouth, at Aislaby in the parish of Egglescliffe (with jurisdiction over the tenants of the adjacent manors of Egglescliffe and Aislaby) and at Bishopton in the parish of Bishopton.77 Charter evidence reveals the existence of courts at Hulam in the parish of Monk Hesledon and Layton in the parish of Sedgefield.78 What kinds of judicial rights did the holders of these manors exercise over their tenants? Fortunately, a handful of manor court records survive to assist us. Some, such as the 1367 record of the court at Thorleston in the parish of Hart, are so brief as to be useless.79 Others, however, are more detailed and informative. Court rolls for the manor of Bolam in the parish of Gainford, between 1396 and 1415, show the functioning of a court leet which was held twice a year: the manor had free and customary tenants, the latter of whom rendered an ancient customary due known as ‘wardsilver’ for the use of the commons, and whose entries into customary holdings were duly reported by the manorial jurors. The jurors also informed the steward of the court of affrays of the peace, evidence of the criminal jurisdiction exercised by the manorial lord.80 At the manor of Seaton in the east-coast parish of Seaham, the court rolls of which are extant from 1420–37,81 it is clear that here too the lord of the manor possessed court leet jurisdiction and was able to try minor breaches of the peace involving wounding in his biannual manor court, since the jurors presented one man for having made an affray of the peace and drawn blood from another villager. Here, the lord had ownership of the soil. Indeed, one man was placed in mercy ‘for breaking the lord’s ground’ without his licence.82 At the Claxton manor of Burn Toft in the parish of Elwick Hall, whose court rolls cover, albeit episodically, the years 1392–1451,83 the lord of the manor also possessed jurisdiction over minor breaches of the peace. Indeed, in 1392, the villagers of Burn Toft were ordered ‘that none … should violently draw a knife on pain of 40d or shed blood on pain of 6s 8d.’ In essence, then, there was a manorial regime in the southern and eastern

76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

P.D.A. Harvey, Manorial Records (British Records Association 5, 1999), p. 2. DURH 3/2, fols 274v–276r, 76v, 125v–126r. DCM, Misc.Chs 6253, 5572. NYCRO, ZFL 127. DRO, D/Ph 63/1–3. DRO, D/St/D7/105, m. 1r-d. Cf. Jolliffe, ‘Northumbrian Institutions’, pp. 1, 3–5. DCM, Misc.Chs 200, m. 1r-d, and 400, m. 1r-d. The quotation which follows is from Misc.Ch. 200.



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parts of the bishopric which had a great deal in common with much of southern and central England, traditionally seen as classically manorialised countryside. These manor courts performed the same functions as those found elsewhere in England, receiving the homage and fealty of free tenants and the entry of heirs into customary holdings, taking fines for non-attendance at the court, hearing pleas of trespass with animals and cases of unlawful occupation of property brought by tenants against each other, and accepting presentments of jurors concerning infringements of the lord’s peace. As the work of Brian Roberts has shown, the eastern half of Durham was characterised by ‘former champion landscapes, dominated by nucleated settlements and open, subdivided townfields’.84 Here, manor and village settlement were often coterminous and the words ‘vill’ and ‘manor’ were used interchangeably to describe the same estates: examples include Blakeston Hall in the parish of Norton, Dawdon in the parish of Dalton-le-Dale, Coxhoe in the parish of Kelloe, Little Eden in the parish of Easington, Elstob in the parish of Great Stainton, Hulam in the parish of Monk Hesledon, Thorpe Bulmer in the parish of Hart, Washington in the parish of Washington and Wynyard Hall in the parish of Grindon.85 Lords held whole villages containing an internal demesne and the villagers possessed a degree of communal organisation to issue by-laws concerning the regulation of the use of the lord’s demesne arable and meadow lands for common pasturing of animals.86 In this primarily lowland landscape the manor was the main form of social organisation. It is little wonder that the eastern half of Durham was populated by virtually all of the county’s resident knightly families. These included several who only established themselves in the bishopric in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, most notably the Bowes of Streatlam, the Claxtons of Claxton and the Fulthorpes of Tunstall. The Bowes of Streatlam owed their initial acquisition of land at Streatlam to the marriage of Adam Bowes and Alice, the daughter and sole heir of Sir John Trayne, in the early fourteenth century,87 but it was probably from Adam’s legal services to Durham priory, by whom he was retained from 1309 and employed as steward from 1331, that the Bowes obtained the priory estates of Low Barford and Osmond Croft in the parish of Winston. By the mid fourteenth century, the family was in possession of six manors and other lands primarily in the neighbouring parishes of Staindrop, Winston and Auckland St Helen, all lying north east of 84 85

86 87

Roberts et al., ‘Region and Place in County Durham’, p. 232. Cf. F. Pollock and F.W. Maitland, The History of English Law, 2 vols, 2nd edn rev. (Cambridge, 1968), Vol. I, p. 596. Blakeston Hall: FPD, p. 88; Dawdon: DURH 3/2, fols 198v–200v; Coxhoe: DURH 3/2, fols 265v–266r; Little Eden: DRO, D/St/D13/1/2/131; Elstob: DURH 3/2, fols 83v, 175v; Hulam: DURH 3/2, fols 256v–258v, HS, p. 153; Thorpe Bulmer: CIPM, Vol. XII, pp. 99–100, and Vol. XVIII, pp. 257–8; Washington: HS, p. 102; Wynyard Hall: DURH 3/2, fol. 300v. DRO, D/St/D7/105, m. 1d. For this and what follows, see J. Foster, Pedigrees Recorded at the Visitations of the County Palatine of Durham in 1575, 1615 and 1666 (London, 1887), pp. 34–7; below, p. 80; DURH 3/2, fols 131v–132r.

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THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

Barnard Castle. The Bowes held no land outside the bishopric, but the family caput of Streatlam in the parish of Gainford was valued at £40 per annum in 1399. As recent research has demonstrated, the Claxtons of Claxton in the parish of Greatham, in the south-eastern corner of the bishopric, owed their development of a substantial landed power base in Durham to the patronage of the Nevilles of Raby.88 Apart from a couple of properties north of the river Derwent in the county of Northumberland,89 the Claxton estate was entirely bounded by the rivers Tyne and Tees. On his death in 1431, Sir William Claxton held some eight manors in the bishopric, seven of which lay on the eastern seaboard of Durham, running south from the parish of Easington through the parishes of Monk Hesledon, Sedgefield, Elwick Hall and Greatham. His was an estate which probably produced a landed annual income of around £100.90 The Fulthorpes of Tunstall emerged in the second half of the fourteenth century thanks to the efforts of Sir Roger Fulthorpe, who made his fortune through the law and who became a royal justice.91 His caput was Tunstall in the parish of Stranton, a few miles south of the town of Hartlepool, and he also held the manors of Thorpe Thewles in the parish of Grindon and Hurworth Bryan in Kelloe, as well as land and tenements in seventeen other places mostly in the south-east corner of the county. In addition, he built up a large estate in Westmorland and all three ridings of Yorkshire. Found guilty of treason in 1388 by the lords appellant, he was sentenced to exile in Ireland and his estates subject to forfeiture. The Yorkshire properties were valued at £64 per annum, and his non-Yorkshire estates, including his lands in the bishopric, were said to be worth at least £100 per annum, indicating that his annual income from land approached £200. But most of the knightly families resident in the eastern half of the bishopric could claim a long and distinguished association with Durham. The Washingtons of Washington had enjoyed hunting rights on their estate at Washington from at least the 1290s,92 whilst the Conyers of Sockburn were a family with continuous links to the bishopric from the first half of the twelfth century. From this date, they held their principal properties of Sockburn and Bishopton in the extreme south of the county, where they also held the right of free warren.93 A comparable family – and neighbours of the Conyers at Dinsdale-on-Tees, a few miles north on the banks of the river Tees – were the Surtees, who held Felling in the north-eastern parish of Heworth and a substantial landed complex in the south of the bishopric comprising the contiguous manors of Dinsdale, Morton Palms and Middleton One Row. Manorial lords of Dinsdale-on-Tees from the second half of the twelfth century, the 88 89 90 91 92 93

B.A. Barker, ‘The Claxtons: A North-Eastern Gentry Family in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Teesside, 2003), pp. 239–45. Feudal Aids, Vol. IV, p. 84. DURH 3/2, fols 256v-258v. For this and what follows, see below, p. 143; CFR, 1383–91, p. 241. For evidence of free warren, see Bek, p. 39. Aird, St Cuthbert, pp. 209–13; DURH 3/31, m. 4d.



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Surtees also held a single estate outside of the county, the manor of North Gosforth, valued at £3 per annum in 1444, which lay across the River Tyne from their property of Felling.94 The Lumleys of Lumley castle had lived at Lumley since the early thirteenth century, and in the fourteenth century they were able, through a succession of marriages, to extend significantly their landed base within and without the county. The first of these marriages was that of Sir Robert Lumley to Mary FitzMarmaduke, the daughter of John Fitz­Marmaduke, which helped to bring to the senior branch of the Lumleys the manor of Stranton in the parish of Hart in the early fourteenth century.95 At the beginning of our period, the Lumley estate in the bishopric comprised five manors, all of which lay in the east of the county, including Little Lumley in the parish of Chester-le-Street, Murton and Cold Hesleden in the parish of Dalton-le-Dale, and Stranton, just south of the town of Hartlepool.96 Something of the character of the Hyltons of Hylton castle is glimpsed in the record of the legal proceedings conducted during the course of the Scrope­Grosvenor dispute of the 1380s. According to a deponent for the cause of Richard Scrope, first lord Bolton, Scrope had tried to secure the hand in marriage of a daughter of Sir Robert Hylton of Hylton.97 The marriage negotiations came to nothing and so Scrope married the daughter of Sir William de la Pole. Hylton was said to have been so angry that he declared, rather petulantly, that he was pleased that Scrope had not married his daughter, since he had heard that he was not a graunt gentil homme, to which a friend of Scrope retorted that he was ‘descended from great gentlemen from the time of the Conquest’. The Scropes and the de la Poles, of course, were very similar families and represented par excellence the opportunities for social climbing in the fourteenth century. The Hyltons did not enjoy such great wealth, but from their residence at Hylton, which they had occupied continuously since the first half of the twelfth century, they could claim ancient landownership. And in contrast to the Claxton and Fulthorpe properties, which were much more geographically dispersed – evidence of their piecemeal accumulation through purchase – the Hylton estate consisted of a group of contiguous landholdings constituting a single locus of power. In contrast, the western half of the bishopric saw a great amount of colonising activity in the two hundred years between the compilation of Boldon Book and the Hatfield Survey, much of it concentrated in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.98 Bishops Bek and Kelloe were quick to see

94 95

96 97 98

DURH 3/2, fols 273r-274r; C 139/113/8, mm. 1–2. P.R. Coss, ‘Heraldry and Monumental Effigies in the North East’, Northumbrian Panorama: Studies in the History and Culture of North East England, ed. T.E. Faulkner (London, 1996), pp. 9–10. DURH 3/2, fols 258v-259v. The Scrope and Grosvenor Controversy, ed. N.H. Nicolas 2 vols (London, 1832), Vol. I, pp. 134–5. H.M. Dunsford and S.J. Harris, ‘Colonization of the Wasteland in County Durham, 1100–1400’, EcHR 56 (2003), p. 48.

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THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

the possibilities arising from their possession of large areas of uncultivated land and sought to use it as a source of patronage from which to reward members of their household and their wider affinity.99 At the same time, there seems to have been a significant amount of unlicensed reclamation of the waste, and it is clear that the bishops of Durham struggled at times to retain control of, and keep pace with, this colonising movement. In 1312, for instance, Bishop Kelloe was so conscious of the speed of the campaign of assarting and enclosure within the parishes of Chester-le-Street, Lanchester and Auckland St Andrew that he decided to take stock of the situation and to send a commission into the three parishes to inquire of the date at which the assarted land was first cultivated, to establish the identity of the new landholders, and to determine the annual value of the tithes arising from the property.100 A recent study of the geographical pattern of waste colonisation has confirmed the impression provided by this contemporary record, demonstrating that the process was concentrated in two areas: the foothills of the Pennines in the parishes of Lanchester, Chester-le-Street and Durham St Oswald, and the Wear valley in the parishes of Auckland St Andrew and Wolsingham.101 Colonising activity took a number of forms. Several villages were founded. One was Esh, a settlement which lies on a ridge of high ground running west from Bearpark, a mile north west of the city of Durham, through the parish of Lanchester, the first documentary evidence for which is the late-twelfth-century grant of seventy acres of land in the village of Esh, with tofts and crofts on the north side of the end of the village towards the east.102 Another village was St Helen Auckland in the parish of the same name, whose late-twelfth-century church is embedded in a regular toft layout on the north side of the street, suggesting that the church and the village plan are contemporary.103 By the late fourteenth century, both Esh and St Helen Auckland were well-established manorial lordships, whose holders had a court for their tenants, customary and free. From the 1330s the holders of St Helen Auckland were absentee lords from the North Riding, the Colvilles of Ingleby Arncliffe and Dale, whose single property in the bishopric was worth around £14 per annum and included twenty messuages, forty bovates (600 acres) of arable, forty acres of meadow, 1,000 acres of pasture, and 100 acres of woodland.104 The extant court rolls of the manor, which cover the period 1397–1403, reveal a well organised manor containing a community of the vill, by whose ‘common assent’ the ‘tenants of the village’ issued bylaws and whose lord enjoyed minor criminal jurisdiction over affrays of the

99 100 101 102 103 104

For Bek, see Fraser, History of Antony Bek, pp. 106–7. RPD, Vol. I, p. 161. Dunsford and Harris, ‘Colonization of the Wasteland’, p. 46. English Episcopal Acta 24: Durham 1153–1195, ed. M.G. Snape (Oxford, 2002), pp. 2–3. I would like to thank Brian Roberts for discussion of this point. DURH 3/2, fol. 291v; NYCRO, ZFL 63.



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peace.105 At Esh the lord possessed a court leet, held twice a year, whose manorial staff, including a steward and a bailiff, sought to uphold the lord’s right to the assizes of bread and ale and to punish those found guilty of minor disturbances of the peace.106 On both estates much of the manorial property was given over to pastoral husbandry. Indeed, in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries the lord of Esh received a series of grants of waste in and around Esh which, by the second half of the fourteenth century, were said to amount in total to about 250 acres.107 The court roll of the manor of Esh also reveals, from the number of fines imposed upon tenants trespassing in the lord’s wood, that this was a lordship which was not only surrounded by forest, but which also contained enclosed woodland.108 Yet, as a rule, the wave of colonisation which took place in the western half of Durham between the second half of the thirteenth and the first half of the fourteenth centuries did not lead to the creation of new villages, but rather the establishment of single farmsteads.109 Documentary and map evidence suggests that, in the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the vast majority of these properties retained their original features as farms in the modern sense of the word: ‘a compact cultivated or pastured area without appurtenant customary holdings and labour services’.110 According to the Durham IPMs there were, west of the Barnard Castle-Bishop AucklandDurham-Gateshead boundary line, approximately forty properties which were described as ‘manors’ and which were reportedly worth, in net terms, around a couple of pounds per annum.111 Only a few, such as the manors of Green Laws, Bishopley, Woodcroft, Unthank and Riding House, in the parish of Stanhope, and Broadwood and Chatterley, in the parish of Wolsingham, lay in the most hilly and westerly parts of the bishopric. Most of these manors were situated in the foothills of the Pennines. These included the manors of Woodhouses, Fitches, Wadley, Helmington Hall, West Shipley and East Shipley, in the parish of Auckland St Andrew, Holywell, Stanley Farm and Wooley Hill, in the parish of Brancepeth, Wheatley Hill, Broomy Holm, Lintz, Edmondsley, Friarside, Pockerley, Beamish, Nettlesworth, White Hill and Tribley Farm, in the parish of Chester-le-Street, and Cornsay, Hamsterley Hall, Holmside Hall, Black Burn, Byerside, Bushblades, Medomsley, Stockerley, Collierley, Ousterley, Crookhall, Ponthop and East Rowley, in Lanchester. Both then and now, there seems to have been a considerable amount of uncertainty regarding the precise status of these manorial estates. This ambivalence was articulated in the inconsistent language that was used to 105 106 107 108 109 110 111

NYCRO, ZFL 129, mm. 2r–d, 4r. Only one court roll survives (1402–4): DRO, D/Gr 275. Bek, pp. 23, 81; RPD, Vol. II, pp. 1309–10; DURH 3/2, fol. 96v. DRO, D/Gr 275, m. 1r–d. I would like to thank Brian Roberts for this information in advance of publication. Dunsford and Harris, ‘Colonization of the Wasteland’, p. 46. DURH 3/2, passim.

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THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

describe them. For instance, the estate of Byerside in the parish of Lanchester was described variously as the manor of Byerside, containing 100 acres of arable, woodland and pasture, and as simply ‘a parcel of pasture and woodland called Byerside next to Medomsley’. The neighbouring estate of Hamsterley Hall was similarly referred to as the manor of Hamsterley Hall next to Medomsley and, more prosaically, as 160 acres of land with appurtenances in Hamsterley.112 With few exceptions, all of these properties began life as ‘moorland farms’, that is, ‘a distinctive form of enclosure familiar throughout the northern counties as well as elsewhere in England where waste abounded’.113 They comprised nucleated demesnes, shorn of customary dependants and were dependent upon wage labour for their cultivation. Evidence from the First Edition Ordnance Survey maps confirms the absence of settlement around these estates, even in the mid nineteenth century, revealing a landscape of isolated farmsteads and small hamlets. Along the Wear valley, west of Auckland St Andrew, on the highest and poorest quality agricultural ground in the bishopric, most of the demesne was given over to pasturage. The Conyers of Sockburn held the manor of Harperley, which in 1431 was said to comprise a fairly basic farm complex (a hall, chamber, kitchen and chapel) with two granges and a bercary, as well as thirteen acres of meadow and nineteen acres of woodland, in addition to a total of 100 acres of arable.114 If the composition of lay manorial estates in Weardale indicates the existence of a largely pastoral economy based upon stock farming, further east, in the parishes of the foothills of the Pennines, on slightly lower lying ground, mixed farming was more prevalent. Thus, for example, the manor of Ponthop in Lanchester amounted to a single messuage with a garden plus 200 acres of land, divided equally between arable and pasture.115 The manor of Tribley Farm in the parish of Chester-le-Street consisted of sixty acres of arable, twenty-four acres of meadow, one acre of woodland and 100 acres of pasture.116 On the whole, estates in the north and west, compared to the south and east of the bishopric, contained only small arable demesnes. In these areas, what, then, did the possession of a ‘manor’ actually mean? The general absence of references to the existence of lay courts in the western half of the bishopric is instructive. Apart from evidence of courts for the barony of Brancepeth and the manors of Esh and St Helen Auckland, the only other record concerns the manor of Medomsley in the parish of Lanchester, held by the Feltons of Edlingham, a Northumberland knightly family, to which the holders of the manor of Bradley, also in origin a moorland farm,

112 113 114 115 116

Byerside: HS, p. 113, DURH 3/2, fols 198v–200v; Hamsterley Hall: DURH 3/2, fols 61r, 123v. The exceptions: Helmington Hall, Cornsay, Bushblades, Stockerley and Nettlesworth. The quotation is from Dunsford and Harris, ‘Colonization of the Wasteland’, p. 43. DURH 3/2, fol. 262r–v. DURH 3/2, fols 256v–258v. DURH 3/2, fols 270v–271v.



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owed suit.117 The ‘manor’ was essentially a unit of land management, rather than of jurisdiction, based upon a single residence. Indeed, in some cases it is clear that the word ‘manor’ signified nothing more than a dwelling, as it did in other parts of England at the time of Domesday Book and more occasionally in the thirteenth century.118 The ‘manor’ of Satley in the parish of Lanchester is the best example of this meaning. This was an estate consisting, in the mid fourteenth century, of one messuage and fifty-seven acres of land, which had increased to a total of 130 acres by the time of the Hatfield Survey, made up of a single tenement, 100 acres of land and an enclosure containing 30 acres. The actual lords of Satley, who held the mill and 100 acres of land there, were an entirely different family, the Marleys of Unthank.119 In this landscape of predominantly small estates, where settlement consisted, at best, of a couple of peasant households, manorial lordship was weak. This would explain why, in 1395, the holder of the ‘manor’ of Black Burn in the parish of Lanchester appeared before the Durham justices of assize to charge an individual with cutting down and removing the trees on his estate, precisely the sort of offence which we might expect to come under the jurisdiction of a manorial lord in his own manor court.120 The holders of these estates could not command manpower in the same way as manorial lords east of the Barnard Castle-Bishop Auckland-Durham-Gateshead boundary line. If it was the existence of a court which defined a manor in the fifteenth century, very few of these properties in the north and west of Durham can properly be called a manor in the classical sense. It is, then, hardly surprising that the western half of Durham contained very few resident knights. The Eures of Witton le Wear were the only greater knights who lived here. With the exception of the large Neville complex at Brancepeth, their principal estate at Witton le Wear in Weardale was the only major lay estate in this part of the bishopric. Witton le Wear in the parish of Auckland St Andrew, four and a half miles west of Bishop Auckland, was originally part of the pre-Conquest estate of Aucklandshire belonging to the church of Durham, but was split up when Ranulph Flambard granted land to the Amundevilles, a Norman family, in the first half of the twelfth century.121 In 1166 Robert Amundeville held a total of five knights’ fees centred upon his main residence of Witton le Wear.122 The Amundevilles continued to reside at Witton in Weardale until the early fourteenth century, when it would appear that one Sir John Eure acquired the estate with hunting rights in the forest of Weardale.123 Sir John Eure was a Northumbrian knight, whose main estate,

117 118 119 120 121 122 123

DURH 3/2, fol. 114r–v. Cf. Harvey, Manorial Records, p. 2; Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, p. 598. DURH 3/2, fol. 44v; HS, pp. 116–17. DURH 13/224, fol. 13r. For the original composition of Aucklandshire, see Roberts, Green Villages, pp. 13–18. Aird, St Cuthbert, pp. 186, 217. Grant dated 28 December 1318 at Witton le Wear: DRO, D/X 99/1.

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comprising three manors, lay in the barony of Mitford, but who also held substantial property in and around the manor of Stokesley at the foot of the Cleveland Hills in the North Riding of Yorkshire.124 At first closely associated with the household of Edward II, he later became disillusioned with the king, joining forces with Thomas of Lancaster, with whom he fought at the battle of Boroughbridge in March 1322.125 It was in the late 1310s that the Eures acquired the property at Witton le Wear. Hitherto, their caput had been the Northumberland manor of Kirkley. The complications arising from the for­feiture of Sir John Eure in 1322, which meant that Sir John’s son and heir did not receive livery of Kirkley until 1358, perhaps persuaded the Eures to make Witton le Wear their primary residence in the second half of the fourteenth century.126 As befitted an estate which had originally been enfeoffed upon one of the bishop’s twelfth-century barons, the Eure caput of Witton le Wear was held of the bishop of Durham for knight’s service, homage and fealty and suit of the county court of Durham.127 Sir John’s Durham lands included the neighbouring estates at Redford and Hoppyland in the forest of Hamsterley, two miles west of Witton le Wear, and the manor of Bradley in the eastern corner of the parish of Wolsingham, four miles north west of Witton. In this sense, the Eures’ property in the bishopric amounted to a relatively compact lordship. A closer examination of this multiple estate, however, reveals a different story. The three properties of Bradley, Redford and Hoppyland were all, in origin, single farmsteads taken from the waste: they constituted previously marginal lands (moorland and woodland, rather than arable and improved pasture) which were drawn into cultivation. Bradley was in existence by the 1180s, but toponymic evidence suggests that Hoppyland was a fairly recent creation in 1300, and the first reference to Redford is from 1314 when Bishop Richard Kelloe made a grant of eight acres of waste ‘apud Le Roteford’.128 In the mid fourteenth century, then, the Eure lands focused upon Witton in Weardale were a less stable and less firmly entrenched territorial power base than might first appear to be the case. In the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Eures did much to consolidate their lordship at Witton le Wear through the piecemeal accumulation of land which began, after 1350, with Sir John Eure’s purchase of the estate at Witton belonging to the Barmptons. The Barmptons could trace their descent from one Walter Barmpton, a forester of Bishop Robert of Holy 124 125

126 127 128

CIPM, Vol. VI, pp. 206–7, 462–3. A. King, ‘Bandits, Robbers and Schavaldours: War and Disorder in Northumberland in the Reign of Edward II’, Thirteenth Century England IX, ed. M. Prestwich et al. (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 126–7; J.R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster 1307–1322: A Study in the Reign of Edward II (Oxford, 1970), pp. 41–3; W.P. Hedley, Northumberland Families, 2 vols (Newcastleupon-Tyne, 1968), Vol. I, p. 184. CIPM, Vol. VI, pp. 462–3; Hedley, Northumberland Families, Vol. I, p. 184. See, for example, DURH 3/2, fol. 80r. Boldon Buke, ed. W. Greenwell (SS 25, 1852), pp. 28, 63; V. Watts, A Dictionary of County Durham Place-Names (English Place-Name Society Popular Series 3, 2002), p. 61; RPD, Vol. II, pp. 1248–9.



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Island and a servant of Bishop Antony Bek in the later thirteenth century, who received several grants of waste around Witton le Wear in 1294 to extend his holdings next to his residence there.129 By the mid fourteenth century this estate amounted to a small manorial property at Witton, worth a couple of pounds a year, which was referred to in later records as Barmpton Hall.130 The main residence of the Eures, at this date, seems to have been what later became known as Witton Hall, a quasi-fortified manor house situated at the west end of the village of Witton le Wear, which is still extant and which retains some twelfth-century features.131 Sometime after 1350 and certainly by the time of the Hatfield Survey, the Eures were in possession of all of the Barmpton lands around Witton le Wear. These properties, according to the Hatfield Survey, included some thirteen pieces of land ranging in size from one to twelve acres, all of which were held by Sir Ralph Eure by the late 1370s.132 Most significantly, the Barmptons’ principal property, known as Barmpton Hall, was taken over by the Eures and ‘improved’ as their own manorial residence in the second half of the fourteenth century. When Sir Ralph Eure secured a retrospective licence to crenellate his manor from Bishop Thomas Langley in September 1410, the new three-storey tower house enclosed within a curtain wall must have been close to completion.133 This new property was described as the fortalice and manor of ‘Bermetonhall’ in Witton le Wear in a 1431 enfeoffment to use, and it was located on the south bank of the river Wear about a mile from the village, which lay on the other side of the river.134 By 1422, on the death of Sir Ralph Eure, the Eure complex at Witton le Wear comprised two main properties, one called the manor of Witton le Wear and the other described as the manor of ‘Bermetonhall’ with appurtenances in Witton le Wear. Each was now valued at £20 per annum, which meant that the entire Eure estate at Witton produced an annual income of £40.135 This was a dramatic increase in the productivity of the Eure estate: on the death of Sir Robert Eure in the late 1360s, the total income from the two properties had been estimated at £11 per annum.136 In the second half of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries the Eures had managed to develop what was essentially a patchwork of lands and small enclosures, newly cultivated from the waste (in the late thirteenth century) into something much more coherent and substantial. In 1422 the manor of

129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136

RPD, Vol. II, p. 1285; Bek, pp. 42–4. DURH 3/2, fol. 38v. R. Hugill, The Castles and Towers of the County of Durham (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1979), p. 108. HS, pp. 51–2. DURH 3/34, fol. 6r: the licence records the enclosing of the manor of Witton with a lime-stone wall and its embattlement, crenellation, turreting and fortification. DURH 3/36, fol. 2r. DURH 3/2, fols 214r–217r. DURH 3/2, fol. 80r.

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Barmpton Hall, as the castle of Witton le Wear was still called, was said to contain 600 acres of land, combining arable, meadow and woodland.137 In the western half of the bishopric the Eure estate at Witton le Wear was unusual in its size, but not in its complexion. First, located in relatively marginal terrain as it was, the Eure lordship contained a considerable amount of pasture. The estate lay in what might be termed a wood-pasture zone. Secondly, reclaimed waste constituted a sizeable portion of the estate. Indeed, the Eures owed the extension of their property eastwards into the area of Escomb to a grant in perpetuity by Bishop John Fordham in 1384 to Sir Ralph Eure, for his past service to the bishop, of two pieces of the bishop’s waste.138 The first consisted of just over eighty-nine acres and was described as lying in the bishop’s forest next to the river Wear. The second portion of waste was much smaller, consisting of eight acres on the eastern side of Ralph’s manor, formerly called ‘Bermetonhall’, together with four acres lying towards the south. In both instances the bishop granted that Ralph and his heirs should be able to enclose the waste and to hold the property in severalty. Crucially, however – and this is an important point to which we shall return – though the land was marginal in the sense of it having been previously woodland, the bishop was fully aware of the economic potential of the resources which might lie beneath the land. The grant explicitly reserved to the bishop and his successors both his rights to coal and stone, iron and other metals, if they should be found within the bounds of the waste, and his access to the same through the construction of pathways and aqueducts. If a coal mine should be established within the bounds of the newly enclosed waste, then Sir Ralph and his heirs could only take the coal necessary for fuel at the manor house of Witton le Wear, to which they were entitled free of charge. Their annual income from land, by the end of the period, put them on a par with families such as the Bowes of Streatlam, the Claxtons of Claxton and the Hyltons of Hylton, on the rung below the Lumleys of Lumley castle. According to the 1436 income tax, to which Sir William Eure contributed because of his possession of nine manors in Northumberland, the Eures of Witton le Wear enjoyed a clear annual income from their manors, lands, tenements and rents throughout England (namely, from estates in Durham, Northumberland and the North Riding) of £160, of which about half came from manors in the western parishes of Auckland St Andrew, Lanchester and Wolsingham.139 But apart from the Eures, the only other resident knights in the western half of the bishopric were the Lumleys of Ravensworth castle and the Redheughs of Redheugh, and even these two families were most definitely lesser knights, with an annual income of around £40: the Lumleys 137 138 139

DURH 3/2, fols 214r–217r. For what follows, see DURH 3/32, fol. 7d. The income tax return is in E 179/158/38, m. 5d. For the value of the landed estate in Durham, see DURH 3/2, fols 214r–217r.



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were a cadet branch of the Lumleys of Lumley castle, whose principal holdings were the adjacent manors of Ravensworth castle and Lamesley in the parish of Chester-le-Street,140 whilst the Redheughs flickered brightly in the 1360s when Sir Hugh Redheugh purchased several manors in the parishes of Whickham, Lanchester and Chester-le-Street, but seem to have been in debt by the early fifteenth century, when they mortgaged several of their estates, including Hollingside in the parish of Whickham, and sold their patrimony of Redheugh on the southern bank of the river Tyne to the Newcastle merchant, Roger Thornton.141 There were a handful of resident families in the western half of the bishopric, whose annual income from land amounted to between £20 and £40, placing them in the ranks of the squirearchy. These included the Binchesters of Binchester and Hunwick, neighbouring properties in the parish of Auckland St Andrew, the Burnigills of Burnigill and the Randolphs of East Brandon in the parish of Brancepeth, the Claxtons of Old Park in the parish of Whitworth, the Eshs of Esh in the parish of Lanchester and the Eures of Bradley (a cadet line of the Eures of Witton le Wear) in the parish of Wolsingham. Although the manors of Binchester and Hunwick were long established estate centres, with their roots as dependent vills of the preConquest estate of Aucklandshire belonging to the church of Durham,142 the majority constituted farmsteads either wholly taken from the waste, such as Burnigill, Old Park and Bradley, or else consolidated by the acquisition of waste land, such as Esh. None of these manors was especially large; certainly not compared to some of the manors to the south and east of the bishopric.143 Hunwick Hall was perhaps typical of these manorial residences. Dating from the fifteenth century, this was a very simple courtyard house, with ranges on three sides of the plan, but without a moat.144 Bradley Hall was an exceptional building in this regard. In 1432 the lord of Bradley acquired a licence from Bishop Langley to fortify, crenellate and embattle his manor with a limestone wall.145 The remains of this fifteenth-century manor house, located on the north bank of the river Wear on the road towards Wolsingham, are still extant, revealing a four-sided moated site enclosing a courtyard plan.146 However, the licence to crenellate was indicative not of the imposing nature of this residence, but of the aspirations of its new lord, Robert Eure, the 140 141

142 143 144 145 146

For the best estimate of the Lumleys’ income from land in the late fourteenth century, see the dower assignment recorded in DURH 3/2, fol. 117r. Acquisition: DURH 3/31, m. 1d (Hollingside and Bradley); Loss: DRO, D/St/D5/2/6 (Hollingside), DURH 3/2, fol. 167v (Redheugh and Axwell) and DURH 3/34, m. 7d (Ivesley and East Rowley). Sir Hugh’s acquisitions are also recorded in HS, pp. 93, 117, 125. Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, pp. 66–9, 113. Old Park, for example, was a 180 acre site: DURH 3/2, fols 139r-140r. A. Emery, Greater Medieval Houses of England and Wales 1300–1500, Vol. I: Northern England (Cambridge, 1996), p. 106. DURH 3/36, fol. 5r. See Emery, Northern England, pp. 55–6, although the historical details are wrong: the house belonged to Robert rather than Sir William Eure, his elder brother.

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younger son of Sir Ralph Eure of Witton le Wear and founder of a cadet line of the Eures. For the most part, the western half of the bishopric was throughout the period a landscape occupied by single-estate landed families, whose ‘manors’ were almost all medieval farms established from the waste, and all of which were consistently valued at between £1 and £10 per annum. The IPMs reveal around forty such families: in the parish of Stanhope the Blackheads of Woodcroft and the Marleys of Unthank and their successors, the Maddisons of Unthank; in the parish of Hunstanworth the Allenshields of Allenshields; in the parish of Wolsingham the Egglestons of Broadwood and the Yorks of Newlands Hall; in the parish of Auckland St Andrew the Parks of Byers Green, the Marleys of Fitches (a cadet branch of the Unthank Marleys), the Henknowles and later Belasis family of Henknowle, the Chancellors of High Woodifield, the Goldsboroughs of Mayland East, the Meagers of East Shipley and their successors, the Blackdenes of Shipley, and the Barmptons of Witton le Wear; in the parish of Lanchester the Grooms of Bushblades, the Parks of Colepike Hall (relations of the Parks of Byers Green), the Guildfords of Collierley, the Stubbs of Consett, the Rougheads of Greencroft and the Gourlays of Ponthop; in the western portion of the parish of Chester-le-Street the Edmondsleys of Edmondsley, the Gategangs of Nettlesworth and later the Hagthorpes of Nettlesworth, the Ravensworths of Ravensworth, the Stutevilles of Kibblesworth, the Milots of White Hill and the Urpeths of Urpeth; in the western half of the parish of Durham St Oswald the Brackenburys and later Claxtons of Burn Hall and the Hexhams of Broom; and in the parish of Whickham the Burntons of Hollingside and the Mashams of Gibside.147 In this respect, Durham was similar to other counties, where ‘the manors of the older and greater knightly families tended to be situated in areas of primary settlement and were probably of larger size than those of the lesser esquires and mere gentry, which might represent subsequent settlement on marginal land.’148 But Durham also represents a meeting point of different models of manorialisation. If the tenurial structure of lordship and the geographical distribution of landed power within the bishopric of Durham were not altogether unique, since there were other areas of England which contained a similar upland-lowland division and/or which experienced relatively late colonisation, where the process of manorialisation was equally uneven,149 the existence of a large number of small manors made Durham distinctive.150 In the north and west of the bishopric some lords, such as the Yorks of Newlands 147 148 149

150

DURH 3/2, passim. G. Harriss, Shaping the Nation: England 1360–1461 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 138–9 and n. 9. For the north west, see A.J.L. Winchester, Landscape and Society in Medieval Cumbria (Edinburgh, 1987), pp. 133–5; for the midlands, see B.K. Roberts, ‘A Study of Medieval Colonization in the Forest of Arden’, Agricultural History Review 16 (1968), pp. 101–13. Cf. P. Coss, Lordship, Knighthood and Locality: A Study in English Society c.1180–c.1280 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 305.



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Hall in Wolsingham, did exercise lordship over free and customary tenants,151 but it is generally difficult to find evidence that these manorial lords enjoyed lordship over men. Did these manorial lords also lack the landed wealth and control of economic resources which the lords of manors held in the south and east of the bishopric? While the IPMs reveal uniformly the preponderance of small holdings in the western half of Durham, they also indicate the generally impoverished nature of these estates, which were worth a few pounds a year at most. We seem to have here confirmation that in the upland areas of the north the gentry were indeed poor, if not backward. Yet there are good grounds for thinking that the IPMs do not tell the whole story. Though the amount of arable land under cultivation in the western half of Durham was relatively small, the estates did contain other potentially valuable natural resources, including pasturage for sheep and cattle farming, which the IPMs generally undervalued,152 and woodland, which could be exploited in all kinds of ad hoc and impermanent ways and which the IPMs, as snapshots of land utilization at particular moments in time, tended not to record. The entrepreneurial qualities of Robert Marley, for instance, an esquire and the lord of three relatively small manors in the parishes of Chester-le-Street and Whickham, are barely hinted at in his IPM, but they are perhaps only unusual in being so well documented from other sources. Here was a fairly low-income esquire, very typical of the north and west of the bishopric in the fifteenth century, who in 1412 leased a piece of land called ‘Gellesfeld’ on his manor of Marley Hill to Sir Robert Umfraville, explicitly for the purposes of coal extraction, in return for an annual payment of £2, who in 1416 leased his manor of Marley Hill to the same Sir Robert in return for an annual income of £6, who in 1428 leased his fulling mill in the river Derwent and who in 1435 sold 800 of his best oak trees from his estate at Marley Hill to a Newcastle barker.153 Deprived of the best agricultural land within the bishopric, here was nonetheless a member of the Durham lesser gentry making the most of all the resources at his disposal. The main problem confronting landholders in the western half of the bishopric was the poor quality of the soil or, in the words of the IPMs, ‘the sterility of the land’ (sterilitas patriae). But, as the example of Robert Marley indicates, land unsuitable for arable farming in the north and west of Durham could have other uses. An inquest into the value of the manor of Friarside in the western part of the parish of Chester-le-Street, for instance, recorded the existence of a sub-manorial property at Lintz ‘otherwise called “Colesfeld” ’, where the land was sterile. The land on the surface was evidently worth relatively little, no doubt because of the poor soil, but the colloquial name for Lintz indicates the real subterranean value of the estate.154 Indeed, increas151 152 153 154

DURH 3/30, m. 4d. Saul, Knights and Esquires, p. 206. DRO, D/St/D5/1/12, D/St/D5/1/17, D/St/D13/1/2/124, D/St/D5/1/22. DURH 3/2, fols 247v–250v.

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ingly the most valuable natural resources within the bishopric lay in the north and west of Durham, in what in later centuries would become known as the Durham coalfield. Here the outcroppings of coal produced a different range of economic opportunities from those available to landholders in the south and east of the bishopric. The bishops of Durham were quick to spot the potential profit from the exploitation of mineral resources. The manor of Fugar House is a good example. This was originally a farm carved from the waste in the north-west corner of the parish of Chester-le-Street in the late twelfth century.155 In the mid fourteenth century this property was described as ‘one messuage called Fugar House and sixty acres of land and woodland with appurtenances’, which belonged to a very minor landed family whose main base was at Newcastle-upon-Tyne.156 The property passed to an heiress, who was also a minor, and it would appear that the bishop retained hold of the estate and, at some point before the compilation of the Hatfield Survey, granted it to Henry Percy, first earl of Northumberland from 1377. By the time of the Hatfield Survey, the estate was a manor containing an estimated 100 acres of land. The wealth of the estate, however, was not derived from the farming of the land itself. It was the coal-pit at Fugar House which was most valuable and which the bishop now leased to the earl for the not insubstantial sum of £26 13s 4d per annum.157 In 1378 Bishop Hatfield also leased a coal mine in the townfield of Whickham to Henry Percy for a term of seven years in return for £30 per annum, with the right to have coal borne from Fugar House to the river Tyne by a suitable route assigned by the steward and chief forester of Durham through the bishop’s estate of Whickham.158 The bishop’s principal mining complexes were located in the north and west of the bishopric. There were four sites of coal mining activity in the west: Railey (Auckland St Helen), Cold Hurst, ‘Herkeld’ (Auckland St Andrew) and Heatherley Cleugh (Stanhope), all of which the bishop was leasing out by 1367.159 In the north, the bishop’s mineral exploitation was concentrated in the adjacent parishes of Whickham and Gateshead, all the evidence for which suggests that they too were opened up in the second half of the fourteenth century. In 1373 Thomas Hatfield appointed a keeper of the bishop’s coal mines at Whickham and Gateshead, who was to sell the coal and answer to the bishop for the profits derived thereof. A year later, in the context of a more general labour shortage within Durham, the bishop instructed two of his officers to requisition workers for the bishop’s mines of Whickham and Gateshead as well as carriers of coal wherever they could find them within the bishop’s lordship, giving the officers full power to imprison the workers

155 156 157 158 159

DCM, Misc.Ch. 6824. DURH 3/2, fol. 49r. HS, p. 93. DCM, Reg. II, fols 288v–289r. DRO, D/Lo/F 26.



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and carriers if they resisted.160 The bishop’s coal mines in the north were clearly a major enterprise, with five at Whickham alone in 1356, when they were leased for twelve years at 500 marks per annum.161 The evidence of coal mining on lay estates confirms that it was primarily on lands west of the Barnard Castle-Bishop Auckland-Durham-Gateshead line that the industry was located in this period:162 from Lumley in the northern parish of Chester-le-Street, through to Hett in the parish of Merrington, where, as early as 1357, the lords of Hett were involved in drift-mining, negotiating with their landlord, the priory of Durham, over the digging and removal of coal, to Cockfield in the parish of Cockfield, a couple of miles north of Raby.163 It has been argued that it was only in the eighteenth century that ‘the coal reserves suddenly endowed the waste with a value that led very rapidly to their enclosure and to disputes over ownership’.164 Though the evidence is not plentiful, there is enough to suggest that there was already, in the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, a correlation between the location of previously uncultivated land and the establishment of the Durham coal industry. Virtually all of the known mines on lay estates in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries – Colepike Hall (Lanchester), Marley Hill (Whickham), Morley (Brancepeth), High Woodifield (Auckland St Andrew), and Broom (Durham St Oswald) – began life as farmsteads reclaimed from the waste. We know a reasonable amount about the mining interests of the Nevilles of Raby and Brancepeth, who had a head start in this respect because of their possession of the manor of Winlaton on the south bank of the river Tyne, along which coal could easily be shipped through Newcastle, as it was in 1364 when coal from Winlaton was used for lime-burning in the rebuilding of Windsor castle.165 The Nevilles’ interest in coal grew enormously in the period. In 1388 John Lord Neville acquired some property from the bishop of Durham at Colepike Hall, in a grant which made specific reference to the potential wealth of the area in mineral resources.166 In the first decade of the fifteenth century John’s son and heir, Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland, obtained the manor of Cockfield from the Vavasours of Hazlewood, in an exchange for the manor of Eastburn in the West Riding. Cockfield’s value to the Nevilles lay not so much in its geographical proximity to the Neville caput of Raby, but in the presence on the manorial estate of a mine, which was said in 1375 to be worth over £13 annually when it was demised 160 161 162

163 164 165 166

DURH 3/31, mm. 4d, 5d. DURH 3/30, m. 11d. For an overview of the north-east coalfield in the late middle ages, see J. Hatcher, The History of the British Coal Industry, Vol. I: Before 1700: Towards the Age of Coal (Oxford, 1993), pp. 72–7. Lumley: Greenwell Deeds, p. 108; Hett: DCM, Misc.Chs 2115, 2116, 2118; Cockfield: DURH 3/2, fol. 95v. Dunsford and Harris, ‘Colonization of the Wasteland’, p. 46. J.B. Blake, ‘The Medieval Coal Trade of North East England: Some Fourteenth-Century Evidence’, NH 2 (1967), pp. 3–4. DURH 3/32, m. 10d.

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at farm.167 On his death in 1425 Ralph was also in possession of coal mines at Morley in the parish of Brancepeth and at High Woodifield, Lynesack and Folly in the neighbouring parish of Auckland St Andrew.168 We also know something of the activities of the Newcastle merchant, Roger Thornton, who assumed a leading position in this rapidly growing industry from the beginning of the fifteenth century. This was a significant development, reflecting as it did the changing way in which members of the Newcastle mercantile community responded to the growth of this new lucrative source of revenue on their doorstep. At first, Newcastle merchants were economically dependent upon the bishop’s coal mines for the export of coal.169 In 1392, for instance, the mayor, bailiffs and community of Newcastle paid Bishop Walter Skirlaw £312 for the acquisition of a consignment of coal.170 Roger Thornton was a bailiff, alderman and nine times mayor of Newcastle, who purchased six manors, with the assistance of several Newcastle burgesses, in the north of the bishopric in the first three decades of the fifteenth century, five of which – Swalwell and Axwell in the parish of Whickham, Redheugh in the parish of Gateshead, Crookhall in Lanchester and Friarside in Chesterle-Street – lay in parishes which were known for their rich coal deposits and four of which are known to have been, in origin, moorland farms taken from the waste.171 Thornton also held a property, described in his IPM as ‘a certain waste called Fugarfield’, which was part of the manor of Fugar House to which reference has already been made and which he was granted in 1405 by letters patent of Henry IV for his role ‘in the defence of Newcastle’ against Henry Percy, first earl of Northumberland.172 The sixteenth-century antiquary, John Leland, remembered Thornton as ‘first a marchante and then a landid man’,173 but there is no evidence at all that Thornton sought to become a landed gentleman. He was a merchant and a burgess of Newcastle, who was buried next to his wife in the church of All Saints within the walled town and whose will, in its generous bequests for the repair and maintenance of several Newcastle churches – St Nicholas’, All Saints’, St John’s, St Andrew’s, and the Chapel of St Thomas’ on the Tyne Bridge – and in its donation of 100 marks for the upkeep of the Tyne Bridge, provides compelling evidence of the strength of his attachments to the town.174 The acquisition of land in the north west of the bishopric was essentially a commercial investment: rather than rely upon the bishop’s mines at Gateshead and Whickham for coal, Thornton obtained land upon which to establish his own mines. He looked

167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174

DURH 3/2, fol. 95v. DURH 3/2, fols 230r–232r. Blake, ‘Medieval Coal Trade’, pp. 22–4. DURH 3/33, m. 9d. A record of his Durham properties is provided in his IPM: DURH 3/2, fols 247v–250v. For the timing of the purchases, see DURH 3/2, fols 167v, 175r-v, 192r-v. SC 8/153/7624B. The Itinerary of John Leland, ed. L.T. Smith, 5 vols (London, 1907–10), Vol. IV, pp. 117–18. Thomas Langley, Vol. III, pp. 164–7.



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upon land not as a source of social status, but as an economic asset, as the foundation of future wealth. Circumstantial evidence suggests, however, that there was a much more extensive interest in coal mining among resident manorial lords within the bishopric. One of the grievances expressed in 1303 by the ‘good men of the franchise of Durham between Tyne and Tees’ in their dispute with Antony Bek concerned the way in which the bishop’s ministers had infringed the right of local lords to mine coal found on their own land, thereby denying them profit.175 A few months later, when a charter was drawn up between the bishop and the ‘community of the franchise of Durham’, Antony Bek extended this entitlement to cover iron as well as coal, which could be mined on the demesne estates of lords in the same way as he enjoyed this privilege on the properties under his direct control. The mining of coal involved precisely the kinds of minor landed figures who dominated numerically the landscape of north and west Durham. Some oversaw the bishop’s coal mines. In 1413, for instance, the farmers of the bishop’s coal mine of Gateshead were John Dolphamby, a wealthy landlord in the bishop’s borough of Gateshead, John Guildford, lord of Collierley and John Ravensworth, lord of Ravensworth.176 Others, such as William Chancellor, Esq., lord of High Woodifield in the parish of Auckland St Andrew in the early fifteenth century, were in possession of coal mines on their own estates.177 Though the evidence is incomplete, there were opportunities as well as problems for those meagrely endowed esquires willing and able to diversify their operations. If, then, in contrast to the lords of manorialised villages in the eastern half of Durham, the holders of these small estates in the western half of the bishopric did not, as a rule, possess manorial lordship over men, if their sources of landed income were more diverse and less stable, this was an environment in which relatively minor landholders could stake a claim to status and influence. Here were families such as the Gategangs of Gateshead, who emerged in the later thirteenth century. Their main possession was a piece of land – originally a piece of waste – called Pipewellgate, which was part of the bishop’s borough of Gateshead stretching westwards from the Tyne Bridge parallel with the river.178 In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries the head of the family was a bailiff of Gateshead, a position which no doubt helps to explain why Bishop Bek granted him nearly 130 acres of ‘new waste’ in and around Gateshead. By the mid fourteenth century, the family’s main residence remained at Pipewellgate, but the family also held a series of small enclosures taken from the waste and from the townfields of Gateshead, some of which were described as parks in the family’s IPMs.

175 176 177 178

For this and what follows, see RPD, Vol. III, pp. 42, 62–3. DURH 3/34, m. 9d. DURH 3/2, fols 311v–313r. Much of the following is taken from Surtees, History and Antiquities, Vol. I, pp. 105–6, 116. The grant by Bek is in Bek, pp. 55–6, 160. For the reference to parks, see DURH 3/2, fol. 53r–v.

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Though Pipewellgate was never described as a manor, there is some evidence to suggest that there was a court there, where the Gategangs exercised their own lordship, and Alan Gategang, who was dead before 1350, had his own seal in which he styled himself, somewhat grandly, ‘lord of Pipewellgate’. Here also were the Guildfords of Collierley and the Rougheads of Greencroft, neighbours in the parish of Lanchester. The manor of Collierley was a small and otherwise unremarkable property at the time of the Hatfield Survey containing 200 acres of pasture, arable and woodland, but its lord, as early as 1293, enjoyed the right of free warren on his estate.179 The Rougheads held a moiety of the manor of Greencroft, consistently valued at £3 per annum, whose head in 1399, one John Roughead, was described loftily as the ‘lord of Greencroft.’180 The Balance of Landed Power To what extent was this kind of lesser lord, extremely numerous in the western half of the bishopric, but unlikely to have exercised lordship over dependent tenants, part of the gentry? What, indeed, was the balance of power between landholders within the bishopric, between clerical and lay, between the nobility and gentry and between different ranks within the gentry? To what extent did it change over time? How was landed society within the bishopric stratified? The remainder of this chapter analyses the distribution of landed power within the bishopric at three reasonably spaced points in time, 1345, 1381 and 1434.181 The manor, though it did mean different things and did not always constitute a unit of lordship, was the main building block of landholding within all parts of the bishopric.182 For this reason, analysis of the balance of landed power is dependent upon a survey of the holders of manors within the bishopric.183 The starting point is the beginning of Thomas Hatfield’s episcopate; the date of the second cross-section corresponds to the compilation of the Hatfield Survey; and the final snapshot, from 1434, is informed by the roll call of names of Durham landholders whose oath to keep the peace locally the bishop received in Durham cathedral priory on 23 September 1434. To assess the balance of landed power within the bishopric between the nobility and gentry and between the different ranks of the gentry, we need to define our terms. By the fourteenth century, there were only vestigial traces of an older, local concept of the barons of the bishopric, a distinct group of 179 180 181 182 183

HS, p. 124; Bek, p. 39. DURH 3/2, fols 121r, 205v–206r; DRO, D/CG 7/669. Cf. C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401–1499 (Cambridge, 1992), Ch. 3. See above. For the problems associated with the counting of manors as a means of establishing the distribution of landed wealth, see A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses: Lay Society, War, and Politics 1450–1500 (Oxford, 1990), pp. 81–3.



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Durham landholders whose formation in the twelfth century had led them to be described as the barones et fideles sancti Cuthberti.184 These landholders counted as honorial barons, whose status was based not upon their position as the greater tenants-in-chief of the crown, holding multiple knights’ fees of the king, but as the most important tenants-in-chief of major landholders who were themselves tenants-in-chief of the crown. Thus, in the twelfth century the bishop of Durham had his own barons, just as did the earls of Chester and Pembroke and the lords of Lancaster and Richmond.185 By the end of the twelfth century, the term ‘baronage’ had come to mean almost exclusively the leading tenants-in-chief of the crown, and by the mid fourteenth century, the title of baron distinguished a landholder who was in receipt of a summons to parliament.186 In the mid 1190s, during the vacancy of the see of Durham created by the death of Bishop Hugh Puiset, there were ten baronies in the bishopric.187 As we have seen, only in the case of the Hylton barony was this older idea of an honorial baronage preserved. It may explain why the heads of the Hylton family were summoned to parliament in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, but these summonses were sporadic (1295–6, 1332–6) and the Hyltons never again enjoyed the status of parliamentary peers.188 Indeed, whilst the family’s longevity and continuous possession of the estate based at Hylton marked out the Hyltons among other landholding dynasties within the bishopric, their landed wealth – around £200 per annum – meant that they could never qualify for the peerage. They should be seen rather as part of a small group of greater knightly families among the gentry. In Durham, as elsewhere by the fourteenth century, the nobility were synonymous with the parliamentary peerage.189 The real problem, as historians have long recognised, is that the term ‘gentry’ is a construct. In one sense, the gentry were the lesser landowners who were left after the nobility were defined as the parliamentary peerage.190 There is a general consensus that gentility was rooted in the possession of land and, in particular, of manorial estates. In the words of a recent commentator, manorial lordship, inasmuch as it entailed lordship over men and resources, was ‘the basic definition of gentility’.191 In the case of the bishopric, the application of this straightforward definition of the gentry to Durham landholders is problematic. In a physical environment of sharp contrasts, where tenure of a manor did not necessarily indicate possession of a court or dependent tenants, the possession of a manorial estate might not necessarily distinguish

184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191

Aird, St Cuthbert, pp. 197–8; and above, p. 25. F. Stenton, The First Century of English Feudalism, 1066–1166 (Oxford, 1932), Ch. 3. S. Painter, Studies in the History of the English Feudal Barony (Baltimore, 1943), pp. 14–15. Boldon Buke, pp. xi-xii. CP, Vol. III, pp. 19–24. W.M. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III: Crown and Political Society in England, 1327‑1377 (New Haven, 1990), p. 95. K.B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973), pp. 268–78. C. Carpenter, ‘Gentry and Community in Medieval England’, JBS 33 (1994), p. 353.

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one landholder from another within local society. We should not assume that holders of a ‘manor’ in Durham were automatically of gentle status, set apart from others by their collection of rents.192 Throughout the period there were a handful of manorial ‘lords’ who were, in reality, little more than farmers in the modern sense of the word. These families included the Driltons, who held the manor of Wadley in the parish of Auckland St Andrew and the vaccary of Bollihope Shield in the parish of Stanhope, both of which, according to an IPM, produced a clear, combined annual landed income of £2.193 The Blackheads of Woodcroft in the parish of Stanhope were of a similar status: Woodcroft was, as its name suggests, a small woodland enclosure, consisting of a single messuage and forty acres of land. Described as a ‘manor’ in 1418, it was reportedly worth less than £1 per annum. The Blackheads were part of the Durham gentry in the later sixteenth century, but there is no evidence at all that they were considered gentle in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They were certainly not armigerous and they did not hold any kind of local office.194 The so-called ‘manors’ held by these yeomen farmers are, therefore, excluded from the following analysis. The pool of manorial landholders within the bishopric has been divided into four categories of gentry, based essentially upon landed income, although it is also recognised that gentility cannot be coupled precisely with income.195 At the top of the pyramid of gentry society in Durham were two knightly groups, comprising greater and lesser knightly families. Greater knights had an annual income in excess of £100, which was typically though not always drawn from an average of six manors within Durham and generally included estates outside the bishopric. Below these were the lesser knights, with a landed income of between £40 and £100, usually derived from an average of three manors in the bishopric as well as estates outside Durham. These lesser knightly families also included those who, if not technically knights, were eligible for knighthood, since they enjoyed a landed income of over £40. The third tier of families among the Durham landholders constituted what we can call the squirearchy, that is, families with a landed income of between £20 and £40 with an average of two manors in the bishopric, whose heads were invariably described as esquires when this title became firmly established in the bishopric as a status distinction in the first half of the fifteenth century.196 In the second half of the fourteenth century an increasing number of these families are known to have borne their own arms, the right to which

192 193

194 195 196

Cf. Bennett, Cheshire and Lancashire, p. 90. DURH 3/2, fol. 97v. See also S.J. Harris, ‘Wastes, the Margins and the Abandonment of Land: The Bishop of Durham’s Estate, 1350–1480’, North-East England in the Later Middle Ages, ed. C.D. Liddy and R.H. Britnell (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 201–2. DURH 3/2, fols 43r, 187r; Foster, Visitations of the County Palatine of Durham, pp. 16–17. Harriss, Shaping the Nation, p. 137. For this process: P.R. Coss, The Origins of the English Gentry (Cambridge, 2003), Chs. 4, 9; Saul, Knights and Esquires, pp. 6–29; and Carpenter, Locality and Polity, pp. 39–46.



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was becoming a distinguishing feature of this newly defined social group.197 These families included the Menvilles of Ludworth, a cadet branch of the Menvilles of Horden, and the Waltons of Durham, who held the manor of Croxdale to the south west of the city of Durham.198 Below this group was the largest cluster of manorial landholders among the gentry in the bishopric, almost all of whom held only a single manor and to whom, for the purposes of the following analysis, the term ‘parish gentry’ is an appropriate designation.199 What distinguished this group of landholders from the free tenants below them in the social hierarchy was not the possession of a ‘manor’ per se, but a combination of markers of gentle status, including the tenure of manorial lordship over free and customary tenants, office-holding, connections, the possession of heraldic arms and title. Discounted from the following analysis are seven non-resident noble families who held much of the most productive land in terms of farming, but who otherwise had very little stake in the bishopric and rarely, if ever, took part in its affairs. The Cliffords’ estate at Hart and the Beauchamps’ property at Barnard Castle and Gainford have already been mentioned. Two families, the Dacres of Gilsland in Cumberland and the Percys of Alnwick, each held a single manor – Newton Hanzard and Dalton Piercy in the southeastern parishes of Elwick Hall and Hart respectively – but the majority held several properties. The Greystokes of Greystoke in Cumberland and Morpeth in Northumberland held three manors in the bishopric in parishes on the northern bank of the Tees, and at Coniscliffe, from as early as the 1290s, they were in possession of capital jurisdiction on their estates, with the right of gallows and infangenetheof, so as to punish felons found guilty in their court.200 In 1418 the three manors were said to be worth a total of £106 per annum, a sum which only amounted to around one-sixth of the annual income of the Greystokes, who held over thirty manors outside Durham in seven northern counties.201 The de la Poles, summoned to parliament from the mid 1360s and created earls of Suffolk in 1385, held four manors in the bishopric, three of which, Bradbury, The Isle and Preston le Skerne, lay in the valley of the river Skerne in the south of the county. The combined estate, worth around £35 per annum, was dwarfed by the family’s much more substantial interests, first in and around Hull in the East Riding, and then, from the 1380s, in the county of Suffolk.202 Finally,203 there were the Scropes of Bolton in the North Riding, who, by the early 1380s, held three manorial

197 198 199 200 201 202 203

Saul, Knights and Esquires, p. 255; Carpenter, Locality and Polity, p. 44. Greenwell Seals, Vol. I, pp. 210, 329. For the term, see C. Given-Wilson, The English Nobility in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1987), pp. 71–2. Bek, p. 39. DURH 3/2, fols 186v–187r; CIPM, Vol. XXI, pp. 28–31. J.S. Roskell, The Impeachment of Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, in 1386 (Manchester, 1984), pp. 34–5, 205–8. Also excluded are the Willoughbys of Eresby in Lincolnshire, about whom see below, p. 67.

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estates in the bishopric, two of which, High Cliff (parish of Winston) and Little Haughton (parish of Haughton-le-Skerne), lay just a few miles north of the river Tees. The Scropes, summoned to parliament from 1371, were essentially a Richmondshire family who held over fifty manors in the North Riding.204 Their Durham estate was only of peripheral concern and they used the properties north of the Tees to reward members of their affinity.205 Also excluded from the following discussion are twelve knightly families who held property in the bishopric, but who were never in any sense Durham landholders: that is to say, their principal holdings and residence lay elsewhere and they did not participate, either formally or informally, in the business of the bishopric. From the North Riding were the Bruces of Pickering, who held the manor of Heworth in the parish of Aycliffe, and the Colvilles of Ingleby Arncliffe and Dale, lords of the manor of St Helen Auckland throughout the period.206 From the East Riding were the Salvins of North Duffield and Harswell, who acquired the manor of Croxdale just outside the city of Durham in the early fifteenth century.207 From Northumberland were the Monbouchers of Horton and their successors, the Harbottles, holders of a compact lordship in the Team valley centred upon the manor of Beamish, the Tailboys of Hepple and the Ogles of Ogle, who shared possession of the manor of Hurworth on Tees, and the Horsleys of Farnham, who held throughout the period a small estate at Crawcrook and Bradley in the parish of Ryton, immediately south of the river Tyne.208 Another family from north of the river Tyne were the Feltons of Edlingham, who, up to the early fifteenth century, held the contiguous properties of Hamsterley Hall and Medomsley in the parish of Lanchester, which seem to have been treated as a single manorial complex and whose value (reportedly around £1–2 per annum) was almost negligible, certainly in comparison to the four manors which they held in Northumberland.209 The Hansards of South Kelsey in Lincolnshire were originally a Durham family, extremely prominent in the bishopric in the second half of the twelfth century. By the second half of the fourteenth century, they only held a single estate in Durham, the manor of Walworth in the south of the county, and by the fifteenth century, their interests lay entirely in Lincolnshire where they held most of the county offices.210 A similar family were the Vavasours of Hazlewood, holders of the manor of Cockfield in the south west of the bishopric until the early fifteenth century, 204

205 206 207 208 209 210

B. Vale, ‘The Scropes of Bolton and of Masham, c.1300-c.1450: A Study of a Northern Noble Family with a Calendar of the Scrope of Bolton Cartulary’, 2 vols (D.Phil. thesis, University of York, 1987), Vol. I, Chs. 3–4. For example, John Dawnay, who had a life interest in the manor of High Cliff in the early fifteenth century: DURH 3/2, fol. 267r–v. DURH 3/2, fol. 63r; W. Brown, ‘Ingleby Arncliffe’, YAJ 16 (1902), pp. 162–4. DURH 3/33, m. 27r. Monbouchers: DURH 3/2, fols 111v-112r; Tailboys and Ogle: DURH 3/2, fols 181v–182r; Horsleys: DURH 3/2, fols 88v, 116v; CIPM, Vol. XVII, p. 32. DURH 3/2, fols 61r, 123v; CIPM, Vol. X, pp. 353–4, and Vol. XVII, p. 247. Offler, ‘Fitz Meldred, Neville and Hansard’, p. 7; DURH 3/2, fol. 121v.



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whose principal estates lay in the West Riding.211 Sir Peter Tilliol of Scaleby in Cumberland was the lord of ten manors in the north west of England and held five manors in the bishopric in right of his wife until his death in 1435. These five estates produced an annual income of approaching £40, with the single most valuable property, the estate of Hetton-le-Hole in the parish of Houghton-le-Spring, valued at £20 per annum and including 420 acres of arable and 200 acres of pasture. Tilliol, however, never held office in the bishopric and the records leave no trace of his presence in the land between Tyne and Tees.212 Included among the knightly Durham landholders are six families – three from north of the Tyne and three south of the Tees – for whom their Durham estates were of secondary, but not peripheral, concern. Furthest south were the Darcys of Coningsby, a Lincolnshire knightly family whose connection to Durham was the consequence of the patronage of Bishop Bek in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.213 The Darcys, though they lived primarily at Coningsby, were not a gentry family of any importance in Lincolnshire. But as the lords of two manors in the north of the bishopric on either side of the river Wear, they held occasional office in Durham and were regular witnesses to the conveyance of land involving their neighbours.214 The Bulmers of Bulmer and Wilton in the Cleveland Hills held two manorial estates in the bishopric and for much of the period they were absentee lords, but Sir Ralph Bulmer (d. 1444) resided for some time at the manor of Thorpe Bulmer, held office in Durham and enjoyed close links with several major Durham families, notably the Hyltons and Eures.215 A comparable knightly family, whose interests, by the end of the period, had shifted to include a more active participation in the social and political life of the bishopric, were the Hastings of Roxby in the North Riding. They were the successors to the Feltons of Edlingham, holding the two adjacent manors of Hamsterley Hall and Medomsley in Durham. Sir John Hastings served on three commissions of array for the ward of Darlington in the 1430s, and his son and heir, Edmund, was born at Brancepeth castle and baptised in the local parish church.216 The Greys of Heaton in Norhamshire were essentially marcher lords, but they were in possession of four manors in the bishopric in the second half of the fourteenth century and several heads of the family held palatine office in 211 212 213 214 215 216

DURH 3/2, fol. 175r–v; CIPM, Vol. XX, pp. 7–8. The House of Commons, 1386–1421, ed. J.S. Roskell, 4 vols (Stroud, 1992), Vol. IV, pp. 614–17; DURH 3/2, fols 272v–273r, 276v–277r. Sir Philip Darcy was constable of Durham castle under Antony Bek: Fraser, History of Antony Bek, p. 105. DURH 3/2, fol. 177r; DCM, 1.4.Reg.7; DURH 3/32, m. 6d; DURH 3/30, m. 13d; DCM, Misc. Ch. 5303; DRO, EP/Ho 574; DURH 3/31, m. 4d. CIPM, Vol. VIII, p. 384, DCM, Bursar’s Book A, fol. 129r, CIPM, Vol. XIX, pp. 29–30; DURH 3/37, m. 3r. House of Commons, 1386–1421, Vol. III, pp. 317–19; DURH 3/37, mm. 3r, 11d, DURH 3/36, mm. 13r–14r; J.C. Hodgson, ‘Proofs of Age of Heirs to Estates in Northumberland in the Reigns of Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI’, AA, new series 22 (1900), pp. 129–30.

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the land between Tyne and Tees during this period.217 The Herons of Eshott, lords of a single manor in the bishopric from the early 1360s, were closely associated with Bishop Hatfield, although their interests south of the Tyne declined significantly with the death of Sir Gerard Heron in the first decade of the fifteenth century.218 Finally, there were the Umfravilles, later lords of Redesdale, who acquired four estates in Durham in the third quarter of the fourteenth century. The properties were all single farmsteads, carved from the waste in the northern parishes of Chester-le-Street and Whickham, and were worth practically nothing. By the early 1420s, the property at Holmside, now a fairly modest courtyard house surrounded by a moat, had been abandoned by the family.219 Nonetheless, though Durham was never central to the family’s territorial or political interests, members of the family continued to hold office in the bishopric into the 1430s.220 The first cross-section of Durham landholding society is from 1345. In the absence of a complete Victoria County History of Durham, the manorial count is my own, based largely upon the evidence of IPMs. Because of the uneven survival of evidence, the number of manors varies from one snapshot to another. Of the 259 manors for which we have evidence in 1345, the church held a total of fifty-seven (22%) estates between Tyne and Tees, leaving 202 manorial properties (78%) in the hands of lay lords. Most of the priory and bishopric estates were situated on the best farming land in this region, but nonetheless, this figure indicates that the church did not hold as many estates as might have been expected.221 Of these 202 manors, the nobility held 20% and the gentry 80%. These figures do not, however, tell the whole story. If we exclude the non-Durham landholders, who held between them some forty properties, the numbers are as follows. At the beginning of our period the Nevilles of Raby were the single most powerful family resident within the bishopric, and they held fourteen manors in the North Riding including the large manorial complexes at Sheriff Hutton and Middleham,222 but their landed position in Durham was basically limited to their patrimonial estates of Raby and Brancepeth. It is worth noting that their status as major landed figures in Durham was also relatively recent. Until the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Nevilles were essentially a Lincolnshire family. It was only from the mid thirteenth century, with the possession of the two estates at Raby and at Brancepeth, that the Nevilles became the greatest resident lay lords between the Tyne and 217 218 219 220 221

222

Durham landholding: DURH 3/2, fols 82v–83v; Durham office-holding: below, pp. 105–6, 129. DURH 3/30, m. 13d; below, pp. 105–7. P.F. Ryder, ‘Holmside Hall’, Durham Archaeological Journal 13 (1987), pp. 89–94; for the evidence of abandonment, see DURH 3/2, fols 211v–212r. For the evidence of office-holding, see DURH 3/34, m. 3d; DURH 3/38, m. 16r; DURH 3/37, mm. 3r, 11d. Twenty-seven: Bishop of Durham; twenty-one: Durham priory (bursar’s estate); four: Kepier Hospital; one: Sherburn Hospital, Finchale priory, Neasham priory, Guisborough priory, St Bartholomew’s nunnery (Newcastle). CIPM, Vol. XII, pp. 136–43.



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Table 1.  Distribution of Manors among Durham Lay Landholders, 1345 Landed Income £ p.a. Nobility Greater knights Lesser knights Squirearchy Parish Gentry

100 40–100 20–40 0–20

Number  1  3 13 15 50

Total Manors 16 17 32 30 67

Percentage (%)   9.88 10.49 19.75 18.52 41.36

the Tees.223 Although the Nevilles were summoned to parliament continuously from 1295,224 local observers within Durham were all too aware of the family’s history. In 1331, at the end of a long-running conflict between the prior of Durham and the Nevilles of Raby over the precise nature of their annual render of a stag to the cathedral priory in return for their possession of Raby (which they held for a rent of £4 per annum and per servicium unius cervi), a contemporary monastic chronicler of Durham, Robert Graystanes, revealed in caustic terms that the property in question was bestowed upon Ralph Neville’s ancestors ‘when they were not such great lords that they had a marshal, butler and other honourable servants, since they then only held Raby with appurtenances, which then was not of such value as it is now, and they only acquired Brancepeth afterwards by marriage and Raskelf and other lands in the county of York and Richmond in the same way’.225 In 1345 there was only a very small group of greater knightly families within the bishopric, comprising the Bowes of Streatlam, the Hyltons of Hylton and the Lumleys of Lumley. Instead, the most marked feature of the tenurial landscape was the numerical dominance of a group of parish gentry. What these families had in common was their possession of a single estate within Durham. Indeed, thirty-six of the fifty parish gentry held only one manor in 1345. The next snapshot of Durham society is from 1381. We now have evidence of the existence of 288 manors in Durham, 20% of which were held by the church and 80% by the laity. Within lay society, the distribution of manors between the nobility and gentry of Durham (excluding the thirty-eight properties held by non-Durham landholders) revealed a significant shift in favour of the former, who now held just over 18% of the manorial estates. Table 2 gives a breakdown of landholding among the gentry and nobility of the bishopric. The greatest changes occurred towards the apex of the landed hierarchy, among the knightly and noble groups, both of which had increased substantially their share of the manors in the bishopric. Among the former, the Hyltons 223 224 225

See above, pp. 33, 35. CP, Vol. IV, p. 497. Scriptores Tres, p. 112.

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Table 2.  Distribution of Manors among Durham Lay Landholders, 1381 Landed Income £ p.a. Nobility Greater knights Lesser knights Squirearchy Parish Gentry

100 40–100 20–40 0–20

Number  2  6 14 10 48

Total Manors 35 36 44 18 60

Percentage (%) 18.13 18.65 22.80   9.32 31.10

had expanded their estate westwards into the neighbouring parish of Washington, purchasing two additional manors, whilst the Bowes had picked up the valuable manor of Dawdon on the east coast of Durham through the marriage of Sir William Bowes to Matilda, granddaughter of Sir Jordan Dawdon.226 Most significantly, the ranks of the resident greater knightly families had swelled with the addition of the Claxtons of Claxton, the Eures of Witton le Wear, the Fulthorpes of Tunstall and the Greys of Heaton. The Lumleys of Lumley castle, meanwhile, had effectively entered the peerage with their inheritance after 1374 of a substantial share of the Thweng patrimony in Yorkshire, including Thwing in the East Riding and the manor of Kilton in the North Riding.227 When Ralph Lumley succeeded to his dual inheritance in the early 1380s, with a combined estate of over £500 per annum, his wealth and lineage qualified him for the peerage, and it is little wonder that he was summoned to parliament as Lord Lumley from 1384.228 These developments were, however, overshadowed by the dramatic expansion within the bishopric of the territorial interests of John Lord Neville. By 1381, the Nevilles had acquired a further fourteen manors, only one of which, the manor of Winlaton, had originally belonged to the family, having been granted for life to the Menvilles of Horden in the mid fourteenth century. The acquisition of the others is evidence of a purchasing policy by John Neville. This was not, as some have thought, simply concentrated around the existing family residences in Durham, at Raby and Brancepeth.229 Manors purchased from the early 1370s were primarily in the south and east of the bishopric, in the parishes of Darlington, Gainford, Sedgefield, Hart and Elwick Hall.230 Further acquisitions followed: in 1382 the Nevilles secured the manor of Stotfold in the south east of the bishopric, and in 1385 the family obtained the manor of Sunderland Bridge, a few miles south of the city of Durham. If there was a pattern to this purchasing strategy, it was based upon a willingness to exploit opportunities on the land market as they arose, notably 226 227 228 229 230

HS, pp. 82, 102; DURH 3/2, fols 198v–200v. Coss, ‘Heraldry’, pp. 9–10. CCR, 1381–5, pp. 333–6; CCR, 1389–92, pp. 428–9; Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 108–9. Given-Wilson, English Nobility, pp. 126–7. Oxney Flatt: DURH 3/31, m. 11r; Summerhouse: E 210/11225; Swainston: E 326/5484, E 327/380; Dalton Piercy: E 326/3782, E 326/3778; Newton Hanzard: E 327/380.



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from landholders whose principal interests lay outside the bishopric. In the late 1360s the Willoughbys of Eresby, a Lincolnshire peerage family whose ancestor, Robert Willoughby, had been a kinsman and counsellor of Bishop Antony Bek, relinquished their Durham estates, including the manor of Cornsay in the parish of Lanchester.231 John Neville’s purchase of Dalton Piercy in 1370 was from Henry Lord Percy, future earl of Northumberland, whose power was derived from his landed resources in Yorkshire and, increasingly, in Northumberland. In 1371 John Neville acquired the manor of Newton Hanzard belonging to the Dacres of Gilsland in Cumberland, and a year later, the Howdens of Kirby Sigston in the North Riding, whose latetwelfth-century ancestor had been a servant of Bishop Hugh Puiset, sold their manor of East Rowley to John Neville.232 In this phase of accumulation, Neville’s gains were made at the expense of non-resident gentry and nobility. By 1381, then, John Neville had become the largest single landholder within the bishopric, with estates, unlike those of the bishop and priory of Durham, scattered throughout Durham. Of the 294 manors for which we have evidence in 1434, just under 20% were in the possession of the church and over 80% held by the laity. Discounting the forty manors now held by non-Durham landholders, this left nearly 30% in the hands of the Durham nobility (including the Umfravilles, whose share of the patrimony of Gilbert Umfraville, earl of Angus, amounted to the liberty of Redesdale in Northumberland and the barony of Kyme in Lincolnshire, all of which, according to the 1436 income tax, produced an annual landed income of £400)233 and 70% of manorial properties belonging to the Durham gentry. The most obvious changes in Durham’s tenurial landscape since 1381 were the reduction of the number of parish gentry holding manors and the ever greater monopoly of landed wealth in fewer hands. This process is illustrated directly by the purchase by Sir Ralph Neville, later first earl of Westmorland, of the manor of Allenshields in the parish of Hunstanworth in 1394 from the descendant of the original thirteenth-century lords of the manor, the Allenshields, a single-estate family in the north-western extremity of the ­ bishopric.234 On the death of Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland, the Nevilles had increased their Durham estates from thirty at the time of the Hatfield Survey to forty-seven by 1425, whilst also extending their landed base in the North Riding.235 These forty-seven manors were spread

231 232 233 234

235

Fraser, History of Antony Bek, pp. 105, 232 n. 2; DURH 3/2, fol. 50r; DCM, Misc.Ch. 6317; HS, p. 122. DCL, Randall MS 3, pp. 159, 161; E 326/3097. E 179/158/38, m. 5d. E 326/13. For the status of the Allenshields, see M.L. Holford, ‘The Esh Family: Officeholding and Landed Society in the Palatinate of Durham in the Earlier Fourteenth Century’, NH 43 (2006), p. 231. For the picture in Yorkshire, see C.D. Ross, ‘The Yorkshire Baronage, 1399–1435’ (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1950), Ch. 1.

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Table 3.  Distribution of Manors among Durham Lay Landholders, 1434 Landed Income £ p.a. Nobility Greater knights Lesser knights Squirearchy Parish Gentry

100 40–100 20–40 0–20

Number  4  9  6 10 28

Total Manors 57 55 18 27 40

Percentage (%) 28.93 27.92   9.14 13.71 20.30

throughout seventeen parishes between the Tyne and the Tees, but in contrast to his son, Ralph Neville seems to have concentrated his attention on properties close to the main patrimonial estates of Raby and Brancepeth. Thus, in the first decade of the fifteenth century, Ralph exchanged his manors of School Aycliffe and Newbiggin in the parish of Heighington for the adjacent estates of Binchester and Hunwick in the parish of Auckland St Andrew, a few miles south of Brancepeth castle.236 By his death, Ralph held ten manors in the parish of Brancepeth, four in the parish of Auckland St Andrew and one in the parish of Whitworth. Close to the caput of Raby, Ralph was the lord of six manors in the parish of Staindrop, three in the parish of Gainford and one in the parish of Cockfield. In 1434, when Ralph Neville, second earl of Westmorland wrote to the king seeking the restoration of his entire inheritance from his grandfather, the first earl, the Nevilles’ annual income, from castles, manors, lands and tenements, was valued at over £2,500 (4,000 marks).237 This income placed the Nevilles on the second tier of the upper peerage.238 Almost half of this total came from the Durham estates.239 The nobility’s position, however, was much weaker than the statistical data suggest. Ralph Lord Lumley’s participation in the Epiphany rising of 1400 against Henry IV did not help the family, since it led to the lapse of the family’s peerage and the forfeiture of the Lumley estates. Although the Lumley properties were returned to the family in 1405 and although the Lumleys continued to be of equivalent standing to the nobility in terms of wealth, lands and lifestyle, it was not until 1461 that the family were formally restored to the peerage.240 When Sir John Lumley died in 1421 leaving a minor, the junior branch of the Lumleys capitalised upon the circumstances of the minority to mount a sustained claim to the estate at Stranton.241 Four years later, the death of Ralph, first earl of Westmorland divided the Nevilles and led to a contested inheritance and a divided patrimony, the implications 236 237 238 239 240 241

DURH 3/2, fols 166v–167r. E 28/53/72–3. Harriss, Shaping the Nation, p. 99. The Durham IPMs of Ralph, first earl of Westmorland provide the annual value (c. £400) of about one-third of the Durham properties: DURH 3/2, fols 228v–233r. CIM, 1399–1422, pp. 40–4; Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 108–9; CP, Vol. VIII, pp. 271–3. DURH 3/2, fols 209v–210r, 244r–v.



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of which for Durham landed society are explored more fully below.242 The Neville feud led to the partition of the family’s estates within the bishopric: Joan Beaufort, countess of Westmorland, Ralph’s second wife, succeeded to the estate of Raby and held a third of the Brancepeth lordship in dower, whilst Ralph, second earl of Westmorland, grandson of the first earl and his first wife, Margaret Stafford, inherited the remainder of the Brancepeth estate. The tenurial situation was actually more complex, since the second earl was under age on his grandfather’s death. In 1426 Countess Joan acquired the manor of Cockfield in south-west Durham, and in the same year secured a dower from her deceased husband’s Durham properties, which amounted in practice to possession of a share of the Brancepeth estate.243 In 1427 custody of the remainder of the Brancepeth estate, which included two-thirds of the castle of Brancepeth, as well as the manors of East Brandon, Holywell, Tudhoe, Wooley Hill, Stanley and Billy Row in the parish of Brancepeth, was vested in a small group of Durham gentry headed by Sir William Eure of Witton le Wear.244 In 1431 Richard Neville, the eldest son of Ralph, first earl of Westmorland by his second wife, gained possession of the manors of Stotfold and Newton Garths.245 In the following year Ralph, second earl of Westmorland finally succeeded to his share of the Neville inheritance in Durham, principally the majority share of the Brancepeth estate, but also including the manors of Elwick, Oxney Flatt, Birtley and Homelands.246 Throughout the 1430s, then, as the second earl battled to secure his full inheritance, both inside and outside the bishopric, neither branch of the Nevilles was as dominant territorially as the first earl had been a generation earlier. The period from 1381 to 1434 witnessed the consolidation of the territorial position of a small elite of greater knightly families: the Bowes of Streatlam now held ten manors within Durham, the Claxtons of Claxton eight and the Eures of Witton le Wear ten. The ranks of the knightly class as a whole were filled out with the addition of the Tempests of Studley and Washington and the Thorntons of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The Tempests were incomers in the bishopric in the early fifteenth century and drew most of their income from their Yorkshire estates.247 A cadet branch of the Tempests of Bracewell in the West Riding, they held the manors of Studley and Linton in Craven in the West Riding and Hartforth, Appleton and Stainton in Richmondshire in the North Riding. In the 1370s they acquired the manor of Trafford Hill in the parish of Egglescliffe, on the northern bank of the river

242 243 244 245 246 247

See below, pp. 213–20. DURH 3/38, m. 13r. DURH 3/38, m. 15d. DURH 3/36, m. 4r. These properties were not subject to an enfeoffment: DURH 3/2, fols 228v–232r. For the writ to deliver seisin, see DURH 3/37, m. 6r. For the value of their Yorkshire properties, see C 139/115/29, mm. 3–4. For what follows, see Heraldic Visitation of the Northern Counties in 1530 by Thomas Tonge, ed. W.H.D. Longstaffe (SS 41, 1862), p. 103; DURH 3/31, m. 11r; DURH 3/33, mm. 26r- 27d; DURH 3/2, fol. 311r.

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Tees close to Hartforth. On the death of Sir William Washington in 1399, they succeeded, through marriage, to the estate at Washington. The Thorntons, whose background was urban and mercantile and whose wealth was bound up in overseas trade, could not have been more different.248 The estate-building of the Newcastle merchant, Roger Thornton, which began with the acquisition of the manor of Swalwell in the parish of Whickham in the early fifteenth century, saw the Thorntons in possession of ten manors between the Tyne and the Tees at the end of the period. By the mid 1430s, Roger’s son and heir, another Roger, had bought the de la Pole manors of Bradbury, The Isle, Preston le Skerne and Bolam in the south of Durham and established himself as a landed gentleman of considerable distinction within the bishopric.249 The landed power of this group cannot be questioned. Fifteen Durham knightly families held over one-third of the lay estates in the bishopric belonging to resident landholders. It was an elite of leading gentry landholders that was also connected by kinship and marriage. Towards the end of the period, Sir William Eure’s daughter, Margery, married Christopher Conyers of Sockburn in Eure’s castle of Witton le Wear, Eure having first secured episcopal dispensation for the marriage since the betrothed couple were related within three degrees of consanguinity.250 Eure’s sisters, Elizabeth and Isabel had, meanwhile, married Sir William Claxton of Claxton and Horden and Sir Thomas Surtees of Dinsdale-on-Tees respectively. And when Claxton subsequently separated from Elizabeth, it was with Surtees that Claxton’s estranged wife sought refuge.251 Sir Ralph Bulmer of Bulmer and Wilton in the North Riding, lord of several estates on the east coast of Durham, was the wife of Margaret, daughter of William Baron Hylton, and Bulmer’s son, William, married the daughter of Sir William Eure’s younger brother, Robert.252 But the existence of a small establishment of leading county families was not unusual in this period.253 A much more pronounced feature of Durham landed society was rather the existence, throughout the period, of a substantial group of lesser gentry. This group appears with greater clarity among the assembly of five knights, fifty-one esquires and eighteen others who gathered in Durham cathedral priory on 23 September 1434 to swear an oath to uphold the article agreed upon in the parliament of the previous year for the preservation of law and order.254 It is the presence of so many low-income esquires in 1434 which is most arresting. On this occasion, many of those families, previously consid-

248 249 250 251 252 253 254

House of Commons, 1386–1421, Vol. IV, pp. 596–8. DURH 3/2, fols 167v, 175r–v; the court rolls of Thornton’s manor of Bolam are extant for 1434–5: DRO, D/Ph 63/4. Thomas Langley, Vol. IV, pp. 80–5, 88–9. Barker, ‘Claxtons’, pp. 232–3. CP, Vol. II, p. 417; DURH 3/37, m. 4r; Heraldic Visitation of the Northern Counties in 1530, p. 25. Carpenter, ‘Gentry and Community’, p. 350. Thomas Langley, Vol. IV, pp. 142–3.



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ered ‘parish gentry’ in terms of landed wealth, were now taken to be of higher status. The fifty-one esquires included William Milot, lord of White Hill, a small manor in the parish of Chester-le-Street which was originally a moorland farm and comprised sixty-seven acres of land, three closes containing forty-four acres of arable land and six acres of meadow. Milot also held the manor of Fitches, another single farmstead, this time in the parish of Auckland St Andrew.255 Hugh Forster of Evenwood, lord of the manor of Wadley, also in the parish of Auckland St Andrew, was another low-income esquire named in 1434.256 Twenty-two of the fifty-one esquires were in fact sub-manorial gentry. They included William Marley, the son and heir of Robert Marley of Gibside (also named in 1434), and Robert Dalton, the second son of John Dalton, whose properties were almost entirely within the parish of Auckland St Helen.257 Among the other twenty-nine named esquires, only thirteen held more than one manor within Durham, and of these thirteen, only two stood out: Robert Claxton, the young heir to the eight-manor estate of the Claxtons of Claxton and Horden, and Roger Thornton, the son and heir of the Newcastle merchant of the same name. Of the other eleven, eight held two manors and three held three manors each. Very few of the manorial lords listed among the fifty-one esquires in 1434 drew a significant landed income. Indeed, seventeen of the twenty-nine manorial esquires were relatively poor men to enjoy such rank: John Trollop of Thornley, Thomas Billingham of Crook Hall, John Killinghall of Middleton St George, John Stuteville of Kibblesworth, Robert Marley of Gibside, William Milot of White Hill, William Mordon of Mordon, Brian Boys of Chilton, Thomas Gower of Little Stainton, John Fossor of Harbour House, William Hutton of Hardwick, William Forster of Bishop Auckland, Hugh Forster of Evenwood, William Belasis of Henknowle, Thomas Forster of Bishop Auckland,258 John Guildford of Collierley and Gateshead, and William Hagthorpe of Nettlesworth. To what, then, did the esquires of 1434 owe their title? Their recorded status in 1434 was not exceptional. Thirty-one of the fifty-one esquires are so styled in other documents.259 In addition, of the remaining twenty esquires, both the Hagthorpes of Nettlesworth and the Killinghalls of Middleton St George are known to have borne their own family arms.260 Nonetheless, several families clearly hovered on the borderline between squirearchy and

255 256 257 258 259

260

DURH 3/2, fol. 286r–v; Northumberland and Durham Deeds, ed. A.M. Oliver (Newcastle-uponTyne Records Committee 7, 1929), p. 259. DURH 3/38, m. 6r. HS, pp. 29, 31, 32; DURH 3/2, fols 213v–214r. He was the son of William Forster of Bishop Auckland, another of the 1434 esquires: the father held the manor of Newbiggin, the son the manor of School Aycliffe. This includes William Belasis, whose father, Robert, was described earlier in the fifteenth century as an esquire, and John Guildford, whose father, another John, was similarly described: Greenwell Deeds, pp. 129–130; DURH 3/38, m. 10r. Greenwell Seals, Vol. I, pp. 135, 179.

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gentlemen, and five of the 1434 esquires, William Hutton of Hardwick, Robert Marley of Gibside, John Trollop of Thornley, Alexander Featherstone of Stanhope and John Spence of Bishop Auckland, were described elsewhere variously as gentlemen and esquires.261 John Spence was in fact described as a ‘yeoman’ (valettus) in the formal letters of his commission as coroner of Darlington ward in 1430.262 Four families were missing from the list of fiftyone esquires, who by tenure and wealth counted among the squirearchy of Durham – the Eshs of Esh, the Hadhams of Seaham, the Huttons of Hunwick and the Hyltons of Great Usworth – but none of them, barring the Hyltons, who were headed by Robert, son and heir of William Baron Hylton of Hylton, was particularly wealthy.263 Why were there so many esquires of so little landed wealth among the Durham oath-takers? Some of the esquires listed in 1434 owed their title purely to service rather than landholding. The list was, after all, an expression of those whom the bishop of Durham, on the king’s instruction, saw fit to swear the oath to keep the peace. This almost certainly explains why the fifty-one Durham esquires who assembled in Durham priory in 1434 contained a core of men – six in fact – who had experience as coroner of one of the four wards into which the bishopric was divided for the purposes of local administration and justice, including the four current coroners: Robert Dalton for Chester, Robert Jackson for Easington, John Sayer for Stockton, and John Spence for Darlington.264 Among the twenty-two non-manorial esquires listed in 1434, there was one member of the bishop’s household retinue: Robert Strangways (who was described separately as domicellus noster).265 Three are also known to have strong connections to the junior branch of the Nevilles. These were the aforementioned Strangways, who was an esquire of Joan, countess of Westmorland, Robert Meynell of Snotterton in the parish of Gainford, who had served as the receiver of Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland, and Thomas Tailboys, a free tenant of the first earl at Denton, also in Gainford.266 In addition, John Dalton, the father of Robert and Richard Dalton, two of the 1434 sub-manorial esquires, bore an armorial seal derived from the Neville saltire and acted as an attorney of John Lord Neville in the 1370s.267 But the underlying reason for the preponderance of low-income and submanorial esquires among the 1434 oath-takers is to be found in the landscape. The relationship between gentility and possession of manorial property within the bishopric was considerably more complex than in other counties. As was

261 262 263 264 265 266 267

For example, Featherstone: DURH 3/37, m. 1d (gentleman). DURH 3/37, mm. 1r-2r, 15d. IPMs indicate an income of around £20 per annum: see, for example, DURH 3/2, fols 195r–v, 242r. Past coroners: John Hedworth for Chester; John Sharp for Darlington. Thomas Langley, Vol. III, p. 74. DCM, Loc.XXV:124; DCM, Bursar’s Roll, 1407–1408; DURH 3/2, fols 228v–230r. Greenwell Seals, Vol. I, p. 87; DURH 3/31, m. 10d; DURH 13/222, m. 8r.



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indicated earlier in the chapter, tenure of a manor in Durham did not automatically distinguish a landholder as a member of the gentry. The assumption that, in Warwickshire, ‘there were certainly some small estates claiming to be manors, presumably because their lords had jurisdiction over their tenants’, does not hold true for Durham.268 Durham’s landscape was characterised by small manors and single farms, in which lordship took several forms not necessarily based upon the manorial estate. Some ‘manorial’ families were never considered gentle, such as the Egglestons of Broadwood in the parish of Wolsingham, who held the manor of Broadwood, a small farm comprising 180 acres (one and a half carucates) taken from the woodland, which was valued consistently at around £1 to £2 per annum throughout the period.269 Indeed, one John Eggleston was listed among the yeomanry (valetti) in 1434. So too were Henry Ravensworth, who occupied the manor of Ravensworth in the parish of Chester-le-Street, and Richard Maddison, who held the manor of Unthank in the parish of Stanhope. The manor of Ravensworth contained little more than three messuages, a cottage, 120 acres of arable land, four and a half acres of pasture, an acre of meadow, and eight acres of woodland. This was clearly not much more than a medium-sized holding and though Henry’s father, John, had indeed been described as a gentleman, it is perhaps no surprise that Henry himself preferred to reside on the family’s estate at Gateshead.270 The Maddisons were originally customary tenants of the bishop from Ellergill in Stanhope and Richard’s father, William, had secured the family’s lands – a collection of small portions of land including four cottages, five messuages and around fifty acres – through an appearance at the bishop’s halmote court at Wolsingham in 1413.271 William’s marriage to the niece and heiress of William Marley of Unthank saw the Maddisons acquire the manor of Unthank and assume the arms of Marley.272 Though the Maddisons had married into the gentry of Durham, their claims to gentility – given their background – were perhaps sufficiently dubious to include them among the valetti of 1434. But in the murky water of the lesser gentry of western Durham, characterised by the liminality of the gentleman/yeoman divide, there was perhaps a different set of notions about what constituted the gentry. A more fluid concept of gentility allowed men, who in other areas of England would have been quintessential yeomen, to stake a claim to gentle status. This was an environment – physical and social – in which sub-manorial families, such as the Pollards of Bishop Auckland, could carve out a patchwork estate for themselves from the waste, over which they could exercise control. The Pollards were armigerous from the second half of the fourteenth century and the head of the family consistently enjoyed the title of esquire 268 269 270 271 272

Carpenter, Locality and Polity, p. 136. DURH 3/2, fols 42v, 155v, 183r–v. DURH 3/2, fol. 260r-v; ‘Durham Records: Cursitor’s Records: Inquisitions Post Mortem’, The Forty-Fourth Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records (1883), p. 490. DRO, D/Lo/F 16. Foster, Visitations of the County Palatine of Durham, pp. 220–4.

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from the 1430s when he came of age.273 The Featherstones of Stanhope were a similar sub-manorial family who held a relatively small estate in Stanhope in Weardale. Holding three messuages and a total of 137 acres of land in 1374, and in possession of a water-mill at the time of the Hatfield Survey, they were probably already resident in the house which was later known (from the sixteenth century) as Stanhope Hall, next to Stanhope Burn, less than a mile to the west of the centre of the village. By 1418, the family drew an income from rents in the village of Stanhope but also held a total of 245 acres of land in eight separate enclosures located in the vicinity of Stanhope. Alexander Featherstone was among the fifty-one esquires named in 1434.274 The ambitions of these kinds of families, who were characteristic of the western half of Durham, were primarily bound up in the landscape. The land, whilst not especially conducive to arable farming, did offer other economic opportunities which could be exploited.275 The Pollards, for instance, were involved in sheep farming on their lands south west of Bishop Auckland.276 They were almost certainly wealthier than their forebears. They were newly prosperous in the second half of the fourteenth century and they did take advantage of the social and economic changes created by the Black Death: William Milot’s father, John, for instance, was originally a free tenant from Pelaw, a village just over a mile north east of White Hill, who was active in the local land market in the 1370s and who had acquired the estate at White Hill from its previous owners by the early 1380s.277 But these families remained, in financial terms, gentry landholders of very modest rank. Minor office certainly helped to advance their claims to gentility,278 but their relatively high social status for such poorly endowed esquires was essentially a consequence of a landscape which encouraged what Christine Carpenter has described in her work on Warwickshire as a process of status inflation, in which areas largely devoid of noble lands and resident knights could raise the social pretensions of relatively minor landholders.279 These included families in Durham such as the Burdons of Helmington Hall in the western parish of Auckland St Andrew and the Carlisles of Penshaw in the northern parish of Houghton-le-Spring, who reportedly enjoyed a landed wealth of less than £10 per annum but who considered themselves among the Durham squirearchy and indeed received the title of esquire.280 The Burdons’ manor comprised nothing more than a single messuage, seventy acres of arable, ten acres of 273

274 275 276 277 278 279 280

C.D. Liddy, ‘Land, Legend and Gentility in the Palatinate of Durham: The Pollards of Pollard Hall’, North-East England in the Later Middle Ages, ed. C.D. Liddy and R.H. Britnell (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 75–95. DURH 3/2, fol. 91v; HS, pp. 68–73; DURH 3/2, fol. 185r–v. See above, pp. 53–7. HS, pp. 33–4. DRO, EP/Ho 574–80; HS, p. 77; Foster, Visitations of the County Palatine of Durham, pp. 242–3. See below, pp. 153–5. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, pp. 76–8. Thomas Burdon: DRO, D/St/D5/1/23 (1436), D/St/D5/1/24 (1438); John Carlisle: H.E. Bell,



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woodland and a water-mill.281 Thomas Carlisle, the head of his family from the early 1420s to his death in 1436, was the heir to a property at Penshaw in Houghton-le-Spring consisting of two estates: the village of Penshaw and an enclosure of 134 ½ acres partly taken from the moorland. This enclosure had originally been granted in the second half of the twelfth century by Bishop Hugh Puiset to one of his servants, Ralph Basset: by 1385, the property was given the name of Barnwell; by 1422 precisely the same piece of land was described as the ‘manor’ of Barnwell.282 The Carlisles were not wealthy esquires, but it did not stop Thomas Carlisle styling himself on his seal ‘Thomas Carlisle, heir of Ralph Basset’, in deference to the twelfthcentury lord of the estate.283 Here was an assertive family seeking to buttress its position within local society through its invocation of the inheritance of power from the past. To be sure, the heads of several local knightly families were missing from the 1434 list of Durham gentry, including Christopher Conyers of Sockburn (a minor), Sir Thomas Surtees of Dinsdale-on-Tees and Sir William Hylton of Hylton, the latter two of whom were perhaps absent through illness.284 But the gathering of gentry in Durham cathedral in 1434 was also a representative cross-section of landed society within the bishopric. Durham was a county that continued to be characterised by the existence of a lesser gentry of the lowest rank of esquires and landed gentlemen. The pool of ‘parish gentry’ among the manorial lords did diminish considerably – by half – across the period. The period also saw the increasing concentration of land in fewer hands and the contraction of the pool of manorial lords. Nevertheless, the composition of landed society between Tyne and Tees remained distinctive. In a region which was never thoroughly manorialised and in which manorial lordship was often an aspiration rather than a reality, there was greater continuity than change in the structure of Durham landed society. Although lacking economic power, these minor landholders continued to enjoy status, rooted as it was in the distinctive pattern of landholding and land use within the bishopric which gave encouragement to their ambitions.

281 282 283 284

‘Calendar of Deeds given to the Society by Lord Ravensworth’, AA, 4th series 16 (1939), pp. 60–1. DURH 3/2, fol. 127r. English Episcopal Acta 24, pp. 3–4. Greenwell Seals, Vol. I, p. 63. Both died the following year: DURH 3/2, fols 273r–274r, 274v–276r.

3 Lordship and Society

In his study of the changing character of northern society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Mervyn James captured the essence of this period of transition and evolution in his description of a shift from ‘lineage’ to ‘civil’ society. This lineage society was ‘essentially medieval … its associated culture centred on the great household, gregarious and hospitable, with its swarms of servants and dependants’, and the ‘emphasis in this society was on the cult of “lordship”, the exercise of which in the course of time had come to be thought the natural and inherent prerogative of the leading lineages’. It was a society structured around the aristocratic households and affinities of the region’s great landed families, most notably the Neville earls of Westmorland, whose castles of Raby and Brancepeth dominated the Durham landscape, literally and figuratively. This was a world of patrons and clients and, without a major town or city to act as a focal point for their interaction, the gentry of Durham coalesced around and were dependent – socially, economically and politically – upon the region’s pre-eminent aristocratic interests. Under the Tudors, according to James, the whole basis of this society was transformed by the individualising forces of urbanisation and commercialisation: as the market rather than the aristocratic household began to determine the character of the region, the members of Durham landed society now engaged directly with central government at Westminster and swore obedience to the crown. Whilst aspects of the more general thesis, concerning the cultural changes which supposedly underpinned this shift from lineage to civil society, have been subject to serious inquiry and revision, this characterisation of pre-Tudor Durham as a society organised around the cult of lordship still resonates in the work of historians of late medieval England. But was this a society which was dominated by patronage relations and which revolved, as James thought, around the aristocratic affinity? The answer to this question has more than local significance. Historians have tended to adopt sharply polarised positions in the debate about the distribution of power  



M. James, Family, Lineage and Civil Society: A Study of Society, Politics, and Mentality in the Durham Region, 1500–1640 (Oxford, 1974), p. 183. Most notable here is the recent work of Richard Cust on the enduring importance of blood, lineage and honour to the gentlemen of early modern England, for an example of which, see his ‘Honour and Politics in Early Stuart England: The Case of Beaumont v. Hastings’, P&P 149 (1995), pp. 57–94. See, very briefly, C. Carpenter, The Wars of the Roses: Politics and the Constitution in England, c.1437–1509 (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 54–6.



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between magnates and gentry in late medieval England. On the one hand, they have emphasised regional differentiation, acknowledging that there were different power structures in different parts of the kingdom: the northern shires of Northumberland, Durham and Yorkshire as well as counties such as Warwickshire and Devon were characterised by a high concentration of noble landed power, whereas in Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Gloucestershire and Sussex, for instance, the gentry acted autonomously of the nobility and regulated their own affairs. The end result is that historians of provincial society have been encouraged to think about their own study of a particular county in terms of widely diverging horizontal and vertical axes of power, that is, either gentry independence or aristocratic dominance. On the other hand, historians have felt compelled to resolve what they have perceived as a dichotomy between the competing horizontal and vertical bonds of community and lordship by arguing, ultimately, for the essential typicality of one form of social organisation or the other. This study of the bishopric of Durham is informed by a belief that it is in the interaction rather than distinction between community and lordship that we can best understand how local society in late medieval England worked. To whom did Durham landholders turn in order to protect their inheritance or extend their landed interests? Who helped them organise their property? If it was primarily land which gave landholders their power, the means by which landholders sought to preserve their land were also based, in the first instance, upon personal relationships rather than the institutional apparatus of the law. In order to guard against the expense and disruption resulting from legal disputes in the law courts and the disorder which arose from conflict over land, landholders looked to a range of private connections for the mutual trust upon which the maintenance, purchase and sale of land were dependent. The scarcity of extant wills from the diocese of Durham means that it is necessary to rely, almost entirely, upon the evidence of deeds and charters concerning the transmission of land within the bishopric of Durham. Around seven hundred such records of the conveyance of property are the basis of what follows. These documents are an indispensable source for the analysis of relationships within landed society. Of special importance are the lists of witnesses, whose presence in person or by proxy validated the transaction, as well as the names of feoffees who, upon receiving lands in trust 

  

For example, A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses: Lay Society, War, and Politics, 1450–1500 (Oxford, 1990), pp. 401–3; C. Carpenter, ‘The Beauchamp Affinity: A Study of Bastard Feudalism at Work’, EHR 95 (1980), pp. 514–32; E. Acheson, A Gentry Community: Leicestershire in the Fifteenth Century, c.1422-c.1485 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 92–4; S.M. Wright, The Derbyshire Gentry in the Fifteenth Century (Chesterfield, 1983), p. 144; S.J. Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian England: The Greater Gentry of Nottinghamshire (Oxford, 1991), pp. 87–8. Cf. Payling, Nottinghamshire, pp. 87–8; Carpenter, Wars of the Roses, pp. 57–9. C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401–1499 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 284–7. Carpenter, Wars of the Roses, pp. 59–60.

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for the use of individuals prescribed by the original holders of the property, then became the legal holders of the property at common law. The particular focus of this chapter is the importance of the vertical ties of lordship in binding Durham landed society together. The following discussion concentrates principally upon the affinities of the three major resident aristocratic nexuses between the Tyne and the Tees: the retinues of the Nevilles of Raby and Brancepeth and the bishops and priors of Durham. The basic framework of noble lordship in late medieval England is now well understood as a series of interlocking groupings focused upon the person of the lord: at the centre, the lord’s most trusted counsellors, often, but not exclusively, high-ranking members of the household and central estate structure; then a second circle of men, comprising lawyers and more minor estate servants drawn from local landholding society, who were retained by the lord in his service whether through an indenture of retainer or an annuity and who, like the lord’s closest advisers, were invariably also in receipt of a distinctive livery; and finally, a more amorphous group of dependants whom historians have tended to refer to as ‘well-wishers’, men who might not have a formal attachment to the lord, but who might seek to take advantage of the lord’s ‘good lordship’. In the case of Durham, the absence of all but a small proportion of the Neville family archive is a major drawback. Very few indentures of retainer are extant, whilst there are no lists of individuals in receipt of a Neville fee or livery for the period in question. But it is also now recognised that any calculation of a magnate’s influence simply by the number of retainers he kept or men he had on the pay roll is too crude a methodology. Even if not formally retained, evidence of the way in which a landholder’s life revolved around a magnate can be found in the identity of those to whom a lord enfeoffed his land and in the lists of witnesses to deeds concerning the lord’s property.10 On its own, this type of source may indicate no more than evidence of ‘association’ rather than ‘commitment’ to a lord,11 but the greater the frequency of the connection, whether as attorney, witness or feoffee, the more confident we can be of the potency of the tie between the lord and his dependant. If the results of this sort of inquiry are inevitably impressionistic, these sources remain a fundamental guide to the sorts of people in whom landholders placed their trust and to the social networks to which they belonged.



 10 11

Carpenter, ‘Beauchamp Affinity’, pp. 514–18. Cf. C. Given-Wilson, The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity: Service, Politics and Finance in England 1360–1413 (New Haven, 1986), pp. 203–4. See, for example, J. Watts, Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 92–3. N. Saul, Knights and Esquires: The Gloucestershire Gentry in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1981), p. 74. M. Hicks, Bastard Feudalism (London, 1995), pp. 65–8.



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The Affinity of the Nevilles of Raby and Brancepeth In the first week of September 1343 Ralph Neville (d. 1367) gathered together at Staindrop, less than a mile from his principal residence of Raby, a small group of landholders to witness his establishment of a chantry in the local parish church. Endowed with an annual rent of twenty marks from his property at Raby, two chantry priests were to pray daily and in perpetuity for the souls of Ralph and his family.12 The witness list was dominated by some of the leading Durham gentry in this period. It was headed by the name of Sir John Eure, lord of the manor of Witton le Wear, six miles from the Neville castle of Brancepeth. Some ten years later, Eure would follow Ralph Neville into war in Scotland, serving with him in the defence of Berwickupon-Tweed.13 But what linked the majority of the witnesses to Ralph’s chantry foundation was not Neville himself, but rather their occupation, for six were lawyers. Sir Thomas Surtees was retained by the prior of Durham from 1325 and by the bishop of Durham from 1337, and was regularly appointed to commissions of oyer et terminer in the northern counties of Durham, Northumberland, Yorkshire, Cumberland and Lancashire.14 Surtees is also known to have served as steward of Durham priory in 1326 and as steward of the bishop of Durham’s estate from 1337 to 1344.15 A year after he witnessed the chantry foundation at Staindrop, Surtees attested Ralph Neville’s wedding gift of the manors of Snape and Elwick in the North Riding of Yorkshire and the bishopric of Durham to Ralph’s son and heir, John, and his new wife, Matilda, daughter of Henry Lord Percy.16 A justice of the bishop of Durham from 1336, who served frequently as a justice of gaol delivery and of oyer et terminer within the bishopric in the 1330s and 1340s, Sir Roger Esh was in receipt of a robe from the prior of Durham from 1338, and held the office of steward of Durham priory between 1346 and 1347.17 Roger Blakeston was retained by the prior of Durham from 1328 and was in receipt of a fee from the bishop of Durham from 1339. He served on numerous crown commissions of oyer et terminer and was a regular member of the assize circuits in the northern counties during the 1340s.18 Thomas Seaton was in receipt of a fee to provide legal counsel for the prior of Durham from 1333 12 13 14

15 16 17 18

E 40/260. CDS, Vol. V, p. 521. DCM, Reg. II, fols 89v-90r, Bursar’s Roll (A), 1344–5; ‘Durham Records: Cursitor’s Records: Chancery Enrolments’, The Thirty-First Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records (1870), p. 45, DCM, Loc.V:32; CPR, 1340–3, pp. 112, 320–1, 585–6, CCR, 1341–3, pp. 476–7, 521, 691, and RPD, Vol. IV, pp. 286–7, 325, 334–9. DCM, Misc.Ch. 4585; ‘Chancery Enrolments’, p. 45, and RPD, Vol. IV, pp. 348–50. The Percy Chartulary, ed. M.T. Martin (SS 117, 1909), p. 193. RPD, Vol. IV, pp. 215–16, 286–7, 301–4, 322–5, 328–30, 337–9, and Vol. III, pp. 238–9, 281–2, 341–2, 350; DCM, Misc.Ch. 3705, and Reg. I, fol. 68r-v. DCM, Misc.Ch. 5025; Loc.V:32; for example, CPR, 1340–3, pp. 585–6, CPR, 1343–5, pp. 74, 98, 412, CPR, 1345–8, pp. 102, 182, 303–4, 382–3, DURH 3/30, mm. 1d, 3d, 4d, and CCR, 1346–9, pp. 83, 156, 277.

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and for the bishop of Durham from 1339, and would go on to hold a wide range of judicial commissions under the crown and the bishop, culminating in his appointment as a justice of king’s bench and, later, of common bench.19 The Bowes were neighbours of the Nevilles, for their main residence was at Streatlam, two miles south west of the Neville estate of Raby. But it was Adam’s legal expertise which was most valued by Ralph Neville: Adam was in receipt of a fee from the prior of Durham from 1309 and was steward of Durham priory from 1331 until 1345, holding multiple commissions of oyer et terminer from the crown and the bishop in Northumberland and Durham respectively during the 1340s until his death in 1347.20 John Menville was another lawyer, but his connections to Ralph Neville were perhaps stronger than those among his fellow 1343 witnesses. Originally a Northumberland landholder, Menville was in the process of making the manor of Horden in the parish of Easington his chief residence. The extension of his landed interests into Durham was largely a consequence of Neville patronage. In the 1330s John Menville acquired the manor of Great Haswell in the parish of Easington through a series of purchases which made Ralph Neville his mesne lord.21 At Brancepeth in December 1340, Ralph Neville granted Menville the estate of Horden, a manor which had just entered Neville’s own possession.22 Two years later, Menville was also the lord of the manor of Thornley next to Winlaton, which he held similarly of Ralph Neville.23 But it is also true that Menville’s legal services were in demand from several lords. He first served the bishop in 1336, acted as one of the bishop’s justices of gaol delivery in the early 1340s, as a justice of oyer et terminer both in Durham and in Northumberland throughout the 1340s, and was retained by the prior from 1348, becoming steward of Durham priory in the following year.24 These six men – all of whom were or would become substantial Durham landholders – were almost certainly retained by Ralph Neville. Though obviously not free from magnate ties, these prominent members of the Durham gentry, like other lawyers in this period, had several clients and multiple loyalties. The Neville connection assumed greater significance only to one Durham family. The Claxtons counted among the Durham squirearchy and, at the beginning of our period, were in possession of the single, albeit valuable,

19 20 21 22 23 24

DCM, Misc.Ch. 4046b; DCM, Loc.V:32; Select Cases in the Court of King’s Bench under Edward III, Vol. VI, ed. G.O. Sayles (Selden Society 82, 1965), pp. liii-liv, lxix-lxx. DCM, Misc.Ch. 4766; DCM, Bursar’s Roll (A), 1344–5; CPR, 1340–3, pp. 320–1, CCR, 1341–3, p. 691, and RPD, Vol. IV, pp. 286–7, 301–4, 324–5, 328, 334–7. See, for example, DCM, Misc.Ch. 5794. DCM, Misc.Ch. 6264. DCM, Misc.Ch. 364. RPD, Vol. IV, pp. 215–16, 302–3, 322–4, 329–30, 334–9, and Vol. III, pp. 238–9, 350; CPR, 1340–3, pp. 320–1; CCR, 1341–3, p. 691; CPR, 1343–5, p. 412; DURH 3/30, mm. 3d, 4d, 5d; DCM, Bursar’s Roll (draft), 1348–9; DCM, Reg. I, fol. 69r. For more on the Menvilles, see B.A. Barker, ‘The Claxtons: A North-Eastern Gentry Family in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Teesside, 2003), Appendix 1.



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manor of Claxton, worth £20 annually.25 Their association with the Nevilles, by this date, was long established. According to a late-seventeenth-century antiquarian source, the Claxtons had held what amounted to the hereditary constableship of Brancepeth castle since the early thirteenth century.26 And when the head of the Claxton family in the mid fourteenth century, Leo Claxton, decided in the spring of 1349 to settle his ancestral home of Claxton upon his three sons, William, Thomas and John, he chose Ralph Lord Neville as his final remainderman in default of heirs.27 With the exception of the Claxtons, other Neville administrators and servants were figures of considerably more modest origin, such as John Birtley and Gilbert Clifton. John Birtley was an executor of Ralph’s will and held four manors in the north of the bishopric – Friarside, Twizell Hall, Ousterley and Riding Barns – which were reportedly worth around £5 per annum in total.28 Clifton was lord of a single estate: the manor of Langley in the parish of Brancepeth.29 Thomas Wayte, about whom even less is known, was also one of Ralph Neville’s executors. He only held property in the bishopric in right of his wife, the widow of Thomas Harpin, lord of the manor of Thornley in the eastern parish of Kelloe, a marriage which was no doubt arranged by Ralph Neville, since Neville was the overlord of Thornley.30 The Claxtons relied heavily upon these other Neville associates in the settlement of their estates. In 1359 John Birtley was among the witnesses to the grant of the remainder of the manor of Hulam to Sir William Claxton.31 Gilbert Clifton featured in 1352 among the witnesses to the grant of a moiety of the manor of Fishburn, a property which, within a few years, would end up in the possession of the Claxtons.32 In 1359 the witnesses to the enfeoffment of Sir William Claxton’s manor of Burn Toft included Gilbert Clifton and John Birtley.33 In 1361 Clifton was one of the witnesses to Sir William Claxton’s exchange of property in Stockton-on-Tees for a moiety of the manor of Fishburn, in the south east of the bishopric.34 In the same year Thomas Wayte’s name was on a witness list headed by Sir William Claxton when Claxton made arrangements for the conveyance of his property in Great Kelloe, Thornley, Plawsworth and Durham.35 In the exclusivity and longevity of their ties to the Nevilles of Raby and Brancepeth, however, the Claxtons were very much the exception rather than the rule among the Durham gentry. Under the direction of John Lord Neville, Ralph’s eldest son, the Neville 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

DCM, Misc.Ch. 442. DUL, Mickleton and Spearman MS 32, fol. 15v. DCM, Misc.Ch. 455. DCM, Hatfield’s Register, fol. 47v; DURH 3/2, fol. 82r-v. DCM, Hatfield’s Register, fol. 147v. DCM, Hatfield’s Register, fol. 47v; Greenwell Deeds, p. 105. DURH 3/30, m. 13d. DCM, Misc.Ch. 5795a. DCM, Misc.Ch. 163. DCM, Misc.Ch. 5807. Greenwell Deeds, p. 99.

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landed power base expanded significantly north and south of the river Tees. This process of accretion was fuelled by the profits which John derived as one of Edward III’s favoured counsellors and by the patronage of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster,36 and took two forms. On the one hand, as we saw in the previous chapter, Neville pursued a purchasing policy within Durham, beginning in the late 1360s and continuing until his death in 1388, which saw the acquisition of seven manors in the 1370s and a further two in the 1380s. On the other, Neville invested large sums of money in the rebuilding and updating of his two principal residences within the bishopric, Brancepeth and Raby, as well as the extension and renovation of Middleham and Sheriff Hutton castles in the North Riding.37 At Brancepeth, evidence from the bursars’ accounts of Durham priory – in the form of gifts to masons – indicates that construction work at the castle continued into the mid 1380s, and it was left up to John’s son and heir, Ralph, to oversee the resurfacing of the roads leading up to the castle in the early 1390s.38 In the case of Raby, John Neville obtained a licence to crenellate from Bishop Thomas Hatfield in 1378, converting the manor house into a castle, and a year later, to accompany the transformation and presumably to increase the financial profits of lordship, he secured an episcopal licence to hold an annual fair once a year and a weekly market at Staindrop.39 Of John Neville’s inner circle of dependants, perhaps half were from the North Riding of Yorkshire, reflecting the significant landed interests which Neville held there.40 This group of close associates included Robert Coverham, who was involved in the arrangements surrounding the descent of Neville’s manors in Yorkshire and Northamptonshire in the 1380s, received a testamentary gift from Neville, and was an executor of his lord’s will. Another of John Neville’s most trusted counsellors was Richard Basy of Bilbrough. He witnessed the settlement of the Neville manor of Elslack and John Neville’s acquisition of the manor of Hook in the West Riding in 1377, and served as a feoffee of the manor of Sheriff Hutton in 1382 and as a party to the enfeoffments of Neville property in Yorkshire and Northamptonshire prior to 1388. He was duly remembered in John Neville’s will and, on his own death in 1393, left to his wife the silver cup ‘which I had from the gift and bequest of my lord Sir John de Nevyle’. John Fairfax, a clerk and possibly the treasurer of Neville’s household, was present at Middleham in 1377 to head the list of witnesses to the quitclaim of the North Yorkshire manor of Elslack and acted 36 37 38 39 40

M. Arvanigian, ‘A Lancastrian Polity? John of Gaunt, John Neville and the War with France, 1368–88’, Fourteenth Century England III, ed. W.M. Ormrod (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 121–42. For the 1382 licence to crenellate Sheriff Hutton, see CPR, 1381–5, p. 108. DCM, Bursar’s Rolls, 1376–7, 1380–1, 1384–5; DURH 3/33, m. 4d. DURH 3/31, mm. 10d-11r; G.T. Lapsley, The County Palatine of Durham: A Study in Constitutional History (London, 1900), p. 62. For the following, Coverham: CIPM, Vol. XVI, pp. 279–87; Basy: Pudsay Deeds, ed. R.P. Littledale (YASRS 56, 1916), p. 236, E 210/9569, E 326/3260, Test. Ebor., Vol. I, pp. 192–3; Fairfax: Pudsay Deeds, p. 236, DURH 3/31, m. 11r, DCM, Misc.Ch. 2124, Test. Ebor., Vol. I, p. 188. For John Neville’s will, see Wills and Inventories, pp. 38–42.



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as a regular feoffee and witness in the conveyance and purchase of Neville property in the bishopric in the late 1370s and early 1380s. He was also remembered in John Neville’s will, of which he was an executor, and, on his own death in 1393, he bequeathed the silver bowl ‘marked with the arms of Lord Nevyll’ which he had received five years earlier. Of the inner core of John Neville’s affinity drawn from Durham, there was a basic continuity of key personnel. The most important individual, from the late 1360s to the end of the 1370s, was Sir William Claxton. In the late summer of 1368 Claxton appeared at the royal exchequer to receive the money assigned by the crown for the wages of the members of a diplomatic mission to France which included John Neville.41 In the 1370s Claxton not only benefited directly from his lord’s patronage, for instance, acquiring rents in the city of Durham from John Neville, but also regularly borrowed money from his lord, almost certainly to continue to finance his own estatebuilding.42 He acted as one of the key witnesses to Neville’s estate aggrandisement within the bishopric,43 and was often in close personal contact with his lord, following him to France, where he died at Bordeaux in October 1379. A death-bed bequest by Claxton was attested by the personal seal of John Neville, who was then the king’s lieutenant of Aquitaine.44 Such was the bond between Neville and Claxton that, after the latter’s death in 1379, it was John Neville who secured the lands and marriage of Claxton’s son and heir during his minority, despite the claims of the king and the bishop of Durham, to whom Claxton was a tenant-in-chief.45 On the death of Sir William Claxton in 1379, his younger brother, Thomas, became the central figure in the Neville affinity within the bishopric. The principal witness to John Neville’s acquisition of the manors of East Rowley in 1372 and Sunderland Bridge in 1385, and Neville’s attorney in the settlement of various properties within Durham in 1382, Thomas was receiver-general of John Neville’s estate administration by the mid 1380s and the recipient of a gift in Neville’s will, of which he served as an executor. Claxton was buried in the south aisle of the parish church of Brancepeth, a fitting resting place for one who had also held the office of constable of Brancepeth castle; and the armorial brass inlaid on a marble gravestone, below which he was entombed, duly depicted him clad in a suit of armour to denote the traditional military responsibilities associated with the office.46 Thomas Claxton was the founder of the Claxtons of Old Park and owed everything to the Neville connection: his main landed estate

41 42 43 44 45 46

E 101/315/28. DCM, Misc.Chs 2208, 451, 6636. For example, E 326/3778; DCM, Misc.Ch. 2126. BL, Egerton Charter 575. DCM, Misc.Ch. 1467; CPR, 1381–5, pp. 492–3; BL, Egerton Charter 578. E 326/3097; DURH 3/32, m. 7r; DCM, Misc.Ch. 2125; HS, Appendix, p. 269; Wills and Inventories, pp. 40, 42; Durham Monuments, ed. C.H. Hunter Blair (Newcastle-upon-Tyne Records Committee 5, 1925), pp. 6–7; W. Lack et al., The Monumental Brasses of County Durham (London, 2002), pp. 22–3.

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was a small property of 180 acres, which lay around three miles directly south of Brancepeth castle and which he obtained through the patronage of John’s father, Ralph Lord Neville, when the previous owner died in the mid 1340s, leaving a minor.47 Claxton’s rather precarious landed position – as a younger son whose stake in local society was entirely dependent upon the support of the Nevilles – is an important reminder that those closest to John Neville were men of fairly modest origin. These included individuals such as William Hutton of Brandon, a parishioner of Brancepeth who had a life grant of the manor of White Hall in the parish of Chester-le-Street, acted as attorney in the conveyance of John Neville’s property in the bishopric in the early 1380s, and was described in the will of John Neville as provisor, a position as steward of the household for which he was rewarded £10 in John’s will.48 William Hutton of Tudhoe, another Neville estate, was involved on behalf of John Neville in the settlement of the manors of Wynyard Hall and Sheraton in 1382 and 1384 respectively and also received a bequest in John Neville’s will.49 John Headlam, a sub-manorial landholder in Stainton in the parish of Gainford, three miles south west of Raby castle, was a feoffee to John Neville’s purchase of various manorial estates in the bishopric in the 1370s and 1380s. He also served as an attorney and witness on behalf of John Neville in the same period and appeared before the court of the justices of assize at Sadberge in 1378 on behalf of the abbot of St Mary’s in York in a plea of debt.50 He is likely to have been a senior member of Neville’s estate staff with legal training. Thomas Hexham of Brancepeth, lord of the estate of Broom in the parish of Durham St Oswald, whose net annual landed income, according to his IPM, was less than £1, acted as a feoffee, attorney and witness for John Neville in the early 1370s.51 William Blackdene was a regular feoffee, who in 1377 made a life grant of the Neville manor of Raskelf to the prominent merchant and citizen of York, John Gysburn.52 Blackdene was retained as a counsellor of Bishop John Fordham in the mid 1380s to audit the bishop’s accounts and draw up a new rental, so it is most probable that he occupied a similar high-level post as auditor in John Neville’s estate administration. His lands in Durham, which could not have produced an annual income of more than £5 to £10 and which were acquired through his two patrons, included the former moorland farms of East and West Shipley in the parish of Auckland

47 48 49 50

51 52

DURH 3/2, fols 139r-140r; RPD, Vol. IV, pp. 339–40. Thomas Langley, Vol. V, p. 166; DURH 3/38, fol. 2r; DCM, Misc.Ch. 2125; Greenwell Deeds, p. 115; Wills and Inventories, p. 40. DRO, D/Lo/D 432; E 210/7161; Wills and Inventories, p. 40. DRO, D/St/D1/2/5; E 326/3097; DCM, Misc.Ch. 2126; DURH 3/31, m. 10d; E 210/2425; E 326/3782, E 210/1040; DCM, Misc.Ch. 2054; DURH 3/32, m. 7r; DRO, D/St/D7/86; DURH 13/222, m. 1. DRO, D/Sa/D 372; DURH 3/2, fol. 92v; E 210/1040, E 326/3778; E 40/416; E 326/3097. E 326/3778; E 40/416; DCM, Misc.Ch. 2054; E 40/417.



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St Andrew and a small property in Hunwick in the same parish, held of the Nevilles.53 Other key members of Neville’s administrative staff from the bishopric of Durham were also relatively marginal landed figures. There were several new faces including John Sadberge, who, at the time of the Hatfield Survey, held a single messuage and 100 acres of land in North Bedburn and a chief messuage and several portions of land in the former barony of Evenwood, both estates located between the principal Neville residences of Brancepeth and Raby. Sadberge acted as an attorney with another known Neville retainer, John Headlam, to receive seisin in 1370 of the manor of Dalton Piercy on behalf of John Neville.54 Robert Belasis, the younger son of John Belasis, originally of Wolviston in the south east of the bishopric but, from 1380, the lord of the manor of Henknowle in the parish of Auckland St Andrew, was regularly John Neville’s attorney in property transfers within the bishopric. He also appeared before the Durham justices of assize in 1395 for Ralph Lord Neville, John’s son and heir, in a case of arson against Neville property at Raby. His position as steward of the manors of Esh – three miles north of Brancepeth castle – and Auckland St Helen – four miles north west of Raby – is strong evidence that he was an estate steward of John Neville with some legal training.55 Alan Lambard, the owner of several burgages in the town of Hartlepool, was another frequent witness to John Neville’s accumulation of estates in Durham in the 1380s.56 And finally Walter Hawick, lord of the manor of Little Eden in the parish of Easington, which was regularly assessed at less than £10 per annum, came to the castle of Brancepeth to act as the principal witness to John Neville’s quitclaim of land in the bishopric in 1384.57 But there was an underlying continuity represented by the figures of Thomas Birtley, lord of the small manor of Twizell Hall in the parish of Chester-le-Street and son and heir of one of Ralph Neville’s executors,58 John Claxton, the younger brother of Sir William and Thomas Claxton, who had no land of his own but a life grant of the manor of Fishburn from his eldest brother,59 and Thomas Menville, son of John Menville and younger brother of William Menville, retainers of Ralph and John Neville respectively.60 Thomas Menville was lord of the manor of Ludworth in the parish of Pittington. He acquired a share of the manor of Old Burdon in the parish of Bishop Wearmouth in 1363, which he held jointly with John Neville at the time of 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

DURH 3/2, fol. 168r. Blackdene was also armigerous: for his seal, see E 329/9. HS, pp. 57, 74; E 326/3782. DRO, D/Lo/D 433; Greenwell Deeds, p. 115; DCM, 6.1.Elemos.18; DURH 13/223, m. 3r, DURH 13/224, mm. 4r, 11r; DRO, D/Gr 275, m. 1r; NYCRO, ZFL 129, mm. 1r, 2r-d. CIPM, Vol. XVI, p. 322, and Vol. XVIII, pp. 257–8; DRO, D/Lo/D 432–4; E 327/279; DCM, 6.1.Elemos.18. DURH 3/2, fols 87r, 161r; Greenwell Deeds, p. 116. See also E 210/2524. HS, p. 108; DURH 3/2, fol. 122r-v. E 210/2524; DCM, Misc.Ch. 5803e; DURH 3/2, fol. 115r. For William Menville’s connection to John Neville, see, for example, E 326/3778.

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the Hatfield Survey and which eventually passed into the Neville patrimony, via the hands of Thomas Claxton and John Headlam, two of John Neville’s closest servants.61 These, then, were precisely the same kinds of men who had served Ralph Lord Neville, John’s father, in a variety of ways, as attorneys, feoffees and witnesses. Several members of the greater gentry of the bishopric continued to find a place within the Neville affinity. To be sure, there was a major new addition in the form of the lawyer, Sir Roger Fulthorpe of Tunstall. Fulthorpe was the surety to the crown’s grant to John Neville of the manor of Dilston in Northumberland in 1378 and was the principal witness to the series of conveyances in 1382 which saw Neville enfeoffed in the manor of Wynyard Hall.62 But both Sir Thomas Surtees of Dinsdale-on-Tees and Sir Ralph Eure of Witton le Wear followed their fathers in service to a Neville. Surtees was a frequent feoffee, attorney and witness to Neville estate building north and south of the river Tees in the 1370s.63 Sir Ralph Eure performed a similar function in the bishopric in the 1380s.64 He was also a beneficiary of Neville patronage. In the ensuing minority created by the death of Sir Marmaduke Lumley of Lumley castle in 1365, Bishop Hatfield granted Ralph Lord Neville custody of all the lands and tenements belonging to Marmaduke within the bishopric and held in chief of the bishop, a grant confirmed by the bishop in 1367, in return for 400 marks, whilst the crown granted Neville custody of the marriage of Marmaduke’s young heir, Robert, in return for 600 marks.65 On his succession to the Neville patrimony, John Neville granted the guardianship of the person and Durham lands of Marmaduke’s heir (first Robert, and then, on Robert’s death in 1374, Ralph) to Sir Ralph Eure, although he retained overall control of the marriage of the heir, as is evident from Ralph Lumley’s marriage to Eleanor, John’s daughter by his first wife, Matilda Percy.66 A similar arrangement between Neville and Eure transpired in the mid 1380s regarding the wardship and marriage of Sir William Claxton’s heir, which were passed from John Neville via Thomas Claxton to Ralph Eure, who eventually married his daughter, Elizabeth, to William’s son and heir, another Sir William.67 The relationships between Fulthorpe, Surtees and Eure and John Neville were not characterised by exclusivity or subservience. In common with many lawyers in this period, Fulthorpe had numerous clients: he was in receipt of a fee from the prior of Durham from 1353 and counted among Bishop 61 62 63 64 65 66

67

BL, Additional Charter 62701; DCM, Misc.Chs 6215, 312–13; HS, p. 145; E 210/873; DURH 3/2, fols 230r-232r; Greenwell Deeds, p. 116. CFR, 1377–83, pp. 103–4; DRO, D/Lo/D 432–4. E 326/3778; E 210/1040; E 40/416; DCM, Misc.Ch. 2126. DCM, Misc.Chs 2054, 2124; E 210/4096. DURH 3/31, mm. 1d, 7r; CPR, 1364–7, pp. 189, 243. A Second Calendar of Greenwell Deeds, ed. F.W. Demoy (Newcastle, 1930), p. 107; DCM, Misc. Ch. 7078. Ralph Eure’s role as guardian of Ralph Lumley explains why Margaret Eure, Ralph’s mother, remembered Lumley in her will of 1378: DCM, Hatfield’s Register, fols 139v–140r. BL, Egerton Charter 578; Barker, ‘Claxtons’, Appendix 6.



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Hatfield’s household retainers (domicelli), when he witnessed the taking of the oath of office by the newly appointed chief forester in the inner chamber of the bishop of Durham’s manor of Auckland in 1366, before his commission as the bishop’s chief justice in 1380. He also served frequently as a justice of the peace for the crown in the northern counties from the early 1370s before his appointment as a royal justice of common bench in 1374.68 Like his father, Surtees was the steward of Durham priory from 1353 until his death in 1379.69 And Eure too had several lords, of whose existence Bishop Fordham was well aware when he granted him an annuity of £10 in 1382, retaining him for life to be of his counsel, saving his bond to the earl of Warwick.70 By 1383 Ralph was steward of the bishop’s estates in the bishopric of Durham and was in receipt of an annual fee of £40 from Bishop Fordham.71 Eure was also in receipt of an annual fee of £13 6s 8d from Thomas Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, and was almost certainly the earl’s principal representative in the maintenance of his lordship of Barnard Castle.72 But if John Neville was never the sole source of patronage in Durham and if Fulthorpe, Surtees and Eure served multiple lords, this was an affinity that by the 1380s had acquired a definite group identity whose members looked to each other both for marital connections and for the settlement of their estates. The best example of the former is Sir William Claxton’s second marriage, in 1374, to Isabel, the daughter and sole heir of William Menville. Sir William Claxton’s marriage led to the Claxtons’ eventual absorption of the Menville inheritance, comprising three manors in the bishopric of Durham alone.73 It is not, however, the only example. Isabel Claxton’s mother, another Isabel, who was the second wife of William Menville, took as her second husband, after Menville’s death in 1372, William Fulthorpe, the son and heir of Sir Roger Fulthorpe of Tunstall.74 The evidence relating to the conveyance of land is especially important here in showing how members of the affinity relied upon each other in their dealings with property. Just as John Neville lent money to Sir William Claxton to enable him to establish his own landed base within the bishopric, so too did Claxton himself extend credit to other Neville retainers in the 1370s, men such as Walter Hawick, John Sadberge and William Blackdene.75 In two separate enfeoffments to use from the late 1370s, the entire witness lists to Sir William Claxton’s transfer of property in the adjacent parishes of Sedgefield and Monk Hesledon were composed of known Neville retainers: Sir Roger Fulthorpe, Sir Thomas Surtees, Alan

68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

DCM, Misc.Ch. 3518, Bursar’s Roll, 1386–7; DCM, Hatfield’s Register, fol. 46v, DURH 3/31, m. 14r; CPR, 1367–70, pp. 193–4, CPR, 1374–7, pp. 31, 136–9. DCM, Bursar’s Rolls, 1352–3, 1378–9, DURH 3/31, mm. 3d, 9r. DCM, Reg. II, fol. 298r. DURH 20/114/8, m. 1r-d. SC 6/1303/11, m. 4r. DURH 3/2, fol. 88r; DCM, Misc.Chs 144, 5803d; DURH 3/2, fols 201v-203v. DURH 3/2, fols 135v-136r. DCM, Misc.Ch. 6144.

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Lambard and Walter Hawick.76 Among the witnesses to Sir Roger Fulthorpe’s grant of property in Edmondbyers in the extreme north west of the bishopric in 1379 were Sir Thomas Surtees and Walter Hawick, whilst Thomas Menville enfeoffed property in Easington upon Walter Hawick, John Claxton and Isabel, widow of Sir William Claxton, in 1384, in a grant witnessed by another known Neville retainer, John Sadberge.77 Such examples of association and interdependence based upon the vertical tie of lordship could be multiplied. Indeed, when the mother of Sir Ralph Eure died in 1378, among the recipients of her bequests were John Sadberge, Sir Thomas Surtees and the wife and son of William Blackdene, all of whom were similarly retained by John Neville.78 And yet the real expansion of the Neville affinity within the bishopric of Durham took place among the outer circle of ‘well-wishers’, whose relationship with John Neville was based upon association rather than active commitment. In part, John Neville himself was responsible for extending the influence of the affinity within Durham landed society. He capitalised upon his father’s purchase of the wardship and marriage of the Lumley heir, marrying his daughter, Eleanor, to Ralph Lumley and thereby drawing the Lumleys of Lumley castle into the Neville orbit. Ralph Lumley’s younger brother, Thomas, was married to the daughter and heir of Thomas Harpin of Thornley, one of John Neville’s free tenants, a marriage presumably negotiated by Neville himself.79 When Ralph Lord Lumley made a major settlement of his properties in Yorkshire, Northumberland and Durham in the mid 1380s, the man whom he chose as his feoffee was John Sadberge, a Neville man.80 Most instrumental in the diffusion of Neville’s lordship within the bishopric of Durham was neither John Neville himself nor his extension of the Neville patrimony beyond the traditional centres of Neville power at Brancepeth and Raby, but the influence of certain key retainers drawn from the bishopric, whose own connections within local society were central to the extended network of the affinity.81 The most important families in this regard were the Menvilles and Claxtons. Walter Hawick, for instance, first entered the Neville fold because of his family’s relations with the Menvilles. Walter’s father, another Walter, was a member of the Menville circle of associates in the third quarter of the fourteenth century, as the Menvilles established themselves as major landholders in the parish of Easington, where the Hawicks’ single estate of Little Eden was located. This tie of neighbourhood saw Hawick attest William Menville’s purchase of the manor of Pespool Hall in 76 77 78 79 80 81

DCM, Misc.Chs 5804, 6251. DCM, Misc.Chs 2133, 5154. DCM, Hatfield’s Register, fols 139v-140r. CP, Vol. VIII, pp. 269–70; Greenwell Deeds, p. 112. H.E. Bell, ‘Calendar of Deeds given to the Society by Lord Ravensworth’, AA, 4th series 16 (1939), p. 57. Cf. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, pp. 335–6; C. Carpenter, ‘Gentry and Community in Medieval England’, JBS 33 (1994), p. 360.



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Easington in the later 1350s and his son, Walter, witness Menville’s settlement of his Northumberland estates upon his brother, Thomas, in the early 1370s.82 With Sir William Claxton’s marriage, in 1374, to the daughter and heir of the Menvilles of Horden, the social networks of the Claxtons and the Menvilles fused together,83 and from the later 1370s, Hawick was a frequent and often principal witness to the succession of conveyances involved in the settlement of Sir William Claxton’s substantial estate in the bishopric of Durham.84 Thereafter, Hawick acted on behalf of John Neville himself, but also for other members of the affinity.85 It is around Sir William Claxton that we can best observe the process by which John Neville’s affinity expanded at its edges. Sir William Claxton’s circle of associates in the south east of the bishopric, comprising four families who counted among the squirearchy and lesser knightly families of Durham – the Blakestons of Blakeston Hall, the Carews of Seaton Carew, the Embletons of Tursdale and the Langtons of Wynyard Hall – constituted an affinity within an affinity.86 William Blakeston’s father, Roger, a lawyer, had been a retainer of Ralph Lord Neville, and William himself was an occasional witness for John Neville.87 John Carew was a witness, with Sir William Claxton and William Menville, to the conveyance of a Neville estate in the early 1370s, whilst his nephew and heir, another John, was also a Neville witness.88 William Embleton’s wife was one of the daughters and co-heirs of John Randolph, lord of the Neville manors of East Brandon and Holywell in the parish of Brancepeth, and he attested several Neville deeds with Simon Langton.89 This was a grouping linked by marriage and by neighbourhood – Avice, the wife of Simon Langton, lord of Wynyard Hall, was the sister and co-heir of John Carew the elder, and she took as her second husband, Thomas Embleton, William Embleton’s son and heir – whose members acted as feoffees and witnesses for each other’s land transactions.90 On occasion, however, if it suited their purposes, they were prepared to make use of John Neville’s lordship, the best example of which dates from 1382 and the arrangements surrounding the conveyance of the manor of Wynyard Hall. The manor of Wynyard Hall was held jointly by Simon Langton and Avice, his wife, until the former’s death by 1380.91 In an elaborate series of trans­ actions two years later, by which time Avice had married Thomas Embleton, 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

DCM, Misc.Chs 6164, 6943. A point made in Barker, ‘Claxtons’, p. 129. DCM, Misc.Chs 6256, 6217–8, 6253–5. See above, p. 85, and below, p. 112. Cf. M. Cherry, ‘The Courtenay Earls of Devon: The Formation and Disintegration of a Late Medieval Aristocratic Affinity’, Southern History 1 (1979), p. 78. E 327/279. E 326/3778; DCM, 6.1.Elemos.18. DURH 3/2, fols 66r–v, 68r–v; E 326/5484; E 326/3778. For the marital ties, see R. Surtees, The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham, 4 vols (London, 1816), Vol. III, p. 79. See also Figure 1. DURH 3/2, fol. 103r.

Embletons of Tursdale

Randolphs of East Brandon

Thomas Langton, Esq. d. 1437

Sir William Embleton d. c.1448

Blakestons of Blakeston Hall

John Carew Avice = (1) Simon Langton = (2) Thomas Embleton, Esq. Thomas Alice = Sir William d. c.1379    d. c.1380 d. 1416   Hett Blakeston    d. c.1390   d. 1418

Carews of Seaton Carew Langtons of Wynyard Hall William Embleton = Joan Margaret = William   d. c.1379   Hett d. c.1388



Figure 1.  ‘Well-Wishers’ of John Lord Neville (d. 1388) in South-East Durham



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William Hutton of Tudhoe, one of John Neville’s most valued retainers, quitclaimed his right in the manor of Wynyard Hall to William Embleton, Thomas’s father. Just over a week later, Thomas Embleton enfeoffed the manor upon John Neville, who agreed to pay him £24 annually for his lifetime, and within a couple of days an indenture was drawn up between the two parties at Brancepeth, in which John Neville agreed to pay an annual rent to Avice upon the death of her new husband, Thomas Embleton. The witnesses to this series of conveyances included Sir Roger Fulthorpe, Alan Lambard, and William Blakeston, all of whom had ties, of varying intensity, to John Neville.92 Why did Thomas Embleton choose John Neville as his trustee? The main point is that, in making arrangements for his recent acquisition of the manor of Wynyard Hall in right of his wife, he recognised Neville’s power and the resources which Neville had at his disposal should any legal dispute arise. Embleton made his position quite clear when the charter conveying legal ownership of the manor to John Neville recalled a prior agreement between the two men that, should henceforth any plea or suit be brought from any cause or title relating to the manor against Neville, his heirs and assigns, then Neville should faithfully defend in perpetuity all such pleas and suits both in court and outside.93 In the settlement of the manor of Wynyard Hall, Embleton and his associates provide a classic example of the concerns of ‘well-wishers’, who, in the words of a recent historian, ‘were not necessarily contracted to the lord but were prepared to accept – and exploit – his social and political primacy in the region’.94 Thomas Embleton entered John Neville’s affinity through their mutual ties to Sir William Claxton. As Claxton’s own landed base in the south and east of the bishopric grew, thanks to the financial support of his patrons, first Ralph and then John Neville, so too did Claxton’s circle of associates, primarily local landholders connected to him through the proximity of their estates, expand. In the early 1360s Sir William Claxton purchased the manor of Fishburn in the parish of Sedgefield. The witnesses to the deeds included Simon Langton of Wynyard Hall and William Embleton of Tursdale, both being of comparable social status to Claxton; Langton’s seat was in the parish adjacent to Fishburn, whilst the Embletons had a residence in the same parish as Claxton’s new estate.95 The other party to the acquisition was Sir Roger Fulthorpe, whose main property at this time seems to have been the manor of Hardwick, also in Sedgefield, a mile south of Fishburn, and from this date Fulthorpe and Claxton would become close associates, certainly in business, in which

92 93 94 95

DRO, D/Lo/D 432–5. DRO, D/Lo/D 434. W.M. Ormrod, Political Life in Medieval England, 1300–1450 (Basingstoke, 1995), p. 51. DCM, Misc.Chs 5807, 6403.

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there was a considerable amount of interdependence.96 Thereafter, the two most frequent witnesses to Claxton’s acquisitions in the 1360s and 1370s were William Embleton and Simon Langton, and in the 1370s they would be joined by William Blakeston, Langton’s immediate neighbour and lord of Blakeston Hall in the parish of Norton.97 Along with John Carew, lord of Seaton Carew and a longstanding neighbour of the Claxtons, they witnessed the settlement of the Claxton ancestral home in 1370.98 The ties between these men, based primarily upon the propinquity of their estates, were strong. When, in 1371, John Embleton quitclaimed to William Embleton, his father, all right in the manor of Tursdale in the eastern parish of Kelloe, the first name on the witness list was Sir William Claxton, followed immediately by Simon Langton.99 It is little surprise, then, that Carew’s sister, Avice, should marry first Simon Langton and then Thomas Embleton, William’s son. Claxton was at the centre of this group and it was through him that these families were connected to John Neville. When Neville enfeoffed his recently acquired manor of Dalton Piercy upon some of his closest counsellors in 1371, the witnesses – John Carew, William Menville, William Embleton and Simon Langton – were all associates of Sir William Claxton, who himself headed the list.100 When Thomas Embleton made arrangements for his newly acquired manor of Wynyard Hall in 1382, it is, therefore, perfectly understandable that he should choose John Neville as his trustee and that the witnesses to the transactions, principally Sir Roger Fulthorpe, William Blakeston and Alan Lambard, should all be Claxton associates. In the case of the affinity of Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland, the identity of the unnamed esquires, valets, grooms and pages who were remembered in their lord’s will can only be established in a couple of instances.101 It is possible, however, to place the affinity in context. Crucial to understanding the social significance of the Neville affinity within the bishopric of Durham in the late fourteenth and first quarter of the fifteenth centuries is an awareness of Ralph Neville’s territorial interests in the north of England. As we saw in the previous chapter, Ralph increased the family’s manorial possessions north of the Tees and south of the Tyne by over a third, making him indisputably the greatest lay landholder in Durham.102 But the Durham estates were never, in themselves, a priority to Ralph Neville. They were part of a much larger conception of the Neville patrimony which began to take shape in this period and which tied the lands in Durham to those in the North Riding of Yorkshire. Ralph’s ambitions are glimpsed in his will, in the bequest of 100 96 97 98 99 100 101 102

DCM, Misc.Chs 5803a, 5800; for Hardwick, see DCM, Hatfield’s Register, fol. 41r; for the ties between Fulthorpe and Claxton, see, for example, DCM, Misc.Chs 6702–3, 6730. For the frequency of association, see Barker, ‘Claxtons’, p. 121. DCM, Misc.Ch. 6141. DURH 3/31, m. 3d. E 326/3778. Wills and Inventories, p. 72. See above, pp. 67–8.



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marks for the construction of a bridge at Winston, two miles south of Raby castle on the north bank of the river Tees.103 The bridge was a link, metaphorical and real, between the Neville lands in the bishopric, concentrated around Raby and Brancepeth, and the estates around Middleham and Sheriff Hutton in North Yorkshire. From the late 1390s and his acquisition for life of the honour of Richmond in October 1399, Ralph’s main interest lay in tightening his control of the core of the honour of Richmond, the lordship of Richmondshire.104 Recent research has shown how seriously and how vigorously Ralph pursued his aim to transform Henry IV’s life grant of the honour into a permanent alienation of the estate and of the title of earl of Richmond.105 It was Ralph’s Yorkshire estates which, in the words of Charles Ross, ‘seem … to loom even larger in Nevill concerns between 1399 and 1435 than did their possessions in Durham’.106 This shift in priorities had major consequences for the composition of the whole affinity, but the most pronounced changes occurred within the inner core of Neville’s retainers. Ralph Neville’s most trusted advisers and associates, certainly by his death in 1425, were overwhelmingly non-Durham landholders, although the Claxtons continued their tradition of service to the Nevilles through to the early fifteenth century. Thomas Claxton of Old Park served both John and Ralph Neville as constable of Brancepeth castle until his death in 1402 and he almost certainly continued in office as receiver-general.107 His death in 1402, however, led to a prolonged minority because his son and heir, another Thomas, was only five years of age, and the new constable of Brancepeth was not a Claxton at all, but one John Carnaby, whose obscure origins appear to have lain outside the bishopric.108 On Thomas’s death, the key Durham retainer within the Neville affinity became Thomas’s nephew, Sir William Claxton, head of the main branch of the Claxtons, who only came of age himself in the late 1390s, at which point he was retained for life by Ralph Neville, who also contracted him to serve in the garrison at Carlisle in 1403, two months after Ralph had been appointed warden of the west march by Henry IV.109 Claxton’s ties to Ralph Neville are further illustrated by his role as a witness on Neville’s behalf.110 In 1418, when the auditors of Ralph Neville found a shortfall of nearly £275 in his accounts, they duly delivered the receiver of Sheriff Hutton, whom they held accountable, to William Claxton, then sheriff of Durham, for safekeeping in the gaol at Durham castle until the receiver’s 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110

Wills and Inventories, p. 73. C.D. Ross, ‘The Yorkshire Baronage, 1399–1435’ (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1950), pp. 6–10; CPR, 1399–1401, p. 24. M.J. Devine, ‘Richmondshire: 1372–1425’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Teesside, 2006), pp. 38–43. Ross, ‘Yorkshire Baronage’, p. 8. CPR, 1391–6, p. 509; E 326/13; E 210/631; Ross, ‘Yorkshire Baronage’, pp. 42–3, E 210/6599. DCM, Reg. III, fol. 65v. His surname suggests a Northumbrian origin. DCM, Misc.Ch. 6709. E 326/10050; Lumley MSS, MTD/A8/2, E 210/423; E 326/1860.

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debts were cleared: a nice example of the interplay of the private forces of lordship and patronage and the official mechanisms of government.111 But from this date Claxton had too many other matters on his mind to become an influential Neville retainer within the bishopric. These problems were chiefly financial, resulting from his tenure as sheriff of Durham between 1415 and 1419, and they saw Claxton, at the end of the decade, flee Durham to take refuge in his Northumberland residence of Dilston, on the south bank of the river Tyne but outside the bishopric and beyond the reach of the palatine administration, claiming, on the grounds of ill health, that he could not return to settle his debts with the bishop’s ministers.112 Claxton’s financial woes were compounded by his marital difficulties stemming from his separation from his wife, Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir Ralph Eure, and the ensuing conflict between the Eures of Witton le Wear over the estrangement, which was only resolved in the mid 1420s.113 It is little wonder that Claxton, preoccupied as he was with family business, was not one of those upon whom Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland relied in the performance of his will. The individuals from the bishopric who formed the inner circle of Ralph’s affinity tended not to be landholders in their own right, but clerks and very minor landed figures, whose position within Durham landed society was based entirely upon service. Gilbert Elvet was the son of John Elvet, a clerk, coroner and attorney of Durham priory from the mid fourteenth century. Gilbert himself was retained by the prior from the late 1370s and received a fee from the bishop in the 1380s. He also served Bishop Thomas Langley as a serjeant-at-law.114 He had been an occasional witness for Ralph’s father, John Neville, but his ties were much stronger to Ralph, for whom he was a frequent feoffee from the 1390s for property in the bishopric as well as in the East and North Ridings of Yorkshire.115 When Ralph Neville went to Ireland with Richard II in 1394, Gilbert Elvet was named as one of his attorneys to look after his business in England during his absence, and in 1400 it was Gilbert who was entrusted with delivering to the prior of Durham for safekeeping a copy of the will and testament of his lord, Ralph Neville.116 John Alwent, rector of Staindrop church in the early fifteenth century, was another Durham clerk who had extremely close ties to Ralph Neville, whom he served as a feoffee for property in the bishopric and Yorkshire.117 John Hutton of Tudhoe was almost certainly the son of William Hutton of Tudhoe, one of John Neville’s closest associates. John Hutton was a feoffee for Ralph 111 112 113 114 115 116 117

DCM, Misc.Ch. 6664. DCM, Misc.Ch. 7184; Barker, ‘Claxtons’, pp. 200–1, 235–9. See also below, p. 139. For the terms of the separation, see DCM, Misc.Ch. 2467; the broader context is discussed in Barker, ‘Claxtons’, pp. 233–5. DURH 3/2, fols 151v–152r; DCM, Bursar’s Rolls (A), 1349–50, 1375–6, and 1379–80; DURH 20/114/8; DUL, CCB, B/13/1, m. 1. DURH 3/32, m. 7r; E 326/13; E 210/631; Ross, ‘Yorkshire Baronage’, pp. 42–3, E 210/6599; DURH 3/2, fols 230r–232r; E 326/435; Yorkshire Deeds, Vol. IX, pp. 92–3. CPR, 1391–6, p. 509; DCM, 1.2.Ebor.15a-e. For this first will, see below pp. 218–19. E 326/435, DURH 3/2, fols 264r–265r, 302r–v; CPR, 1396–9, p. 340, E 326/4517; E 210/454.



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Neville and held all of his estates in the bishopric, totalling some six manors on his death in 1420, by virtue of Neville patronage.118 His wife was the daughter and sole heir of John Whitworth, lord of a manor a mile from Brancepeth castle which ended up in the possession of Ralph Neville.119 But apart from these few individuals, the core of Ralph Neville’s affinity was provided by men whose origins lay firmly outside the bishopric. This grouping included several men who had occupied a similarly intimate position in the affinity of Ralph’s father, John Neville. Robert Coverham and John Killinghall were two such individuals, both of whom acted frequently as Neville feoffees, attorneys and witnesses from the 1380s until the end of the first decade of the fifteenth century.120 Further evidence of continuity can be found in the persons of Sir Thomas Colville (father and son) of Coxwold in the North Riding, Sir Thomas Rokeby of Rokeby, also in the North Riding, and John Darell, whose family seat was the manor of Sessay, a few miles south of Thirsk. The elder Colville was a counsellor of John Neville and a regular witness to the enfeoffment of John’s estates in Yorkshire. He was also very close to John’s son, Ralph, for whom he was an attorney in 1394 during Ralph’s absence in Ireland in the king’s service.121 The younger Colville’s ties with Ralph Neville were also potent: it was Ralph who secured for him the marriage and estates of Joan Lady of Esh, a wealthy heiress in the bishopric; it was two of Ralph’s most intimate advisers, Thomas Claxton and Gilbert Elvet, who acted as feoffees for Thomas Colville’s settlement of his Durham lands; and it was the strength of Thomas’s associations with Ralph which resulted in his murder during the Scrope rebellion of May 1405.122 Sir Thomas Rokeby, lord of Rokeby in Richmondshire, was an esquire of Ralph Neville and another North Riding gentleman upon whom Neville was dependent in a variety of contexts, serving as attorney and surety in the conveyance of land, and acting as witness to the transfer of Neville property north and south of the river Tees. He was also one of Ralph’s familiares who was present at Bishop Auckland in November 1425 for the official opening of Ralph Neville’s last will and testament before the bishop of Durham.123 William Darell of Sessay had been a Neville retainer from at least the 1370s, when he witnessed several land transactions relating to John Neville’s manor of Raskelf in the North Riding, but it was John Darell, his second son, who 118 119 120

121 122

123

DURH 3/34, m. 7d; DURH 3/35, m. 14d; DURH 3/2, fols 175r–v, 196r–197r. Surtees, History and Antiquities, Vol. III, p. 131; DURH 3/2, fols 230r–232r. In 1420 Neville gained episcopal permission to make a park in Whitworth: DURH 3/35, m. 20r. Coverham: Lumley MSS, MTD/A1/4, E 326/13, E 210/631, E 210/454, Yorkshire Deeds, Vol. II, p. 10, E 326/3057, DURH 3/2, fols 264r–265r; Killinghall: CPR, 1391–6, p. 509, CCR, 1392–6, pp. 360–2, E 326/1388, Yorkshire Deeds, Vol. IX, pp. 92–3. E 40/416–17; Pudsay Deeds, p. 238; CPR, 1391–6, p. 509. E 326/2462; CFR, 1399–1405, p. 29; DURH 3/33, m. 25d; DURH 3/2, fols 144v–145r. See also the biography in The House of Commons, 1386–1421, ed. J.S. Roskell, 4 vols (Stroud, 1992), Vol. II, pp. 638–9. E 210/11151; CFR, 1399–1405, p. 59; E 210/4163; E 326/1860; Thomas Langley, Vol. VI, pp. 6–8.

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moved more closely within the orbit of the Nevilles, even after he moved to Kent at the end of the fourteenth century to establish a cadet line of the family: a feoffee for the settlement of the manor of Sheriff Hutton upon Ralph and his second wife, Joan, in 1398, he was also an executor of Ralph’s will in 1424.124 There were, however, several new faces in the inner grouping of Ralph Neville’s affinity. They were from the North Riding and they included Sir Robert Conyers of Ormesby and his younger brother, John Conyers of Hornby. Sir Robert Conyers, who resided at Ormesby at the foot of the Cleveland Hills, was a frequent witness and feoffee for Ralph Neville and Richard Neville, his son and heir by his second wife, Joan.125 Sir Robert’s younger brother, John, was a lawyer who had several clients, but who was particularly attached to Ralph Neville. John Conyers was retained as a counsellor of the bishop of Durham and the prior of Durham from the 1380s and was an apprentice-at-law in the Westminster courts in the 1390s. He was appointed steward of the bishop’s estate of Allertonshire in the mid 1390s and rose to become Bishop Langley’s secondary justice in the first decade of the fifteenth century. He also took a fee from Henry Lord FitzHugh of Ravensworth castle in the North Riding and served as steward of the honour of Richmond when Ralph Neville had tenure of the lordship of the honour.126 John Conyers was essentially a Richmondshire man, as the balance of his appointments to office indicates, and his chief residence, from the early 1390s, was Hornby in Richmondshire, an estate which he had acquired in 1391 with the purchase of the wardship and marriage of the heiress of Thomas St Quintin of Hornby from Richard Lord Scrope of Bolton.127 Conyers was a regular attorney, feoffee and witness for Ralph Neville in his conveyances of property in the East and North Ridings of Yorkshire from the late 1390s until his death in 1412.128 Thereafter, the position of Ralph Neville’s main legal adviser was assumed by James Strangways of West Harsley in Cleveland. A serjeant-at-law in the royal courts at Westminster from 1412, Strangways, like Conyers, was in receipt of fees from several lords: these included Henry Lord FitzHugh of Ravensworth castle, from whom he received an annuity in the second decade of the fifteenth century, the prior of Durham, from whom he received an annual pension beginning in the same period, and the bishop of Durham, who retained him as his secondary justice and then, from the early 1420s, as his chief justice, and who, as lord of Allertonshire, was his landlord in respect of 124 125 126

127 128

CPR, 1396–9, p. 340; E 326/4517; Ross, ‘Yorkshire Baronage’, pp. 28–9, 42–3; Wills and Inven‑ tories, p. 73. See also the biography in House of Commons, 1386‑1421, Vol. II, pp. 752–5. E 326/3606; E 326/2462; Yorkshire Deeds, Vol. II, p. 10, and Vol. IX, pp. 92–3; E 326/1860. See also CCR, 1392–6, p. 500, E 327/173. DURH 20/114/8; HS, Appendix, pp. 260–75; DCM, Bursar’s Rolls, 1384–5, 1410–11; S. Walker, ‘Yorkshire Justices of the Peace, 1389–1413’, EHR 108 (1993), pp. 287, 293, 294 n. 1; DURH 3/33, m. 14r; DUL, CCB, B/13/1, m. 1; NYCRO, ZJX 3/2/45. Devine, ‘Richmondshire’, pp. 63–4. E 210/454; E 326/4517; E 326/1388; CCR, 1392–6, pp. 360–2; Yorkshire Deeds, Vol. II, p. 10; E 326/435; Yorkshire Deeds, Vol. IX, pp. 92–3; E 326/3057. See also CPR, 1391–6, p. 509.



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the manor of West Harsley.129 Strangways’s associations with Ralph Neville were evident as early as 1412, when he was appointed as one of the quorum in a commission of oyer et terminer to investigate hunting offences in Neville’s parks at Raby and Brancepeth.130 From this date he was a frequent feoffee for Ralph in relation to the settlement of his property in Essex and Yorkshire and for Richard, Ralph’s son and heir by his second wife, for land in the bishopric.131 Robert Strangways, a relation of James, possibly a younger brother, was another member of the inner circle of the Neville affinity, who also acted with James as a feoffee for Ralph and who, like James, was appointed to the 1412 commission of oyer et terminer to inquire into disturbances on Ralph’s two principal estates in the bishopric.132 Unlike James, Robert held some property north of the Tees, but this was relatively insubstantial and only temporary, in the form of a grant in 1410 of the wardship and marriage of a minor tenant-in-chief of the bishop, the surety for which was provided by another Neville associate, Sir Thomas Rokeby. Robert’s main base appears to have been in Yorkshire: his will, in which he made a small bequest to the high altar of Staindrop church for the payment of his tithes, was dated at Sutton upon Derwent, a Neville manor in the East Riding and part of a cluster of Neville properties comprising Stamford Bridge, Skirpenbeck and Elvington.133 Similar close ties to Ralph Neville were shared by John Morton, John Quixley, William Tunstall and William Horn, the last three of whom were North Riding clerks, and all of whom were frequently employed as feoffees for the settlement of Ralph’s estates within and without the bishopric upon his second wife and their male heirs.134 Morton, although an inhabitant of the city of York, is not to be confused with the man of the same name who was a sheriff and mayor of York in the early fifteenth century. Rather, he was a parishioner of St Michael le Belfrey, which lay cheek-by-jowl with York Minster, whose liberty he served as bailiff of the court of St Peter. Indeed, on his death in 1431, the Neville retainer of this name left money to the fabric of York Minster and a copy of Gower’s Confessio Amantis to Ralph Neville’s widow, Joan, ‘for remembrance’.135 All four men were also greatly involved in the performance of Ralph’s will, an issue of the utmost delicacy given, as we shall see, Ralph’s virtual disinheritance of the children of his first marriage: Morton, Horn and Quixley were all executors, the latter of whom 129

130 131 132 133 134 135

CCR, 1409–13, p. 258, CCR, 1422–9, p. 199; NYCRO, ZJX 3/2/51; DCM, Bursar’s Rolls, 1414–15, 1425–6; DUL, CCB B/1/1, B/1/2, B/1/3, B/1/4, B/1/5, B/1/6; VCH North Riding, Vol. I, p. 434. DURH 3/34, m. 9d. CIPM, Vol. XXII, pp. 577–9; E 326/1860. J. Raine, The History and Antiquities of North Durham (London, 1852), p. 229; CIPM, Vol. XXII, pp. 577–9; DURH 3/34, m. 9d. DURH 3/34, m. 6r; Test. Ebor., Vol. II, pp. 108–9. CPR, 1401–5, p. 470, CIPM, Vol. XXII, pp. 578–9; E 326/10050; DURH 3/2, fols 228v–32r; DURH 3/38, m. 13d. Test. Ebor., Vol. II, pp. 13–15. Cf. Ross, ‘Yorkshire Baronage’, p. 41.

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was also paid for writing the will, whilst Tunstall was present at Raby castle in November 1425 to hear Ralph’s widow, Joan, countess of Westmorland, swear an oath to administer Ralph’s goods in accordance with the terms of his testamentary provision.136 The inner core of Ralph Neville’s affinity on his death in 1425 did not contain a Durham landholder. Several members of the greater gentry of the bishopric, most notably Sir Ralph Eure and Sir Thomas Surtees, continued to be retained by the family. Both were among the witnesses to Ralph Neville’s settlement of the Raby estate upon the junior line of his family in 1417.137 It was at Eure’s home at Witton le Wear that Neville was dining in May 1405 when Henry Percy, first earl of Northumberland sought to ambush him, and in 1411 William, Eure’s son and heir, married Matilda, daughter of Henry Lord FitzHugh of Ravensworth, a member of the Richmondshire nobility who himself was closely aligned with Ralph Neville.138 It was also other Neville associates upon whom Eure was dependent as he sought to consolidate his own holdings around his caput of Witton le Wear in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The principal witnesses in 1399 to a quitclaim of the manor of Bedburn to Eure by one of Neville’s retainers were Gilbert Elvet and Thomas Claxton, whilst in 1401 Sir William Claxton and Thomas Claxton headed the witness list to Eure’s acquisition of the manor of Edge Knoll in the same parish.139 Thomas Surtees called upon this affinity in his own dealings: one of his executors was Henry Tailboys of Hurworth on Tees, a neighbour on the north bank of the river, but also a Neville retainer who, like Surtees, witnessed the 1417 settlement of Raby and its constituent estates.140 But the expansion of the Neville affinity was focused almost exclusively upon the North Riding of Yorkshire. Thus, the Durham landholders who entered the orbit of the Nevilles for the first time were those, like the Tailboys of Hurworth on Tees, whose landed property lay in the extreme south of the bishopric. Henry Tailboys, as we have seen, witnessed Ralph Neville’s enfeoffment of the Raby estate in 1417, the same year in which he held crown office as a tax collector in the North Riding, whilst Thomas Tailboys, almost certainly a younger brother and a tenant of Ralph Neville at Denton in Gainford, had interests within the same locality, on the northern bank of the river Tees at Barnard Castle.141 And it was in this southernmost stretch of the bishopric that the affinity maintained its cohesion, notably through intermarriage. John Clervaux of Croft on Tees, one of Ralph’s retainers in Richmondshire, took as his second wife the widow of one of Sir William Bowes’s 136 137 138 139 140 141

Wills and Inventories, p. 73; Thomas Langley, Vol. VI, pp. 6–8. E 326/10050. ‘Annales Ricardi Secundi et Henrici Quarti’, Johannis de Trokelowe…Chronica et Annales, ed. H.T. Riley (RS, 1866), p. 400; Thomas Langley, Vol. I, pp. 144–5. DURH 3/33, mm. 22d, 25r. The party to the quitclaim, Alan Meynell, was a feoffee for Neville’s Sheriff Hutton estate in 1398: CPR, 1396–9, p. 340; E 326/4517. Test. Ebor., Vol. II, pp. 45–6. E 326/10050; CFR, 1413–22, p. 219; DURH 3/2, fols 228v–230r; DURH 13/222, m. 1.



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younger sons, whilst his daughters, Agnes, Beatrice and Joan, married John Headlam, John Killinghall Jr and Henry Tailboys respectively, all of whom had close ties to Ralph Neville.142 It was on the south side of the Tees that Ralph Neville concentrated his energies. New retainers included John Thorpe, an esquire from Thorpe Underwood, north west of the city of York, and Marmaduke Rivers, lord of Brandsby, north of Sheriff Hutton. Thorpe, who had acted as a feoffee for Neville’s estates of Sheriff Hutton and Elvington in the late 1390s, was retained for life in 1406 in return for a fee which was to be paid by Neville’s receiver of Richmondshire.143 Rivers was retained for life from 1410 in return for a payment from Neville’s receiver of Sheriff Hutton.144 Beyond these formal indentures of retainer, there is strong circumstantial evidence to indicate the recent attachment to Ralph Neville of a number of other North Riding landholding families, including the Boyntons of Sedbury near Gilling and the Nortons of Norton Conyers near Ripon. Christopher Boynton was the younger son of Sir Thomas Boynton of Acklam in Cleveland. Christopher was a lawyer, who was retained by the prior of Durham and by Henry Lord FitzHugh of Ravensworth from the early fifteenth century, but he was also a Neville man: he was present at the opening of Ralph’s will in 1425 and acted as an executor of the wills of two of Ralph’s most trusted associates, John Morton of York and John Conyers of Hornby.145 Richard Norton was an apprentice-at-law in the 1390s practising in the Westminster courts, who rose to become chief justice of common bench by 1413, and who had numerous clients including the archbishop of York, the Scropes of Bolton and Masham and the earls of Northumberland, as well as the prior of Durham, Henry Lord FitzHugh and Bishop Thomas Langley, whom he served as chief justice from the beginning of his episcopate.146 But Norton was also close to Ralph Neville, from whom he received the wardship and marriage of the son and heir of one of the major Richmondshire gentry families, the Stapleton lords of Bedale.147 Norton was a feoffee in 1408 with Sir Robert Conyers, John Conyers of Hornby, Gilbert Elvet and John Killinghall, all Neville retainers, for the conveyance of Neville property near Guisborough in Cleveland. Four years later he was one of the quorum on the commission of oyer et terminer to investigate hunting on Ralph’s estates at Raby and Brancepeth with other Neville retainers such as James and Robert Strangways and John Killinghall; and in the same year, he enfeoffed Richard, son of John Conyers of Hornby,

142 143 144 145 146 147

DRO, D/St/D7/7/1; Visitations of the North c.1480–1500, ed. C.H. Hunter Blair (SS 144, 1930), pp. 104–5. John Clervaux was a frequent witness for Ralph Neville: E 326/1057, /1146, /1148. CPR, 1396–9, p. 340; E 326/1388; M. Jones and S. Walker, ‘Private Indentures for Life Service in Peace and War, 1278–1476’, Camden Miscellany 32 (1994), pp. 134–5. NYCRO, ZQG I/1/4. Thomas Langley, Vol. VI, pp. 6–8; Test. Ebor., Vol. II, pp. 13–15; DCM, Misc.Ch. 6002. Walker, ‘Yorkshire Justices of the Peace’, p. 294 n. 1; CCR, 1413–19, p. 109; DCM, Bursar’s Roll (A), 1406–7; NYCRO, ZJX 3/2/45; DUL, CCB B/13/1, m. 1. CFR, 1405–13, p. 242.

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in the manor of Solberge on Wiske in Richmondshire, a grant witnessed by Sir Thomas Rokeby and John Clervaux, both Neville men.148 Into the early fifteenth century, the Neville affinity under Ralph was a major axis around which Durham landed society revolved, drawing its strength from the activities of certain individuals, or brokers, notably the clerk, Gilbert Elvet, upon whom several Durham landholders, not necessarily members of the affinity, relied in the conveyance of their property.149 Thereafter, Ralph’s own territorial priorities began to concentrate increasingly upon Richmondshire. Why was Richmondshire so important to Ralph Neville? It was not simply that Richmondshire lay equidistant between the main Neville estates of Raby and Sheriff Hutton and represented, therefore, an essential link in Ralph’s attempt to create a single, compact lordship.150 Before Henry IV’s grant of the honour of Richmond to Ralph Neville for life in 1399, Neville had already displayed a serious interest in consolidating and expanding his landed base south of the Tees when he caused his North Riding neighbour, Henry Lord FitzHugh, to surrender his lease of the lordship of Richmondshire. In October 1395 Neville secured a lease of the lordship for twelve years.151 But it was Ralph’s second marriage to Joan Beaufort, daughter of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, who held the lordship of Richmond between 1342 and 1372, which may further have sharpened Ralph’s ambitions in Richmondshire.152 And certainly, in his desire to establish a suitable patrimony for his second family, it was Ralph’s Yorkshire lands which took centre stage. From the late fourteenth century, these properties were all conveyed to Ralph and Joan and their male heirs in a series of enfeoffments which involved predominantly North Riding members of Ralph’s affinity.153 As Ralph’s territorial and familial priorities changed, so the complexion of the Neville affinity acquired a greater North Riding focus. Ralph saw his Durham estates as a reservoir of patronage from which he could reward his retainers from the North Riding. Some, such as John Trollop, an esquire almost certainly from Marske in Swaledale, settled permanently within the bishopric, but most viewed their Durham properties solely in terms of financial profit, whose maintenance did not require residence north of the Tees. In 1392 Trollop received the wardship of the lands of William Lumley of Mordon in the parish of Sedgefield, the surety for the grant being provided by 148 149

150 151 152

153

Yorkshire Deeds, Vol. IX, pp. 92–3; DURH 3/34, m. 9d; Yorkshire Deeds, Vol. III, pp. 133–4. For the abundant evidence of Elvet’s role as a witness and feoffee in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, see DRO, D/St/D1/1/15, D/St/D7/190, D/St/D13/1/2, pp. 90, 96, 100, 101, 104, D/Br/D 2608; DCM, Misc.Chs 1707, 1717, 5271; DURH 3/2, fol. 161r; DURH 3/33, mm. 22d, 25d; NYCRO, ZFL 129, m. 9d. For the ‘logic’ of aristocratic territorial ambitions in this period, see C. Given-Wilson, The English Nobility in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1987), pp. 129–37. BL, Additional Charter 20582; CPR, 1391–6, p. 470. Devine, ‘Richmondshire’, p. 42. For Gaunt’s role as earl of Richmond, see A. Goodman, John of Gaunt: The Exercise of Princely Power in Fourteenth-Century Europe (London, 1992), pp. 30–1, 51–2, 185–6, 312, 342. Ross, ‘Yorkshire Baronage’, pp. 40–3.



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Robert Belasis, one of Ralph’s attorneys.154 Trollop married the young heir, a minor on her father’s death, and through the acquisition of the other Lumley estate, the manor of Thornley, became Ralph’s tenant. When Trollop’s son and heir made a settlement of his two Durham manors of Mordon and Thornley in the second decade of the fifteenth century, the witnesses to the series of conveyances included John Clervaux, John Killinghall, Sir Thomas Surtees, Sir Robert Conyers and Robert Belasis, all Neville retainers.155 Sir Thomas Colville Jr of Coxwold received the highly profitable wardship and marriage of Joan Lady of Esh around the same time, but preferred to reside south of the river Tees. Other members of Ralph Neville’s North Riding affinity, such as John Dale and John Kilham of Danby Hall, certainly had a more transient interest in land north of the Tees. In 1392 Ralph made a life-grant of his manor of Edmondsley in the bishopric of Durham to Dale, presumably in lieu of a retaining fee, and in 1413 it was Dale and William Frank of Richmond upon whom Ralph enfeoffed his manor and castle of Worton, manor of Bainbridge, and free chase in Wensleydale.156 John Kilham, meanwhile, whose residence at Danby lay only two miles east of the Neville caput of Middleham, witnessed Ralph’s conveyance of his estates of Worton and Bainbridge, leased property at Barden in Richmondshire to Ralph Neville in the second decade of the fifteenth century, and held the manor of Little Burn in the parish of Brancepeth in the early fifteenth century.157 The swarms of servants and dependants who clustered around the Nevilles of Raby and Brancepeth were increasingly men from the North Riding rather than Durham. The Affinity of the Priors of Durham The Nevilles were not the only significant noble presence between the Tyne and the Tees. Both the bishop and prior of Durham, although of course ecclesiastics, were also secular lords of large estates and commanded affinities of their own to uphold their landed interests. The key point about the affinity of the priors of Durham was that it followed the grain of Durham landed society and did not work against it. The prior was never, except perhaps in the 1430s,158 an independent focus of loyalty and attachment among the Durham gentry. His lay counsellors, almost all of whom were common lawyers and who were in receipt of an annual fee, to whom the prior turned only when required for advice and information, were also retained either by the bishop of Durham or by the head of the Neville family, and generally by both. At the beginning of our period, the latter was true of Adam Bowes, Sir

154 155 156 157 158

DURH 3/33, m. 8r; DURH 3/2, fol. 136v. Greenwell Deeds, pp. 126, 128–9. The feoffees included John Cleasby, the rector of Marske church. E 326/3746; E 329/267; E 210/4163. DRO, D/Br/D 984; E 210/4163; T. Madox, Formulare Anglicanum (London, 1702), p. 143. See below, p. 217.

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Thomas Surtees, Roger Blakeston, Sir Roger Esh and John Menville.159 In the last quarter of the fourteenth century the same was true of clerks such as John Killinghall and Gilbert Elvet, as well as members of the Durham knightly class in the form of Sir Thomas Surtees and Sir Roger Fulthorpe.160 Although it is perhaps a reflection of the nature of the source material, the overriding impression from the accounts of the bursar of Durham priory is of the determination of successive priors to keep on good terms with prominent figures within Durham landed society who, from their receipt of occasional gifts, could count themselves among the prior’s ‘well-wishers’. These gifts included a payment to the masons of William Baron Hylton in the mid 1380s, presumably engaged in the construction of Hylton castle, and a contribution of £5 towards Ralph Lord Lumley’s ransom after his capture by the Scots at the battle of Otterburn in 1388.161 In many ways, the prior’s relations with local society were mediated through their ties to the Nevilles, who were the most significant tenants-in-chief of the priory, holding the substantial territorial complex of Staindropshire as well as the manor of Summerhouse in the neighbouring parish of Gainford.162 Otherwise, the only sizeable estates held of the prior within the bishopric were the manor of Felling (on the south bank of the river Tyne), belonging to the Surtees of Dinsdale-on-Tees, and the manor of Blakeston Hall in the southeastern parish of Norton, held by the Blakestons and, in 1432, including twenty tofts, twenty-four cottages, 500 acres of arable land, 60 acres of meadow, 1000 acres of pasture and 400 acres of moorland.163 The only other Durham knightly family who held of the prior were the Bowes of Streatlam, in respect of their small manorial estates at Low Barford and Osmond Croft in the parish of Winston on the north bank of the river Tees.164 The priors of Durham were extremely sensitive to the growing territorial ambitions of the Nevilles within the bishopric and, as the family’s landed interests between the Tyne and the Tees expanded considerably in the course of the second half of the fourteenth century, the priors sought to cultivate a mutually beneficial relationship. The bursars’ account rolls record a continuous exchange of gifts and services throughout the period, which included, on the priory’s part, a series of payments to the masons rebuilding Brancepeth castle in the 1370s and 1380s.165 Just as Ralph Lord Neville (d. 1367) was the first layman to be buried within Durham priory, so his son, John, was similarly buried, having

159 160 161 162 163 164 165

For Bowes, Surtees, Blakeston, Esh, Menville, Seaton, see above, pp. 79–80. For Elvet, see above, p. 94. For Killinghall, see DCM, Misc.Ch. 4890, Bursar’s Roll, 1375–6. DCM, Bursar’s Rolls, 1384–5, 1389–90. The property at Summerhouse was also, according to Robert Surtees, a ‘considerable estate’: FPD, pp. 54–5; Surtees, History and Antiquities, Vol. IV, p. 31. Felling: DCM, Loc.II:17; Blakeston Hall: DURH 3/2, fols 265v–266r. R.A. Lomas, ‘Durham Cathedral Priory as a Landowner and a Landlord 1290–1540’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Durham, 1973), pp. 70–1; Barford and Osmond Croft: FPD, pp. 51–3. See, for example, the dona et exennia sections of DCM, Bursar’s Rolls 1363–4, 1365–7, 1368–9, 1376–7, 1380–2, 1384–5, 1396–7, 1399–1403, 1418–20.



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earlier collaborated with Prior Fossor in the major remodelling of the east end of the monastic church, climaxing in the construction of a stone altar screen between the choir and the feretory, which was completed at the end of 1380.166 Occasional gifts were even extended to members of the Neville affinity, such as the payment to William Blakeston in the early 1370s for the purchase of a gown, whilst John Birtley of Twizell Hall, one of Ralph Lord Neville’s executors in 1367, received a pension from the priory for three consecutive years until his death in 1369.167 Whilst none of the Neville family occupied a formal position in the priory affinity, the heads of successive generations of the Nevilles counted among the ‘well-wishers’ of the priory, who made frequent recourse to the prior’s ‘good lordship’, particularly in the matter of the appointment of the prior’s lay steward. In his role as the manager of the main priory estate, charged with the administration of leases and grants of priory lands and tenements, the steward was the principal estate servant and the most important of the prior’s lay counsellors.168 It was an office of undoubted influence within the bishopric and, as such, was attractive to members of the Durham gentry. Throughout the period, the office of steward was held by an almost continuous series of Neville retainers: Sir Thomas Surtees (1325–31), Adam Bowes (1331–45), Sir Roger Esh (1346–7), John Menville (1349), Sir Thomas Surtees (1353– 79), Thomas Claxton (1381–?1402), and Thomas Langton (1416–36).169 It was precisely this tradition of Neville association which members of the senior branch of the family called upon when it became apparent in the early summer of 1436 that Langton could no longer perform his office due to ill health. In separate letters to the prior of Durham, the brothers and wife of Ralph, second earl of Westmorland, grandson of the first earl, wrote recommending the appointment as steward of William Hutton of Hardwick, a lawyer and the second earl’s steward.170 Sir John and Sir Thomas Neville promised that they would support Hutton in his new post just as the family had given their backing to the prior’s steward in the past, who ‘has alwaye bene toward our saide lorde and his auncesters’.171 Such was the relationship between the priory and the Nevilles that it is difficult to view the prior of Durham as a great magnate in his own right.172

166

167 168 169

170 171 172

M.G. Snape, ‘Documentary Evidence for the Building of Durham Cathedral and its Monastic Buildings’, Medieval Art and Architecture at Durham Cathedral, ed. N. Coldstream and P. Draper (Leeds, 1980), pp. 27–8. The two Neville tombs and the Neville Screen remain in situ today. DCM, Bursar’s Rolls, 1366–9, 1371–3. R.B. Dobson, Durham Priory, 1400–1450 (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 124–6. The dates given are those for which there is a definite documentary record: DCM, Misc.Ch. 4585; Bursar’s Roll (A), 1330–1, Misc.Ch. 3661; Reg. I, fols 68r–69r; Bursar’s Rolls, 1352–3, 1378–9; Misc.Ch. 5728; Bursar’s Rolls (A), 1416–17, 1435–6. DCM, Loc.XXV:47, 133. DCM, Loc.XXV:47. ‘Toward’ here means ‘benevolent, compliant, well-disposed, favourable’: see MED, sub ‘toward’ (2a-b). A point also noted, for instance, in Dobson, Durham Priory, pp. 184–5.

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The Bishop of Durham’s Affinity By virtue of his extensive landed estates primarily but not exclusively within the bishopric of Durham, the bishop of Durham was a secular as well as ecclesiastical magnate. By virtue of his position within the bishopric as universal landlord, from whom all land between the Tyne and the Tees was held, directly and indirectly, the bishop was a magnate of great landed power.173 The biographies of the bishops of Durham from this period within the roughly contemporaneous Durham chronicle, the Gesta Episcoporum Dunelmensium, amply convey their lordly qualities and pretensions, notably that of Bishop Thomas Hatfield. His generosity of spirit was such that he ‘always strove to be first or among the first’ in any aristocratic gathering, and he was remembered locally for his munificent building work, which included the financing of the construction of the bishop’s hall and constable’s hall in Durham castle and of a new tower to strengthen the city walls of Durham.174 There can be little doubt that this extensive building programme also involved a strong element of social display, a motive shared by a number of prominent Durham lay landholders in this period. In the same way that the castles of Raby, Lumley and Hylton – the first rebuilt and the others constructed anew in the later fourteenth century – featured heraldic displays on the exterior of the buildings as an articulation of their owners’ status and prestige, so armorial bearings decorated the buildings funded by the bishops of Durham. The biography of Bishop Walter Skirlaw, who contributed greatly to the construction of a new cloister and dormitory at Durham priory, purposefully reveals how Skirlaw placed his arms in all of these additions.175 According to his mini-biography, Bishop Thomas Langley, Skirlaw’s successor, founded a perpetual chantry in the Galilee chapel, the entrance to which bore Langley’s own arms sculpted in marble, whilst the buildings newly erected at the episcopal residence of Howden in the East Riding also carried his arms.176 It was in a calculated appeal to Bishop Hatfield’s self-importance that Edward III resurrected, in 1376, the distinctive title ‘earl palatine’, a noble title which had first been used in relation to Bishop Antony Bek in early 1293, but which had since fallen into disuse.177 Following Hatfield’s example, all of his immediate successors – John Fordham, Walter Skirlaw and Thomas Langley – claimed the title.178 The wills of Walter Skirlaw and Thomas Langley similarly reveal the highly ordered nature of the entourages which typically surrounded the bishops of Durham and which, in their dominance 173 174 175 176 177

178

Dobson, Durham Priory, p. 238. Scriptores Tres, pp. 137–8. Scriptores Tres, pp. 144–5. Scriptores Tres, pp. 146–7. Bishop Langley’s chantry tomb, decorated with his arms, survives in situ within the Galilee chapel, at the west end of the cathedral. C.M. Fraser, A History of Antony Bek, Bishop of Durham, 1283–1311 (Oxford, 1957), pp. 95–6; J.W. Alexander, ‘New Evidence on the Palatinate of Chester’, EHR 85 (1970), pp. 726–9; CCR, 1374–7, pp. 427–8. See, for example, CPR, 1381–5, p. 362; SC 8/20/980.



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by members of the household – clerks, esquires, valets, grooms and pages – were no different from those of the great lay magnates of the period.179 The menials who occupied the bishop’s household as domestic servants were numerous, as the identity of the recipients of some of Thomas Hatfield’s grants of escheats, wardships and minor estate offices indicates: valets of the kitchen, valets of the pantry, valets and barbers of the chamber.180 And just like secular aristocratic households, the different ranks of the bishops’ household servants were carefully delineated by dress as well as pay. The wording of Bishop Hatfield’s appointment of one of his servientes to the post of porter of Auckland manor in 1375, for instance, included the grant of a robe of the bishop’s valet livery (unam robam de librata valettorum nostrorum).181 The bishops of Durham were potentially a significant focus of loyalty and service among lay society within the bishopric. The continuator of the Durham chronicle, the Gesta Episcoporum Dunelmensium, wrote of Richard Bury, Bishop Hatfield’s predecessor, that he ‘endeavoured greatly to retain with him in his household the sons of the gentlemen of his bishopric’ (multum etiam affectabat retinere secum in familia filios generosorum episcopatus sui), an act which ‘nourished the great friendship between himself and the gentlemen of his country’ (quod factum nutrivit magnam amicitiam inter ipsum et ipsius patriae generosos).182 Therefore, in the early fifteenth century, when Thomas Langley retained Sir Ralph Eure’s son, William, in his household, he was simply maintaining a palatine tradition.183 There were three principal factors which worked to weaken the hold of the episcopal affinity among lay landed society in Durham. The first was the geography of the bishop’s lordship, which stretched beyond the land between Tyne and Tees to incorporate pockets of episcopal land in Northumberland and the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire. The affinity of Bishop Thomas Hatfield (1345–81) was structured, like that of any other lord, in three concentric circles:184 instead of an organised council, the bishop was dependent upon an inner circle of counsellors and advisers comprising essentially high-ranking members of his household and estate administration. However, for almost all of Hatfield’s episcopate, the bishop’s most frequent counsellors were nonDurham landholders. None of Hatfield’s stewards – who occupied the most senior position within his estate administration – could be described as resident landholders within the bishopric. Only three of Hatfield’s stewards were laymen: Thomas Metham (1345–7), Sir Thomas Grey (1347–58) and Sir John Heron (1379–81). Whilst all three were tenants-in-chief of the bishop, their 179 180 181 182 183

184

Test. Ebor., Vol. I, pp. 306–12; Scriptores Tres, pp. ccxli-ccxlvii. DURH 3/30, m. 6d; DCM, Misc.Ch. 1; DURH 3/31, mm. 2r, 3d, 4d, 10r, 12r-d, 14r. DURH 3/31, m. 7d. The bishop’s esquires wore a different livery: CPR, 1354–8, p. 416. Scriptores Tres, pp. 129–30. Thomas Langley, Vol. I, pp. 144–5; R.L. Storey, Thomas Langley and the Bishopric of Durham, 1406–1437 (London, 1961), p. 93. The other son, Robert, was one of Langley’s esquires: below, pp. 138–9. Cf. Given-Wilson, Royal Household, p. 203.

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main estates lay beyond the Tyne and Tees: Metham was an East Riding justice from Metham, four miles south east of the bishop’s manor of Howden; Grey was lord of Heaton in Norhamshire; and Heron held two manors of the bishop – Duddo and Twizel in Norhamshire – but his caput was Eshott, six miles north of Morpeth, in the heart of Northumberland.185 When the palatinate was threatened by Scottish invasion, the geography of palatine lordship enabled Hatfield to choose his stewards from among those whose martial abilities made them most suitable to the post. It is no coin­cidence that Bishop Hatfield appointed Sir Thomas Grey of Heaton to the office of steward of the bishop’s lands between the rivers Tyne and Tees not long after the battle of Neville’s Cross in October 1346, at which Grey had distinguished himself with the capture of two Scottish prisoners and the receipt of a personal letter of gratitude from the king for his actions on the battlefield.186 The commission followed Hatfield’s earlier appointment of Grey as constable of Norham castle and sheriff and escheator of Norhamshire and Islandshire during pleasure in January 1346, a joint commission that, after the battle of Neville’s Cross, was extended in January 1347 for life so as to include the office of receiver of the bishop’s lands in the northern outpost of the palatinate.187 For the next ten years, until his removal from the office of Durham steward in 1358, Grey was Hatfield’s right-hand man in the bishopric. The bishop rewarded him with a succession of wardships between the Tyne and the Tees in the late 1340s and early 1350s, all of which enabled Grey to gain a partial foothold in Durham landed society and which he subsequently exploited to secure the permanent annexation of the lands.188 Captured by the Scots at Norham in October 1355 whilst employed by the bishop in the defence of the palatinate, Grey spent a period of extended captivity in Edinburgh castle, where he famously began work on the chronicle known as the Scalacronica.189 After his release, Thomas Hatfield provided Grey with the lucrative grant in November 1356 of a twelve-year lease of five of the bishop’s coal mines at Whickham.190 It was also the geographical spread of Thomas Hatfield’s palatine lordship, coupled with the challenges of war, which brought the Herons of Eshott, a Northumberland knightly family, more firmly into the ambit of the bishop’s affinity. The Herons had a small landed interest in Durham thanks to Sir John Heron’s purchase of the Eppleton estate in the east of the bishopric in

185

186 187 188 189 190

Metham: DURH 3/30, mm. 1d, 2d (in June 1347 Metham was appointed steward of the bishop’s manors of Howden and Crayke in compensation for the loss of the office of steward of the bishopric to Grey); Grey: DURH 3/30, m. 5r-d, DCL, Randall MS 13, p. 71; Heron: DURH 3/31, m. 12d. Rot. Scot., Vol. I, pp. 675, 678; DURH 3/30, m. 5r-d. DURH 3/30, mm. 1d, 2d. For example, August 1348: wardship and marriage of the heiresses to the manor of Newlands Hall in the parish of Wolsingham (DURH 3/30, m. 4d.). Sir Thomas Gray, Scalacronica 1272–1363, ed. and transl. A. King (SS 209, 2005), pp. xl–xli. DURH 3/30, m. 11d.



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the late 1350s and early 1360s, but it was relatively insignificant compared to the three manors which the family held north of the river Tyne.191 In 1373 Hatfield confirmed Sir John in the office of constable of Norham castle for life, a post which also entailed the offices of justice, steward, sheriff and escheator in Norhamshire and Islandshire and which he had enjoyed in practice almost certainly since 1370, when Sir Nicholas Dagworth, the Norfolk knight, had been placed in nominal control of Norham castle by Bishop Hatfield.192 In 1374 Sir John’s younger son, another Sir John, is known to have been one of Hatfield’s familiares and it was no doubt as a member of the bishop’s household that he was able, in 1379, to secure from the bishop a fifteen-year lease of the demesne manor of Bishop Middleham. At the end of 1374, Sir John’s second son, Gerald, who was retained for life by Bishop Hatfield, received from his lord the wardship of the manor of Scremerston in Norhamshire in lieu of a retaining fee, and from 1379 Sir John was Hatfield’s steward in the bishopric.193 The second general observation about the nature of the episcopal affinity relates to the distinctively ecclesiastical character of the bishop’s household, whose clerical members enjoyed a considerably greater influence within the bishop’s secular service than the clerks in lay aristocratic households.194 In this respect, if the bishop of Durham’s affinity was comparable to a lay aristocratic affinity in its structure, it was also very different in its composition. Bishop Hatfield’s most trusted advisers in temporal affairs were the clerical servants within his familia. As was true of most aristocratic households in this period, the treasurer of Hatfield’s household was a clerk, by the name of John Hanley, who was also rector of Sedgefield and one of the bishop’s executors.195 Hatfield’s chamberlain throughout his episcopate was one John Belgrave, whose surname suggests a midlands origin: already chamberlain of the household in the early 1350s, he was appointed chief forester in the bishopric for life in January 1353, an office he continued to hold until his replacement in 1379 by Hatfield’s nephew and clerk, John Popham.196 Hatfield took care to channel some of his landed resources in Belgrave’s direction, conferring upon him the occasional wardship and escheat, but these, by their very nature, were temporary grants. Belgrave’s main landed estate, the manor of Oxney Flatt, south of Darlington on the northern bank 191 192 193 194

195 196

Northumberland and Durham Deeds, ed. A.M. Oliver (Newcastle-upon-Tyne Records Committee 7, 1929), p. 105; DURH 3/30, m. 13d. DCM, Reg. II, fol. 280r-v; DURH 3/32, m. 7r; House of Commons, 1386–1421, Vol. II, pp. 733–4. DCM, Hatfield’s Register, fol. 78v, and Reg. II, fol. 288r-v; DURH 3/31, mm. 7r, 12d. For the most recent study of the episcopal household in Durham, whose conclusions differ from my own, see P. Hoskin, ‘Continuing Service: The Episcopal Households of ThirteenthCentury Durham’, The Foundations of Medieval English Ecclesiastical History, ed. P. Hoskin et al. (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 124–38. Given-Wilson, English Nobility, p. 91; DURH 3/31, mm. 11d, 12r; Test. Ebor., Vol. I, pp. 121– 2. DCM, Reg. II, fol. 122r; DURH 3/31, m. 12d.

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of the river Tees, was in the possession of John Neville by the later 1370s.197 From 1358 to 1379, the office of steward of Durham was filled by an uninterrupted sequence of bishop’s clerks: William Westley, dean of Auckland and archdeacon of Durham, Alan Shitlington and Hugh Westwick.198 Their landed position within local society, such as it was, was entirely dependent upon the patronage of the bishop. Westwick, for instance, held a widely scattered and heterogeneous estate comprised largely of small pieces of land close to the episcopal demesne centres at Wolsingham and Bishop Middleham, including the lease of a portion of a demesne farm at Haughton-le-Skerne and the possession of a moorland farm, the ‘manor’ of Chatterley in the parish of Wolsingham, which was nothing more than a single messuage with a fold for animals and which, on Westwick’s death, passed to another member of the episcopal household.199 Under Hatfield, the post of temporal chancellor,200 which was held simultaneously with the offices of constable of Durham castle and receiver of the exchequer and which was second only in importance to the steward within the bishop’s administration, was also held by members of the clerical estate. Just as Bishop Richard Bury, Hatfield’s immediate predecessor, appointed one of his clerks, Robert Calne, constable, receiver and chancellor of Durham in 1341, so, from the beginning of Hatfield’s episcopate, his palatine chancellors were all bishop’s clerks: John Windsor, John Sculthorpe, William Westley, John Kingston and, until 1376, Richard Barnard Castle.201 Only in the last five years of Bishop Hatfield’s regime did a layman occupy these three key ministerial positions: William Embleton, a manorial lord in the south east of the bishopric, who held the offices of chancellor, receiver and constable of Durham concurrently and continuously from 1376.202 With the exception of Embleton, Bishop Hatfield’s temporal chancellors were clerical figures, whose roots within Durham landed society, as landholders in their own right, were non-existent. The bishop of Durham’s affinity was also different in terms of its discontinuity.203 Sir Ralph Eure of Witton le Wear was the notable exception in this respect: he served three successive bishops of Durham as palatine steward in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries virtually without inter-

197 198

199 200 201

202 203

DURH 3/30, mm. 9d, 10d; DURH 3/31, m. 11r. Westley: DURH 3/30, m. 6d, DCM, Misc.Ch. 6269, DCL, Randall MS 13, p. 71; Shitlington: DRO, D/Ph 280/1, DCM, Hatfield’s Register, fol. 46v, DURH 3/31, m. 4d; Westwick: SC 1/40/198, DURH 3/31, m. 10r. HS, pp. 7–9, 60, 74, 179; DURH 3/2, fols 125r-v, 238v-239r; DURH 3/33, m. 17r. For the origins of the temporal side of the Durham chancery, see Storey, Thomas Langley, p. 59. RPD, Vol. III, pp. 358–9; DURH 3/30, mm. 1d, 2d, 4d, 6d, 10d, 12r; DCM, Misc.Ch. 1; HS, Appendix, p. 214; DURH 3/31, mm. 3r, 4d; DRO, D/St/D1/4/3, D/Ph 280/1; DUL, Mickleton and Spearman MS 2/1, fol. 15v. DRO, D/Sa/D 369; DURH 3/31, m. 9r. K. Mertes, The English Noble Household 1250–1600: Good Governance and Politic Rule (Oxford, 1988), pp. 64–5.



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ruption until his death in 1422.204 In the case of Durham, this lack of continuity was an inevitable consequence of the bishop’s habitual status as an outsider to the bishopric who brought with him his own familiares, whether family, friends and/or servants, all of whom expected to be rewarded with the lands and offices which he now had at his disposal. Bishop Hatfield was only different inasmuch as it was in the last years of his life that he turned the palatine resources which were available to him to the advantage of his family. In 1377 the bishop appointed Nicholas Hatfield – described as ‘our beloved kinsman’ (dilectus consanguineus noster) – keeper of the park of Wolsingham for life.205 The chief forester from whom Nicholas would receive his wages was, from 1379, another of the bishop’s kin, one John Popham, a clerk and one of the executors of Hatfield’s will. Popham was frequently described as nepos noster,206 and from 1377 to the bishop’s death in 1381 he received a wide range of favours from his uncle: a piece of escheated land in 1377; the wardship and marriage of two of his tenants-in-chief and the lease of the manor of Woodhouses, an episcopal demesne farm, in 1378; the wardship and marriage of three of his tenants-in-chief in 1379; the wardship and marriage of another tenant-in-chief in 1380; and, in the most generous grant, the wardship and marriage of the son and heir of Sir Alexander Surtees of Dinsdale-on-Tees.207 But Popham failed to establish himself in Durham landed society, disappearing almost as quickly as he had arrived on the death of Bishop Hatfield in May 1381. It was only with Bishop Fordham’s episcopate (1381–8), when episcopal and Neville ties of lordship overlapped and reinforced each other, that the bishop’s affinity acquired a greater social significance within the bishopric. During Thomas Hatfield’s rule of the bishopric the existence of two powerful independent foci of service and loyalty operating within the same region resulted in local tensions. Sir William Claxton and William Menville, who were appointed successively to the joint shrievalty and escheatorship of Durham in the late 1350s and early 1360s,208 were among the nucleus of Ralph Lord Neville’s affinity in the bishopric. Their political aspirations were largely satisfied by service to Neville, but both clearly saw in their appointment to major local office the opportunity for private gain. It can be no coincidence that Claxton’s most acquisitive phase of estate building occurred in precisely the period in which he occupied the shrievalty: in possession of one estate, the manor of Claxton, prior to his appointment, Claxton had

204

205 206

207 208

Steward: 1381–8, 1392–1422. See M. Arvanigian, ‘Landed Society and the Governance of the North in the Later Middle Ages: The Case of Sir Ralph Eure’, Medieval Prosopography 22 (2001), pp. 81–2. DURH 3/31, m. 9d. DURH 3/31, m. 12d; Test. Ebor., Vol. I, pp. 121–2; Popham, described as literatus, was collated by Bishop Hatfield to a prebend in the collegiate church of Auckland St Andrew in 1367: DCM, Hatfield’s Register, fol. 63r. DURH 3/31, mm. 9d, 10d, 11d, 12d, 14r. DURH 3/2, fols 57v, 70v–71r, 88r–v.

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Claxton had increased his holdings to four manors by the end of his term in office.209 William Menville’s tenure of the shrievalty ended in controversy with accusations of false imprisonment and extortion.210 But even more illuminating was the major criminal investigation launched by Menville into the theft of a substantial sum of money from the palatine exchequer at Durham in 1368–9.211 Since the exchequer was at this time located in the bishop’s castle and building work was underway at the castle on the keep,212 the main suspects were the masons in the charge of the bishop’s chief mason, John Lewin. Lewin found himself accused of harbouring one of the masons, for which offence he was indicted, imprisoned and tried before the bishop’s justices at Sedgefield in the south of the bishopric in 1372.213 Although the full details of this episode are unknown – and there is almost certainly more involved here than meets the eye – what is particularly interesting is that the chief suspect, a mason by the name of Richard Goldesburgh, had in the previous year already secured a pardon for the alleged crime from the king. This royal pardon had been granted explicitly at the request of John Neville, one of Edward III’s principal courtiers.214 Bishop Hatfield had simply ignored both the king’s pardon and Neville’s support for the suspect and instructed William Menville – not only his sheriff but a prominent Neville retainer as well – to arrest and incarcerate the suspect’s master, John Lewin. Menville undoubtedly faced a conflict of interests, a situation which perhaps helps to explain why Hatfield replaced him with an individual whose position within the bishopric was wholly dependent upon the favour of the bishop. This was Sir Robert Umfraville, who was made sheriff and escheator of Durham during the bishop’s pleasure in November 1371, an office which he continued to hold until September 1374.215 Umfraville’s background lay demonstrably in Northumberland, where he possessed land and a wife who was the daughter of a prominent member of the Northumberland gentry. It was also north of the Tyne that he held the vast majority of his offices in local government, both before and after his post in Durham. Thomas Hatfield’s relationship with the Nevilles of Raby and Brancepeth was cordial and cooperative, but it was also expedient.216 In the late 1360s, when Hatfield’s responsibilities for the defence of the north were formalised with his repeated appointment by the crown as warden of the east march 209 210 211 212 213 214 215

216

For further comment, see Barker, ‘Claxtons’, p. 44. CCR, 1369–74, pp. 319–20. For the date of the robbery, see DURH 3/32, m. 6r. B. Dobson, ‘The Church of Durham and the Scottish Borders, 1378–88’, War and Border Societies in the Middle Ages, ed. A. Goodman and A. Tuck (London, 1992), p. 138. The details are known from Lewin’s appeal to the king: SC 8/58/2854. CPR, 1370–4, p. 38. For this and what follows, see DURH 3/31, m. 3d; DURH 3/2, fols 94v-95r; Northumberland and Durham Deeds, pp. 188, 221; CPR, 1361–4, p. 530; CPR, 1370–4, p. 239; CPR, 1374–7, pp. 330–1; CFR, 1369–77, pp. 112, 127; CFR, 1377–83, pp. 56, 164. C.D. Liddy, ‘The Politics of Privilege: Thomas Hatfield and the Palatinate of Durham, 1345–81’, Fourteenth Century England IV, ed. J.S. Hamilton (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 76–7.



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– the commissions for which he invariably headed – the bishop’s relations with his affinity similarly acquired a more formal footing as he began to retain men specifically to supply soldiers for the Scottish war. Thus, in May 1368, at precisely the moment at which he was reappointed by the crown as a warden of the east march, Bishop Hatfield made an indenture of retainer with John Neville, a fellow warden, who was to serve him for life both in peace and war, but especially in the latter, in the marches of Scotland and in Scotland itself.217 It was only a shared responsibility in the defence of the northern border which brought the two men closer together. The wording of the indenture betrays the temporary and conditional nature of this relationship, acknowledging Neville’s prior attachment to the king and John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. Neville was to serve the bishop ‘unless he shall be disturbed by the service of our lord the king or the duke of Lancaster, his son, with whom he is retained’. With the episcopate of John Fordham, the character of the bishop’s affinity changed. Fordham drew upon John Neville’s expanding affinity for counsel and advice rather than cultivate his own affinity. To a large extent, he simply had to in order to accommodate the dramatic growth within Durham of the landed power of the Nevilles, with whom the new bishop now had no alternative but to deal. John Lord Neville, who had only been engaged by Hatfield in the light of the specific needs of border defence, was formally retained by Fordham to be of his counsel on a more permanent basis. The cost of Neville’s retention – £33 6s 8d per annum – placed him at the top of the two extant lists of Fordham’s retainers.218 Sir Ralph Eure, Fordham’s steward, an office for which he was paid a fee of £40, was also retained for life by the bishop to be of his counsel, in return for which he received a £10 annuity.219 Equally significant, almost all of Fordham’s other regular paid advisers were legal associates and estate officials of John Neville. These men included Sir Roger Fulthorpe, Fordham’s chief justice, who received a fee of £10, John Killinghall, clerk of the bishop’s justices, who received a fee of £5, John Conyers of Hornby and Gilbert Elvet, both retained of the bishop’s counsel for annuities of £2, William Blackdene, the auditor of Fordham’s accounts, for which he was paid a fee of £5, and Walter Hawick, retained of the ­bishop’s counsel for a fee of £5.220 To these we can also add William Lambard, who was retained by Bishop Fordham to be of his counsel in return for a fee of £4. Lambard was ‘an estate steward with some legal training’ from the North Riding of Yorkshire,221 and it was almost certainly as a lawyer that Lambard was retained by Fordham. Under Bishop Langley, Lambard was retained formally as the bishop’s serjeant-at-law, a position which entailed 217 218 219 220 221

For Hatfield’s appointments, see Rot. Scot., Vol. I, pp. 910–11, 923, 935, 940, 945. For the indenture of retainer, see DURH 3/31, m. 2r. DURH 20/114/8, m. 1r-d; HS, p. 267. DCM, Reg. II, fol. 298r. DURH 20/114/8, m. 1r-d; HS, pp. 267–8. Walker, ‘Yorkshire Justices’, p. 294 and n. 3.

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his presence at the Westminster law courts.222 In the late fourteenth century Lambard had a number of clients, including Durham priory, by whom he was first retained in 1375–6, and Thomas Beauchamp, earl of Warwick and lord of Barnard Castle, from whom he is known to have received a fee in 1390–1.223 It was upon William Lambard that Sir William Claxton, Neville’s right-hand man, enfeoffed all of his property within the bishopric in a series of conveyances beginning in 1374, and in 1378, when the crown granted John Neville custody of the manor of Dilston in Northumberland, an estate to which Claxton had a claim, it was William Lambard who acted as surety.224 Fordham’s remaining advisers included three members of the Durham knightly class. Sir William Bowes and Sir William Washington were each retained of the bishop’s counsel for an annual fee of £6 13s 4d, whilst William Blakeston was in receipt of an annuity of £5. These three Durham landholders, all of comparable status, relied upon each other in the conveyance of their estates. In 1377, when Sir William Bowes made a settlement of his chief residence within the bishopric, the manor of Streatlam, it was Sir William Washington who headed the list of witnesses to the deed.225 All three men also had links to John Neville. The connections between John Neville and Blakeston have already been documented.226 Washington’s name attested several charters in the 1370s and 1380s along with known Neville associates drawn from his inner circle of advisers such as Walter Hawick, Sir William Claxton and Thomas Claxton, and in 1383, Washington witnessed a grant of property to John Neville in Winlaton, on the northern border of the bishopric.227 When Sir William Bowes sought to place his ancestral home of Streatlam, in the south-west corner of the bishopric, in trust in 1383, the man he chose as his feoffee was Walter Hawick, and in 1389, when he made another settlement of a major part of his estate in the Tees valley, the witness list was headed by Sir William Washington, followed by Walter Hawick, John Claxton and Gilbert Elvet, all members of the core of Neville’s affinity, whom we encountered earlier in the chapter.228 The connections between Bowes, Washington, Blakeston and John Neville were almost all at one step removed, an indication that they counted among Neville’s increasingly large and influential group of ‘well-wishers’ drawn from the ranks of the Durham gentry. Throughout the 1380s, then, the affinities of Neville and Fordham comple-

222 223 224

225 226 227 228

DUL, CCB B/1/1. DCM, Bursar’s Roll, 1375–6: gift of 6s 8d to William Lambard on his first retention (in prima retencione sua); SC 6/1303/11, m. 4r. DCM, Misc.Chs 131, 144, 180, 443, 445, 5804, 6250, 6251; CFR, 1377–83, pp. 103–4. For further evidence of Lambard’s connections with the Nevilles, see Yorkshire Deeds, Vol. IX, pp. 92–3. DCL, Randall MS 3, p. 230. For Blakeston and Washington, see, for example, DRO, D/Gr 239–40, and Second Calendar of Greenwell Deeds, p. 114. See above, pp. 89–92. Greenwell Deeds, pp. 108, 110, 114; DCM, Misc.Ch. 2133; E 210/4096. DCL, Randall MS 3, p. 232; DRO, D/St/D1/1/15.



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mented and reinforced each other and it was along the Neville-Fordham axis that the bishop’s patronage flowed. The relationship between Ralph Neville and Bishop Walter Skirlaw (1388– 1406), who both entered their lordships at the same time, was much more of an equal partnership of mutual support. Theirs was a symbiotic relationship, as the political career of the bishop’s closest adviser, the esquire Peter Hay, illustrates. Hay was lord of Spaldington, a village in the East Riding of Yorkshire, where Skirlaw too had his roots. Hay’s connections with Skirlaw stretched back to at least 1385, when Skirlaw was made bishop of Coventry and Lichfield. Hay, described as an ‘esquire of Master Walter Skirlaw’, received a grant of the constableship of Eccleshall castle and the office of chief forester of Cannock Chase in Staffordshire.229 Hay followed Skirlaw north to Durham in 1388 and became chamberlain of the bishop’s household.230 A steady flow of grants of office and land followed thereafter in return for Hay’s service to the bishop. An esquire of the bishop (scutifer noster), he was appointed steward of Allertonshire for life in 1393 and steward of Howdenshire for life in 1394.231 In 1390 he received a grant of the custody of the Durham estates of Michael de la Pole, first earl of Suffolk, and in 1402 Skirlaw gave him the wardship and marriage of the heir of one of the bishop’s most powerful tenants-in-chief, Sir William Bowes of Streatlam.232 Hay, who was one of the executors of Skirlaw’s will, was suitably rewarded by his master. He himself received £100 from Skirlaw ‘for his good and lawful service given to me … and for the labours and expenses which he has sustained and shall sustain in my service’, by far and away the largest single financial bequest in Skirlaw’s will. Hay’s wife, Elizabeth, was left a silver basin and ewer and, in codicils to the will, Hay’s three sons were also remembered by the bishop with objects including a portable breviary.233 Significantly, less than two years after his appointment, Hay had surrendered his office of steward of Allertonshire to Skirlaw, who immediately regranted it to John Conyers of Hornby, one of Ralph, first earl of Westmorland’s inner circle of legal counsellors.234 In 1402 Skirlaw awarded Hay the wardship and marriage of the heir of Thomas Claxton of Old Park, Ralph Neville’s principal adviser within the bishopric.235 Such reciprocity was entirely characteristic of the relationship between Skirlaw and Neville. In contrast to Peter Hay, Adam Tirwhite, the marshal of Walter Skirlaw’s household, became a landholder in the bishopric in his own right thanks to the bishop. In a codicil to his will, Skirlaw left money for Tirwhite’s purchase of the manor of Nesbitt Hall in the parish of Hart, an acquisition which 229 230 231 232 233 234 235

CPR, 1385–9, p. 23. DUL, CCB B/23/1/24. DURH 3/33, mm. 9d, 12r. CFR, 1383–91, p. 310; DCM, Reg. III, fols 5v–6r. Test. Ebor., Vol. I, pp. 309–14. DURH 3/33, m. 14r. DCM, Reg. III, fol. 6r.

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was duly completed, as Tirwhite’s 1429 IPM indicates.236 The evidence of a late-fifteenth-century heraldic visitation, however, suggests that Tirwhite also enjoyed strong connections to the Nevilles of Raby and Brancepeth through Tirwhite’s wife, one of the daughters of Ralph Lord Lumley and Eleanor, sister of Ralph, first earl of Westmorland.237 The other beneficiaries of Skirlaw’s will included his steward, Sir Ralph Eure, as well as John Conyers of Hornby, a lawyer, and Sir Robert Conyers of Ormesby, who was Skirlaw’s sheriff and escheator from January 1401 and who also, in a death-bed grant of Bishop Skirlaw (par parole et nient en escript) in 1406, received the wardship and marriage of one of the grandchildren of Sir William Bowes of Streatlam (d. 1399).238 All three men were closely associated with Ralph Neville.239 Neville’s retainers, men such as Sir Thomas Colville Jr of Coxwold and Thomas Claxton of Old Park, were also prominent among those who were in receipt of Bishop Skirlaw’s patronage, and it was one of Ralph Neville’s life retainers, John Dale, a relatively recent arrival in the bishopric from the North Riding of Yorkshire, whom Bishop Skirlaw confirmed in the office of parker of the episcopal park of Evenwood in the parish of Auckland St Helen in 1404.240 In Skirlaw’s episcopate, then, the affinities of bishop and Neville did not represent two alternative sources of loyalty and attachment for the Durham gentry: both at their core and, to some extent at their periphery, they were identical. The origins of the nucleus of the affinity of Bishop Thomas Langley (1406–37) lay in Lancashire, the county of his birth and early career. Langley brought with him to Durham a small group of Lancashire men, almost all clerical members of his familia, whose service to the bishop was rewarded with the grant of a wide range of ecclesiastical preferments within the bishopric.241 This group included John Radcliffe, treasurer of Langley’s household from the early 1420s, whom Langley remembered in his will with a bequest ‘for his good and lawful service’, and John Newton, a bishop’s clerk who was treasurer of the bishop’s household from 1406 until the mid 1410s and then the bishop’s receiver-general. Other Lancastrians were Nicholas Hulme, a bishop’s clerk who replaced Newton as treasurer of the household and receiver-general, and Richard Buckley, the rector of St Nicholas’s church in Durham as well as master of Kepier Hospital, who held the office of receiver-general from December 1422, both of whom acted as Bishop Langley’s executors.242 Several of these outsiders to the bishopric – men such as James Strangways, 236 237 238 239 240 241 242

Test. Ebor., Vol. I, p. 314; DURH 3/2, fols 240r–241r. For his other lands, see DURH 3/33, m. 17r; DURH 3/2, fols 238v–239r. Visitations of the North, p. 42. Test. Ebor., Vol. I, p. 310; DURH 3/33, m. 24r (appointment as sheriff); NYCRO, ZPQ 35. See above, pp. 96, 98. DURH 3/33, mm. 25r-d, 32r. Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 78–9. Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 74–5, Scriptores Tres, pp. ccxliii–ccxliv, ccxlvii.



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a chief legal adviser of Bishop Langley in his palatine administration and an executor of his will, and Robert Strangways, a household retainer (domicellus) of the bishop who served as his chief forester from 1410 – were then retained by Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland to become part of what was, in effect, a single affinity. When, in 1426, not long after the death of her husband, Joan, countess of Westmorland wrote from Middleham to the prior of Durham concerning a promotion to the church of Hemingbrough in the East Riding, the letter was borne by Robert Strangways, described by Joan as ‘oure right welbeloved and trusted squier’, and endorsed by Bishop Langley.243 Thomas Holden, another Lancastrian, was one of the bishop’s esquires (dilectus armiger noster), who held the office of chamberlain of the bishop’s household throughout Langley’s episcopate, replacing Sir Ralph Eure as Langley’s steward on Eure’s death in 1422, and who also received episcopal patronage in the form of land, including the grant of a licence to crenellate his recently acquired manor of Ludworth in 1422 and the lease of two episcopal properties in 1431.244 Holden, who was named an executor of Bishop Langley’s will, was also an executor of Ralph Neville’s last will and testament. Holden’s first wife was the daughter and heir of Gilbert Elvet, one of Neville’s closest advisers, and Holden was among a group, including Christopher Boynton and Robert Strangways, upon whom Ralph’s son and heir by his second marriage, Richard Neville, enfeoffed two of Ralph’s estates within the bishopric in 1431.245 The amalgamation of the Neville and episcopal affinities was such that, when Sir William Claxton (d. 1431), the head of the Claxtons of Claxton and Horden and a service family for the Nevilles of Raby and Brancepeth for generations, made his will, Richard Buckley, Bishop Langley’s clerk, was among his executors and trustees.246 And whilst Ralph Neville was never formally retained by Bishop Langley, it was Neville retainers who dominated Langley’s group of legal advisers and administrators, all of whom, by virtue of their office, were in receipt of an annual fee: Gilbert Elvet and William Lambard, the bishop’s serjeants-at-law; John Conyers and Christopher Boynton, the bishop’s secondary justices; Richard Norton and James Strangways, the bishop’s chief justices; John Aislaby, Langley’s attorney general; as well as Sir Ralph Eure and Thomas Holden, the bishop’s stewards.247 Similarly, the only individuals known to have been in receipt of a livery robe from Bishop Langley – Sir Thomas Surtees and John Hutton of

243 244 245 246 247

For the Neville-Strangways connection, see above, pp. 96–7. For Robert Strangways, see also DURH 3/34, m. 5r; Thomas Langley, Vol. III, p. 74. For the letter, see DCM, Loc.XXV:124. Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 5, 93, 102; DURH 3/38, m. 13d; DURH 3/36, m. 2r. Scriptores Tres, pp. ccxli–ccxlvii; DCM, Reg.Parv. II, fol. 106v; Wills and Inventories, p. 73; SC 8/26/1295; DUL, CCB B/50/1; DCM, Misc.Ch. 1739; DURH 3/36, m. 4r. DCM, Misc.Ch. 457. DUL, CCB B/13/1, m. 1; DUL, CCB B/1/1, B/1/2, B/1/3, B/1/4, B/1/5, B/1/6.

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Tudhoe, both tenants-in-chief of the bishop – were also Neville men, as we saw earlier in the chapter.248 The inter-flow between Langley and Neville’s affinities was almost certainly helped by their good personal relationship. Both had strong ties to the house of Lancaster and both were executors of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster.249 But their relationship was not such that Langley surrendered his palatine authority to the earl of Westmorland. Langley was undoubtedly a stalwart Lancastrian, as his career as chancellor under all three Lancastrian kings testifies, but we should not assume that Langley committed the authority, power and resources of his palatinate to the Lancastrian cause. Langley was not simply a stalwart Lancastrian. As bishop of Durham, he also moved in another social and political world – the palatinate of Durham – with its own history, traditions and expectations. And Langley was as determined as his predecessors to exercise his own palatine authority and to defend his palatine rights and privileges.250 The overlap between Langley and Neville’s affinities had other causes.251 It was Earl Ralph’s intentions regarding his family settlement which Bishop Langley backed. A good indication of how close Langley was to Ralph Neville and the family of his second wife, Joan, daughter of John of Gaunt by his mistress, Katherine Swynford, is provided by the circumstances surrounding the opening of the first earl’s will. It was Bishop Langley who, in the context of the virtual dispossession of the senior branch of the family in a legal process already complete before Ralph’s death, conducted extraordinarily formal proceedings into the opening of the earl’s last will and testament in a chapel at his Auckland residence in November 1425. Here, one of the executors of the earl’s will presented to the bishop a small chest called a ‘trussyng coffre’, upon which were the seals of all the earl’s familiares who were present at his death, as well as that of Richard Neville, the earl’s son. The bishop asked for the key to open the box, only to be informed that Richard Neville had it in his possession but was in London, so the executor, having gained the bishop’s permission, forced open the container to reveal its contents. The executor could break the lock because he knew that Richard Neville, the eldest son of the first earl’s second marriage, would approve of the action the bishop would take. The will left nothing to the head of the senior branch of the family, the grandson of the first earl.252 Nonetheless, the intermingling of the two affinities meant that, politically significant though they were as the bishop’s key ministers, the chief members of Langley’s affinity comprised almost exclusively Lancastrians and North Riding men, whose position within Durham landed society was

248 249 250 251 252

DCM, Misc.Ch. 7187; see above, pp. 94–5, 98. Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 3–4, 105–6. See below, pp. 175–86. See below, p. 146. Thomas Langley, Vol. VI, pp. 6–8; Wills and Inventories, pp. 68–74.



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recent, marginal and dependent upon their connection to the bishop.253 The Neville and episcopal affinities did not and could not, therefore, absorb the existing social networks of the Durham gentry. The Limits of Lordship Undoubtedly, there were several major Durham gentry families for whom the service relationship was critical to their landed fortunes and the aristocratic affinity was central to their social relations, notably the Claxtons. We have seen how the Claxtons’ choice of feoffees and marriage partners was dominated by their connection with successive generations of Nevilles. It is also no surprise that Sir Ralph Eure, who had served as steward of Durham for three successive bishops – Fordham, Skirlaw and Langley – should choose to place his son and heir, William Eure, in the household of Bishop Langley for his upbringing. Yet this bond was not strong enough to prevent Sir William Eure from leading the major attack upon Bishop Langley’s lordship in the 1430s.254 There were in fact several substantial Durham gentry families who always stood outside the nexus of both episcopal and Neville patronage, notably the Hyltons of Hylton and the Conyers of Sockburn. When Sir William Hylton (d. 1435) financed the construction of a new tower-house in the last decade of the fourteenth and first decade of the fifteenth centuries, he decorated the west front of the gatehouse with an heraldic display bearing the shields of numerous northern families. The arms of Neville were conspicuously absent.255 Neither Sir William Hylton nor Sir John Conyers of Sockburn (d. 1396) was immune from the bonds of lordship. Both had connections to Henry Percy, first earl of Northumberland. In 1376, the same year in which he saw service at Berwick-upon-Tweed with Percy, Conyers attended a feast at Alnwick abbey in Percy’s honour.256 To Hylton, who was born and baptised at Alnwick castle and was a tenant-in-chief of Henry Percy in respect of his Northumberland estates, who accompanied Percy to Scotland in 1384, who served regularly under Percy’s command at Berwick in the 1380s and 1390s, and who displayed the arms of both Percy and his son on his new residence at Hylton, Percy lordship clearly meant something more.257 In neither case, however, did these patronal connections dominate their social relationships. It was not just the arms of Percy which adorned the west face of Hylton castle, but those of families of similar social status to their own drawn from 253 254 255 256 257

See, for example, Langley’s 1434 grant of the wardship and marriage of one of the co-heiresses of John Aislaby, the bishop’s former attorney general: DURH 3/36, m. 8r. See below, pp. 208–35. B.M. Morley, ‘Hylton Castle’, Archaeological Journal 133 (1976), pp. 131–3. CDS, Vol. V, p. 526; ‘Cronica Monasterii de Alnewyke’, ed. W. Dickson, AA, 1st series 3 (1844), pp. 43–4. Conyers also served at Berwick in the following year: CDS, Vol. V, p. 526. CIPM, Vol. XV, pp. 29–30; Feudal Aids, Vol. IV, p. 75; E 101/51/2, m. 1r; CDS, Vol. V, pp. 528, 532, 550; Morley, ‘Hylton Castle’, p. 132.

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Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Edinburgh Berwick SCOTLAND

Gateshead we

nt

Newcastle

T y ne

D

er

Durham

Carlisle

ve

r

ENGLAND

Ri

Riv

a e r Te m

Gibside

Marley Hill Ravensworth Kibblesworth

Hedley Beam

ish B

ur

Tanfield

n

Birtley

Collierley rn

Bushblades

Bu

Rive

e

yo

ar

W

K

r

Twizell Hall 0 0

miles kilometres

2 5

Map 4.  The Team Valley

across northern England but especially the bishopric, including the Bowes of Streatlam, the Eures of Witton le Wear, the Lumleys of Lumley castle, the Surtees of Dinsdale-on-Tees and the Washingtons of Washington. Their shields were organised in a horizontal fashion beneath a vertical symbolic hierarchy which included the Percy coats of arms. Vertical ties of lordship were only effective in shaping the pattern of gentry relationships within the bishopric when they were underpinned by horizontal ties of neighbourhood and community. As we saw earlier in the chapter, the growth of the Neville affinity in south-east Durham in the third quarter of the fourteenth century was dependent upon Sir William Claxton’s existing associations with men of comparable status, who lived in the same locale and whose tie of neighbourhood was reinforced by kinship. Lordship was weakest when such horizontal bonds were absent, when those within its ambit found themselves in a local society with which they had no substantial connection. Much more durable and of much more fundamental importance to the Durham gentry over the whole period were those social networks based not upon lordship, but upon locality. We have already seen, in the analysis of the social network around the figure of Sir William Claxton, how important was the tie of neighbourhood in drawing together several of the greater gentry families of south-east Durham.



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An example of a more extreme notion of neighbourliness comes from the Team valley in north-west Durham.258 This was an area stretching from Collierley in the west through to Gateshead in the east.259 It was an area inhabited largely by the sorts of lesser gentry – lords of single manors with annual incomes of generally less than £20 – who characterised the tenurial profile of north and west Durham, but it was not untouched by aristocratic influence. Although the Nevilles held no property there at the beginning of the period, John Birtley, lord of the small estate of Twizell Hall, south of the river Team, was an executor of Ralph Lord Neville (d. 1367), and by the time of the Hatfield Survey, John Neville had acquired a moiety of the manor of Birtley.260 From this date, the Nevilles were a presence in the region and, in 1421, John Birtley of Birtley granted three of Ralph Neville’s retainers an annuity from his share of the estate: Thomas Brancepeth, a clerk, William Hutton of Tudhoe and John Arrowsmith of Brancepeth.261 But throughout the period the underlying social structure of the area remained the same, characterised by a high level of intermarriage between the eight resident gentry families – the Kibblesworths, the Stutevilles, the Mashams, the Marleys, the Guildfords, the Birtleys, the Gategangs and the Ravensworths – and considerable reciprocity in the maintenance of their lands. The manor of Kibblesworth in the parish of Chester-le-Street was a divided estate, held by two families of similar social status: the Stutevilles and Kibblesworths. The Kibblesworths of Kibblesworth were lords of the adjacent lordships of Ravensworth and Kibblesworth and, on the death of John Kibblesworth in 1369, the estate passed, for default of male heirs, to John’s sister, Alice, who subsequently married Robert Masham, lord of Gibside in the parish of Whickham, about four miles west of Kibblesworth.262 Alice and Robert’s daughter, Elizabeth, married Richard Marley, lord of Marley Hill, two miles east of Gibside, but also lord of the manor of Hedley, just over a mile west of Kibblesworth, and at the end of the period, Robert Marley, Alice and Robert’s grandson, held the manors of Gibside, Hedley and Marley Hill.263 By this date, the Kibblesworths’ property at Ravensworth – a small ‘manor’ consisting of three messuages, a cottage, 120 acres of arable, four and a half acres of pasture, an acre of meadow and eight acres of woodland – had been acquired by a local family, the Ravensworths, whilst the Stutevilles, who by now had purchased the other moiety of the manor of Kibblesworth, had married into the Birtleys of Birtley, a property two miles south 258

259 260 261 262 263

Cf. P. Maddern, ‘ “Best Trusted Friends”: Concepts and Practices of Friendship among FifteenthCentury Norfolk Gentry’, England in the Fifteenth Century, ed. N. Rogers (Stamford, 1994), pp. 110–11. See Map 4. Above, p. 81; DURH 3/31, m. 10d. DURH 3/38, m. 7r. DURH 3/2, fols 78v, 85r, 172v, 174r–v; HS, pp. 82, 107. For the evidence of intermarriage, see Figure 2. DRO, D/St/D13/1/2/109, D/St/D5/1/8, D/St/D5/1/10; DURH 3/2, fol. 122v; DURH 3/35, m. 9r.

Kibblesworths of Kibblesworth

Mashams of Gibside

Marleys of Marley Hill

Birtleys of Birtley

Margaret = (1) John Stuteville = (2) John Birtley, Esq. d. 1420    d. c.1409    d. 1425

Stutevilles of Kibblesworth

John Stuteville, Esq. Waleran Birtley    liv. 1444    d. c.1451





Robert Marley, Esq.    d. 1438

Agnes = Robert Masham Elizabeth = Richard Marley    d. c.1416   d. c.1396

  John Kibblesworth Alice =   Robert Masham    d. c.1369    d. c.1375



Figure 2.  Familial Relationships between the Gentry of the Team Valley



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east of Kibblesworth.264 The Guildfords were lords of the contiguous estates of Collierley and Bushblades, about one mile west of Tanfield. In the mid fourteenth century their lord was Thomas Guildford, whose sister, Isabel, later married John Birtley of Twizell Hall, just over two miles to the east of Bushblades.265 Thomas’s nephew and eventual heir, John Guildford, subsequently married the daughter of William Gategang, the lord of Pipewellgate in Gateshead, seven miles north east of Bushblades, a marriage which led to the Guildfords inheriting the Gategang estate in the 1430s.266 This was essentially a network of lesser gentry, comprising families whose heads, in the early fifteenth century, were described variously as gentlemen or esquires, including men such as Robert Marley, whom we encountered in the previous chapter.267 In some cases, such as that of the Ravensworths, these families hovered uncertainly between gentility and commonality: John Ravensworth could be described as a ‘gentleman’ in 1417, whilst his son and heir, Henry, counted among the valetti of the bishopric in the 1434 oath-list.268 Over several generations the heads of these families regularly acted as feoffees and witnesses for each other’s conveyances of land, which were all concentrated in and around the Team valley.269 In 1383 the Birtleys’ settlement of their manor of Twizell Hall was witnessed by John Stuteville, Richard Marley and Robert Masham. In 1387 Alice Masham, a descendant of the Kibblesworths of Kibblesworth and the widow of Robert Masham of Gibside, served as a feoffee for Richard Marley in relation to his property at Marley Hill and Gibside, a transfer attested by Robert Masham, Alice’s son, but also by John Guildford and Alan Ravensworth. In 1395 Alice enfeoffed Robert Marley, Richard’s son, in the land at Hedley in which she had originally been enfeoffed by Richard Marley, another conveyance to which John Guildford and Alan Ravensworth attested. In 1414 Robert Masham, Alice’s son and heir, made a settlement of his manor of Gibside which was witnessed by William Gategang, John Ravensworth and John Guildford, the last two also witnessing the enfeoffment of the same manor a year later by Agnes Masham, Robert’s widow. When Robert Marley, Alice’s grandson, granted a small annuity from his property at Ravensworth in 1423, the deed was witnessed by John Birtley, John Ravensworth and John Stuteville. These same families also frequently acted together as witnesses to other conveyances of property in the area, in which they themselves were not directly involved.270 A 1405 quitclaim of land at Bushblades was witnessed by John Guildford, 264 265 266

267 268 269 270

DURH 3/2, fols 166r, 197v–198r, 260r–v. DURH 3/2, fols 37r, 82r–v, 113r–v. DURH 3/2, fol. 155r; ‘Durham Records: Cursitor’s Records: Inquisitions Post Mortem’, in The Forty-Fourth Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records (London, 1883), pp. 397–8. Cf. DCM, Misc.Ch. 6715; DRO, D/St/D5/1/22–3. See above, p. 53. DCM, Misc.Ch. 6715; Thomas Langley, Vol. IV, p. 143. For what follows, see Second Calendar of Greenwell Deeds, p. 106; HS, pp. 82, 107; DURH 3/2, fols 172v, 174r–v; DRO, D/St/D5/1/9–10, D/St/D5/1/13, D/St/D5/1/16; D/St/D5/1/39. For what follows, see DRO, D/St/D5/1/121, D/St/D5/2/8; Bell, ‘Calendar of Deeds’, p. 59.

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John Ravensworth and John Stuteville. A 1413 enfeoffment of various lands in Whickham was witnessed by Robert Marley, John Ravensworth, William Gategang and John Guildford. And when Sir William Lumley of Ravensworth castle mortgaged his park at Lamesley, south of Gateshead, to Sir Ralph Eure in 1417, the witnesses included John Birtley, John Ravensworth, John Guildford and William Gategang. In short, the individuals in whom these lesser gentry repeatedly and consistently placed their trust in the conveyance of land were neighbouring landholders of similar status, among whom there was a good deal of intermarriage. Theirs was a world in which they were able to manage their own affairs without recourse to the nobility or to members of the greater gentry who held property there. Even after the Umfravilles, later lords of Redesdale in Northumberland, moved into the area in the second half of the fourteenth century through the marriage of Robert Umfraville, earl of Angus to his second wife, Eleanor, countess of Ravensworth, the Umfravilles only very occasionally served as feoffees for these families.271 A glimpse of the social world in which these lesser gentry moved is afforded by the proof of age of Sir Thomas Lumley of Lumley castle in 1432.272 It was, in large part, bounded (but not determined) by the parish. One of the jurors was Robert Marley, the lord of Marley Hill within the parish of Chester-leStreet as he himself declared in the inquisition. According to his testimony, he was at Tanfield, a dependent chapel of Chester-le-Street, to hear mass when the chaplain informed him of the baptism. Another of the jurors, Henry Ravensworth, was resident with his father, John, at Ravensworth within the parish of Chester-le-Street, at the time of Thomas’s birth, and attended the baptism. John Stuteville, another juror, declared that he was hunting hare at Harraton, also in the parish of Chester-le-Street, in the company of John Hedworth, when he met William Baron Hylton, riding from Hylton on his way to Chester-le-Street to act as one of Sir Thomas Lumley’s godparents. John Guildford also offered his testimony, according to which he was with Sir William Tempest at Washington, five miles north east of Chester-le-Street, when he heard from Baron Hylton of Sir Thomas’s baptism. And yet, one of the most interesting aspects to this intensely localised world is that it is only revealed to us in the course of interaction and engagement with the apparatus of palatine government: the proof of age was held at Durham before the sheriff and escheator. Indeed, much that is known of lay landholding within the bishopric is a consequence of the enrolment of deeds among the records of the palatine chancery in Durham at the request of all levels of Durham gentry society, who took advantage of the presence of a local chancery to establish greater security for their transfer of property.273

271 272 273

Bell, ‘Calendar of Deeds’, p. 56; DRO, D/St/D5/1/16. For what follows, see DURH 3/2, fols 258v–259v. See, for example, DURH 3/30, mm. 3d, 5d, 8d, 9d, 10d, 11d, 12r, 13d; DURH 3/31, mm. 1d, 3d, 11d; DURH 3/32, mm. 7r, 7d, 9r; DURH 3/33, mm. 15r, 18d, 22d, 25r, 29r; DURH 3/34, m. 7d; DURH 3/35, mm. 5d, 20r; DURH 3/37, m. 4r; DURH 3/38, mm. 2d, 5r, 7r, 14r.



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That they looked frequently to the bishop’s chancery to safeguard their land suggests that the institutions of the bishopric were much more important in the lives of the Durham gentry than has been imagined. Topography undoubtedly divided the landholding community between Tyne and Tees.274 But although the greater and lesser gentry of Durham occupied different landscapes and inhabited different social worlds,275 the institutions of the bishopric helped to provide a sense of political community.

274 275

See above, Ch. 2. Cf. G. Harriss, Shaping the Nation: England 1360–1461 (Oxford, 2005), p. 139.

4 Office-Holding

In recent years the study of local office-holding – and specifically, local office-holders – has acquired a particular currency among historians of the late medieval English gentry. Why does the identity of local office-holders matter? The subject has been seen as integral to the wider understanding of gentry society for a variety of reasons. First, and perhaps most pragmatically, historians seeking to identify the gentry within their particular shire have used participation in the administration of a county as one of the key qualifications for membership of the gentry along with other criteria such as wealth and landholding. In short, the meaning of gentility has been explored in both an administrative as well as tenurial context. Secondly, and more conceptually, office-holding has been viewed as central not only to the identification of individual members of the gentry, but to the evolution and definition of the gentry as a social class. In Peter Coss’s groundbreaking study, The Origins of the English Gentry, pivotal to the formation of the gentry, a social phenomenon which he dates to the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, was the arrival in the localities of an ‘explosion’ of royal commissions, relating to finance, politics, justice and war. These new local offices, of tax collector, knight of the shire, keeper of the peace and commissioner of array, were rapidly filled by knightly and, later, sub-knightly landholders. They looked upon such offices as both a source of social prestige and a form of social control. In holding such commissions, they entered into a partnership with the state which was their hallmark. Thirdly, historians of the gentry have examined the relationship between office-holding and identity, arguing for the close correlation between landholding and office-holding and positing the idea that, in the collective involvement of the gentry in the administration of their shire, the county was of real significance as a source of social and political cohesion. The real issue surely, however, lies in the nature of the relationship between office-holding and power. ‘No study of the institutional façade of government can by itself tell us much about the location of power. What mattered to many contemporaries was the means by which institutions and officials could be manipulated; what

  

S.M. Wright, The Derbyshire Gentry in the Fifteenth Century (Chesterfield, 1983), pp. 1–6. P. Coss, The Origins of the English Gentry (Cambridge, 2003), Ch. 7. S.J. Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian England: The Greater Gentry of Nottinghamshire (Oxford, 1991), p. 185.



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mattered to others was how such manipulation could best be checked.’ The most interesting and yet most challenging question is why individuals were appointed to office in the first place. Although in Durham the officers were agents of the bishop, who acted officially in his name and who were accountable, ultimately, to him, what informal influences, often conducted behind the scenes, helped to determine the choice of local officials? Put simply, did office-holders qualify for office in their own right by virtue of social status, administrative experience or landholding, or were they interpolated into office because of other external factors, notably their connections with aristocratic patrons? The direct operation of patronage is often unobservable. In the case of Durham, appointments to local office were formally initiated by the bishop’s privy seal, but the difficulty lies in discovering the range of influences which could prompt the bishop to issue letters of privy seal in the first place. We know that one John Short purchased his commission as a sub-forester of Weardale for £10 in 1363 because it says so on the palatine chancery rolls of Bishop Hatfield. Indeed, the entry ends by stating that Short also paid 16s to the bishop for the fee of the charter, presumably for the cost of having it enrolled. We also know that one William Forester of Gateshead secured the office of keeper of Gateshead park in 1369 thanks to the patronage of William Menville, the bishop’s sheriff, since his letters of appointment were prefaced by a note to this effect. Such entries are highly unusual in their transparency. In previous studies of local office-holding, historians have concentrated almost exclusively upon what they have identified as the ‘major’ offices of shire administration, namely the triumvirate of sheriff, justice of the peace (JP) and knight of the shire (MP): ‘major’ because the administrative, judicial, financial and representative powers associated with them made them of great local consequence politically, and ‘major’ because they conferred significant social status upon their holders. By the end of the fourteenth century, there was a seemingly universal hierarchy of local office and a cursus honorum of local office-holding: at the base of the pyramidal structure was the office of coroner, along with the position of tax collector, followed by the escheatorship, and finally, at the apex, the offices of MP, JP and sheriff. Among the greater offices, first rung on the ladder was the position of knight of the shire, whose election was conducted locally, but who, once elected, became a familiar figure to the crown as a potential candidate for other prestigious

   

J.R. Maddicott, ‘Law and Lordship: Royal Justices as Retainers in Thirteenth- and FourteenthCentury England’, P&P Supplement 4 (1978), p. 1. DURH 3/30, m. 14r. DURH 3/31, m. 2r. E. Acheson, A Gentry Community: Leicestershire in the Fifteenth Century, c.1422–c.1485 (Cambridge, 1992), Ch. 5; C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401–1499 (Cambridge, 1992), Ch. 8; Payling, Nottinghamshire, Ch. 5.

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local offices. When G.T. Lapsley wrote his seminal study of the county palatine of Durham, his approach was to explore the extent to which Durham, at least in its administrative structure, was a microcosm of England. Successive bishops of Durham certainly reminded the crown that they were in possession of a chancery, exchequer and court (for crown and civil pleas), staffed by their own chancellors, justices, sheriffs, escheators, coroners, bailiffs and other ministers, such as the king was accustomed to appoint in the rest of England. In reality, the governmental structure of the bishopric of Durham was different in many respects from that which operated in the traditional English county. On the one hand, there were considerably fewer opportunities to hold the kinds of office which proliferated in other localities. For a start, the bishopric was not, for the most part, subject to the demands of royal taxation, which much of the kingdom experienced with increasing regularity from the late thirteenth century. The reasons for this exemption need not detain us now,10 but it was an immunity which, ‘acquired piecemeal’, limited the need for parliamentary representation. It was only as a result of a long and drawn out process of negotiation in the seventeenth century, when parliamentary taxation began to be routinely levied upon the bishopric, that Durham was enfranchised.11 Also in contrast to the rest of England, the shrievalty and escheatorship were not separate posts, but were combined and held simultaneously by a single person who was accountable to the bishop for the issues of the two offices.12 On the other, there was available a wider range of offices within the bishopric as a result of the bishop’s distinctive status as both a territorial magnate and a regalian lord. Thus, there were offices within the bishop’s palatine administration which were comparable to those found at Westminster: the post of temporal chancellor; the position of receiver of the bishop’s exchequer; and the office of chief justice.13 And there were seigneurial estate offices, rising from the minor – such as sub-forester and parker – through to the more significant, notably the positions as chief forester and steward, who were primarily responsible for the maintenance of the bishop’s estates. Studies of other counties have focused upon the public offices of local government, pointing to parliamentary legislation, for instance, which actually forbade seigneurial stewards from holding the shrievalty and a posi-

  10 11

12 13

N. Saul, Knights and Esquires: The Gloucestershire Gentry in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1981), pp. 163–4; Payling, Nottinghamshire, p. 114. For Neville, see above, p. 15; for Langley, see ‘Henry VI: Parliament of 1433, Text and Translation’, PROME, Vol. XI, p. 92. See below, pp. 206–8. J. Scammell, ‘The Origin and Limitations of the Liberty of Durham’, EHR 81 (1966), p. 450 n. 2; A.W. Foster, ‘The Struggle for Parliamentary Representation for Durham, c.1600–1641’, The Last Principality: Politics, Religion, and Society in the Bishopric of Durham, 1494–1660, ed. D. Marcombe (Nottingham, 1987), pp. 176–201. See, for example, DURH 3/30, m. 1d; DURH 3/32, m. 8d; DURH 3/33, mm. 4r, 7r. For the first reference to this judicial office, see DURH 3/31, m. 14r.



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tion on a commission of the peace.14 In Durham there was not such a straightforward distinction. The steward did not simply act as a glorified manorial official, although he did preside over the bishop’s halmote court, but rather, he had a more general supervisory role within the palatine administration as a whole, as the bishop’s key adviser. Bishop Langley, when presented with the list of articles by his receiver-general in 1419 concerning the governance of the bishopric in his absence, was fully prepared to rely upon the discretion of his steward, Sir Ralph Eure, for their resolution.15 Similarly, the position of coroner within the bishopric combined the policing and judicial duties typically associated with the office with special responsibilities for the collection of rents from the bishop’s free tenants.16 The coroner’s role lay as much in the administration of the bishop’s estates as in the administration of criminal law, and in contrast to other parts of England, the coroner was not elected in the county court, but appointed by the bishop himself. This blurring of function makes it more difficult to assess the significance of office-holding within the bishopric of Durham. Was employment in the government of the bishopric a form of office or of episcopal service? Might what appears to be ‘independent’ gentry political activity in reality be service to the local lord, the bishop? This distinction, which is one of agency, perhaps underlies Peter Coss’s view of the significance of the emergence of royal commissions in late-thirteenth- and early-fourteenth-century England, in which the gentry ‘came to see themselves not so much as officials of the crown – commissioned for this or that purpose – but as essential partners in government’.17 In Durham there is no doubt that the pattern of office-holding was greatly informed by the rhetoric and substance of lordship. Tenure of office, whether for the posts of sheriff and escheator, steward, coroner, parker, chief forester or sub-forester, was frequently expressed as being ‘at the bishop’s pleasure’.18 Peculiarly, many local offices were also salaried, whereas elsewhere in England, with the exception of the position of knight of the shire, local offices were unpaid. As well as the more obviously palatine estate offices of steward – a post to which there was attached a £40 fee – and chief forester – for which the incumbent was paid just over £6 – several of the officials involved in law enforcement within the bishopric were also salaried. Throughout this period the sheriff and escheator of the bishopric was paid an annual fee of £10, whilst the bishop’s letters patent appointing coroners routinely made reference to the receipt of a customary, but unspecified, fee.19 In this sense, 14 15 16 17 18 19

Saul, Knights and Esquires, pp. 157, 164. DCM, Misc.Chs 7182–3. See the bishop’s concluding remarks. See below, p. 155. Coss, English Gentry, p. 180. DURH 3/30, m. 1d; DURH 3/31, mm. 3d, 12r; DURH 3/32, mm. 8r, 8d; DURH 3/33, mm. 4r, 7r, 16r, 23r, 24r; DURH 3/34, m. 5r; DURH 3/35, mm. 2r, 8r, 19r; DURH 3/36, mm. 11r, 14r. Steward: DURH 20/114/8, DURH 3/33, m. 7r, DUL, CCB B/1/1; chief forester: DURH 3/31, m. 12d, DURH 3/34, m. 5r; sheriff and escheator: DURH 20/1, DCM, 1.5.Pont.6, DURH 3/42, mm.

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it might be volunteered that the entire institutional edifice of the bishopric was underpinned by the operation of patronage: that the relationship between the bishop and his office-holders was characterised by patron-client ties and that far from being partners in palatine government, the office-holders were actually the bishop’s servants, whose reward could be calculated in remunerative gains. It is an important point, but it is only by examining, over the period as a whole, the wide range of offices available within the bishop’s palatine administration, that the dynamics of office-holding can be properly understood. The Stewardship and Chancellorship The structure of local government within Durham was different from other counties inasmuch as the most powerful posts in the bishopric were not the offices of sheriff and justice of the peace, but the stewardship and the chancellorship. The most striking feature of the stewardship and chancellorship of Durham was the frequency with which clerical servants of successive bishops of Durham were appointed to the two offices. It was, as we have seen, a pattern apparent among the stewards of Durham from 1358 to 1379, when three of Thomas Hatfield’s clerks, William Westley, Alan Shitlington and Hugh Westwick, held the stewardship continuously.20 It was also, to some extent, evident in the appointment of Thomas Holden as steward in 1422 upon the death of Sir Ralph Eure: although a layman, Holden was ‘a life-long servant of the bishop’, who had followed Thomas Langley from Lancashire to Durham in 1406 and who had witnessed the appointment of Langley as dean of York at the royal manor of Eltham in 1401, when he was described as literatus.21 Between 1345 and 1437 the post of temporal chancellor, to which were customarily attached the offices of receiver of the exchequer and constable of Durham castle, was held for a total of fifty years by clerical members of the bishop’s familia. From 1345 to 1376, the office was occupied by a continuous sequence of five bishop’s clerks, John Windsor, John Sculthorpe, William Westley, John Kingston and Richard Barnard Castle. Another clerk, Hugh Westwick, was in office on and off between July 1381 and at least early 1382, from at least May 1383 until his replacement by April 1384, and then again from the beginning of Walter Skirlaw’s episcopate in September 1388 until at least April 1390, when he was eventually replaced by yet another clerk, Robert Wycliffe, who remained in post until Walter Skir-

20 21

1r, 4r, 5r; coroner: DURH 3/30, m. 4d, DURH 3/32, mm. 1r, 4d, 10r, 10d. Cf. Saul, Knights and Esquires, pp. 147–8. See above, p. 108. A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses: Lay Society, War, and Politics 1450–1500 (Oxford, 1990), p. 161; R.L. Storey, Thomas Langley and the Bishopric of Durham, 1406–1437 (London, 1961), p. 102; A Calendar of the Register of Richard Scrope, Archbishop of York, 1398–1405, ed. R.N. Swanson, 2 vols (York, 1981–5), Vol. I, p. 6.



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law’s death in 1406 and who acted as one of the bishop’s executors.22 Four of these seven clerks – Westley, Kingston, Barnard Castle and Westwick – also served as dean of the church of Auckland St Andrew, a collegiate institution which had been substantially re-endowed by Bishop Bek in the late thirteenth century, whilst Robert Wycliffe is known to have been rector of the parish of Hutton Rudby on the edge of the Cleveland Hills in the North Riding.23 Only during certain critical periods of military tension, when imminent Scottish invasion threatened the palatinate, did the bishops of Durham prefer laymen to the office of steward, particularly Northumberland landholders. Two men who had specific experience and expertise in military affairs on the Scottish border were Sir Thomas Grey of Heaton, steward of the ­bishopric of Durham between 1347 and 1358, and Thomas’s son, another Sir Thomas, who held the same office from the beginning of Walter Skirlaw’s episcopate in 1388 until January 1392.24 The terms of Sir Thomas Grey’s commission in 1388 are very revealing in this respect, giving particular weight to the military duties which the bishop expected him to perform: as the bishop’s ‘steward of all his demesnes and lands within his bishopric of Durham and the county of Northumberland’, Skirlaw also committed to him ‘the governance and rule of all the bishop’s men and tenants within the aforesaid bishopric and county both in time of war and in time of peace’.25 Given the events of the summer of 1388, in the transitional period between the end of John Fordham’s episcopate and the beginning of Skirlaw’s regime, when the Scots, at least according to the chronicler Froissart, penetrated south of the river Tyne into the bishopric of Durham as far as the gates of the city of Durham, this was definitely a case of closing the stable door after the horse had bolted.26 There were only two laymen in the whole period, William Embleton and William Chancellor, who held the posts of temporal chancellor, receiver and constable. William Chancellor, who served continuously from the death of Bishop Skirlaw in 1406 until the accession of Robert Neville in April 1438, was a Durham esquire and the lord of a small estate, the manor of High Woodifield in the parish of Auckland St Andrew. His income from office dwarfed considerably his landed wealth which only placed him among the 22

23 24

25

26

Westwick: CCR, 1381–5, p. 4; DURH 3/32, mm. 1r, 2r; DURH 3/33, mm. 1r, 2d. Wycliffe: DUL, Mickleton and Spearman MS 2/1, fol. 16r; DURH 3/33, mm. 5r, 6r, 9r, 17r, 27r, 29r, 32r; DRO, D/St/D5/1/101; Test. Ebor., Vol. I, p. 311. K. Emsley and C.M. Fraser, The Courts of the County Palatine of Durham (Durham, 1984), pp. 95–6; Test. Ebor., Vol. I, p. 311. See above, pp. 105–6, and DURH 3/33, mm. 1r, 6r, 7r. There is a biography of the younger Thomas in The House of Commons, 1386–1421, ed. J.S. Roskell, 4 vols (Stroud, 1992), Vol. II, pp. 222–5. DURH 3/33, m. 1r. For the original Latin, see G.T. Lapsley, The County Palatine of Durham: A Study in Constitutional History (London, 1900), p. 79 n. 1. Note that Norhamshire and Islandshire had a separate steward. Grey was given charge of Bedlingtonshire, the third pocket of episcopal demesne in Northumberland. Oeuvres de Jean Froissart, ed. K. de Lettenhove, 15 vols (Brussels, 1867–71), Vol. XIII, pp. 208–10.

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parish gentry of the bishopric.27 In this respect, Chancellor’s appointment maintained a distinctive and traditional feature of office-holding in Durham, namely the relatively weak connection between landed wealth, social standing and the holding of local office. This was an environment in which ‘bishops had no compunction about appointing people of relatively low status to significant offices’.28 In contrast, Embleton, whose income from four manors placed him among the wealthy squirearchy of the bishopric, had the sort of administrative profile characteristic of the English gentry in this period. By 1376, when he was first appointed to the chancellorship, receivership and constableship of Durham, Embleton had held a succession of posts in the bishop’s administration, as a collector of the parish subsidy of 1371, a justice of labourers in 1373, and sheriff and escheator, justice of gaol delivery and justice of the peace in 1374. The chancellorship represented the climax of his career in local government.29 However, Embleton’s political career, which saw him hold all of the key administrative positions in Durham bar the stewardship, was far from typical of the Durham gentry. Instead, there seems to have been an ingrained preference throughout the period for clerical chief ministers of government. Such a preference could provoke tensions within local society between ecclesiastical and secular servants of the bishop, the most notable example of which is the feud between William Embleton and Hugh Westwick. Embleton was replaced as chancellor by the episcopal clerk, Hugh Westwick, during the vacancy created by the death of Bishop Hatfield, only to regain the position by November 1382. By May 1383, Westwick was back in office, but less than a year later, Embleton was in favour, holding the post of chancellor without interruption until the end of Bishop Fordham’s episcopate in 1388, when Westwick returned.30 Westwick was everything that Embleton was not, in terms of both his professional and personal status. In December 1377, on the petition of Westwick, Bishop Hatfield appointed a commission of oyer et terminer to investigate the clerk’s claim that in September of that year Thomas Beauchamp, earl of Warwick and several of the officials of his lordship of Barnard Castle had seized and abducted, vi et armis, two horses, twelve cows and twenty marks belonging to him at Stainton, a mile north of Barnard Castle, where they had also assaulted Westwick’s servants. The justices heard the case at Sadberge, where Westwick appeared in person to claim damages and the earl, through his attorney, asserted that he was not liable because ‘the same Hugh is his neif (nativus suus) belonging to his manor of Gainford and he and all his ancestors were neifs from time out of mind’. Westwick refuted this 27 28 29 30

CPR, 1405–8, p. 175; DURH 3/34, m. 1r; DUL, CCB B/1/1, B/1/2, B/1/3, B/1/4, B/1/5, B/1/6; DURH 3/42, m. 4r. For his Durham IPM, see DURH 3/2, fols 311v–313r. M.L. Holford, ‘The Esh Family: Officeholding and Landed Society in the Palatinate of Durham in the Earlier Fourteenth Century’, NH 43 (2006), pp. 227–8. DCM, 1.4.Reg.7; DURH 3/31, mm. 5r, 6r, 9r; DCM, 1.5.Pont.6r; DUL, Mickleton and Spearman MS 2/1, fol. 15v. DUL, Mickleton and Spearman MS 2/1, fol. 15v; DURH 3/32, mm. 2r, 2d, 6d, 7d, 10r.



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allegation, arguing that he was free and of free condition, and when the case went before a jury, the jurors found in favour of the clerk.31 No such questions could be raised about Embleton’s status: the Embletons had resided at ­Tursdale since at least the early fourteenth century.32 The rapid interchange of the chancellorship between Embleton and Westwick in the 1380s suggests a fractious and personal contest for office, a suspicion confirmed by the appearance in the Durham chancery of the two men, with their groups of guarantors, in early 1391, not long after the conclusion of Westwick’s third spell as chancellor. The guarantors were bound over to the bishop in 500 marks to ensure that both Embleton and Westwick kept the peace towards each other.33 Subsequent peace bonds were negotiated in the chancery, but William Embleton refused to find appropriate security, and in October 1392, Bishop Skirlaw granted William’s younger son, Thomas, along with five other men, a pardon for the murder of Westwick’s brother, John, another clerk, Thomas having been indicted for ambushing the clerk at Tudhoe, two miles to the west of the Embleton residence of Tursdale.34 Given the doubts over Hugh Westwick’s social origins, it is plausible to suggest that William Embleton’s hostility towards the clerk was nurtured by an attitude increasingly characteristic of the governing elite in this period: namely, that men of low birth should not exercise a power to which they were not entitled, lacking inherited wealth and position.35 But, in a Durham context, it is perhaps more significant that Westwick was replaced as chancellor, receiver and constable by another clerk, Robert Wycliffe. One of Thomas Langley’s most notable institutional innovations, to which R.L. Storey drew attention in his biography of the fifteenth-century bishop, was the emergence of the office of the receiver-general, whose holder, certainly upon Sir Ralph Eure’s death in 1422, replaced the steward as the bishop’s principal accounting official, responsible for the oversight of the entire episcopal estate throughout the palatinate, including the whole area north of the river Tyne.36 It was a position which, throughout Langley’s episcopate, was held by a succession of clerks of the bishop’s household.37 It was not so much that the bishops’ freedom of action allowed them to exercise their own patronage and that those who served in the most important of the palatine posts tended to be individuals for whom the ties of patronage to the bishops were personal and binding. Rather, the bishops valued the clerks as

31 32 33 34 35 36 37

DURH 3/31, m. 10r; DURH 13/222, m. 7r. R. Surtees, The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham, 4 vols (London, 1816), Vol. I, p. 76, and Vol. III, p. 55. DURH 3/33, m. 5d. DURH 3/33, mm. 7r, 10r, 10d. S. Walker, The Lancastrian Affinity, 1361–1399 (Oxford, 1990), p. 255. Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 74–81. See above, p. 114.

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a professional class, whose skills and expertise would make for the more efficient administration of their lordship.38 The Shrievalty and Escheatorship In other counties of England the shrievalty remained a position of considerable administrative, judicial and financial importance, despite the subsequent emergence of an array of local offices in the late thirteenth century which had usurped some of the powers originally attached to the office. Notwithstanding the development of the commission of the peace, the sheriff continued to play a major role in law enforcement, presiding over the county court, where civil suits and minor pleas of trespass were heard and official proclamations issued, and executing royal writs for the arrest and imprisonment of offenders of whom he normally had custody.39 Despite the advent of the escheatorship, the sheriff remained the crown’s ‘principal financial agent’ in the localities, responsible for the collection of a significant portion of the king’s revenue accruing from the traditional royal landed rights within his bailiwick, including the profits of justice. And notwithstanding the emergence of commissions of array, the sheriff continued to serve as a ‘local military leader’, with a key role in the organisation of local defence, proclaiming the summons for the array of troops within the county and assisting the commissioners in their assembly. Between the rivers Tyne and Tees there was in practice a single sheriff, even though formal appointments routinely referred to the dual offices of sheriff of the county of Durham and sheriff of the county or wapentake of Sadberge – an area of southern Durham on the north bank of the river Tees – in deference to the incorporation of the latter into the bishopric in the late twelfth century.40 The sheriff of Durham had comparable powers to those associated with the office elsewhere in England. He had financial responsibilities and had to account annually for the issues of his office at the bishop’s exchequer; he had executive powers in the administration of writs issued in the bishop’s name; and he continued to serve a military function, customarily being instructed to arrest and imprison those who refused to cooperate with the commissioners of array and, in 1435 and 1437, actually receiving an appointment as one of the arrayers in each of the four wards of the bishopric as well as in the wapentake of Sadberge.41 But in one respect, the sheriff of Durham exercised greater power, since he also served

38 39

40 41

Cf. C.M. Fraser, A History of Antony Bek, Bishop of Durham, 1283–1311 (Oxford, 1957), p. 104. For this and what follows, see W.A. Morris, ‘The Sheriff ’, The English Government at Work, 1327–1336, II, ed. W.A. Morris and J.R. Strayer (Cambridge, Mass., 1947), pp. 53–73; H.M. Jewell, English Local Administration in the Middle Ages (Newton Abbot, 1972), pp. 182–90. The quotations are from R. Gorski, The Fourteenth-Century Sheriff: English Local Administration in the Late Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2003), p. 3. For example, DURH 3/33, m. 4r. For Sadberge, see above, pp. 26–7. DURH 3/37, m. 11d; DURH 3/36, mm. 13r–14r.



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concurrently as escheator, a position which gave him further administrative responsibility in the maintenance of the bishop’s large landed estate within the bishopric and additional financial powers in the collection of escheats from the bishop’s tenants-in-chief. Who, then, were Durham’s sheriffs and escheators in this period? A useful framework within which to answer this question is provided by the parliamentary agenda sustained by the knights of the shire in the second half of the fourteenth century, which sought to regulate crown appointments to the shrievalty and escheatorship. There were three basic demands: that the sheriffs and escheators should be substantial freeholders; that they should be resident in the county in which they held office; and that they should be replaced annually. This campaign came to a head in the parliament of February 1371, when the parliamentary commons petitioned that the sheriff and escheator should only remain in office for one year and that they should hold £20 of land in the county where they were appointed to office.42 The king gave his assent to the petition and, in the case of the shrievalty, the crown upheld its promise on the issue of the annual rotation of office.43 Viewed individually, the three items on the commons’ agenda each dealt with a slightly separate issue: the request that the sheriff should be a man of substance was a reflection of the personal liability attached to the office, which meant that if a sheriff defaulted on his accounts at the royal exchequer, his debts could be levied upon his own lands; the insistence that the sheriff should hold landed property within his bailiwick was a solution to the problem of absentee ­ sheriffs, whose absence hindered the proper performance of their office; and the desire for the annual replacement of sheriffs was borne of a perception of the connection between long tenure of office and administrative corruption and abuse.44 What linked and in a sense underpinned all three points of reform was not necessarily an articulation of a burgeoning county sentiment or, in Simon Payling’s words, ‘a growing identity of gentry with the shire in which they resided’, but something much more prosaic: a belief that the needs of local government were best served by local landholders, whose very landed stake in the county meant that they were most in tune with local opinion and local conditions, rather than by those appointed to office through the personal favour and political influence of their aristocratic or royal patrons.45 First, contrary to the force of national parliamentary petitions and legislation, in Durham the joint shrievalty and escheatorship was characterised by long tenure. Throughout the period 1345–1437 the average term of office

42 43 44 45

‘Edward III: Parliament of 1371, Text and Translation’, PROME, Vol. V, p. 247. For discussion, see Saul, Knights and Esquires, pp. 110–11. On this latter point, see Gorski, Sheriff, p. 38. Payling, Nottinghamshire, p. 157, citing with approval Saul, Knights and Esquires, pp. 161–3. I prefer the more pragmatic reading of Gorski, Sheriff, pp. 37–8.

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was about four and a half years.46 One of the charges levelled against Thomas Langley in 1433 was that, in 1419, the bishop had appointed a sheriff and escheator of Durham who continuously occupied the office, in contravention of royal statutes and to the emasculation of the crown.47 But among the bishops of Durham Langley was not alone in this respect. In contrast to other English counties, the parliamentary legislation of 1371 made no discernible impact upon the length of office within the bishopric. From 1345 to 1371, the average length of office was just under four and a half years, more than double the national average in the same period.48 After 1371, it was precisely the same, and the two longest serving sheriffs in the period were from the first quarter of the fifteenth century, Percival Lindley and Robert Eure, who held the office for nine and sixteen years respectively. This pattern of tenure becomes more explicable when it is remembered that appointments were made entirely at the bishop’s pleasure, an arrangement which inevitably worked against the annual rotation of sheriffs. Secondly, contrary to the weight of local opinion articulated in parliament, the evidence of episcopal appointments in Durham suggests that successive bishops felt no compulsion to appoint men of substance to the office of sheriff/escheator. In terms of the social status of the office-holders, there was a definite change over the period, with an increasing preference given to men of knightly status. In the first half of the fourteenth century only one of the fifteen sheriffs of Durham was a knight, whereas half of the twenty men appointed to the shrievalty in the period 1345–1436 were knights, a proportion comparable to that which has been found elsewhere in England.49 But none of the first four sheriffs of Bishop Hatfield’s episcopate was a knight, and even in the last quarter of the fourteenth century there were some curious appointments, most notably that of John Hindley in January 1377.50 Hindley, who held the shrievalty for over two years until the end of August 1379, was a sub-manorial landholder from south-west Durham who, along with a small group of local free tenants, had witnessed Sir William Bowes’s settlement of his manor of Streatlam at the end of 1371 before Bowes’s departure to France. Hindley’s wife, Joan, had already been married twice before: to William Sockburn of West Auckland and then to Geoffrey Headlam of Stainton in the parish of Gainford, both of whom were of sub-gentry status. Hindley was probably a local man of law, since he was a coroner and attorney

46

47 48 49 50

This figure includes the seven months which William Blakeston served as Richard Bury’s sheriff prior to his reappointment by Bishop Hatfield in the summer of 1345. William Embleton and Sir Robert Layton each served for two separate periods, but I have calculated their total length of office. Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 248–9. Gorski, Sheriff, p. 38. Holford, ‘Esh Family’, p. 233; Saul, Knights and Esquires, p. 117; Carpenter, Locality and Polity, pp. 266, 268. For this and what follows, see DURH 3/31, m. 9r; DURH 3/2, fols 91v, 97r–v, 98v–99r; DCL, Randall MS 3, p. 233; DRO, D/St/D1/2/10; DCM, Bursar’s Rolls, 1366–7, 1373–7, 1378–9.



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of Durham priory from the later 1360s until the end of the 1370s, but his social status is uncertain. Meanwhile, a significant number of Durham sheriffs throughout the period could not be described as local landholders. These ranged from men of fairly humble, probably sub-gentry status such as John Burland, sheriff and escheator of Durham between the summers of 1356 and 1358, who was almost certainly from the East Riding, to knights such as Sir Robert Layton of Barton in Richmondshire, sheriff and escheator during two periods of office, between March 1382 and January 1386, and October 1395 and October 1397.51 Even though Layton was removed from his office of coroner in Yorkshire on the grounds that ‘the king has learned by credible witness that he dwells more in the bishopric of Durham than in Yorkshire, so that he has not time to exercise the office of coroner there’, this discharge only occurred in 1392 and was a consequence, not a cause, of his appointment to the Durham shrievalty.52 Percival Lindley, who held office from August 1406 until June 1415, was also from Yorkshire, probably the West Riding.53 Prior to his appointment as sheriff of Durham, Lindley had married the widow of Sir William Washington, through whom he pursued an unsuccessful claim to the manor of Washington, and a good indication of his lack of an established residence within the bishopric is the bishop’s grant, in September 1410, of a licence for Lindley, his wife and family to have an oratory ‘at any place within the diocese of Durham’.54 Less than a year later, Lindley had taken possession of a property in the bishopric, but the one messuage and 100 acres of arable at Fulforth, three miles north west of the city of Durham, was little more than a large peasant holding.55 The result was that the office of sheriff did not fit into any obvious administrative cursus within the bishopric of Durham, such as has been identified in other counties. To seven of the twenty sheriffs – Sir William Claxton (d. 1379), William Menville, Sir Robert Umfraville, Sir William Bowes (d. 1399), Sir Robert Layton, Sir Robert Conyers and Robert Eure – appointment to the shrievalty was not so much the pinnacle of their career in local government in Durham as the beginning. Sir William Claxton, a Durham knight who had succeeded John Burland as sheriff by July 1358 and who remained in office until at least early 1363, only held two other formal commissions from the bishop and these were in the extraordinary circumstances created by Edward III’s imposition of the parish subsidy of 1371 in the palatinate of Durham.56 To 51

52 53

54 55 56

In the cases of Burland and Layton, these are the known dates. Their formal letters of appointment and replacement have not survived. Burland: DURH 3/2, fols 54v, 55r, 57v; Layton: Greenwell Deeds, p. 112, DURH 3/2, fols 125v, 127r, 155v, DURH 3/33, m. 19r. CCR, 1392–6, p. 25. Lindley: DURH 3/34, m. 1r, DURH 3/35, m. 8r. Lindley is in the West Riding close to Otley, where Percival Lindley witnessed deeds in the late fourteenth century: Yorkshire Deeds, Vol. IX, p. 81. DURH 3/33, mm. 26r, 27d; Thomas Langley, Vol. I, p. 117. DURH 3/2, fol. 175r–v. DURH 3/2, fols 60r, 70v–71r; DCM, 1.4.Reg.7; DURH 3/31, m. 5r.

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THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

William Menville, whose substantial estates on the east coast of the bishopric qualified him for knighthood, the office of sheriff, which he occupied from at least March 1364, was also his first post within the palatine administration and only towards the end of his shrievalty, in 1371, did he hold any other formal commission.57 The notable exception to this pattern was William Embleton, who held the shrievalty on two occasions, in the mid 1370s and in the mid 1390s, after first serving in a wide range of administrative, financial and judicial offices.58 But Embleton’s career path was, as we have seen, unique at this time in the bishopric, and it says much for the notion of a cursus honorum involving the shrievalty and the Durham landed elite that Embleton’s replacement as sheriff, in January 1377, was one John Hindley, a sub-manorial landholder from south-west Durham.59 To what, then, did the sheriffs and escheators of Durham owe their appointment? The principal factor was the exercise of aristocratic patronage. The identity of the Durham sheriffs and escheators presents a striking picture of local lordship operating without constraint or competition from either the crown or the local community. The appointment of a succession of North Riding men to the joint shrievalty and escheatorship between the early 1380s and early fifteenth century betrays the growing influence of the Nevilles of Raby and Brancepeth. It follows the changes in the character of the episcopal affinity which accompanied John Fordham’s arrival in Durham in 1381.60 Bishop Fordham’s first appointment to the shrievalty and escheatorship was Sir Robert Layton, who continued in post until the spring of 1386, when he was replaced by Sir William Bowes, lord of Streatlam.61 Bowes was one of John Neville’s ‘well-wishers’, who was formally retained by the bishop to be of his counsel ‘for peace and war’ (pro pace et guerra) in 1385–6.62 Bowes was at least a Durham man. Layton was from Richmondshire. His only previous administrative experience had been in the North Riding, where he served as a collector of the 1379 poll tax.63 He was the founder of a cadet branch of the Laytons of East Layton in Richmondshire and lord of the manor of Barton on the southern bank of the river Tees from the mid fourteenth century. He was a retainer of John Neville, serving in the 1380s as a regular witness to property transactions on Neville’s behalf.64 The only property he held in the bishopric consisted of the custody of the manor of Fulthorpe during the minority of its lord, which he shared with another Neville retainer

57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

DURH 3/2, fols 71r, 88r-v; DURH 3/31, m. 3d. Sheriff: 1374–7 (DURH 3/2, fol. 92r–v; DCM, 1.5.Pont.6r; DURH 3/31, m. 9r) and 1394–5 (DURH 3/2, fols 121v, 123r–v). See above, pp. 134–5. See above, pp. 111–13. DURH 3/2, fols 150r–v, 155v; DURH 3/32, m. 8d. Above, p. 112, and HS, Appendix, p. 267. CFR, 1377–83, p. 148. VCH North Riding, Vol. I, pp. 131, 151–2; DRO, D/Lo/D 432–4; E 327/279; DCM, Misc.Chs 2124, 6254; DCM, 6.1.Elemos.18.



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from the North Riding, Sir John Burgh.65 John Neville’s personal patronage was critical to Layton’s landed fortunes in Durham: the men who stood as surety for the 1379 grant of the Fulthorpe estate were also members of the Neville affinity, Walter Hawick and William Blakeston.66 To Layton, who in his native Yorkshire held the offices of tax collector and coroner, relatively minor positions in shire administration, there can be little doubt that the Durham shrievalty was a considerably higher step on the cursus honorum of local office, and it is no wonder that he chose to spend more time in the bishopric even after his term of office came to an end.67 Sir Thomas Boynton, sheriff and escheator of Durham from November 1391 until the spring of 1394,68 was another who was part of the inner circle of Ralph Neville’s affinity. Boynton was from Acklam in Cleveland, where his main properties were situated and indeed where he was buried.69 Among the co-owners of Boynton’s estate of Plawsworth in the parish of Chester-le-Street were Gilbert Elvet and John Hutton of Tudhoe, two of Ralph’s closest associates within the bishopric.70 To Boynton, whose father had served regularly on commissions of the peace and of array in the North Riding from the late 1370s, but who himself had held no such formal office, the Durham shrievalty must have been a source of prestige.71 His wife, Margaret, was the sister of another member of the Cleveland gentry, Sir Robert Conyers of Ormesby, whose son and heir, another Sir Robert, was also a sheriff of Durham.72 On 18 January 1401 Sir Robert Conyers of Ormesby replaced Thomas Claxton, constable of Brancepeth castle and probably Ralph Neville’s receiver-general.73 Conyers held the office of sheriff of Durham for the remainder of Bishop Skirlaw’s episcopate.74 He was the lord of the manor of Coatham Stob in the Tees valley, but his principal estates, including Ormesby and Upsall, were on the other side of the river Tees, and it was in the North Riding that he served frequently as a justice of the peace and a commissioner of array.75 He had not held office of any sort within the bishop’s administration prior to his appointment as sheriff of Durham. Indeed, this was his first formal position in local government anywhere, in contrast to his father, who had acted repeatedly as a tax collector and commissioner of array in the North Riding.76 After the 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

76

DURH 3/32, fol. 8r. DURH 3/2, fol. 90r–v. See above, p. 135. DURH 3/33, m. 7r; DURH 3/2, fol. 146v. Test. Ebor., Vol. I, pp. 286–7; Yorkshire Deeds, Vol. I, p. 99. HS, p. 84; DURH 3/2, fols 164v–165r, 196r–197r. CPR, 1377–81, pp. 359, 472; CPR, 1385–9, pp. 81, 82; CPR, 1388–92, pp. 137, 343. DURH 3/2, fols 164v–165r. See above, p. 93. DURH 3/33, m. 24r. DURH 3/2, fol. 112v; DRO, D/X 209/3, D/X 1197/1–2; CPR, 1405–8, pp. 499–500; CPR, 1408– 13, pp. 224, 487; CPR, 1413–16, p. 407. See also CPR, 1401–5, pp. 284, 506, and S. Walker, ‘Yorkshire Justices of the Peace, 1389–1413’, EHR 108 (1993), pp. 300, 305. CFR, 1369–77, pp. 111, 229, 268; CPR, 1377–81, p. 359; CFR, 1383–91, p. 70; CPR, 1385–9, p. 475.

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conclusion of his tenure of the shrievalty in Durham, Conyers returned to the North Riding to hold a wide range of administrative offices. But the influence of the Nevilles should not be exaggerated. In the episcopate of Thomas Hatfield the list of Durham sheriffs and escheators was dominated by episcopal servants. Robert Bowes, who succeeded William Mordon as sheriff in June 1350 and who continued in office until mid 1356,77 was in many ways precisely the sort of local man of substance whom the parliamentary commons had in mind as a suitable candidate for the shrievalty when they petitioned the crown on the subject regularly in the course of the fourteenth century. Bowes was not a knight, but his landed income from his six manors in south-west Durham meant that he qualified very comfortably for knighthood. He also had some prior experience within the bishop’s palatine administration, having served as a commissioner of array in 1343 in the ward of Darlington, where almost all of his properties were located.78 But critical to his appointment as sheriff of Durham were also his close ties to Thomas Hatfield, counting as he did among the ranks of the bishop’s household retainers (valetti), an association which Bowes called upon successfully in 1347 when he implored the bishop to grant a pardon to one of Bowes’s neighbours for certain unspecified homicides, felonies and robberies.79 The relationship with Bishop Hatfield of John Burland, Bowes’s successor in the shrievalty, was perhaps even more intimate. He had no roots at all in the bishopric, save a connection with the bishop resulting from the bishop’s possession of the East Riding manor of Howden: Burland was in the parish of Eastrington, two miles north east of Howden, where the bishop had an impressive residence. He too was one of the bishop’s valetti, but unlike Bowes, who already had a well-established landed stake in the bishopric, Burland was a dependant of the bishop, who benefited from a considerable amount of episcopal patronage prior to his elevation to the shrievalty. In 1352 Hatfield granted him – as a reward for his past and future service – the escheated estate of one of his tenants-in-chief outlawed for felony, and a year later Burland received the wardship of a series of properties in the bishopric which had escheated to the bishop on the occasion of several minorities.80 The main quality which Burland brought to the shrievalty was a tie of unquestionable personal loyalty to his lord, the bishop. Towards the end of the period, the operation of episcopal patronage also resulted in the appointment of Robert Eure, Esq., the second son of Sir Ralph Eure of Witton le Wear, who occupied the office of sheriff of Durham without interruption from January 1420 to May 1436, having never held any other formal office within Durham before his commission.81 In January 1432, when Langley

77 78 79 80 81

DURH 3/2, fols 47v, 53r. RPD, Vol. IV, p. 271. DURH 3/30, m. 2d. DCM, Reg. II, fol. 143r; DURH 3/30, m. 9d. DURH 3/35, m. 19r; DURH 3/36, m. 11r.



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issued a licence to Robert to crenellate his manor of Bradley in the western parish of Wolsingham, Robert was described explicitly as the bishop’s esquire (dilectus armiger noster).82 The ties of patronage were no obstacle to the collection of rents and the enforcement of judicial rights on behalf of the bishop. Sir William Claxton, Robert Eure’s immediate predecessor and the principal Durham retainer of Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland, found this to his cost in the late 1410s. Claxton was forced to take shelter at his manor of Dilston, outside the bishopric, to avoid the unwanted attentions of the bishop’s ministers and auditors, whom, he complained, ‘calles me dayly to accompt of the tyme that I was your shiref within your Counte of Durham supposant to vex me’.83 Claxton claimed to be too sick to travel to appear before the bishop’s exchequer and ended his letter archly with a note that his letter was written ‘at Dilston in Northumberland’, where the bishop’s officials had no authority. Langley coldly informed Claxton’s messenger that he could not grant the respite in his accounts which he requested since it would be to his prejudice, and offered the far from generous concession that, if he should come to Durham and be found to be in arrears, he would at least avoid imprisonment by being bound over in the bishop’s chancery to render his debts at a future date. The demands of the bishop’s seigneurial administration meant that the sheriffs and escheators of Durham were answerable only to the bishop rather than the local community. In contrast to other counties in England, very few of the knights and esquires of the bishopric had the opportunity to serve in this major office of local government. The Commission of the Peace One of the most important developments in English local government in this period was the appearance in each county, after a period of judicial experimentation and political vacillation, of the permanent commission of the peace, whose members were empowered to determine as well as hear indictments for felonies and trespasses in courts which, from 1362, were to be held at least four times a year. The composition and power of the peace commission were the subject of parliamentary debate and, though recent scholarship has tended to place greater emphasis upon the crown’s role and initiative in finding a solution to what was perceived to be growing lawlessness in the first half of the fourteenth century, it would be unwise to minimise the participation of the parliamentary commons in the political process.84 If the qualifications for the shrievalty and escheatorship were the source of repeated parliamentary petitions in the course of Edward III’s reign, it was the peace commission which attracted the considerable attention and frequently the 82 83 84

DURH 3/36, m. 5r. DCM, Misc.Ch. 7184. See also Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 84–5. Here I agree with Coss, English Gentry, pp. 181–5.

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ire of the representatives of the English counties among the parliamentary commons, who sought growing involvement in the formal mechanisms of local justice. The compromise solution to these competing demands saw the emergence of a devolved system of royal justice in the form of a series of county peace commissions which were linked, practically from their inception, to the operation of the six nation-wide itinerant circuits of royal assize and gaol delivery justices.85 From the 1330s, these assize justices, staffed by judges and serjeants of the central law courts at Westminster, travelled twiceyearly to the counties to take care of a range of civil and criminal pleas. These justices were also empowered to deliver the gaols of the prisoners detained on indictments for felony within their circuits. When the peace commission took shape in the mid fourteenth century, the JPs were only allowed to hear and determine criminal offences in the presence of professionals learned in the law who constituted the quorum. From 1350, the crown appointed assize justices to the quorum of each commission of the peace within their circuit. To this quorum of assize justices was added, from 1394, two local men of law of the county.86 At the same time, the assize justices, in their capacity as justices of gaol delivery, frequently handled the cases of prisoners held in the county gaols who had first been indicted for offences before the county bench in joint sessions of assize and of the peace, particularly in relation to serious cases of felony, which were increasingly referred to the assize justices for determination.87 This, then, is the national picture: of self-government at the king’s command, of the devolution of justice under royal supervision and regulation. In some respects, in its judicial structure, the bishopric of Durham was a microcosm of these national developments. Durham was not formally part of the northern assize circuit, but it did have its own justices of assize who met at Durham and Sadberge three times a year, generally in September, January and April, and who dealt with the same mixture of criminal and civil business as elsewhere: pleas of debt, trespass and disputed title, but also criminal offences such as assault, arson and grand larceny, which in Durham were said to be infringements of the bishop’s peace.88 The Durham justices of assize were also charged with gaol delivery, that is, of hearing and determining the cases of suspects imprisoned in the bishop’s gaols at Durham and Sadberge. When separate commissions of gaol delivery were very occasionally issued in the bishopric, as indeed they were in 1371 and 1374, they contained explicit instructions that they were not to try the cases of those indicted for manslaughter or murder, serious felonies which were 85 86 87 88

E. Powell, ‘The Administration of Criminal Justice in Late-Medieval England: Peace Sessions and Assizes’, The Political Context of Law, ed. R. Eales and D. Sullivan (London, 1987), pp. 49–59. E. Powell, Kingship, Law, and Society: Criminal Justice in the Reign of Henry V (Oxford, 1989), pp. 57–8. P.C. Maddern, Violence and Social Order: East Anglia, 1422–1442 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 54–61; Walker, ‘Yorkshire Justices’, p. 290. See, for example, DURH 13/222–5.



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reserved for the assize justices. In March 1377, for example, Bishop Hatfield appointed his justices of assize to deliver from the bishop’s gaol of Sadberge all of the bishop’s prisoners detained there for whatever cause, only saving to the bishop the customary fines and amercements.89 Just like in the rest of England, the commission of the peace, when it arrived in the bishopric in the 1370s, was grafted on to this formal system of peacekeeping: all of the ten commissions issued between 1373 and 1427 contained at least one active justice of assize for Durham and Sadberge: four of the nine JPs in 1373, two of the six JPs in 1374, four of the seven in 1376–7, four of the nine in 1381–2, one of the five in 1383, four of the ten in 1410, one of the seven in 1417, three of the eleven in 1422, four of the twelve in 1423 and four of the fourteen in 1427.90 In a couple of instances it is also easy to see how, just as in the rest of England, the assize justices dovetailed precisely into the peace commissions. In 1422 the three assize justices commissioned as JPs on 20 May – two of whom made up the quorum for felonies and trespasses – had actually been appointed to hear all assizes on their circuit at Durham and Sadberge six weeks earlier, on 4 April.91 In 1423 four of the twelve JPs appointed to the Durham bench on 10 March – three of whom formed the quorum – were commissioned as assize justices two days later, on 12 March.92 The timing suggests that there were joint commissions of assize and of the peace, such as operated outside of the bishopric. Such similarities masked the more considerable differences in the Durham commissions of the peace, differences which become more apparent when we consider who was appointed to the bench in the bishopric and why. Crucially, the Durham commissions were not issued in line with general commissions of the peace appointed for the country as a whole. Appointments were made consistently in the light of local circumstances and local needs: commissions were issued sporadically to deal with local problems as and when they arose, and their composition reflected the nature of these concerns. The first peace commission to operate within the bishopric was not appointed in fact until 1373, and even then it was not strictly a commission of the peace, but a commission to enforce the national labour laws regarding prices and wages in the form of the ordinance of labourers of 1349 and the statute of labourers of 1351. The 1373 Durham commission recalled a period of experimentation on the part of the crown between 1352 and 1359, when responsibility for the enforcement of the labour legislation in the rest of England had been given not to peace commissions, but to separate commissions for labourers.93 In fact, Bishop Hatfield appointed two commissions in 1373, though the same 89 90

91 92 93

DURH 3/31, mm. 3d, 6r, 9r. See also DURH 3/34, m. 10r. DURH 3/31, mm. 5r, 6r, 9r; DURH 3/32, m. 4d; DURH 3/34, m. 7r; DURH 3/35, m. 11r; DURH 3/38, mm. 8r, 16r. Note that I have counted the two commissions in 1373 only once, since in practice they were occupied by the same people. DURH 3/38, m. 7r. DURH 3/38, m. 8r. Powell, ‘Criminal Justice’, p. 52.

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men were appointed to both.94 The first was assigned to deal with the servants, labourers and craftsmen within the bishop’s liberty of Durham who had evaded and broken the terms of the statute of labourers governing wage limits. The second was a response to the problem of high prices and, in particular, a complaint that those in the victualling trades within the liberty of Durham, notably butchers, fishmongers, hostelers and vintners, sold their produce not at a reasonable price, but for gain, contrary to the ordinance of labourers. It was in the early 1370s that a series of economic factors combined to make this a particularly difficult period for landholders between the Tyne and the Tees after two decades of economic growth following the Black Death. On top of steadily rising wages from 1349, brought about by a decline in population, the early 1370s saw a dramatic decrease in grain production, almost certainly the consequence of extremely poor harvests.95 The rising cost of labour coupled with the falling profit of production would have made landholders, in their capacity as consumers, especially sensitive in this period to new surges in the prices of certain foodstuffs. The preface to the two Durham commissions of 1373 is extremely important in this respect and should not be dismissed as empty rhetoric.96 Both made it clear that, in issuing the commissions, Bishop Hatfield was reacting to and acting upon the collective will of his subjects between the Tyne and the Tees. The commission to impose the national wage legislation was predicated on the bishop’s understanding that certain men of his liberty of Durham were ‘committing against the bishop and others of the said liberty … intolerable damages within the aforesaid liberty against the form of the aforesaid statute in contempt and damage of the whole people of the bishop’s aforesaid liberty’. More emphatically, the commission to deal with rising prices was, according to the letters patent issued from the bishop’s chancery, a consequence of the vociferous complaint which he had received from the people of his liberty of Durham (ex clamosa querela populi libertatis nostre Dunelmensis). Price increases were, Bishop Hatfield declared, ‘to the loss and impoverishment of the people’ of his liberty, and the bishop made clear his intention to take care (prospicere) of his people. Much is known about the nature of the bishop of Durham’s response on his own estates to the economic change brought about by the Black Death, but the vigorous ‘feudal reaction’ of this major landlord was conducted not on the basis of national labour laws, but through his extensive seigneurial authority exercised in his halmote court, which, as a recent study has shown, was no ordinary manorial court.97 When justices of labourers were appointed in Durham in the early 1370s, they were commissioned in 94 95 96 97

DURH 3/31, m. 5r. For the general economic picture, see B. Dodds, Peasants and Production in the Medieval NorthEast: The Evidence from Tithes, 1270–1536 (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 73–81. For the following, see DURH 3/31, m. 5r. R.H. Britnell, ‘Feudal Reaction after the Black Death in the Palatinate of Durham’, P&P 128 (1990), pp. 28–47; P.L. Larson, ‘Local Law Courts in Late Medieval Durham’, North-East



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response to the force of local public opinion and a particular combination of local economic conditions.98 But if local needs determined the appointment of the 1373 commissions, local gentry did not feature prominently among the nine justices. The 1373 bench was dominated by lawyers and the bishop’s chief ministers, who had an ex officio presence on the commissions. The professional careers of John Mowbray and Sir Thomas Ingleby followed a very similar trajectory. Both were retained by Durham priory from the mid 1340s for their legal counsel; both served regularly on a range of royal judicial commissions in the northern counties of England in the course of the 1350s, frequently together; and both thereafter combined crown office as a royal justice of assize with continuous employment on the bishop of Durham’s behalf, which in the case of Ingleby, involved service as Bishop Hatfield’s chief justice.99 Ingleby had the stronger connection to Durham in the sense that he held land just north of the river Tees, including a fairly substantial estate at Hurworth on Tees, but it was insignificant compared to the four manors in the North Riding which he acquired from the profits of the legal profession, one of which, Ripley near Knaresborough, would become the ancestral home of the family.100 Ingleby’s legal expertise was shared by another member of the Durham bench in 1373, Sir Roger Fulthorpe. Lord of Tunstall in the south-east corner of Durham and the head of one of the small number of greater knightly families of the bishopric, Fulthorpe was, more importantly, a professional justice, who was equally at home in the law courts of Westminster and Durham. Retained by Durham priory from 1353, he was a royal assize justice of the northern circuit from 1368, in which capacity he acted frequently as a JP in the northern counties throughout the 1370s, rising to become a royal justice of common bench at Westminster in 1374, at precisely the same time that he was developing a judicial career in the bishop’s administration, serving as a Durham justice of assize from 1370 and replacing Ingleby as Bishop Hatfield’s chief justice in December 1380 on the former’s death.101 Three of the remaining six members of the 1373 commissions were ex officio appointments: Alan England in the Later Middle Ages, ed. C.D. Liddy and R.H. Britnell (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 97–109. 98 For evidence of the enforcement of the statute of labourers in the bishopric in the 1370s, see DURH 3/31, m. 11r. 99 Mowbray: DCM, Misc.Ch. 4586, Bursar’s Roll, 1371–3; CPR, 1354–8, pp. 59–62, 123, 226, 237, 291, 331, 388, 389, 392; CPR, 1358–61, pp. 70, 109; CPR, 1361–4, p. 530; CPR, 1364–7, p. 200; CPR, 1367–70, p. 193; DURH 3/30, mm. 12r, 13d; DURH 3/31, mm. 2d, 3r, 3d, 4r, 4d. Ingleby: DCM, Bursar’s Rolls (A), 1347–8, 1379–80; CPR, 1354–8, pp. 237, 296, 392; CPR, 1361–4, p. 530; CPR, 1364–7, p. 200; CPR, 1367–70, p. 193; CPR, 1374–7, pp. 140, 491; CPR, 1377–81, pp. 45–9, 301; DURH 3/30, m. 13d; DURH 3/31, mm. 2d, 3–6, 7r, 9, 10r, 11r, 14r. For their role as royal assize circuit justices, see Powell, ‘Criminal Justice’, pp. 58–9. 100 DURH 3/2, fol. 106r-v; The Parliamentary Representation of the County of Yorkshire, 1258–1832, ed. A. Gooder, 2 vols (YASRS 91–6, 1935–7), Vol. I, pp. 100–2. 101 DCM, Misc.Ch. 3518, Bursar’s Roll, 1386–7; Powell, ‘Criminal Justice’, p. 59; CPR, 1367–70, pp. 193–4; CPR, 1370–4, pp. 194, 304; CPR, 1374–7, pp. 45, 136–9, 314, 330–1; DURH 3/31, mm. 3, 4d, 5r, 6, 7r, 9, 10r, 11r, 12d, 14.

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Shitlington and Richard Barnard Castle, both clerks, were Hatfield’s steward and temporal chancellor respectively, whilst Sir Robert Umfraville held the offices of sheriff and escheator of Durham conjointly at the time of his appointment to the bench.102 The subsequent Durham commissions of the peace in the period covered by this book were also characterised by an exceptionally professionalised cadre of legal officials and administrators, whose professional qualifications made them an appropriate choice for a place on the bench. The December 1374 commission was composed of the sheriff and escheator of Durham and Sadberge, as well as lawyers with training and expertise in the Westminster courts and with some practical legal experience in the local palatine courts, and two purely local men of law, John Elvet and Thomas Hartlepool.103 The 1376–7 peace commission included two ex officio appointments:104 William Embleton, Bishop Hatfield’s temporal chancellor, and Hugh Westwick, Bishop Hatfield’s clerk but also his steward, who was one of his most trusted administrators at the time of his appointment as a JP, acting as Hatfield’s personal representative in his dealings at Westminster with Edward III’s chancellor.105 The remaining JPs included two professional lawyers who practised both at Westminster and at Durham, Ingleby and Fulthorpe, and two local men of law, John Elvet and John Hindley.106 Notwithstanding John Neville’s position at the head of the Durham peace commission,107 the vast majority of those appointed to the Durham bench in 1381–2 again qualified for office not by virtue of their landed resources or as a consequence of aristocratic assistance, but on the basis of their administrative and judicial skills. Sir William Bowes, a new addition to the Durham bench drawn from the greater knightly class of the bishopric, was also the sheriff and escheator of Durham at the time of his appointment; Hugh Westwick was Fordham’s temporal chancellor; and Sir John Heron, who was one of the quorum for felonies, was a Northumbrian knight with a single manorial estate south of the river Tyne, whose commission in 1381–2 was also ex officio in respect of his office as steward of Durham.108 The other two members of the quorum were lawyers with vast experience in the law courts of northern England. They included John Preston, who hailed from the north west, who held a succession of crown offices in the West Riding, Cumberland and Westmorland from the late 1370s

102 103

104 105 106 107 108

Shitlington: DURH 3/31, m. 4d; Barnard Castle: DUL, Mickleton and Spearman MS 2/1, fol. 15v; Umfraville: DURH 3/31, m. 3d. For the commission, see DURH 3/31, m. 6r. For Elvet, see DCM, Bursar’s Rolls (A), 1349–50, 1376; DCM, Reg. II, fol. 159v; DURH 3/31, mm. 3d, 6r, 11r, 11d. For Hartlepool, see DURH 3/31, m. 6r; DURH 3/32, m. 1d; DURH 3/32, mm. 2r, 3d. DURH 3/31, m. 9r. DURH 3/31, m. 10r; SC 1/40/198. See also above, pp. 130–1. For Hindley, see above, pp. 134–5. DURH 3/32, m. 1d. For Heron, see above, pp. 105–7.



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and who rose to become an assize justice on the northern circuit in 1411.109 Filling out the Durham commission were three local men of law. Similarly, more than half of the October 1383 commission of the peace consisted of ex officio appointments, including the two men who headed the list of JPs, Sir Ralph Eure and Sir Robert Layton.110 The opportunities for the local gentry to hold a position on the Durham bench by virtue of their status within local society were strictly limited. When the next commission of the peace was appointed in Durham in April 1410,111 the man chosen to act as one of the quorum, whose presence was therefore necessary for the determination of all offences, was the major lay magnate in the bishopric, Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland. From Neville’s point of view, a position among the quorate as ‘the chief keeper of the bishop’s peace’ (capitalis custos pacis nostre) allowed him to maintain a watchful eye on the activity of the peace commission to protect his own interests.112 When a new peace commission was appointed for the whole bishopric in May 1422,113 the bench was headed by Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland, and Richard Neville, his favoured son by his second wife. Richard had only come of age in 1421, so a place on the Durham bench was very much part of a wider ambition to consolidate his position within the north of England. Eight days after his appointment as a JP in Durham, Richard was added to the North Riding peace commission alongside his father for the first time, from which point he consistently received a commission to the benches north and south of the river Tees.114 The March 1423 peace commission in Durham included both Ralph and Richard Neville, whilst the September 1427 bench, in the absence of his father – who had died in October 1425 – was headed by Richard.115 But it would be a mistake to see the peace commissions in Thomas Langley’s episcopate simply as an adjunct and conduit of Neville power. A more striking feature of the 1410 commission – and the ones that followed in Bishop Langley’s reign – was not so much the high level of aristocratic participation but the dominance of an enlarged quorum comprising lawyers and officials drawn from the bishop’s administration. They were consistently a major and occasionally principal presence: seven of the ten JPs in 1410; four of the eleven JPs in 1422; five of the twelve in 1423; and five of the 109

110 111 112 113 114 115

CPR, 1377–81, pp. 47, 515; CPR, 1381–5, pp. 140, 245, 253; CPR, 1388–92, pp. 137, 343; CPR, 1391–6, p. 292; Walker, ‘Yorkshire Justices’, p. 289 n. 3. For Preston’s career as a justice of the bishop, see DURH 20/114/8; HS, Appendix, p. 267. DURH 3/32, m. 4d. DURH 3/34, m. 7r. See, for example, DURH 3/34, m. 10r (1413), where the man summoned before the JPs and later pardoned by Bishop Langley for outlawry was one of Neville’s own tenants. DURH 3/38, m. 8r. There was a peace commission in the intervening period, but this was specifically for Sadberge: DURH 3/35, m. 11r. CPR, 1416–22, pp. 462–3; CPR, 1422–9, p. 572; CPR, 1429–36, pp. 627–8; CPR, 1436–41, pp. 593–4; DURH 3/38, mm. 8r, 16r; DURH 3/36, mm. 7r, 11r; DURH 3/42, mm. 4r, 8r, 15r. DURH 3/38, mm. 8r, 16r.

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fourteen in 1427. The quorum in 1410 included, in addition to the first earl of Westmorland, Sir Ralph Eure, Langley’s steward, and William Chancellor, simultaneously chancellor, constable and receiver of Durham, posts he had held concurrently from 1406. The remaining members of the quorum were Richard Norton of Norton Conyers in the North Riding, Bishop Langley’s chief justice and a lawyer active in the courts at Durham and Westminster in the early fifteenth century; Bishop Langley’s secondary justice, John Conyers, lord of Hornby in the North Riding; Bishop Langley’s serjeant-at-law, William Lambard, another North Riding landholder from the Cleveland area; and Robert Wycliffe, a clerk who had served in the joint offices of temporal chancellor, constable of Durham castle and receiver of Durham from at least 1391 until the end of Skirlaw’s episcopate and who had an enormous amount of experience in the local palatine courts as a justice of assize from the early 1390s.116 Of the three non-quorum members of the peace commission, one was also a lawyer, who earned his living in the palatine courts of assize and chancery as a local attorney.117 The quorum in May 1422 comprised Richard Buckley, one of Bishop Langley’s household clerks, as well as three ex officio appointments: William Chancellor, the bishop’s temporal chancellor; John Aislaby, a Durham lawyer in receipt of an annual fee from the priory from 1418 and the bishop’s attorney general;118 and James Strangways, the bishop’s chief justice. The March 1423 peace commission was only issued to accommodate the addition of Bishop Langley’s new steward, Thomas Holden, an ex officio member of the quorum. And the September 1427 commission of the peace – although it was the largest yet in the bishopric – contained a quorum all of whom had served before. This was a quorum dominated by lawyers and other palatine professionals who also counted among Neville’s principal advisers.119 But their inclusion on the peace commissions was not determined by the interests of Ralph Neville. The Durham bench was not politicised in this way. These lawyers and administrators were as much the bishop’s men as Neville’s. Their appointment undoubtedly owed much to the close relations between Langley and Neville and the inter-flow between their affinities,120 but it was also the product of a more characteristic feature of major local office in Durham, namely the existence of a highly professionalised service. Bishop Langley used his powers of patronage to employ a class of professionals who necessarily worked across the boundaries of overlapping affinities. Analysis of the composition of the Durham commissions of the peace between the 1370s and 1420s certainly reveals the continuing influence of

116 117 118 119 120

For Wycliffe’s legal experience, see DURH 13/223–5. DURH 13/222, m. 8r; DURH 13/235, m. 1r; DURH 3/33, m. 27d. For Aislaby’s employment by Durham priory, see DCM, Bursar’s Rolls, 1418–19, 1434–5. See above, p. 115. See above, pp. 115–16.



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the workings of lordship upon the bench. Indubitably, the Durham peace commissions expanded in size over the period,121 but opportunities for the local gentry did not increase correspondingly. A place on the Durham bench was essentially a top-down appointment. The participation of the Durham gentry was minimal, and those who were appointed as justices of the peace owed their commission largely to their professional administrative and judicial skills. There is similarly very little evidence that a place on the Durham bench was part of a cursus honorum of local politics, such as has been identified elsewhere. If the office of JP was at the pinnacle of the hierarchy of local government in other parts of England, this was not the case in Durham: between 1373 and 1427, there was an average of one JP on each of the ten peace commissions for whom this was their first and in some cases only experience in palatine administration. Long ago, Lapsley noted that ‘it does not appear that a peace magistracy, as distinct from the ordinary judicial officers, arose in the bishopric until a later time’, but he ventured no explanation beyond this observation.122 Why was the Durham bench different? A partial explanation might be found in chronology, for comparable studies of the peace commission in other areas of England have tended to concentrate upon the middle decades of the fifteenth century when, at least in Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, as the size of the commissions grew, so did the number of local esquires and knights appointed to the bench.123 However, A.J. Pollard’s examination of the Durham commissions of the peace in the second half of the fifteenth century substantially confirms the findings presented here: a pattern of infrequent, relatively small commissions, in which ‘gentry participation was slight’.124 Most unusual were the long periods without a commission of the peace. In one sense, the explanation for this can be found once more in the operation of lordship. Durham’s lack of parliamentary representation among the commons meant that royal statutes – with which the emerging system of justices of the peace was intimately connected – did not apply as of right, but were selectively adopted and enforced according to local need, whatever that might be.125 However, the infrequency of the peace commissions was also the product of an underlying community interest at work. The justices of the peace, who arrived in the bishopric in the 1370s and sporadically thereafter, were in fact an intrusion into an older and more established semi-formal mechanism of dispute resolution, based upon peace bonds.

121 122 123 124 125

See above, p. 141. Lapsley, County Palatine, p. 179. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, pp. 267–72; Acheson, Leicestershire, p. 131; Payling, Nottinghamshire, p. 176; Wright, Derbyshire, pp. 95–6. Pollard, North-Eastern England, pp. 162–3. Cf. Larson, ‘Local Law Courts’, pp. 103–4 n. 23.

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Peace Bonds In Durham peace bonds were enrolled in chancery almost exclusively in the form of recognisances. These recognisances, which survive in large numbers from the beginning of the episcopate of Richard Bury (1333–45) when a separate chancery was created specifically to handle the bishop’s secular business, were employed to serve a variety of purposes, both private and public: to acknowledge financial debts between private creditors and debtors or between individuals and the bishop of Durham; to guarantee good behaviour towards the bishop and his officials; to uphold the peace between disputatious subjects of the bishop; and, increasingly, to ensure that the bishop’s officials performed their offices adequately. The precise function of these bonds before the episcopate of Walter Skirlaw (1388–1406), when the records of the chancery enrolments become more detailed, is difficult to determine and has perhaps dissuaded historians from assessing their significance. Many of the recognisances, ostensibly of debt towards the bishop or towards individuals known to have served the bishop in an official capacity, must have had a peace-keeping role.126 A similar system of law enforcement operated in other areas of England which shared Durham’s palatine status. Not long after the crown’s establishment of the palatinate of Lancaster for Henry Grosmont, first duke of Lancaster in 1351, the county community of Lancashire ‘devised a system of collective peace-keeping’, agreeing ‘by unanimous assent of the whole community’ that anyone found to be a ‘common transgressor’ would be bound to the duke by statute merchant in differing amounts according to their status – £200 for gentlemen and £40 for non-gentlemen – which sum would be levied in the event that the wrongdoer broke the conditions contained in his bond.127 The chancery rolls of the county palatine of Lancaster reveal that the same ‘semi-formal system of private peace-keeping’, based upon the entering into of recognisances for good behaviour, continued to operate in Lancashire under Henry’s son-in-law, John of Gaunt, second duke of Lancaster, in the later fourteenth century.128 In fifteenth-century Cheshire the maintenance of law and order in the palatinate was dependent upon an almost identical judicial procedure involving both recognisances and mainprises: recognisances, which were pre-emptive measures entered in the Cheshire exchequer designed to ensure that individuals who might become involved in criminal behaviour kept the peace or upheld an arbitration settlement and which would be cancelled once the conditions set out in the bond had been met; and mainprises entered into by those already indicted for offences and agreed to at a session of the county court requiring the subject’s appearance

126 127 128

The Durham recognisances in chancery await more detailed attention than is possible here. Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, pp. 154–5, discussing Select Cases in the Court of King’s Bench under Edward III, Vol. VI, ed. G.O. Sayles (Selden Society 82, 1965), pp. 86–91 at 89–90. Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, pp. 155–6.



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before the court at a future date.129 Significantly, these peace bonds have been seen as a direct consequence of Cheshire’s palatine status, which left the county bereft of a ‘regular system of law enforcement’ such as to be found in other English counties. It was not until the 1530s that Cheshire saw the advent of JPs. Without these officials, one of whose key responsibilities was the binding over of potential troublemakers to keep the peace, peace bonds were central to the policing of late medieval Cheshire society and represented a form of communal self-regulation, in which the gentry of the county, acting as sureties of mainprises or recognisances, were most instrumental. In Durham there was a similar system of peace-keeping, which stood half-way between the informal processes of mediation and arbitration and the formal legal mechanisms of the courts. The recognisances enrolled in the Durham chancery explicitly for the preservation of the bishop’s peace exist in large number from the later fourteenth century. Peace bonds were used frequently in relation to law enforcement in the bishop’s parks and forests, areas of the bishopric where the bishop’s exercise of forest law was applicable: rather than the punitive measures associated with the strict implementation of forest law in his forest courts, a policy which Antony Bek had pursued in the late thirteenth century and which had, in 1303, produced a political backlash from ‘the good men of the franchise of Durham between Tyne and Tees’ in the form of a protest to the king about the oppressive nature of the bishop’s lordship, groups of guarantors appeared in the Durham chancery to bind themselves to the bishop in substantial amounts of money, which would be levied if the subjects of the recognisance did not behave well towards the bishop, his foresters and parkers.130 Another purpose of the peace bonds was to ensure that individuals or groups who were in disagreement, who might or might not have already been formally indicted for an offence, but whose conflict was thought likely to escalate into further violence, were bound over to keep the peace towards each other, sometimes indefinitely, but often for a prescribed period, which could be continuously renegotiated until the issues underlying the dispute had been resolved. On 8 April 1422, for instance, four members of the Durham gentry, a knight and three esquires, appeared in chancery as surety for Sir William Eure and Robert Eure, Esq., that they would behave peacefully towards Sir William Claxton until a future date, at which point the entry was crossed through and another date interlined.131 Most often, peace bonds were used in Durham in conjunction with arbitration as part of a legal process which would lead to a 129 130

131

For this and what follows, see D.J. Clayton, ‘Peace Bonds and the Maintenance of Law and Order in Late Medieval England: The Example of Cheshire’, BIHR 58 (1985), pp. 133–48. For the 1303 petition, see RPD, Vol. III, pp. 44–6. For examples of such collective regulation, see DURH 3/37, mm. 1r-2r, and ‘Durham Records: Cursitor’s Records: Chancery Enrolments’, The Thirty-Third Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records (1872), pp. 45, 49, 58, 59, 72. DURH 3/38, m. 7r. For similar cases, see DURH 3/34, mm. 7d, 8d, 9r; DURH 3/37, mm. 1d, 2r, 5d.

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THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

definite conclusion: guarantors bound themselves to the bishop on the condition that suspected wrongdoers, for whom they provided surety, accept the decision of a group of arbitrators or, in default of an arbitration award, abide by the settlement of named umpires.132 The integral role played by recognisances in the process of arbitration meant that, as guarantors of bonds and arbitrators, the whole spectrum of Durham landed society was involved in the maintenance of law and order, far beyond the limited number of gentry formally appointed to a commission of the peace: from knights and well-off esquires in the south and east to yeomen farmers, sub-manorial gentlemen and low-income esquires in the north and west of the bishopric. The former group included William Baron Hylton of Hylton, Sir William Tempest of Studley and Washington, Sir William Fulthorpe of Tunstall, Robert Conyers of Sockburn, Esq., and Thomas Fulthorpe of Fulthorpe and Barnard Castle, Esq. The latter group included John Eggleston of Broadwood in Wolsingham, Robert Todd of Stanhope, Thomas Tebson of Wiserley in Wolsingham, lord of a ‘manor’ containing two halls, two granges, two cattle-sheds and a vaccary, William Maddison of Unthank in Stanhope, who bestrode the divide between yeoman and gentleman, Thomas Bultflour of Pockerley in the parish of Chester-le-Street, who whilst not himself gentle, certainly socialised with the local squirearchy, and Alexander Featherstone of Stanhope, who hovered on the borderline between gentleman and esquire.133 Although the venue for the negotiation of these peace bonds was the bishop’s chancery, the individuals who acted as sureties and frequently as arbitrators were men of comparable social status to the subjects of the recognisances. When Sir William Washington died in 1399 and the male line of the Washingtons came to an end, possession of the estate of Washington was contested between the widow, who by early 1401 had remarried, and the daughter, wife of Sir William Tempest of Studley near Ripon.134 This was precisely the sort of dispute which typically led to violence and forcible ejection from the property. On Washington’s death the estate passed to his widow by virtue of an earlier jointure, a conveyance retrospectively confirmed by Bishop Skirlaw in January 1401, but by early 1402 William’s daughter and her husband had secured possession of the manor, a move fought by the widow and her new husband initially through the courts in an assize of novel disseisin which they had brought before the bishop’s justices of assize. In the meantime, in April 1402, Sir William Tempest and three other gentlemen entered chancery at Durham and bound themselves to Bishop Skirlaw in £100 on condition that Tempest should hold his recently acquired property 132

133

134

See, for example, DURH 3/33, m. 27r; DURH 3/35, m. 6d; DURH 3/38, mm. 13d, 14d, 16r. For the importance of such bonds in legal decisions which were outside the common law, see N. Ramsay, ‘Retained Legal Counsel, c. 1275–1475’, TRHS, 5th series 35 (1985), p. 110. For the Maddisons, see above, p. 73. For the Egglestons and Featherstones, see above, pp. 73–4. For Tebson, see DURH 3/2, fols 262v–263r. For Bultflour, see DRO, D/St/D5/1/101, DURH 3/2, fols 258v–259v (fox hunting at Chester-le-Street with William Milot, Esq.). For this and what follows, see DURH 3/33, mm. 26r, 27d.



OFFICE HOLDING

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peacefully and without violence. Three months later, the widow’s husband and the daughter’s husband each appeared in the Durham chancery with their two guarantors and pledged themselves in the enormous sum of 600 marks to abide by the award of twelve arbitrators drawn from a cross-section of the Durham gentry, including two knights and seven esquires.135 These were local gentry using the mechanisms of palatine government to resolve their own problems concerning title to property which were common enough in landed society and which had the potential to descend into violent dispute and disorder. The purpose of these recognisances in chancery, particularly those used in association with arbitration, was the restoration of social peace, not the enforcement of social control. A recognisance made on 28 January 1428 to keep the peace between two groups of Weardale landholders until 25 March next and to ensure that the protagonists upheld the settlement of arbitrators chosen by the two sides was subsequently cancelled because, according to the chancery enrolment, ‘the parties were reconciled’ (quia partes concordate sunt).136 The legal system within the bishopric, which was characterised, both locally in the bishop’s halmote court and centrally in the bishop’s chancery, by an emphasis upon compromise and dispute resolution rather than the strict interpretation of points of law, gave opportunities for participation in the provision of justice that the bench did not.137 Minor Estate Offices Beneath the posts of sheriff, escheator and JP, there was a cursus honorum of local office in the administrative hierarchy of Durham. At the bottom of the hierarchy were minor estate offices, especially the posts of parker and forester, followed, one rung up, by the position of coroner. The parkers maintained the bishop’s principal deer parks at Stanhope and Wolsingham, carved out of the forest of Weardale, but also several other smaller enclosures in the western parishes of Brancepeth, Auckland St Andrew and Wolsingham, as well as Gateshead park on the south bank of the river Tyne. The foresters, under the general supervision of the chief forester, were responsible for the upkeep of the bishop’s forests: there were four in the forest of Weardale, an area covering the entire Wear valley from Stanhope in the west to Bishop Auckland in the east, as well as a forester for the bishop’s forest in the ward of Chester, in the valley of the river Derwent.138 At the beginning of the period, Bishop Hatfield used the forest administration as a source of patronage, granting out the offices of parker and forester to 135

136 137 138

Another of the arbitrators, Robert Fenrother of Pittington, had an armigerous seal, but according to one scholar, his ‘shield is very indistinct and doubtful’ and ‘has the appearance of false arms’: Greenwell Seals, Vol. I, p. 112. For examples of arbitration involving men of lower social status drawn from Weardale, see DURH 3/35, m. 6d, DURH 3/38, m. 16d. DURH 3/38, m. 16d. For this view of the halmote court, see Larson, ‘Local Law Courts’, pp. 97–109. For the extent of the bishop’s forest, see Fraser, History of Antony Bek, pp. 87–8.

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THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

his familia. Their appointment, almost invariably for life, in return for a daily wage and other perquisites of office, was intended as a reward for past service and a guarantee of future loyalty.139 Richard Whitchurch, appointed forester of the bishop’s forest within Chester ward for life in 1355, was a member of the bishop’s household, who was replaced in 1379 by one Walter Brantingham, a valet of the bishop’s kitchen.140 Hugh Buttery and John Saucery were, as their names suggest, domestic servants within Hatfield’s household, and both were appointed for life to the office of forester of Broadwood within the forest of Weardale, in 1363 and 1381 respectively. Roger Tickhill, appointed keeper of Gateshead park in 1349, was already the bailiff of Auckland manor and Coundon Grange, whom Hatfield would reward further with grants of escheated land and wardships. William Beliers, who was appointed keeper of Stanhope park for life in 1343, an office in which he was confirmed in 1372, was an existing episcopal servant, whose grant was issued specifically pro bono et grato servitio suo. And John Bettinson of Evenwood, one of the ­bishop’s servientes, received a series of commissions in the late 1370s, starting with his appointment as keeper of Bedburn park and a forester of Weardale in 1379, and ending in his appointment as parker of Evenwood in 1381. But increasingly those who held the offices of parker and forester formed a distinctive group characteristic of the social and political structure of Weardale. Robert Todd, appointed for life as one of the four foresters of Weardale in 1360, died in possession of a small estate in Horseley Burn, Stanhope and Harrow Bank, all in the parish of Stanhope, whilst Adam Batemanson, who was appointed to a similar position for life in 1364, held land in Stanhope, where the family continued to reside into the second quarter of the fifteenth century.141 Among a small group of the yeomanry (valetti) of the bishopric who assembled in Durham cathedral in 1434 to swear an oath against lawbreakers were three men from Weardale: Robert Emerson, Thomas Rogerley and John Eggleston.142 These men were not simply yeomen in the social sense of landholders who farmed their estates with their own hands, probably employing some kind of farm labour. They represented a specific kind of occupational yeoman: the yeoman of the forest.143 The word valettus in this context was both a term of service and a description of social status. Robert Emerson was the third generation of a family which had served continuously as keepers of

139 140

141 142 143

These perquisites are listed explicitly in the 1367 commission of a parker: DURH 3/31, m. 2d. For this and what follows, Whitchurch: DURH 3/30, m. 10d; Brantingham: DURH 3/31, m. 12d; Buttery: DURH 3/30, m. 14d; Saucery: DCM, Reg. II, fol. 287v, DURH 3/30, m. 7d; Tickhill: DURH 3/30, mm. 4d, 7d, 9d, HS, Appendix, pp. 211–24; Beliers: RPD, Vol. III, p. 363, DCM, Hatfield’s Register, fol. 50r; Bettinson: DURH 3/31, m. 12r, DCM, Reg. II, fol. 287v. Todd: DURH 3/30, m. 13r, DURH 3/2, fol. 207r–v; Batemanson: DCM, Reg. II, fol. 267v, DURH 3/37, m. 2r. The list is in Thomas Langley, Vol. IV, pp. 142–3. R. Almond and A.J. Pollard, ‘The Yeomanry of Robin Hood and Social Terminology in FifteenthCentury England’, P&P 170 (2001), pp. 52–77.



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the bishop’s park at Stanhope from the 1380s.144 In 1434 Thomas Rogerley, whose family had intermarried with the Emersons, was the keeper of the bishop’s other major park in the bishopric, at Wolsingham.145 John Eggleston was a member of the Egglestons of Broadwood in Wolsingham who, along with his father, Thomas, had served as keeper of Wolsingham park from 1423.146 The forestry service was dominated by precisely the sorts of lesser landed families – the Egglestons of Broadwood, the Emersons of Stanhope, the Rogerleys of Wolsingham – who, both by status and occupation, were not part of the Durham gentry. They were part of an extremely localised society within Weardale which developed in the course of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries and which had at its heart the maintenance of the bishop’s forest. Thus, in 1430, when Bishop Langley’s chancery officials took a series of recognisances to ensure the probity of some of his forest officials as well as to secure the good behaviour of certain individuals towards his foresters and parkers, the names of those who stood as surety for each other included Robert Todd of Stanhope, John Batemanson of Stanhope, Robert Emerson of Stanhope and John Eggleston of Broadwood.147 The offices of parker and forester were positions in local government which had little appeal, on the whole, to the Durham gentry. This is hardly surprising given the increasingly onerous nature of the post: from the 1380s, successive bishops of Durham appointed men on condition that the officeholder perform his responsibilities in person rather than by deputy (ita quod in propria persona sua moretur super officio predicto), and from the 1420s, Bishop Langley used recognisances in chancery to bind over newly appointed parkers and foresters to ensure that they served faithfully in office.148 The climax of this process of growing supervision came in 1430, when Alexander Featherstone was appointed a forester of Weardale and made a recognisance of £20 to the bishop on condition that it should be cancelled only if he remain for the following year on the shieling in the forest of Weardale demised to him by the bishop both in summer and winter, along with his household (et hospicium suum ibidem tenebit).149 However, for families of limited landed wealth and relatively uncertain landed position, minor office, for all its hardship, was undoubtedly not only a useful ancillary source of income, but a means of consolidating local lordship. Some of those involved in the administration of the bishop’s parks and forests did come to occupy the lower ranks of the Durham gentry, among them the Featherstones of Stanhope. Three generations of this sub-­manorial 144 145 146 147 148 149

DURH 3/32, m. 7d; DURH 3/33, m. 32r; Thomas Langley, Vol. III, pp. 74–5. DURH 3/38, m. 15r; DURH 3/2, fol. 274v. DURH 3/38, m. 10r. DURH 3/37, mm. 1r, 2r. See, for example, DURH 3/32, m. 8r; DURH 3/33, mm. 31r, 32r, 32d; DURH 3/38, mm. 10r, 15r; DURH 3/37, m. 7d. DURH 3/37, m. 1d. A shieling was a temporary settlement used typically for the grazing of flocks on upland pastures.

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THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

landholding family served as keepers of Stanhope park and foresters of Weardale from the 1380s: William, appointed keeper of Stanhope park for life in 1385; his son, William, a forester of Weardale, replaced in office in 1404; and William’s son and heir, Alexander, appointed forester in 1430 during the bishop’s pleasure.150 An armigerous family with a long pedigree by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whose members remembered Robert, the father of the first William, as the first to assume the surname ‘Featherstone’, their status was not altogether secure in the first quarter of the fifteenth century when Alexander Featherstone occupied an indeterminate position between gentleman and esquire.151 The close neighbours of the Featherstones near Stanhope were the Marleys of Unthank, who included among their number a parker of Wolsingham and Waskerley park and sub-forester of Weardale. Appointed to the offices for life in January 1381, William Marley Jr belonged to a family which occupied the marginal zone between gentility and commonality.152 Around Auckland park, close to the episcopal residence, was a cluster of comparable minor gentry families holding single estates, notably the Burdons of Helmington Hall in the parish of Auckland St Andrew and the Pollards of Bishop Auckland. John Burdon, whom Bishop Hatfield appointed keeper of Auckland park for life in 1353, an office which he held until his death in 1363, had no property of his own at the time of his appointment, but was the son and heir of the lord of two small manorial estates, and the importance of episcopal service to his sense of identity is revealed in the armorial seal in which he styled himself, ‘John de Burdon, forester of the park of Auckland’.153 His brother-in-law held the post of bailiff of the bishop’s manor of Bishop Auckland from the mid 1360s.154 The Pollards were a sub-manorial but armigerous family, who held a series of small enclosures to the south and west of Bishop Auckland, where they too were almost certainly manorial officers over several generations.155 Another of the bishop’s deer parks was at Frankland, three miles north of the city of Durham, and among its keepers in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries were the heads of similar lesser gentry families from the adjoining parishes of Lanchester and Chester-le-Street, the Stubbs of Consett and the Milots of White Hill. William Stubbs, who had acquired a moiety of the manor of Consett, his only property, by the time of the Hatfield Survey, and who was confirmed in the office of parker of Frankland for life in 150 151 152 153 154 155

DURH 3/32, m. 7d; DURH 3/33, m. 32d; DURH 3/37, m. 1d. Foster, Visitations of the County Palatine of Durham, pp. 118–19. DURH 3/31, m. 14d. See also DRO, D/Lo/F 22–3; DURH 3/2, fol. 121v. His father was armigerous: Greenwell Seals, Vol. I, p. 211. DCM, Reg. II, fol. 165r; DURH 3/2, fol. 56r; Greenwell Seals, Vol. I, p. 56. DCM, Misc.Chs 10, 3. For the familial relationship, see HS, p. 51; DURH 3/2, fol. 127r. The evidence is circumstantial, but telling: C.D. Liddy, ‘Land, Legend and Gentility in the Palatinate of Durham: The Pollards of Pollard Hall’, North-East England in the Later Middle Ages, ed. C.D. Liddy and R.H. Britnell (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 75–95. In addition, see DURH 3/30, m. 9d; DURH 3/31, mm. 2r, 12d.



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1385, was the ancestor from whom the family traced their descent in heraldic visitations of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.156 Stubbs’s successor in the post of parker by 1403 and indeed his feoffee for the settlement of his estate at Consett, was William Milot, who held the office until his death in 1437 and who was lord of the manor of White Hill, a fairly basic estate containing a hall, a chamber, a kitchen, a barn, a stable and a malt kiln, with a small demesne, described in the mid fourteenth century as simply a ‘messuage’ called White Hill.157 Manorial lordship did not differentiate these families: the Burdons, Marleys, Stubbs and Milots were lords of single or fractional manors, which in any case seem to have been little more than residences with a landed estate of no great size. But in several cases, the posts of parker and forester were a stepping stone to further office. William Featherstone, father and son, both went on to hold a position as commissioner of array in Darlington ward after their appointment to the forestry service, and William Milot held the same office in Chester ward on three occasions, after first having been appointed parker of Frankland at the beginning of the fifteenth century.158 In the first quarter of the fifteenth century, when the designation ‘esquire’ gained wider currency in the bishopric as elsewhere, the Featherstones, the Milots and the Pollards counted among the squirearchy of Durham, though they were lowincome esquires.159 The office of coroner within the bishopric was more important locally than in other parts of England and was unusually a salaried position.160 The coroner was essential to the management of the bishop’s landed estate. Appointed directly by the bishop rather than elected in the county court, as in other counties, the Durham coroners, each operating in one of the four wards of the bishopric – Chester, Darlington, Easington and Stockton – had a distinctive financial as well as judicial function: they were involved in the collection of the rents of the bishop’s free tenants, for which they accounted at the bishop’s exchequer in Durham.161 The office of coroner in Durham, in the words of a recent study, ‘played a more crucial role in the administration of the bishop’s vast lands than it did on behalf of the crown elsewhere in the realm’.162 But the substantial financial and judicial powers associated with it

156 157 158 159 160 161 162

HS, p. 124; DURH 3/34, m. 2r; DURH 3/32, m. 8r; Foster, Visitations of the County Palatine of Durham, pp. 144–5. DURH 3/33, m. 31r; DURH 3/34, m. 2r; DURH 3/36, m. 14r; DURH 3/2, fol. 286r–v; RPD, Vol. IV, pp. 304–5; DCM, Misc.Ch. 6455. DURH 3/32, m. 6d; DURH 3/34, m. 11d; DURH 3/35, m. 15d; DURH 3/37, m. 11d; DURH 3/36, mm. 13r–14r. For the Milots, see DURH 3/38, m. 7r. C.J. Neville, ‘ “The Bishop’s Ministers”: The Office of Coroner in Late Medieval Durham’, Florilegium 18.2 (2001), p. 54; Jewell, English Local Administration, p. 156. For the wards, see Map 5. This seigneurial aspect of the coroner’s office in Durham is brought out in the terms of appointment: DURH 3/38, m. 17r. The quotation is from Neville, ‘Coroner’, p. 48.

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THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

Gateshead

CHESTER WARD Chester-le-Street

EASINGTON Durham

WARD

DARLINGTON WARD Bishop Auckland

STOCKTON WARD

N

Barnard Castle

0 0

miles kilometres

5 10

Map 5.  Ward Boundaries in the Bishopric of Durham

were offset by the growing episcopal regulation of the post comparable to that which parkers and foresters increasingly faced. As with the offices of parker and forester, Bishop Hatfield used the office of coroner explicitly as a form of financial remuneration to reward the service of members of his household. Very few were local men, that is, inhabitants of the ward in which they served. Among the bishop’s household retainers, Thomas Lamb of Hartlepool, appointed coroner of Stockton ward for life in 1369, stands out in this respect.163 Other valetti were from Durham, but their connections with the ward to which they were appointed were nonexistent. Nicholas Skelton was a landholder who had a house at Old Burdon, on the east coast of the bishopric, but he had no roots at all in Chester ward, of which he was made coroner for life in 1369.164 In fact, most of Bishop Hatfield’s household servants had very modest origins, about whom – in the cases of Walter Dynant, coroner of Stockton ward in the 1350s, Nicholas Belgrave, appointed coroner of Darlington ward for life in 1361, and John

163 164

DCM, Reg. II, fol. 169v. RPD, Vol. IV, pp. 270, 276; DURH 3/30, mm. 1d, 4d; DCM, Hatfield’s Register, fol. 41r, and Reg. II, fol. 276v.



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Bather, made coroner of Darlington ward for life in 1369 – nothing is known of their landholding within the bishopric.165 Increasingly, however, the coronership was a reflection and extension of the holder’s position in local society rather than a straightforward act of episcopal patronage. It is possible to construct a continuous list of the coroners of Chester ward from the beginning of Bishop Hatfield’s episcopate until the end of Bishop Langley’s reign. Seven men held the office of Chester coroner in this period: if we exclude the armigerous Nicholas Skelton, one of Hatfield’s valetti whose base was at Old Burdon in the parish of Bishop Wearmouth, five were resident in the ward in which they served and one, Robert Dalton of West Auckland, whilst not a resident landholder, did have strong connections to the Lumleys of Lumley castle, the major landed family in Chester ward.166 With the exception of Skelton and Dalton, the coroners of Chester ward were all manorial lords, but they either did not occupy the entire manor or else held only one manorial estate.167 William Kirkby, appointed coroner for life in 1346, held the small manor of Crookhall in the parish of Lanchester at the time of his appointment, purchasing the manor of Follingsby in the parish of Jarrow in the late 1350s. Gilbert Eglin, whom Bishop Fordham made coroner for life in January 1382, was originally of Bishop Auckland where he held several pieces of property, but by the time of his appointment he held in right of his wife the manor of Tribley Farm and a moiety of the manor of Birtley, where he resided, both estates just over two miles north of Chester-le-Street. William Chester, Eglin’s successor in November 1383, was a retainer of Ralph Lord Lumley (d. 1400), who, during his tenure of office, would become the lord of a moiety of the manor of Little Usworth in the parish of Washington. John Birtley of Birtley, Chester’s successor in January 1410 until late 1419, was the son and heir of Gilbert Eglin. And John Hedworth, Birtley’s successor in 1420 until Robert Dalton’s appointment in November 1422, was originally a sub-manorial landholder based in the northeast corner of the bishopric at Southwick with a reasonably concentrated estate between the south bank of the river Tyne and the borough of Sunderland. By the early 1430s, Hedworth had gained possession of two-thirds of the manor of Harraton in the parish of Chester-le-Street and made it his new caput in Durham. Hedworth’s acquisition of Harraton, a substantial manorial estate comprising over 400 acres of arable, meadow, wood and pasture as

165 166 167

Dynant: DURH 3/30, mm. 10d, 12r; Belgrave: DURH 3/30, m. 13d; Bather: DCM, Reg. II, fol. 276v. For Skelton’s armorial seal, see Greenwell Seals, Vol. I, p. 278. For the Dalton-Lumley connection, see Greenwell Deeds, pp. 127–9; DURH 3/35, m. 17r; DURH 3/2, fol. 209r-v. For what follows, Kirkby: DCM, Reg. II, fol. 158v, DURH 3/30, m. 13d, DURH 3/31, mm. 1d, 2d, DURH 3/2, fol. 157r; Eglin: DURH 3/32, mm. 1r, 7d, DCM, 1.5.Pont.6d, E 210/4096, HS, pp. 36–9, 81, 107, DURH 3/38, m. 7r; Chester: DURH 3/32, m. 4d, DURH 3/2, fols. 169v–170r, CIPM, Vol. XVIII, pp. 324–6; Birtley: DURH 3/35, mm. 2r, 17d, DCM, Bursar’s Roll, 1414–15, DURH 3/2, fols 226r–v, 267v; Hedworth: DCM, Misc.Chs 7182–3, DURH 3/38, m. 7d, DCM, Reg. III, fol. 57v, FPD, pp. 84–5.

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THE BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM

well as ferry rights over the river Wear,168 says much about the social aspirations of the type of landholder who held the office of coroner in this period. Hedworth’s mother was the sister of Robert Darcy, the head of a knightly family based at Coningsby in Lincolnshire and, since the early fourteenth century, lords of the manors of Harraton and West Herrington in the bishopric of Durham thanks to the patronage of Bishop Antony Bek, a fellow Lincolnshire man.169 Even before Robert Darcy’s death and the failure of the male line of the family in 1416, when he was named one of the four co-heirs to the Darcy estates in Durham, Hedworth had shown an interest in the Harraton estate: the proof of age of Sir Thomas Lumley of Lumley castle reveals that, at the time of Lumley’s birth in 1410, Hedworth had been hunting hare at Harraton.170 Hedworth’s ambitions towards Harraton were initially thwarted by the machinations of Darcy’s widow, Margaret. Margaret, according to Hedworth, claimed to have been pregnant at the time of her husband’s death (‘feyned hir with childe with hir husband’), even acquiring another woman’s child and trying to pass it off as her own. She subsequently protested that she held the lands in the bishopric in jointure, to the disinheritance of Hedworth and his co-heirs. By 1432, however, Hedworth had established himself at Harraton.171 Hedworth’s reinvention of himself and his family was complete when, according to a late-sixteenth-century heraldic visitation, he assumed the arms of Darcy, and it was from him that the later Hedworths of Harraton traced their descent.172 The coroners of Darlington ward, of whom we have an almost complete record between the episcopates of Hatfield and Langley, were a comparable social group. Of the twelve known coroners in this period, only the first three were not resident landholders within the ward: John Thropton, coroner of Darlington ward on Hatfield’s accession to the bishopric and lord of the manor of Offerton in the northern parish of Houghton-le-Spring, and the two household retainers, Nicholas Belgrave and John Bather.173 Bather’s successor in January 1381 was William Embleton Jr who, through the marriage of his father, William Embleton, to one of the daughters and coheirs of John Randolph of East Brandon, held a quarter share of the manors of Holywell and East Brandon in the parish of Brancepeth.174 Embleton’s

168 169 170 171 172 173 174

DURH 3/2, fol. 274r–v. See above, p. 63. DURH 3/2, fols 177r, 258v–259v. DCM, Loc.V:15; DURH 3/37, m. 13d. Foster, Visitations of the County Palatine of Durham, pp. 160–1. Thropton was armigerous and had held the office since at least 1327: Greenwell Seals, Vol. I, p. 304; DCM, Misc.Ch. 355; RPD, Vol. IV, p. 349. For this and the following, Embleton: DCM, Reg. II, fol. 284v, DURH 3/2, fols 66r–v, 68r–v; Billy: DURH 3/32, m. 1r; Middleton: DURH 3/32, m. 10r, HS, p. 11; Featherstone: DURH 3/33, m. 6d, DCM, Misc.Ch. 314; Morton: DURH 3/33, m. 16r, HS, pp. 7, 14, 15, 197, DURH 3/2, fol. 224r–v; Alwent: DURH, 3/35, m. 19r–d, DURH 3/38, m. 16d, Storey, Thomas Langley, p. 260; Belasis: DURH, 3/35, m. 2r, DURH 3/2, fol. 194r–v.



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successor, in April 1382, was John Billy, almost certainly another resident of the parish of Brancepeth from Billy Hill. John Middleton, who replaced Billy in January 1388, was a sub-manorial figure, who held several parcels of land in Blackwell, south west of Darlington, where he lived. Richard Featherstone, Middleton’s successor in 1391, was probably a relation of the Featherstones of Stanhope, parkers of Stanhope and foresters of Weardale. John Morton, appointed coroner of Darlington in February 1396, had a moiety of the estate of Morton Tinmouth in the south-western parish of Gainford, amounting to a chief messuage, six cottages, ten tofts and 140 acres of arable and meadow, a manorial property which he co-owned with another Darlington coroner, William Alwent, who held the office between 1420 and 1428. And Robert Belasis, coroner between 1410 and late 1419, was the lord of one manor, Henknowle, in the parish of Auckland St Andrew. Like their colleagues in Chester ward, Darlington coroners held single manors, fractions of manors or sub-manorial estates. Late-fourteenth-century coroners such as Embleton and Morton came from armigerous families, whilst in the early fifteenth century Robert Belasis and William Alwent enjoyed the status of esquire.175 Our knowledge of the identity of the coroners of the wards of Stockton and Easington is more uncertain and the sequence of coroners is incomplete, but a similar pattern, nonetheless, is evident. In the case of Stockton, five coroners are known: the first two coroners of Hatfield’s episcopate were his household retainers, Walter Dynant and Thomas Lamb, but thereafter a succession of coroners, starting with Gilbert Hutton, appointed for life in January 1388, John Mordon, appointed at the bishop’s pleasure in December 1399 and active in office until at least 1422, and John Sayer, in post in the last years of Thomas Langley’s episcopate, were all local men with strong attachments to the ward in which they served.176 Gilbert Hutton was a submanorial landholder whose main estate, at the time of his appointment, was in the village of Sedgefield, but who, by 1396, had acquired through his marriage to the daughter and sole heir of John Hardwick, a moiety of the manor of Hardwick, also in the parish of Sedgefield, as well as other parcels of land in the adjoining parish of Bishop Middleham.177 John Mordon, with whom Hutton was a regular witness to land conveyances in the parish of Sedgefield and whom Hutton appointed as his feoffee, was a similar submanorial figure, whose family had been lords of the manor of Mordon in the parish of Sedgefield since the first half of the fourteenth century, from which he himself received an annuity of two marks.178 John Sayer was from a North 175

176 177 178

Embleton and Morton: Greenwell Seals, Vol. I, pp. 100, 219; Belasis and Alwent: DCM, 3.3.Pont.3, Greenwell Deeds, pp. 129–30, DRO, D/St/D1/1/19. John Spence, coroner of Darlington from 1430, was described at different times as yeoman, gentleman and esquire: DURH 3/37, mm. 1r–2r; DUL, Mickleton and Spearman MS 2/1, fol. 80v; Thomas Langley, Vol. IV, pp. 142–3. Appointments: DCM, Reg. II, fol. 299v (Hutton); DURH 3/33, m. 23r, DUL, CCB B/50/1–4 (Mordon); DURH 3/37, m. 15d (Sayer). DURH 3/2, fols 126r–v, 133r. DRO, D/Sa/D 227, D/St/D7/118; VCH Durham, Vol. III, p. 334.

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Riding family, but though he had a residence at Worsall on the south bank of the river Tees, two miles south west of the village of Yarm, and served as a tax collector of the lay subsidy in North Yorkshire in 1434, he was baptised in the Durham parish of Norton, held moieties of the manors of Foxton and Preston-on-Tees north of the river and, in 1434, was among the fifty-one esquires of Durham who swore an oath to the bishop to preserve the peace in the bishopric.179 Mordon and Sayer, though neither of them held an entire manor, were low-income esquires.180 As for the coroners of Easington ward, all of the three known officeholders were local men: John Boner, appointed for life in 1348, Robert Skelton, coroner by February 1380 and appointed for life in January 1388, and Robert Jackson, appointed for life in April 1402, a post he held continuously through to the end of Thomas Langley’s episcopate. None held a manor, but all were of gentle status.181 Boner, who held property at Shadforth in the parish of Pittington, was armigerous. Skelton, son of the armigerous Nicholas Skelton, inherited his father’s house and 100 acres of arable and meadow at Old Burdon on the north-east coast of the bishopric. And Jackson, who was consistently styled an esquire, had a residence at Farringdon, three miles south west of Sunderland. In 1388 John Middleton of Blackwell was appointed coroner of Darlington ward for life with the proviso that he remain in office (ita quod idem Johannes moretur super officio predicto), presumably rather than carry out his duties by deputy.182 In the first quarter of the fifteenth century, in the context of a serious decline of landed income from the episcopal estate, Bishop Langley took a variety of steps to arrest this decay, one of which was the exercise of more ‘rigorous’ control over the conduct of the coroners, whose responsibility it was to collect the free rents from the bishop’s tenants in the bishopric.183 From the 1410s, coroners, having taken an oath of office in the Durham chancery, were bound over by recognisances to render their accounts in full at the bishop’s exchequer, and in 1428 the new coroner of Darlington ward was appointed to hold the office specifically for the financial year from Michaelmas last up to Michaelmas following, on the condition that he answer to the bishop for the free rents due from his ward.184 The extensive powers held by the four coroners in the bishopric made the office an attractive one to a wider group of Durham gentry than the posts of forester and parker, but the laborious nature of the position meant that landholders of greater social 179 180 181

182 183 184

CIPM, Vol. X, p. 426; CFR, 1430–7, p. 193; DURH 3/2, fols 133v, 142r, 195v; Thomas Langley, Vol. IV, p. 143. See also DRO, EP/Du SM/610–11. DCM, 3.3.Pont.31, and Misc.Ch. 1056. Boner: DURH 3/30, mm. 2d, 4d, 12r, DCM, Reg. II, fol. 137r, HS, p. 146, Greenwell Seals, Vol. I, p. 39; Skelton: Greenwell Deeds, p. 112, DURH 3/32, m. 10d, DURH 3/2, fols 139r–140r; Jackson: DURH 3/33, m. 3d, DURH 3/35, m. 14d, DCM, Misc.Ch. 2080, DURH 3/37, mm. 5d, 15d, DCM, 3.3.Pont.3. DURH 3/32, m. 10r. Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 69–70. DURH 3/35, mm. 7r, 13d; DURH 3/37, mm. 1r–2r, 8d; DURH 3/38, m. 17r.



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standing did not become coroners. Contrary to the findings of a recent study, the individuals who served as coroner in the bishopric were not, on the whole, ‘men of considerable social standing’.185 The Office of Tax Collector In other parts of England the office of tax collector represented the next step up the ladder of local government. The difference, in the case of Durham, was that the bishopric was not only exempt from parliamentary taxation but also, after the mid fourteenth century, immune from local taxation levied by the bishop of Durham. There were certainly well-established mechanisms in place to assess and collect taxation. In February 1343 Bishop Richard Bury issued a commission – ‘with the common counsel and unanimous consent of the whole community of our lordship and royal liberty of Durham and Sadberge’ – to levy a total of £160 between the Tyne and the Tees in two instalments for the acquisition of ‘a good peace or truce with the Scots’ up to the feast of Pentecost next. A further sum of almost £9 was to be raised to pay for the expenses of messengers carrying the community’s protection money to Scotland.186 The commission marked a return to the practices which the ‘community of the bishopric of Durham’ had adopted in the first quarter of the fourteenth century to preserve the integrity of the bishopric and, specifically, to meet the threat of Scottish raids south of the river Tyne.187 The commission’s geographical scope covered the entire area between the rivers Tyne and Tees and drew in not only the four wards of Easington, Darlington, Stockton and Chester, but also the wapentake of Sadberge, an older territorial division running the length of the Tees valley which in 1343 was itself divided into western and eastern halves. The commissioners were instructed to apportion the sum due from all the villages and hamlets within each ward and each division of the wapentake of Sadberge according to their discretion. For these reasons, the commission of 1343 represented a truly communal endeavour which involved some twenty-nine men: seven for Darlington ward, five for Chester ward, four for Easington ward, six for Stockton ward and a total of seven for the wapentake of Sadberge. This was, then, an enormous tax commission, considerably larger than the commissions appointed to levy taxation for the crown, even when the membership of such royal commissions was expanding in the late fourteenth century.188 There was only one knight on the Durham commission, Sir John Lumley of Ravensworth castle, head of the cadet line of the Lumleys of Lumley castle, but at the time of his appointment he held but a reversionary interest in Ravensworth and resided instead at a manor in Stranton in the south-eastern 185 186 187 188

Neville, ‘Coroner’, p. 54. For this and all further references to the commission, see RPD, Vol. IV, pp. 273–6. J. Scammell, ‘Robert I and the North of England’, EHR 73 (1958), pp. 385–403. Cf. Saul, Knights and Esquires, pp. 145–6.

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parish of Hart.189 It was for this reason that he was a tax collector in the east ward of Sadberge. However, whilst the commission was occupied by a high percentage of sub-gentry figures (45%), of whom several were extremely obscure characters about whom nothing is known beyond the record of their 1343 appointment, it also contained a significant number of gentry who were lords of several manors within the bishopric and who were precisely the kinds of individuals to whom service as a parker, forester or coroner was socially inappropriate. The panel of tax collectors for the ward of Darlington was headed by John Randolph, lord of two manors in the parish of Brancepeth, who enjoyed a substantial landed income of at least £26, and included John Burnigill, lord of three manors, two in the parish of Brancepeth, one of which was his caput of Burnigill, with a comparable income, and Thomas Whitworth, lord of Whitworth Hall and Woodham, whose annual income was probably between £10 and £20.190 Among the tax collectors for Chester ward were Gilbert Marley, lord of the manors of Hedley and Marley Hill in the parishes of Chester-le-Street and Whickham respectively, and, most notably, John Menville, a relatively recent entrant into Durham landed society, who, at the time of his appointment, held three manors in the bishopric including the manor of Thornley in the north-western parish of Ryton. Although not actually a knight, Menville enjoyed a landed income of over £40 and was of knightly status.191 The list of tax collectors for Stockton ward included two relatively prosperous members of the Durham squirearchy, Henry Langton, lord of Wynyard Hall and Redmarshall, in both of which he enjoyed the right of free warren, and Leo Claxton, lord of a single but nonetheless valuable estate at Claxton in the parish of Greatham. Both Langton and Claxton had a landed income of around £20 per annum.192 The mid 1340s saw the appointment of another local tax commission in the bishopric, on this occasion to raise the sum of 600 marks (£400) which in June 1345 the community of the bishopric of Durham had agreed to pay the king to secure exemption from a royal eyre.193 Bishop Hatfield, on his receipt of the temporalities of the bishopric, duly issued letters patent appointing a twenty-strong commission, with four men appointed to each ward and a further four covering the wapentake of Sadberge. Each ward was to produce its ‘portion of the said £400’.194 There was considerable overlap in the composition of the panels of 1343 and 1346, with eleven men serving 189 190

191 192 193 194

H.S. Offler, ‘Murder on Framwellgate Bridge’, North of the Tees, ed. A.J. Piper and A.I. Doyle (Aldershot, 1996), p. 200. Randolph: DURH 3/2, fols 66r–v, 68r–v; Burnigill: DURH 3/2, fols 62v–63r; Whitworth: Greenwell Seals, Vol. I, p. 333, DURH 3/2, fols 9r, 52r, DCM, Bursar’s Book A, fol. 139v, DURH 3/30, m. 4d. Marley: DRO, D/St/D5/1/5, DURH 3/2, fol. 80r; Menville: DURH 3/2, fols 64v–65r, and above, p. 80. Langton: DRO, D/Lo/D 427, 429–31, 596–7, DURH 3/2, fol. 103r; Claxton: DCM, Bursar’s Book A, fols 30r, 134v, Misc.Ch. 442. CFR, 1337–47, p. 422. The broader political context is explored below, pp. 202–4. DURH 3/30, m. 1d.



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on both commissions. The nine new additions were of comparable social status: seven were manorial lords, of whom five held more than one manor. Robert Brackenbury held the manors of Burn Hall and West Shipley.195 John Birtley of Twizell Hall, one of the two new collectors for Chester ward, was the lord of four manors in the north west of the bishopric, whilst the other, Thomas Stuteville, enjoyed manorial lordship at Kibblesworth in the parish of Chester-le-Street as well as a 240-acre estate at Nafferton in southern Northumberland. The two additions to the commission for Easington ward were Walter Ludworth and Thomas Harpin, the first of whom held a single estate, the manor of Ludworth, and the second two manors, Thornley and Mordon. John Aislaby, who was appointed to collect the tax in the wapentake of Sadberge, was the lord of two adjacent manors, Egglescliffe and Aislaby in the parish of Egglescliffe, on the north bank of the river Tees, at the second of which the family had its own private chapel. William Kilkenny, one of the two new appointments to the Stockton commission, resided at Burn Toft in the parish of Elwick Hall, and although not a manorial lord himself, was the second son of Sir William Kilkenny, lord of Stanley as well as Stotfold, the family seat less than a mile north of Burn Toft.196 Whilst Joan, widow of Sir William’s son and heir, Robert, held in jointure the two manors, worth over £40 per annum, the younger William Kilkenny enjoyed a reversionary interest in the two estates and was from a distinguished local family whose ties to the south-eastern corner of the bishopric could be traced back to the first half of the thirteenth century. Peter Brackenbury, the other new appointment to the Stockton commission, although not a knight, was definitely of knightly status, with an annual landed income of around £50 drawn from the manors of Hetton-le-Hole and Layton.197 The 1346 commission included not only tax collectors, but also six surveyors and auditors, among whom was the chancellor, John Windsor, as well as three knightly members of the Durham gentry, Adam Bowes, John Menville and Thomas Surtees.198 They were appointed ‘at the request of the community of our aforesaid liberty’ and instructed to survey and audit the accounts of each of the twenty tax collectors, since the community of the bishopric had petitioned Bishop Hatfield seeking to be informed ‘how and in what way’ the £400 was to be apportioned, levied and collected in the wards and wapentake of Sadberge, ‘lest the poor tenants of our church and others … be oppressed unduly or injured in this matter by excessive taxes’. 195

196

197 198

For this and what follows, Brackenbury: DURH 3/2, fols 81v–82r; Birtley: DURH 3/2, fol. 82r–v; Stuteville: DURH 3/2, fol. 54v, CIPM, Vol. XIV, p. 51; Ludworth: DURH 3/2, fol. 30v; Harpin: DURH 3/2, fol. 45v; Aislaby: RPD, Vol. II, pp. 1238–40, Vol. III, p. 513, and Vol. IV, pp. 278–9. For the Kilkennys, see DCM, Misc.Chs 149, 191, 6126, 7081; DURH 3/12, fols 78, 94; E 210/1231; DURH 3/2, fol. 90r-v; B.A. Barker, ‘The Claxtons: A North-Eastern Gentry Family in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Teesside, 2003), pp. 111– 12; VCH Durham, Vol. III, p. 240. DCM, Misc.Chs 6211, 6213; DURH 3/2, fol. 32r. For this and what follows, see DURH 3/30, m. 1d.

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When the £400 was not forthcoming – the reasons for which are explored in the following chapter – Bishop Hatfield was forced to pay the money himself, subsequently trying to reclaim some of his expenditure from the inhabitants of the bishopric. Thus in March 1349 Hatfield appointed another commission to collect from the bishopric of Durham a total of 400 marks, which had been granted to him by the magnates, proceres and ‘the whole community of our royal liberty of Durham’, to recompense him ‘for the great labours and various expenses’ incurred by the bishop in his relations with the king ‘for maintaining that said liberty’.199 This commission comprised sixteen members: three each for the wards of Darlington, Chester and Easington, two for Stockton ward and a further five divided between the western and eastern parts of the wapentake of Sadberge. Eight of the sixteen had received a commission in 1346, of whom six served on the three tax commissions of 1343, 1346 and 1349, and another three were tax collectors in 1343 and 1349. What is most significant about the men selected for this commission in 1349 is that they were chosen not by Hatfield but by the magnates, proceres and ‘the whole community of our royal liberty of Durham’ who had granted the 400 marks to the bishop and who petitioned the bishop (per petitionem suam nobis supplicaverunt) that he appoint the sixteen men whose names followed on the bishop’s chancery roll. The Durham tax commissions, then, did not simply enable appointees to accumulate a wealth of experience of local government, but were a communal initiative, whose members were answerable not just to their lord, the bishop, but to the collective will of the local community. The Commission of Array Opportunities to hold office as a tax collector in the bishopric disappeared almost entirely after 1349, for this was the last occasion on which the Durham community paid a local tax to the bishop in the late middle ages. A system of local taxation comparable to the Cheshire mise, for instance, did not develop.200 From the mid 1380s, however, the commission of array emerged as an essential part of the local administrative cursus. Much more than the tax commissions of the 1340s, the commissions of array of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries involved all gradations of Durham gentry society. Like the earlier tax commissions, however, the commissions of array were a collective enterprise and an articulation of a strong local communal identity. To understand their significance, it is necessary to appreciate more

199 200

DURH 3/30, m. 4d; and below, p. 204. Durham contributed to the 1371 parish subsidy and the 1436 income tax, when it made its own arrangements: DCM, 1.4.Reg.7; DURH 3/36, m. 10r, DCM, Reg. III. fols 201v–202v. For the Cheshire mise, see P.H.W. Booth, The Financial Administration of the Lordship and County of Chester, 1272–1377 (Manchester, 1981), pp. 118–26. Durham’s fiscal immunity is discussed below, pp. 204–5.



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fully the corporate mentality which underpinned the military service of the bishopric. In the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the crown made clear its growing expectation that the men of the bishopric should provide military service in the war with Scotland, the community of the bishopric was quick to make its protest. In a famous episode, when Bishop Antony Bek, on the instruction of Edward I, ordered the men of the bishopric to accompany him with horses and arms to go into Scotland in 1299, the soldiers deserted and returned home, where they were promptly imprisoned at Durham castle. It was then that the ‘men of the bishopric’ (homines de episcopatu) presented their complaint against the bishop, ‘claiming to be the Haliwerfolk and to hold their lands for the defence of the body of St Cuthbert’, who ‘ought not to go beyond the boundaries of the bishopric, namely beyond Tyne and Tees, for king or bishop’.201 In early 1303 the ‘good men of the franchise of Durham between Tyne and Tees’ repeated their argument that they had no obligation to provide military service beyond the rivers Tyne and Tees, that they should not be forced to serve against their will outside the bishopric, and that such service without the liberty had to be voluntary and properly remunerated. The bishop agreed to these demands, stating that he would pay troops from the liberty serving in Scotland and that service would only be expected when the bishopric of Durham was also threatened.202 Although this dispute has been variously interpreted – as part of a larger conflict between the bishop and his subjects over the oppressive nature of Bek’s lordship, or as an illustration of the broader contemporary debate about the obligation of local communities to render unpaid military service for the defence of the realm beyond the boundaries of a particular county –203 the quarrel was grounded in a firm commitment to the principle of local defence, which was bound up in attachment to the cult of St Cuthbert and which went considerably beyond the personal and the contingent. The bishop’s concession to the complaints of his subjects restricting the obligation of military service beyond Tyne and Tees was not formally enshrined in the charter of liberties issued to the ‘men of the community of the franchise of Durham’ in July 1303.204 But it was a principle which helps to explain why Edward III wrote to Bishop Louis Beaumont in 1333 specifically to promise that the military forces which he had sent on several occasions to serve in Scotland, at the king’s request, extra libertatem suam episcopatus Dunelmensis, would not be to the loss of the bishop’s liberty or to the prejudice of the men of the liberty.205 Similarly, when the crown sought to tap the military resources of the bishopric periodically throughout the fourteenth century for the war against Scotland, it did 201 202 203 204 205

Scriptores Tres, p. 76. For the concept of the Haliwerfolc, see below, pp. 186–98. RPD, Vol. III, pp. 45–6. For these two views, see Fraser, History of Antony Bek, p. 178, and M. Powicke, Military Obligation in Medieval England (Oxford, 1962), pp. 131, 187. Cf. RPD, Vol. III, pp. 45–6, 61–7. RPD, Vol. IV, p. 173.

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so indirectly, ordering the bishop, under the terms of the 1285 Statute of Winchester, to raise all available men between the ages of sixteen and sixty within the bishopric – men-at-arms, hobelars and archers – under his own commission of array rather than appoint royal commissioners of array.206 The crown also took care, in its rhetoric at least, to respect Durham’s tradition of military autonomy, pointing out the severity of impending hostilities on the Scottish border and expressing a concern that the liberty of Durham should not ‘be prejudiced or in any way diminished by the present command’ and an expectation that the liberty ‘should always remain safe’.207 Crucially, the men of the bishopric did not need to await royal instruction to act as commissioners of array. In addition to the crown’s repeated requests to the bishops of Durham to assemble companies of foot soldiers and cavalry for the defence of the border, the bishopric had its own mechanisms to raise soldiers which could be activated by local rather than national requirements. This machinery was called into action in 1343 when Bishop Bury, having learned that the Scots were intending to invade the bishopric, appointed twenty-two commissioners to array all men potentes et defensabiles residing in the land between Tyne and Tees aged from fifteen to sixty, according to the Statute of Winchester. Issued just over two weeks before the commission to raise £160 to buy off the Scots, the 1343 commission of array was a local communal response independent of royal initiative and instruction, the aim of which was not the defence of the Anglo-Scottish border per se, but the preservation of the bishopric. Indeed, thirteen of the twenty-two commissioners of array were subsequently appointed to the tax commission.208 Such separate defensive procedures were required once again from the mid 1380s, when the crown’s perception of the military role of the bishopric changed. From the mid fourteenth century, successive bishops of Durham had been appointed wardens of the east march by virtue of their possession of Norham castle, the major English fortress on the south bank of the river Tweed.209 With the renewal of the Scottish war in the mid 1380s, Bishop Fordham was removed from the wardenship of the east march in favour of aristocratic families such as the Nevilles and Percys, whose retinues were now mobilised in the service of the crown.210 Their private resources rendered largely superfluous the royal commission of array, and the flow of writs to the bishop of Durham ordering the assembly of troops under this commission dried up. In one sense, these new arrangements cut through and across the jurisdictional boundaries of the

206

207 208 209

210

Rot. Scot., Vol. I, pp. 251–2, 330, 349, 408–9, 615, 652, 775, 856, 909–10, 952, and Vol. II, pp. 54, 70–1, 80–1. See also CCR, 1369–74, pp. 18–19 (1369), and DCM, Hatfield’s Register, fol. 141v (1378). Rot. Scot., Vol. II, pp. 54, 70–1. Cf. RPD, Vol. IV, pp. 269–71, 273–6. Rot. Scot., Vol. I, pp. 670, 910–11, 923, 935, 940, 945, and Vol. II, p. 2; R.L. Storey, ‘The Wardens of the Marches of England towards Scotland, 1377–1489’, EHR 72 (1957), pp. 610– 11. Storey, ‘Wardens of the Marches’, pp. 599–600.



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bishopric. From the late 1380s, when wardens were expected to raise soldiers through paid retinues, individual members of the Durham gentry did serve on the Scottish border, particularly in the company of Ralph Lord Neville, who was warden of the west march from 1403 until 1414.211 It is from this period that an indenture of retainer with Sir William Claxton dates, in which Claxton, barely two months after Ralph’s appointment as warden, agreed to serve with two archers in the royal garrison at Carlisle for one year, and in April 1404 a session of the Durham county court was suspended because the suitors to the court were said to be in the retinue of the earl of Westmorland on the Scottish march.212 With the privatisation of border defence from the mid 1380s, Bishops Fordham, Skirlaw and Langley issued commissions of array on their own authority, which served a more narrow purpose: the military defence of the bishopric in the event of Scottish penetration south of the river Tyne. It is no coincidence that the series of Durham commissions of array begins in April 1385. This was one month before Bishop Fordham ordered the detention of all carpenters within the bishopric of Durham – except those employed by the prior of Durham, John Lord Neville and Ralph Lord Lumley – for the immediate repair and fortification of the bishop’s castles and other fortalices so as to help the bishopric better resist the recent Scottish attacks.213 It was two months before Richard II led a major military expedition north of the border in July of that year. In what would become standard formula, the members of the commission were instructed, ‘for lack of defence’, to array all defensible men between the ages of sixteen and sixty within their ward and to equip all men-at-arms, hobelars and archers with sufficient arms, ‘for the salvation of the kingdom and of our liberty’. Tellingly, however, the imminent military threat the commission was to meet was to the bishopric itself and not to the kingdom as a whole. This premise would explain why, from 1408, Durham commissioners of array were expected to ensure that early warning signs of invasion in the form of beacons were lit on hilltops or in other places in each ward of the bishopric, ‘when and where there is need’.214 After 1385, the appointment of Durham commissions of array continued episodically throughout the episcopates of Bishops Fordham, Skirlaw and Langley, to confront the more sporadic nature of war in the Anglo-Scottish border region in the early fifteenth century: in July 1389, September 1408, July 1415, July 1418, May 1430, May 1435 and July 1437.215 These commissions all coincided with periods of crisis in Anglo-Scottish relations. The 1389 commission was appointed on 4 July, less than a week after the Scots 211 212 213 214 215

Storey, ‘Wardens of the Marches’, p. 613. DCM, Misc.Chs 6709, 5722, m. 4r. DURH 3/32, mm. 4d, 6d, 7r. DURH 3/34, m. 3d. For this and all future references to the commissions, see DURH 3/32, mm. 4d, 6d (1385 and 1389); DURH 3/34, mm. 3d, 11d (1408 and 1415); DURH 3/35, m. 15d (1418); DURH 3/37, mm. 3r, 11d (1430 and 1435); DURH 3/36, mm. 13r–14r (1437).

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had invaded Northumberland, reaching as far south as Tynemouth.216 Both the 1415 and 1418 commissions took place in the context of fears of Scottish raiding following Henry V’s invasion and then conquest of France.217 In May 1435, a year after the town of Alnwick in Northumberland had been burned by the Scots, another Durham commission of array was appointed. And in September 1435 Bishop Langley sent writs to the same commissioners to carry out the terms of their command ‘with all possible haste’, presumably in the light of further rumours about Scottish invasion. In no sense were these royal commissions: though their timing suggests that they were sometimes issued (for example, in 1415 and 1418) as part of broader national plans for the defence of the north,218 the commissions were a local response to a local problem and were not directly inspired by royal writ. The most striking feature of these Durham commissions of array was their size. Consisting of twenty-two men in 1343, the commissions numbered twenty-five in 1385,219 thirty in 1389, nineteen in 1408, thirty-eight in 1415, twenty-eight in 1418, twenty-nine in 1430, thirty in 1435 and twenty-eight in 1437. Whilst it was usual for local commissions of this sort to expand in the period,220 most commissions of array in other counties of England were considerably smaller: a sample of crown appointments in the period 1400– 1430 has revealed that the average number of men on such a commission was less than ten.221 Durham’s commissions were on a par with those for Yorkshire (all three ridings) or Lincolnshire (all three parts), and the bishopric of Durham was a considerably smaller geographical area than the counties of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.222 How, then, should the size of the Durham commissions of array be explained? Geographically, they covered all of the land between the Tyne and the Tees: the four wards and the wapentake of Sadberge in the extreme south of the bishopric. The 1385 commission even included three appointments for the city of Durham. The 1408 commission of array was the smallest and the most socially exclusive: it included one nobleman in Sir John Lumley, ten men of knightly status, a rich esquire in the form of Thomas Embleton, lord of Tursdale, and four low-income esquires holding between one and two manors in the bishopric.223 Yet every commission involved the whole spec216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223

A. Goodman, ‘Introduction’, War and Border Societies in the Middle Ages, ed. A. Goodman and A. Tuck (London, 1992), pp. 19–20. Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 149, 152. Cf. 1415: CCR, 1413–19, p. 268, PPC, Vol. II, pp. 167–9, CPR, 1413–16, pp. 407–8; 1418: CPR, 1416–22, pp. 196–9. In fact, twenty-three were initially appointed, but Robert Carlisle, lord of Penshaw, died and was replaced by two men, John Claxton and William Lambton: cf. DURH 3/32, mm. 4d, 6d. Saul, Knights and Esquires, pp. 133–5, 145–6. CPR, 1399–1401, pp. 209–13; CPR, 1401–5, pp. 114–15, 287–91, 358–9; CPR, 1405–8, pp. 61–2; CPR, 1413–16, pp. 407–9; CPR, 1416–22, pp. 196–9, 209–12. See, for example, CPR, 1399–1401, pp. 210, 213; CPR, 1401–5, pp. 284, 289. John Hutton of Tudhoe, a Neville retainer, was the exception in this respect, but of the six manors which he held on his death, only the estate of Hunwick in the parish of Auckland St Andrew became a permanent possession of the family.



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trum of landed society, from men below the status of gentry, to sub-manorial gentlemen, wealthy knights of the bishopric and the head of the Lumleys of Lumley castle, who counted among the peerage from the last quarter of the fourteenth century. The 1385 commission included seven men of knightly status, three of whom held more than seven manors in the bishopric alone, a handful of wealthy esquires – Thomas Claxton of Old Park, William Embleton of Tursdale and Thomas Bland of Startforth – a further six gentry holding between one and two manors, and nine sub-manorial landholders, two of whom were lawyers, one the bishop’s master mason, and only one of whom belonged to the level of society below the gentry. The 1389 commission contained a similar mix: a peer in the form of Sir Ralph Lumley; six men of knightly status; three wealthy esquires; six parish gentry holding between one and two manors; and fourteen sub-manorial landholders. Of these fourteen, one was a clerk, another a local lawyer, a third a younger brother of one of the knightly members of the commission and six of sub-gentry status. This last category included men such as Henry Pillock of Sadberge, a very minor episcopal estate official, who had served as the bailiff of the wapentake of Sadberge since 1376.224 The 1415 commission consisted of ten men of knightly status, three rich esquires, one of whom, Robert Strangways, derived his wealth and status from office rather than land; seven manorial lords whose landed wealth, drawn from two manorial estates at most, placed them among the parish gentry of the bishopric, but the majority of whom were also styled esquires; and eighteen sub-manorial landholders. Of these eighteen, Thomas Fulthorpe and Thomas Blakeston were the sons of knightly members of the same commission, another six were styled esquires, leaving ten men who ranked among the yeomanry of the bishopric, including Richard Cowherd from Durham and Thomas Emerson from Stanhope. The former’s family had served as keepers of the prior’s deer park at Bearpark for several generations, whilst the latter’s family had occupied a similar position as keepers of the bishop’s deer park at Stanhope from the 1380s.225 The 1418 commission was made up of seven men of knightly status, three wealthy esquires, eight gentry holding a couple of manors at most who now counted among the low-income esquires of the bishopric, and ten sub-manorial landholders including the mayor of Hartlepool. Of these ten, only three were definitely below the status of gentry: two were wholly obscure, but the third, John Vescy, a commissioner of array for the wapentake of Sadberge in 1415 and 1418, was a free tenant at Low

224 225

Pillock: DCM, Reg. II, fol. 278v; DUL, CCB B/23/1/14. Cowherd: DCM, Reg. II, fols 145v, 213r, Reg. III, fols 174v–175v, Loc.XXV:120; Emerson: see above, pp. 152–3.

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Coniscliffe in the southern extremity of the bishopric.226 The 1430, 1435 and 1437 commissions of array contained the same balance. In none of the eight commissions of array between 1385 and 1437 did men of knightly status – whether actual or potential knights – predominate.227 The Durham commissions of array were more socially inclusive. On the one hand, the composition of these commissions essentially mirrored the social structure of landed society in the bishopric. This meant that, on the whole, the eight commissions were characterised by a preponderance of lesser landholders of the bishopric: relatively low-income manorial lords and sub-manorial gentry. On the other, this meant that the commissions frequently included a member of the gentry who had only a small landed interest between the Tyne and the Tees and who otherwise had very little to do with the affairs of the bishopric. Thomas Bland, for instance, who served on the 1385 and 1389 Durham commissions of array, was essentially a landholder from the North Riding, where he held the vast majority of his offices. He was the lord of the manor of Startforth, opposite Barnard Castle on the south bank of the river Tees, and his landed stake in the bishopric was limited to a few burgages in Barnard Castle.228 John Dawnay, one of the seven manorial lords on the 1415 Durham commission of array, was almost certainly a retainer of the Scropes of Bolton in the North Riding, from whom he held a life interest in the manor of High Cliff in the parish of Winston.229 Ralph Bulmer, lord of Bulmer and Wilton, was the head of a knightly family whose principal interests lay south of the river Tees in North Yorkshire. By virtue of a small estate in the parish of Jarrow, in the north-eastern corner of the bishopric, Bulmer nonetheless was appointed as a commissioner of array for Chester ward in 1430.230 John Hastings, son and heir of Sir Edmund Hastings, was another North Riding gentleman. He served on three successive Durham commissions of array in the 1430s, by dint of his possession of two relatively minor manorial estates in the bishopric, which he had acquired as the heir of Sir John Felton of Edlingham in Northumberland.231 In 1434 both Bulmer and Hastings’s father, Edmund, were among those gentry who swore an oath to uphold the peace in the county of Yorkshire, rather than in Durham.232 Above all, the Durham commissions of array brought together the broad stratum of landed society within the bishopric: from resident aristocratic and knightly families such as the Lumleys of Lumley castle and the Hyltons,

226 227 228 229 230 231 232

Vescy: DURH 3/2, fols 280v-281v. For a different conclusion in relation to another part of England, see Acheson, Leicestershire, p. 113. DCM, Reg. II, fol. 290v; CPR, 1385–9, pp. 254, 260, 261; NYCRO, ZKW (NLI) D/Wat/Box 79. DURH 3/2, fol. 267r–v. Bulmer estates: CIPM, Vol. XIX, pp. 30–1 (Yorkshire); FPD, p. 85, DURH 3/37, m. 4r (Durham). DURH 3/2, fols 211r–v, 309v; House of Commons, 1386–1421, Vol. III, pp. 317–19. CPR, 1429–36, p. 378.



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neither of whom tended to hold palatine office, to lesser families for whom a position on the commission of array was part of a cursus honorum of office. From 1345 until Sir Thomas Lumley’s appointment as a JP in 1433,233 appointment to the commission of array was the only formal office which a Lumley held in the bishopric. From the same date until 1430, when William Baron Hylton’s son and heir, Robert, was appointed to two separate commissions to investigate the state of the rivers in the bishopric,234 no Hylton held a post in the bishop’s palatine administration other than on a commission of array. To the lesser gentry and those who occupied a marginal position between free and gentle, the commission of array, though it was an ad hoc and, therefore, far from regular appointment, was the culmination of their ascent through the hierarchy of local office. This was true of John Billy, an obscure individual, who was appointed coroner of Darlington ward in 1383, before serving as commissioner of array for the same ward in 1385; of Robert Skelton, coroner of Easington ward by 1380 and commissioner of array there in 1385; of Gilbert Eglin, coroner of Chester in 1382 and commissioner of array there in 1389; of William Chester, coroner of Chester ward in 1383 and commissioner of array there in 1389 and 1408; of Henry Pillock, bailiff of the wapentake of Sadberge in 1376 and commissioner of array there in 1389; of John Middleton of Blackwell, coroner of Darlington in 1388 and commissioner of array there in 1389; of Gilbert Hutton, coroner of Stockton ward in 1388 and commissioner of array there a year later; of John Birtley, coroner of Chester in 1410 and commissioner of array there in 1415 and 1418; of William Featherstone and Thomas Emerson, keepers of Stanhope park and commissioners of array in Darlington ward in 1415; of Robert Belasis, coroner of Darlington ward in 1410, where he was also a collector of unfree rents on behalf of the bishop,235 and a commissioner of array in the ward in 1415 and 1418; and of William Milot, parker of the episcopal park of Frankland in 1403 and commissioner of array for Chester ward in 1418, 1435 and 1437. To these individuals, the majority of whom were armigerous and low-income esquires, a position on the commission of array for the ward in which they lived allowed them to rub shoulders with the greater gentry of the bishopric and represented the pinnacle of their involvement in the administrative structures of the bishopric. The Durham commissions of array, however, commanded the attention of the whole gamut of landed society in the bishopric not just because they provided an opportunity to hold office. They were evidence of the ‘community of the bishopric’ in action, the significance of which will be explored more fully in the next chapter. Individually, the members of these commissions of array were not independent of the vertical and hierarchical ties of lordship, but their participation in the defence of the bishopric reflected a 233 234 235

DURH 3/36, m. 7r. DURH 3/38, m. 20r. DUL, CCB B/54/1, m. 1r.

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more profound assumption of political life in Durham: adherence to ideas of collective political involvement and communal identity. If, in the case of urban communities, ‘mustering went to the very heart of a town’s notion of self-identity’, forcing towns to prepare for war and to organise collectively their means of local defence, the Durham commissions of array held a similar significance for local society within the bishopric.236 Interestingly, no Neville occupied a position on a Durham commission of array in the period in question, although the Nevilles were frequently appointed to commissions of array outside the bishopric, where they held property.237 Between 1427 and 1434, for instance, Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury headed a succession of commissions of array in the counties of Cumberland, Westmorland, Lancashire and all three ridings of Yorkshire.238 The participation of a wide cross-section of local society in the Durham commissions of array says much about the underlying strength of collective bonds within the bishopric: officeholding in this sense really did provide a locus of social and political interaction. But more than that, the Durham commissioners of array, appointed independently of the crown for the preservation of the physical integrity of the land between the Tyne and the Tees, demonstrated an essential and continuous feature of political life in Durham, namely a shared commitment to the maintenance of the autonomous traditions of the bishopric. Office-holding helped to foster a sense of local community within Durham, drawing in the lesser landholders and giving them a stake in the bishopric. Military appointments had a more representative character than the pattern of top-down appointments to the major offices in Durham. But this was nonetheless essentially a fractured office-holding community. There was a two-tier system of local government in Durham. This was not the straightforward divide found generally in other counties of England, with the greater offices going to the greater gentry and the lesser offices monopolised by the lesser gentry. Prominent local families such as the Hyltons and the Lumleys rarely held office in the bishopric. Participation in local government was not the norm for the knightly elite of Durham.239 Appointment to the chief administrative and judicial offices within Durham was shaped largely by the exercise of episcopal patronage. The major offices tended to be filled by those who owed their appointment to seigneurial service or legal and administrative experience and included ecclesiastics, lawyers, professional administrators and greater gentry from outside the bishopric. It did not necessarily reflect

236 237

238 239

L. Attreed, The King’s Towns: Identity and Survival in Late Medieval English Boroughs (New York, 2001), pp. 187–8. John Neville: CPR, 1374–7, p. 498, CPR, 1377–81, pp. 38, 472, CPR, 1381–5, p. 591; Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland: CPR, 1391–6, p. 93, CPR, 1399–1401, pp. 211, 213, CPR, 1401–5, pp. 287, 294, CPR, 1416–22, pp. 211, 271. CPR, 1422–9, pp. 405, 406; CPR, 1429–36, pp. 40, 71, 359–60. Holford, ‘Esh Family’, p. 222.



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local rank and status.240 Lesser offices – of parker, forester, coroner, tax collector, commissioner of array – were much more representative of the gradations of landed society within Durham. If this was a community which might come together periodically through a shared experience in officeholding, it was not primarily through participation in local government that a sense of local identity was forged.241 The county community of Durham was not a social or political community as such. It was essentially an imagined community, whose coherence and sense of collective awareness were created and maintained by a distinctive cultural identity associated with the historical traditions of the church of Durham and the concept of the Haliwerfolc.

240 241

Holford, ‘Esh Family’, pp. 227–8. Cf. Coss, English Gentry, pp. 202–15.

5 The Haliwerfolc and the Politics of Community

Historians interested in the political history of Durham and, in particular, in the question of what constituted local politics, have tended to approach the subject from opposite directions. One view of local politics in late medieval England is that the sources of conflict and tension within local society were indigenous and revolved around land, its acquisition, maintenance and consolidation. The language of this kind of politics drew upon the rhetoric of lordship, the family, neighbourliness, friendship, fidelity and service. Mervyn James, in his characterisation of late medieval Durham as a ‘lineage’ society defined by the cult of lordship, argued that local politics were of precisely this type. ‘One aspect of the bounded horizons and particularized modes of thought characteristic of the lineage society’, wrote James, ‘emerges in the rarity with which it was possible for lineage politics to be articulated in terms of generalized political principles or constitutional positions.’ In his view, few members of political society within the bishopric had access to the kind of education ‘which might have opened up a perspective wider than the grievances and aspirations of the lineage itself ’. It is a line of thought which comes close to arguing that local society formed a sub-political (or non-political) world, only characterised by feuding among kin groups over land and office. A more recent approach to the study of local politics in England has been to emphasise the close ties between centre and locality. From this perspective, the administrative and judicial autonomy of the bishopric of Durham was no impediment to the political interaction between court and country. Much of the agenda of local politics between the Tyne and the Tees, it has been suggested, was shaped by the politics of the realm and, in particular, by the factional politics of the royal court. ‘Politics in the county palatine did reflect the alignment of factional politics at court. How could they not? The politics of this province, of this palatinate, were enmeshed in the politics of the whole realm.’ So long as the bishop was primarily the king’s minister,    

G.L. Harriss, ‘The Dimensions of Politics’, The McFarlane Legacy: Studies in Late Medieval Politics and Society, ed. R.H. Britnell and A.J. Pollard (Stroud, 1995), pp. 2–7, 15. For this and what follows, see M. James, Family, Lineage and Civil Society: A Study of Society, Politics, and Mentality in the Durham Region, 1500–1640 (Oxford, 1974), p. 184. Cf. C. Carpenter, ‘Gentry and Community in Medieval England’, JBS 33 (1994), pp. 356–7. For what follows, see A.J. Pollard, ‘Provincial Politics in Lancastrian England: The Challenge to Bishop Langley’s Liberty in 1433’, People, Places and Perspectives: Essays on Later Medieval and Early Tudor England, ed. K. Dockray and P. Fleming (Nonsuch, 2005), p. 76.



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the politics of Durham were inevitably bound up in the politics of the royal court. In its own way, this perception of the politics of the bishopric as not just a reflection, but an extension of the politics of the centre, continues to diminish the vigorous nature of political culture in Durham. The localised character of Durham’s political life – specifically the relationship between the bishop and the bishop’s subjects – is the subject of the chapter. Local politics were not only about the individual relationships between successive bishops of Durham and their greatest subjects within the bishopric, namely the Nevilles of Raby and Brancepeth, but also encompassed the collective interests and ambitions of the ‘community of the bishopric’. All of the bishops of Durham in this period were in fact guardians of the palatinate’s traditions of autonomy as well as representatives of the crown. There was no intrinsic contradiction. The series of roughly contemporaneous biographies of the bishops written at Durham is particularly revealing in this respect. If Thomas Hatfield could be singled out as a bishop who ‘defended, to the best of his ability, the rights of the liberty of the bishopric against outsiders’, even a bishop as curialist as Thomas Langley, who served all three Lancastrian kings as a royal councillor and chancellor of England whilst simultaneously the head of the church of Durham, was deserving of praise for his defence of the rights of Durham. The author of the Durham chronicle, the Gesta Episcoporum Dunelmensium, wrote of Langley that he was ‘bishop of Durham in the time of three kings, namely six years and six months in the time of Henry IV, ten years and five months in the time of Henry V and fifteen years in the time of Henry VI, in all of whose reigns he was held in the highest esteem for his outstanding wisdom and skilled in using his great authority for the public good’. There followed immediately a lengthy recitation of the record of the bishop’s recovery of part of the Tyne Bridge, which the burgesses of Newcastle claimed in its entirety but which, Langley argued, had belonged to the bishop and his predecessors from time immemorial in right of the church of St Cuthbert of Durham. It was Bishop Langley who, in the course of the dispute about the Tyne Bridge, appeared in the king’s chancery to declare resolutely and unambiguously that the county and liberty of Durham was a jurisdiction where he exercised royal rights ‘and where royal writs do not run’ (et ubi brevia regia non currunt). Langley’s outlook on political life was shaped as much by the culture of palatine liberties as the politics of the royal court. Langley’s successor, Bishop Robert Neville, a royalist bishop if ever there was one, whom Henry VI had gone out of his way to appoint in 1438 with a carefully crafted and elaborate justification, was similarly commended for the financing of a new home for the palatine

   

Scriptores Tres, p. 137. For this and what follows, see Scriptores Tres, pp. 146–7; C 44/27/2. KB 27/614, m. 15d. T. Thornton, ‘Fifteenth-Century Durham and the Problem of Provincial Liberties in England and the Wider Territories of the English Crown’, TRHS, 6th series 11 (2001), p. 99.

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chancery and exchequer before the gates of Durham castle. Royal service did not preclude or take priority to service to the palatinate. If it became necessary, the late medieval bishops of Durham were fully prepared to act in the interests of the palatinate against the infringements of the crown. Antony Bek may have been the most outspoken of the ­fourteenthand fifteenth-century bishops of Durham when he declared, in angry response to the very idea of the quo warranto inquiry of 1293, that neither the king nor his officials had the power to enter the palatinate except in time of a vacancy of the see and that the sheriff of Northumberland had no authority to act in ‘another county’.10 However, in the mid fifteenth century, Bishop Robert Neville was prompted, by the demand in the parliament of 1453 for the supply of 300 archers from the bishopric, to prepare an equally staunch defence of the independence of the entire palatinate, whose privileged position was predicated upon an authority wholly separate from that of the crown. This was the authority of tradition, custom and precedent.11 In a ‘contemporary legal and political culture’ which respected ‘custom and particularism’,12 the crown found it difficult to ignore the legitimising force of the authority of tradition that the bishops of Durham were able to call upon to justify their position. At the beginning of our period, in the first year of Thomas Hatfield’s episcopate, the bishop petitioned the king and council to register his protest about the behaviour of the sheriff of Northumberland who, on the order of the royal exchequer, had distrained the bishop’s tenants in the shires of Norham, Island and Bedlington in Northumberland and in Crayke in North Yorkshire, forcing them to pay a special tax on wool (the ninth) granted in the parliament of March 1340. From time out of mind, Hatfield alleged, the bishops of Durham had held the aforementioned franchises free of all manner of tax and tallage as a parcel of their liberty of Durham between Tyne and Tees.13 The bishop did not try to argue that the palatinate’s role as a buffer against the Scots was the basis of its exemption from royal taxation. Rather, he asked that his tenants in these outlying members of the palatinate be free of all such taxes specifically in right of his church of St Cuthbert of Durham, to whose disinheritance such an imposition would serve. The king’s response was to order that the records of the royal exchequer be searched to check for proof of past immunity. The fourteenth- and fifteenth-century bishops of Durham were committed to palatine privileges and traditions essentially because they were bound up in the possessions of the church of Durham. The origins of the territory over which the bishops of Durham presided – the origins of their palatine authority – lay in the estates accumulated by the pre-Conquest church of Durham and  10 11 12 13

Scriptores Tres, p. 147. This building survives to the present day. Bek, p. 40. SC 8/85/4208; and above, p. 15. Thornton, ‘Fifteenth-Century Durham’, p. 100. For this and what follows, see Northern Petitions, pp. 271–2; CCR, 1346–9, p. 3; CCR, 1354–60, pp. 113–14; CCR, 1360–4, p. 118.



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granted to St Cuthbert, mostly after his death. The land between Tyne and Tees, as well as the other satellites of the bishopric north of the Tyne and south of the Tees, constituted the patrimony of St Cuthbert. Ultimately, it was in terms of the defence of the rights of his church – its privileges, immunities and franchises – that Robert Neville articulated and justified his resistance to the crown in 1453.14 Just as bishops were the successors to the apostles and the pope was the successor to St Peter, the bishops of Durham saw themselves as the personification of the founding saint of their church. They had a particular responsibility to maintain the endowments of their church, since the possessions of the church of Durham were dedicated and belonged symbolically to St Cuthbert. As the lineal descendants and earthly representatives of St Cuthbert, the late medieval bishops of Durham were determined defenders of the privileges and jurisdiction of their church against any attempted usurpation by others. Lands and rights were committed to their care and could not be lost.15 Their loss was a dishonour to Cuthbert. Thus, in 1388, Bishop Fordham responded to the forfeitures of the estates of one of Richard II’s justices, Sir Roger Fulthorpe, and of the king’s chancellor, Michael de la Pole, earl of Suffolk – both of whom had been declared traitors in the Merciless Parliament of that year and both of whom held properties in the bishopric – by reminding the king in no uncertain terms of the misfortune which had often ‘come to those who have damaged the rights and franchises of the said holy body (St Cuthbert) and of his church of Durham’ (considerantz auxi diverses meschiefs que sovent ount avenuz a ceux qui ount enblemyz les droitz et franchises du dit corps seint et de sa Eglise de Duresme). In Fordham’s words, the parliamentary statute of 1388 which ordered that the forfeited estates should accrue to the king within franchise and without, would be of ‘great injury and damage to the rights of the said glorious holy body and of his franchise, and of great harm and disinheritance to his said church’ (grand prejudice et blemyssement as droiz du dit glorieux corps seint et de sa dite franchise, et grand damage et desheriteson a sa dite Eglise).16 The anticipated infringement of the bishop’s right to dispose of palatinate lands belonging to traitors against the crown was represented as a personal slight to Cuthbert himself. In January 1390, after Sir William Scrope was found guilty of committing various unnamed ‘trespasses … in the bishopric of Durham’, the offences were seen not as an attack upon Bishop Walter Skirlaw per se but as a crime against St Cuthbert. The king ordered Scrope to make penance for his wrong in the form of the offering of a jewel, worth no less than £400, at the shrine of St Cuthbert in Durham cathedral.17 It was to Cuthbert rather than Skirlaw that Scrope was

14 15 16 17

SC 8/85/4208. For the wider context of episcopal rights and duties, see R.W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 270–1. RP, Vol. III, p. 177. CPR, 1388–92, p. 178. The nature of Scrope’s offence is not known.

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expected to make amends. In the second decade of the fifteenth century, when the growing tensions between the bishops of Durham and the town of Newcastle-upon-Tyne came to a climax over the seemingly prosaic issue of the building of a new tower by the men of Newcastle upon the southern half of the Tyne Bridge, Bishop Thomas Langley made it abundantly clear that he saw his jurisdiction as exercised primarily on behalf of Cuthbert. In March 1412, on Langley’s initiative, the mayor of Newcastle, with eleven other representatives of the town, appeared before the bishop in the chapter house of Durham cathedral, to swear individually an oath to respect the bishop’s franchise. The religious setting, coupled with the actual wording of the oath, is most suggestive, for the burgesses of Newcastle swore to uphold the boundaries of the ‘fraunchis and jurisdiction temporell of Seynt Cutbert of Duresme and of Thomas Bisshop of the kirke of Seynt Cutbert of Duresme and of his predecessours sumtyme Bisshopes of þe same kirke’.18 To the bishops of Durham, the palatinate was essentially a form of lordship. In particular, it was a special kind of lordship, a regality, whose holder held powers normally reserved to the crown in other parts of the kingdom, and none of the bishops in our period was reluctant to emphasise the regal quality of his lordship.19 Indeed, Thomas Hatfield made this very point from the start of his episcopate when he introduced a great seal in chancery which was self-consciously modelled upon the king’s great seal. On the obverse was the bishop seated in majesty on the episcopal throne, exercising justice and the power of mercy, and on the reverse was the bishop clad in armour, sitting on a horse with a sword by his side.20 Here was an image of the bishop as peacemaker and warrior within his palatinate; but it was the equestrian portrait, above all, which exemplified the extent of Hatfield’s pretensions. Wearing a mitre on top of his coroneted helmet, the reverse of the great seal was the visual representation of that oft-repeated statement, made some forty years earlier at the beginning of the fourteenth century by the steward of Bishop Antony Bek, that ‘there are two kings in England, namely, the lord king wearing a crown in sign of his regality, and the lord bishop of Durham wearing a mitre in place of a crown in sign of his regality in the diocese of Durham.’21 Hatfield’s successors continued his practice in the design of their great seals, introducing changes which imitated the royal example even more suggestively.22 They also spoke freely, in their relations with their own subjects and with the crown, of their exercise of a royal lordship and of their

18 19 20 21 22

C 44/27/2. The dispute is discussed more fully, with references, below. Cf. R.R. Davies, Lordship and Society in the March of Wales 1282–1400 (Oxford, 1978), p. 217. See Plate 1. For the context, see C.M. Fraser, A History of Antony Bek, Bishop of Durham, 1283–1311 (Oxford, 1957), pp. 82–99 at 98–9. C.H. Hunter Blair, ‘Medieval Seals of the Bishops of Durham’, Archaeologia, 2nd series 22 (1921–2), pp. 16–17. In the seals of Hatfield’s successors, the bishop, like the king, rides from left to right, whilst the bishop’s sword is also similarly unsheathed.



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Plate 1.  Reverse of Bishop Hatfield’s great seal

possession of a royal franchise.23 These bishops did not necessarily share the crown’s interpretation of the meaning of their regalian status. The crown’s attitude, certainly from the time of Bishop Bek’s protracted disputes with Edward I in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, was consistent: as holders of regalian privileges, privileges issuing from the crown, the bishops of Durham were royal ministers.24 The bishops saw in the palatinate and its traditions of autonomy a bundle of rights, privileges and prerogatives which pertained to them in right of the church of Durham. It was primarily in defence of these powers that the bishops acted, sometimes against the claims of the crown. The lordship exercised by the bishops of Durham was geographically extensive: it incorporated the entire palatinate, that is, the area between Tyne 23 24

In chronological order, see, for example, DURH 3/30, m. 4d; Northern Petitions, pp. 271–2; RP, Vol. III, p. 177; SC 8/20/981B; DCM, Misc.Ch. 7076; C 44/27/2; SC 8/85/4208. C.M. Fraser, ‘Edward I of England and the Regalian Franchise of Durham’, Speculum 31 (1956), pp. 329–42; see also above, pp. 12–13. Cf. James, Family, Lineage and Civil Society, p. 41.

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and Tees, as well as the substantial possessions in Northumberland and Yorkshire. All of these lands were symbolically if not financially as valuable as each other, for all were closely associated with the saint. This is why Bishop Hatfield, at the very beginning of his episcopate, moved quickly to ensure that the crown treated the geographically peripheral members exactly the same as the core of the palatinate in the matter of taxation.25 It is also why Hatfield, for around ten years from the mid 1360s, fought so hard to preserve his financial rights on the river Tweed, at the northernmost extremity of the palatinate.26 When Bishop Fordham, as a consequence of his conflict with the town of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the 1380s, sought royal endorsement of his rights, he actually listed, one by one, all of the principal estates which he held in demesne: between the Tyne and the Tees these included the city and castle of Durham, the manor and wapentake of Sadberge, the manors of Bishop Auckland, Bishop Middleham, Darlington, Stockton, Easington, Houghton-le-Spring, Chester-le-Street, Gateshead, Ryton, Lanchester, Evenwood, Stanhope and Wolsingham, as well as the castle of Norham and the manor of Bedlington north of the Tyne and the manors of Howden, Allerton and Crayke in Yorkshire.27 And when Walter Skirlaw sought to place his palatine privileges on a firmer footing in 1391, among the charters which Richard II inspected and confirmed was the decidedly spurious grant in 685 by Ecgfrith, king of Northumbria – one of the most generous benefactors of the Northumbrian church – of Crayke and certain estates in northern Northumberland to ­ Cuthbert, newly consecrated bishop of the church of Lindisfarne, predecessor of the church of Durham of which the bishop claimed to be custodian.28 All of the bishops in this period – Thomas Hatfield, John Fordham, Walter Skirlaw and Thomas Langley – spent long periods away from Durham. Thomas Hatfield’s episcopal register still awaits its historian, so it is difficult to be certain of his itinerary, but as warden of the east march, he was certainly in residence at Norham castle during the 1350s and 1370s.29 The registers of Fordham and Skirlaw are not extant, but both were undoubtedly very busy men. Fordham was made treasurer of the royal household in January 1386 and, although dismissed from royal office in the Wonderful Parliament of October 1386 along with the king’s other leading ministers, he remained with the king throughout the period of appellant rule in 1387.30 Skirlaw, Fordham’s successor, was also closely connected to the royal court, where his diplomatic skills were particularly valued by the regimes of Richard II and Henry IV, 25 26 27 28 29 30

See above, p. 176. Northern Petitions, pp. 40–3. CPR, 1381–5, p. 362. CChR, 1341–1417, p. 328. See also Symeon, pp. 46–7 and n. 58. DCM, Hatfield’s Register; see above, p. 14. R.G. Davies, ‘The Episcopate and the Political Crisis in England of 1386–1388’, Speculum 51 (1976), pp. 665–8. See also C. Given-Wilson, ‘Royal Charter Witness Lists, 1327–1399’, Medieval Prosopography 12 (1991), pp. 89, 91.



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primarily in their relations with the French.31 When Prior John Wessington petitioned Bishop Langley in the early fifteenth century seeking the enforcement of the terms of the agreement known as ‘le Convenit’, which regulated financial and juridical relations between priory and bishop, he bemoaned the fact that Langley’s predecessors, Bishops Fordham and Skirlaw, had ‘resided almost continuously in London’ (ipsi domini quasi continue manebant London) and had not been open to dialogue.32 But their frequent absences from Durham did not lead to the neglect of their local responsibilities. Even those bishops who were criticised for being away from the bishopric too much were zealous guardians of their palatine rights and privileges. When a group of aristocratic and knightly royal favourites and a significant number of royal justices, including two holders of estates in the bishopric of Durham, suffered forfeiture for treason in 1388, Bishops Fordham and Skirlaw fought a sustained campaign over several years to ensure that their regalian rights in respect of forfeited properties were respected by the crown, so that they could dispose of the escheats freely without royal intrusion.33 For more than half his episcopate, Thomas Langley’s other responsibilities took him away from the bishopric,34 but he was as vigilant as his predecessors in the defence of his rights. It was not just the crown against whom the late medieval bishops of Durham maintained a watchful eye in the event of lands and privileges pertaining to the church of Durham being taken away. Indeed, it was the long-running conflict with the town of Newcastle in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries which best illustrates the importance which successive bishops of Durham attached to the full enforcement of their palatine rights. It was the efforts of the mercantile community of Newcastle-upon-Tyne to control the emerging north-east coal trade which led to local conflict in the 1380s. At stake, first and foremost, were the financial profits and economic rights of the bishops of Durham. John Fordham made this absolutely clear when he petitioned the king in 1383 in order to protect the large annual income which he obtained from coal.35 This revenue was derived from the bishops’ possession of mineral rights within their palatinate, which were in turn the consequence of their position as universal landlord within their jurisdiction: the coal in question was ‘their’ coal and it was in ‘their’ land (leurs charbons esteanz en leur soil). The problem, according to Fordham, was that the men of Newcastle, and especially the civic officials 31

32 33

34 35

Davies, ‘Episcopate’, p. 687; D. Biggs, ‘Royal Charter Witness Lists for the Reign of Henry IV, 1399–1413’, EHR 119 (2004), pp. 411, 418. For evidence of diplomatic activity, see PPC, Vol. I, pp. 19–24, 82–3, 102–3; Rot. Scot., Vol. II, pp. 109, 125–6. DCM, Reg. III, fol. 180v. RP, Vol. III, p. 177; CFR, 1383–91, p. 253; SC 8/20/981B; CCR, 1389–92, p. 221. This is part of a longer story which has been told elsewhere: G.T. Lapsley, The County Palatine of Durham: A Study in Constitutional History (London, 1900), pp. 41–50; C.M. Fraser, ‘Prerogative and the Bishops of Durham, 1267–1376’, EHR 74 (1959), pp. 474–5. A calculation based upon the evidence of Langley’s itinerary, as reconstructed in R.L. Storey, Thomas Langley and the Bishopric of Durham, 1406–1437 (London, 1961), pp. 226–44. For this and what follows, see Northern Petitions, pp. 169–73.

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of the town, had started to obstruct the passage of coal from the river, which was of great damage to the church of Durham and to his own revenue (et en grand grief et subtraccion du profit du dit suppliant). Specifically, Fordham accused the civic elite of Newcastle of infringing his rights in that part of the river Tyne which pertained to the bishopric of Durham: here, the men of Newcastle had sought to restrict trade, obstructing ships from mooring, preventing the bishop from transporting coal in his own ships and imposing, on their own authority, a tax on coal on any vessel leaving the bishop’s part of the river Tyne. Fordham protested that, as a result, he had not received any profit from coal since his accession in 1381. It was in this context, in the interests solely of the bishop and his successors, that Fordham sought a royal charter. The bishop gained more than he had asked for: comprehensive letters patent confirming his possession of ‘the lordship and liberties of count palatine therein’ and listing all of Fordham’s main landed properties within the palatinate;36 and a charter granting that ships should be allowed to moor, load and unload coal and other merchandise (with the exception of wool) on the southern side of the river Tyne without any kind of impediment, financial or otherwise, from the men of Newcastle.37 Fordham’s charter generated an immediate response from the burgesses of Newcastle, who claimed the whole transpontine area for the port of Newcastle and who sought the charter’s revocation on the grounds that immunity from local tolls or customs greatly diminished the town’s ability to pay its annual fee farm to the king;38 but though an official inquiry was ordered, the dispute petered out, almost certainly in favour of the bishop.39 The failure of this campaign of river obstruction by the men of Newcastle led directly to, or at least was accompanied by, the building of a new tower on the southern half of the Tyne Bridge.40 This was a highly symbolic gesture, which reflected the townsmen’s growing confidence in their own corporate identity in the late fourteenth century, expressed elsewhere in the town’s elevation to county status in May 1400, when it was separated, in matters of law and administration, from the county of Northumberland.41 But it was motivated, above all, by Newcastle’s ambitions to control shipping on the whole of the river Tyne, an agenda which was driven by the economic interests of Newcastle’s substantial and increasingly prosperous mercantile community, represented by the town’s civic rulers, who wanted to exercise greater control over the expanding trade in coal, much of it mined in the bishopric of Durham, by channelling it through the port of Newcastle.42 Our knowledge of the construction of a tower on the Gateshead side of the Tyne 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

CPR, 1381–5, p. 362. CChR, 1341–1417, pp. 290–1. See also CCR, 1381–5, p. 349. Ancient Petitions relating to Northumberland, ed. C.M. Fraser (SS 176, 1961), pp. 257–8. CCR, 1381–5, p. 573. According to Langley’s 1413 petition, the building began in May 1384: KB 27/614, m. 13r. CChR, 1341–1417, pp. 397–8. The House of Commons, 1386–1421, ed. J.S. Roskell, 4 vols (Stroud, 1992), Vol. I, p. 546; J.B.



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Bridge is a result of the lawsuit which Bishop Langley instigated against the mayor and community of Newcastle in 1410, when he petitioned the king in parliament to complain about its deleterious impact upon his traditional and inherited rights within the bishopric.43 His predecessors, he informed the king, had held from time immemorial the land between Tyne and Tees and the moieties of the same rivers adjoining the bishopric in right of his church of St Cuthbert of Durham. This lordship also included half of the Tyne Bridge between the towns of Newcastle and Gateshead. But in the mid 1380s the mayor and bailiffs of Newcastle started to build a tower on the southern half of the bridge adjacent to Gateshead. This construction work was completed in the episcopate of Langley’s predecessor, Bishop Skirlaw, by the community of Newcastle, whose civic officials had also removed and appropriated certain stones lying in the middle of the bridge, which formed the boundaries between the bishopric of Durham and the town of Newcastle. The whole of the bridge up to the town of Gateshead, according to Langley, was claimed by the men of Newcastle as lying outside the bishopric of Durham and within the newly constituted county of the town of Newcastle. Bishop Langley viewed the actions of the men of Newcastle on the Tyne Bridge as a blatant attack upon the traditional rights of the church of Durham (overt disheritison de sa dicte eglise).44 Langley’s stance was informed by a perception that each part of the palatinate, however small, had to be protected at all costs, even against the possible encroachments of the crown. Thus, having brought the subject to the attention of the king, who delegated the issue for resolution in chancery, Langley was fully prepared in 1412 to try to co-ordinate a peace agreement locally: as we have seen, he managed to secure an oath from twelve delegates of the town of Newcastle in which they acknowledged the full extent of the bishop’s temporal jurisdiction as lying up to the exact mid-point of the Tyne Bridge. It was the king’s chancellor who declared the oath unjust and who intervened again to bring the two parties into chancery.45 When, in 1413, the mayor and community of Newcastle pleaded successfully for the king’s aid on the grounds that Newcastle was a royal town which was held of the crown in return for the payment of a fee farm and the civic officials were, therefore, the king’s ministers, it was Bishop Langley who declared firmly that such aid should be denied since the disputed section of the Tyne Bridge lay completely (totaliter) within the county and liberty of Durham.46 Langley, in contrast to the mayor of Newcastle, never once presented himself as a royal servant. Rather, it was the bishop’s unswerving

43 44 45 46

Blake, ‘The Medieval Coal Trade of North East England: Some Fourteenth-Century Evidence’, NH 2 (1967), pp. 1–26 at 24–6. SC 8/108/5361. KB, 27/614, m. 13r. C 44/27/2. For the oath, see above, p. 178. KB, 27/614, mm. 13d-14r. For the notion of the ‘king’s aid’, see L. Ehrlich, ‘Proceedings against the Crown (1216–1377)’, Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History VI, ed. P. Vinogradoff (Oxford, 1921), p. 25.

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devotion to the preservation of the inheritance of the church of St Cuthbert of Durham which characterised this struggle. When Langley petitioned the crown in the first parliament of Henry V’s reign, he confided that the equitable jurisdiction of the chancellor was at least preferable to the interminable delays and costs involved in pursuing a case at common law.47 Langley was to be disappointed and, a year later, both parties agreed that the dispute should be handled through trial by jury. Protracted and frequently tortuous debate then followed as to the composition of the jury: the mayor of Newcastle argued that the jury should come from Northumberland, since it was the closest county geographically to the subject of dispute, namely the Tyne Bridge. Langley, however, did not believe that he would get a fair trial from a Northumberland jury, claiming that the inhabitants of the county would be favorabiles et inclinantes to the mayor and community of Newcastle and minus indifferentes to himself, since at the time that the tower in question was built on the Tyne Bridge, Newcastle was part and parcel of the county of Northumberland and not yet a separate county in its own right. The bishop also remembered how the Northumbrians had, in the past, claimed certain customs in aqua Sancti Cuthberti de Tyna.48 Langley wanted the suit to be settled, therefore, by a jury drawn from Yorkshire on the basis that it was the closest county to the town of Gateshead to which the southern half of the bridge was connected. This was a somewhat optimistic interpretation, but was one made with reference to the fact that Yorkshire was at least adjacent to the bishopric of Durham (of which Gateshead was part), whereas the county of Northumberland lay north of Newcastle and was not contiguous with Gateshead. In the end, the chancellor decided that a mixed jury from Cumberland and Westmorland would suffice. In 1414 the case came before the court of king’s bench and eventually, two years later, a jury composed of Cumberland and Westmorland men found in favour of Bishop Langley: in addition to the payment of damages amounting to forty marks for the removal of the boundary markers, the bishop recovered possession of the section of the bridge on which the men of Newcastle had built their tower, which tower he was now allowed to keep for his own use.49 What is inescapable is the bishop’s unrelenting determination, sustained over several years, to bring the conflict to a conclusion, as the case dragged on interminably through the various royal courts. At one point, in 1414, Langley even petitioned the king to point out that Sir James Harrington, the sheriff of Cumberland, who would ordinarily have received the writ to impanel a jury from the county, was actually related to him by marriage. Such a familial connection, the bishop

47 48 49

For this and what follows, see KB, 27/614, mm. 13r–17d. This is almost certainly a reference to the disputes of the twelfth century discussed below, pp. 185, 188–9. DUL, Mickleton and Spearman MS 1, fol. 186r.



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declared, might lead to a legal challenge and a further delay, and so he asked that the writ be sent to the coroners of Cumberland instead.50 What, ultimately, was the bishop fighting for, and what did he win? In technical terms, the jury awarded Langley seisin of one third of the Tyne Bridge, for it was on this third that the men of Newcastle had recently constructed their tower. Possession of the southern third of the bridge was in line with earlier settlements from the reigns of Henry I and Henry II which had determined that seisin of the northern third of the river Tyne belonged to the county of Northumberland, that the southern third pertained to the bishopric of Durham, and that the middle third was shared between both parties.51 There is no doubt, however, that the formal ratification of possession of this ‘third’ was of utmost significance to Bishop Langley and to the exercise of his rights of regalian lordship throughout his palatinate. At the end of October 1416, Langley issued letters patent announcing the appointment of the steward, temporal chancellor and sheriff of Durham as his representatives to receive possession of the southern third of the Tyne Bridge from the sheriff of Westmorland carrying the king’s writ.52 Such written confirmation was not enough for the bishop. News of his victory had to be seen and heard in order to impress itself upon the collective memory of the bishop’s subjects. The delivery of the writ was actually witnessed towards the end of January 1417 by a group of twelve knights and twenty-one named esquires ‘of the bishopric of Durham’, as well as ‘many’ unnamed ‘others’ from the bishopric, two knights ‘of the county of Westmorland’ and four knights ‘of the county of Northumberland’. Although the twenty-one esquires formed a reasonable cross-section of the Durham gentry, the Durham knights included Sir John Colville of Ingleby Arncliffe and Dale, a substantial North Riding landholder with estates also in Northumberland, whose only property in the bishopric of Durham was the manor of Auckland St Helen.53 But Colville’s lord, in respect of his North Riding estates of Thimbleby, West Rounton and Kirby Sigston, was the bishop of Durham, since the three manors formed part of the bishop’s lordship of Allertonshire, south of the river Tees.54 Meanwhile, the four Northumbrian knights called upon to witness the formal receipt of seisin of the southern part of the bridge, Sir Robert Ogle, Sir John Bertram, Sir John Widdrington and Sir John Middleton, were all officers of Thomas Langley in the bishop’s lordship of Norham on the Scottish border: Ogle had held the offices of constable of Norham castle, steward, sheriff, escheator and justice of Norhamshire and Islandshire jointly and continuously since

50 51 52 53 54

KB 27/614, m. 16d. J. Brand, The History and Antiquities of the Town and County of the Town of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2 vols (London, 1789), Vol. II, pp. 5–7. For this and what follows, see DCM, 3.3.Pont.3. NYCRO, ZFL 6. CIPM, Vol. XX, pp. 113–14.

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1403, whilst Bertram, Widdrington and Middleton were all palatine justices.55 Through the attestation of a large group of landholders with connections to all parts of the palatinate, Bishop Langley had thus turned the recovery of a fraction of the Tyne Bridge into a ceremonial affirmation of the geographical reach of his lordship. The Haliwerfolc and the Community of the Bishopric Throughout the seven-year conflict with the town of Newcastle, Bishop Langley had maintained the consistent argument that he was acting in the interests of ‘the bishop’s church of St Cuthbert’.56 But St Cuthbert did not just belong to the bishops of Durham. The palatinate grew out of the preConquest patrimony of St Cuthbert, the custody of which had been vested in the church of Durham, an ecclesiastical community headed by the bishop of Durham. In 1083 Bishop William of Saint-Calais oversaw the foundation of a Benedictine monastic community in Durham. With the establishment of the cathedral priory of Durham, the trusteeship of St Cuthbert and his lands was no longer in the sole possession of the bishops of Durham: it was shared with the priors and monks of Durham. Into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the members of this religious community continued to see themselves as the successors to the pre-Conquest church of Durham, as custodians of St Cuthbert’s shrine and, more generally, as ministers of St Cuthbert. Their role was the veneration of St Cuthbert, the preservation of his memory and the protection of his estates.57 Under St Cuthbert’s protection, however, also came the ‘people of the saint’: in Latin, populus sancti or populus sancti Cuthberti; in Old English, Haliwerfolc, an unusual compound expression, almost certainly dialectical,58 combining the adjective hálig (meaning ‘holy’) and the nouns wer (meaning ‘man’) and folc (meaning ‘people’) to refer to the ‘people of the holy man’. The ‘people of the saint’ were originally the tenants of the pre-Conquest church who occupied those properties which had been granted to Cuthbert and which constituted the patrimony of the saint. This early sense of the phrase was preserved in an undated charter of Henry II to Durham priory (1155x1166), in which the king delivered a mandate to the archbishop of York, the bishop of Durham and other of the king’s ministers to ensure that tota terra et homines sancti Cuthberti et monachorum Dunelmensium were quit of suit of court of shires, hundreds, trithings and wapentakes, and that the monks hold their own court and liberties as fully as they did in the reign 55 56 57

58

Ogle: DURH 3/33, m. 31r; Bertram, Widdrington and Middleton: DURH 3/34, m. 6d, DURH 3/38, mm. 5r, 7r, DURH 3/36, mm. 4r, 5r. See, for example, DCM, 3.3.Pont.3. M. Foster, ‘Custodians of St Cuthbert: The Durham Monks’ Views of their Predecessors, 1083c.1200’, Anglo-Norman Durham 1093–1193, ed. D. Rollason et al. (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 53–65; R.B. Dobson, Durham Priory, 1400–1450 (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 11–32. I would like to thank John McKinnell for advice on this point.



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of Henry I throughout their lands: the homines sancti Cuthberti were indubitably the tenants of the priory’s estates.59 We can see this meaning of the concept more clearly in Symeon’s history of the early church of Durham, in his description of how, in the first quarter of the tenth century, a king of York occupied ‘the whole of the land of St Cuthbert’ (totam … terram sancti Cuthberti) and distributed Cuthbert’s estates to two of his followers, one of whom frequently committed many injuries to ‘the bishop, community, and people of St Cuthbert’ (multis sepe iniuriis episcopum, congregationem atque populum sancti Cuthberti molestaret).60 At this date, the bishop’s power was not yet perceived in clearly delineated territorial terms. When a battle was fought against the Scots in 1018 on the south bank of the river Tweed at Carham, Symeon noted that it was the ‘people of St Cuthbert’, that is, ‘the whole people between the river Tees and the river Tweed’, who waged the unsuccessful campaign.61 The people of St Cuthbert comprised the tenants of the church of Durham, wherever they were located, both north and south of the river Tyne. Probably before the Norman Conquest, but certainly by the later eleventh century, the bishop’s government had clear territorial limits. In particular, the area between Tyne and Tees became an established political unit under the control of successive bishops of Durham. Although an early-twelfth-century memorandum noted that the river Tyne had been the ‘boundary’ (marchia) between the bishopric of Durham and the earldom of Northumbria ‘for all time’ (ab omni tempore),62 it was in the post-Conquest period that the Tyne became a significant jurisdictional border, where the bishop of Durham’s powers ended and where the earl of Northumbria’s powers began.63 Two episodes dating from the 1070s and early 1080s and retold by Symeon of Durham make this point very clear. The first is the story of the three monks from the abbeys of Evesham and Winchcombe who, inspired by Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, travelled to the north east to pursue monastic reform, and who settled on the north bank of the river Tyne at a site which would later become known as Newcastle; or in Symeon’s words, at a ‘place which although it belongs to the bishopric of Durham is under the jurisdiction of the earl of Northumbria’. With this in mind, Bishop Walcher (1071–80) invited the monks ‘to accept a place to live which was rather under the jurisdiction of the church than under that of secular power’.64 The second episode involves the murder of Bishop Walcher in 1080, at Gateshead, on the south bank of the river Tyne. On his appointment as earl of Northumbria in 1075, the bishop had extended his authority north of the Tyne, leading to bloody conflict between the bishop’s regime and the people of Northum59 60 61 62 63 64

DCM, 3.1.Reg.10. Symeon, pp. 130–3. Symeon, pp. 156–7. Brand, History and Antiquities, Vol. II, pp. 4–5. D. Rollason, Sources for York History to AD 1100 (York, 1998), p. 79. Symeon, pp. 200–3.

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berland. To secure peace, a meeting was therefore arranged at Gateshead, on the border of the earldom and bishopric, between Bishop Walcher and his retinue and representatives of the Northumbrians (the people ‘who lived beyond the Tyne’). The attempted reconciliation failed, and Bishop Walcher was cut down by the Northumbrians.65 In the same period, the river Tees emerged as a major frontier in matters of jurisdiction and governance. In the early 1070s, according to Symeon,66 William the Conqueror visited the city of Durham on his way south from Scotland and, suspicious of the cult of St Cuthbert, ordered an inquiry to investigate the local belief in the existence of the saint’s undecayed body. The king, however, had not bargained upon the protective power of St Cuthbert: William became feverish and, having mounted his horse, departed as swiftly as possible until ‘he reached the river Tees’, the southern boundary of the patrimony of St Cuthbert. A short while later, William sent a tax collector appointed ‘to compel the people of St Cuthbert to pay tribute to the king’. Cuthbert’s people prayed to the saint for his intervention, which duly arrived when he appeared to the king’s official in a dream rebuking him for having the impudence to injure those who came under the saint’s protection. The tax collector’s actions were deemed an insult to Cuthbert, whose threshold he had crossed. He therefore awoke to find himself struck down with serious illness, which kept him bed-ridden and which prompted him to solicit Cuthbert’s aid. William’s minister promised that, if he should regain his health, he would be ‘a faithful and devoted servant to the saint and all his people’. North of the Tees, according to Symeon, so long as the tax inspector ‘remained in places belonging to the bishopric’, he continued to suffer from illness, but as soon as he left and returned to the king, his recovery was immediate. The Tees was a jurisdictional boundary just as much as the river Tyne. When Symeon wrote his history of the church of Durham in the early twelfth century, the frontiers of the bishop’s jurisdiction were sufficiently settled for the land between Tyne and Tees to be known as Haliwerfolc. When Bishop Flambard issued a charter in the second decade of the twelfth century announcing his grant of land to one of his retinue, he notified the archbishop of York ‘and all the barons … of Yorkshire and the chapter of St Cuthbert and all his barons and faithful men of Haliwerfolc and all the barons … of Northumberland’.67 Sandwiched between Northumberland and Yorkshire, Hali­werfolc was a geographical entity with definite borders. In the early twelfth century, when a dispute erupted between Ranulph Flambard and the men of Northumberland over the possession of competing fishing rights in the river Tyne, Henry I’s justices first called upon the collective wisdom of the antiquiores totius Haliwerisfolk et Northumbrie to help determine 65 66 67

Symeon, pp. 216–19. For the historical context, see W.M. Aird, St Cuthbert and the Normans: The Church of Durham, 1071–1153 (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 94–8. For this and what follows, see Symeon, pp. 196–9. See also Aird, St Cuthbert, p. 88. DEC, p. 72.



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the boundaries of the two jurisdictions. It was the river Tyne which divided them.68 From the same dispute, we know that the southern half of the river was known as ‘St Cuthbert’s water’ (in aquis sancti Cuthberti de Tina).69 And in the middle of the Tyne Bridge were sacred boundary markers in the form of two stones known as ‘Cuthbertstones’ which, according to Bishop Langley, had been the ancient divisions (ab antiquo) between the bishopric of Durham and the town of Newcastle.70 Whatever St Cuthbert’s wider regional cult, it was at Durham that the body of Cuthbert came to rest and it was with the land between Tyne and Tees that he was most closely connected. It was here that the ‘people of the saint’ lived. And it was for this ‘people’ that a collective origin myth took shape in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. The basis was the pre-Conquest story of the flight of the Christian community of Lindisfarne with the body of St Cuthbert in response to Viking raids. Beginning in 875, the saint and his people wandered throughout northern England for seven years.71 According to the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, probably written at Durham in the mid eleventh century, the travels of the community of St Cuthbert at Lindisfarne culminated in its arrival at the mouth of the river Derwent on the Cumbrian coast.72 Here, the leaders of the community decided to transport Cuthbert’s body to Ireland, at which point the people of St Cuthbert intervened. St Cuthbert’s devotees – ‘all his people who had long followed him’ (omnis populis eius qui eum diu erat secutus) – stood on the shore, ‘mourning that their pious patron was being taken away’, when, miraculously, a storm appeared and overwhelmed the ship. Taking this as a sign, the leaders of the community returned to shore and carried the body of Cuthbert to Crayke in North Yorkshire, before transferring the body to Chester-le-Street in the land between Tyne and Tees. It was a story which was later embellished in the collection of miracle stories associated with St Cuthbert and compiled in the last two decades of the eleventh century.73 The second miracle in the compilation recounted the flight from Lindisfarne, but on this occasion, the people of St Cuthbert had a much more prominent role in the narrative of the community’s exile. The leaders of the Lindisfarne community, we are told, made a decision among themselves to remove the body of St Cuthbert from the monastery: His people, when they heard this, followed immediately with wives and small children, abandoning their homes with all their household possessions. For 68 69 70 71 72 73

Brand, History and Antiquities, Vol. II, pp. 5–6. CChR, 1341–1417, p. 454. KB, 27/614, m. 13. D. Rollason, ‘The Wanderings of St Cuthbert’, Cuthbert: Saint and Patron, ed. D. Rollason (Durham, 1987), pp. 45–59. For this and what follows, see Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, ed. T. Johnson South (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 58–9. For the date, see W.M. Aird, ‘The Making of a Medieval Miracle Collection: The Liber de Translationibus et Miraculis Sancti Cuthberti’, NH 28 (1992), pp. 3–4.

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these people (who are peculiarly called his people, since they are protected by him through a special foresight and are not able to live otherwise except under him in the way that other peoples can who know how to live in foreign lands equally as well as in their own) have so great a confidence in his protection, that they fear no harm from the punishment of their enemies. [Hoc populus ipsius postquam audivit, domibus cum tota supellectili relictis, cum uxoribus et parvulis continuo subsequitur. Est enim huic (qui suus proprie dicitur populus, quoniam speciali quadam provisione ab eo servatur, nec alibi nisi sub eo vivere valet, sicut aliae gentes, quae in extraneis aeque ut in propriis degere sciunt terris) tanta in eo tuitionis securitas, ut nullas adversitatum poene pertimescat injurias].74

In this greatly elaborated version of Cuthbert’s translation, the purpose of the miracle story was undoubtedly to provide further confirmation of the protective power of St Cuthbert, which spread beyond the preservation of his church and his estates to include the people who looked to him as their patron.75 But the extended explanation of the meaning of the concept of the ‘people of the saint’ suggests a wider significance to this passage. The people of St Cuthbert, in this account, were an individual people with a separate collective identity, who were distinguished from ‘other peoples’ (aliae gentes) by the intensity of their devotion to the saint, in whom they placed all their trust and through whom they were immune from hardship. In contrast to ‘other peoples’, who had already learned, presumably through migration, how to live in both their own and foreign lands, the author of the miracle story revealed that Cuthbert was the special guardian of ‘his people’, who could not live without him. It was for this reason that they so readily abandoned their worldly possessions and followed the saint’s body. Their departure from Lindisfarne in 875 marked the beginning of their own migration. We have, then, in this account of Cuthbert’s initial flight, the development of a story of the origins of a people, of the type which proliferated during the middle ages, especially in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but which tended usually to pertain to kingdoms (the community of the realm) rather than smaller polities.76 In Symeon of Durham’s history of the pre-Conquest church, written in the first decade of the twelfth century, the ‘people of the saint’ had a recurring role.77 It was they who accompanied Cuthbert’s body on its various wanderings, which began in 875 on Holy Island and which continued episodically until 995, when Cuthbert’s remains acquired a permanent resting place in the city of Durham. With the arrival at the mouth of the river Tyne of Halfdan,

74 75 76

77

‘Capitula de Miraculis et Translationibus Sancti Cuthberti’, Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ed. T. Arnold, 2 vols (RS, 1882–5), Vol. I, p. 235. Aird, ‘Miracle Collection’, p. 10. For the idea of migration, which was at the heart of the origin myths of peoples in the medieval period, see S. Reynolds, ‘Medieval Origines Gentium and the Community of the Realm’, History 68 (1983), pp. 375–90. For the following paragraph, see Symeon, pp. 100–5, 110–23, 144–9.



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king of the Danes, who was intent on ‘devastating the whole region north of that river’, the community on Holy Island along with the ‘indigenous Christian people with their children and wives’ embarked upon a nomadic existence in the company of their saintly patron. A persecuted and itinerant people, ‘they travelled through all parts of Northumbria always without any fixed home, and like sheep fleeing from the jaws of wolves they placed their faith entirely in the leadership and protection of their shepherd.’ After a period of exhausting and perilous itineration, it was these refugees – ‘the bishop, the abbot, and the people’ – who assembled on the north-west coast of England. On the Cumbrian coast, the bishop and the abbot devised their own plan to transport Cuthbert’s body to Ireland. Excluded from these arrangements, the people of the saint remained behind on the shore and wept at their separation from their ‘father’ and ‘protector’. Their tears prompted the miracle which prevented the attempted passage to Ireland: the winds changed direction, waves of blood overwhelmed the ship carrying Cuthbert’s body and the vessel returned to shore, with the bishop prostrate on the ground seeking the forgiveness of those who had been left behind. Tired and hungry, the ‘people’ departed, all except for seven of their number, who had been specially chosen from among them to carry the body of Cuthbert. With the dispersal of the people of the saint, it was left to their seven representatives to transport ­Cuthbert first to Crayke, where his body remained for four months, and then, in a more extended residence, to Chester-le-Street. Over a hundred years later, in a repeat of the earlier excursus in response to Viking attacks, the bishop, ‘accompanied by all those people who are called the “people of the saint” ’, packed up Cuthbert’s remains and transferred them once more, on this occasion to Ripon. After a period of a few months the exiles returned north to restore Cuthbert to his shrine at Chester-le-Street. However, when the party reached the outskirts of the city of Durham, the coffin bearing Cuthbert’s undecayed remains became an immoveable object. The bishop called upon the divine intervention of the ‘people of the saint’ to identify the new location of Cuthbert’s resting place. In the words of Symeon, ‘the bishop spoke to the people and ordered that everyone should with three days of fasting, prayers, and vigils beseech the manifestation of a heavenly sign to indicate where they were to take the holy body of the father.’ Once the sign was received, the party brought Cuthbert to Durham. Here, thanks to the assistance ‘of all the people’, the bishop was able to clear the site on the peninsula and to make it habitable, preparing the way for the construction of a church. With increasing layers of detail, these closely related historical writings presented a myth of the common descent of the inhabitants of the area between Tyne and Tees, who had endured a long migration in northern England before settling in their spiritual home. Collectively and historically, these inhabitants constituted a single gens or populus. Drawing ultimately upon the Old Testament topoi of the ‘chosen people’ and their sacred territory, assailed continuously by hostile outside forces and forced to flee in search of the

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promised land,78 this was a myth which had a particular currency and which was the subject of considerable elaboration in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. That it drew upon popular tradition is made clear by the story of the seven porters of Cuthbert’s body, four of whose names, according to Symeon, ‘are remembered as being more important than the other three’.79 That this accretion to the Cuthbert myth had a powerful contemporary resonance is confirmed by Symeon’s statement that ‘many of their descendants in the kingdom of the Northumbrians – clergy and laity – take pride that their ancestors are said to have served St Cuthbert so faithfully.’ Among the ‘people’ who escorted Cuthbert on the final stage of his journey to the city of Durham in 995 was one of the descendants of the seven original bearers of the saint’s remains, the names of whose own progeny Symeon was able to recite up to his own day. Symeon can only have gleaned this information from the families of the carriers of the body in the early twelfth century.80 However, it was not just individual families which sought to claim such illustrious ancestry. This was a collective myth about the sacred source of the region’s identity which had relevance to all of the inhabitants of the area bounded by the rivers Tyne and Tees. What made the notion of the Haliwerfolc such a potent source of regional self-consciousness and collective mythology was its explicit coupling of the ‘land’ between the Tyne and the Tees and the ‘people’ who lived there.81 On the one hand, as we have seen, the word Haliwerfolc was used to denote a precise geographical space. Charters issued by a series of twelfth-century bishops of Durham – Ranulph Flambard (1099–1128), Geoffrey Rufus (1133–41) and Hugh Puiset (1153–95) – frequently made use of the term Haliwerfolc as a synonym of the bishopric (episcopatus) of Durham in their inscriptio: episcopal charters were addressed to omnibus hominibus suis … de Haliweresfolc and omnibus baronibus et fidelibus suis de Haliarefolc, or to some variation such as omnibus baronibus et amicis suis de Euerwicscire et de Haliwerefolc et de Norhumberland, or omnibus baronibus et hominibus suis de Haliwerefolc, or baronibus, militibus et omnibus hominibus suis de Haliwerefolc.82 The address omnibus baronibus et amicis suis de Euerwicscire et de Haliwerefolc et de Norhumberland from a charter of 1116x1119 is conclusive evidence that the Haliwerfolc constituted the area between Northumberland and Yorkshire, divided by the rivers Tyne and Tees. It was this same territorial conception of the Haliwerfolc which was evident in 1208 when, during 78 79

80 81 82

A.D. Smith, Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity (Oxford, 2003), pp. 44–65. For the following, see Symeon, pp. 116–17. Reginald of Durham, writing his hagiographic text in the 1160s, some fifty years after Symeon’s history, added further details to the story: Reginaldi Monachi Dunelmensis Libellus de Admirandis Beati Cuthberti Virtutibus quae Novellis Patratae sunt Temporibus, ed. J. Raine (SS 1, 1835), pp. 24–8. Symeon, p. 148 n. 7. Cf. recent work on national identity and the construction of nationhood, which has emphasised the extremely close relationship between people and place: Smith, Chosen Peoples, pp. 131–65. DEC, pp. 68, 72, 75, 119, 122; English Episcopal Acta 24: Durham 1153–1195, ed. M.G. Snape (Oxford, 2002), p. 13 (and pp. 2, 25, 65, 111, 125, 139).



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a vacancy in the see of Durham, King John granted to ‘the free tenants of the bishopric in the name of the knights and free tenants of Halywerfolk’ a charter authorising them to have, within the courts of the bishopric, the new royal legal process of the grand assize to determine disputes over the right to land.83 Haliwerfolc here signified the bishopric of Durham, just as it did in 1267 when Henry III annulled his earlier forfeiture of the manor of Greatham – whose previous lord had rebelled against him – since the estate lay within the bishop’s liberty of Haliwerfolc and therefore pertained to the bishop rather than the king.84 On the other hand, charter evidence indicates that the original meaning of the Haliwerfolc – the ‘people of the saint’ – continued to be the basis of a collective group identity for the inhabitants of the bishopric of Durham. Examples include the addresses: omnibus baronibus et fidelibus sancti Cuthberti de Euerwicscira et de episcopate Dunelmensi; hominibus et fidelibus sancti Cuthberti; or omnibus baronibus et hominibus sancti Cuthberti.85 More revealing is a mid-twelfth-century charter of Durham cathedral priory, whose prior and chapter issued a notification of a grant of land in the southern portion of the bishopric to omnibus hominibus sancti Cuthberti de Haliwerefolc.86 Here, the Latin and vernacular forms were used to connect people and place. In this linkage, the Haliwerfolc was both a geographical expression and a political entity. Into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the idea of the historical distinctiveness of the inhabitants of the bishopric of Durham continued to circulate locally. The cultural interest in the concept of the Haliwerfolc is best demonstrated in the so-called metrical life of St Cuthbert, a hitherto largely ignored Middle English poem with a Durham provenance. Written in a northern dialect and dating from the first quarter of the fifteenth century, the poem comprises a compilation of stories associated with the saint.87 Divided into four books, it is the third – a series of loosely connected accounts of the various miracles performed by St Cuthbert – which is of most relevance for our purposes. The author of the vernacular poem drew freely upon the lateeleventh-century Durham hagiographic material and Symeon of Durham’s history of the church and, in this sense, the text might be viewed as further evidence of the regionalised tradition of historiography associated with Durham priory. But the poem, although highly derivative, was not a straightforward translation of the original Latin sources. The Haliwerfolc, rendered here as ‘Cuthbert folk’, were given particular attention. In the story of the initial flight of the community of Lindisfarne in 875, for instance, the role of the ‘people of the saint’ was adapted to become absolutely central not only to the decision to abandon the attempted voyage 83 84 85 86 87

Rotuli Chartarum, 1199–1216 (London, 1837), p. 182. SC 8/20/981A; CPR, 1266–72, p. 63. DEC, pp. 97, 107, 173. DEC, p. 130. The Life of St. Cuthbert in English Verse, c. A.D. 1450, ed. J.T. Fowler (SS 2, 1889). I would like to thank Ian Doyle for advice on the dating of the text.

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to Ireland but to the eventual settlement of Cuthbert’s body in Durham one hundred years later. We are told from the outset that it was because both laity and clergy (‘Bathe þe lewed men and þe lerde’) faced persecution in Northumberland that St Cuthbert’s body was translated.88 When the clergy (‘Reuly men of religioune’) decided to remove the body from Lindisfarne, ‘Cuthbert folk’ followed at once, bringing with them ‘þair barnes and þair wyues’. In an almost word-for-word translation of the parenthetical aside provided in the late-eleventh-century miraculum, the author of the poem then explained the meaning of the phrase ‘Cuthbert folk’: For whi, þat pople propirly Þat duelt in contre cuthbert by, his awen pople was calde, Be cause he kepid þaim oft fra care; Als lange als þai loued his lare, To na man were þai thralled.  (lines 4614–19)

Appropriating the Old Testament concept of the ‘chosen people’, the anonymous early-fifteenth-century writer also hinted at the existence of a covenant between Cuthbert and his people.89 So long as they were obedient to Cuthbert’s teaching, the prosperity of the ‘people of the saint’ would be guaranteed and they would be free from oppression. Indeed, as the special patron of the Haliwerfolc, ‘Wha so did þaim disturblaunce,/ Cuthbert oft tyme grete vengeaunce/ of þair enmys toke’ (lines 4629–31). Just as the descendants of Abraham were prone to sinful behaviour and did not always adhere to the word of God, but learned, through the many dangers and obstacles which confronted them, to acquire a faith that was constant and unyielding, so St Cuthbert’s people experienced a similar ordeal in their travels throughout England: Bot na man apply to þat meryte,90 Þat Cuthbert kepid þaim in slike plite, for many of þaim were schrewes.91 Bot in þis men may fele and fraiste92 What it is in him to traiste, And to loue his lawes.  (lines 4632–7)

To the familiar story of the arrival of the bishop, the abbot and ‘þe pepill’ at the mouth of the river Derwent with the body of Cuthbert, the fifteenthcentury poem added a large amount of detail concerning the ‘people of the saint’. The people were not party to the decision to transport Cuthbert overseas (‘Þe pepill’ wist noʒt of þair gamen’), so they stood on the shore and 88 89 90 91 92

For this and what follows, see Life of St. Cuthbert, pp. 135–41. Cf. the words of Moses in Deuteronomy 30:15–20. ‘Merit’ in the sense of ‘spiritual reward’: see MED, sub ‘merit’ (3a). In other words, ‘wicked persons’: MED, sub ‘shreue’ (1a). ‘Fele and fraiste’: that is, to have a physical sensation and learn by experience. See MED, sub ‘felen’ (1a) and ‘fraisten’ (5).



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watched as the ship carrying Cuthbert, the bishop, the abbot and ‘þair counsail’ left for Ireland. The poet then proffered an extraordinarily vivid and lengthy description of the ‘Cuthbert folk’, covering some nineteen lines of text (lines 4677–95), replete with biblical imagery. Disconsolate at the departure of their saint (their ‘patroune’ and ‘Gude fadir’), they wept and prostrated themselves on the ground, scattering dust on their heads to symbolise their mourning,93 tearing their clothes, beating their chests with their fists and their staffs, and bemoaning their misfortune. Separated from their shepherd, they were utterly helpless, like sheep to be devoured by wolves. The Haliwerfolc prayed to Cuthbert and their prayers were answered in the form of ‘a grete tempest’, which persuaded the bishop and the abbot to return the ship bearing the saint to shore, where Cuthbert could be reunited with his people. Of equal significance, the author of the fifteenth-century poem elided the various accounts of Cuthbert’s wanderings through northern England, including the journeys to the temporary resting places of Crayke and Chesterle-Street, into a single, seamless narrative. As soon as the bishop and abbot had seen their mistake, they sought the forgiveness of ‘þe pople’ whom they had left behind, and ‘All’ was forgyuen, þai were att ane’. With peace restored between the ‘Cuthbert folk’ and the bishop and abbot, the whole party accompanied the saint: ‘With’ þe cors þai come ilkane/ To a toune calde Crayke’ (lines 4741–2). Within the space of seven lines, we then have an extremely compressed passage recounting Cuthbert’s move to Chester-le-Street and finally to Durham (lines 4755–61). Given the extremely unequal treatment of Cuthbert’s travels, the impression is that the Haliwerfolc accompanied the saint throughout his wanderings and were his constant companions. The narrative is as much a story of the migration and eventual settlement of the ‘people of the saint’ in Durham as it is an account of the flight of the body of a saint. Other stories taken from the late-eleventh-century hagiographic material and told by Symeon of Durham in the early twelfth century were also reworked in the fifteenth-century text. Of particular interest here is the story of the invasion, in the first quarter of the tenth century, of Rægnald, a Viking ruler and a pagan (‘A paynyme king’), who forcibly ‘occupyd all’ cuthbert lande’ and who divided it between two of his soldiers.94 In the earlier narratives, the focus was upon the damage wrought by one of these men, Onlafball, upon the church and property of St Cuthbert.95 In the fifteenth-century poem, the theme is the destruction brought by Onlafball upon the people who inhabited the patrimony of St Cuthbert. We are specifically told, for instance, how Onlafball ‘spared na man of gentryse’, that is, men of gentle birth, and how, through his malice, ‘Þe gude bischope and all’ his kirke,/ Als þe peple made he irke’ (lines 4815–16). The change of emphasis is most apparent in 93 94 95

‘Molle on þair heueds þai scaterd’: cf. Job 2:12; Lamentations 2:10; Ezekiel 27:30. For this and what follows, see Life of St. Cuthbert, pp. 141–4. Cf. ‘Capitula de Miraculis’, Vol. I, pp. 238–40; Symeon, pp. 130–3.

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the conclusion to this story, which sees a contrite Onlafball, immobilised and tormented by the power of St Cuthbert, acknowledge Cuthbert’s sanctity. In the miracle collection and Symeon’s history, the message of this episode was simple: all of the other pagans were so terrified by the example Cuthbert had made of their leader Onlafball that they ‘presumed no more to misappropriate in any way lands or anything else which belonged by right to the church’.96 The corresponding section of the vernacular poem reads very differently: ‘Othir paynyms were so a dred,/ Þat cuthbert men þaire lyfe led/ Aftir ward in pes’ (lines 4872–4). Indeed, the author of the poem sought to remind his readers of this later version of the tale in the preface to the next miracle story, which begins with the simple rejoinder: ‘It was a meruayle talde beforne,/ how onalafbalde was forlorne,/ Cuthbert folk noyande’ (lines 4887–9). Why was there such local interest in the refashioning and rewriting of the myth of the Haliwerfolc in the later middle ages? Why did the notion of the Haliwerfolc exercise such a powerful imaginative hold over the inhabitants of the bishopric? The poem provides several telling clues. The concept of the Haliwerfolc was more than a focus for cultural identification and the basis of a sense of belonging. First, it was a term which provided an illustrious collective identity for the inhabitants of the land between Tyne and Tees that was explicitly separate from that of their lord, the bishop. And secondly, it was a concept which emphasised the intrinsic autonomy of both the ‘people of the saint’ and the territory which they occupied. Since the Haliwerfolc were under the special protection of the saint, ‘To na man were þai thralled’, wrote the author of the fifteenth-century vernacular life of St Cuthbert.97 The same poem also retold the story of how the tenth-century bishop, Sexhelm, oppressed his subjects (‘Þe saint pople he diseesyd’), until Cuthbert came to their rescue. The saint appeared to the bishop three times in a dream and, on the third occasion, threatened him with death unless he left the church. When the bishop woke up ‘ryght seke’, he seized his horse and headed south, and it was not until he crossed the river Tees and entered Yorkshire that he found his health restored (‘Vnto ʒorkeschire gon he pas./ When he came ʒork nere,/ he felde him self bathe hale and fere’).98 The idea of the Haliwerfolc reinforced the sacred and inviolate character of Cuthbert’s land and of the people who inhabited it and might be used to counter the challenges of both insiders and outsiders. It was the cultural foundation of Durham’s autonomy. When ‘the men of the bishopric’ told Antony Bek that they would not perform military service in Scotland in the winter of 1299, they did so specifically in the name of the Haliwerfolc: ‘claiming to be the Haliwerfolk and to hold their lands for the defence of the body of St Cuthbert’, they declared to the bishop that they ‘ought not to go beyond the boundaries of the bishopric,

96 97 98

Symeon, pp. 132–3, drawing verbatim upon ‘Capitula de Miraculis’, Vol. I, p. 240. Life of St. Cuthbert, p. 136. Life of St. Cuthbert, p. 219. Cf. Symeon, pp. 140–1.



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namely beyond Tyne and Tees, for king or bishop’.99 And in 1303 it was ‘the good men of the franchise of Durham between Tyne and Tees’ who once more stubbornly refused to provide military service beyond the rivers Tyne and Tees.100 This seemingly prosaic episode, ostensibly over the conditions of employment in the bishop’s army, is actually more significant than it might first appear. It is important for two reasons. First, it is evidence of a belief that the privileges of the bishopric and, in particular, its autonomy, pertained to the bishop’s subjects as well as to the bishop himself: the bishopric was not just a form of lordship, but a community. Secondly, the ‘community’ of the bishopric appropriated the concept of the Haliwerfolc in order to legitimise its defiance and independence of the bishop. Rather than protected by St Cuthbert, the ‘people of the saint’ were now, much more actively, the protectors of St Cuthbert. In other words, the ‘men of the bishopric’ sought to stake a claim to the custodianship of the saint, which is precisely why they protested so vigorously to the king in 1303 when the bishop and his ministers denied them their customary access to the shrine of St Cuthbert and the relics of the saint through the gate of the bailey of Durham.101 To successive bishops of Durham in the late middle ages, their selfprofessed position as trustees of St Cuthbert enabled them to lay claim to an ideological source of power independent of the crown and to affirm their autonomy from royal intervention in matters of finance and jurisdiction. To the bishop’s subjects, the idea of the Haliwerfolc, an ancient vernacular term, helped to justify their claim to enjoy certain rights within the land between Tyne and Tees separate from their episcopal lord. In 1300 the knights and free tenants of Durham fell foul of Antony Bek’s steward who, thanks to the patronage of his lord, had accumulated a great deal of power within the bishopric.102 Protected by Bek, it was widely believed (secundum communem famam patrie) that the steward had ruled arbitrarily according to his will, seizing property and subjecting certain of the free tenants of Durham to long periods of incarceration. According to the author of the contemporary Gesta Dunelmensia, such actions were particularly resented since ‘the people of the said liberty, who were called Haliwerfolk in English ... were always accustomed to be free before that time’ (populus dicte libertatis, qui anglice Haliwerfolk’ vocabatur … ante illa tempora semper liber esse solebat). The bishopric of Durham was in this respect an ethnic and linguistic region. Bek, sensitive to complaints against his administration, especially his chief minister and confidant, instructed two of his spiritual representatives to proclaim a sentence of excommunication in Durham cathedral against all those violating or plotting to violate the liberties of the church of Durham and the juris-

99 100 101 102

Scriptores Tres, p. 76. RPD, Vol. III, pp. 45–6. RPD, Vol. III, p. 44. For what follows, see Gesta Dunelmensia, A.D. 1300, ed. R.K. Richardson, Camden Miscellany 13 (1924), pp. 11–12.

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diction of the bishop.103 But the cathedral was a contested space in which, according to the Gesta Dunelmensia, not long after the declaration of the ecclesiastical censure, the knights and free tenants of the liberty assembled to secure redress of their grievances. Before this gathering, one of their number spoke, recalling how the bishop had excommunicated those who infringed the ‘liberties and praiseworthy customs of the church of Durham’ and exhorting those present in the cathedral to swear an oath to stand up for the liberty of the church. Bek’s view of the liberties of the church of Durham was not shared by his subjects within the bishopric. In this case, their interests were diametrically opposed. The Durham gentry, who portrayed themselves as the Haliwerfolc – the ‘people of the saint’ – sought comfort and found collective strength in Cuthbert. Though there was disagreement among them as to how they should proceed, with some believing that their conspiracy would only further inflame the bishop’s ire, it was eventually agreed that ‘everyone of the said liberty should make a corporal oath on the shrine of St Cuthbert’ (omnes et singuli dicte libertatis prestarent iuramentum corporale super feretrum Sancti Cuthberti) to stand together to defend the dignity of the church. The Haliwerfolc found their voice in their close association with the history of the church of Durham. Confronted by the collective will of his people, the bishop was reminded that the land between Tyne and Tees was not a piece of private property with which he could do as he pleased. It was a territory which also belonged to his people.104 This popular perception of the bishopric was sufficiently well known by the second decade of the fifteenth century for the prior of Durham, John Wessington, to acknowledge it when he launched a vigorous defence (against the mayor and burgesses of Newcastle-upon-Tyne) of the priory’s rights of jurisdiction in the Tyne, especially at South Shields, on the southern bank of the mouth of the river. Wessington’s strategy was to draw attention to the ancient foundation of the bishopric of Durham, compared to which, the town of Newcastle was simply a thrusting parvenu. He connected the Haliwerfolc explicitly to the gradual creation of the bishopric in the dim and distant past: in 883, according to the prior, the whole land between the rivers Wear and Tyne was given to St Cuthbert and his church; ‘immediately afterwards’, St Cuthbert and his church received the whole land between the Tees and the Wear; ‘and then, a royal liberty was granted in the said land to St Cuthbert, his bishop and the ministers of his church, and the people called Haluwerfolk.’105 To understand more fully the appeal of the local political traditions associated with the Haliwerfolc in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it

103 104 105

DCM, Reg. III, fol. 81r–v. See also S. Reynolds, ‘The Idea of the Nation as a Political Community’, Power and the Nation in European History, ed. L. Scales and O. Zimmer (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 56, 57. DCM, Cart. III, fol. 1r: et pro tunc concessa est regalis libertas sancto Cuthberto Episcopo suo et ministris ecclesie sue ac populo vocato Haluwerfolk in dicta terra.



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is necessary to explore the nature of the ‘community of the bishopric of Durham’ by whom the concept was appropriated. This political community is best approached in the context of the politics of episcopal succession. What happened in the intervening period when one bishop died or, in the case of John Fordham, was removed from the see of Durham? Given that the palatine lordship of the bishop was elective rather than hereditary, how did local society organise itself when it did not know who was to be appointed next and when the bishop himself was typically an outsider? And of equal importance, how did bishops respond to the new political environment in which they found themselves at the beginning of their episcopate? These questions almost certainly explain the emergence of the local tradition surrounding the presentation of a sword to each bishop of Durham on his first entry into the bishopric from the south. The most detailed record of a formal episcopal entry comes from August 1661, when the new bishop, John Cosin, arrived in Durham for his enthronement. Cosin wrote to William Sancroft, his chaplain and the future archbishop of Canterbury, to inform him of the generous welcome which he had received in the middle of the river Tees: The confluence and alacritie both of the gentry, clergie, and other people was very greate; and at my first entrance through the river of Tease there was scarce any water to be seene for the multitude of horse and men that filled it, when the sword that killed the dragon was delivered to me with all the formality of trumpets and gunshots and acclamations that might be made.106

A day later, Cosin’s secretary, Miles Stapleton, wrote a similar account of the ‘petty triumph’ which he had witnessed on Cosin’s entrance into the bishopric, during the course of which, ‘when my Lord came, the usual ceremony of delivering a great drawne faulchion was performed.’107 The sword presented to Bishop Cosin on his crossing of the river Tees in 1661 was a falchion, a type of broad curved sword, which belonged to the Conyers of Sockburn, a knightly family whose main estate lay on the most southerly tip of the bishopric of Durham. Its possession by the family is first documented in 1396, on the death of Sir John Conyers, who was said to hold the manor of Sockburn per servicium demonstrandi domino episcopo unum Fawchonem ita quod postquam dominus episcopus illud videre restituat ostendenti, but the sword itself, which is on display in the treasury of Durham cathedral, dates from the mid thirteenth century.108 The falchion was both a symbol of title and a distinctive form of tenure, hovering between a service rendered for a piece of land such as a serjeanty and an object embodying the right to it. The origin of the ceremonial entrance of the bishop into the bishopric lay in a symbolic 106 107 108

The Correspondence of John Cosin, D.D., ed. G. Ormsby, 2 vols (SS 52, 55, 1868–70), Vol. II, p. 21. R. Surtees, The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham, 4 vols (London, 1816), Vol. III, p. 406. DURH 3/2, fol. 124r. For an image of the sword, see the Frontispiece.

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ritual of vassalage involving the reciprocal exchange of the falchion, whereby the head of the Conyers family acknowledged the temporal authority of his new lord, the bishop of Durham. But it is not difficult to see how such an individual act of homage might develop into the ritualisation of the communal bond between the bishop and his subjects. The same phenomenon is evident in several of the Welsh marcher liberties on the first entry of the lord into his lordship.109 In the 1660s Bishop Cosin viewed the presentation of the Conyers falchion as a distinctive element in the process of episcopal inauguration, in which the bishop met his subjects – clergy, gentry and others – for the first time. Although it is impossible, for lack of evidence, to trace definitively the evolution of a continuous tradition from the thirteenth century through to the mid seventeenth century, Cosin is likely to have seen the ritual surrounding the falchion as one of the ancient rites associated with Durham when he was made bishop in 1660 following the abolition of the bishopric in the period of interregnum.110 After his enthronement in Durham cathedral, the new bishop then had to accommodate himself to local custom.111 It was the ‘community of the bishopric of Durham’ which saw itself as the guardian of local custom. But what, precisely, was this ‘community’? G.T. Lapsley encouraged subsequent historians to believe that the ‘community’ was a formal legislative assembly, the equivalent of the Westminster parliament, consisting of the free tenants of the bishopric. And yet, when the bishop’s lordship came under attack in 1433 from his own subjects, Bishop Langley was specifically accused of usurping all of the prerogatives of the king except in relation to the holding of a parliament (preterquam quod idem episcopus non tenet parliamentum suum ibidem).112 What Durham did have was not a parliament, but a county court. Was it the Durham county court which provided the forum within which the free tenants of the bishopric met collectively to discuss issues of common interest and to engage directly with the bishop’s lordship?113 The evidence for the role of the Durham county court in local politics is ambiguous. On the one hand, the court had the potential to act as a formal mechanism for the articulation of local opinion. It certainly met more frequently than county courts elsewhere in England: in addition to three principal sessions held annually, it also assembled fortnightly rather than monthly for ordinary meetings of the court.114 And when a separate commission of justices of labourers was appointed in the early fifteenth century to enforce the labour laws, the 109 110 111 112

113 114

Davies, Lordship and Society, pp. 461–2. Lapsley, County Palatine, pp. 199–200. Cf. Davies, Lordship and Society, p. 458. Lapsley, County Palatine, pp. 106–36; Fraser, ‘Prerogative’, p. 179; K. Emsley and C.M. Fraser, The Courts of the County Palatine of Durham (Durham, 1984), p. 3; Storey, Thomas Langley, p. 260. Cf. J.R. Maddicott, ‘The County Community and the Making of Public Opinion in FourteenthCentury England’, TRHS, 5th series 28 (1978), pp. 27–43. DCM, Misc.Ch. 5722 (the only extant roll of the county court from the period, covering the years 1403–4); see also DURH 3/2, fols 35v, 36v, 37r, 40r, 40v, 42r.



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sessions of the bishop’s justices were held on precisely the same day as the fortnightly meetings of the county court,115 an indication perhaps of the larger assemblies of landholders which are likely to have gathered on these occasions. On the other hand, the lack of evidence of the operation of the court is such that, whilst we know of the identity of the suitors of the county court who had a tenurial obligation to attend, there is simply no way of knowing who, among the bishop’s free tenants, did actually attend sessions of the court.116 Indeed, there are good reasons to think that the county court was less important as a political gathering of local society within the bishopric, since the court did not experience the external pressures faced by similar institutions in other parts of England. It was free of the obligation to elect MPs to represent the bishopric in parliament, since Durham did not have representation in the lower house until the seventeenth century, whereas in other counties, it was the holding of parliamentary elections which tended to inspire the gathering of large local assemblies. Nor did the Durham county court have any interaction with parliament in a fiscal context, since the bishopric was also exempt from direct taxation. The evidence of any kind of formal local assembly within the bishopric is in fact slim, which is hardly surprising given the absence of a tradition of local taxation in the late middle ages. In this respect, Durham was wholly different from other privileged communities such as the palatinate of Chester or the Welsh marcher lordships, which were exempt from royal taxation but which nonetheless paid taxes to their respective lords. In virtually all of those territories subject to the English crown but exempt from royal taxation, there was such a tradition. The main consequence of this was that ‘local representative institutions or parliaments were strong’,117 since any demand for taxation required, as it did at Westminster, some form of communal negotiation and, ultimately, collective consent. There was nothing in Durham comparable to the Cheshire mise, which evolved in the mid fourteenth century to help finance the military expeditions to Aquitaine of the Black Prince, the earl of Chester, and which became established during the fifteenth century as an obligatory payment made by the community of Cheshire upon the accession of a new earl as an acknowledgement of his lordship.118 Nor was Durham like the Welsh marches, whose lords could impose taxation almost at will.119 There was no single institutional structure or forum for the articulation of local political opinion within the bishopric of Durham. The ‘community’ was 115 116 117

118

119

Cf. DCM, Misc.Ch, 5722, Loc.V:74. For suit of the county court of Durham as an incident of feudal tenure, see DRO, D/St/ D5/1/21. T. Thornton, ‘Taxing the King’s Dominions: The Subject Territories of the English Crown in the Late Middle Ages’, Crises, Revolutions and Self-Sustained Growth: Essays in European Fiscal History, 1130–1830, ed. W.M. Ormrod et al. (Stamford, 1999), p. 109. P.J. Morgan, ‘Cheshire and the Defence of the Principality of Aquitaine’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 128 (1979), pp. 142–5; T. Thornton, Cheshire and the Tudor State, 1480–1560 (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 2, 64. Davies, Lordship and Society, pp. 183–7.

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an evanescent body, comprising the freeholders of the bishopric who gathered periodically in an ad hoc fashion.120 It had no precise constitutional status. Instead, there were more informal associations which could convene in a range of settings clustered around the formal institutional apparatus of palatine government in Palace Green on the Durham peninsula. These informal meetings are, by their very nature, difficult to identify in the historical record. It is certainly clear, however, that there were regular social occasions on which landed society within the bishopric assembled on a regular basis. The accounts of the bursar of Durham priory reveal that the two feasts of St Cuthbert, in March and September, were major annual events for members of local society. In 1344 the bursar paid money to various unnamed messengers for carrying letters of the prior of Durham inviting the proceres of the bishopric to attend the feast of St Cuthbert in March.121 That this was not an isolated occasion is confirmed by the frequent gifts extended by the bursar of Durham priory to players (histriones) and minstrels (ministri) in attendance on the two feast days, and by the payment, in 1357, to an unnamed herald of arms for his presence on the feast of St Cuthbert in March.122 That Durham cathedral priory was seen as a suitable meeting place for local landholders is also suggested by the choice of venue for the swearing of oaths to uphold the peace within the bishopric in 1434. It was in the county court that the bishop’s sheriff issued the summons to all of the knights and esquires of the bishopric, and it was at the bishop’s castle at Durham, the customary venue for sessions of the county court, that the bishop’s landholders were expected to meet.123 In the end, the oaths were sworn in the sacred space of Durham cathedral priory.124 That these landholders could gather together in common action for political purposes, as and when required, is revealed by an episode which took place at the beginning of March 1349, just over three years after Bishop Hatfield’s enthronement. The bishop addressed his ‘faithful and loyal subjects’ reciting how he had appointed justices at Durham to conduct legal proceedings to inquire into and hear and determine various articles relating to ‘trespasses and oppressions’ within the bishopric, but that the ‘community of the people of our royal franchise of Durham’ had petitioned the bishop to admonish him that neither he nor his predecessors had ever held a session of the justices under general articles except during the royal commission known as the eyre.125 Such things, the ‘community’ told the bishop, should not take place

120 121 122 123 124 125

See also H.S. Offler, ‘Murder on Framwellgate Bridge’, North of the Tees, ed. A.J. Piper and A.I. Doyle (Aldershot, 1996), p. 199. DAR, Vol. II, p. 544; DCM, Bursar’s Roll, 1343–4 (B). See also RPD, Vol. IV, p. 435. See, for example, DAR, Vol. II, pp. 556, 557; DAR, Vol. III, pp. 581, 582; DCM, Bursar’s Rolls, 1343–4, 1394–5. DURH 3/37, m. 12d. Thomas Langley, Vol. IV, pp. 142–3. For a brief overview of the eyre, see A. Musson and W.M. Ormrod, The Evolution of English Justice: Law, Politics and Society in the Fourteenth Century (Basingstoke, 1999), pp. 43–5.



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because they were ‘to the injury and hardship of the pays [and] against the custom of our said royal franchise’. Given episcopal pretensions to enjoy a ‘royal lordship’ within the bishopric, it is little wonder that Thomas Hatfield should assume that it was his right to exercise judicial powers which in other parts of England were exercised by the king. His belief that he had an inherent right to appoint his own justices in eyre was certainly shared by the lords of the Welsh marcher lordships, for instance, who in practice held sessions in eyre without the crown’s diktat.126 But to the ‘community of the bishopric’, the intended commission was likely seen as an agency to enforce the bishop’s rights between Tyne and Tees. The main purpose of Hatfield’s letters patent of March 1349 was, therefore, to inform the bishop’s subjects of the abandonment of the commission. In fact, the bishop, ‘desiring the good will, affection and comfort of our said people’, went further in promising his subjects that henceforth ‘we shall not make or suffer to be made such inquiries or others which are against the custom of our royal franchise … and which we and our predecessors from time out of mind have not made, except in time of eyre.’127 This was a significant concession to the ‘community of the bishopric’ because of the infrequency of the eyre. Since the second half of the thirteenth century eyres had been held in Durham only when royal justices in eyre were appointed in Northumberland:128 the bishop was expected to meet the royal justices at Newcastle-uponTyne, on the northern border of the bishopric, and to collect the articles of the eyre, so that his own justices could enforce them within his jurisdiction. But in practice, Northumberland eyres were few and far between, and in 1293 Bishop Antony Bek famously and deliberately failed to turn up at Newcastle to collect the articles, just as Bishop Robert of Holy Island had done in 1279, viewing the symbolic reception of the royal articles of the eyre as an assertion of royal authority over the bishop’s jurisdiction and an infringement of his own rights of lordship. Only when there was an episcopal vacancy did the crown have the right to send its own justices into the bishopric to undertake an eyre. Moreover, in practice, such eyres were even more exceptional because of the opposition of the bishop’s subjects, who viewed them as a challenge to Durham’s self-determination in matters of law.129 In 1345, upon the death of Richard Bury, two representatives of the ‘community of the bishopric of Durham’ (de communitate episcopatus Dunelmensis) travelled to London to seek the cancellation of the planned visit of the royal justices in eyre (pro relaxacione itineriis domini Regis) and agreed to pay 600 marks (£400) to 126 127 128

129

T.B. Pugh, The Marcher Lordships of South Wales, 1415–1536 (Cardiff, 1963), pp. 4–8. DURH 3/30, m. 4d. For this and what follows, see D. Crook, ‘The Later Eyres’, EHR 97 (1982), pp. 252–5; Bek, pp. 37–41. See also J. Scammell, ‘The Origin and Limitations of the Liberty of Durham’, EHR 81 (1966), pp. 464–5. For the suggestion that occasional eyres were held in the fourteenth century, after their general demise, as ‘a means of asserting royal ascendancy over a liberty’, see Crook, ‘Later Eyres’, p. 259.

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the king by way of compensation.130 In 1345 the community of Durham did exactly what it had done in 1311 and 1333 and decided to make a fine to the crown to avoid the prospect of the imminent arrival of a royal eyre.131 In 1349 Bishop Hatfield agreed that he would not appoint a judicial commission charged with making general inquiries in the bishopric independently of the crown; he would only do so during the time of an eyre. And given the way in which the community had also managed to buy off the royal eyre repeatedly since the early fourteenth century, the prospect of a visit of royal justices in eyre was highly unlikely. The community of Durham knew very well the history of the relationship between the bishopric and the royal eyres. The community also had an expectation, based on recent precedent, that it would not have to foot the bill for the fine which it had agreed to pay the crown to avoid the advent of royal justices in eyre: in 1311, for instance, though the men of the bishopric had promised to reimburse the new bishop, Richard Kelloe, the 1,000 marks paid to the king on their behalf, they never did so.132 In 1345 the 600 marks pledged by representatives of the Durham community was not forthcoming, despite a declaration that it would be paid in full by Michaelmas 1345. The men of the bishopric knew that the fine was a tax in all but name. Such was their hostility towards the payment of the fine that they tried to make the prior of Durham, the archdeacons of Durham and Northumberland and the clergy of the archdeaconry of Durham contribute, an action which the churchmen complained to Bishop Hatfield was contrary to their ecclesiastical immunities and liberties and canonical statute.133 In the end, Thomas Hatfield was forced to pay the fine himself. On 10 March 1349, exactly one week after the bishop had promised that he would not hold a general eyre within the bishopric on his own authority, the magnates, proceres and the whole community of the royal liberty of Durham granted Thomas Hatfield 400 marks ‘for the great labours and various expenses’ undertaken by the bishop ‘against the lord king of England for maintaining that said liberty’.134 This was part of the 600 marks which the community of Durham had promised to pay Edward III in 1345. In this process of negotiation, a deal was finally struck between the bishop and the community, in which the latter gave its consent to taxation in return for the redress of its grievances. Although devoid of an obvious institutional focus, the ‘community of the bishopric of Durham’ nonetheless saw itself as the mouthpiece of local custom. In March 1349 it was this community which reminded Bishop Hatfield that he should respect the custom of the pays.135 Among these customs was a belief that the bishop should not tax his subjects. As we saw in the previous 130 131 132 133 134 135

DCM, Misc.Ch. 6059; CCR, 1343–6, p. 524; CFR, 1337–47, p. 422. Crook, ‘Later Eyres’, pp. 255, 263–6. Crook, ‘Later Eyres’, p. 255 n. 2, drawing on Scriptores Tres, p. 93. DCM, Reg. II, fol. 127v. DURH 3/30, m. 4d. For the collective values of political life illuminated by such references, see S. Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1997), p. 244.



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chapter, the mechanisms for raising local taxation did exist in Durham: they were certainly in place by the first quarter of the fourteenth century, when they were employed to pay off the Scots.136 After 1349, local taxation, which had in any case been occasional and geared specifically to meet external threats to the bishopric, simply disappeared. Why, in contrast to the earls of Chester and the lords of the Welsh marcher liberties, did the bishops of Durham not enjoy the right to tax their subjects as an aspect of their regality? There was an expectation that the bishop, with one of the largest and most compact estates in England, should live of his own, and Bishop Hatfield more than made up for his lack of income from public taxation through the intensive exploitation of his estates and other sources of landed wealth.137 It was in reaction to the coercive nature of the bishop’s seigneurial lordship that the community of the bishopric of Durham successfully petitioned the crown in 1353 for a confirmation of the ‘charter of liberties’ granted by Bishop Antony Bek to the ‘community of the franchise of Durham’ in May 1303, which dealt almost entirely with issues relating to the bishop’s administration of his landed resources.138 Four years later, in December 1357, Bishop Hatfield issued a commission of oyer et terminer to address complaints arising since the beginning of his episcopate from the actions of the bishop’s major estate officials – his stewards, sheriffs and chief foresters – against the ‘people of the bishop’s liberty of Durham’.139 What sustained the ‘community of the bishopric of Durham’ and what gave it a voice in local politics was not a position within the formal structures of power, but the strength of a corpus of ideas about the historical identity of the Haliwerfolc. This ‘community’ strongly identified itself with the traditions of the Haliwerfolc. Something of the power of this collective mentality is revealed in the confrontation which took place in 1344, when the crown sent a royal commission into Hart, in the south-east corner of the bishopric, to conduct an inquisition post mortem on the death of its lord, Robert Clifford. The right of superior lordship, in the cases of Hart and Barnard Castle, belonged in theory to the crown. With the beginning of the Scottish war in the 1290s, Barnard Castle and Hart, which had been in the hands of the Balliols and Bruces respectively, were confiscated by Edward I for treason and, despite the protestations of successive bishops, they were held by the families of Beauchamp and Clifford directly of the crown throughout this period.140 From the perspective of the crown, neither Barnard Castle nor Hart was part of the bishopric of Durham: it was because Robert Clifford was a tenant-in-chief of the king rather than the bishop that Edward III ordered an 136 137 138 139 140

See above, p. 161. R.H. Britnell, ‘Feudal Reaction after the Black Death in the Palatinate of Durham’, P&P 128 (1990), pp. 28–47. CPR, 1350–4, p. 466. DURH 3/30, m. 12r. A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses: Lay Society, War, and Politics 1450–1500 (Oxford, 1990), pp. 147–9. See also above, pp. 26–7.

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inquisition post mortem in 1344. But the common acceptance of the bishopric’s traditional territorial borders of the rivers Tyne and Tees led the free tenants of the lordship of Hart to refuse to cooperate with the king’s officials in 1344 on the grounds that ‘they, like the other men of those parts, were “Haliwerfolk” and of the liberty of St. Cuthbert, where a writ of the realm does not run.’141 Hart was within the liberty of St Cuthbert, where the bishop’s writ applied, and it was customary for the inhabitants of Hart to obey only the commands of their bishop. As the Haliwerfolc – the ‘people of the saint’ – they also knew of the vengeful power of Cuthbert, who was a protective force against those who threatened the autonomy of the bishopric. The free tenants in Hart told the royal commissioners of the threat of excommunication which St Cuthbert could wield against those ‘doing anything against (venientes in aliquo contra) the said liberty’, particularly ‘anything new’. The spiritual muscle of Cuthbert was more than a match for the crown officials, who duly reported to the king that they were unable to complete the terms of their commission. To the modern biographer of Thomas Langley, the fifteenth-century bishop of Durham, the ‘ “acid test” of palatine privilege lay in the question of the disposal of lands of traitors against the Crown’,142 but this perception is valid only if we think of the bishopric in terms of the bishop and his powers and prerogatives. There were other privileges associated with the bishopric, and perhaps the most valuable to its inhabitants was Durham’s exemption from royal taxation. It was a privilege which attracted considerable attention from outsiders. In 1384, when the town of Newcastle-upon-Tyne petitioned the crown about the grant of a recent charter to Bishop Fordham concerning trading rights on the river Tyne, it drew a marked contrast between its own desperate financial predicament and the fiscal immunity of the bishopric: whereas the men of Newcastle paid almost as much as the city of York, no taxation whatsoever was forthcoming to the king within the bishopric. Unless the king revoked the bishop’s charter, the men of Newcastle warned, the inhabitants of the city would move to Gateshead, on the south bank of the river Tyne and within the bishop’s jurisdiction.143 To the northern neighbour of the bishopric, therefore, Durham was a tax haven. It was a situation which the community of the bishopric wished to maintain. Symeon of Durham’s story of the unsuccessful journey of William the Conqueror’s tax collector to the bishopric was just as relevant in the early fifteenth century as it was when it was first recorded in the early twelfth century, perhaps even more so given the increasingly hostile attitude of the parliamentary commons towards the existence of such privileged immunities

141 142 143

For this and what follows, see CIPM, Vol. VIII, pp. 383–4. Storey, Thomas Langley, p. 53. Ancient Petitions relating to Northumberland, pp. 257–9.



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as Durham’s.144 The author of the vernacular life of St Cuthbert retold the story, but he updated and elaborated it so as to place even greater emphasis upon the Haliwerfolc’s exemption from fiscal obligation.145 In this rendering of the tale, the king sent a royal official to levy a ‘grete tax’ from Cuthbert’s people (‘Þe folk to pay he wald constreyn’), who then prayed to their saint for divine intervention. The night before his ‘folke’ were to assemble before the tax collector, Cuthbert appeared to the king’s representative in a dream and struck him with his crosier for presuming to oppress his people (‘My pepill’ forto thrall’). The next morning, he awoke bedridden. Seeking the intercession of ‘þe pepill’ with their saintly patron, he promised never again to harm them if his health should be restored. So long as he remained in ‘þis diocise’, he remained in a state of sickness, but as soon as headed home and crossed the border of the diocese, he was cured. Although the episode was situated in the reign of William I, there was a strong contemporary resonance to the account, which was most apparent in the admonitory tone at the beginning and end of the story. The fifteenth-century rubric which prefaced the tale was entitled ‘How saint cuthbert Ranulphum flay,/ Þat walde streyn his folk kyngs tax to pay’ (lines 6233–4), with ‘flay’ here meaning ‘frightened away’ to indicate the terrifying power of the saint. The final three lines were an equally stark warning to those who might seek to tax the Haliwerfolc in the future. From the time that the king heard of the fate of his tax collector, wrote the author of the fifteenth-century poem, ‘Of cuthbert men na tax Iwis/ Neuer aftir rays he bad’ (lines 6293–4). In 1435 Durham’s privileges were challenged by the grant of a new kind of parliamentary subsidy, an income tax payable by individuals rather than communities on all those with an annual net income of at least £5.146 Local resistance greatly impeded the process of assessment and collection, both in practice and theory. At the end of January 1436, Bishop Langley was instructed to appoint his own officials to assess those liable to the income tax within the liberty of Durham and to order his sheriff to collect the money and to pay it into the royal exchequer.147 On 6 March 1436 Langley obliged, appointing eight men to assess the tax and his sheriff to collect it. The bishop’s commission was evidently ignored, however, since three months later, at the end of May 1436, the king issued his own letters patent to the Durham tax commissioners, ordering them to make the necessary inquiries in the bishopric and the sheriff to collect the subsidy by a revised date. When this money was not forthcoming, the king sent a writ to Bishop Langley telling him to distrain the sheriff of Durham of his lands and goods within the bishopric, since he had patently failed to collect the tax. Langley obliged once more 144 145 146 147

C.D. Liddy, ‘The Politics of Privilege: Thomas Hatfield and the Palatinate of Durham, 1345–81’, Fourteenth Century England IV, ed. J.S. Hamilton (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 73–5. For this and the following, see Life of St. Cuthbert, pp. 182–4. H.L. Gray, ‘Incomes from Land in England in 1436’, EHR 49 (1934), pp. 607–39. For this and what follows, see CFR, 1430–7, p. 262; DURH 3/36, m. 10r; DCM, Reg. II, fols 200v–202v.

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by distraining the sheriff, who was to appear before the barons of the king’s exchequer at the end of September 1436. Despite these punitive measures, still no tax materialised from Durham. Why? That the resistance came from the community of the bishopric is made manifest by the compilation (or dossier), now sadly lost, which was put together by Prior Wessington on behalf of the inhabitants of Durham and which had the rather unwieldy title ‘Why the men of the bishopric of Durham should be free from the payment of a subsidy to the lord king by virtue of their liberty.’148 The tax assessors and collectors themselves were drawn from this community, including among their number the heads of three of the most distinguished landed families within the bishopric, the Lumleys of Lumley castle, the Bowes of Streatlam and the Eures of Witton le Wear. In the end, rather than pay a tax to the king, the community of the bishopric decided to make a fine. The roll of the royal exchequer records the receipt, on 26 November 1436, of £100 ‘from the men inhabiting the bishopric of Durham … as a fine for a certain subsidy granted to the king by the laity in his fourteenth year for their manors, lands and tenements within the bishopric aforesaid’.149 As a fine, the money was a voluntary offering rather than a fiscal obligation, and this was an important distinction, since there was a principle at stake. In the letters of indemnity which the king issued in February 1437, he promised that the ‘gift’ made by the men of the bishopric ‘of their free will’, amounting to ‘a sum much exceeding what the said subsidy would have amounted to, if levied’, would not be made a precedent.150 The principle which the community of the bishopric sought to uphold was its freedom from national taxation.151 It was a principle that was worth paying for. Lordship and Community: The Challenge to Bishop Langley in 1433 It was in response to episcopal rather than royal lordship, however, that the community’s role as the defender of local custom can be best observed. One episode deserves particular attention here: the concerted attack, led by Sir William Eure, upon the lordship of Bishop Thomas Langley in 1433. The main details of this conflict can be summarised quickly. On 12 February 1433 Henry VI appointed a commission to inquire into the infraction of royal rights in the three northern counties of Northumberland, Westmorland and Cumberland.152 Less than two months later, on 1 April, the commission, headed by Henry Percy, second earl of Northumberland, held an inquisition at Hartlepool, a town about five miles north of the mouth of the river Tees and within the barony of Hart, which technically lay outside the bishopric and within 148 149 150 151 152

Scriptores Tres, p. cclxx: Quod homines episcopatus Dunelmensis liberi forent a solucione subsidii domino Regi virtute libertatis suae. E 401/749, 26 Nov. CPR, 1436–41, p. 43. For the broader context, see Thornton, ‘Fifteenth-Century Durham’, pp. 90–3. CPR, 1429–36, p. 276.



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the county of Northumberland since it was held directly of the king.153 The fifteen jurors, summoned before the royal commissioners, levelled twentyfour charges against the bishop of Durham, Thomas Langley, the essence of which was that the bishop had, since the beginning of his episcopate and by colour of his liberty of Durham, usurped all royal prerogatives ‘both written and unwritten’, to the great damage of the crown.154 Bishop Langley’s response to these allegations was two-fold. First, on 5 June 1433, he secured from the crown an inspeximus and confirmation of certain royal grants and charters made to the bishop and his predecessors, thereby buttressing the legal foundations of his palatine administration.155 And secondly, just over a month later, at the Westminster Parliament which opened on 8 July 1433, Langley petitioned the king to refute the main thrust of the allegations against him. In a comprehensive statement of his powers as earl palatine, Bishop Langley declared that he and his predecessors had been accustomed from time immemorial to enjoy ‘the liberty of a county palatine’ between and beyond the rivers Tyne and Tees. It was by virtue of this ‘county palatine’ that Bishop Langley also claimed to possess ‘various liberties, franchises, privileges and immunities’, the most important of which were the palatine institutions of a chancery, exchequer and judiciary, all of which operated by a writ of the bishop rather than of the king.156 In the same parliament, one of the bishop’s subjects, Sir William Eure, a leading member of the community of the bishopric, delivered an equally trenchant counter-petition in which, professing to speak ‘on behalf of the lord king’ as well as ‘for himself’, he denied categorically that the bishops of Durham had held the ‘liberty of a county palatine’ from time out of mind and maintained vigorously that such ‘liberties and franchises of a county palatine’, most notably the royal prerogatives associated with this dignity, had only been asserted by Thomas Langley rather than by his predecessors.157 After careful examination of the two petitions, the king’s council decided in favour of the bishop and, following Bishop Langley’s request, instructed the royal chancery to strike the commission’s findings at Hartlepool from its records.158 The events of 1433 have been variously interpreted. To G.T. Lapsley, to whom the political history of Durham was essentially that of the changing nature of its relationship with the crown, the royal commission of February 1433, whose findings prompted the parliamentary confrontation between Bishop Langley and Sir William Eure, was ‘an unusually flagrant case of royal encroachment’ upon the liberty.159 R.L. Storey believed that it was the Durham gentry who were behind the attack upon Bishop Langley and drew 153 154 155 156 157 158 159

See above, pp. 26–7. Storey, Thomas Langley, p. 260. CPR, 1429–36, p. 281. ‘Henry VI: Parliament of 1433, Text and Translation’, PROME, Vol. XI, p. 92. ‘Henry VI: Parliament of 1433, Text and Translation’, PROME, Vol. XI, p. 96. ‘Henry VI: Parliament of 1433, Text and Translation’, PROME, Vol. XI, pp. 101–2. Lapsley, County Palatine, p. 241.

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attention to the ‘fact’ that ‘at least an influential proportion of the subjects of the bishopric wished to see an end of their ruler’s palatinate authority.’ As to why the bishop’s subjects acted in the way that they did, Storey argued that ‘several of the richer Durham tenants had lands in other counties and sometimes served in their local administrations, and even as their shire knights.’ Given the strength of these connections beyond the bishopric, men such as Sir William Eure ‘would not have considered the bishopric as an enclosed community’; since it did not define their world, they would, therefore, have been able to countenance the idea of the bishopric’s destruction.160 A more recent interpretation of the challenge to Bishop Langley’s privileges has stressed the importance of other kinds of private association which helped to shape the very public actions of the key figures in 1433: Sir William Eure, it has been argued, was a prominent member of the affinity of Ralph Neville, second earl of Westmorland, who was in the midst of an ongoing legal wrangle to overturn his disinheritance at the hands of his grandfather’s second wife, Joan Beaufort, and her eldest son, Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury; and in the Neville family feud, Bishop Langley was very much an ally of the junior branch headed by Joan Beaufort, an alliance which prevented the second earl from entering his patrimony in full.161 ‘Behind Eure’, it has been suggested, ‘lay the twenty-six year old earl of Westmorland, his family and friends.’ As ‘a stalking horse for the earl of Westmorland’, Sir William Eure’s machinations were designed, ultimately, to reverse his lord’s disinheritance within the bishopric by weakening one of the main props of the junior Nevilles, namely the bishop’s hold over a powerful and autonomous machinery of government. How should we interpret this episode? Prosopographical analysis certainly confirms Storey’s suggestion that several of the resident Durham gentry drawn from the knightly class had strong connections beyond the borders of the bishopric. Sir William Eure inherited considerable property in the western half of Durham, as well as a sizeable estate in Northumberland and in the foothills of the Cleveland Hills in the North Riding.162 His landed interests were reflected in the geographical pattern of his office-holding:163 prior to 1433, he served as MP for Yorkshire on two occasions and was appointed to seven commissions of the peace in the North Riding, holding office continuously from 1420. Eure was not someone to whom the river Tees was a social, tenurial or administrative barrier. It made perfect sense,

160

161 162 163

R.L. Storey, ‘The North of England’, Fifteenth-Century England, 1399–1509, ed. S.B. Chrimes et al. (Manchester, 1972), p. 142. See also A.J. Pollard, ‘The Crown and the County Palatine of Durham, 1437–94’, The North of England in the Age of Richard III, ed. A.J. Pollard (Stroud, 1996), p. 71. Pollard, ‘Provincial Politics’, pp. 69–78 at 73, 76. This argument develops a suggestion made in Dobson, Durham Priory, p. 186. See above, p. 50. For what follows, see Return of Members, Vol. I, pp. 304, 320; CPR, 1416–22, pp. 462–3; CPR, 1422–9, p. 572; CPR, 1429–36, pp. 627–8; DURH 3/38, mm. 11r, 17r, 20r.



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then, for Bishop Langley to appoint Eure to a succession of commissions of inquiry to investigate the state of the bishopric’s rivers, including the Tees, from the mid 1420s. It is also the case that Sir William Eure was a man in whom the crown invested its trust in the mid 1430s, when Anglo-Scottish relations once more deteriorated: in 1436 Eure was appointed captain of the town and castle of Berwick-upon-Tweed.164 In the breadth of his horizons, Eure was not alone. Sir William Embleton, an associate of Eure in the political attack upon Bishop Langley in 1433, was another with ties of land and office outside the bishopric. Embleton’s father had, from the 1390s, built up a dispersed estate in Northumberland which, by the time of his death, had become focused upon the town of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.165 It was by virtue of these properties that Embleton held all of the key posts in the administration of the county: appointment as commissioner of array and sheriff in 1419; as MP in 1422 and 1427; and as JP in 1423 and 1424.166 He was also called upon by the crown to serve in the defence of the northern border, receiving a life grant of the offices of receiver-general and constable of Bamburgh castle on the Northumberland coast in 1419 and employed on a diplomatic mission to Scotland in 1429.167 As crown officials themselves, is it any wonder that Eure and Embleton sought to undermine the position of the bishop of Durham by claiming that, since the palatinate of Durham had no legal foundation, the bishop’s exercise of power by prescriptive rather than royal title had shown a complete disregard for royal authority? What, we might wonder, did Durham actually mean to men like Eure and Embleton? Was it only valued because of the additional opportunity it provided to serve in the bishop’s administration alongside a career in the service of the crown? Observed in this light, what transpired in 1433 was also the consequence of Sir William Eure’s personal vendetta against a bishop who had deprived him of the office of steward of Durham, a position held previously by William’s father, Sir Ralph, for thirty years.168 That Durham mattered more to Sir William than merely as a source of employment is suggested by his role in the collection of the 1435 income tax. Rather than suffer the imposition of a subsidy, he and the other leaders of the community of the bishopric negotiated a communal fine with the king in order to preserve the principle of Durham’s fiscal autonomy.169 There was also nothing unusual about the existence of such ties linking Durham landholders to neighbouring counties and, ultimately, to the crown. Throughout the period, members of the Durham gentry, especially the greater landholders, looked towards the crown for the opportunities of office and 164 165 166 167 168 169

CDS, Vol. V, pp. 294, 561; Rot. Scot., Vol. II, p. 297. DCM, Misc.Ch. 353; DURH 3/46, m. 6r. CPR, 1416–22, p. 211; List of Sheriffs for England and Wales (PRO Lists and Indexes 9, 1898), p. 98; Return of Members, Vol. I, pp. 303, 314; CPR, 1422–9, p. 567. CPR, 1416–22, p. 247; CPR, 1422–9, p. 273; SC 8/109/5423; Rot. Scot., Vol. II, p. 268. For this suggestion, see Storey, Thomas Langley, p. 117. For Ralph, see above, pp. 108–9. See above, pp. 207–8.

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service. The more substantial gentry occupied office in more than one county, since they also tended to hold properties in shires other than the one in which they chiefly resided.170 The Surtees of Dinsdale-on-Tees held a single estate in Northumberland, the manor of North Gosforth, by virtue of which the head of the family represented the county at parliament in 1361, 1362 and 1372, acted as JP in 1372, 1376 and 1377 and gained appointment to the Northumberland shrievalty in 1372, 1378, 1379 and 1420.171 Sir John Conyers of Sockburn, an estate on the southern boundary of the bishopric, served as a tax collector of the lay subsidy in 1388 across the river Tees in the North Riding, where he held property in right of his wife, one of the daughters and co-heirs of Sir William Ayton of Malton and Ayton. John’s son, Robert, held an identical office south of the Tees in 1417 and 1419.172 Meanwhile, William Baron Hylton, a noted soldier and military captain, served regularly in both Scotland and France from the late 1370s and was retained for life in both peace and war by Richard II from 1386 and, on identical terms, by Henry IV from November 1399.173 His castle at Hylton provided tangible proof of his loyalties and attachments. At the top of the heraldic display on the west front of the new castle gatehouse were the royal arms, whilst in the centre of the east façade was Richard II’s personal emblem, the badge of the white hart, above the shield and crest of Hylton himself.174 And Hylton’s contemporary, Ralph Lumley, whilst never formally retained by Richard II, could also count himself among the royal affinity. Summoned to parliament as Lord Lumley in 1384, Ralph served the king as captain of the castle of Berwick-upon-Tweed in the later 1380s and was of sufficient importance to Richard II for the king to help pay his ransom when Ralph was captured by the Scots at Otterburn in 1388.175 Ralph felt sufficiently strongly towards the king that, when he ‘turned his house into a castle’ in the late fourteenth century, he ensured that the royal arms of Richard II occupied the central place at the top of the entrance into the main courtyard.176 When Henry Bolingbroke usurped the throne in the autumn of 1399, Ralph was one of the leading conspirators in the Epiphany Rising of January 1400, supporting Richard against the new king, a treasonous act in which he was joined by Thomas, his son and heir, a minor at the time of the plot. Ralph’s participation cost him his life

170 171 172 173

174 175 176

Cf. Carpenter, ‘Gentry and Community’, pp. 348–9. Return of Members, Vol. I, pp. 167, 170, 189; CPR, 1370–4, p. 239; CPR, 1374–7, pp. 330–1; CPR, 1377–81, p. 49; List of Sheriffs, pp. 97–8. CFR, 1383–91, p. 266; CFR, 1413–22, pp. 219, 300; CIPM, Vol. XVI, pp. 3–4. CDS, Vol. V, pp. 528, 532, 550; E 101/51/2, m. 1r; A.R. Bell, War and the Soldier in the Fourteenth Century (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 20, 95; CPR, 1391–6, pp. 17, 306; CPR, 1401–5, p. 393; PPC, Vol. I, pp. 243–6; CPR, 1385–9, p. 131; CPR, 1399–1401, p. 142. B.M. Morley, ‘Hylton Castle’, Archaeological Journal 133 (1976), pp. 122, 131, 133, 134. CDS, Vol. IV, pp. 81, 535, 539, 540, 541, 545, 546, 547; Rot. Scot., Vol. II, p. 96; CDS, Vol. III, p. 90. P.R. Coss, ‘Heraldry and Monumental Effigies in the North East’, Northumbrian Panorama: Studies in the History and Culture of North East England, ed. T.E. Faulkner (London, 1996), p. 7.



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and the forfeiture of his property, within and without the bishopric, whilst Thomas was also attainted of treason and died at the end of May 1400 in the king’s custody, the precise circumstances unknown.177 It was not simply in the period immediately preceding 1433 that Durham landholders looked upon the crown as a source of patronage and were prepared to enter royal service. The difference is that these allegiances did not lead to a determined assault upon the power of the bishop of Durham. What was different, therefore, about 1433? One argument attributes the events of 1433 to the beginning of the NevilleNeville feud, a bitter family dispute whose roots lay in the virtual disinheritance of the senior line by Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland. This was a process which had commenced in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries with a series of enfeoffments in favour of the family of Ralph’s second wife, Joan Beaufort, and which came to fruition on the death of the first earl in 1425. What happened in 1433, it has been argued, was an episode in a much larger, aristocratic conflict, namely the struggle between the two branches of the Nevilles over control of the inheritance of the first earl.178 There is circumstantial evidence to tie Sir William Eure to the senior line of the Nevilles and the second earl in particular. In 1427 Eure was granted the custody of the Brancepeth estates of the first earl, along with two men, a clerk by the name of William Spence and a gentleman and lawyer called William Hutton of Hardwick, both of whom are known to have counted among the inner circle of the second earl’s affinity: indeed, Hutton was the second earl’s steward.179 When Eure’s younger brother, Robert, agreed in May 1435 to serve Joan, countess of Westmorland and her son, Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, the indenture of retainer acknowledged the possibility of future dispute between William and the junior Nevilles, in the event of which Robert’s loyalties were reserved to his sibling: ‘it shal be leful to ye said Robert to be of consail and helping with Sir William Eure his brother and with his children ayen ye said Contesse and Erle if eny materes of difference in lawe happen to fal bitwix theym.’180 Eure’s attachments to the second earl, however, were far from exclusive. In November 1438, less than a year after the accession of Richard’s younger brother, Robert Neville, to the see of Durham, Sir William Eure made an indenture to serve the new bishop in war as well as in peace for the not inconsiderable annual sum of £20. Among the various conditions which were attached to the indenture was the expectation that Eure would, by command of the bishop, also be prepared at all times to serve Robert Neville’s mother, 177 178 179 180

CPR, 1399–1402, p. 173; CIM, 1399–1422, pp. 43–4; ‘Henry IV: Parliament of 1401, Text and Translation’, PROME, Vol. VIII, pp. 109–10; CIPM, Vol. XVIII, pp. 324–6. For the two branches of the family, see Figure 3. DURH 3/38, m. 15r. For the connections between the second earl and Spence and Hutton, see DCM, 1.2.Ebor.15a; DCM, Loc.XXV:133; DURH 3/42, mm. 9r-12r. M. Jones and S. Walker, ‘Private Indentures for Life Service in Peace and War, 1278–1476’, Camden Miscellany 32 (1994), p. 150.

Elizabeth Percy  =  (1) John  =  (2) Ralph Neville, Lord Second Earl of Clifford Westmorland d. 1422 d. 1484

Richard Earl of Salisbury d. 1460

George Lord Latimer d. 1469

Robert Bishop of Durham d. 1457

Sir Thomas Neville d. c.1461

William Lord Fauconberg d. 1463

Sir John Neville d. 1461

Elizabeth  =  Sir John Neville Sir Ralph Neville Alice  =  Holland d. 1420   d. 1458      Montagu

Ralph Neville, First = (1) Margaret Stafford = (2) Joan Beaufort Earl of Westmorland d. 1396 d. 1440 d. 1425

Figure 3.  The Senior and Junior Lines of the Nevilles

Edward Lord Bergavenny d. 1476



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Joan, countess of Westmorland, and Robert’s brothers, Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, William Lord Fauconberg, George Lord Latimer and Edward Lord Bergavenny.181 Eure’s readiness to support the junior Nevilles, almost certainly in their dispute with the senior branch of the family, indicates a measure of independent political activity on his part. That Eure was prepared to do so after the death of Thomas Langley is a strong signal that the main source of his disquiet was not the unequal distribution of the Neville inheritance but the governance of Bishop Langley. In December 1433 Eure, who had served continuously as a JP in the bishopric from May 1422, was conspicuous by his absence from the Durham bench, a bench headed by Richard Neville and his younger brothers, William and George.182 Eure’s removal owed everything to his opposition to Bishop Langley earlier that year rather than his active support of the senior line of the Nevilles. Eure was not a stooge for his supposed political master, the second earl. He bore his own grievances towards Langley. But Eure did not act alone in 1433. This much is evident from the charges which were laid against Langley in April 1433. Of the twenty-four allegations, only four related, directly or indirectly, to the personal experiences of Sir William Eure.183 Did the remaining twenty indictments come from supporters of the senior line of the Nevilles, disgruntled at the treatment of the second earl and the connivance of Bishop Langley in his disinheritance? Among the fifteen jurors, William Lumley of Butterby, Esq., younger brother of Sir Thomas Lumley of Lumley castle, was among the small circle of advisers of the second earl who played an active role in trying to secure possession of the first will and testament of Ralph, first earl of Westmorland,184 but he was outnumbered on the jury by the presence of several members of the Durham gentry – among them John Trollop of Thornley and Henry Tailboys of Hurworth on Tees, both of whom were retainers of the first earl – whose loyalties lay decidedly with the junior Nevilles.185 Their involvement in a scheme, ultimately on behalf of the disinherited second earl, is therefore highly unlikely. Similarly, two of the articles sworn by the jury at Hartlepool in 1433 concerned individuals with strong connections to the first earl of Westmorland and to the junior branch of the Neville family. The last of the twenty-four articles against Thomas Langley involved Sir Peter Tilliol, a knight from Cumberland with estates in the bishopric. Tilliol was one of the executors of the second will of Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland. It was this will which sealed the disinheritance of the second earl of Westmorland: having already enfeoffed most of his estates upon Joan Beaufort and their children, his will completed the disposition of his landed estates 181 182 183 184 185

DURH 3/46, m. 13r. DURH 3/38, mm. 8r, 16r; DURH 3/36, m. 7r. Storey, Thomas Langley, p. 120. For the existence of two wills, see below, pp. 218–19. For Lumley, see DURH 3/38, m. 15r; DCM, 1.2.Ebor.15a; DURH 3/42, mm. 9r–12r. For Trollop and Tailboys, see above, pp. 98–101.

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by bequeathing the Northumberland barony of Bywell and Styford to Ralph Neville, the first earl’s younger son by his first marriage, and the manor of Winlaton in the bishopric of Durham to Edward Neville, one of the younger sons of his second marriage. The second earl was not mentioned at all.186 The fourth article recounted the arrest of the Durham esquire, Thomas Claxton of Old Park, and his bond to keep the peace within the bishopric. Claxton’s father, another Thomas, had risen to a position of prominence within Durham political life thanks to the patronage of the first earl, whom he served as constable of Brancepeth. The son too became constable of Brancepeth, an estate to which the second earl succeeded in 1432, but in March 1439 he also became a life retainer of Bishop Neville in receipt of an annuity of £4.187 Those involved in the events of 1433 against Bishop Langley were in no sense acting in support of the second earl against the settlement engineered by the first earl. Their loyalties and attachments were far from straightforward. Behind the argument that the Neville of Westmorland connection helped to promote Sir William Eure’s suit against Bishop Langley in 1433 is an assumption about the significance of the Neville dispute in the politics of the bishopric and about the strength of Neville lordship within Durham in this period. We saw in chapter three how the affinity of the first earl of Westmorland, in the course of the early fifteenth century, acquired an increasingly North Riding complexion, inasmuch as the earl’s main advisers were drawn from south of the river Tees rather than from the bishopric.188 The consequences of this shift were felt keenly by Richard Neville, whose standing in the North Riding was considerably greater than it was within the bishopric, despite his position at the head of the Durham bench. South of the Tees, Richard worked with the executors of his father’s will to establish himself at Middleham,189 but north of the river, Richard’s ties with members of landed society were weaker. The evidence of Richard Neville’s frequent communication with John Wessington in the late 1420s and early 1430s reveals an individual who lacked confidence in the customary support of the prior of Durham for the Nevilles and in his place within Durham society more generally. Writing from Middleham in June 1429, Richard Neville informed the prior that he was currently occupied in the Anglo-Scottish border region as a warden of the march and that he was ‘yhitt a yong housband and noght all redy purveid ne stored of all at wer nedefull nor noght might be lik as I had purposed’ because of the ‘grete costagez and expencez as I have hadd now of late as for the suyte of my landez’. He therefore asked the prior to borrow ‘your chariotour with your chariot and the chariot horses’ for his meeting

186 187 188 189

Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 261–2; BIHR, Probate Register II, fol. 495v. The will printed in Wills and Inventories, pp. 68–74, contains some inaccuracies. Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 247–8; above, p. 93; Pollard, North-Eastern England, p. 138; DURH 3/37, mm. 5r, 6r; DURH 3/42, m. 7r. See above, pp. 93–101. T. Madox, Formulare Anglicanum (London, 1702), p. 331.



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on the east march with representatives of the Scottish king.190 In the early 1430s he travelled to France to accompany Henry VI on a military campaign culminating in the king’s coronation and entry into Paris in December 1431, and it was from northern France that Richard Neville wrote repeatedly to the prior of Durham inquiring about the prior’s welfare and relating news of the king’s progress.191 In March and April 1431, first Joan, countess of Westmorland and then Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury were admitted into the confraternity of St Cuthbert associated with Durham priory.192 Membership of this exclusive confraternity may have been sought by the junior branch of the Nevilles not only for the obvious spiritual benefits, but also for the opportunity to build ties of interdependence with the prior. And yet, for all these attempts to court the prior, John Wessington was able to retain, in this period at least, a measure of independence in his relations with the Nevilles. This freedom palpably aroused Richard Neville’s exasperation in early 1438 when he learned that the prior had removed one of his servants from the office of forester of Bearpark, despite the existence of a supposedly longstanding agreement (‘of olde tyme’) between the priory and his predecessors. How, he wondered (‘to our mervail’), was it possible, especially since ‘he is oure servant’, for the forester to have been discharged ‘so suddenly’ from office?193 At the same time, the position of the second earl of Westmorland within the bishopric was uncertain. This was not, as used to be thought, because the second earl was simple minded (innocens homo).194 Far from it, on a national stage, before the king’s council, he vigorously fought his corner. Writing to the king in 1434, the second earl calculated very precisely the extent of his disinheritance, contrasting the annual landed revenue of his grandfather, the first earl, amounting to 4,000 marks, with his own vastly reduced income of 600 marks.195 He then explained that he had been wrongfully deprived of the remainder of his inheritance by the actions of Joan, countess of Westmorland and Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, both of whom had committed further offences by alleging to the king that the second earl wanted to pursue his title to the other properties with force (‘with strenthe and agayns youre pees’). As a result, the second earl complained, he had been bound over to the king continuously to keep the peace, paying ‘grete and notable sommes’ from the moment he had entered his majority (1429).196 Now, the earl declared, Joan wanted him to be bound over to the king in £10,000, lest he try to pursue

190 191 192 193 194 195 196

DCM, Loc.XXV:121; Dobson, Durham Priory, p. 187. DCM, Loc.XXV:122; DCM, Misc.Ch. 1077; Dobson, Durham Priory, p. 187. DCM, Reg. III, fols 138v–139r. Cf. DCM, Reg. III, fol. 212v, and Loc.XXV:120. To make matters worse, the servant had been his father’s deputy in the office: DURH 3/36, m. 6r. William Worcestre’s Itineraries, ed. J.H. Harvey (Oxford, 1969), p. 345. Cf. Pollard, ‘The Crown and the County Palatine’, pp. 85–6, and Pollard, ‘Provincial Politics’, p. 74. For this and what follows, see E 28/53/72–4. CCR, 1429–35, pp. 67, 125, 346–8; CCR, 1435–41, pp. 56–7, 178–9, 276–7, 279–80.

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his case by force or by legal judgment. In an unmistakeable tone of defiance, the earl concluded his letter by reminding the king ‘howe the saide bisecher is born to bere the name of Erle in youre saide Roialme’, how he might not be able to support the title of earl without a sufficient estate, and how he did not need to be bound over to keep the peace, since he would place his trust instead in the king’s duty to exercise justice to his subjects impartially and without favour (‘that he be juge indifferent to everych liegeman of youre Roialme’). Running throughout the letter was a barely contained feeling of resentment that his predicament was due largely to the political support which Joan and her son, Richard, enjoyed within the king’s council. Here, of course, the second earl was absolutely right: Joan’s brother, Henry Beaufort, was a dominant figure in the royal council for much of the 1430s, and he used his influence to protect his sister and nephew in their struggle with the second earl by placing the king’s council at the centre of any attempt to resolve the dispute.197 Politically, it was not just at Westminster that the second earl’s standing was insecure. Locally, the earl faced a bishop, in the form of Thomas Langley, whose loyalties in this family dispute lay unquestionably with the junior branch of the Nevilles.198 The second earl also suffered from a relatively weak territorial position within the bishopric, which was a consequence of both the first earl’s settlement and the assignment of dower rights in April 1426 to Joan, countess of Westmorland, which deprived the second earl of the entire Raby estate and one-third of the Brancepeth lands.199 Although he had a base at Brancepeth in the 1430s, he would appear to have spent more time at the manor of Hart, the principal residence of his wife, Elizabeth Percy, by virtue of her first marriage to John Lord Clifford.200 In this respect, the second earl’s status as the ‘county’s leading nobleman’ was more tentative and provisional than has been appreciated.201 Among the consequences of the bifurcation of the Neville dynasty was a shift in power towards other resident Durham landholders, whose support both branches of the family now actively sought in order to buttress their position locally. The disinheritance of the second earl did arouse hostility in Durham, but this enmity came specifically from within the inner circle of the first earl’s affinity. It was information given to the second earl by an unnamed clerk and familiar of the first earl about the existence of the latter’s first will and testament as well as other related deeds and charters, delivered to the safekeeping of the prior of Durham in 1400, which led to increasing political tensions in relations between the junior and senior branches of the Nevilles and the prior and bishop of Durham. The second earl, Joan, coun197 198 199 200 201

G.L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort: A Study of Lancastrian Ascendancy and Decline (Oxford, 1988), pp. 267–8. Storey, Thomas Langley, p. 108. Raby: DCM, Reg.Parv. II, fols 37r, 42v, 85r–86v, 99r, 108v, 131r; Brancepeth: DURH 3/38, mm. 13r, 15d, DURH 3/37, m. 6r. DCM, 1.2.Ebor.15a; DCM, Loc.XXV:132–3; Dobson, Durham Priory, p. 186. Pollard, ‘Provincial Politics’, p. 76.



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tess of Westmorland, Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, Bishop Langley and Cardinal Beaufort then exerted considerable pressure upon Prior Wessington to surrender the documents, which allegedly contained details of the lands and lordships pertaining to the second earl’s inheritance. The second earl brought legal proceedings before the bishop’s justices in 1434 to force the prior’s hand, but in 1435, on pain of ecclesiastical censure, the prior was forced by the bishop to deliver to the attorneys of Joan and Richard the contested documentation.202 At the time of the conflict with Bishop Langley in 1433, landholders were courted by both sides and were adept at keeping their options open. Sir William Eure and Thomas Claxton of Old Park, as we have seen, had connections with both branches of the family. They were not alone. Among those involved in the arrangements organised for the custody of the second earl’s estate of Brancepeth in 1427 were Sir William Bowes of Streatlam and William Hutton of Hardwick.203 For all his apparent attachment to the second earl, Bowes was also Thomas Langley’s last sheriff and escheator, appointed at the bishop’s pleasure in May 1436.204 William Hutton was a lawyer whose family had been closely associated with the first earl of Westmorland, and although he did become the steward of the second earl, his loyalties were not so fixed as to prevent him from accepting a place on the Durham peace commission of July 1436 headed by Richard Neville and his two younger brothers, William and George, and the receipt of an annuity from Bishop Neville.205 Sir Thomas Lumley, one of the most powerful landholders in the bishopric, who could count Bishop Langley among his godparents, was another whose attachments were not cast in stone. Appointed in December 1433 to the quorum on the Durham bench, to which he was reappointed in July 1436, Lumley’s ties to the junior Nevilles were not absolute.206 The May 1435 indenture of retainer between the Durham esquire, Robert Eure, and Joan, countess of Westmorland and Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury contained a deleted clause which reserved Robert’s loyalties to Thomas Lumley in the event that Lumley should come into conflict with the countess or earl. The clause read: ‘and if it happen also yat God so wil yat eny mattere of difference or vareance fal bitwix ye said Contesse or Erle and Thomas of Lumley yat ye said Robert shall not be constreyned to be with ye said Contesse and Erle of conseil ayenst ye said Thomas.’207 In this world of conditional allegiances, the support of prominent Durham landholders was vigorously canvassed and they sought to preserve a significant degree of independence within their 202 203 204 205 206 207

DCM, 1.2.Ebor.15a-e; Thomas Langley, Vol. IV, pp. 132–3; DCM, Loc.XXV:78; DCM, Misc. Ch. 7154. See also Dobson, Durham Priory, pp. 189–90. DURH 3/38, m. 15r. DURH 3/36, m. 11r. See above, p. 103; DURH 3/36, m. 11r; DURH 3/42, m. 16r. DURH 3/36, mm. 7r, 11r. ‘Private Indentures for Life Service’, p. 150.

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relationships with the Nevilles. Robert Eure was the sheriff and escheator of Durham, a post he had held without interruption since January 1420.208 Sir Thomas Lumley, whose father John had enjoyed close ties to the mother of the second earl of Westmorland and whose younger brother, William, was a retainer of the second earl, was appointed chief forester of Weardale by Bishop Langley in May 1436.209 The terms of Thomas’s commission reveal the political expectations surrounding this act of episcopal patronage. Unusually, the chief forester was empowered to determine as well as hear all forest offences in his own forest court rather than see them determined before the bishop’s justices.210 That Lumley’s bond to the junior Nevilles was by no means assured is confirmed by Thomas Langley’s reappointment of Lumley, only two days before his own death on 20 November 1437. Langley’s letter of privy seal expressed, more in expectation and hope, the bishop’s confidence in Lumley’s ability and loyalty (Come nous confoiantz in les scien et loialtee), and upgraded the earlier grant of the office at the bishop’s pleasure to one for the incumbent’s lifetime.211 In these circumstances, when members of the gentry had their feet in both camps, the Neville family dispute could never be the issue which splintered Durham landed society into two deeply opposed factions. Sir William Eure’s challenge to Thomas Langley in 1433 was not prompted by questions about aristocratic lineage and inheritance, but about the very nature of Bishop Langley’s palatine regime. At its heart was a debate about the identity and constitution of the bishopric. Eure did not act alone in 1433, but his support did not come principally from aristocratic backers, namely the second earl of Westmorland and his younger brothers, Sir John and Sir Thomas Neville. There was another social and political world in which Eure moved, a context provided by the ‘community of the bishopric of Durham’. In the last week of September 1433, almost six months after the Hartlepool jury presented its findings and just over a month after the adjournment of the Westminster parliament at which Eure had presented his petition against Langley, two Durham knights, Sir William Eure and Sir William Embleton, wrote to the prior of Durham, John Wessington, seeking his good lordship and his intervention to restore peaceful relations with the bishop.212 That Embleton bore his own grievances towards the bishop’s regime is indicated by the bond of £200 which he made in the Durham chancery in September 1432 to keep the peace towards one of the bishop’s household clerks, George

208 209

210 211 212

DURH 3/35, m. 19r. The supervisor of Sir John Lumley’s 1418 will was Elizabeth, wife of Sir John Neville, the eldest son of the first earl of Westmorland’s first marriage, and it was Elizabeth to whom John made several bequests: Thomas Langley, Vol. II, pp. 191–4. For William Lumley, see DCM, 1.2.Ebor.15a; DURH 3/42, mm. 9r–12r. DURH 3/36, m. 11r; J.L. Drury, ‘Durham Palatinate Forest Law and Administration, Specially in Weardale up to 1440’, AA, 5th series 6 (1978), pp. 89, 102–3. DURH 3/145; DURH 3/36, m. 14r. For all references to this letter, see DCM, Loc.XXV:7.



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Radcliffe, who was from a Lancashire family, the Radcliffes of Radcliffe, in whose service Langley had begun his career and with whom Langley continued to be very closely associated on his appointment as bishop of Durham.213 However, it was not as individuals but as representatives that Eure and Embleton sought to present their opposition to the bishop. In their letter to Prior Wessington of September 1433, they reminded the prior of the ‘gret affectoun and love that ye have to the gentilmen of this cuntre’ and it was on behalf of the gentry of the bishopric – ‘us and our frendes’ – that they claimed to speak. They had the right credentials to assume such a leadership role: Eure, who had held the office of JP in the bishopric from 1422, enjoyed an annual landed income in excess of £150, which placed him in the upper echelon of Durham gentry society, whilst Embleton was the lord of four manors in the bishopric, where he continued to reside despite holding office in Northumberland, and it was in Durham that his father and grandfather had carved out for themselves major administrative careers.214 The standing of Eure and Embleton within Durham landed society is confirmed by their presence, first and third respectively, in the list of five knights, fiftyone esquires and eighteen others who swore an oath to maintain the peace within the bishopric before Langley at Durham cathedral on 23 September 1434.215 It was this assembly of landholders, comprising a cross-section of landed society between the Tyne and the Tees, which constituted the ‘community of St Cuthbert’.216 It was this community which was actively behind the charges presented against Bishop Langley in April 1433: the meeting at Durham cathedral in September 1434 included eight of the fifteen jurors at Hartlepool and a further five who were named by the jurors as victims of Langley’s administration. The role of the community of the bishopric in formulating the allegations against Langley helps further to explain why none of the accusations concerned the bishop’s rule north of the river Tyne in Bedlingtonshire, Norhamshire and Islandshire and south of the river Tees in Crayke, areas which were also under the bishop’s palatine authority. The indictments against Bishop Langley in April 1433 related solely to the land between Tyne and Tees. What we have, then, in 1433 is the articulation of the collective concerns of the Durham gentry. When, in the Westminster parliament of autumn 1433, Bishop Langley submitted a petition in respect of the ‘various and very many people of the said county and liberty of Durham’ (diverse et quamplures gentes dicti comitatus Dunelmensis et libertatis) who were resentful of the franchises, privileges and liberties with which the church of St Cuthbert was endowed and 213 214 215 216

DURH 3/37, m. 5d; Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 2–3. Eure: DURH 3/38, mm. 8r, 16r, and E 179/158/38, m. 5d; Embleton: DURH 3/46, m. 6r, and above, pp. 129–30, 136. Thomas Langley, Vol. IV, pp. 142–3. For the representative nature of the 1434 gathering, see above, p. 75. The quotation is from Pollard, North-Eastern England, p. 154.

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who were unwilling to be subject to his rule (aut ipsius episcopi regimini), he articulated surprise and dismay at the strength of the ties which bound them together.217 According to Langley, they gained empowerment from a variety of associational forms, choosing ‘jointly to gather together in assemblies … and gather together from day to day, enter counsels and form bonds between themselves’ (invicem in conventiculis congregare ceperunt … et indies congregant, consilia ineunt et ligationes inter se faciunt) for the purpose of destroying the bishop’s liberties and franchises. Eure and Embleton were precisely the sorts of prominent figures among the community of the bishopric who could set such assemblies in motion. Why, to paraphrase Langley’s parliamentary petition, was the bishop’s regimen the object of so much ill-feeling among so many of his subjects in the bishopric? What was the character of his lordship? Thomas Langley’s enduring commitment to the house of Lancaster has received most critical attention, which is unsurprising since historians have tended to approach the political history of Durham in this period from the perspective of the centre and, in particular, in the light of the sustained efforts of the early Lancastrian kings to establish their power in north-eastern England.218 In fact, Langley’s relationship with the crown, as bishop of Durham, was very similar to that of his immediate predecessors. Just like Bishops Fordham and Skirlaw, Langley sought royal charters to strengthen the legal basis of his palatine jurisdiction in the context of specific challenges to his rights at particular moments of political crisis.219 Thus, in May 1413, during the first week of the first parliament of Henry V’s reign, at which Langley petitioned the king to contest possession of the Tyne Bridge with the mayor and community of Newcastle, the bishop also secured an inspeximus and confirmation of charters of Henry I and Henry II relating to the division of the river Tyne.220 To argue that ‘Bishop Langley’s chief ambitions lay at Westminster’ is to downplay the seriousness with which Bishop Langley took his local responsibilities as the heir to St Cuthbert.221 Langley’s tenacious pursuit of his rights on the southern half of the Tyne Bridge has been discussed.222 The bishop fought a similarly determined campaign in Hart, in the extreme south east of the bishopric. This was a lordship which had been confiscated by Edward I and which, from the early fourteenth century, was held directly by the Cliffords of Skipton-in-Craven

217 218

219 220 221 222

DCM, Loc.XXI:21. See also Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 129–30. See, for example, M. Arvanigian, ‘Landed Society and the Governance of the North in the Later Middle Ages: The Case of Sir Ralph Eure’, Medieval Prosopography 22 (2001), pp. 65–87, and ‘Henry IV, the Northern Nobility and the Consolidation of the Regime’, Henry IV: The Establishment of the Regime, 1399–1406, ed. G. Dodd and D. Biggs (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 117–37. CChR, 1341–1417, pp. 292–3, and CPR, 1381–5, p. 362 (the river Tyne); CChR, 1341–1417, p. 328, and CCR, 1389–92, p. 221 (forfeitures of treason). KB 27/614, m. 13r; CChR, 1341–1417, pp. 454–5. Arvanigian, ‘Landed Society and the Governance of the North’, p. 86. See above, pp. 181–6.



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of the king. The king rather than the bishop was, in theory, the overlord of Hart.223 In the last decade of the fourteenth century the crown and Bishop Walter Skirlaw had both, without any hint of conflict or competition, issued a series of grants of murage for the repair and maintenance of the walls of the town of Hartlepool.224 Langley, however, insisted upon his sole power to concede the right to levy local taxes within the bishopric, and in November 1410, the bishop acquired from the crown the revocation of royal letters patent of July 1400 authorising the mayor and bailiffs of Hartlepool to collect murage for ten years. In the words of the annulment, such ‘letters manifestly redound to the prejudice of the bishop of Durham and his franchises, jurisdiction and royal rights’.225 Langley’s exclusive view of his lordship within the bishopric saw him license the civic officials of Hartlepool, in the late 1410s and early 1420s, to raise a tax upon merchandise entering the town for sale for the strengthening of the town walls and, in the same period, his sheriff threatened to imprison the mayor of Hartlepool, much to the consternation of the local lord, the dowager lady Clifford.226 Something of the intractable and scrupulous character of Langley, ever sensitive to infringements of his palatine authority, is revealed in the writ sent by Henry VI to Henry Percy, second earl of Northumberland, in the latter’s capacity as warden of the east march. The king explained that ‘because he is earl palatine’, the bishop and all his men and tenants living within the bishopric had not been obliged or accustomed in the past to plead in any court outside the liberty and, within the liberty, in any court other than that of the bishop. Accordingly, the king prohibited Percy, on pain of £1,000, from summoning the bishop, his men and tenants to appear before Percy’s court outside the liberty.227 From the very beginning of his tenure, Langley had shown an uncompromising will to enforce, without impediment, the miscellaneous rights accumulated by his predecessors, from St Cuthbert to Antony Bek to Walter Skirlaw. In May 1407, in the period between his consecration as bishop and enthronement in Durham cathedral, Langley secured an inspeximus and confirmation of a charter of 1391 to Bishop Skirlaw, which in turn confirmed various earlier letters patent and charters of episcopal privileges.228 Less than a year later, in March 1408, Langley successfully requested an exemplification of the 1293 settlement, achieved under considerable strain by Bishop Bek, confirming the bishop of Durham’s enjoyment of regalian privileges and liberties throughout his liberty of Durham and its members north of the river Tyne.229 In 1433 Langley’s defence of the privileges of the palatinate before parliament was ‘based almost word for word on the statement of claims made 223 224 225 226 227 228 229

See above, p. 27, and Fraser, History of Antony Bek, p. 203. DURH 3/33, m. 2d; CPR, 1391–6, p. 118; DURH 3/33, m. 21r; CPR, 1399–1401, p. 355. CPR, 1408–13, p. 264. DURH 3/35, mm. 16d, 19d; DCM, Loc.XXV:56. DCM, Reg. III, fol. 167v. CChR, 1341–1417, p. 432. CPR, 1408–13, pp. 54–5; Bek, pp. 37–41.

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by Antony Bek to Edward I’s justices in 1293’.230 If Langley viewed Bek as a role model for his own governance of the bishopric, he would have been as well to remember that Bek’s energetic pursuit of his rights had led to a bitter conflict with the ‘men of the community of the franchise of Durham’ in the early fourteenth century. The charges against Thomas Langley in April 1433 emphasised the novelty of the bishop’s lordship and, specifically, his recent usurpation of rights and prerogatives pertaining to the crown. According to the twenty-first clause of the jury’s list of indictments, with the exception that he did not hold parliament, Bishop Langley had, from the outset (tempore ex quo ipse in episcopum Dunelmensem creatus fuit), encroached upon and assumed all royal prerogatives, both written and unwritten, to the prejudice of the crown during the reigns of Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI.231 Such accusations, however, were an inevitable consequence of the premise of the royal commission to which the jury reported its findings: the commission had been instructed to investigate possible infringements of crown rights in the north of England, and this is precisely what the jury did. The purpose of the commission helped to structure the responses of the jury. In reality, whilst Langley did make innovations to the system of palatine government,232 these reforms were a symptom rather than a cause of grievance among the bishop’s subjects. What was at issue was the intensity of Langley’s lordship. And what Langley’s subjects resented most was the bishop’s relentless pursuit of his financial interests within the bishopric as earl palatine. A great number of the allegations against Langley related to the systematic assertion of his feudal rights as landlord, specifically the enforcement of his right to the incidents of feudal tenure: his seizure of the lands of those tenants-in-chief who did not seek episcopal licences for alienations and enfeoffments to use; his practice of issuing retrospective licences in return for a financial penalty;233 his exercise of the right of primer seisin, which entitled the bishop to take possession of the estates of his tenants-in-chief as soon as they died until the heir paid a fine to the bishop to secure entry into his inheritance; his exploitation of his right of prerogative wardship, which allowed him to hold the properties of tenants-in-chief in the event of a minority and in the event that the young heir held some of his estates of another landlord. External evidence confirms this picture of the coercive nature of Langley’s role as supreme landlord within the bishopric of Durham, from whom all tenants between Tyne and Tees ultimately held their land. In the second decade of the fifteenth century Langley commissioned a thorough overview of his financial resources, ordering the compilation of

230 231 232 233

Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 57–8. Storey, Thomas Langley, p. 260. Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 1, 74–81. For this and what follows, see Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 247–62: clause 3 (enfeoffments); clauses 7 and 24 (primer seisin); clause 8 (prerogative wardship). See also clauses 9, 16.



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a survey of his landed estate within the bishopric and a register containing abstracts of all inquisitions post mortem held throughout the palatinate since the second quarter of the fourteenth century.234 Officers of the bishop, whose responsibility it was to oversee the maintenance of Langley’s landed estate and to collect the financial profits issuing from it, were pursued inflexibly and unsympathetically. From the early 1420s, relatively minor estate officials such as coroners, parkers and foresters were bound over in the bishop’s chancery to account for their annual receipts and threatened with distraint and even imprisonment in the bishop’s gaol at Durham for shortfalls in their accounts.235 Higher officials, notably the sheriff and escheator, could not escape the constraints of the bishop, whatever their social status and whatever the strength of their connections in seigneurial service.236 Langley’s palatine chancery, and his exploitation of writs to summon his subjects to account before it, was a particular focus of rancour. The bishop turned the chancery into an instrument of lordship and made more extensive use of the writ of scire facias than any of his predecessors. This was a writ which a succession of chancellors of England had applied in the 1340s as a consequence of the royal chancery’s role in issuing royal charters and letters patent in the king’s name: it was employed to bring suits before the king’s chancery on the grounds that the cases involved the exercise of royal patronage, the alienation of lands held in chief of the king (which ought to have acquired a royal licence), or the repeal of royal grants under the great seal which the crown had made mistakenly.237 Article eighteen of the jury’s findings in 1433 referred to the way in which Langley’s tenants-in-chief had been ordered to appear before his chancery to explain why the bishop should not rescind earlier grants made to them in the wrong form, and article nineteen described the bishop’s use of the scire facias procedure in response to the failure of a tenant-in-chief to acquire the necessary episcopal licence for a conveyance of land. Both related specifically to the personal experiences of Sir William Eure, but he was not alone among the community of the bishopric in suffering at the hands of the bishop’s chancery. John Birtley, the coroner of Chester ward, along with a group of lesser Durham gentry including John Dolphamby of Gateshead, William Featherstone of Stanhope and John Guildford of Collierley and Gateshead, who stood as surety for him, received a succession of writs of scire facias instructing them to appear in the bishop’s chancery in the late 1410s and early 1420s to account personally for outstanding debts owing from the coroner’s term in office.238 Bishop Lang234 235 236 237 238

For the estate survey, see R.H. Britnell, ‘The Langley Survey of Durham Bishopric Estates, 1418–21’, AA, 5th series 16 (1988), pp. 213–21. Parkers and foresters: above, p. 153; coroners: DURH 3/35, mm. 13d, 14d; DURH 3/38, m. 9d; DURH 3/37, mm. 1r–2r, 8d. For the fate of Sir William Claxton, see above, p. 139. W.M. Ormrod, ‘The Origins of the Sub Pena Writ’, HR 61 (1988), pp. 12–13; Musson and Ormrod, Evolution of English Justice, p. 24. DURH 3/35, m. 11d; DURH 3/38, m. 9d.

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ley’s chancery had become, therefore, primarily a court for the maintenance of the bishop’s financial interests. Why was Bishop Langley so insistent upon the exercise of his rights as landlord? In contrast to the crown in this period, the financial power of the bishops of Durham was not dependent upon taxation. Without such revenue, bishops had to pay much greater and more sustained attention to their landed sources of income than the kings of England.239 At the same time, the early fifteenth century saw the continuation of a gradual reduction in the estate income of the bishops of Durham. This was a decline which was brought about by depopulation as a result of the Black Death and which Bishop Langley’s estate survey and registers were designed to quantify and, ultimately, to halt.240 Recent research has indicated that it was a decline which, thanks to a conjunction of poor harvests and the return of pestilence, became an economic crisis in the early 1430s, precisely at the moment that the dispute between Bishop Langley and Sir William Eure began.241 It was in the late summer of 1432 that Thomas Langley sent a writ to Eure summoning him before the bishop’s chancery to answer the contention that he had succeeded unlawfully, some ten years earlier, to two estates in the bishopric which his father had acquired without episcopal licence.242 Langley was perfectly within his rights to inquire into alienations of lands held in chief of the bishop, even those which had taken place some considerable time in the past: the act of commissioning the assemblage of a register of abstracts of inquisitions post mortem, ex officio and ad melius inquirendum dating from the episcopate of Bishop Bury (1333–45) reflected Langley’s determination that the passage of time should be no barrier in the pursuit of potential sources of income.243 The same register includes numerous ex post facto inquisitions into earlier conveyances of property between Langley’s tenants-in-chief, and Langley’s chancery rolls record an equally large number of retrospective pardons and licences for transfers of land, several dating from the episcopates of the bishop’s predecessors.244 In September 1433 Eure’s attorney appeared in the chancery at Durham not to deny that the conveyances had been made without licence of the bishop (they had), but to argue that Eure had offered to pay a fine in respect of one of the manors of which he enjoyed seisin.245 Eure’s attorney presented him as the guardian of local custom: there had been, from time out of mind in the bishopric, ‘a certain custom among certain used and approved customs’ 239 240 241 242 243 244 245

For the crown, see C. Carpenter, ‘General Introduction to the New Series’, CIPM, Vol. XXII, pp. 3–4. Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 69–70; Britnell, ‘Langley Survey’, p. 220. B. Dodds, Peasants and Production in the Medieval North-East: The Evidence from Tithes, 1270–1536 (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 73, 97, 98–100. DURH 3/37, mm. 5r–6r. DURH 3/2. DURH 3/2, fols 167v, 175r–v, 190r–v, 191v–192v; DURH 3/34, mm. 1r, 2r, 3r, 6r; DURH 3/35, mm. 12r, 17r; DURH 3/38, mm. 2r, 6r, 13r; DURH 3/36, m. 4r. For this and what follows, see DURH 3/37, mm. 9r–11r.



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(quedam consuetudo inter ceteras consuetudines usitatas et approbatas), that anyone acquiring lands or tenements within the bishopric held of the bishop in chief by knight’s service without a licence should make a fine with the bishop; and further, that it had been customary within the bishopric for the bishop, both in word or by deed, to either discharge the beneficiary of the alienation at his pleasure or to grant a pardon in return for the payment of a fine. All of this, as we have seen, was incontestable. What was more contentious was Eure’s allegation that, prior to his receipt of the livery of his estates after his father’s death in 1422, he had offered a ‘reasonable’ fine for his father’s trespass.246 This offer, according to Eure, had been rejected by the bishop, who instead granted him a verbal pardon for the alienation in return for his good service. There can be little doubt that Eure thought unreasonable the bishop’s demands upon him to account for the profits of the two manorial estates over ten years, but how and from whom could he seek redress of his grievances? When the two leaders of the Durham community, Sir William Eure and Sir William Embleton, wrote to the prior of Durham in September 1433 seeking his intervention to act as an arbitrator to bring peace between themselves and the bishop, they expressed their frustration and disappointment that they should need external assistance: ‘for als mekill as we can noght by our ordenaunce fynd no way that may best ples our said lord we pray you hertly comyn with hym on sith wyse as this mater may best be indusid to my lordes plesaunz and our right.’247 In the Welsh marches and Cheshire relations between lordship and community were mediated episodically through the grant and/or confirmation of charters of liberties, which acted as ‘safety-valves’ in the relationship, modifying the demands of the former in the light of the needs of the latter. Such charters were themselves a consequence of the power of lordship: specifically, the financial power to tax, in return for which the rulers of the marcher lordships negotiated and formally conceded rights to their subjects.248 This was a power which the bishops of Durham did not wield after the mid fourteenth century. What the community of the bishopric did possess was the 1303 charter of liberties issued by Bishop Antony Bek to the ‘men of the community of the franchise of Durham’ (les gentz de la comunalte de la franchise de Duresme), and there is some evidence to suggest that the charter continued to have symbolic meaning within Durham after the early fourteenth century: as we have seen, in June 1353 it was the ‘men of the commonalty of the liberty of the bishopric of Durham’ who secured from Edward III an exemplification of the 1303 charter.249 But in practical terms, the 1303 charter simply did not address the issues raised by Langley’s lordship, least of all because, despite 246 247 248 249

Cf. the 1327 royal statute: Statutes of the Realm, 11 vols (London, 1810–28), Vol. I, p. 256. DCM, Loc.XXV:7. Davies, Lordship and Society, pp. 463–4; Thornton, ‘Taxing the King’s Dominions’, pp. 99– 105. For the 1303 charter, see RPD, Vol. III, pp. 61–7; for the confirmation of 1353, see CPR, 1350–4, p. 466, and above, p. 205.

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the hostility of the bishop’s subjects, it explicitly defended and confirmed Bek’s prerogative right of wardship between Tyne and Tees.250 The bishop’s position within the bishopric was in many ways impregnable. Just like the king within England, against whom no writ could be sued, the bishop was immune from suits by his own subjects.251 Langley’s ministers were in an equally powerful position vis-à-vis the bishop’s subjects, as Sir William Eure well knew. In the spring of 1431 Eure secured a writ of replevin in the bishop’s chancery at Durham for wrongful dispossession of two of his oxen; the defendant subsequently claimed that he was a bailiff of the bishop and that he had seized the animals in the course of the exercise of his official duties since they were found to be grazing on episcopal land. The bailiff, claiming that the bishop’s interests were at stake, sought the ­ bishop’s aid. Eure was then forced to apply for the bishop’s writ de procedendo from the Durham chancery in order to pursue the case.252 In effect, Eure had to seek the bishop’s favour to seek justice against one of his ministers. It was not unusual for the inhabitants of the bishopric to petition the bishops of Durham against the perceived wrongdoings of their officials.253 Indeed, Bishop Hatfield issued a judicial commission in December 1357 precisely to investigate allegations of malpractices committed by the bishop’s ministers since the beginning of his episcopate in 1345.254 But it was entirely up to the bishop in question whether to act upon such complaints. Thomas Hatfield did, and duly replaced his steward, the chief minister answerable for the management of the bishop’s landed estate.255 Bishop Bek certainly did not. In 1300 Bek promised an inquiry into the actions of his officials, but the ‘judicial inquiry that autumn came to nothing because Bek would not authorize his justices to take action in cases concerning himself or his chief officers’. The two representatives of the community of the bishopric then presented their complaints before Edward I at the Lincoln parliament of January 1301.256 In 1433 the political community of Durham also looked outside the bishopric to the king and parliament for protection. What Sir William Eure wanted was not the destruction of the palatinate of Durham. He took advantage of the terms of the 1433 royal commission – to inquire into the alienation of the rights of the crown – to present himself as the defender of royal power against the bishop, who had usurped it. What the leaders of the Durham gentry, Sir William Eure and Sir William Embleton, wanted was the renewal of the relationship between lordship and community. As they told the prior of Durham in September 1433, they sought ‘the gud lordschip of our right wurshipfull lord of Durham’ and ‘gude end and accord 250 251 252 253 254 255 256

RPD, Vol. III, p. 62; Storey, Thomas Langley, p. 126. Ehrlich, ‘Proceedings against the Crown’, pp. 24–6; Storey, Thomas Langley, p. 125. Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 117–18, 254–5. See, for example, RPD, Vol. III, pp. 268–9; DURH 3/30, mm. 6r, 14r; DCM, Misc.Ch. 5251. DURH 3/30, m. 12r. See above, p. 108. Fraser, ‘Regalian Franchise’, pp. 335–6.



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of all maters hyngyng in travers and difference betwen our said lord and us’.257 What did ‘good lordship’ mean in this context? Bishop Langley’s lordship was bound up in the defence and maintenance of the traditional rights of St Cuthbert’s church of Durham, rights which he had inherited from his predecessors and which it was his duty to bequeath in their entirety to his successors. This is precisely what Langley argued in the parliament of summer 1433, when he alleged that the judicial commission which sat at Hartlepool in April of that year had been devised to ‘disinherit the same present bishop and his aforesaid church … of their said liberties, privileges, franchises and immunities’.258 According to Langley, it was in view of these immemorial rights that he and his predecessors had been accustomed to enjoy the ‘liberty of a county palatine’. Langley’s sense of Durham’s history in fact stretched well beyond the limits of legal memory to include the pre-Conquest church of Durham and its gradual accumulation of lands and privileges. In April 1433, less than a week after the legal proceedings at Hartlepool, Bishop Langley called upon the prior of Durham to produce written proof ‘concerning the origin of the royal liberty of the church and bishopric of Durham, and the first donation of the whole land between Tyne and Tees’ (De origine libertatis regiae ecclesiae et episcopatus Dunelmensis, ac primaria donacione tocius terrae inter Tynam et Tesam). Prior Wessington duly compiled a text consisting of an uneven mixture of chronicle extracts drawn from the Liber summi altaris ecclesie Dunelmensis (a book chained to the high altar of Durham cathedral narrating the history of the see of Durham up to and including the reign of William the Conqueror) and forged charters relating to the late-eleventh-century re-foundation of the church of Durham.259 Equipped with such documentary knowledge, it is no wonder that Langley was deeply conscious of the achievements of his predecessors in adding to the privileges of the church of St Cuthbert. At parliament in the summer of 1433,260 he recalled the actions of Bishop Bek in 1293, whose deliberate failure to appear before Edward I’s quo warranto justices in Newcastle firmly established the idea that the bishop’s jurisdiction was an entity in itself, separate entirely from the county of Northumberland. Langley also recited the examples of more recent incumbents of the see of Durham, John Fordham and Walter Skirlaw, both of whom had acquired royal confirmation of episcopal privileges throughout the palatinate. And Langley spoke defiantly when he concluded his petition in parliament with a demand that the king cancel the record of the judicial proceedings at Hartlepool ‘for God, St Cuthbert and his aforesaid church’ (ob reverentiam Dei, Sancti Cuthberti, et ecclesie sue predicte). 257 258 259 260

DCM, Loc.XXV:7. ‘Henry VI: Parliament of 1433, Text and Translation’, PROME, Vol. XI, p. 94. Scriptores Tres, pp. cclxx, ccxxviii–ccxxxv; H.H.E. Craster, ‘The Red Book of Durham’, EHR 40 (1925), pp. 519–32. For the charters, see also Aird, St Cuthbert, pp. 129–30. For this and what follows, see ‘Henry VI: Parliament of 1433, Text and Translation’, PROME, Vol. XI, pp. 93–5.

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The problem for Bishop Langley was that whilst he could claim in all sincerity to be acting in the interests of St Cuthbert and the church of Durham, others, notably his subjects within the bishopric led by Sir William Eure, believed that he was working towards their emasculation. This is why rumours circulated so quickly within the bishopric in 1433 about the contents of a petition which Bishop Langley was believed to have submitted to parliament in the autumn of that year in order to obtain ‘certayne thinges agains þe fraunchises of godde kyrk and Seint Cuthbert of Duresme’.261 These rumours, by their very nature, were impossible to contain, although the bishop did his best to limit their damage and his chief justice, James Strangways, denied them. The challenge for Langley was that the petition did exist; ‘certain’ unnamed ‘persones’ had managed to acquire a copy of it. They had assembled in St Nicholas’s parish church in the market-place in the heart of the city of Durham, where they ‘comuned of matiers conteyned in þe forsaid bille’ and decided among themselves that they should meet once more at St Nicholas’s at the beginning of January 1434 in order to send ‘summe of hem’ from Durham before the king’s council as their representatives to put forward their objections. It is no surprise that these assemblies should take place in the church of St Nicholas, one of the three major buildings on the Durham peninsula;262 the other two, the cathedral and castle, so closely associated with the bishop and the church of Durham, were out of bounds. St Nicholas’s was also a well-established site of communal activity, housing the shrine and guild of Corpus Christi and marking the beginning of the city’s annual Corpus Christi procession and play involving the city’s various craft guilds, each of whom sustained a light in the church.263 The bishop’s subjects meeting in these informal gatherings had good reason to suspect Langley of contravening the franchises of the church and St Cuthbert of Durham. What the bishop requested in his petition of autumn 1433 was the crown’s endorsement of a new judicial procedure to allow certain cases within the county and liberty of Durham which might be tried at common law before a Durham jury to be dealt with instead before a royal court with a jury drawn from Yorkshire. Notwithstanding the fact that the bishop’s justices were to retain the right to determine such cases once they had been heard outside the bishopric, the bishop’s proposals did threaten Durham’s judicial autonomy, namely the principle that the bishop had sole cognizance in his courts of all pleas arising between Tyne and Tees.264 Langley’s plans were a pragmatic and immediate response to the behaviour of the 261 262

263 264

For all references to this petition, see DCM, Loc.XXV:58. See the inset of the city of Durham on John Speed’s 1611 map of the bishopric of Durham, reproduced in M. Bonney, Lordship and the Urban Community: Durham and its Overlords, 1250–1540 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 238–9. M. Harvey, Lay Religious Life in Late Medieval Durham (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 35–6, 157–60, 165–6. See, for example, Langley’s own complaint about the powers of the warden of the east march, discussed above, p. 223.



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‘very many men of the said county and liberty of Durham’ whom, the bishop confessed, assembled daily to try ‘among themselves’ (inter eos) the bishop’s liberties and franchises, believing that any matter concerning the bishop or his liberties and franchises ought to be tried by verdict of a jury comprising men of the said county and liberty.265 However, the potency of the rumours that Langley’s actions were a betrayal of the liberties and franchises of the church of St Cuthbert of Durham resided in the basic fact that these very liberties and franchises had a particular meaning to the bishop’s subjects that might or might not coincide with the interests of the bishop. We have already seen, in a fiscal context, what the franchises and liberties of Durham meant to the community of the bishopric of Durham. It was the leaders of this community, including Sir William Eure, who fought to preserve Durham’s immunity from parliamentary taxation in 1436.266 Despite royal encroachments, there was also a strong attachment to the principle of autonomy in military affairs, so that the communal obligation to render military service was reserved solely for the defence of the land between Tyne and Tees.267 Judicially, there was a preference for communal forms of justice. In addition to a commitment to the customary use of bonds and recognisances to preserve the peace,268 landholders wanted the protection of common law procedure involving presentment and trial by a local jury. They were suspicious of the equitable and increasingly all-encompassing jurisdiction exercised in the bishop’s chancery at Durham, which was seen to safeguard the interests of the bishop rather than of his subjects. This is one of the reasons why the first of the twenty-four articles presented by the jurors at Hartlepool in April 1433 recited King John’s charter of 1208 to the ‘knights and free tenants of Haliwarefolc’, which extended to the bishopric the Angevin legal procedures of the grand assize and the possessory assizes. These were judicial processes relating primarily to the possession of, and right to, land and involving the use of a sworn jury drawn from the county whose members would then be asked to testify to the truth of the matter in question. The 1208 charter granted to the men of the bishopric the same privilege, but also allowed them to choose to defend themselves by the assizes ‘if they or their heirs are impleaded for any matter (de aliqua re) in the court of the bishop of Durham’.269 This charter, enshrining the principle of trial by inquest, was a major concession to the constitutional rights of the bishop’s subjects against the regalian claims of the bishop. And it continued to be revered and remembered by the community of the bishopric in the early fifteenth century, when it was copied and enrolled in one of the cartularies of Durham priory.270 In the 265 266 267 268 269 270

Storey, Thomas Langley, pp. 130–2. See above, pp. 207–8. See above, pp. 164–72. See above, pp. 148–51. Storey, Thomas Langley, p. 246; Rotuli Chartarum, p. 182. For the operation of the assizes, see P.R. Coss, The Origins of the English Gentry (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 45–51. For this and what follows, see DCM, Cart. I, fols 194r–196v.

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margin, in the same hand as the enrolment, was a description of the contents of the charter: ‘Charter of King John for the community of the liberty of St Cuthbert’ (Carta Regis Johannis pro communitate libertatis sancti Cuthberti). In a later hand, of around 1500, was a continuation of the marginal gloss, which read ‘concerning the form of pleading in the bishop’s court and the liberty of the said community of the Haliwerfolk’ (super forma placitandi in curia episcopi et libertate dicte communitatis de Haliwerfolk). The 1208 charter continued into the fifteenth century to have resonance for the community of the bishopric. The fact that it was inscribed in the records of Durham priory immediately preceding a copy of the 1225 reissue of Magna Carta is highly instructive as to its local constitutional import. The 1208 charter, issued during a period of episcopal vacancy, was a formal recognition of the existence of the community of the bishopric and an acknowledgement that the land between Tyne and Tees, which grew out of the pre-Conquest patrimony of St Cuthbert, belonged not simply to the bishop and the church of Durham but also to the Haliwerfolc. Written below the image of Cuthbert in the upper central light of one of the windows of the Galilee chapel in Durham cathedral was a pithy but eloquent description of the saint as ‘once bishop of Lindisfarne and great patron of this church and country’ (quondam Lindisfarnensis episcopus et huius ecclesie et patrie maximus patronus).271 Institutionally, there is little to suggest that the community of the bishopric assembled in a strong representative body such as the local parliament identified in Cheshire,272 but it continued into the fifteenth century to have a strong perception of its own history and of its links to the pre-Conquest notion of the Haliwerfolc. It was a collective memory that was preserved in part by others. It is notable, for example, that when the men of the bishopric sought to maintain their fiscal autonomy from the crown in the mid 1430s, they turned to the prior of Durham as the custodian of knowledge about St Cuthbert, for historical justification of their privileged independence.273 But to the people living within the bishopric of Durham, a strong sense of their own history and identity may also have been provided by the existence of various public markers, written on the landscape, denoting their occupation of the land of St Cuthbert. These included the ancient and sacred boundary stones on the Tyne Bridge known as ‘Cuthbertstones’ as well as the ritual surrounding the first entry of the bishop into the bishopric over the river Tees, both of which helped to delineate the territorial and political boundaries of the land between Tyne and Tees and to act as the basis of a group memory for the bishop’s subjects.274 It was as the community of the liberty of St Cuthbert or the community of the Haliwerfolc that the community of the bishopric was also known. 271 272 273 274

The Rites of Durham, ed. J.T. Fowler (SS 107, 1902), pp. 47–8, 236. Thornton, Cheshire, pp. 67–9. See above, p. 208. See above, pp. 189, 199–200.



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The concept of the Haliwerfolc had a continuing significance for the inhabitants of the land between Tyne and Tees. This was an idea to which all living within the bishopric could pay allegiance. The original of the 1208 charter, issued ‘on behalf of the community of the liberty of St Cuthbert’ and enshrining the liberties and customs of the bishopric of Durham, was in the possession of Ralph Lord Neville of Raby (d. 1331) in the early fourteenth century, when he was one of the two principal figures in the conflict between Bishop Bek and the community of Durham.275 This is an important reminder that there was no necessary conflict of interest between the community of the bishopric and the leading local lay magnate. The history of the Haliwerfolc was bound inextricably to the story of the foundation of the palatinate of Durham, since the establishment of the church of St Cuthbert in the city of Durham was remembered as the product of the wanderings of the ‘people of the saint’ who carried the body of Cuthbert to its eventual place of rest on the Durham peninsula.276 It was a collective mythology about the role of the Haliwerfolc in the formation of the palatinate which was in sharp contrast to the ‘myth-history’ of the creation of the palatinate of Chester, according to which William the Conqueror granted the earldom of Chester to one of his Norman followers, Hugh Lupus of Avranches, by attaching a belt and sword around his waist.277 This was an origin myth in which the story of the earl’s sword, a symbol of lordship which was preserved in the lord’s residence of Chester castle, held centre stage as the focus for local memory. Contra Chester, Durham’s foundation myth did not anchor the beginnings of the palatinate to a single act of royal patronage.278 The inhabitants of the bishopric had their own history to tell themselves and to tell others, which highlighted their own particular connections to the founder-figure of St Cuthbert. It was a history independent of the crown, but also separate from their lord, the bishop. In his study of the rebuilding of Westminster abbey by Henry III in the mid thirteenth century, Paul Binski interpreted the king’s patronage as part of ‘a process in the formation of the English royal state: the process whereby the state, the government, and the persona and mythology of the king, obtained a location’.279 Though there was no single building campaign in Durham in the late middle ages to match the reconstruction of Westminster abbey, a succession of bishops of Durham, whose achievements are dutifully recorded in the local chronicle known as the Gesta Episcoporum, made a similar architec-

275

276 277 278 279

DCM, Cart. Vet., fols 63r, 152r (Custos istius carte. Dominus Ranulphus de Nevill); H.S. Offler, ‘Fitz Meldred, Neville and Hansard’, North of the Tees, ed. A.J. Piper and A.I. Doyle (Aldershot, 1996), p. 14 n. 64; Scriptores Tres, p. 76; Lapsley, County Palatine, pp. 128–34. See above, pp. 190–1. I would like to thank Matthew Holford for this point. Thornton, Cheshire, pp. 43–4, 62. P. Binski, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets: Kingship and the Representation of Power, 1200–1400 (New Haven, 1995), p. 4.

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tural investment that was largely confined to the Durham peninsula.280 It was here that Bishop Hatfield was remembered for the extensive remodelling of Durham castle and the fortification of the city walls of Durham. It was here that Bishop Skirlaw gave over £800 towards the rebuilding of the cloister and dormitory at Durham cathedral, and here too that Bishop Langley restored the Galilee chapel in the cathedral at a cost of almost £500, contributed over £200 to the completion of the monastic cloister and paid for the erection of a new gaol in the city of Durham. On the peninsula at Durham was the cathedral church, where bishops were crowned and buried and where, at the east end, behind the high altar, lay the body of St Cuthbert. Cuthbert’s shrine was the centre of his cult and was seen as a source of power; and it was the denial of access to the shrine which formed one of the grievances of the community of the bishopric in the early fourteenth century.281 Opposite the cathedral was the castle, where the bishop lived and where his subjects met at sessions of the county court. On Palace Green, between the castle and the cathedral, lay a collection of administrative and judicial offices housing the bishop’s palatine administration. Bishop Neville, as we have seen, financed the construction of a new home for the bishop’s chancery and exchequer and their associated rooms.282 It was here at Durham in the chancery on Palace Green that the landholders of the bishopric registered their deeds and entered bonds and recognisances to keep the peace; and it was at the bishop’s exchequer that they paid their rents as tenants-in-chief of the bishop and, as palatine officials, accounted for the revenues of their office. Upon the Durham peninsula was a building complex, which served as both the spiritual and secular centre of the palatinate. In its concentration of political, administrative, judicial, financial, spiritual and cultural functions, and in its gathering together in one location of residence, government and spiritual centre, the peninsula was a political capital and a site of real power and meaning. Perhaps perversely, Sir William Eure would not have gone to such trouble to undermine Bishop Langley’s position, both locally and at parliament, if the bishopric had not meant something to him. What the conflict with Bishop Langley demonstrated, ultimately, was the importance of collective local identity in underpinning the autonomy of the bishopric. It has been argued that it was the crown which was the most important buttress to Durham’s independence in the business of law, finance and administration. Historians have viewed the relationship with the crown both negatively and positively. On the one hand, it has been claimed that ‘the basis … of the autonomy of the bishop of Durham was royal sufferance.’283 In other words, the crown did not especially like the existence of a highly autonomous jurisdiction in the north of England, but was prepared to tolerate the situation into the fifteenth 280 281 282 283

For what follows, see Scriptores Tres, pp. 138, 145, 146. James, Family, Lineage and Civil Society, p. 56; RPD, Vol. III, pp. 44, 64. See above, pp. 175–6. For the following, see Fraser, ‘Prerogative, p. 474; Storey, Thomas Langley, p. 144.



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century because it saw the bishop as the defender of the northern border and because it had other, more pressing issues with which to contend, notably foreign war. On the other hand, a more recent interpretation is that the crown continued to shore up the privileged status of the liberty of Durham not for want of alternatives, but because it actually respected local custom and particularism and saw in such ‘strong provincial jurisdictions’ as Durham ‘an obvious solution to the challenges’ posed to government in the fifteenth century and beyond.284 But what sustained the bishopric of Durham was not the external force of the crown so much as the shared commitment of the bishop’s subjects to its history and traditions. When Sir William Eure appealed to the crown in the parliament of summer 1433 to rebut Bishop Langley’s earlier petition, he sought to underline the ambiguous nature of relations between the bishop and the crown. The props provided by the crown, according to Eure, were not nearly as stable and secure as Langley alleged. Eure’s very first, and entirely accurate observation, was that the bishop ruled essentially ‘by prescriptive title’ (per titulum prescriptionis) rather than by chartered right. He then proceeded to use against the bishop the very same evidence supplied by Langley in order to show how the charters granted by English kings since the early fourteenth century could be susceptible to a very different interpretation, tending to undermine rather than strengthen the bishop’s claims for autonomy.285 What both Eure and Langley really knew was that, without the support of his subjects, the bishop’s claims for palatine liberties were more prone to serious challenge from within than without.

284 285

Thornton, ‘Fifteenth-Century Durham’, p. 100. ‘Henry VI: Parliament of 1433’, PROME, Vol. XI, pp. 96–101.

6 Epilogue

It is tempting to view the history of Durham in this period in terms of the growing influence and power of the Nevilles. The appointment of Robert Neville as bishop of Durham in 1438 could be seen not so much as a turning point or watershed, but as the natural conclusion to a more long-term process explored in chapter three, namely the increasing integration of the affinities of the Nevilles and bishops of Durham. This integration, it might be argued, produced a single lineage system in which the resources of the palatinate were placed firmly at the disposal of one family: there was effectively only one aristocratic patron from whom the gentry of the bishopric could seek favour. Contemporaries were aware of the potential power of this lineage. When John Wessington, the prior of Durham, wrote to Robert Neville in May 1438 to express his pleasure at the bishop’s elevation, he drew particular attention to Neville’s status as a local man rather than an outsider, a quality generally lacking in those who occupied the see of Durham. The new bishop, wrote the prior, was one ‘to whom all the lords and magnates of this country are closely related’ (cui … omnes domini et majores natu hujus patriae genere sunt propinqui). It was an observation that was not lost on the new incumbent of the church of Durham. When the ties of service and good lordship were of uncertain strength, it was to family that the junior Nevilles turned to anchor their position within local society. Local politics, in the early years of Bishop Neville’s episcopate, acquired their own distinctive idiom: the language of kinship and fraternity. It was the bishop’s ‘dearest brothers’ (carissimi fratres nostres), Richard, William, George and Edward Neville, who headed the first and second peace commissions of Robert Neville’s episcopate in May 1438 and May 1439. Richard Neville was also granted a lifetime annuity of £100 in May 1439 as a reward ‘for the good and gracious fraternity’ which he, as ‘our very dear brother’, had offered to the bishop (pro bona et gratuita fraternitate quam precarissimus frater noster Ricardus Comes Sarum hactenus nobis fecit), his brotherliness having a greater meaning here to denote Richard’s sense of moral brother-



 

Cf. M. Cherry, ‘The Courtenay Earls of Devon: The Formation and Disintegration of a Late Medieval Aristocratic Affinity’, Southern History 1 (1979), pp. 71, 97; C. Given-Wilson, The English Nobility in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1987), p. 75. Scriptores Tres, p. cclv. For this and subsequent references, see DURH 3/42, mm. 4r, 8r, 11r.



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hood with the bishop. In December 1440 it was Robert Neville’s ‘dearest brother’, George Lord Latimer, who benefited from a generous grant of the wardship and marriage of one of the bishop’s tenants-in-chief. Such rhetoric also permeated the vocabulary of relations between Bishop Neville and the top ranks of the wider political community within Durham. In May 1439 Bishop Neville appointed two judicial commissions to inquire into infractions of the parliamentary statutes regarding the passage of river traffic and the regulation of salmon fishing in the bishopric. The commissions were headed by Sir Thomas Lumley of Lumley castle, Sir William Eure of Witton le Wear and Robert Eure of Bradley, Esq., all three of whom were described in their letters of appointment as ‘our dearest kinsmen’ (carissimus consanguineus noster). In December 1440 Robert Neville’s ‘beloved and faithful kinsman’, Sir Thomas Lumley, received a pardon without the payment of a fine for all unlicensed alienations and acquisitions of land held in chief of the bishop. In July 1441 the first six names on the Durham peace commission consisted of the four brothers of the bishop and two of his kinsmen, Sir Thomas Lumley and Sir William Eure. In November 1442 Lumley, who was already the bishop’s chief forester, was granted a life annuity of £20 from the issues of his office, in part at least ‘for the good and praiseworthy service which our kinsman shall henceforward give to us and our successors and our church of Durham’. It was as Robert Neville’s ‘beloved and faithful kinsman’ that Sir William Eure was also pardoned the payment of a fine for all unlicensed transfers of property held in chief of the bishop in July 1440. Sir Robert Ogle of Ogle and Bothal in Northumberland was Bishop Neville’s first sheriff and escheator of Durham and he was described specifically as the bishop’s kinsman (consanguineus noster) in the letters patent of February 1440 appointing him jointly to the offices of constable of Norham castle and steward and sheriff of Norhamshire and Islandshire. In May 1442 Bishop Neville granted on preferential terms the wardship and marriage of one of his tenants-in-chief to his ‘beloved brother’, William Lord Fauconberg, and to his ‘beloved kinsman’, Sir Ralph Grey of Heaton. In the same month, Bishop Neville issued a pardon to ‘our beloved kinsman’, Sir Robert Hylton, the son and heir of William Baron Hylton, for an unlicensed enfeoffment of certain property in the bishopric made to Robert by his father. The springs of political action, it would appear, were those of family and lineage. However, Bishop Neville’s translation to Durham in the spring of 1438 was anything but inevitable. Neville’s promotion was, in the words of a recent historian, ‘an act of naked factionalism in the pursuit of Beaufort family

    

For this and what follows, see DURH 3/42, mm. 8r, 12r, 15r, 18r. DURH 3/42, m. 11r. DURH 3/42, m. 10r. DURH 3/42, m. 17r. DURH 3/42, m. 17r.; DURH 3/2, fols 274v–276r.

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aggrandisement’. Robert Neville’s appointment was the consequence of political machinations at the centre, where Cardinal Henry Beaufort – brother of Joan, countess of Westmorland and Robert’s uncle – worked to protect the family’s inheritance. Secondly, the Nevilles did not constitute a single family, for the preference shown by Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland towards the children of his second marriage had divided the lineage. The rhetoric of fraternal harmony could not disguise this simple fact, even though it was also extended to the second earl of Westmorland in an attempt to work out new social and political relationships between the junior and senior branches of the family. Already before the formal peace of August and September 1443 – a settlement which confirmed Richard Neville in possession of the first earl’s properties in Yorkshire, Cumberland, Westmorland, Essex, York and London, in return for which Ralph Neville, second earl of Westmorland received chartered title to various properties in the bishopric of Durham10 – the second earl enjoyed ownership of Raby castle. In May 1440 the second earl secured from Bishop Neville an inspeximus and confirmation of an earlier entail of Raby and Staindrop upon the male heirs of the first earl, dating from 1368–9, the existence of which rendered unlawful the first earl’s subsequent enfeoffment of the Raby estate in 1417 and substantiated the claims of the second earl concerning his disinheritance.11 By January 1441 at the latest, just over a month after the death of Joan, countess of Westmorland in November 1440, the second earl had been restored to the lordship of Raby. In the same month Bishop Neville granted an inspeximus and exemplification of various inquisitions post mortem held in the bishopric after the death of the first earl.12 When, in October 1441, Bishop Neville instructed his sheriff and escheator to deliver seisin to the second earl of all the lands and tenements which Joan, countess of Westmorland had held of the bishop, both in dower and in jointure, ‘from the inheritance of the aforesaid present earl of Westmorland’, he referred to the beneficiary specifically as ‘our dearest kinsman’ and described him knowingly as Ralph, earl of Westmorland, son and heir of John, son of Ralph late earl of Westmorland, thereby recalling their common descent.13 And in December 1442 Bishop Neville granted ‘our dearest nephew’, the second earl of Westmorland, possession of a property in the bishopric previously acquired by the first earl without a licence of the bishop.14 But the language of kinship could not remedy the issues arising from the disinheritance of the senior Nevilles. Robert Neville’s installation as bishop of Durham in April 1438 was bitterly resisted by the  10 11 12 13 14

A.J. Pollard, ‘The Crown and the County Palatine of Durham, 1437–94’, The North of England in the Age of Richard III, ed. A.J. Pollard (Stroud, 1996), p. 75. CCR, 1441–7, pp. 150–1, 198; CCR, 1441–7, pp. 195–6, 199; DURH 3/46, m. 9r. DURH 3/42, m. 10r; E 326/10050. For the contents of the earlier entail, see DURH 3/2, fols 110r–111r. DCM, Reg.Parv. II, fol. 151v; DURH 3/42, m. 12r. DURH 3/46, m. 8r. DURH 3/42, m. 19r.



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second earl of Westmorland and his younger brothers. The unsettled state of affairs within the bishopric after 1438 is confirmed by the frequency with which commissions of the peace were appointed in Durham in the period immediately following the death of Bishop Thomas Langley. Beginning in January 1438, when Richard Neville held the custody of the temporalities of the see of Durham, four were appointed in the space of three and a half years,15 compared to an average of one just over every six years in the period 1373 to 1437. Thirdly, in respect of the wider political community of Durham, Bishop Neville’s application of the concept of family was so broad and his expectations of commonality among distant relatives so unreal as to caution against assuming that the bonds of blood and kinship were crucial in governing political life in this period.16 Sir Thomas Lumley was related to the bishop through the marriage of his grandfather, Ralph Lord Lumley (d. 1400), to the sister of the first earl of Westmorland.17 Sir William Eure’s kinship with Bishop Neville was even more tenuous, based as it was upon his sister’s marriage into the Nevilles of Thornton Bridge in the North Riding, a cadet line of the Nevilles of Raby and Brancepeth.18 Sir Robert Ogle’s distant familial relationship with Bishop Neville was the consequence of his mother’s family, the Greys of Heaton: Ogle’s mother, Matilda, was the sister of Sir Thomas Grey and sister-in-law of Alice, one of the daughters of the first earl of Westmorland by his first marriage.19 Sir Robert Hylton’s kinship with the bishop was based upon his marriage to the daughter of Matilda Lady Clifford and Roger the fifth Lord Clifford of Skipton-in-Craven: Roger’s sister-in-law, Euphemia, was the daughter of Ralph Lord Neville (d. 1367), the grandfather of the first earl of Westmorland.20 From the bishop’s perspective, ties of kinship did not necessarily dissolve with the passage of time, but Robert Neville’s attempts to forge relationships within the extended kin group were made more in hope than in expectation. Sir Ralph Grey of Heaton, for example, was the grandson of the first earl of Westmorland by the earl’s first marriage rather than his second to Joan Beaufort. The bishop extended his patronage to these men not because they were part of the Neville family to which all felt a degree of emotional affinity, but because they were the heads of some of the leading landed families within the bishopric whom the junior Nevilles now had to court in order to strengthen their position locally. The Neville family quarrel also needs to be placed in context. The political

15 16 17 18 19 20

DURH 3/42, mm. 1r, 4r, 8r, 15r. Cf. M. Hicks, ‘Cement or Solvent? Kinship and Politics in Late Medieval England: The Case of the Nevilles’, History 83 (1998), p. 31. See above, p. 88. Yorkshire Deeds, Vol. I, pp. 213–14. W.P. Hedley, Northumberland Families, 2 vols (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1968), Vol. II, p. 147; Alice was a beneficiary of the first earl of Westmorland’s will: Wills and Inventories, p. 72. CP, Vol. III, p. 292.

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culture of Durham was never dominated by questions of land and lineage and the tensions arising from them. Local politics had several dimensions and both the bishop and his subjects had other, more potent, loyalties. One dimension was provided by relations between the bishop and the crown and was characterised by the politics of provincial autonomy. If Robert Neville looked to promote the interests of his family, he also sought to protect and uphold the rights of the church of Durham and the traditional independence enjoyed by the bishops of Durham within their secular franchise. As a recent historian has counselled, we should be careful in reading too much into Neville’s family ties.21 Barely a year after his appointment, Neville took advantage of the death of the lord of Barnard Castle, Richard Beauchamp, in April 1439, and the minority of his heir, to make a forced entry into a lordship whose precise relationship with the palatinate was a matter of continuous debate throughout this period between the bishop, the crown and its lord.22 That this was a calculated show of force by Bishop Neville and a careful declaration of his palatine authority is made clear by the request which he made at this time of the prior of Durham for the compilation of a dossier supporting the rights of the bishop of Durham in Barnard Castle. In early January 1440 Prior Wessington showed one of his notaries a copy of Symeon of Durham’s early-twelfth-century history of the church of Durham and asked him to copy out the sections relating to the activities of Bishops Ecgred and Ealdhun, the first of whom had acquired estates in the Tees valley for St Cuthbert and the second of whom had witnessed their dispersal and alienation.23 In asserting his rights to Barnard Castle, Bishop Neville acted directly contrary to the interests of both the crown and his elder brother, Richard. The crown was the overlord of the lordship and had a direct stake in its profits in the event of a minority, whilst Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury was the father-in-law of the young heir and the guardian of his estates, and it was Richard who was actually charged by the crown to investigate Robert Neville’s intrusion into Barnard Castle.24 The bishop’s interpretation of the liberties of his church of Durham, however, was not necessarily shared by his subjects between Tyne and Tees. Local politics also concerned internal relations between lordship and community. In 1453, when Bishop Neville launched an impassioned appeal to Henry VI to thwart the parliamentary demand for 300 archers from the bishopric to serve in the defence of the realm, he did so with reference to the privileges, immunities and franchises of the church of Durham and of the county palatine, hallowed by time, history and precedent.25 The bishop 21 22 23 24 25

T. Thornton, ‘Fifteenth-Century Durham and the Problem of Provincial Liberties in England and the Wider Territories of the English Crown’, TRHS, 6th series 11 (2001), pp. 96–7. CPR, 1436–41, pp. 371–2; A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses: Lay Society, War, and Politics 1450–1500 (Oxford, 1990), pp. 147–9. Scriptores Tres, p. cclxxi; DCM, Reg. III, fol. 247r–v; Symeon, pp. 92–5, 154–5. CPR, 1436–41, pp. 371–2, 408; CP, Vol. XII/2, pp. 383–4. SC 8/85/4208.



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recalled the events of 1433, when Thomas Langley, his predecessor, had been indicted on various offences within the bishopric before royal commissioners for the county of Northumberland, the record of which had subsequently been cancelled and erased. Neville thus considered the defeat of the challenge against Bishop Langley as a victory for the privileges and franchises of his church and county palatine. To the inhabitants of the bishopric, who had brought the charges against Langley, believing themselves to be acting in the interests of the franchises of St Cuthbert of Durham, the events of 1433 would have been remembered very differently. The political structure of the bishopric was strongly hierarchical. Lordship was a fact of political life in Durham. But it did not take the form of royal lordship. Direct royal presence in Durham was limited, even after 1399. Neither Bishop Skirlaw nor Bishop Langley, whatever their royal connections, delivered the considerable power of the palatinate to the house of Lancaster. The bishops of Durham in this period, even those such as Fordham and Skirlaw, both of whom remain shadowy figures, were fully conscious of their rights as earl palatine and pressed for their full recognition, even when this led them into conflict with the crown. Even in the face of the growing territorial and political power of the Nevilles, with whom they generally maintained good relations, the bishops were still able to exercise their own palatine authority. Indeed, although there was occasional conflict between the bishop and his subjects, the inhabitants of the bishopric also helped to support and reinforce the palatine powers and privileges of their lord. Their support took several forms. Ralph Lord Lumley, the builder of Lumley castle, obtained a licence to crenellate from Richard II, but he only did so after first acquiring a licence from Bishop Skirlaw.26 Even so ‘productive and dependable’ a servant of the crown as Sir Ralph Eure in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries sought a licence to crenellate his residence at Witton le Wear from Bishop Langley alone.27 When John Neville wanted a licence to crenellate Raby castle in 1378 and chartered permission to establish an annual fair and a weekly market at Staindrop in 1379, he asked Bishop Hatfield, and did not approach the crown for confirmation, the palatine authority of Bishop Hatfield being more than sufficient.28 In seeking a warrant from the bishops of Durham, these major landholders were acknowledging and respecting the legitimacy, autonomy and superiority of palatine lordship within the bishopric. Durham was never characterised by an ‘independent gentry establishment’,29 even at the end of the period when the junior and senior Nevilles became suitors as well as patrons of local landholders. The Durham gentry 26 27

28 29

DURH 3/33, m. 1d; CPR, 1391–6, p. 188. See above, p. 49. The quotation is from M. Arvanigian, ‘Landed Society and the Governance of the North in the Later Middle Ages: The Case of Sir Ralph Eure’, Medieval Prosopography 22 (2001), p. 66. See above, p. 82. Cf. S.J. Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian England: The Greater Gentry of Nottinghamshire (Oxford, 1991), pp. 105–8.

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were never free from magnate ties. The lesser gentry who held office as parker, forester or coroner in the bishopric were, after all, estate officials of the bishop, whilst even those greater gentry families, such as the Hyltons who never aligned themselves with the Nevilles and who rarely held local office in the bishop’s administration, had strong connections to other aristocratic families like the Percys.30 But the gentry of Durham were never simply the retainers of local magnates. Throughout the period the bishop’s subjects, including the Nevilles of Raby and Brancepeth, belonged to a community known as the ‘community of the bishopric’ which, drawing upon a longestablished historical identity as the Haliwerfolc, was capable of independent action in defence of its own collective rights. In recent years the ‘county community’ school of gentry studies has received substantial and occasionally caustic criticism from a wide range of historians of pre-modern England.31 To approach the bishopric as a county community risks further critical comment. Indeed, according to the view from Westminster, it was not even a county in its own right, but a liberty within the county of Northumberland. Durham was different from other counties in all sorts of ways. Constitutionally, Durham had its own legal and administrative machinery separate from that at Westminster, through which the bishop governed the land between Tyne and Tees. Financially, Durham remained exempt from the system of national taxation administered at Westminster. Politically, Durham was not represented in the lower house of parliament until the seventeenth century. Durham’s county community was also different from other county communities. There was certainly a shire elite of leading gentry families, which included the Eures, Surtees, Hyltons, Claxtons, Bowes, Fulthorpes, Conyers and Lumleys, the last of whom hovered, in wealth and title, between gentility and nobility. This was also a shire establishment bound by ties of kinship and marriage. But the marriages of this knightly group also extended beyond the boundaries of the bishopric and for some of the greater gentry familes, such as the Hastings, Bulmers and Tempests, most of their landed income came from estates outside Durham. The gentry’s social horizons and their networks of social relations were both narrower and wider than the borders of the bishopric. There was also no simple correlation between the leading families and major office-holding. If one of the main arguments of the county community school is that it was the county gentry of knights and wealthy esquires who formed the political community of the shire, holding all of the most important county offices such as sheriff, JP and MP,32 it was in fact the lesser gentry of Durham – notably low-income esquires who characterised the structure of landholding between 30 31

32

See above, p. 117. For a review of this literature, see P. Withington and A. Shephard, ‘Introduction: Communities in Early Modern England’, Communities in Early Modern England, ed. P. Withington and A. Shephard (Manchester, 2000), pp. 1–15. Given-Wilson, English Nobility, pp. 77–8; C. Carpenter, ‘Gentry and Community in Medieval England’, JBS 33 (1994), pp. 344–5.



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Tyne and Tees – who enjoyed a much greater involvement in local administration. It is also difficult to identify within Durham a distinctive political and judicial institution such as the Cheshire county court to provide a single focus for the county community and to encourage a greater sense of corporate selfawareness.33 In several respects, therefore, gentry society within Durham was not like gentry societies in other parts of England.34 What provided cohesion and identity to local society in Durham was a matrix of ideas about the community of the bishopric. Lacking strong institutional structures, this was an associational grouping whose position within the bishopric rested only in part upon the possession of formal, chartered privileges. Its status and power was grounded instead in the less precise, but arguably more potent realm of belief, history and custom. With Durham priory the keeper of the memory and identity of the local community, such accumulated ideas were likely to persist in the second half of the fifteenth century and beyond. If Durham was different, it was that the essence of the county community did not reside either in patterns of landholding, social interaction or office-holding. It was in the concept of the Haliwerfolc and in the cult of St Cuthbert that the inhabitants of the bishopric possessed their own distinctive culture of community and ideology.

33 34

Cf. P.H.W. Booth, The Financial Administration of the Lordship and County of Chester, 1272– 1377 (Manchester, 1981), p. 8. Cf. A.J. Pollard, ‘Use and Ornament: Late-Twentieth-Century Historians on the Late Medieval North-East’, NH 42 (2005), pp. 65–6.

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Index Places are in historic County Durham unless otherwise stated. Acklam (North Riding, Yorkshire)  99, 137 Aidan, saint  3 Aislaby  40, 163 Aislaby family of Aislaby  163 John  163 Aislaby, John  115, 117 n.253, 146 Allenshields  52, 67 Allenshields family of Allenshields  52, 67 Allertonshire see Northallerton Alnwick (Northumberland)  61, 168 abbey of  117 castle of  117 Alwent, John  94 Alwent, William  159 Amundeville family of Witton le Wear  47 Robert  47 Appleton (North Riding, Yorkshire)  69 Aquitaine (France)  201 see also France Arrowsmith, John  119 Auckland, Bishop  31–3, 47, 71–4, 95, 151, 154, 157 manor of  87, 105, 116, 152, 154, 180 park of  154 Auckland, St Helen  44 manor of  28, 44, 46, 62, 85, 185, parish of  41, 44, 54, 71, 114 Auckland, West  134, 157 Auckland St Andrew, church of  108, 109 n.206, 129 parish of  47, 50–2, 60, 68, 71, 74, 84–5, 129, 151, 154, 159, 168 n.223 coal mines  54–7 colonisation of the wasteland  44–5 Aucklandshire  32, 47, 51 Axwell  51 n.141, 56 Aycliffe, parish of  36, 62 Ayton (North Riding, Yorkshire)  212 Ayton, William  212

Bainbridge (North Riding, Yorkshire)  101 Balliol family of Barnard Castle  205 Bamburgh castle (Northumberland)  211 Barden (North Riding, Yorkshire)  101 Barmpton family of Witton le Wear  48–9, 52 Walter  48–9 Barmston  37 Barnard Castle  26, 31, 33, 38, 98, 150, 170 barony and lordship of  27, 34–5, 37, 61, 87, 112, 130, 205, 240 see also Beauchamp Barnard Castle, Richard  108, 128–9, 144 Barnwell  75 Barton (North Riding, Yorkshire)  135, 136 Basset, Ralph  75 Basy, Richard  82 Batemanson, Adam  152 John  153 Bather, John  156–7, 158 Beamish  45, 62 Bearpark  44 park of  169, 217 Beauchamp, earls of Warwick  27, 35, 61, 205 Guy (d. 1315)  27 Richard (d. 1439)  27, 240 Thomas (d. 1401)  27, 35, 87, 112, 130 Beaufort, Cardinal Henry  218, 219, 238 Beaumont, Bishop Louis  13, 165 Beaumont Hill  31 Bedale (North Riding, Yorkshire)  99 Bedburn  98 park of  152 Bedburn, North  85 Bede  187 Bedlington (Northumberland), manor of 180 Bedlingtonshire  15, 17, 129 n.25, 176, 221

262

INDEX

Bek, Bishop Antony  20, 104, 129 affinity of  43–4, 49, 57, 63, 67, 158 conflict with the community of the bishopric  57, 149, 165, 196–8, 205, 224, 227, 233 and liberties and franchises of Durham 5, 176, 178, 198, 203, 223–4, 229 lordship  165, 197–8, 228 relations with the crown  179, 203, 223–4, 229 and Scotland  165, 196 Belasis family of Henknowle  52 John  85 Robert, son of  71 n.259, 85, 100–1, 159, 171 William, son of  71, 71 n.259 Belgrave, John  107–8 Belgrave, Nicholas  156, 158 Beliers, William  152 Bertram, John  185–6 Berwick-upon-Tweed (Northumberland) 79, 117, 211, 212 Bettinson, John  152 Bilbrough (North Riding, Yorkshire)  82 Billingham  31 Billingham, Thomas  71 Billy, John  159, 171 Billy Hill  36, 159 Billy Row  69 Binchester  51, 68 Binchester family of Binchester and Hunwick  51 Birtley  69, 119, 157 Birtley family of Birtley  119–22 John  119, 121, 122, 157, 171, 225 Birtley family of Twizell Hall  81 John  81, 103, 119, 121, 163 Isabel Guildford, wife of  121 Thomas, son of  85 Bishop Middleham, manor of  107, 108, 180 parish of  159 Bishopley  45 Bishopric of Durham see Durham bishopric Bishopton  40, 42 parish of  40 Black Burn  45, 47 Black Death  142, 226 Blackdene family of Shipley  52, 88 William  84, 87, 111 Blackhead family of Woodcroft  52, 60 Blackwell  159 Blakeston family of Blakeston Hall  89, 102 Roger  79, 89, 102

William, son of  89, 91, 92, 103, 112, 134 n.46, 137 Thomas, son of  169 Blakeston Hall  41, 102 see also Blakeston family Bland, Thomas  169, 170 Bolam  40, 70, 70 n.249 Boldon Book  21, 32, 39 Bolingbroke, Henry see Henry IV Bollihope Shield  60 Boner, John  160 Bordeaux (France)  83 see also France Boroughbridge, battle of (1322)  48 Bothal (Northumberland)  237 Bowes family of Streatlam  32, 41–2, 50, 65, 66, 80, 102, 118, 208, 242 Adam, 41, 80, 101, 103, 163 Robert, son of  138 William, son of (d. 1399)  66, 98, 112, 113, 114, 134, 135, 136, 144 Matilda, wife of  66 William (d. 1465)  219 Boynton family of Acklam  99 Thomas  137 Margaret, wife of  137 Boynton family of Sedbury  99 Christopher  99, 115 Boys, Brian  71 Bracewell (West Riding, Yorkshire)  69 Brackenbury, Peter  163 Brackenbury family of Burn Hall  52 Robert  163 Bradbury  61, 70 Bradley (Lanchester)  46, 51 n.141 Bradley (Ryton)  62 Bradley (Wolsingham)  48, 51–2, 139 Brancepeth  84, 91, 119 barony of  35–7, 46, 64–5 castle of  36, 63, 69, 76, 80, 85, 93 constables  81, 83, 93, 137, 216 rebuilding  82, 102 church of  33, 83 estate of  36–7, 47, 66, 68, 69, 85, 213, 218, 219 forest of  36 parish of  33, 35–6, 45, 51, 68, 69, 81, 89, 101, 151, 158–9, 162 coal mines  55–6 park of  97, 99 Brancepeth, Thomas  119 Brandon, East  36, 69, 84, 89, 158 Brandsby (North Riding, Yorkshire)  99



INDEX

Brantingham, Walter  152 Brierton  34, 39 Broadwood  45, 52, 72, 150 forest of  152 Broom, 52  55 Broomy Holm  45 Bruce family of Hart  205 see also under Hart Bruce family of Pickering  62 Buckley, Richard  114, 115, 146 Bulmer (North Riding, Yorkshire)  63 see also Bulmer family Bulmer family of Bulmer and Wilton  35, 63, 242 Ralph (d. 1444)  63, 70, 170 Margaret Hylton, wife of  70 William, son of  70 Bultflour, Thomas  150 Burdon family of Helmington Hall  74–5, 154–5 Burdon, John  154 Burgh, John  137 Burland, John  135, 138 Burn Hall  52, 163 Burn Toft  39, 40, 81, 163 Burnigill  36, 51, 162 Burnigill family of Burnigill  51 John  162 Burnton family of Hollingside  52 Burreth (Lincolnshire)  35 Bury, Bishop Richard  7, 20, 28, 105, 108, 134 n.46, 148, 161, 166, 203, 226 Bushblades  45, 46 n.113, 52, 121 Butterby  215 Buttery, Hugh  152 Byers Green  52 Byerside  45, 46 Bywell and Styford, barony of (Northumberland)  216 Calne, Robert  108 Cannock Chase (Staffordshire)  113 Carew family of Seaton Carew  89 John  89, 92 John, nephew of  89 Carham (Northumberland)  187 Carlisle (Cumberland)  93, 167 Carlisle family of Penshaw  74–5 Robert  168 n.219 Thomas  75 Carnaby, John  93 Chancellor family of High Woodifield  52 William  57, 129–30, 146 Chatterley  45, 108

263

Cheshire  30 Chester, earldom of see Chester palatinate Chester, earls of  3–4, 59, 205 Edward the Black Prince  201 Hugh Lupus, of Avranches  233 Chester, ward of  72, 151, 152, 155–8, 161–4, 170, 171 Chester, William  157, 171 Chester palatinate  8, 20, 148–9, 201, 227, 233 baronies of  37 castle of  233 county court of  148–9, 243 parliament of  232 relations with the crown  3–4, 6, 9, 233 taxation in  164, 201 Chester-le-Street  150 n.133, 189, 191, 195 manor of  180 parish of  43, 51–2, 73, 84, 85, 119, 122, 137, 150, 154, 157, 162, 163 coal mines  53, 55 colonisation of the wasteland  44–6, 54, 64, 71 Chilton  71 Chronicles see under Durham cathedral priory, Scalacronica and Froissart Chur (Switzerland)  1, 2 Claxton  41, 81, 109, 162 see also Claxton family of Claxton and Horden Claxton family of Burn Hall  52 Claxton family of Claxton and Horden  21, 39, 40, 43, 50, 66, 69, 242 association with the Nevilles  41–2, 80–1, 83–4, 87–92, 93–4, 98, 115, 117, 139, 167 Leo  81, 162 John, son of  81, 85, 88, 112, 168 n.219 Thomas, son of see under Claxton family of Old Park William, son of (d. 1379)  81, 83, 86, 87, 89, 91–2, 109–10, 112, 118, 135 Isabel Menville, wife of  87, 88, 89 William, son of (d. 1431)  42, 70, 86, 93–4, 98, 115, 139, 149, 167 Elizabeth Eure, wife of  70, 86, 94 Robert, son of  71 Claxton family of Old Park  51, 83–4 Thomas  81, 83–4, 86, 93, 95, 98, 103, 112, 113, 114, 137, 169, 216 Thomas, son of  93, 216, 219 Cleasby, John  101 n.155

264

INDEX

Clervaux, John  98–9, 101 Cleveland (North Riding, Yorkshire)  96, 99, 137, 146 Cleveland Hills (North Riding, Yorkshire)  48, 63, 96, 129, 210 Clifford family of Skipton-in-Craven  35, 61, 205, 222–3 Elizabeth (d. 1424)  223 John Lord (d. 1422)  218 Elizabeth Percy, wife of  218 Robert Lord (d. 1314)  27 Robert Lord, son of (d. 1344)  205–6 Roger Lord, son of (d. 1389)  239 Clifton, Gilbert  81 Clowcroft  37 Cnut, king of England  33 Coal  11, 50, 53–7, 106, 181–2 Coatham Mundeville  31 Coatham Stob  137 Cockfield  55, 62, 69 parish of  55, 68 Cold Hesleden  43 Cold Hurst  54 Colepike Hall  52, 55 Collierley  45, 52, 57, 58, 119, 121 Colville, Thomas  95 Thomas, son of  95, 101, 114 Colville family of Ingleby Arncliffe and Dale  44, 62 Robert  28 John, son of  185 Commissions of array see under Durham bishopric Commissions of the peace see under Durham bishopric Coningsby (Lincolnshire)  63, 158 Coniscliffe  39, 61 Coniscliffe, Low  169–70 Consett, 52  154–5 Conyers, John (of Hornby)  96, 99, 111, 113, 114, 115, 146 Richard, son of  99 Conyers, Robert (of Ormesby)  137 Robert, son of  96, 99, 101, 114, 135, 137 Conyers family of Sockburn  42, 46, 117, 199–200, 242 and the falchion  199–200 John  117, 199, 212 Robert, son of  150, 212 Christopher, son of  70, 75 Cornsay  45, 46 n.113, 67 Cosin, Bishop John  199–200 Coundon  32 Coundon Grange  31, 152

Coventry and Lichfield, bishop of  113 Coverham, Robert  82, 95 Cowherds of Durham  169 Richard  169 Coxhoe  41 Coxwold (North Riding, Yorkshire)  95, 101 Crawcrook  62 Crayke (North Riding, Yorkshire)  189, 191, 195, 221 manor of  15, 17, 106 n.185, 176, 180 Croft on Tees (North Riding, Yorkshire)  98 Cromwell, Thomas  7, 8 Crook Hall  71 Crookhall  45, 56, 157 Croxdale  61, 62 Cumberland  79, 144, 172, 184–5, 191, 208, 238 Cuthbert, saint  3, 13, 16, 165, 232 barones et fideles  25, 58–9 and bishops of Durham  16, 177–8, 186, 222, 223, 229–30 church of Lindisfarne  3, 180, 232 see also pre-Conquest community of confraternity of  217 cult of  165, 188, 234, 243 feasts of  202 patrimony of  12, 15, 25, 33, 176–7, 186–8, 195, 232, 240 people of see Haliwerfolc pre-Conquest community of  3, 12, 25, 176–7, 186–7, 189–91, 193–5, 198, 229, 233 shrine of see under Durham cathedral priory travels of  189–95 Dacre family of Gilsland  61, 67 Dagworth, Nicholas  107 Dale, John  101, 114 Dalton, John  71, 72 Richard, son of  72 Robert, son of  71, 72, 157 Dalton Piercy  61, 66 n.230, 67, 85, 92 Dalton-le-Dale, parish of  41, 43 Danby Hall  101 Darcy family of Coningsby  63 Philip  63 n.213 Robert  158 Margaret, wife of  158 Darell, William  95 John, son of  95–6 Darlington  31 manor of  180 parish of  66



INDEX

Darlington, ward of  63, 72, 138, 155–60, 161–4, 171 Dawdon  41, 66 Dawdon, Jordan  66 Dawnay, John  62 n.205, 170 de la Pole, earls of Suffolk  61, 70 William (d. 1366)  43 Michael, son of (d. 1389)  113, 177 Denton  72, 98 Derbyshire  30, 77, 147 Derwent, river  17, 42, 53 valley  151 Derwent, river (Cumberland)  189, 194 Devon  77 Dilston (Northumberland)  86, 94, 112, 139 Dinsdale-on-Tees  42–3 see also Surtees family Dolfin, son of Uhtred  33 Dolphamby, John  57, 225 Domesday Book  47 Drilton family of Wadley  60 Duddo (Northumberland)  106 Dudley, Edmund  6–7 Durham bishopric (bishop’s secular franchise)  17, 77, 79 administration of  16, 17, 22, 126 auditors  84, 111, 139 chancery  5, 17, 126, 209, 231, 234 chancellors (temporal)  15, 108, 126, 128–31, 144, 146, 163, 185 recognisances  20, 131, 139, 148–51, 153, 160, 220, 225 registration of deeds  20, 122–3 rolls  20, 29 n.24, 125, 142, 164, 226 seals  178 writs  225–6, 228 commissioners of array  63, 132, 138, 155, 164–73 constables of Durham castle  63 n.213, 108, 128, 130, 131, 146 constable’s hall  104 coroners  15, 72, 127, 151, 155–61, 173, 225, 242 courts  5, 8, 9, 17, 144, 150–1, 231 county court  155, 167, 200–1, 202 forest courts  149, 220 halmote  33, 73, 127, 142, 151 see also chancery exchequer  5, 17, 110, 132, 139, 155, 160, 177, 234 receivers  108, 126, 128, 130, 131, 146 receivers-general  114, 127, 131

265

forestry service  149, 153 chief foresters  15–16, 54, 87, 107, 109, 115, 126, 127, 151, 205, 220, 237 sub-foresters  15, 48, 125, 126, 127, 151–5, 156, 160, 173, 225, 242 parkers  109, 114, 125, 126, 127, 151–5, 156, 160, 171, 173, 225, 242 justices  15, 110, 111, 115, 126 chief justices  87, 96, 99, 111, 115, 143, 146, 230 justices of assize  84, 85, 140–1, 143, 146, 150 justices in eyre  202–4 justices of gaol delivery  79–80, 140–1 justices of labourers  130, 141–2, 200–1 justices of oyer et terminer  79–80, 97, 99, 130 justices of the peace  130, 141–7, 171, 215, 216, 219, 221, 236, 237, 239 secondary justices  96, 115, 146 sheriffs and escheators  15, 114, 126, 130, 132–9, 144, 185, 219, 220, 223, 237, 238 accountability  94, 139, 205, 207–8, 225 county court  202 financial rewards of office  109–10, 127 patronage exercised by  125 powers  132–3 proof of age before  122 stewards  54, 79, 87, 105–9, 114, 115, 117, 128–31, 144, 146, 178, 185, 211 complaints about  197, 205, 228 financial rewards of office  111, 127 powers  126–7, 131 wards  155–60, 161–4, 168 see also Chester, Darlington, Easington, Stockton barons of  25, 58–9 community of  22, 28, 57, 142–3, 149, 161–4, 165–6, 171, 173, 175, 196–208, 209, 220–1, 224, 225, 227, 228, 231–3, 234, 242 see also Haliwerfolc estate structure in  32–58 ‘Durham acres’  36 n.60 local parliament in  5, 34, 200, 224

266

INDEX

relations with English parliament  4, 15, 24, 126, 176–7, 201, 206–7, 231, 240, 242 see also Parliament taxation in  5 local  161–4, 201, 204–5, 226 tax collectors  161–4, 173 national  24, 27–8, 126, 130, 135, 161, 164 n.200, 176, 206–8, 211, 231, 232, 242 tax collectors  207–8 topography of  31, 37–9, 41, 52, 72–3, 123 Durham bishops  1–7, 12–17, 20, 186 affinity of  78, 104–17, 136 coal mining  54–7 landholding  20–1, 22, 25, 27–33, 64, 64 n.221, 65, 67, 180, 186 lordship of  22, 25–7, 59, 105, 127, 132–3, 165, 178–80, 181, 226, 228 relations with the crown  4, 7, 12–15, 26–7, 28, 162, 165–8, 174–81, 205–6, 240–1 relations with the Neville family of Raby and Brancepeth  236 see also the names of individual bishops Durham castle  1, 2, 93, 104, 108, 110, 165, 176, 180, 202, 230, 234 Durham cathedral priory  102–3, 197–8, 200, 223 archive of  20, 21 bursar of  30–1, 82, 102, 202 cartulary  231–2 chapter house  178 chronicles and historical tradition of  21, 232, 243 Gesta Dunelmensia  197–8 Gesta Episcoporum Dunelmensium 104, 105, 175, 233 Historia de Sancto Cuthberto  189 Liber summi altaris ecclesie Dunelmensis  229 Life of St. Cuthbert in English Verse 193–6, 207 Reginald of Durham  192 n.79 Symeon of Durham  187–8, 190–2, 193, 195–6, 206–7, 240 cloister of  104, 234 coal mining  55 courts of  33 Cuthbert, saint  186, 202, 217, 232, 234 shrine  177, 197–8, 234 dormitory of  104, 234 foundation of  186, 229

Galilee chapel in  104, 232, 234 landholding of  21–2, 25, 27, 30–3, 41, 64, 64 n.221, 65, 67, 186–7 location of  2, 230, 234 lordship of  33–4 oaths of Durham gentry in 1434  58, 70, 75, 152, 202, 221 prior of  13–14, 33, 65, 94, 115, 167, 193, 202, 204, 227, 228, 229 affinity  41, 78, 101–3, 112, 134–5, 143, 146 relations with the Neville family of Raby and Brancepeth  13–14, 33, 101–3, 216–17, 218–19 see also Fossor and Wessington stewards of  79–80, 103 treasury of  199 Durham city  1, 81, 83, 180, 188 Corpus Christi procession in  230 gaol in  234 Palace Green  17, 202, 234 resting-place of St Cuthbert  3, 190, 191, 195, 233 St Nicholas, church  114, 230 walls of  104, 234 gates  129 Durham diocese  3, 13–14, 15, 17, 135 archdeacons of  15, 108, 204 Durham gentry  11, 20–1 collective identity of  22–3, 164–73, 186–208, 232, 243 see also Haliwerfolc and see under Durham bishopric gradations of  58–75, 129–30, 152–5, 164, 168–71, 242 landholding of  28–30, 41–75, 210, 242 oath-list of 1434  58, 70–5, 121, 152, 160, 170, 202, 221 office-holding of  22, 41–2, 79–80, 87, 124–73, 210–13, 242–3 residence of  41–3, 47–53, 119–22 Durham palatinate  1–3, 17, 22 origins of  11–12, 15, 25, 176–7, 186, 198, 229, 233 relations with the crown  4, 5–11, 12–15, 25, 234–5, 242 taxation  7–8, 180 territorial extent of  12, 17, 105–7, 129, 131, 176, 179–80, 221 see also Durham bishopric, Bedlington, Crayke, Norham Durham St Oswald, parish of  44, 52, 55, 84 Dynant, Walter  156, 159



INDEX

Ealdhun, Bishop  3, 240 Easington  88 manor of  180 parish of  36, 39, 41, 42, 80, 85, 88 Easington, ward of  72, 155, 159–60, 161–4, 171 Eastburn (West Riding, Yorkshire)  55 Eastrington (East Riding), parish of  138 Eccleshall (Staffordshire)  113 Ecgfrith, king of Northumbria  180 Ecgred, Bishop  240 Eden, Little  41, 85 Edge Knoll  98 Edinburgh (Scotland)  106 Edlingham (Northumberland)  46, 62, 63 Edmondbyers  88 Edmondsley  45, 52, 101 Edmondsley family of Edmondsley  52 Edward I, king of England  3, 27, 165, 179, 205, 222, 228 quo warranto proceedings of  6, 8, 12–13, 34 n.53, 35, 36–7, 61, 176, 224, 229 Edward II, king of England  13, 48 Edward III, king of England  13, 24, 82, 104, 110, 139, 144, 165, 205, 227 Egglescliffe  40, 163 parish of  40, 69–70 Eggleston family of Broadwood  52, 73, 153 Thomas  153 John, son of  73, 150, 152–3 Eglin, Gilbert  157, 171 Elizabeth I, queen of England  20 Ellergill  73 Elslack (West Riding, Yorkshire)  82 Elstob  41 Eltham (London)  128 Elvet, John  94, 144 Gilbert, son of  94, 95, 98, 99, 100, 102, 111, 112, 115, 137 Elvington (East Riding, Yorkshire)  97, 99 Elwick  34, 39, 69, 79 Elwick Hall, parish of  39, 40, 42, 61, 66, 163 Ely abbey (Cambridgeshire)  21 bishops of  3 Embleton family of Tursdale  89, 131 William  89–92, 108, 129–31, 134 n.46, 136, 144, 158, 169 John, son of  92 Thomas, son of  89–92, 131, 168 Avice, wife of  89–92

267

William, son of  211, 220–2, 227, 228 William, Jr., son of  158–9 Emerson family of Stanhope  153, 169 Thomas  169, 171 Robert, son of  152–3 English Civil War  19 Eppleton  106 Eresby (Lincolnshire)  67 Escomb  50 Esh  44–5, 46, 51, 72, 85 Esh family of Esh  44–5, 51, 72 Joan  95, 101 Roger  79, 102, 103 Eshott (Northumberland)  64, 106 Essex  97, 238 Eure family of Bradley  51 Robert  51–2, 70, 105 n.183, 134, 135, 138–9, 149, 213, 219–20, 237 Eure family of Witton le Wear  47–50, 63, 66, 69, 94, 118, 208, 242 John  47–8, 79 Margaret, wife of  86 n.66 Ralph, son of (d. 1422)  86, 98, 105, 122, 138 estates  49–50, 241 offices  87, 108–9, 111, 114, 115, 117, 127, 131, 145, 146, 211 Robert, son of see under Eure family of Bradley William, son of  50, 51 n.146, 70, 98, 105, 117, 149, 237, 239 and events of 1433  117, 208–11, 213, 215–16, 219–22, 225–8, 230, 231, 234, 235 Margery, daughter of  70 Matilda FitzHugh, wife of  98 Robert, son of  49 Evenwood  71, 85, 152 manor of  180 park of  114, 152 Evesham abbey (Worcestershire)  187 Fairfax, John  82–3 Farnham (Northumberland)  62 Farringdon  160 Featherstone family of Stanhope  74, 153–4, 159 Richard  159 Robert  154 William, son of  154, 155 William, son of  154, 155, 171, 225 Alexander, son of  72, 74, 150, 153

268

INDEX

Felling  42, 102 Felton family of Edlingham  46, 62, 63 John  170 Fenrother, Robert  151 n.135 Finchale priory  64 n.221 Fishburn  81, 85, 91 Fitches  45, 52, 71 FitzHugh, Henry Lord  96, 98, 99, 100 FitzMarmaduke, Mary, daughter of John 43 Flambard, Bishop Ranulph  25, 39, 47, 188, 192 Follingsby  157 Folly  56 Ford  37 Fordham, Bishop John  104, 199 affinity of  50, 84, 87, 111–13, 117, 136 and liberties and franchises of Durham 13, 177, 180, 181–2, 206, 222, 229, 241 relations with the crown  180–1, 241 relations with the Neville family of Raby and Brancepeth  109, 111–13 and Scotland  129, 166, 167 Forester, William  125 Forster, Hugh  71 Forster, William  71, 71 n.258 Thomas, son of  71, 71 n.258 Fossor, John  71 Fossor, Prior John  103 Foxton  160 France, the French  83, 134, 168, 180, 212, 217 Frank, William  101 Frankland, park of  154, 155, 171 Friarside  45, 53, 56, 81 Froissart, Jean, chronicler  129 Fugar House  54, 56 Fulforth  135 Fulthorpe  136–7, 150 Fulthorpe, Thomas  150 Fulthorpe family of Tunstall  41–2, 43, 66, 242 Roger (d. 1392)  42, 86–8, 91–2, 102, 111, 143, 144, 177 William, son of  87, 150 Thomas, son of  169 Gainford, barony of  27, 34, 37, 61 manor of  130 parish of  40, 42, 66, 68, 72, 84, 98, 102, 134, 159 Gategang family of Gateshead  57, 119–22 Alan  57

William, son of  121 William, son of  121, 122 Gategang family of Nettlesworth  52 Gateshead  31, 38, 54, 56, 73, 119 borough of  57, 183, 184, 187–8, 206 manor of  180 parish of  54, 56 park of  125, 151, 152 Pipewellgate in  57–8, 121 Gaunt, John of see under Lancaster, house of Gentry see Durham gentry Germany  2, 3 princes of  2 see also Holy Roman Empire Gibside  52, 71, 119, 121 see also Marley family of Marley Hill and Gibside Gilsland (Cumberland)  61, 67 Gloucestershire  77 Goldesburgh, Richard  110 Goldsborough family of Mayland East  52 Gourlay family of Ponthop  52 Gower, lordship (Wales)  35 see also Wales Gower, Thomas  71 Graystanes, Robert, chronicler of Durham  65 see also under Durham cathedral priory Greatham, manor of  193 parish of  42, 162 Green Laws  45 Greencroft  52, 58 Grey family of Heaton  63–4, 66, 239 Thomas (d. 1369)  105–6, 129 Thomas, son of (d. 1400)  129 Thomas, son of (d. 1415)  239 Alice Neville, wife of  239 Ralph, son of  237, 239 Greystoke (Cumberland)  61 Greystoke family of Greystoke  39, 61 Grindon  37 Grindon, parish of  41, 42 Groom family of Bushblades  52 Guildford family of Collierley and Gateshead  52, 58, 119–22 John (d. 1428)  57, 71 n.259, 121, 122, 225 John, son of  71, 71 n.259 Thomas  121 Guisborough (North Riding, Yorkshire)  99 Guisborough priory  64 n.221 Gysburn, John, merchant of York  84



INDEX

Hadham family of Seaham  72 Hagthorpe family of Nettlesworth  52, 71 William  71 Halfdan, king of the Danes  190–1 Haliwerfolc  15, 165, 173, 186–98, 205–6, 207, 231–3, 242, 243 see also Cuthbert Hamsterley  48 Hamsterley Hall  45, 46, 62, 63 Hanley, John  107 Hansard family of South Kelsey  62 Harbottle family of Horton  62 Harbour House  71 Hardwick (Sedgefield)  71, 91, 159, 213 Hardwick, John  159 Harperley  46 Harpin, Thomas  81, 88, 163 Harraton  122, 157–8 Harrow Bank  152 Harswell (East Riding, Yorkshire)  62 Hart (and Hartness)  34 barony and manor of  27, 34–5, 37, 61, 205–6, 208–9, 218, 222–3 parish of  39, 40, 41, 43, 61, 66, 113, 162 see also Clifford family, Hartlepool Hartforth (North Riding, Yorkshire)  69–70 Hartlepool  26, 156, 208, 209, 215, 220, 221, 229–231 mayor of  169, 223 town of  34, 85, 223 Hartlepool, Thomas  144 Hastings family of Roxby  63, 242 Edmund  170 John, son of  63, 170 Edmund, son of  63 Haswell  36 Haswell, Great  80 Hatfield, Bishop Thomas  13, 15, 22, 104, 130, 234, 241 affinity of  64, 86–7, 105–11, 138, 151–2, 156–7 see also officers coal mining  54–5, 106 estates of  142 Hatfield Survey  29, 47, 49, 54, 74, 85–6, 154 family of  107, 109 great seal of  178 and liberties and franchises of Durham 175, 202–5 lordship of  142, 202–5 officers of  125, 128, 134, 138–9, 141–4, 151–2, 154, 156–60, 205, 228

269

relations with the crown  162–4, 176, 204 relations with the Neville family of Raby and Brancepeth  13, 33, 82, 86, 110–11 and Scotland  13, 14, 110–11, 180 Hatfield, Nicholas  109 Hatfield Survey see under Hatfield, Bishop Thomas Haughton-le-Skerne  31, 108 parish of  62 Hawick family of Little Eden  88–9 Walter  88 Walter, son of  85, 87–9, 111, 112, 137 Hay, Peter  113 Elizabeth, wife of  113 Hazlewood (West Riding, Yorkshire)  55, 62–3 Headlam  35 Headlam, Geoffrey  134 Headlam, John  84, 85, 86, 99 Agnes, wife of  99 Heatherley Cleugh  54 Heaton (Northumberland)  63, 106 Hedley (Chester-le-Street)  119, 121, 162 Hedworth, John  72 n.264, 122, 157–8 Heighington, parish of  68 Helme Park  36 Helmington Hall  45, 46 n.113, 74–5 Hemingbrough (East Riding, Yorkshire) 115 Henknowle  52, 85, 159 see also Belasis family Henknowle family of Henknowle  52 Henry I, king of England  185, 187, 188, 222 Henry II, king of England  185, 186, 222 Henry III, king of England  3, 193 Henry IV, king of England  56, 68, 93, 100, 175, 180, 212, 224 Henry V, king of England  168, 175, 184, 222, 224 Henry VI, king of England  13–14, 15, 175, 208, 217, 223, 224, 240 Henry VII, king of England  6–7, 8 Henry VIII, king of England  7 Hepple (Northumberland)  62 Heron family of Eshott  64 John  105–7, 144 Gerard, son of  64, 107 John, son of  107 Herrington, West  158 Hett  55

270

INDEX

Hetton-le-Hole  63, 163 Heworth (Aycliffe)  62 Heworth, parish of  42 Hexham family of Broom  52 Thomas  84 Hexhamshire (Northumberland)  6, 17 High Cliff  62, 62 n.205, 170 High Grindon  36 High Woodifield  52, 55, 56, 57, 129 Hindley, John  134–5, 136, 144 Joan, wife of  134 Holden, Thomas  115, 128, 146 Hollingside  51, 51 n.141, 52 Holmside Hall  45, 64 Holy Island (Northumberland) see Lindisfarne Holy Island, Bishop Robert of  48–9, 203 Holy Roman Empire  1, 2–3 Holywell  36, 45, 69, 89, 158 Homelands  69 Hook (West Riding, Yorkshire)  82 Hoppyland  48 Horden  39, 61, 66, 80 see also Claxton family of Claxton and Horden Horn, William  97 Hornby (North Riding, Yorkshire)  96 see also Conyers, John Horseley Burn  152 Horsley family of Farnham  62 Horton (Northumberland)  62 Houghton-le-Spring, manor of  180 parish of  63, 74–5, 158 Howden (East Riding, Yorkshire), manor of 17, 104, 106 n.185, 138, 180 Howdenshire  113 Howden family of Kirby Sigston  67 Hulam  40, 41, 81 Hull (East Riding, Yorkshire)  61 Hulme, Nicholas  114 Hunstanworth  52 Hunwick  51, 68, 72, 84–5, 168 n.223 Hurworth Bryan  42 Hurworth on Tees  62, 98, 143 Hutton, William  84 Hutton family of Hardwick  159 Gilbert  159, 171 William, son of  71, 72, 103, 213, 219 Hutton family of Tudhoe and Hunwick  72 William  84, 91 John, son of  94–5, 115–16, 137, 168 n.223 William, son of  119

Hutton Rudby (North Riding, Yorkshire), parish of  129 Hylton  37, 40, 59, 122 castle of  102, 104, 117, 212 see also Hylton family Hylton family of Hylton  37, 43, 50, 59, 63, 65, 66, 117, 170–1, 172, 242 Robert  43 William Baron Hylton, son of  37, 70, 72, 75, 102, 117, 122, 150, 171, 212, 237 Robert, son of  72, 171, 237 Matilda Clifford, wife of, 239 Romanus  37 Ingleby, Thomas  143, 144 Ingleby Arncliffe (North Riding, Yorkshire) 44, 62 Ireland  94, 95, 189, 191, 194, 195 Islandshire see under Norham Ivesley  51 n.141 Jackson, Robert  72, 160 Jarrow, parish of  157, 170 John, king of England  193, 231–2 Kelloe, Bishop Richard  43–4, 48, 204 Kelloe, Great  81 Kelloe, parish of  41, 42, 81, 92 Kepier Hospital  64 n.221, 114 Kibblesworth  52, 71, 119, 163 Kibblesworth family of Kibblesworth  119– 121 John, 119 Alice, sister of  119 Kilham, John  101 Kilkenny, William  163 Robert, son of  163 Joan, wife of  163 William, son of  163 Killerby, John  21 Killinghall family of Middleton St George 71 John  95, 99, 101, 102, 111 John, son of  71, 99 Beatrice, wife of  99 Kilton (North Riding, Yorkshire)  66 Kingston, John  108, 128–9 Kirby Sigston (North Riding, Yorkshire) 67, 185 Kirkby, William  157 Kirkley (Northumberland)  48 Kyme, barony of (Lincolnshire)  67



INDEX

Lamb, Thomas  156, 159 Lambard, Alan  85, 87–8, 91, 92 Lambard, William  111–12, 115, 146 Lambton, William  168 n.219 Lamesley  51, 122 Lancashire  30, 79, 114, 128, 172, 221 county community of  148 Lancaster, house of  24, 116, 222, 241 Henry Grosmont, duke of  148 John of Gaunt, duke of  82, 100, 111, 116, 148 see also Henry IV Lancaster, lords of  59 Lancaster, Thomas of Lancaster, earl of (d. 1322)  48 Lancaster palatinate  6, 148 see also Lancashire Lanchester, manor of  180 parish of  50, 51, 52, 58, 62, 67, 154, 157 coal mines  55, 56 colonisation of the wasteland  44–7 Langley (Brancepeth)  81 Langley, Bishop Thomas  20, 22, 49, 51, 104, 234, 239 affinity of  94, 96, 99, 105, 114–17, 128, 138–9, 220–1 see also officers estates of  28–9, 30, 160, 224–6 Langley Survey  29, 224–6 and liberties and franchises of Durham 13, 116, 175, 178, 180–6, 189, 206, 209, 221–3, 229–31 lordship of  117, 153, 160, 185–6, 222–3 events of 1433  134, 200, 208–35, 241 officers of  94, 96, 99, 127, 131, 139, 145–6, 185–6, 219–20, 223, 225, 228 relations with the crown  7, 116, 175, 207–8, 222, 223, 241 relations with the Neville family of Raby and Brancepeth  115–17, 146, 210, 218–19 and Scotland  12, 167–8 Langley Survey see under Langley, Bishop Thomas Langton  35 Langton family of Wynyard Hall  89 Henry  162 Simon, son of  89, 91–2 Avice, wife of  89, 92 Thomas, son of  103 Lausanne (Switzerland)  1, 2 Layton  40, 163 Layton, Robert  134 n.46, 135, 136–7, 145

271

Layton family of East Layton  136 Leicestershire  30, 77, 147 Lewin, John  110 Liberties  5–6, 7, 9–10, 22, 23, 178–9 see also Chester palatinate, Durham bishopric, Durham palatinate, Wales Lincoln (Lincolnshire)  228 Lincolnshire  62, 63, 64, 67, 168 Lindisfarne (Northumberland)  3, 189–90, 193–4 see also under Cuthbert Lindley (West Riding, Yorkshire)  135 n.53 Lindley, Percival  134, 135 Linton in Craven (West Riding, Yorkshire) 69 Lintz  45, 53 Little Burn  101 Little Haughton  62 London  181, 203, 238 Low Barford  41, 102 Ludworth  61, 115, 163 Ludworth, Walter  163 Lumley  55 Lumley, Little  43 Lumley castle  43, 104, 241 Lumley family of Lumley castle  43, 50, 65, 66, 68, 88, 118, 157, 169–2, 208, 242 Marmaduke  86 Ralph Lord, son of (d. 1400)  66, 68, 86, 88, 102, 114, 157, 167, 169, 212–13, 239, 241 Eleanor Neville, wife of  86, 88, 114 John, son of (d. 1421)  68, 168, 220 Thomas, son of  122, 158, 171, 219–20, 237, 239 William, son of  215, 220 Thomas, son of  212–13 Robert, son of  86 Robert (d. 1308), 43 Lumley family of Mordon, 100 Thomas, brother of Ralph Lord Lumley 88 William, son of  100 Lumley family of Ravensworth castle  50–1, 68, 161 John  161–2 William  122 Lutterington Hall  32 Lynesack  56 Maddison family of Unthank  52 William  73, 150

272

INDEX

Richard, son of  73 Magna Carta  232 Malton (North Riding, Yorkshire)  212 Manor, meaning of the  30, 32, 37–47, 52–3, 58, 73 March, wardens of the  14, 93, 110–11, 166–7, 180, 216–17, 223 see also Scotland Marley family of Fitches  52 Marley family of Marley Hill and Gibside 53, 119–22 Gilbert  162 Richard, brother of  119, 121 Elizabeth Masham, wife of  119 Robert, son of  53, 71, 72, 119, 121, 122 William, son of  71 Marley family of Unthank  47, 52, 154–5 William  154 William (d. c.1416)  73 Marley Hill  53, 55, 119, 121, 122, 162 Marske (North Riding, Yorkshire)  100 church of  101 n.155 Marwood  35 Masham family of Gibside  52, 119–21 Robert  119, 121 Alice Kibblesworth, wife of  119, 121 Elizabeth, daughter of  119 Robert, son of  121 Agnes, wife of  121 Mayland East  52 Meager family of East Shipley  52 Medomsley  45, 46, 62, 63 Menville family of Horden  61, 66, 88 John  80, 85, 102, 103, 162, 163 Thomas, son of see under Menville family of Ludworth William, son of  85, 87, 88–9, 92, 109–10, 125, 135–6 Isabel, wife of, 87 Menville family of Ludworth  61 Thomas  85, 87, 89 Merrington  55 Metham (East Riding, Yorkshire)  106 Metham, Thomas  105–6 Meynell, Alan  98 n.139 Meynell, Robert  72 Middleham (North Riding, Yorkshire)  64, 82, 93, 115, 216 Middleton, John  159, 160, 171 Middleton, John  185–6 Middleton in Teesdale  35 Middleton One Row  42 Middleton St George  71

Middridge  31 Milot family of White Hill  52, 154–5 John  74 William, son of  71, 74, 150 n.133, 155, 171 Mitford, barony of (Northumberland)  47–8 Monboucher family of Horton  62 Monk Hesledon, parish of  40, 41, 42, 87 Mordon  71, 100–1, 159, 163 Mordon family of Mordon  159 John  159–60 William  138 William  71 Morley  55, 56 Morpeth (Northumberland)  61, 106 Morton, John  97, 99 Morton, John  159 Morton Palms  42 Morton Tinmouth  159 Mowbray, John  143 Murton  43 Nafferton (Northumberland)  163 Neasham  39 Neasham priory  64 n.221 Nesbitt Hall  113 Nettlesworth  45, 46 n.113, 52, 71 Neville family of Raby and Brancepeth  11, 20, 22, 65, 76, 136, 166, 172, 175 coal mining  55–6 estates of  24, 33, 39, 47, 55–6, 64, 65, 68, 102, 119 feud of  22, 68–9, 210, 213–20, 238–9 Geoffrey  35 Elizabeth Bulmer, wife of  35 Henry, son of  35 Isabel, sister of, and wife of Robert FitzMeldred  33, 35 Geoffrey, son of, 33 John Lord (d. 1388)  24, 33, 55, 66–7, 79, 102–3, 108, 110–11, 119, 144, 167, 241 affinity  72, 81–92, 94, 95, 103, 110, 111–13, 136–7 Matilda Percy, wife of  79 lordship  42, 76, 78–101, 236–9 Ralph, first earl of Westmorland (d. 1425) 22, 24, 29 n.25, 34, 55–6, 67–9, 82, 85, 115, 145–6, 167, 239 affinity  72, 92–101, 103, 113–16, 119, 137, 139, 167, 215, 216, 218, 219 disinheritance of senior line  68, 69, 97–8, 210, 213, 217–18, 238



INDEX

Joan Beaufort, countess of Westmorland, second wife of  69, 72, 97–8, 100, 115, 116, 210, 213–19, 238, 239 Edward Lord Bergavenny, son of 215, 216, 236 George Lord Latimer, son of  215, 219, 236, 237 William, Lord Fauconberg, son of 215, 219, 236, 237 Margaret Stafford, first wife of  69 John, son of  220 n.209 Ralph, son of  212 wills  94–9, 116, 215–16, 218–19 Ralph, second earl of Westmorland (d. 1484)  68, 69, 103, 216, 217–20, 238–9 affinity  210, 215, 219 Elizabeth, mother of  220 Elizabeth Percy, wife of  218 John, brother of  103, 220 Thomas, brother of  103, 220 Ralph Lord (d. 1331)  233 Ralph Lord (d. 1367)  65, 84, 102 affinity  79–81, 86, 91, 109, 119 Alexander, archbishop of York, son of  13 Euphemia Clifford, daughter of  239 Richard, fifth earl of Salisbury  69, 96, 97, 115, 116, 145, 172, 210, 213–19, 236–40 Robert, Bishop of Durham  8, 13–14, 15, 129, 175–7, 213–16, 219, 234, 236–41 Neville family of Thornton Bridge  239 Neville’s Cross, battle of (1346)  106 Newbiggin (Heighington)  68, 71 n.258 Newcastle-upon-Tyne  31, 54, 180, 183, 187, 198, 203, 206, 210, 229 burgesses of  175, 178, 181–5, 198, 206, 222 civic government of  56, 182–4 merchants of  51, 56, 71, 181 port of  55, 182 St Bartholomew’s nunnery in  64 n.221 trade of  53, 55 Newlands Hall  52, 106 n.188 Newton, John  114 Newton Garths  69 Newton Hanzard  61, 66 n.230, 67 Newton-by-Hylton  37 Norham (Northumberland), castle of  12, 14, 106, 107, 166, 180, 237

273

Norhamshire and Islandshire  12, 15, 17, 63, 106, 107, 129 n.25, 176, 185–6, 221, 237 Norman Conquest  4, 32, 187 North Duffield (East Riding, Yorkshire)  62 North Gosforth  43, 212 Northallerton (North Riding, Yorkshire), manor of  17, 180 Allertonshire  96, 113, 185 Northamptonshire  82 Northern Uprising (1569)  11, 20 Northumberland  62, 77, 110, 182, 184, 192, 194 administration of  211, 221 commissioners of array  211 JPs  211, 212 justices of oyer et terminer  79–80 MPs  211, 212 sheriffs  176, 211, 212 county community of  14 relations with Durham  12, 15, 26–7, 105, 129, 176, 180, 184–5, 187–8, 203, 208–9, 229, 241, 242 and Scotland  14, 168 Northumberland, earls of see Percy Northumbria, earl of  187 earldom of  187 kingdom of  32 see also Ecgfrith Norton, parish of  41, 92, 102, 160 Norton Conyers (North Riding, Yorkshire) 99 see also Norton family Norton family of Norton Conyers  99 Richard  99, 115, 146 Nottinghamshire  28, 77, 147 Offerton  158 Ogle (Northumberland)  62 Ogle family of Ogle and Bothal  62 Robert  185–6 Matilda Grey, wife of  239 Robert, son of  237, 239 Old Burdon  85, 156, 157, 160 Old Park  51 see also Claxton family of Old Park Onlafball  195–6 Ormesby (North Riding, Yorkshire)  96, 137 Osmond Croft  41, 102 Otley (West Riding, Yorkshire)  135 n.53 Otterburn, battle of (1388)  102, 212 Ousterley  45, 81 Oxney Flatt  66 n.230, 69, 107

274

INDEX

Palatinate of Durham see under Durham palatinate Papal State see Rome Park family of Byers Green  52 Park family of Colepike Hall  52 Parliament  5, 200 legislation of  126–7, 133–4 labour laws  141 and liberties and franchises  7, 8, 206–7 see also under Durham bishopric parliament of 1301  228 parliament of 1340  176 parliament of 1371  133, 134 parliament of 1386  180 parliament of 1388 (February)  177 parliament of 1410  183 parliament of 1413 (May)  184, 222 parliament of 1433  209, 220, 221, 223, 229, 230, 235 parliament of 1453  15, 176, 240–1 petitions from  133–4, 138, 139–40 summons to  59, 61, 62, 65, 66, 212 Pelaw  74 Pembroke, earls of  59 Penshaw  74–5 Percy, earls of Northumberland  61, 99, 166, 242 Henry, first earl  54, 56, 67, 98, 117 Henry, second earl  208, 223 Henry Lord (d. 1342)  79 Pespool Hall  88 Peterborough abbey (Cambridgeshire)  21 Pickering (North Riding, Yorkshire)  62 Piercebridge  35 Pilgrimage of Grace (1536)  11 Pillock, Henry  169, 171 Pipewellgate see under Gateshead Pittington  151 n.135 parish of  85, 160 Plawsworth  81, 137 Pockerley  45, 150 Pollard family of Bishop Auckland  73–4, 154 Ponthop  45, 46, 52 Popham, John  107, 109 Preston, John  144–5 Preston le Skerne  36, 61, 70 Preston-on-Tees  160 Puiset, Bishop Hugh  22, 26, 59, 67, 75, 192 Quarringtonshire  32 Quixley, John  97 Quo warranto proceedings see under Edward I

Raby  33–4, 79 castle of  33–4, 76, 98, 238, 241 rebuilding  82, 104 estate of  33–4, 64–5, 69, 85, 98, 218, 238 park of  97, 99 Radcliffe family of Radcliffe  221 George  220–1 John  114 Rægnald, king  195 Railey  54 Randolph family of East Brandon  51 John  89, 158, 162 Raskelf (North Riding, Yorkshire)  65, 84, 95 Ravensworth  52, 57, 73, 119, 121 Ravensworth castle  52, 161 Ravensworth castle (North Riding, Yorkshire)  96 see also FitzHugh Ravensworth family of Ravensworth  52, 119–22 Alan  121 John, son of  57, 73, 121, 122 Henry, son of  73, 121, 122 Recognisances  20, 131, 148–51, 153, 160, 231, 234 mainprises  148–9 see also under Durham bishopric Redesdale (Northumberland)  6, 64, 67 Redford  48 Redheugh  50–1, 51 n.141, 56 Redheugh family of Redheugh  50–1 Hugh  51 Redmarshall  162 Rhone, river (Switzerland)  2 Richard II, king of England  94, 177, 180, 212, 241 Richmond (North Riding, Yorkshire)  101 honour of  93, 96, 100 lords of  59, 93 Richmondshire  62, 69, 93, 96, 98–101, 135, 136 Riding Barns  81 Riding House  45 Ripley (North Riding, Yorkshire)  143 Ripon (North Riding, Yorkshire)  191 Rivers, Marmaduke  99 Rogerley family of Wolsingham  153 Thomas  152–3 Rokeby (North Riding, Yorkshire)  95 Rokeby, Thomas  97, 99–100 Rome (Italy)  1



INDEX

Roughead family of Greencroft  52, 58 John  58 Rowley, East  45, 51 n.141, 67, 83 Roxby (North Riding, Yorkshire)  63 Rufus, Bishop Geoffrey  192 Ryton, manor of  180 parish of  62, 162 Sadberge  169 bishop’s gaol at  140–1 judicial sessions at  84, 130, 140–1 wapentake of  26–7, 132, 145 n.113, 161–4, 168, 169, 171, 180 Sadberge, John  85, 87, 88 Saint-Calais, Bishop William of  186 St Cuthbert see Cuthbert St Mary’s abbey (York)  84 St Quintin, Thomas  96 St Peter  177 Salisbury, bishops of  14 Salvin family of North Duffield and Harswell  62 Sancroft, William  199 Satley  47 Sayer, John  72, 159–60 Scalacronica  106 Scaleby (Cumberland)  63 School Aycliffe  68, 71 n.258 Scotland, the Scots  13–14, 117, 188, 211 border of  13–14, 110–11, 129, 166–7, 185, 216 invasion by  4, 14, 106, 129, 161, 166–8 king of  217 peace with  161, 205 war with  6, 12, 27, 79, 102, 165, 166–8, 187, 196–7, 205, 211, 212 Scremerston (Northumberland)  107 Scrope family of Bolton  61–2, 99, 170 Richard Lord (d. 1403)  43, 96 William, son of  177 Scrope family of Masham  99 Scrope rebellion (1405)  95 Scrope-Grosvenor dispute  43 Sculthorpe, John  108, 128 Seaham  72 parish of  40 Seaton  40 Seaton, Thomas  79–80 Seaton Carew  89 see also Carew family Sedbury (North Riding, Yorkshire)  99 Sedgefield  110, 159 church of  107 parish of  40, 42, 66, 87, 91, 100, 159

275

Sessay (North Riding, Yorkshire)  95 Sexhelm, Bishop  196 Shadforth  160 Sharp, John  72 n.264 Sheraton  84 Sherburn Hospital  64 n.221 Sheriff Hutton (North Riding, Yorkshire) 64, 82, 93, 96, 98 n.139, 99, 100 Shipley, East  45, 52, 84–5 Shipley, West  45, 84–5, 163 Shitlington, Alan  108, 128, 143–4 Short, John  125 Sion (Switzerland)  1, 2 Sitten see Sion Skelton, Nicholas  156, 157, 160 Robert, son of  160, 171 Skerne, river  61 Skipton-in-Craven (West Riding, Yorkshire) 35 Skirlaw, Bishop Walter  104, 113, 131, 148, 150, 183, 234 affinity of  104–5, 113–14 see also officers coal mining  56 and liberties and franchises of Durham 13, 177–8, 180, 181, 222, 223, 229, 241 officers  117, 128, 129, 137, 146 relations with the crown  180–1, 241 relations with the Neville family of Raby and Brancepeth  113–14 and Scotland  167 Skirpenbeck (East Riding, Yorkshire)  97 Snape (North Riding, Yorkshire)  79 Snotterton  72 Sockburn  42, 199, 212 see also Conyers family Sockburn, William  134 Solberge on Wiske (North Riding, Yorkshire) 99–100 South Kelsey (Lincolnshire)  62 South Shields  198 Southwick  157 Spaldington (East Riding, Yorkshire)  113 Spence, John  72 Spence, William  213 Staindrop  33–4, 41, 79, 82, 102, 241 church of  94, 97 parish of  68 see also Raby Stainton  84, 130, 134 Stainton (North Riding, Yorkshire)  69 Stainton, Great, parish of  41 Stainton, Little  71

276

INDEX

Stamford Bridge (East Riding, Yorkshire) 97 Stanhope  72, 74, 151, 152 manor of  180 parish of  45, 52, 54, 60, 73, 150, 152 park of  151–4, 169, 171 Stanhope Burn  74 Stanley  163 Stanley Farm  45, 69 Stapleton, Miles  199 Stapleton family of Bedale  99 Startforth (North Riding, Yorkshire)  169, 170 Stockerley  45, 46 n.113 Stockton, manor of  180 Stockton, ward of  72, 155–6, 159–60, 161–4, 171 Stockton-on-Tees  81 Stokesley (North Riding, Yorkshire)  48 Stotfold  66, 69, 163 Strangways, James  96–7, 99, 114–15, 146, 230 Robert  72, 97, 99, 115, 169 Stranton  34, 43, 68, 161 parish of  34, 42 Streatlam  41–2, 80, 112, 134 see also Bowes family Stubbs family of Consett  52, 154–5 William  154 Studley (West Riding, Yorkshire)  69, 150 see also Tempest family of Studley and Washington Stuteville family of Kibblesworth  52, 119–22 Thomas  163 John, son of  121 John, son of  71, 121, 122 Suffolk  61 Suffolk, earls of see de la Pole Summerhouse  66 n.230, 102 Sunderland, borough of  157, 160 Sunderland Bridge  66, 83 Surtees family of Dinsdale-on-Tees  42–3, 102, 118, 212, 242 Thomas  79, 102, 103 Thomas, son of (d. 1379)  86–8, 103, 163 Alexander, son of  109 Thomas, son of (d. 1435)  70, 75, 98, 101, 102, 109, 115     Isabel Eure, wife of  70 Sussex  77 Sutton upon Derwent (East Riding, Yorkshire)  97

Swainston  66 n.230 Swaledale (North Riding, Yorkshire)  100 Swalwell  56, 70 Tailboys family of Hepple  62 Tailboys family of Hurworth on Tees  98 Henry  98, 215 Joan, wife of  99 Thomas  72 Tanfield  122 Team, valley  62, 119, 121 Tebson, Thomas  150 Tees, river  15, 17, 25, 30, 31, 188, 199 valley  34, 37–8, 39, 137, 161, 240 Tempest family of Bracewell  69 Tempest family of Studley and Washington 69–70, 242 William  122, 150–1 The Isle  61, 70 Thimbleby (North Riding, Yorkshire)  185 Thirsk (North Riding, Yorkshire)  95 Thorleston  40 Thornley (Kelloe)  71, 81, 101, 163 see also Trollop family Thornley (Ryton)  80, 162 Thornton family of Newcastle-upon-Tyne 69–70 Roger (d. 1430)  51, 56, 70 Roger, son of  70, 71 Thorpe, John  99 Thorpe Bulmer  41, 63 Thorpe Thewles  42 Thorpe Underwood (North Riding, Yorkshire)  99 Thropton, John  158 Thwing (East Riding, Yorkshire)  66 Tickhill, Roger  152 Tilliol, Peter  63, 215 Tirwhite, Adam  113–14 Todd, Robert  152 Robert, son of  150, 153 Trafford Hill  69–70 Trayne, John  41 see also Bowes family Tribley Farm  45, 46, 157 Trollop family of Thornley  100–1 John  100–1 John, son of  71, 72, 215 Tudhoe  36, 69, 84, 131 Tudors, royal dynasty  5, 6–7, 8–10, 76 Tunstall  41–2, 143 see also Fulthorpe family Tunstall, William  97–8



INDEX

Tursdale  89, 92, 131 see also Embleton family Tweed, river  12, 17, 180 Twizel (Northumberland)  106 Twizell Hall  81, 85, 119, 121, 163 Tyne, river  15, 17, 25, 30, 31, 54, 55, 182, 187–9, 198, 206 bridge  56, 57, 175, 178, 182–6, 189, 222, 232 Tynedale (Northumberland)  6 Tynemouth (Northumberland)  168 Umfraville, lords of Redesdale  64, 67, 122 Gilbert, earl of Angus (d. 1381)  67 Robert (d. 1437)  53 Robert, earl of Angus (d. 1325)  122 Eleanor, wife of  122 Robert, son of (d. c.1379)  110, 135, 144 Unthank (Stanhope)  45, 52, 73, 150 Upsall (North Riding, Yorkshire)  137 Urpeth  52 Urpeth family of Urpeth  52 Usworth, Great  72 Usworth, Little  32–3, 157 Vavasour family of Hazlewood  55, 62–3 Vescy, John  169 Wadley  45, 60, 71 Walcher, Bishop  187–8 Wales, marcher lordships of  3, 4, 6, 8, 25–6 n.4, 200, 201, 203, 205, 227 Walton family of Durham  61 Walworth  62 Wars of the Roses  5, 8 Warwick, earls of see Beauchamp Warwickshire  35, 73, 74, 77, 147 Washington  41, 42, 69–70, 122, 135, 150 parish of  32–3, 37, 41, 42, 66, 157 Washington family of Washington  42, 118 William (d. 1399)  70, 112, 135, 150 Waskerley, park of  154 Wayte, Thomas  81 Wear, river  2, 49, 50, 51, 63, 158 valley  37–8, 44, 46, 151 Weardale  31, 32, 46, 47, 74, 151, 152–3 forest of  151–4, 220 see also under Durham bishopric Wearmouth, Bishop, parish of  37, 40, 85, 157 Wearmouth, Monk, parish of  37 Wensleydale (North Riding, Yorkshire)  101

277

Wessington, Prior John  20, 21, 181, 198, 208, 216–17, 219, 220–1, 236, 240 West Harsley (North Riding, Yorkshire)  96 West Rounton (North Riding, Yorkshire) 185 Westley, William  108, 128–9 Westminster  5, 11, 23, 76, 126, 144, 218, 222, 242 courts of  9, 29, 96, 99, 112, 140, 143–4, 146 see also Parliament Westminster, abbey  233 Westmorland  35, 42, 144, 172, 184, 185, 208, 238 Westmorland, earls of see under Neville family of Raby and Brancepeth Westwick  35 Westwick, Hugh  108, 128–9, 130–1, 144 John, brother of  131 Wheatley Hill  45 Whickham  54 parish of  51–3, 64, 70, 119, 122, 162 coal mines  54–6, 106 Whitchurch, Richard  152 White Hall (Chester-le-Street)  84 White Hill  45, 52, 71, 74, 155 Whitworth Hall  95, 162 parish of  51, 68 Whitworth, John  95 Whitworth, Thomas  162 Whorlton  35 Widdrington, John  185–6 William I (the Conqueror), king of England 4, 188, 206–7, 229, 233 Willoughby family of Eresby  61 n.203, 67 Robert  67 Wilton (North Riding, Yorkshire)  35, 63 see also Bulmer family Winchcombe (Gloucestershire)  187 Windsor, John  108, 128, 163 Windsor castle (Berkshire)  55 Winlaton  55, 66, 80, 112, 216 Winston, bridge  92–3 parish of  41, 102, 170 Wiserley  150 Witton le Wear  47–50, 52, 69, 70, 79, 98, 241 see also Eure family of Witton le Wear Wolsingham  51 manor of  31, 73, 108, 180 parish of  36, 48, 50–3, 73, 108, 139, 150, 151 colonisation of the wasteland  44–5 park of  16 n.58, 109, 151, 153–4

278 Wolviston  85 Woodcroft  45, 52, 60 Woodham  162 Woodhouses  45, 109 Wooley Hill  36, 45, 69 Worcestershire  35 Worsall (North Riding, Yorkshire)  160 Worton (North Riding, Yorkshire)  101 Wycliffe, Robert  128–9, 131, 146 Wynyard Hall  41, 84, 86, 89–92, 162 Yarm (North Riding, Yorkshire)  160 York, archbishops of  13, 17, 99, 186, 188 cathedral of  97 city of  97, 206, 238 king of  187 York family of Newlands Hall  52 Yorkshire  42, 67, 77, 88, 168, 170, 184, 188, 192, 196, 230, 238 bishop of Durham’s lordship in  15, 17, 105, 176, 180, 189

INDEX



commissioners of array in  168, 172 commissioners of oyer et terminer in  79 coroners of  135, 137 East Riding  17, 61, 62, 66, 94, 97, 104, 105–6, 113, 115, 135, 138 MPs for  210 North Riding  17, 35, 44, 48, 50, 61–4, 66, 67, 69, 70, 79, 129, 143, 170, 185 commissioners of array  137 justices of the peace  137, 145, 210 and Neville affinity  82, 92–101, 111, 114, 116, 136–7, 216 tax collectors  98, 136–7, 160, 212 sheriffs of  17 West Riding  35, 55, 63, 69, 82, 135, 144

Regions and Regionalism in History Volumes already published I: The Durham Liber Vitae and its Context, edited by David Rollason, A. J. Piper, Margaret Harvey and Lynda Rollason, 2004 II: Captain Cook: Explorations and Reassessments, edited by Glyndwr Williams, 2004 III: North-East England in the Later Middle Ages, edited by Christian D. Liddy and R. H. Britnell, 2005 IV: North East England, 1850–1914: The Dynamics of a Maritime Region, Graeme J. Milne, 2006 V: North-East England, 1569–1625: Governance, Culture and Identity, Diana Newton, 2006 VI: Lay Religious Life in Late Medieval Durham, Margaret Harvey, 2006 VII: Peasants and Production in the Medieval North-East: The Evidence from Tithes, 1270–1536, Ben Dodds, 2007 VIII: The Church of England and the Durham Coalfield, 1810–1926: Clergymen, Capitalists and Colliers, Robert Lee, 2007 IX: Regional Identities in North-East England, 1300–2000, edited by Adrian Green and A. J. Pollard, 2007 X: Liberties and Identities in Later Medieval Britain, edited by Michael Prestwich, 2008