Holford Matthew, Stringer Keith. Border Liberties and Loyalties in North-East England, 1200-1400 (ENG)
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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES
76
Piercy.
93
e Greystoke and Fitzwilliam manor of Coniscli e, too, came
under the authority of the liberty’s institutions. It is true that the manor was
included in licences for alienation granted by Edward I to John Greystoke
and Ralph Fitzwilliam; but the nal concord granting the manor to John
for life was raised in the bishop’s court at Sadberge.
94
As we have seen, the
Balliols acknowledged only with reluctance that Barnard Castle should be
under the jurisdiction of the bishops of Durham; but a er 1200 nal con-
cords concerning that barony were nevertheless made in the bishop’s court.
e only apparent exception is the ne of 1344 raised in Common Pleas
by which omas Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, conveyed Barnard Castle
and Gainford ‘in Northumberland’: and this seems to have been an isolated
act of de ance.
95
And throughout our period, tenants and neighbours of
the Balliols and the earls of Warwick levied nes in the bishop’s court with
some frequency.
Finally, local charters provide some evidence of the nature of legal activ-
ity. References to land recovered before the bishop’s justices are relatively
frequent, whereas we know of no references to royal justices except during
the con scations of the liberty in 1302–3 and 1305–7.
96
e implication
is that the bishop’s court was the rst and usually the only resort of local
society. Even in 1304, when a deed acknowledged the possibility of royal
justices hearing pleas in the liberty, it was the bishop’s justices who were
mentioned rst.
97
We can conclude, therefore, that the limited number of
writs available in the bishopric before around 1345 was not a fundamen-
tal obstacle, and was probably more than compensated for by the relative
ease with which other writs could be obtained, and by the accessibility of
the courts themselves. at writs of entry and formedon were not rou-
tinely available was undoubtedly problematic; but it is unlikely to have
fatally compromised the e ectiveness of the liberty’s courts.
98
Admittedly
we have an unnamed bishop’s testimony that ‘many people of the liberty’
93
Percy Cart., pp. 205, 376–7.
94
CPR 1292–1301, pp. 303–4, 340; CRO (Carlisle), D/HC/2/16/1; NDD, p. 69. Three other
fines of 1278–80 concerning Coniscliffe noted in an antiquarian manuscript (NDD, p. 67)
were likewise raised in the liberty: cf. IND 1/10151, f. 12.
95
Above, Chapter 1, pp. 48–9; CP 25/1/287/41/334.
96
References to bishop’s justices: DCM, Misc. Ch. 5787, 6178; 2.1.Elemos.26a; 1.2.Finc.2,
37; 1.9.Spec.2a; 1.10.Spec.78; 1.15.Spec.38; 3.9.Spec.36; 3.10.Spec.63; 3.12.Spec.8; 3.16.
Spec.28; 4.13.Spec.50; 4.14.Spec.28; Haswell Deeds 6, 9, 17A, 55. Royal justices: see the
following note, and Bek Recs, no. 123.
97
DCM, 4.12.Spec.14.
98
For the attractions of the writ of entry, see P. Brand, The Origins of the English Legal
Profession (Oxford, 1992), p. 29; R. C. Palmer, ‘The origins of property in England’, Law
and History Review, 3 (1985), pp. 24–46. In a rather different case, around 1322, a defend-
ant in the liberty court complained about the issue of a scire facias, arguing that only
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were complaining about the inability of his chancery to issue writs of
entry, escheat, ael, besael and formedon.
99
But this was not a major hin-
drance to justice, since the crown, on petition from the bishop’s subjects,
was prepared to command the issue of such writs, presumably allowing
actions to go forward in the liberty.
100
When the bishop asked the king to
order him to do right to his subjects because no other remedy was avail-
able, he was asking for a mandate to issue such writs.
101
ey might be
open to challenge: when Bishop Bury, at Edward III’s command, issued
a writ of formedon, the defendant complained to the king that it could
not legitimately be pleaded in the liberty.
102
But the reform achieved by
1345 put paid to such challenges; and di culties before that date can be
overstated. In the early nineteenth century it was still ‘a matter of great
convenience’ for the inhabitants of Ely to have ‘justice administered as
it were at their very doors’;
103
and in the fourteenth century the prob-
lems Cumberland and Northumberland faced by virtue of their distance
from the central courts were unlikely to a ect the bishopric. ‘ e lieges
of Cumberland’ complained of the di culties of serving on assizes and
juries outside the county; while ‘the poor people of Northumberland’
complained in about 1320 of the ‘disinheritance’ they su ered because
no royal assize justices had visited the county for ten years and more.
104
In contrast, inhabitants of the bishopric might atly refuse, on the basis
of their privileges, to appear on juries outside it; and assizes were held
throughout the 1310s.
105
All this evidence is con rmed by the comparison that can be made
between the volume of Durham litigation in the liberty and that in the
central courts in 1345. Plea rolls for civil business in the liberty survive
from January of this year; they relate only to the ‘county of Durham’ and
not to the ‘wapentake of Sadberge’, and writs of entry and formedon had
become available by this time. Nevertheless the range and number of pleas
brought by all ranks of local society, when contrasted to the paucity of
royal justices could grant such a writ; but the bishop’s justices ignored the complaint, and
Bishop Beaumont denied that they had acted contrary to statute: C 255/5/2/36.
99
Select Cases in the Court of King’s Bench, ed. G. O. Sayles (Selden Society, 1936–71), ii, pp.
cxlv–vi, discussed by Scammell, ‘Origins and limitations’, p. 466.
100
As is implied by Northern Pets, no. 170, and the endorsements to nos. 171–3; and cf. Rot.
Parl., ii, p. 14.
101
Select Cases in King’s Bench, ii, pp. cxlv–vi.
102
Northern Pets, no. 170.
103
James Bentham, 1812, quoted by H. M. Cam, Liberties and Communities in Medieval
England, new edn (London, 1963), p. 187.
104
Northern Pets, no. 63; Northumb. Pets, nos. 91–2.
105
Below, Chapter 3, p. 135. For the dates of known judicial sessions, see ‘Office- holders’, ii,
passim.
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pleas from the liberty in the central courts over roughly the same period,
make it abundantly clear that the bishopric was essentially a separate judi-
cial zone, and that its judicial status bene ted the local community, which
wished to preserve it.
106
ere may have been formal mechanisms for
punishing those who sued outside the liberty, as there were in thirteenth-
century Tynedale: if so, they have le no trace, and can rarely have been
necessary.
107
A more detailed review of those pleas from the liberty that did come before
royal justices invites only a few quali cations to the above picture. Several
cases reached the royal courts for simple procedural reasons. e liberty’s
court, for example, might require the crown’s assistance in securing the
appearance of parties without lands in the bishopric.
108
In 1298 William
Aislaby sued his baili of Tra ord and Aislaby in Common Pleas; but this
was presumably because the baili , Peter ‘of Ayton in Cleveland’, had lands
only in Yorkshire. On another occasion, the record of pleas at Durham was
sent to royal justices on information that defendants outlawed in the liberty
were at large in Yorkshire, and the case was transferred to the jurisdiction
of the royal courts.
109
Another action remained undetermined while the
liberty was in royal hands under Edward I, and its cognisance was reserved
to Edward II.
110
Only by a good deal of special pleading can such examples
be said to demonstrate, as Scammell seemed to suggest, that the inhabitants
of the liberty sought royal justice in the rst instance;
111
rather they illustrate
procedural di culties that a ected the medieval legal system at all levels.
And the ability of the liberty’s courts to overcome such problems, with
the ready assistance of royal justices, is compellingly illustrated by the plea
between Peter Nuthill and Edmund Kilham over the manor of Littleburn
near Brancepeth. e case began in the liberty court in 1337; complex di -
culties saw it removed to Common Pleas, King’s Bench and Chancery – but
it was in the court at Durham, it would seem, that Nuthill nally released
106
DURH 13/221 (including some later pleas, and on m. 4d cases apparently from 16 April
1343); CP 40/341; KB 27/339 (both Hilary 1345).
107
As we will see, though, the bishop’s officers did sometimes exert private pressure to
prevent pleas from being brought outside the liberty (below, p. 80). For Tynedale, see
below, Chapter 6, p. 243.
108
CPR 1266–72, pp. 389, 473; KB 27/182, m. 32; Select Cases in King’s Bench, ii, pp. cxxviii–
ix; Emsley and Fraser, Courts, pp. 27–8; Lapsley, Durham, pp. 232–4.
109
CP 40/123, m. 66; RPD, iv, pp. 215–21; Northern Pets, no. 174.
110
This was the case of Ralph Fitzwilliam against William Sayer and others, which accounted
for a significant part of the Durham litigation in King’s Bench under Edward II. Most of
the relevant references are given in Fraser, Bek, p. 217, n. 5.
111
Scammell, ‘Origin and limitations’, p. 470.
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his claim in 1355.
112
Again, a plea of dower called from the liberty into
Common Pleas, and from there before the king in Chancery, was returned
to Bishop Bury in 1341 ‘on account of your liberty of Durham’, to be nally
concluded in the bishop’s court.
113
Other examples cited by Scammell concern advowsons Edward II
claimed against Beaumont, pleas that would naturally be heard in the royal
courts.
114
And while the crown had an acknowledged jurisdiction over pleas
from the liberty in case of error, errors were not automatically referred to
the royal courts: Richard Fitzmarmaduke, for example, before turning to
Edward II, sued a writ of error from the chancery of Bishop Kellawe.
115
e overwhelming indication, then, is that the royal courts were used by
the liberty’s inhabitants only in exceptional cases and for very particular
reasons. One of these reasons does admittedly deserve further attention:
the di culty or impossibility of proceeding in the liberty courts against the
bishop or his ministers. It was not possible for the bishop to be sued in his
own courts, as is particularly well illustrated by a plea brought in King’s
Bench in 1352 by Marmaduke Lumley against Bishop Hat eld. Lumley,
‘according to the custom of the liberty used in pleas or business touching
the bishop’s person’, had petitioned Hat eld on several occasions asking
for repayment of a debt, but the bishop had ignored his requests, and
Lumley had consequently turned to the ‘superior lordship’ of the king.
116
It was on such procedural grounds that in 1199 William Kambure had
complained in the curia regis that the bishop of Durham had imprisoned
him wrongfully; that Richard and Margery Gosbeck sued Bishop Stichill
for wardship of the manor of Tunstall in the 1269 Northumberland eyre;
and that William Hebburn sued Bishop Beaumont for a sum of money in
King’s Bench in 1317.
117
Ralph Warsop complained to Edward II of his
imprisonment by Bishop Kellawe; and it was for similar reasons that Guy,
earl of Warwick, sued Bishop Bek and his o cers in King’s Bench for an
112
Durham University Library, Archives and Special Collections, SGD 54/11, 14, 20A; CP
40/324, m. 318–318d; Bodl., MS Dodsworth 94, ff. 98v–9r; Year Books of the Reign of King
Edward the Third: Years XIV and XV, ed. L. O. Pike (RS, 1889), pp. 142–4, 364–6; Year
Books of the Reign of King Edward the Third: Year XVII, ed. L. O. Pike (RS, 1901), pp.
472–3.
113
RPD, iii, pp. 348–9.
114
Scammell cited RPD, ii, pp. 948–9; KB 27/249, rex, m. 4; 27/255, rex, mm. 17d, 21d. Other
examples include KB 27/249, rex, m. 3; below, p. 135, n. 213.
115
RPD, ii, pp. 997–8, 1008–9; CP 40/324, m. 318–318d; cf. Lapsley, Durham, pp. 182–4,
212–13.
116
KB 27/369, m. 72; see also C 255/5/3/34.
117
Northumb. Pleas, no. 13 (and cf. nos. 773, 793, 801); NAR, p. 201; KB 27/257, m.
118d.
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attack on Middleton- in- Teesdale.
118
And while the bishop’s o cers might
be brought to justice in his courts, it is easy to picture circumstances in
which this could be di cult. Around 1308, for example, John son of John
Durham complained to the king that the bishop’s o cers had seized his
land and chattels and that he was unable to obtain justice in the liberty, and
around 1310 Alan Teesdale made similar charges.
119
In 1291 Bek’s steward
and forester imprisoned a woman who had complained about them to the
king; in 1370 the liberty’s sheri forced Robert Fawdon and his wife to enter
into a bond for £40 to prevent them from seeking remedy from the king or
his council.
120
Such abuses, or alleged abuses, were thus a predictable cause
of complaint to the crown; but both abuses and complaints seem to have
been infrequent, and did not undermine the day- to- day administration of
justice in the liberty.
Finally it should cause no surprise that, where there were reasonable
grounds for doing so, parties whose pleas had not succeeded in the liberty
attempted to have their cases reviewed by royal justices.
121
But several
royal interventions in the liberty’s judicial system con rm, paradoxically
enough, that it was the bishopric’s courts around which local expecta-
tions of justice were focused. In 1330, when William Kelloe and William
Silksworth had di culties in bringing pleas before the bishop’s justices,
they did not turn to the royal courts. Instead they petitioned the king to
ensure that the pleas went forward in the liberty, as did Robert Silksworth
in 1325 and Roger Esh in 1331.
122
Similarly when Ida, widow of John
Fitzmarmaduke, obtained a royal letter in her favour, it was to demand
that Bishop Kellawe show her ‘such remedy and redress by judgement of
your court as reason demands’.
123
It is likely that ‘the unfailing willingness
of the bishop’s subjects to complain to the king’ was not, as Scammell
118
RPD, ii, pp. 1030–1, 1046–8. Warwick’s case was one of the exceptional actions com-
prising the bulk of Durham litigation in King’s Bench in Edward II’s reign. See Fraser,
Bek, pp. 221–8; Bek Recs, pp. 209–13; KB 27/197, m. 89; 27/198, m. 53d; 27/199, m. 52d;
27/200, m. 74d; 27/201, mm. 28d, 73; 27/202, m. 82d; 27/203, m. 58; and further occur-
rences until 27/221, m. 39.
119
KB 27/195, m. 11d; 27/196, m. 9d; 27/197, m. 34d; C 255/5/2/4; Bek Recs, nos. 127, 158;
Fraser, Bek, pp. 216–17.
120
JUST 1/226, m. 9d; CCR 1369–74, pp. 319–20.
121
Above, Chapter 1, p. 29.
122
C 260/40/13B, 39B; 260/41/13; 255/5/2/47; cf. 260/50/26; CCR 1330–3, pp. 58, 285. In
all these cases the source of the difficulty was Edward II’s grant of Silksworth to Richard
Embleton, which had made it impossible for the bishop’s justices to proceed. For a
comparable case, where pleas were apparently able to go forward in the liberty, see CCR
1313–18, p. 360; and note also Walter Selby’s attempt to recover Felling by assize of novel
disseisin at Durham: CCR 1341–3, p. 642.
123
RPD, iv, pp. 526–7. Her dower was indeed recovered in the bishop’s court, albeit with
subsequent complications: DCM, Misc. Ch. 6262.
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suggested, an ‘abiding weakness of Durham’s immunity’.
124
It was rather
an accepted part of the liberty’s judicial system when no other remedy was
available, as we have seen in relation to the crown’s authorisation of writs
of entry and formedon. is makes it the less surprising that the commu-
nity could seek royal intervention, as it did at some date before 1345, by
appealing to the king’s duty to ‘do right to all both within franchise and
without’.
125
us, although the crown could be as important as the bishop in
delivering justice in the liberty, the importance of the bishopric’s courts
to the local community should still be emphasised. It is, in fact, perhaps
best illustrated by the collective achievement of legal reform around
1345. is was necessitated by the inadequacies of the liberty’s judicial
systems; but it was precisely because the liberty’s courts mattered that
reform was sought and achieved. Had the local community been content
to sue at Westminster such e orts would have served little purpose. And
we are justi ed in referring again to ‘the community’ because the reforms
were – at least in name – genuinely collective enterprises, secured by ‘the
community of the bishopric’. An unnamed bishop had complained of the
paucity of writs his chancery could issue, but his petition, brought ‘before
the king and a great council’, was answered to the e ect that such a request
for change of the law could only be decided in Parliament, with the assent
of king, bishops, earls and others, and at the request not only of the bishop
but of ‘the community of the bishopric’. It was presumably this response
that lay behind the petition of ‘the people of the liberty of Durham and of
Norhamshire’, which sought the same results and which was endorsed to
exactly the same e ect as the earlier petition.
126
As ever, the social realities
behind the language of community are opaque; but the crown took the
question of collectivity seriously. Reform required the collective assent of
the local community; the liberty’s courts were important enough to moti-
vate collective action and petitioning; and by 1345 the desired result had
been achieved.
What was ‘the community of the liberty’? Historians have long been familiar
with ‘county communities’ elsewhere in England, but for a number of reasons
‘liberty communities’ are o en more elusive. In other parts of England, the
administrative, judicial and nancial demands of the crown provided a
stimulus to the development of collective obligations and interests within
124
Scammell, ‘Origin and limitations’, p. 470.
125
Northern Pets, no. 175 (where the petition is dated ‘post 1345’, but it was clearly drawn
up before that date).
126
Select Cases in King’s Bench, ii, pp. cxlv–vi; Northern Pets, no. 175.
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the county. ‘County communities’ had, under King John, begun to negotiate
collectively with the crown for relief from royal o cials and exactions, and
to o er collective payments for privileges.
127
In Durham itself ‘the knights
and free tenants of Haliwerfolk’ obtained an important charter from King
John in 1208; ‘the knights of Haliwerfolk’ paid him for this charter; and
the knights and free tenants of the liberty contributed to his passage to
Ireland.
128
Elsewhere in England, however, the negotiations and payments
of the early thirteenth century can be seen as the beginning of long- lasting
collective action on the part of ‘county communities’ in relation to royal
government.
129
is was not the case in thirteenth- century Durham. e
liberty’s relations with royal government were for the most part indirect,
and the people of the liberty seem a er 1208 to have had no cause to turn
collectively to the crown. Financial contributions were exacted from the
liberty during vacancies of the see – in 1228–9 an aid from the knights and
free tenants of the bishopric produced over £350 – but if such contributions
could be substantial, they were also infrequent.
130
And in the fourteenth
century the liberty was not usually subject to royal lay taxation; while other
royal demands on the liberty, notably military service, became much slighter
a er the early 1300s.
e demands of episcopal lordship on the liberty, for most of our period,
also seem to have been light. If episcopal administration in the thirteenth
century prompted collective activity and organisation at the level of the
liberty as a whole, it has le little trace. We hear only, in the mid-thirteenth
century, of ‘the barons, knights, and other tenants of the bishop’ complain-
ing about the men of Hartlepool; and of ‘the knights of the country’ com-
plaining about the townsfolk of Durham.
131
Furthermore, the bishops seem
rarely to have asked for ‘aids’ or ‘contributions’ from their lay subjects.
132
is was in striking contrast to such other ‘royal liberties’ as Cheshire
and the Welsh Marcher lordships. Although the men of Cheshire paid no
taxation at all in the years between 1292 and 1346, in the following decades
they made signi cant nancial contributions to the Black Prince. In 1346
an aid of £1,000 was ‘freely granted’; in 1353 an eyre was bought o , and
127
J. R. Maddicott, ‘Magna Carta and the local community 1215–1259’, Past and Present,
102 (1984), pp. 25–65.
128
Above, pp. 68–9; Pipe Roll 13 John, p. 34; cf. Pipe Roll 14 John, p. 36.
129
Maddicott, ‘Magna Carta’, passim.
130
Aids and tallages levied by the crown during vacancies, and recorded in the Pipe Rolls,
were summarised by the treasurer and barons of the exchequer around 1311 in SC
1/33/134.
131
‘Durham assize rolls’, nos. 48, 289–91 (and cf. nos. 284–5).
132
See most recently C. D. Liddy, ‘The politics of privilege: Thomas Hatfield and the palati-
nate of Durham, 1345–81’, Fourteenth Century England, 4 (2006), pp. 61–79.
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various rights were granted or con rmed, in return for 5,000 marks; and
further communal nes were exacted between 1357 and 1362.
133
e Welsh
Marcher lordships paid similarly high levels of communal nes, and their
lords were also able to levy various ‘“gi s”, “aids”, “tallages”, “mises” [and]
“subsidies”’.
134
Durham was hardly ever subject to such demands. Although the lack of
nancial records from the liberty for most of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries means that our knowledge is incomplete, levies on any scale
are likely to have le some kind of record. ere are indeed a couple of
references to nancial exactions under Bek, who ordered the constable
of Barnard Castle to levy money from his bailiwick, and was said to have
tallaged episcopal lands to the unlikely tune of 10,000 marks.
135
A er Bek,
however, an aid granted to Hat eld in 1349 is the only levy comparable
with the subsidies of Cheshire or the Welsh Marches.
136
e absence of
other aids is not easy to explain. In the thirteenth century the bishops cer-
tainly had the power to levy ‘through the whole bishopric’ a ‘common aid’,
contributions to which might be speci ed in charters of feo ment or might
simply be ‘reasonable’.
137
When tenants in Bedlingtonshire commuted
various services in the 1250s, they were to be quit of merchet and aid,
‘except when all the freemen of the bishopric give aid’.
138
If this aid related
to the ‘common aid’ levied by the crown during vacancies, it was worth
around £350, but we do not know how frequently, or with what success,
the bishops attempted to raise it.
139
What seems likely, however, is that
developments in public nance outside the liberty curtailed the bishops’
powers to impose such taxes. As royal taxation came to require the consent
of the community of the realm in circumstances of necessity, the bishops
may have found it increasingly di cult to justify ‘tallages’ and ‘aids’ on lay
133
Booth, Financial Administration, pp. 119–24.
134
Davies, Lordship and Society, p. 184; more widely, T. Thornton, ‘Taxing the king’s
dominions: the subject territories of the English crown in the late Middle Ages’, in W. M.
Ormrod, M. Bonney and R. Bonney (eds), Crises, Revolutions and Self-Sustained Growth
(Stamford, 1999), pp. 97–109.
135
DCM, Loc.XXI.18, m. 5; Misc. Ch. 5646. See also PROME, ii, pp. 484–5; CCR 1333–7,
p. 190.
136
The 1349 aid is fully discussed below, p. 92.
137
Examples include Acta 1241–83, nos. 55–6, 58, 91, 115, 170; Greenwell Deeds, no. 6;
DCRO, D/Lo/F2, 3, 8, 9, 11. Specification of the sums due for ‘common aid’ occurs
in charters until around 1260, but very rarely thereafter – though specifications for
‘common tallage’ appear later, and it is likely that ‘aid’ and ‘tallage’ were one and the same:
Acta 1241–83, nos. 208, 245; DURH 3/2, f. 25r.
138
Boldon Buke, ed. W. Greenwell (SS, 1852), p. 39.
139
For an aid granted ‘by grace’ to Bishop Poore by the freemen of Howdenshire and
Norhamshire, see CPR 1232–47, p. 190.
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society, even if they were still able to call on ‘contributions’ from the local
clergy.
140
For much of its history, then, the liberty did not face the collective
obligations that the English shires had to meet, and pressures to develop
collective institutions and identities were correspondingly weaker. Only in
the rst half of the fourteenth century did an exceptional series of circum-
stances prompt the emergence and development of a ‘community of the
liberty’. First, especially a er 1296, there were the demands of the emerging
Edwardian ‘war- state’, which in Durham, as elsewhere, required collective
action and decision- making on the part of local communities. us in 1296
it was decided, ‘by the assent of the community of the whole bishopric’, that
each vill in the liberty should supply carriage to Scotland in accordance with
its size.
141
In 1300 Edward I thanked ‘the knights, good men and the whole
community’ of the liberty for the military service they had granted him ‘by
common assent’; conversely the Haliwerfolk had collectively refused such
service earlier in 1300, and ‘the magnates, knights and free tenants’ of the
liberty arranged with the crown in 1311 to make a communal payment of
£200 in lieu of providing military service.
142
Another stimulus to collective activity was the oppressive regime of
Anthony Bek (1283–1311). ‘ e knights and free tenants of the liberty’
swore a common oath to resist Bek in April 1300, and to contribute
collectively to the costs of pursuing pleas in Parliament and the other royal
courts; and ‘the community of the liberty’ petitioned Edward I and negoti-
ated collectively with the bishop.
143
Further communal action was required
a few years later by the impact of Scottish raids. From 1311 until 1317, and
then again in 1327 and 1343, the inhabitants of the liberty found it expe-
dient to purchase respite from Scottish attacks with substantial cash pay-
ments, averaging perhaps £1,000 a year in the 1310s.
144
Finally there were
140
Cf. G. L. Harriss, King, Parliament and Public Finance in Medieval England to 1369
(Oxford, 1975), passim. References to clerical contributions include Lapsley, Durham, p.
274; DCM, Bursar’s Accounts, 1298–9, m. 2; Bursar’s Accounts, 1334–5; Reg. Hatfield,
ff. 131v–2r. Bek was accused of extorting a tenth from his clergy: DCM, Misc. Ch. 5646.
141
JUST 1/226, m. 5d.
142
Surtees, I, i, Appendix, p. cxxix; DCM, Loc.XXVIII.14, no. 15.
143
Below, p. 87; Chapter 4, pp. 153, 158, 162–7.
144
The figures given in C. McNamee, The Wars of the Bruces (East Linton, 1997), p. 135,
are certainly too low. A truce in 1311, not there listed, may have cost as much as 1,000
marks, partly met by a clerical subsidy of 10d. in the pound (RPD, i, p. 97). The truce of
1312–13 cost 1,000 marks according to the Durham Priory chronicler (Scriptores Tres,
p. 94), and £2,000 according to Chron. Lanercost, p. 220. In 1313, when the clerical con-
tribution was 20d. in the pound, the total sum was probably between 1,500 and 2,000
marks. In 1315 the Scots demanded 800 marks and – probably when that payment was
late – exacted what was called in 1343 a ‘double payment’ of 1,600 marks (Scriptores Tres,
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DURHAM: GOVERNMENT, ADMINISTRATION AND LOCAL COMMUNITY
85
three payments made to the crown to avoid visitations of royal justices in
eyre during vacancies of the see: in 1311 Bishop Kellawe paid 1,000 marks
on behalf of ‘the men of the bishopric’; in 1333 ‘the community of the
liberty’ paid 1,000 marks; and in 1345 the community o ered £400, a sum
eventually levied by Bishop Hat eld in 1349.
145
Almost all these payments were negotiated by ‘the community of the
liberty’, and the language of collective action is particularly prominent in
the 1310s. In 1312, in Bishop Kellawe’s absence, a truce was made between
King Robert I and ‘the men of the community of the bishopric of Durham
between Tyne and Tees’, and the envoys who negotiated the truce were
appointed by that community. In 1314–15 Durham Priory entered into
a bond with omas Randolph, earl of Moray, ‘for the community of the
bishopric of Durham’, hostages were sent to Scotland ‘from the commu-
nity’, and Richard Fitzmarmaduke ordered the seizure of money from the
priory, ‘with the assent of the clergy and laity of the whole community and
liberty’. In 1317–18, during a vacancy of the see, the sums raised to pay for
a truce were repeatedly said to be ‘from the community of the bishopric of
Durham’, and William Deanham was in Scotland ‘on the business of the
community’.
146
Again, to give a later example, the eyre ne of 1345 was
negotiated on behalf of ‘the community of the liberty’, and ‘the community’
arranged to pay the expenses of its representatives.
147
e social and political realities behind such language are inevitably
obscure and complex. Contemporaries rarely troubled to describe ‘the
community’, and although it was su ciently capable of de nition to sue
and be sued in the bishop’s court, the glimpses o ered by the records
hardly present a coherent picture.
148
It seems certain that some people were
recognised as having a greater voice in the community than others did,
and it is no surprise that these could be identi ed as ‘the more substantial
men’ (bones genz) of the bishopric. It was these ‘greater men’ with whom
pp. 96–7; RPD, iv, pp. 160–5, 274). The sums paid in 1317–18 were also very large: they
were partly met by a considerable clerical levy of 30d. in the pound (two instalments of
15d.). By 9 November 1317 somewhere in the region of 900 marks had been received,
exclusive of what the bishop and clergy owed for their temporalities; but on 1 May 1318
the community was still said to owe Bruce 1,000 marks (DCM, Misc. Ch. 4111, 4265,
and see also 4399).
145
Scriptores Tres, p. 93; CFR, iv, pp. 378–9; v, p. 422; below, p. 92.
146
RPD, i, pp. 204–5; Scriptores Tres, Appendix, no. 94; DCM, Misc. Ch. 3455, 3531, 4458,
5010, 6029.
147
CFR, v, p. 422; DCM, Misc. Ch. 6059.
148
For actions against ‘the community’, see below, pp. 87, 91. Around the second quarter of
the fourteenth century, John Harpin provided surety for twenty marks he had received
from Durham Priory in case ‘the community of the bishopric’ was to exact the money
from the priory: DCM, Misc. Ch. 4487.
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