Holford Matthew, Stringer Keith. Border Liberties and Loyalties in North-East England, 1200-1400 (ENG)
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BORDER LIBERTIES AND LOYALTIES
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service to the crown helped to make some of the bishop’s subjects increas-
ingly powerful gures, and as growing ties of service and lordship outside
the liberty led men to look to other sources for patronage and protection.
Some purchase on these issues is o ered by a letter of around 1312,
which describes a stage in the dispute between Geo rey Hartlepool and
Ralph Fitzwilliam over the manor of Brierton near Hartlepool.
162
e
letter, which provides a rare insight into local con ict, was prompted by
the arrival of Fitzwilliam’s men at Brierton to prevent crops from being
harvested. e writer, perhaps Geo rey Hartlepool’s estate o cial, had
complained in the rst instance to Bishop Kellawe and his council, who
had exerted some moderating in uence on Fitzwilliam. e manor was
not held directly of the bishop; even his overlordship was in doubt fol-
lowing the grant of Hartness to Robert Cli ord (d. 1314), and it was
Cli ord to whom Geo rey Hartlepool had been ordered to do homage in
1307.
163
Nevertheless Brierton still lay within ‘the liberty of the bishopric of
Durham’; it was the bishop who was seen as the principal arbiter in the area,
and who was to some extent able to impose his authority. Yet the writer’s
mood was bleak. Hartlepool had angered Fitzwilliam by presenting a peti-
tion against him in Parliament; furthermore, Fitzwilliam was a keeper of the
peace in the liberty and had been retained to defend it against the Scots. He
therefore had the right to call on the assistance of local society, and no one
in the neighbourhood of Brierton was prepared to side against him. Finally
Bishop Kellawe was unwilling to antagonise Fitzwilliam because he was
an intimate of Piers Gaveston, earl of Cornwall. e writer concluded that
Hartlepool’s best chance of reaching a settlement – if he was not prepared
to put in an appearance himself to gather local support – was to persuade
either the bishop or Marmaduke weng to write to Fitzwilliam.
164
Episcopal lordship, therefore, remained important; but the letter exposes
the limitations to which it was subject in the 1310s. Edward II was later
angered at Kellawe because he had not supported Gaveston strongly
enough against ‘the community of the realm’;
165
and the bishop may
already have had reason to be wary of the earl of Cornwall’s connections.
e demands of war, meanwhile, had made Fitzwilliam an important
representative of episcopal authority, retained by Kellawe to defend ‘the
162
DCRO, D/St/D13/1/2, pp. 36–7 (a nineteenth- century transcript; the original, then
among the Bowes muniments, cannot now be traced). For brief accounts of the dispute,
see Lapsley, Durham, pp. 211–12; VCH, Durham, iii, p. 366; Fraser, Bek, p. 217, n. 5.
163
CPR 1307–13, p. 17.
164
Thweng had a claim to superior lordship over Hartness, which he asserted after Robert
Clifford’s death in 1314: VCH, Durham, iii, p. 256.
165
Scriptores Tres, p. 94.
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royal liberty of the bishop, his lands, people and ministers’ at an annual
fee of £100.
166
at Fitzwilliam came to hold such a position, with the local
weight it carried, was itself a result of his earlier military experience: he
had served Edward I in Wales in the 1270s and 1280s, was captain for the
defence of Northumberland in 1297, and was continually summoned for
military service in the early 1300s.
167
is military experience made him
more important in the liberty than his ancestors had been, and this in turn
led to an expansion of his family’s local interests. But war was not the only
explanation for the dispute at Brierton and the di culties it raised. Geo rey
Hartlepool had looked for help outside the liberty by petitioning Edward II
in Parliament. He complained that the transfer of pleas concerning Brierton
from the king’s court to the bishop’s was against ‘the law and custom of the
realm’ and an a ront to the royal dignity. Hartlepool was a royal lawyer,
who must have had ready access to the king; and he received a favourable
response on the grounds of the king’s duty to show justice to all the inhabit-
ants of his kingdom.
168
e ‘law- state’ as well as the ‘war- state’ lay behind
the cross- currents of authority revealed by the Brierton dispute.
Law and war are indeed the nal pieces in the jigsaw of lordship in the
bishopric in the fourteenth century. Both ‘law- state’ and ‘war- state’, from
the late thirteenth century, made the crown’s servants more in uential
locally than had previously been the case. is led in turn to a correspond-
ing increase in the crown’s own in uence in the liberty. First, the expan-
sion of the central royal courts, and the emergence of a professional elite
among the men who pleaded in those courts, opened up new opportunities
for lawyers and administrators from the bishopric. ere had, of course,
always been openings for such men outside the liberty. John Lithgrains,
named a er a now lost place in the vicinity of Middleton- in- Teesdale, was
connected from early in his life with the Balliols, whose armorial bearings
he adopted, and with bishops Lisle and Bek.
169
But his administrative career
took him much wider a eld, and in 1267 he was clerk to the sheri of
Northumberland. He spent later years in the service of, among others, the
archbishops of York and of the crown, acting as justice, commissioner and
166
The only surviving indenture, for one year, was dated Christmas 1312: RPD, ii, pp.
1181–2.
167
GEC, v, pp. 513–16.
168
DCRO, D/St/D13/1/2, p. 35 (undated); cf. PROME, iii, pp. 68–9 (in the Parliament of
1315); RPD, ii, pp. 1056–8.
169
Blair, ‘Early armorials’, p. 36; DCM, Misc. Ch. 6146*, 6347 (Acta 1241–83, nos. 47, 58,
misread the name); Acta 1241–83, no. 248; JUST 1/225, m. 7; Bek Recs, nos. 23, 53. Useful
earlier biographies include Reg. Romeyn, ii, pp. 44–5, n. 2; Moor, Knights of Edward I, iii,
pp. 51–2. For his origins, see DCRO, D/Sa/D443.
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128
sheri throughout the North and elsewhere in England in the last decades
of the thirteenth century.
170
Nevertheless the emergence, during Edward I’s reign, of a legal profes-
sion with the right of pleading in the central royal courts did o er new
routes to advancement for men from the liberty.
171
Geo rey Hartlepool
provides a good example. He began his career as a legal agent for his lord,
Robert Bruce the Competitor, in the 1280s. By 1291, however, he was a
serjeant of Common Pleas, and by 1302 he had been retained as a king’s
serjeant- at- law.
172
Service for Bruce had involved him with the central
courts, but the opportunities o ered by these courts drew him away from
the liberty. Indeed, it was he who, in 1302, sued for Edward I against Bishop
Bek and his ministers concerning various infringements of royal preroga-
tive.
173
Nor was he unique in seeing the openings that lay outside the liberty.
ree contemporary lawyers – omas Fishburn, William Kelloe and John
Lisle – came from the same corner of the liberty, and all pursued successful
careers in the royal courts.
174
And it was probably as a result of their con-
nections with the central courts and administration that both Fishburn and
Lisle were feed by Durham Priory as early as 1278.
175
Similar careers can be traced in the fourteenth century. Roger Blakiston,
for example, was a serjeant- at- law and a royal justice and commission-
er.
176
e pro ts of legal service also allowed men from around the liberty
to establish themselves in the bishopric. Such gures included William
Deanham’s brother John, king’s serjeant in 1320–7, when he had already
acquired his substantial estates at Coxhoe, Hardwick- on- Sea, Herrington,
Nettlesworth, O erton and Penshaw.
177
e Scropes – well- known exam-
170
Blair, ‘Sheriffs of Northumberland’, p. 35. For his employment by the archbishops of
York, see Reg. Giffard, p. 16; Reg. Wickwane, no. 714; Reg. Corbridge, ii, no. 896.
171
Cf. P. Brand, ‘The serjeants of the common bench in the reign of Edward I: an emerging
professional elite’, TCE, 7 (1999), pp. 81–102.
172
Earliest English Law Reports, ii, pp. lv–vii.
173
JUST 1/226, mm. 1–1d, 3d.
174
Earliest English Law Reports, ii, pp. xxxvi–xl, lxv–ix, lxxvii–lxxxi. Fishburn can tentatively
be identified as the Thomas, son of Thomas clerk of Fishburn, who witnessed a Stillington
charter around 1268: Merton College, Muniments 2299.
175
Along with the other serjeants- at- law William Selby and Gilbert Thornton: Extracts from
the Account Rolls of the Abbey of Durham, ed. J. T. Fowler (SS, 1898–1901), ii, p. 488; cf.
J. H. Baker, The Order of Serjeants- at- Law (Selden Society, Supplementary Series, 1984),
index and obituary, s.v.
176
Baker, Serjeants- at- Law, index, s.v. Blaykeston.
177
Select Cases in the Court of King’s Bench, ed. G. O. Sayles (Selden Society, 1936–71), iv,
pp. lxxxvii–xc, cvii–xv; Greenwell Deeds, nos. 113, 120, 131, 163–4, 202, 204; RPD, ii, pp.
1162–3, 1261–2; DCM, 3.9.Pont.4; DURH 3/2, f. 5v. The properties passed after John’s
death to his brother William, and they constituted for a time one of the principal estates
in the liberty: C 47/1/13; E 198/3/19.
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ples of social advancement through the legal profession – also made signi -
cant acquisitions in the liberty.
178
e increasing professionalisation of the
royal courts, and the increasing fees that a select body of professional lawyers
was able to charge, thus had a signi cant impact within the liberty. e
land- market was opened to the speculations of rising men from neighbour-
ing counties; and careers in the royal courts became increasingly attractive
to talented men from the liberty. Moreover, when men from the bishopric
entered the king’s service, they acquired his patronage and protection, and
the king’s defence of their interests could easily have repercussions for the
governance of the liberty itself. Geo rey Hartlepool was granted the rever-
sion of the forfeited manor of Keverstone by Edward I while the liberty was
in royal hands; he also bene ted from the persistent support of Edward II
during his suit with Ralph Fitzwilliam over Brierton.
179
Nevertheless only a small number of men with roots in the liberty had
the desire or ability to become professional lawyers in the central courts,
still less to reach the upper levels of the royal judiciary. e opportunities
a orded by the expansion of the royal courts were always somewhat limited;
and it was through war, not law, that the king’s lordship a ected the liberty
most widely and profoundly in the fourteenth century. e impact of war
was complex; but, in the rst place, it increased the regional in uence of
magnates whose main interests lay elsewhere, and thus further increased the
range of lordship and patronage available to the liberty’s inhabitants. Henry
Lacy, earl of Lincoln (d. 1311), was overlord of Embleton and therefore
already had a certain presence in local society: the lawyer omas Fishburn,
from Fishburn four miles north- west of Embleton, had entered the earl’s
service by 1291.
180
But the earl’s connections in the liberty were signi -
cantly increased by his involvement in Scottish warfare from 1298, when
he was present at the battle of Falkirk and was granted the lands of James
the Stewart of Scotland. He recruited the services of John Allenshields, who
also held land at Fishburn, and was the receiver of the earl’s Scottish lands
in the opening years of the fourteenth century. In 1298 Emery and Peter
Kelloe of Kelloe, three miles from Fishburn, were employed on the busi-
ness of omas, earl of Lancaster, who since 1294 had been Earl Henry’s
178
NYCRO, ZBO, MP/8, 11; MG/7–11. See further B. Vale, ‘The profits of the law and the
“rise” of the Scropes: Henry Scrope (d. 1336) and Geoffrey Scrope (d. 1340), chief justices
to Edward II and Edward III’, in M. A. Hicks (ed.), Profit, Piety and the Professions in
Later Medieval England (Gloucester, 1990), pp. 91–102.
179
CPR 1301–7, p. 465; Scriptores Tres, p. 88; RPD, ii, pp. 1056–8, 1068–71, 1077–9, 1087–90,
1110–13; iv, p. 509.
180
RPD, ii, p. 1237; VCH, Durham, iii, pp. 239, 326; DURH 3/2, ff. 20v–1r; Earliest English
Law Reports, ii, pp. xxxvi–xl.
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130
son- in- law.
181
By the start of the fourteenth century, Lacy himself had
retained the military services of William Washington, who served again
with him in 1307, together with Robert Binchester, another rising gure in
the liberty.
182
A er the Earl Henry’s death, several of his retainers were taken over
by omas of Lancaster, and Lacy’s ties with the liberty help to explain
Lancaster’s connections there. ese contacts had developed signi cantly
by the 1310s. Several prominent gures from the liberty were among
those pardoned in 1313 for the death of Piers Gaveston: they included
Jordan Dalden, Richard Fitzmarmaduke, and his close associate William
Silksworth, together with William’s brother Robert, Robert Binchester, John
Conyers, Richard Rothbury, William Washington, omas Whitworth and
John Yeland.
183
Men from the liberty were less prominent in the pardons
issued to Lancaster’s adherents in 1318, but Binchester again appears,
alongside Peter Brackenbury and Geo rey and Walter Henknowle.
184
While it is unlikely that all these men were true associates of Lancaster,
both Binchester and Fitzmarmaduke, at least, were closely connected
to him. Fitzmarmaduke was granted an annuity of £20 by the earl, and
exchanged lands with him.
185
Binchester, who in 1318–19 was also in
receipt of an annuity of £20, was appointed keeper of Lancaster’s castle
at Dunstanburgh in 1319, and his connections with the earl are attested
by Bishop Beaumont’s declaration that Binchester was innocent of any
involvement in the ‘rebellion’ of Gilbert Middleton in 1317–18.
186
Recent
historians may be sceptical about Lancaster’s involvement in Middleton’s
rebellion, but the association was clearly made by contemporaries; and, as a
well- known Lancastrian associate, Binchester evidently needed to dissoci-
ate himself from Middleton.
187
181
DL 29/1/2, m. 15; DURH 3/2, ff. 20v–1r; ‘A second calendar of Greenwell deeds’, AA, 4th
ser., 7 (1930), no. 28.
182
DL 29/1/2, m. 15; CDS, v, no. 2684 (reading ‘Wessington’ for ‘Bessington’). Allenshields
also served with Lacy in 1307: CPR 1301–7, p. 323.
183
CPR 1313–17, pp. 21–5.
184
CPR 1317–21, pp. 227–35.
185
G. A. Holmes, The Estates of the Higher Nobility in Fourteenth- Century England
(Cambridge, 1957), pp. 71, 136–7, 141; J. R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, 1307–1322
(Oxford, 1970), pp. 42, 54–5, 61.
186
Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, pp. 20, 46, 339; A. King, ‘Lordship, castles and
locality: Thomas of Lancaster, Dunstanburgh castle and the Lancastrian affinity in
Northumberland, 1296–1322’, AA, 5th ser., 29 (2001), p. 225; C 47/27/8/40.
187
For recent analysis, see A. King, ‘Bandits, robbers and schavaldours: war and disorder in
Northumberland in the reign of Edward II’, TCE, 9 (2003), pp. 115–29; for allusions to
Lancaster’s involvement, A. E. Middleton, Sir Gilbert de Middleton (Newcastle, 1918), pp.
40–5.
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e collapse of Lancastrian fortunes a er the battle of Boroughbridge
(1322) nevertheless had relatively little impact on the liberty. Richard
Fitzmarmaduke was already dead, and Robert Binchester had probably
distanced himself from Lancaster and was looking to the opportunities of
episcopal and royal service. He was a regular witness to Beaumont’s char-
ters in the early 1320s, and very soon a er Beaumont’s accession he had
begun to bene t from the bishop’s patronage.
188
But Binchester’s principal
energies were directed towards royal service, which provided his greatest
rewards. In the autumn of 1322 he led troops from the liberty, and was
assigned to the custody of Holy Island with twenty men- at- arms and sixty
hobelars. In December 1326 he was con rmed as keeper of Richmond
castle, and of manors in Yorkshire and Northumberland, and was on the
king’s business in negotiations with King Robert I.
189
His career continued
to ourish under Edward III: he was granted lands in Berwick in 1334, and
also received a grant of lands in Scotland from Edward Balliol.
190
Binchester was far from being the only inhabitant of the liberty to be drawn
into the crown’s service in war: on the contrary, war brought royal service
within the reach of new numbers of men. Naturally the magnates and knights
of the liberty were conspicuous among them. e greater families of the liberty
in the fourteenth century – Fitzmarmaduke, Hilton, Lumley and Neville
– were all prominently involved from the late thirteenth century onwards.
Robert Hilton (d. c. 1310), for example, was summoned for military service
against the Scots between 1296 and 1305; his grandson and heir, also Robert
(d. c. 1322), was serving in the marches of Scotland in 1315 and was captured
there in 1319. is Robert’s son Alexander (d. c. 1361) was summoned for
military service in 1335 and had earlier had letters of protection to go overseas
with William Zouche in 1332.
191
Knightly families were also prominent, and
(in what must be regarded as a minimum list) those of Basset, Binchester,
Dalden, Hadham, Hansard, Ley, Rothbury, Washington and Yeland all saw
service in Scotland or France. e opportunities of military service also
drew lesser gentry and freeholders of the liberty, men like John Allenshields,
William Brackenbury and Peter his son, John Burnigill, Geo rey Henknowle,
Robert Kilkenny and Walter Ludworth. Alongside them were burgesses such
as the Durham men John Page, John Spicer and Ralph Warsop.
192
188
DCRO, D/St/D7/2; DCM, Reg. II, ff. 71v, 89v, 91r–2r, 102v–3r.
189
BL, MS Stowe 553, ff. 61r, 82r; CCR 1323–7, p. 624; CPR 1324–7, pp. 342, 344; 1327–30, p.
20.
190
CDS, iii, nos. 1114, 1223; Northumb. Pets, no. 142(b).
191
GEC, vii, pp. 20–4.
192
See, for example, CDS, v, nos. 3172, 3176, 3231 (‘Geoffrey de Hencuel’), 3243 (‘John de
Brimynghill’); CPR 1313–17, p. 536; C 81/1736/62; E 101/20/17 mm. 6, 8.
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Service might open up wide- ranging opportunities for such men and
profoundly reshape their aspirations. us John Gildford of Collierley,
who served under Walter Huntercombe in the later thirteenth century,
chose to di erence the Huntercombe arms when bearing argent, two bars
gemelle sable.
193
Similarly the lion rampant, which featured from the early
fourteenth century in the arms of the Washington family, may well have
echoed the arms assumed around 1300 by the lords Percy, under whom
Washingtons o en served.
194
Alan Teesdale, who had been a Balliol retainer
in the 1290s, moved in the 1310s and 1320s to associating with Hugh
Despenser the younger and John Cromwell, and he entered royal service
as a king’s esquire.
195
Or there was Richard Whitparish, a freeholder in the
area of Broom Park and Aldin Grange, who from the later 1330s served
with William Bohun, earl of Northampton, in Scotland and France.
196
Only a handful of people – Robert Binchester, Jordan Dalden and
the Washingtons, for example – had real military careers. Nevertheless
through service in the king’s armies, under whatever captains, royal lord-
ship became increasingly important to parts of the liberty’s society. And
whenever royal servants turned to the crown for the protection of their
local interests, the king’s concern with, and in uence on, the governance
of the liberty inevitably grew. is concern is especially well documented
in the 1310s, due to the survival of copies of royal letters under the privy
seal addressed to Bishop Kellawe.
197
us Edward II sought the bishop’s
favour on behalf of Robert Hansard; William Basset of O erton, on the
king’s service in Scotland, obtained a royal writ asking Kellawe to safeguard
Basset’s property at Penshaw.
198
Royal favour even extended to such small
fry as John Page of Durham. In 1314 he had letters of protection while
193
C. H. H. Blair, ‘Knights of Durham who fought at Lewes, 14th May 1264’, AA, 4th ser.,
24 (1946), p. 199.
194
G&B, nos. 2608, 2609(i); W. H. D. Longstaffe, ‘The old heraldry of the Percies’, AA,
new ser., 4 (1860), p. 162; E 101/388/5, m. 19; 101/19/36, m. 3; 101/20/17, mm. 4, 9; C
81/1736/75; CCR 1313–18, p. 201.
195
Northern Pets, no. 166, comment; CPR 1292–1301, pp. 1–2; 1324–7, p. 195; 1327–30, p.
427; PQW, p. 594; Yorkshire Hundred and Quo Warranto Rolls, ed. B. English (YASRS,
1996), p. 212; CFR, iii, pp. 70, 397; E 101/14/15, m. 9; 101/373/15, m. 8d; and JUST 1/1225,
m. 6, which identifies him as the chamberlain of Hugh Despenser the younger. Alan was
presumably related to the ‘king’s serjeant’ Hugh Teesdale, who similarly appears to have
been connected to Cromwell: CPR 1313–17, pp. 178–9.
196
CPR 1334–8, pp. 530–1; 1345–8, pp. 494, 532, 546; C 81/1734/24, 31, 40; E 101/19/36, m.
5; A. Ayton and P. Preston, The Battle of Crécy, 1346 (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 206, n. 229,
209; CDS, iii, no. 1516; DURH 3/30, m. 3d. For his interests in the liberty (and those of
his father Richard, chief forester, d. 1343), see inter alia DURH 3/2, ff. 67v–8r; RPD, iii,
pp. 343–4; iv, pp. 272–3; Hatfield Survey, pp. 119, 214; VCH, Durham, iii, p. 159.
197
Printed in RPD, iv, pp. 483–531.
198
Ibid., pp. 514–15, 528–9.
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engaged in the defence of Berwick; and around this time Edward II ordered
Kellawe to do Page justice concerning lands he had been granted by Bek.
199
He seems to have held only a small amount of property in Durham.
200
Royal servants like these also received such patronage in the liberty as
the crown had to dispense: Ralph Eppleton, king’s esquire, and probably
from the Durham family of that name, was one of those to be granted the
forfeited manor of Felling by Edward II.
201
Such men likewise brought
the crown’s authority to bear on the distribution of episcopal patronage.
Edward II wrote to Kellawe asking the bishop to grant land in Morton
Tinmouth to the king’s ‘dearly beloved’ omas Greystone, and charters
were duly drawn up on 2 March 1312.
202
But although Greystone was suc-
cessful, it must be admitted that the actual impact of the apparent stream
of royal parchment is o en unclear. e scope of the crown’s interest in the
liberty and its governance is evident; the e ect of that interest is much more
obscure. We can be reasonably certain, however, that royal pressure was
not easily disregarded; indeed it seems likely that it was relatively promi-
nent among the many pressures balanced by the bishops in their distribu-
tion of patronage. It is certainly possible to point to some men whose gains
from episcopal patronage owed everything to royal favour and nothing to
service in the liberty.
By far the best example is provided by the career of John Weardale,
and although his story has already been told in part elsewhere, it bears
repetition and ampli cation.
203
He was perhaps, like Hugh Weardale, one
of the men from the bishop of Durham’s forest of Weardale whom Bek
used to blockade Durham Priory in 1300.
204
John Weardale, however,
took whatever martial proclivities he may have had into royal service. He
rst occurs in 1304, when he was rewarded with wine and victuals worth
£5 for delivering a Scottish prisoner to the king. By 1307 he was heading
a company of y- four archers in the king’s army in Scotland; by 1310
pardons rewarding service in Scotland were being issued at his request.
205
It was around this point that royal favour began to in uence his position in
the liberty itself. In 1309 Bek granted him lands near Chester- le- Street. It is
199
CDS, v, no. 2978; RPD, iv, p. 511. He was owed money, for unknown reasons, by ‘the
community of the vill of Durham’.
200
If, as is likely, he is to be identified with the John Page whose messuage in Durham was
forfeited following his adherence to Thomas of Lancaster (C 145/88/2, 89/21) and whose
son John later conveyed lands, probably also in Durham (BL, Additional Ch. 66344).
201
CPR 1317–21, p. 335.
202
RPD, ii, pp. 1154–6; iv, p. 525.
203
King, ‘Bandits’, pp. 115–16.
204
For Hugh, see RPD, iv, pp. 31–3, 62–3.
205
CDS, ii, no. 1585; CPR 1301–7, p. 250; E 101/373/15, m. 19d; CCW 1244–1326, p. 329.
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likely that the grant was made at royal request, and it was probably again at
royal request that Bek, at about the same time, appointed Weardale forester
of Lanchester ward. Certainly there is no evidence that Weardale had any
other connections with episcopal service or administration.
206
Unsurprisingly Weardale retained his o ce during the vacancy of the
see in 1311, but he was replaced on Richard Kellawe’s accession. Shortly
a erwards Edward II wrote to the bishop an aggrieved letter requesting
Weardale’s reinstatement. is seems to have had some e ect; but soon
a er he was dismissed again, probably because his duties in the king’s
service prevented him from discharging his responsibilities. Edward wrote
again requesting Weardale’s reinstatement, and asking that he be allowed
to appoint a deputy if he could not perform the o ce in person.
207
Whether
or not this had the desired result, Edward’s letter was of little use to
Weardale, who – at least according to the Durham Priory chronicler – was
one of the brigands or schavaldours ranging over the North- East in this
period. He met his death in 1312, in obscure circumstances, at the hands of
a retainer of Bishop Kellawe.
208
e consequences were naturally serious.
Weardale’s killer, Roger Fawside, was captured by Ralph Fitzwilliam and
imprisoned at Durham, where Edward II attempted to ensure his safe cus-
tody.
209
More seriously, the king (again according to the priory chronicler)
attempted to have Kellawe transferred from the bishopric and to have his
brother Patrick arrested. Only Kellawe’s gi to Edward of a warhorse and
1,000 marks enabled reconciliation.
210
Although Weardale’s career was hardly typical, it does have wider reso-
nance as an illustration of how the ‘war- state’ extended the reach of royal
lordship and patronage in the liberty. But while that extension could be
dramatic, it is not always obvious how it a ected local attitudes towards
the liberty and its privileges, and the di culties of generalising can be
illustrated by two contrasting examples. One has already been touched on
in previous chapters – the attempt of Adam Bowes and omas Lambard
to carry out, on behalf of the crown, the inquisition post mortem of Robert
Cli ord (d. 1344), and the refusal of local freeholders to cooperate on
the grounds that they were Haliwerfolk who ought not to obey the king’s
writ.
211
Both Adam and omas themselves were local landholders and
206
Fraser, Bek, p. 212, appears to be mistaken in describing Weardale as ‘one of Bek’s
followers’.
207
Bek Recs, no. 142; RPD, iv, pp. 491, 504–5. In another letter Edward II asked Kellawe to
be ‘gracious and favourable’ to Weardale in all things: RPD, iv, pp. 493–4.
208
Scriptores Tres, p. 94; CCW 1244–1326, p. 385; RPD, i, p. 254; CPR 1307–13, p. 542.
209
RPD, iv, pp. 497, 526.
210
Scriptores Tres, p. 94.
211
See especially above, Chapter 1, pp. 51–2.
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DURHAM: PATRONAGE, SERVICE AND GOOD LORDSHIP
135
both, although they acted as royal commissioners, also served Bishop
Bury.
212
Nevertheless they were prepared to allow the needs of the crown to
take precedence over the claims of local privilege.
e counter- example comes from 1322, when proceedings in King’s
Bench to recover the advowson of Whitburn for the crown were respited.
In the words of the record, ‘Jordan Dalden and other jurors of the liberty of
the bishop of Durham between the waters of Tyne and Tees claim that they
ought not to be placed on assizes or juries anywhere outside that liberty.
ey say that they and their ancestors have used and enjoyed this freedom
from time out of mind, and ask that nothing be taken further in this plea
to the prejudice of that right.’
213
It does not particularly matter whether
the jurors said this because they objected to the crown’s claims, or because
they simply wished to spare themselves the inconvenience of a journey
outside the liberty. e jurors were prepared, as Adam Bowes and omas
Lambard were not, to prioritise local privilege over the king’s needs; and
this was despite the fact that Jordan Dalden had been in royal service in
Scotland since the early fourteenth century. Service to the crown did not
necessarily imply any lesser commitment to the liberty and its rights.
For all the di culties of inferring identities and loyalties from socio-
political networks and patterns of association, however, we can identify
the shi ing structures of lordship in which identities and loyalties in the
liberty took shape. Without doubt these structures changed considerably
from the mid- thirteenth to the mid- fourteenth century; and assessing
the changing position of the bishops of Durham in their liberty is no easy
matter. It is true that, as the Brierton dispute suggests, episcopal authority
did come to be complicated and even challenged by the increasing in u-
ence of the crown and of magnates in the liberty. It is also true that the
bishops were never the sole sources of patronage, employment and favour
in the liberty – as the Black Prince may have been in Cheshire, or John of
Gaunt in Lancashire.
214
In the thirteenth century, the families of Bruce and
Balliol o ered powerful alternative foci for the associations and ambitions
of local families. From the late thirteenth century, service to the crown, in
royal courts and in royal armies, provided an equally attractive alternative
to episcopal service, and war opened up opportunities with other lords.
Furthermore, although the patronage at the bishops’ disposal was exten-
sive, it was used modestly; relatively few local men bene ted from it, or
212
For Thomas Lambard, see RPD, iv, pp. 271, 276, 329.
213
KB 27/249, rex, m. 4; cf. KB 27/250, rex, m. 5; 27/251, rex, m. 1d.
214
P. H. W. Booth, The Financial Administration of the Lordship and County of Chester,
1272–1377 (Chetham Society, 1981), pp. 6–7; above, p. 110.
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