CHAPTER FOUR

The Defence of Northern England, 1311–1322

‘. . . our strong men are become tyrants, our defenders destroyers, our protectors traitors’

There is no mystery as to why the English were losing the Wars of the Bruces: on the one hand, the preoccupation with domestic discord reduced even defence of the realm to a lesser priority in the eyes of king and magnates; on the other, crop failures from 1315 to 1318 and widespread social distress made it difficult to exact purveyance sufficient to keep armies in supplies. For the defence of northern England the consequences were disastrous. Edward II neglected – or was unable – to carry war into Scotland. Payment of cash by English communities in return for truces allowed all initiative to pass to the Scots. Logistical support for garrisons and the maintenance of fortifications were woefully inadequate. Expeditions of magnates to the north of England became mere exercises in containment, achieving only a temporary and partial security. Finally, deployment of mounted free companies contributed to the collapse of all authority in that region.

EDWARD II: DEFENCE OF ENGLAND, INVASIONS OF SCOTLAND

The most telling criticism of Edward II’s handling of the war is his failure to carry war into Scotland. He could only have regained control by showing single-minded dedication to victory, demonstrated by a constant royal presence in the north, invasions of Scotland, and maintenance of garrisons to control that country. In a petition of uncertain date men of the west marches stressed that the king should come in person and with force:

And sire our allegiance will not suffer that we keep from you any longer the truth, which is that you waste your money on Keepers of the Marches towards Scotland, because, sire, no Keeper can arrest the force of your Scottish enemies without the presence of you and your great army . . .¹

Foremost in Edward’s list of priorities was the defeat of a baronial opposition led by his cousin, Thomas Earl of Lancaster. A successful offensive required the undivided energy of the kingdom; but when the opposition forced the king to choose between his domestic priorities and firm action against the Scots, he always chose the former. Royal expeditions therefore took place only when the king was freed from domestic pressures, or when he felt he could use the war as a means to thwart his opponents. Thus his expedition of 1310/11 was embarked upon to undermine the work of the Ordainers and to protect Piers Gaveston;² that of 1319 was made possible by the ‘reconciliation’ with Lancaster brought about by the Treaty of Leake;³ and that of 1322 by his victory over Lancaster. The priority which Edward accorded to defeat of his domestic enemies is illustrated by an episode in 1322: when Andrew Harclay travelled to Gloucester to inform the king that the truce with the Scots had expired, his response was merely to empower Harclay to negotiate an extension of that truce until he had dealt with the baronial revolt.⁴

But Edward II was not alone among the English aristocracy in giving low priority to the defence of northern England. He was denied support from his magnates while he pursued domestic policies of which they did not approve. Most refused to join his expedition of 1310/11; Lancaster and Warwick refused to participate in the Bannockburn campaign.⁵ There are other reasons, too, for the failure of Edward II’s administration to take resolute action. The untimely death of several northern magnates, Robert Clifford (1314), Thomas de Multon of Gilsland (1314) and Henry Percy (1315), undoubtedly left regional interests under-represented in the counsels of the king. And whereas the French alliance was undoubtedly an advantage to Edward in many respects, Philip the Fair’s sympathy for Scotland could bridle his efforts to subdue the Scots, and in 1313 the need to visit France diverted attention from the war.⁶ A crippling lack of funds was another element accounting for Edward II’s failure to provide adequately for the war, at a time when the king’s freedom to manage was hedged about in every direction.⁷ His father had bequeathed to him £200,000 in debts; and since local communities and baronage were already outraged by the incidence of purveyances, prises and additional export duties, scope for taxation was very restricted. From 1311 the Ordinances denied Edward the right to collect duties from alien merchants and required the dismissal of his Italian bankers the Frescobaldi; from 1315–19 customs revenues declined as the wool exports were sent into depression by murrain of sheep, famine and the general economic malaise.

In spite of all this Edward II mounted four royal expeditions into Scotland: 1310–11, 1314, 1319 and 1322 (that of 1307 had already been organised by his father). All were formidable; that of 1322 involved an infantry force just short of 20,000 men, almost as large as Edward I’s army of Falkirk.⁸ But of these, the first was undermined by baronial dissent; the second and third were defeated by the Scots; and the fourth was abandoned because storms wrecked the supply fleet. The enormous effort which government put into the recovery of Scotland is again illustrated by the victualling record. The main obstacle to the English occupation and permanent conquest of Scotland was shortage of provisions for an occupying army. Records survive for most years of the victualling of Berwick and Carlisle, the main supply depots; and receipts of victuals at these bases are represented in Charts 3–6.⁹ A wide variety of goods and materials were stockpiled at the bases, but for clarity the analysis is confined to two staple foods, wheat and oats. For comparison the figures for the later years of Edward I’s reign are included. They show the consistently high stocks maintained under Edward I, contrasting with erratic though generally low levels of stores under his successor. They also illustrate the relative importance of the victualling effort at Berwick on the eastern march, the preferred route of English armies bound for Scotland, over that on the poorer, western march supplied from Carlisle.¹⁰ In 1316 difficulties of access to Berwick became so acute that the receiver’s office on the east coast had to be removed to Newcastle. Preparations were also made for royal expeditions in 1308, 1309, 1316, 1317, 1318 and 1323; all of which involved strenuous logistical exertions, and all of which came to nothing.¹¹

One of the more obvious points is that the victualling effort for the Bannockburn campaign exceeded anything that had been achieved by Edward I. The Carlisle charts, showing the flow of provisions from Ireland to sustain defence of the west march are of particular interest for the next chapter. Highlighted on the Berwick chart is the role of Italian merchants in supplying the English war effort on the east. Of these, Antonio Pessagno was the most important.¹² Banker, diplomat and war-contractor, Pessagno’s ascendancy at the English court is demonstrated by a letter of 1313, in which he is described as ‘a stronger runner’ than Gaveston in his heyday. Pembroke was said to be supporting him with all his influence, and opinion had it that ‘the court is led according to his judgement and will’. Pessagno made possible the Bannockburn expedition of 1314: by negotiating a huge loan from Pope Clement V for the English king of 160,000 florins (£25,000) in return for papal control of the revenues of Gascony; by lending, in the months leading up to the campaign, at least £21,000 to the exchequer; and by supplying three quarters of the wheat and oats received at Berwick. As security for vast sums lent to Edward II – in excess of £145,000 to the crown between 1310 and 1319 – Pessagno had received custody of the English crown jewels. He was instrumental in supplying wheat for the next major expedition in the north, that of Arundel in 1317. Edward II was forced in November 1317 to appoint him as Seneschal of Gascony, to assist in the recovery of the revenues of Gascony from the papacy. But even from Gascony he strove to facilitate the war with Scotland, and undertook to furnish a small army of 200 knights and 2,000 men-at-arms from the resources of the duchy, and galleys for the Irish Sea. He proved inept at dealing with the Gascon nobility, however, and when he embarrassed the administration he was arrested in November 1318, and subsequently left the service of Edward II – to the enormous detriment of the royal finances. By the time of Edward’s last invasion of Scotland in 1322 another Italian merchant had been found to take Pessagno’s place. Manentius Francisci provided £2,735 worth of wheat (2,614 quarters), bought in London and St. Botulph’s and from the Archbishop of Canterbury.¹³

No financial wizard, however, could insure England’s war effort against the effects of famine, murrain, widespread discontent at taxes and purveyance and baronial opposition – all of which inhibited Edward II from defending the north with conviction. But Edward was nevertheless guilty of a serious miscalculation; after Bannockburn he became preoccupied by the need to invade Scotland with heavily armoured foot spearmen. He pursued the assembly of this force relentlessly, and in spite of the glaring fact that the north of England, devastated by Scottish raids, required a totally different sort of defence lightly armoured and highly mobile cavalry to bring the Scottish raiders to battle. He further strained the loyalty of local communities by persistent attempts to shift the financial burden of military service onto their shoulders, by extending the period of military service and by insisting on more elaborate armour. In his defence it may be said that Edward was raising the level of preparedness in northern communities by increasing requirements for possession of armour.¹⁴ Furthermore, in his preparations for campaigning in 1323 he recognised the need for speed and mobility, anticipating that fighting would be on foot, and declaring that wheeled vehicles would not be as useful for carrying baggage as sumpter horses.¹⁵

On occasions Edward II’s government could demonstrate an integrated approach to military and naval crises facing it in the north of England, in Ireland and on the Irish Sea. In March 1315 the royal council planned joint naval offensives in the Irish and North Seas, together with a reorganisation of commands in northern England.¹⁶ In August and early September 1315, under the influence of the earl of Lancaster, a council was held at Lincoln to co-ordinate reaction to the continuing threat to Carlisle and recent Scottish successes in Ireland. Presumably it undertook the planning of Lancaster’s campaign. It resulted in an announcement that the king would campaign in the north from the feast of All Saints (1st November) and in the despatch of John de Hothum to Ireland.¹⁷ On another occasion, in November 1316, and without the prompting of Lancaster, simultaneous appointments were made to commands in England, Ireland and Wales.¹⁸

THE PURCHASE OF PEACE

Toleration and encouragement of suffrances de guerre or short-term, purchased truces was an early and grievous mistake on the part of Edward II. It allowed Robert I to become established in Scotland as a plausible alternative source of authority; and it supplied the Bruces with a steady flow of funds and foodstuffs. For Edward II the truces were a short-term alternative to military action which he resorted to for two reasons: since the king did not have to pay for them, they were cheaper than campaigning; and they also saved Edward from compromises he might have to make on domestic issues in return for taxation to launch a campaign. Only as the situation in the north deteriorated did Edward show a gradual awareness that the taking of such truces was eroding his authority, and he began to prohibit them from 1315.¹⁹

From the first days of his reign Robert I used extortion widely as he struggled to survive. Robert effectively had an ‘official’ truce with Edward II from 1308 until 1310; but during this time the position of English garrisons deteriorated, and commanders were permitted to make whatever deals were necessary to retain their positions. Measures recommended by the English royal council in August 1308 stipulated that, while the king himself should take no truce or suffrance from Robert, ‘wardens of Scotland may take such as long as possible, as they have done hitherto of their own power or by commission’. Here there is no sense that the royal dignity was being compromised by these small-scale, temporary agreements in distant localities. The document implies that truces were a military necessity to gain time for victualling and garrisoning. As to whether the king should be bound by the truces of his commanders, the council shows a very relaxed attitude: ‘he may break the truce at pleasure, if others will yield this point; but if they will not, the truce is to be made without it’.²⁰ Resistance to Robert I was therefore from the first neither principled nor dogmatic, but shaped by day-to-day contingencies.

In the temporising climate of 1308–10, however, when English garrisons were compelled to strike deals with the Bruces, truce also began to be taken by Scottish rural communities which were unarmed, isolated and vulnerable to intimidation. The word tributa is used to describe the payments made; but its translation as ‘tribute’ is scarcely accurate, for no obeisance or recognition of lordship was implied. There are examples of communities paying in order to remain outside the lordship of an aggressor.²¹ It was common for defenders to take the initiative in proposing truce. The first that comes to notice was made in 1308 when the Bruces took tributa from Galloway ‘under agreement that it should be left in peace’. In that same year Edward Bruce and Robert’s other lieutenants invaded Galloway, ‘disregarding the tributa which they took from them’.²² Truces, then, were not always observed, though subsequent events show that the Bruces did not generally violate these arrangements without reason.

The purchase of peace is next recorded when Robert I was closing in on Lothian and Berwickshire after Edward II’s withdrawal in 1311. Not enough information is available to allow meaningful generalisation about their cost, duration or how they were negotiated. There were at least five truces for south-east Scotland but probably many more, spanning most of the whole period from Edward II’s withdrawal in summer 1311 and Bannockburn. What little is known is as follows:²³

Time Span	Duration	Cost
Sept 1311–2 Feb 1312	4 months	[Unknown]
Feb 1312 – [Unknown]	[Unknown]	[Unknown]
[Unknown] – 24 June 1313	[Unknown]	[Unknown]
24 June 1313 – 9 July 1313	15 days	[Unknown]
9 July 1313 – Nov 1313	5 months	1,000 qtrs corn

After Robert I’s raid of September 1311 ‘those of the earldom of Dunbar, next to Berwick in Scotland, who were still of the King of England’s peace, were very heavily taxed for a truce until the Purification (2nd February 1312)’.²⁴ The men of the earldom were evidently paying with Robert to remain outside his lordship, for this truce was later justified as necessary ‘for the safety of the country and their allegiance’.²⁵ In January 1312 Edward II gave power to David de Atholl, Alexander de Abernethy, Adam Gordon and others to negotiate with the enemy on behalf of the ‘people of Scotland’ in preparation for renewal of the arrangement; and in November he ordered sheriffs and constables in what remained of his Scottish territories to contribute cash towards the truces and to curb abuses perpetrated by their garrisons which threatened to disrupt them.²⁶ These agreements were organised by nobles of the district calling themselves the ‘commune’ or ‘people’ of Scotland, and led by Adam Gordon and Patrick Dunbar Earl of March. They embraced the three remaining Anglo-Scottish sheriffdoms of Berwick, Roxburgh and Edinburgh, and the total cost of truce seems to have been apportioned to each sheriffdom, with Edinburgh expected to pay a quarter of the cost. The ‘commune of Scotland’, however, did not have co-operation from English garrisons and wrote to the king complaining bitterly of purveyance, seizure of goods and persons, extortion of ransoms, and in particular of arrests which endangered the truce.²⁷

The next petition from ‘the people of Scotland’ reveals a five-month truce costing a thousand quarters of corn, and further rampant excesses by English garrisons. Distrustful of all Scots and irregularly paid, garrisons made no distinction between the Bruces’ partisans and other Scots and terrorised the population with wholesale arrests, extortions and seizures. The random and insensitive activities of the commander at Roxburgh added to the cost of the truce when he arrested some individuals for whose ransom the community had to pay 80 marks to the Roxburgh garrison, plus a further 160 marks to the enemy as a fine for breach of the truce. Adam Gordon, leader of the Anglo-Scottish community, was arrested while remonstrating with the warden of Berwick. Edward II did respond to the petitions of the community: the keeper of Berwick was ordered not to jeopardise truces; inquiries were made into the pay of the garrison at Berwick; a letter of thanks was dispatched to Anglo-Scottish communities; the outraged Adam Gordon was exonerated (though only after after appearing before the king at Westminster to protest his innocence); and the keeper of Berwick was replaced.²⁸ The conflict of interest between the King of England and his liegemen of Scotland was now glaring. Why should Anglo-Scottish communities continue to pay to remain loyal to a king who would not protect them?

The extraction of cash in return for peace was such a lucrative business that the Bruces could hardly fail to extend it beyond Scotland as soon as the opportunity arose. The Earl of Ulster was forced to buy truce in 1313, though when Robert’s galleys came to collect, they were beaten off by the Ulstermen.²⁹ Fourteen years later Robert again descended on Ulster and this time there is no doubt as to the terms of the truce exacted. The transcript of an indenture between the King of Scotland and the seneschal or stewart of the earldom of Ulster survives. It is dated 12th July 1327 and shows that a year’s peace was purchased in return for a hundred chaldrons of wheat and a hundred of barley to be paid half at Martinmas, half at Whitsun. In monetary terms this was a fairly minor exaction; at four English quarters to the chaldron and at current prices in Scotland its monetary value comes to about £260.³⁰

The north of England offered far greater returns. The ‘men of Northumberland’ are said by Lanercost to have bought three truces from the Scots:

Northumberland paid up after the raid of September 1311, and after the August raid of 1312; and at Midsummer 1313 Robert had only to make threatening noises for them to pay up again. The source for this information is the Lanercost Chronicle, but Northumberland truces are referred to elsewhere.³¹ Lanercost states that in the autumn of 1311 ‘the men of Northumberland’ sent envoys to King Robert. This deputation negotiated for the whole county as a ‘commune’, but presumably it was dominated by the interests of the chief lords. It may have availed itself of the formal sanction of the county court. There was not much unity of purpose or community feeling in northern English counties at the time, and county courts were often forums for the stewards of the rival lordships to fight out their long-standing and bitter local rivalries; but in so far as the fourteenth-century county had any unity, it was as a tax-paying, money-raising entity. During the wars in Scotland comparable bargains were made with English kings over loans and provision of troops in the name of the county community of Northumberland.³²

Whether or not the county court was consulted, there seems to have been a correspondence between methods used to raise cash for these truces and the forms of regular taxation. Northumberland raised money for Robert I’s exactions as though for regular subsidies payable to Edward II. The established distinction in regular taxation between ‘temporalities’ (secular property, such as manors, which paid the lay subsidy) and ‘spiritualities’ (property pertaining to the church, such as tithe income from benefices, which paid the clerical subsidy) seems to have been adhered to in levies for the truce. Traces of levies on temporalities in Northumberland survive in the records of Durham Priory, where bursar’s account rolls for 1313/14 and 1314/15 record that the Priory paid a levy for its Northumberland manors, Wallsend and Willington.³³ It is not known what assessment was used to levy the money. There were also levies on spiritualities; in 1312/13 a tenth was levied on Northumberland benefices through the normal machinery of ecclesiastical taxation and described as ‘conceded to Sir Robert Bruce for the defence of the see’.³⁴ The sum of £2,000 may be a stock figure used by the Lanercost chronicler simply to denote a large sum of money. But it is a not improbable sum; and something very like it was paid by the western march in 1312. It is roughly double the amount paid by Northumberland to Edward I in the lay subsidy of 1296, and it represents 24 percent of the wealth of the county as assessed.³⁵ To levy this twice, maybe three times in as many years, was to extract a ruinous tribute. Surprisingly the cost of peace per day fell from £13 in 1311 to £6 in 1312. The cost (in these terms) appears to have declined for all the county communities on the border in these years. It is difficult to account for this. Certainly county communities would have found it increasingly difficult to pay, but this is not something the Scots would have allowed for.

Besides these quasi-regular lay and ecclesiastical subsidies paid for property and parishes within the bounds of Northumberland, Durham Priory also paid additional sums for immunity for its northern liberty, the parishes of Norhamshire and Islandshire which technically lay outside the county. The sums paid for this area, £25 in 1313–14 and £17. 19s. the following year, represent contributions to a separate deal, independent of the county levy, and designed to prevent repetition of the burning of Norham in 1312.³⁶The payment in 1314–15 ‘to have a truce’ for Norham and Islandshire must have been one of the last payments for the enclave.³⁷ There were also more occasional sweeteners to be provided. Bribes were paid to Scottish agents and go-betweens, usually referred to as ‘spies’. In 1311 the accounts of Ponteland show 12d. paid ‘as a gift to a certain spy for the Scots’, and in 1317 or 1318 Durham paid 2s. to ‘Scottish spies’.³⁸ Ultimately it was all in vain. As the graph of tithe income from those parishes reveals, the Scots destroyed North Durham in 1316; by 1318–19 the only income from Durham’s Northumberland possessions was £10 from the tithes of Ellingham parish; every other revenue rendered nothing on account of the burning of the Scots.³⁹

On the English west march four truces are known to have been bought. Here again the cost per day of truces may have fallen in successive years:⁴⁰

One can be less confident however that truces bought by ‘the men of the western march’ or ‘the men of Cumberland’ relate to whole counties. Historically the western march was much more fragmented than the eastern, being divided formally into wards and in more practical terms into liberties and lordships, each jealous of its independence. The entry for 1312 in the Chronicle of St. Mary’s Abbey, York records that the truces of 1312 were bought by ‘Northumbria, Gilsland, Cumberland, Allerdale and Copeland’.⁴¹This suggests that the western communities could on occasion bargain with the Scots in units much smaller than the county, namely the constituent lordships.

But the truce of 1313 to 1314 extended all over the county of Cumberland and was paid for on the basis of an assessed levy. On 4th October 1314 Edward II ordered the audit of a levy taken for use of his Scottish enemies by William de Mulcaster, Richard de Kirkebride and Alexander de Bastenthwaite.⁴² The final membrane of the account survives, giving assessments, receipts, and sums outstanding for a part of the ward of Allerdale, for the liberties of Penrith, Sowerby, the Bishop and the Prior of Carlisle and for Alston Moor. The surviving part of the Allerdale section is detailed, giving the contributions of separate vills and of individual parish clergymen. The sum of 2,200 marks (£1,466) was due to ‘Robert Bruce’, to be paid in two instalments, at the Assumption (15th August 1313) and Easter (7th April 1314). Assessment was probably based upon the abandoned lay subsidy of 1312, and funds originally collected for that tax may have been diverted to buying off the Scots, prompting the king to have the account audited. Unusually, spiritualities and temporalities are both included in this levy; the usual practice was separate levies for each. The total assessment came to only 2,202 marks, so practically no margin had been built into the assessment to cover expenses of collection. Only 1,540 marks (£1,026) was actually raised and, out of this, hefty expenses were paid to a few local gentry, including bribes to intermediaries, costs of travelling to Scotland and maintenance of hostages. The levy was therefore managed very badly.⁴³

The total expenses came to 1,550 marks (£2,325). Of this, 1,290 marks (£860 or 59 percent of the sum demanded) found its way to King Robert. Philip de Lindsay, a Scot still formally loyal to Edward II, was paid £8 for travelling to Scotland twice on business concerning the truce. Presumably he was delivering cash. Bribes paid to intermediaries, perhaps essential to maintaining trust, came to £32. They included 20 chaldrons of oaten flour (80 qtrs.) to King Robert; and £12 in cash, a salmon and two measures of wine to Brother Robert de Morton, King Robert’s ‘attorney’. Expenses of collection paid to the organisers came to £40; but other payments, including £90 paid for the maintenance of the sons of local knights as hostages in Scotland, allowed the organisers scope for creaming off a profit. At first the levy was supervised by Richard de Kirkebride with Alexander de Bastenthwaite assisting. Both had an interest in its success, having given sons to the Scots as hostages. Three sergeants of the peace traversed the county from August 1313 to Easter 1314 collecting money. The brief Scottish raid at Christmas 1313 suggests that already payments were behind. Collectors of the lay subsidy granted to Edward II in 1313 reported that the Scots then invaded Cumberland because the people were unable to pay for the truce. Needless to say, the collectors were unable to carry out their task. Towards Easter, when it became clear that not enough would be raised to pay the second instalment, panic set in and Bastenthwaite and others rode for six days with a posse of foot and horse, scouring the countryside for cash to stave off invasion. When this failed to raise enough to propitiate the Scots, Edward Bruce invaded to collect in person.⁴⁴

On the east march the system of buying truce collapsed after Bannockburn. Northumberland was already descending into chaos. In September 1314 Edward II ordered an investigation into burnings and depredations by ‘malefactors’ in Northumberland who had ‘broken truces made between the commonalty of the county, for the peace and tranquillity of the king’s people there, and the king’s Scottish enemies’.⁴⁵ The terrorism of local bandits known as schavaldores seems to have been blamed for provoking the Scottish raids of 1314. But whatever the precise cause of the breakdown, there was no longer any sense in buying time since the longed-for royal expedition had arrived, gone to Scotland and been defeated. In the anarchy which then descended on the east march, it became impossible to arrange truces for the whole county. Instead the Scots were free to extort relatively large amounts from terrified, isolated communities. But Scottish gains would have been subject to diminishing returns, as the flight of tenantry restricted the productivity of the land, and famine and animal murrain destroyed incomes. About the year 1315 the earl of Moray was demanding a colossal £270 from the terrified burgesses of Bamburgh; but the half-bushel of wheat given to Philip de Moubray by the reeve of Ponteland ‘to have a truce’ may have been more typical of Scottish gains on the east march at that time.⁴⁶ On the west march the uneasy peace of the truces gave way to the violent years of 1315 and 1316, but later there occurred a revival of truce-taking. Moray was at Lochmaben in early 1319 offering the men of Cumberland and Westmorland truce in return for 600 marks. The surprising recovery of the western march in these later years is apparent in its ability to provide manpower and grain for the campaign of 1319, in contrast to the meagre contributions of Northumberland.⁴⁷

The Bishopric of Durham continued to pay for truces long after the Scots had overrun Northumberland. Mrs. Scammell explained this in terms of Durham’s long tradition as a compact political unit and its social and geographical cohesion;⁴⁸ however, distance from the border was equally important. English border counties had been in the front line of the Scottish attack since 1311 and had spent much manpower and resources in Scotland.⁴⁹ Sheltered from the war, Durham may have been better able to meet Scottish demands. Six truces were taken in the name of the ‘community of the bishopric of Durham’.⁵⁰

No doubt ‘the community’ effectively meant, as in Scotland and Northumberland, the principal lords of the bishopric: the bishop, the prior, Richard Fitz Marmaduke, Robert de Neville and his brothers. Payments are described vaguely as ‘contribution to Robert Bruce’. The cost of three truces is known for certain; and for two others there is a basis for estimate. In view of the size of the sum agreed to in 1315, this truce was probably to last two years. In terms of the cost per day, that of 1314–15 was the most expensive, probably because the Scots were most difficult to appease just after Bannockburn. Moray himself was present in Durham on 7th October 1314, so there cannot have been much scope for haggling on that occasion.⁵¹ As with the border communities, however, the general trend was for the price of peace per day to fall. The gravity of the Scottish threat during these years is brought out by the fact that in 1344 Durham was able to purchase truce for a year in return for as little as £160, that is less than 10s per day.⁵²

As in Northumberland and Cumberland, money for the Durham truces was raised by assessed levies. For the first truce of 1312 the sub-prior of Durham acted as treasurer and Bishop Kellaw lent authority to the raising of money. He wrote to the earl of Warwick asking that Warwick’s lands in Sadberge should contribute to the cost of the immunity that they enjoyed.⁵³ For the truce of 1317–18 a levy was paid on the temporalities of the bishop elect, Louis de Beaumont.⁵⁴ William de Kellaw, an important figure in the financial administration of the palatinate, paid over money to intermediaries and also seems to have supervised the collection of funds. The distinction between lay holdings and benefices was consistently observed. Lay contributions are best documented in the truce of 1327. Surviving receipts show that payment was by manor with collectors assigned to each ward of the bishopric.⁵⁵ Contributions do not relate to any extant assessment; but a rental of episcopal lands was drawn up by Bishop Beaumont, possibly as an aid to assessment, at some unknown date.⁵⁶ By 1344 there was in existence an assessment which had long been used specifically for collecting money to buy off the Scots.⁵⁷ How much landed income was siphoned off to the Scots in these levies? Comparing the money paid to the Scots in 1327 with the cash income of the priory’s manors, as recorded in 1299–1303, it appears that Ketton and Bearpark manors were paying a little under 20 percent of their former income to the collectors of tribute.⁵⁸ Taking into account the fall in agricultural incomes in the 1310s, Mrs. Scammell’s estimate that one third of the annual value of the Durham manors went in tribute to Robert would not be far off the mark.⁵⁹ Levies on benefices or spiritualities, on the other hand, were paid according to the established assessment, the Taxation of Pope Nicholas IV. Since the assessment did not change until 1318, the yield was fixed; a levy of 6d in the pound brought in £65, one of 9d brought in £97, and so forth. Durham Priory recorded these as ‘contributions to Robert Bruce’ for the safety of its parishes within the waters of Tyne and Tees, that is, within the bishopric. Almost £20 was paid in 1313–14, and £4.10s. in the following year.⁶⁰ To pay for the 1317–18 truce, an extraordinarily harsh levy of 30d in the pound was imposed.⁶¹

In emergency the community seized whatever funds it could to buy off the Scots. In 1312 time was short; the truce had been agreed on 16th August and the first instalment of 450 marks was due at Holm Cultram at Michaelmas (29th September).⁶² Cash was seized from individuals by episcopal officers, but paid back in December as the levy came in.⁶³ Another crisis loomed late in 1315. According to the truce taken in June, the community was to pay 800 marks by Christmas, apparently the first instalment of 1,600 marks promised altogether.⁶⁴ Payment must have lapsed, for on 25th November news reached Durham that the Scots had again invaded. A house-to-house search for money was initiated. Conducting the search, William de Kellaw seized £70 from the house of William de Hebburn. Later Hebburn sued Kellaw successfully; but judgement was reversed by the episcopal court on the ground that Hebburn had consented to the communal decision to buy off the Scots. Hebburn then took the matter to the king’s court, but the final decision is not recorded. There was another, more spectacular, violation of property rights. At some time unspecified Richard Fitz Marmaduke, a leading member of the Durham gentry and cousin of Robert I (and consequently a man thought to have influence with the Scots), seized £240 from funds in the cathedral accumulated for payment of a regular clerical subsidy, the 12d in the mark granted to Edward II in 1316. Fitz Marmaduke too acted by consent of the community; but the Durham clergy had later to repay the missing tenth to the king and in 1325 they were levying money for this purpose.⁶⁵

Until the winter of 1317–18 payment for these truces was delivered to the Scots by a monk of Durham, Brother Robert de Ditchburn.⁶⁶ That winter Ditchburn set out for Scotland as usual, but vanished with the money.⁶⁷ This event seems to have had an effect on the amount of information recorded, as though while Ditchburn was courier, business was conducted on a face-to-face basis with little or nothing written down. By contrast, in the year after Ditchburn’s disappearance, there are numerous receipts acknowledging sums paid by William de Kellaw and William de London, the collectors. The receipts show that the expenses of the community did not stop at sums agreed with the Scots but, as with the Cumberland truce of 1313–14, involved a range of additional costs. At Martinmas (11th November) 1317 the community entered into truce for one year in return for 1,000 marks (£666).⁶⁸ The known expenditure of the community during that year is analysed as follows:

Payments to Robert Bruce	£628. 3. 4.
to fitz Marmaduke and Neville	£205. 6. 8.
for the expenses of hostages	£ 39.14. 4.
to schavaldores	£310. 2. 8.
Other Payments	£ 32. 0. 0.
Total known expenditure of the Community	£1,215. 7. 0.

The community was paying out almost twice the sum agreed with Robert I for the ransom of the bishopric. Payments to the Scots were made irregularly. From Martinmas 1317 to February 1318 small sums were being paid to William de Denum. They amount to only 72 marks (£48).⁶⁹ Presumably Denum was amassing these for transmission to Scotland. The next payment ‘for the purposes of Robert Bruce’ was of 200 marks, on 1st May;⁷⁰ and then at the end of June Richard fitz Marmaduke handed over £411 in cash for Robert Bruce.⁷¹ This may have included the £260 which he had lifted from the cathedral treasury. The size of this sum, representing 60 percent of the 1,000 marks due, and the drastic levy of 30d in the pound authorised only days beforehand⁷² reveal a panic in the bishopric at this stage. In May a powerful Scottish force had passed through the bishopric on its way to raid Yorkshire where the bishop’s liberty of Northallertonshire was destroyed, a sharp reminder to the bishopric to pay up on time.⁷³ The crisis may have had its origin in the disappearance of Robert de Ditchburn.

The size of the sums paid to fitz Marmaduke and Robert de Neville highlights the inefficiency of dealing with the Scots indirectly, and the tendency of local lords to profit wherever possible from the situation. Of the £205 paid out to these two, only £37 was specifically for travelling expenses. Fitz Marmaduke and Neville were rival leaders of the Durham gentry. Their competition for the profits of the truce revenues was one of several factors which led to a combat on the Framwellgate Bridge at Durham in December 1318, in which fitz Marmaduke was killed by Neville amid accusations of treachery.⁷⁴ The amount spent on hostages seems paltry compared with the £90 paid by Cumberland. While the Cumberland lords considered the maintenance of their sons and heirs in Scotland to be a priority, the community of Durham could be cavalier in its attitude to hostages. John de Wessington was taken hostage in surety of payment by Durham and he remained in Scotland because the community failed to pay 36 marks owing for a truce. In the end he had to pay the sum himself and, receiving no recompense from the community, he petitioned the king for redress.⁷⁵ Payments to schavaldores (Gilbert de Middleton and Adam Swinburne) accounted for over 20 per cent of the year’s expenditure. Theschavaldores were at their most active during the episcopal vacancy of 1317–18, and this is unlikely to have been an item in other years. It is interesting that in addition to paying off the King of Scots, the community had to buy off other Scottish lords. In the current year 1317–18 payments were made to Philip de Mowbray, and earlier the liberty of Norham had had to buy off William de Prendergast. Probably these other lords were paid in return for using their influence with Robert I in some matter or other, but one cannot entirely discount the possibility that they extracted money on their own account.⁷⁶

There is no question but that the Scots dictated the terms of these truces. In 1312 they reserved to themselves the right to ride through the bishopric into Yorkshire; and they availed themselves of this on three occasions.⁷⁷ On a separate occasion they specifically excluded Hartlepool from the truce and attacked it.⁷⁸ Payment for peace, then, did not keep the Scots out of Durham nor did it immunise the bishopric from other effects of war: passage of armies or ravages of castle garrisons. In 1322 on the expiry of the ‘official’ two-year truce there was in place no unofficial agreement with the Scots to protect Durham. A decision not to purchase one may have been associated with the deposition of the accommodating Prior Geoffrey de Burdon or with the policy of the new Bishop Louis de Beaumont, whose family was so virulently in favour of war. In the single raid known as ‘the burning of the bishopric’ in that year, all that had been protected at such expense from the ravages of war went up in smoke.

Yorkshire was too large and divided to make deals for comprehensive truces, and in the 1310s ransoms tended to involve only individual ‘shires’ or localities. Negotiating from the safety of castle walls in 1316, the nobles of Richmondshire struck a deal with the Scots and organised a levy in the name of the ‘Community of Richmond’ to finance it. Collectors for a clerical subsidy provided some of the money for the Scots.⁷⁹ In May 1318, from the security of the Minster, the men of Ripon promised the Scots 1,000 marks to spare their town. There and then 240 marks were paid and six hostages given. The remainder was to be paid before August. But the wives of the six hostages petitioned the king in 1324, claiming that they could get no satisfaction from officials of the liberty: ‘commune and franchise do nothing, suffering them to languish and die’. The town bailiff claimed to have sent over £500 (750 marks) to Scotland; but only £50 had been received, and the Scots released three of the hostages to speed up payment. These men sued the bailiff, and at length the sheriff of York was ordered to levy the outstanding sum.⁸⁰ In another case three hostages of the Vale of Pickering petitioned Edward II from prison in Scotland to order collection of £400 which men of that district had promised to pay to the Scots for their release. Their neighbours, having agreed to the deal, had totally abandoned them.⁸¹ These cases illustrate the complacency of southerly districts, who believed that they could give the Scots some unimportant individuals as hostages and then safely forget about them. But in 1327 the Scots returned to Yorkshire. Richmondshire and Cleveland are said to have bought peace. Northallertonshire certainly did; in July 1328 the vicar of Northallerton paid 17s. 6d. to the bailiff of the liberty for the expenses of messengers and hostages in Scotland.⁸²

How much money was extracted from the north of England? If Lanercost’s figures are even vaguely correct, the three Northumberland truces may have yielded around £7,000. The yield from the more divided western march is more difficult to estimate. Perhaps, since they were still negotiating in 1319, £5,000 might have been forthcoming from Cumberland, Westmorland and the various western lordships. Durham paid perhaps £4,000. Add to this the sums extracted from isolated rural communities on the border after 1315 and substantial payments from Yorkshire communities, and the total probably exceeded £20,000. The £40,000 suggested by the author of the Vita Edwardi II strains the bounds of credibility.⁸³ What the Bruces did with the money is easier to say. Some found its way into the pockets of the petty kings of Ireland by way of subsidies and payments for provision of mercenaries. Most was used in Scotland, to pay for the prolonged periods of infantry service necessary for the sieges of Dundee and Berwick in 1312, Perth in 1313, Edinburgh and Stirling in 1314, and Berwick from 1316 to 1319. Gradually it would have percolated into the domestic economy. The anxiety of merchants in Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany and in England to trade with Scotland whatever the political or military conditions suggests that there may be a basis in fact to Fordun’s swaggering assertion that Scotland ‘overflowed with boundless wealth’ in the years after 1314.⁸⁴ No doubt this tangible profit of military success helped to stabilise the Bruce regime.

FORTIFICATIONS

Castles, like truces, had implications for seigneurial authority, since only in the possession of castles did there reside all-year-round control of the surrounding territory. As the English had the resources to hold castles but he did not, Robert I set about dismantling castles throughout the Scottish theatre of war. Apart from Berwick, the last Scottish castle to remain in English hands may have been Jedburgh, whose defenders were pardoned their misdemeanours by Edward II for good service in January 1315.⁸⁵ The destruction of castles was first extended beyond Scotland when Rushen Castle on Man was demolished in 1313; and the fortified manor house at Aydon in Northumberland was destroyed by the Scots in 1315.⁸⁶ In Ireland, too, the minor castle at Dundonald was reportedly destroyed ‘by the war of the Scots’; another at Dunadry was said to have been ‘thrown down and waste from the time of the war of the Scots’.⁸⁷

Carrickfergus, however, built of stone and virtually impregnable, was not destroyed when it was at last starved into surrender in 1316. From this point Robert abandoned his concentration on denying castles to the English, and strove instead to possess them, perhaps because the influx of money from truces enabled him to pay for garrisons. He launched a serious drive against English castles in 1318. Berwick was taken in April 1318; Wark surrendered on 21st May 1318; Mitford and Harbottle followed.⁸⁸ The author ofScalacronica states that both Wark and Harbottle were slighted by the Scots. Mitford certainly became a ruin about this time, whatever the cause. Only Berwick was judged strong enough to be held against determined opposition. But the crucial strengths of Bamburgh and Alnwick also came very close to falling to the Scots, for their garrisons were negotiating with the rebels, ‘the one by means of hostages, the other by collusion’.⁸⁹ Subsequently, the Scots attacked the site of Dunstanburgh where a large castle was being built.⁹⁰ Danger of losing castles, with all the implications that carried for loss of lordship, persuaded the English to sue for peace in 1327.⁹¹

Robert I’s attack on England did not prompt the building of new stone castles. The only major stone castle built anew in northern England was the earl of Lancaster’s at Dunstanburgh on his own manor of Embleton in Northumberland, under construction in 1314/15 and probably for years afterwards.⁹² In many ways it is a strange site for such an enormous castle. Dunstanburgh guards no cross-roads or river ford, and serves no obvious strategic purpose. Its great size suggests that it might have been intended to accommodate refugees, not just from Embleton but from a far wider area; and its out-of-the-way location has prompted speculation that the earl was preparing a bolt-hole in anticipation of attack by his royal cousin. Whatever the truth of this, Dunstanburgh was certainly intended as a northern base for anticipated involvement in the Scottish wars. While few could afford to build on this scale, many other magnates acquired castles in this theatre of war: Isabella de Beaumont had control of Bamburgh Castle until 1310 and her brothers Henry and Louis had control of castles in the Bishopric of Durham from November 1316. Pembroke acquired Mitford Castle for his northern campaign in 1314.⁹³ Lancaster did not live to garrison his state-of-the-art fortress; and after his execution in 1322 it housed a royal garrison.⁹⁴

Other building was on a smaller scale. The Prior of Tynemouth was moved by the sacking of Hexham Priory by the Scots in 1296 to construct a castle to protect his monastery.⁹⁵ It was unusual for a religious house to adopt such impressive defences, but as the Scottish raids began to bite, other monasteries also invested in fortifications. At Bolton Priory the canons began to build ring defences, peels and ditches at their properties of Bolton Moor and Ryther in response to the raids of 1318, 1319 and 1322.⁹⁶ As a result of the Scottish raids of 1296 and 1297, other lords improved existing castles. Robert Clifford built an elaborate gatehouse at Brougham;⁹⁷ Henry Percy added a gatehouse and barbican at Alnwick;⁹⁸ and John Clavering improved the curtain walls of Warkworth Castle and added a flanking tower.⁹⁹ These were probably exceptional cases; generally northern castles were far from prepared for Robert I’s raids. Clavering’s expenditure on Warkworth contributed to his bankruptcy.¹⁰⁰ Cockermouth was badly dilapidated.¹⁰¹The buildings at Egremont were in ruins.¹⁰² The Umfraville Earls of Angus saw their vulnerable castle at Harbottle fall into dilapidation through lack of funds and constant Scottish attacks. Harbottle was captured by the Scots in 1318; then it was returned as provided for in the terms of the two-year truce of December 1319.¹⁰³

Because of Edward’s lack of money, royal building was restricted to usually long overdue renovations of existing structures. The defences of both Carlisle and Berwick had been improved by Edward I. Carlisle had recently been restored at a cost of £217, and was thus in good shape when war first broke out in 1296. Edward II continued the work at Carlisle. An East Gatehouse was added at a cost of £654, and from 1308 to 1312 a further £925 was spent, chiefly on a tower in the inner bailey. But only minor repairs were made during the 1310s. A survey of 1321 reveals that during this most dangerous period the castle had become seriously dilapidated. Two sections of curtain wall were ready to collapse, and a forty-foot stretch of the outer bailey, and the vault above the main gate, had actually fallen in. During the truces of 1319–21 and 1323–27 major repairs were carried out to Carlisle, including the erection of peels where the curtain wall had collapsed.¹⁰⁴ Dr. Summerson makes the intriguing suggestion that the crumbling state of Carlisle’s defences could have been a factor in persuading Andrew Harclay to seek a separate peace with Robert I.¹⁰⁵ Defences were in better shape at Berwick. Both castle and town had been radically improved by Edward I. The castle acquired sally ports and a bridge to the town and the gate had been repaired. Major repairs were ordered to turrets and brattices and the formidable Douglas Tower was built. In the case of Berwick Castle, there may have been little for Edward II to improve upon. In 1318 the castle could not be taken by the Scots and had to be starved into surrender.¹⁰⁶ Edward II engaged in a serious building programme at only one other site, Pickering, where the castle was enlarged to double its original size at a cost of £953.¹⁰⁷ Accounts are too piecemeal and disjointed for calculation of an exact total spent on castles, but over the whole period the royal outlay on building and repairs to northern castles might have been in the region of £15,000. A significant investment perhaps; but it is unlikely to have been anything like enough; and that Carlisle should have been on the verge of collapse in 1321 was inexcusable.

Whereas Edward I’s Welsh wars had spawned a magnificent series of stone castles around the north coast of Wales, in Scotland he had preferred to build in wood and earth, probably to save money. Wood and earth remained the preferred building materials throughout the Wars of the Bruces. Stone castles retained an important strategic and perhaps psychological role, but the real initiative in fortification at this time was in minor defensive works - towers, strong-houses and ‘peels’.¹⁰⁸ A proliferation of such weak defences is characteristic of an unsettled ‘march’ territory; in Ireland, for example, the trend towards minor fortifications appears to have been well established. In 1316 the Scots were said to be sheltering in forts in the vicinity of Leix; tenants at Crumlin were to be distrained to construct a ‘fortalice’ there.¹⁰⁹ The term ‘peel tower’ is a confusion of two very different fortifications which came into vogue around this time. During this period in the north of England, 18 licences to crenellate were granted, 16 of which were for minor fortifications. Small stone towers, two or three stories high and with vaulted basement, began to be built. This sort of construction is notoriously difficult to date; but examples which seem to belong to this period include the ‘Vicar’s Peel’ at Corbridge, and the towers at Dalley, Tarset and Heaton in Northumberland, Drumburgh, Lanercost and Wythop in Cumberland.¹¹⁰ They were relatively cheap to build and easy to defend. The tower at Melmerby cost about £100 to construct, and could be held by a dozen men.¹¹¹‘Peels’, however, were the most flexible of the lesser fortifications. The term originally meant a palisade of wood daubed with clay to make it fireproof, often supplemented by earthworks. Even cheaper to build than stone towers, peels were sufficient to provide short-term security for goods and livestock,¹¹² and were often combined with existing castles to increase accommodation or to improve defences; but they also existed independently as low-cost fortifications. Edward I had found peels useful in extending English lordship into the wilder parts of Dumfriesshire and Galloway, where they provided shelter for his forces in hostile country, and bases for raiding deeper into Scotland. The peel of Selkirk projected English authority deep into the forest; other peels at Dumfries and Lochmaben enlarged the capacity of existing castles to provide safety. When the war zone spread south into England, peels began to appear in that theatre too, at Bolton, Horton and Whittingham in Northumberland, Highhead and Scaleby in Cumberland, and Northallerton in Yorkshire.¹¹³ Thirdly, manor houses could be adapted to war conditions by the addition of defensive features: Plessy in Northumberland acquired a wall and ditch; Aydon sprouted battlemented parapets; Aykhurst (also known as Hay) in Cumberland was strengthened by a simple wall; and Houghall in Durham by a moat.¹¹⁴

Robert I and his supporters are known to have been building such minor fortifications in Northumberland. Reference has already been made to Sir Philip de Mowbray’s fort near the chapel of Falstone in Tynedale, and a similar fort was built by a Northumberlandschavaldor at Houxty in the same area.¹¹⁵ These lesser fortifications may be described as tactical, as distinct from strategic, defences, in that they were designed for the defence of a few individuals and their possessions. They were built to be cost-effective (not to require constant attention and investment); to hold off lightly armed horsemen for a short time (not to ‘laugh a siege to scorn’); and to escape attention (rather than to bar the path of invaders). Altogether they represented a more flexible response to the problem of raiding than the great impregnable monuments to earlier wars.

In terms of victualling and manning of castles, the reign of Edward II compares badly with the careful estimates and generous margins for error which characterise the administration of Scottish castles in his father’s reign.¹¹⁶ The garrisons of northern England relied more heavily on local sources of foodstuffs than the English garrisons in Scotland had done. Edward I had been able to sustain his garrisons by bulk transportation of grain into Scotland; but by 1315–16 Edward II had made arrangements with clerks in his service who held benefices in the north to supply tithe grain to neighbouring castles.¹¹⁷ But local sources of victuals were depleted by the famine of 1315–17 and by the flight of the northern peasantry in the face of Scottish raids. Inventories of stores and equipment in northern castles reveal a serious lack of logistical support.¹¹⁸ Berwick Castle, Harbottle and Wark surrendered to the Scots for lack of victuals, or because ‘relief did not reach them on the appointed day’.¹¹⁹

There were many complaints against castle garrisons, and seizures of foodstuffs figure prominently in them. As early as 1309 Alexander de Bassenthwaite had to seize wheat and oats from the Prior of Carlisle’s manor of Crossby in Allerdale to victual Carlisle and Dumfries. The sheriff of Westmorland also took grain from the prior for the supply of Appleby and Brougham garrisons.¹²⁰ In 1313 the Berwick garrison was alleged to have robbed the surrounding countryside of 300 fat beasts, and 4,000 sheep and horses.¹²¹Outrageous ‘prises’ or seizures were said to have been taken by the keeper of Cockermouth Castle, causing the decay of rents and depopulation in surrounding vills.¹²² Roger Horsley, castellan at Bamburgh, was notoriously rapacious.¹²³ The Prior of Nostell complained in 1318 that constables of Bamburgh, Alnwick and Norham took tithe grain worth almost £250 over a number of years.¹²⁴ Similarly Nicholas de Swinburne complained that for six years the garrison of Staworth Peel had lived off the issues of his own lands.¹²⁵

In addition to prises by garrisons, local people were further burdened by the taking of ‘access money’, that is extraction of a fine from those seeking security within castle walls for their persons, goods or livestock. John de Felton at Alnwick included among his receipts for 1314–16 money for ‘the lodging of diverse men of the neighbourhood within the said castle’.¹²⁶ At Bamburgh, Roger Horsley was said to charge 12d. each for a plot of ground on which possessions might be stored safely in times of danger. Free access to the castle was a repeated demand of the Bamburgh tenants,¹²⁷ and Horsley was finally ordered to stop exacting access money on 27th November 1318.¹²⁸ It has been pointed out that Horsley may not have been the worst offender in this respect; a petition alleges that castles in the west march charged 5s. or half a mark for two or three nights’ accommodation, and the locals threatened to evacuate the area rather than pay such outrageous demands.¹²⁹

The victualling of Berwick and Carlisle was absolutely crucial to containing the Scottish threat, since they served as supply depots for border garrisons. It may be seen from the victualling record that the safety margins in these depots were in some years very slim.¹³⁰ Letters reveal that the Berwick garrison were actually starving in the spring of 1316.¹³¹ Payment of garrisons was an associated problem; the men needed their wages to buy victuals, and if unpaid, would just walk away. From 1314 there was great danger that both Carlisle and Berwick garrisons would desert through hunger and lack of pay. In June 1314 the sheriff at Carlisle complained that he was unable to pay his troops; in November he was seizing foodstuffs coming into the town; and in March 1315 it seemed unlikely that the garrison would stay until Whitsun (11th May).¹³² In the autumn of the same year (September 1315) letters from Berwick were again received complaining of lack of pay and victuals; later that month the king wrote to the chancellor and treasurer that he was receiving daily appeals from Carlisle and Berwick, and that ‘many of the people of the garrisons have departed for lack of sustenance . . .’¹³³ A letter dated 18th February 1316 from Maurice de Berkely, warden at Berwick, reveals that the town garrison were deserting daily, leaving only the castle garrison, itself depleted by casualties and hunger.¹³⁴ Bitter rows over the distribution of rations are revealed by proceedings against Ranulph Benton, keeper of victuals at Berwick. Benton was accused of every conceivable form of cheating: giving short measure; exchanging foodstuffs he had received for others of inferior quality and keeping the profit; selling off stores on the quiet; and buying poor quality victuals.¹³⁵ In November 1316 the king was sent an urgent request for a transfer of money to Carlisle, because of the number of desertions from the garrison due to non-payment of wages.¹³⁶ All of Edward II’s castellans were chronically short of money. The difficulties of John de Felton, keeper of Alnwick, are typical.¹³⁷ Over a period of about one year (4th January - 30th December 1315) Felton put his expenditure - in pay, replacement of horses and maintenance of the estate - at £1,252. Receipts from the estate and the exchequer came to only £875, leaving him £376 short. In 1317 his garrison at Alnwick went on strike: the 50 men-at-arms and 60 hobelars withdrew to the town demanding their arrears of pay, and Felton had to write urgently to the king for leave to account in the Wardrobe.¹³⁸

Most castles were owned by lords other than the king; but private castles vulnerable to capture by the Scots were public liabilities. However, far from taking command of private castles in this emergency, Edward II preferred to ensure that, as far as possible, the expense of maintaining garrisons should fall on shoulders other than his own. Only Berwick and Carlisle had permanent royal garrisons prior to 1314. Even at the vital royal castle of Bamburgh there is no evidence of a garrison, though the bishop of Durham maintained a garrison at his castle of Norham. After Bannockburn, Roger Horsley was ordered to maintain 20 men-at-arms and 30 hobelars in Bamburgh.¹³⁹ Several private castles came into the king’s hands through minorities on the deaths of the northern magnates Henry Percy (Alnwick) and Robert Clifford (Brougham, Brough, Appleby and Pendragon). From 1315 the regional commanders known as chevetaignes took greater care to maintain garrisons in the north; but not so Edward II. He was so anxious to disburden himself that he returned Alnwick and the Clifford castles to under-age heirs.¹⁴⁰ Norham, vital to the defence of Northumberland, passed several times between the bishop of Durham and the king.¹⁴¹ But the strain of maintaining castle garrisons was too much for many local lords. An undated petition by John de Denum, asking for royal aid, asserted that he was no longer able to pay the 12 men-at-arms at his tower of Melmerby.¹⁴² Ultimately Edward was obliged to take over the reversion of Warkworth and Wark-on-Tweed (belonging to John de Clavering and William de Ros respectively) as a result of their owners’ financial difficulties.¹⁴³

The fluctuations in the size of castle garrisons make it difficult to estimate costs to the crown. But two Wardrobe Books give totals of annual expenditure. In the year 1316/17 northern garrisons cost about £8,000, and in 1317/18 roughly the same.¹⁴⁴ To this figure must be added the annual cost of the Berwick and Carlisle garrisons, which works out at about £8,571 and £5,002 respectively in 1315/16.¹⁴⁵ The annual cost of manning and supplying northern garrisons probably came to around £20,000 at the height of the Scottish raids. By comparison Edward I had spent £18,368 on garrison pay and supplies to maintain the occupation of Scotland in 1299/1300; £13,769 in 1300/01; and £10,019 in 1303/4.¹⁴⁶ In the years of the Scottish onslaught in the north it was therefore costing Edward II much more just to hold his own than it had cost his father to subdue Scotland.

The difficulties of raising such sums on time to prevent garrisons from starving or deserting were immense. No money was being raised locally: estates were ravaged; taxes ceased to be collected in border counties from 1309; and customs revenue fell away as a result of privateering and disruption to trade. Garrisons meanwhile exploited local communities to make good the shortfall. Royal control of castellans clearly diminished as the military situation deteriorated. Isolated by the chaos, some constables behaved as independent warlords. John le Irroys, sent north with a force which was allowed access to castles, exacted purveyance from the people of Bamburgh and embarked on a short career of terrorism during which he abducted Lady Clifford to Barnard Castle.¹⁴⁷Eventually he sought refuge at Tynemouth Castle.¹⁴⁸ Tynemouth was a place of sanctuary, and the garrison there was allegedly composed of criminals and fugitives from justice. The constable of Newcastle had them all arrested in 1322.¹⁴⁹ John de Eure, Pembroke’s constable at Mitford, put that castle at the disposal of the Northumberland rebels in 1317.¹⁵⁰ The rebels were able to capture many of the minor peels: Horton, Bolton and Whittingham; and the peels of Northallerton, Redham, Daneby and Laneburn fell to rebels in the associated disturbances in Yorkshire.¹⁵¹ Eustace le Constable of Warkworth and others plundered a ship loaded at Hartlepool carrying corn, flour and salt to Berwick, and driven by attacks of privateers into Warkworth.¹⁵² Altogether the North of England’s castles ought to have been its salvation from the Scottish raids. The failure of the crown to pay and provision garrisons adequately, and to exercise control over castellans, left them to prey on those they were supposed to defend.

THE EXPEDITIONS OF THE CHEVETAIGNES

The border districts rapidly developed early-warning systems to counter Scottish raids; the earliest mention of beacons on the hillsides dates to 1298.¹⁵³ But the reactions of the royal administration to the long-range mounted raids of the 1310s were so much slower than local responses as to be ineffective. Generally an array of foot and horse over a wide area would be ordered. In 1314, for example, the Scots invaded Yorkshire around 1st August; on 10th August Pembroke was appointed keeper of the region from Trent to Berwick, and the Yorkshire militia, the ‘fencible’ (able-bodied) men between the ages 15 and 50, were ordered to be arrayed. But already by 4th August the Scots had safely escaped over Stainmore into Westmorland.¹⁵⁴ With a little warning local authorities could arrange more effective precautions. The conference in York Minster at the beginning of 1315 was able to appoint four local magnates as commanders, and a subsidy of 2d. in the mark was levied from the clergy to support their efforts.¹⁵⁵ These measures were successful in keeping the Scots out of Yorkshire, but rarely was there such warning of Scottish intentions. Yorkshire was caught unprepared when the truce of February to Midsummer 1316 lapsed. The Scots raided Yorkshire at Midsummer (24th June), but it was 4th July before orders were issued for an array of foot and a general muster at Newcastle on 10th August.¹⁵⁶ The Scots had probably returned over the border by 5th August.¹⁵⁷

To keep the marches during intervals between truces and campaigns, the English began to dispatch expeditions to the war zone, led by great magnates, chevetaignes or ‘Superior Captains’.¹⁵⁸ These chevetaignes had plenipotentiary powers over wide areas (often from Trent to the Border), and they were obviously intended to be a substitute for the royal presence. Subordinate to the chevetaignes were Wardens of the Marches, the existing unpaid local officials. This hierarchy was intended to facilitate mobilisation of the whole region in resistance to Scottish raiders. After the defeat of Bannockburn, successive chevetaignes – the earls of Pembroke, Lancaster, Arundel and John de Cromwell and the earl of Angus jointly – led expeditions to keep the north free from raiders, with varying degrees of success.

The efforts of the first two magnates are detailed in their biographies. Pembroke’s appointment in 1315 was probably a reaction to the arrival at court of a letter from Ralph fitz William and Simon Ward (keeper of Berwick) which reported that Robert I was preparing to attack York or besiege Berwick and advised a levy of troops.¹⁵⁹ On 4th May 1315, 500 hobelars from Pembroke’s Irish estates were ordered to Newcastle. His mission was to hold the north until a royal army could muster at Newcastle on 15th August, but it was given a new urgency by the Scottish assault on Carlisle.¹⁶⁰ An indenture was drawn up between Pembroke and the king by which the earl agreed to stay in the marches from 24th June to 1st November with 100 men-at-arms for 4,000 marks (£2,666). Additional forces were hired, and when the expedition assembled at York on 21st-23rd July, its total strength exceeded 300 men-at-arms.¹⁶¹ Pembroke arrived at Newcastle on 3rd August and advanced towards Carlisle by way of Barnard Castle and Kendal.¹⁶²Robert I called off the siege of Carlisle at his approach; but Pembroke rode as far as Lanercost to harass the retreating Scots. Leaving the west march in the charge of Ralph fitz William, he returned to Newcastle through Tynedale. After a short stay at Newcastle, Pembroke ventured northwards. It is scarcely credible that he intended to invade Scotland on his own; it is more likely that he intended a punitive raid to relieve the growing pressure on Berwick.¹⁶³ The continuator of Walter of Guisborough’s chronicle accuses the earl’s forces of wanton destruction while moving through Northumberland.¹⁶⁴ He encountered a Scottish force, was lured into Scotland by feigned flight, and was defeated at Longridge, near Berwick. By 1st October Pembroke had retired to Newminster. He remained in the north until relieved by Henry Beaumont, appointed on 18th October to keep the march during the winter.¹⁶⁵ Though Pembroke himself left for the south, his retinue remained for a time under William de Felton, and 10 horses were lost in a clash with the Scots at Rothbury in Northumberland on 31st October.¹⁶⁶

The promised royal army of 1315 never materialised; but Pembroke’s appointment had formally been superseded since 8th August when the earl of Lancaster took over the job of defending the north.¹⁶⁷ This may have been because the fall of Carlisle was anticipated, and the Honour of Lancaster was considered to be in the front line of defence. In October and November Lancaster made requests to religious houses for horses and carts in preparation for a campaign. The replies must have made depressing reading: citing famine, murrain, depredations by magnates and the burden of purveyance, the monasteries declined to help or offered only token assistance. Nevertheless at the Parliament of Lincoln in January 1316 Lancaster succeeded in securing a grant of one footsoldier from every vill in the kingdom and a lay subsidy of one fifteenth from the shires. Orders were issued for a muster at Newcastle on 8th July 1316. Over 2,000 Welsh foot arrived at Newcastle in preparation for the campaign.¹⁶⁸ The administration, however, soon became swamped by problems: the revolt of Adam Banaster in Lancashire; the rebellion of Llywelyn Bren in Glamorgan; civil unrest at Bristol; and the widespread misery of famine. The king was at first distracted from the campaign when a son was born to him; then he became over-enthusiastic and issued demands for military service in violation of the Ordinances. This angered Lancaster, who considered himself guardian of the Ordinances. A violent quarrel ensued, and Lancaster began to distance himself from the administration. The muster was postponed, first to August, then to 6th October, and finally the campaign was abandoned. Government had been paralysed, both by agrarian distress which rendered provisioning a campaign impossible, and by personal antagonism between Lancaster and the king.

On Lancaster’s throwing up the reins of government, Edmund fitz Alan, earl of Arundel, was appointed chevetaigne from 20th November 1316 to Midsummer 1317. His terms of service are preserved in his indenture with the king, dated 19th November; and his appointment coincides with a raft of measures designed to bring the war once more under the control of the administration. In simultaneous appointments Roger Mortimer of Wigmore (who held extensive lands in Meath) was made Keeper and King’s Lieutenant in Ireland; and Roger Mortimer of Chirk, Justice of North Wales.¹⁶⁹ A survey of armaments and manning levels of northern castles was initiated, and Pembroke was dispatched to Avignon to assist in recovering the revenues of Gascony from the Pope.¹⁷⁰

Arundel was to serve with 100 men-at-arms of his own retinue, receiving £3,000 for expenses; and was to be supported by 16 other captains, who contracted to supply men-at-arms and hobelars. On the west march, for example, William Dacre and Antony Lucy each contracted to serve with 65 men-at-arms and 100 hobelars for a year.¹⁷¹ Arundel’s indenture reveals a plan to station a total force of 799 men-at-arms and 750 hobelars on the marches. The main feature of this plan was the deployment of cavalry at 19 castles and peels throughout the region. Based in these castles, 299 men-at-arms and 470 hobelars were stationed as a mobile reserve to counter infiltration and support Arundel’s field forces. Map 11 shows how these forces were distributed throughout the region. Most of the hobelars were provided by northern lords, Arundel’s own forces being mostly men-at-arms. Another new departure was that the king, who had tended to rely on other English lords to defend their own castles, now provided garrisons in 13 castles not in his own hands.¹⁷² At the same time negotiations with the Scots were renewed. Although their outcome is not known, it is possible that a truce for six months was agreed upon for the Anglo-Scottish marches. This is suggested by Robert I’s decision to leave Scotland and cross to Ireland in January.¹⁷³ At any rate Robert was apparently confident that Arundel would not attempt a serious invasion of Scotland. If there was a truce at this time, the English decided not to rely on it, for the deployment of Arundel’s forces went ahead. Probably the English government intended no full-scale attack on Scotland before Midsummer, for estimates were made as to what sums could be raised by that date.¹⁷⁴ In the meantime Antonio Pessagno undertook to supply 17,000 quarters of wheat and 2,600 tuns of wine to maintain Arundel’s garrisons. The contract was fulfilled, despite the famine conditions which prevailed over most of the British Isles.¹⁷⁵

In March 1317 Arundel took advantage of Robert I’s absence in Ireland to lead an incursion into Scotland.¹⁷⁶ It can hardly have been intended as an invasion aimed at permanent recovery of Scottish territory. Advancing into Jedwood Forest, his men hewed down trees to deny cover to the Scots. But the advance guard led by Thomas de Richmond was ambushed at Lintilee by James Douglas. Richmond was killed; and the expedition halted. Douglas’s capture of a nearby peel from a band of schavaldores deterred Arundel from further advance and he retreated into England. Arundel also tested the Scots by sea, sending ships to raid the east coast of Scotland.¹⁷⁷ Robert returned to Scotland in May to meet the planned invasion, but in the desperate famine conditions that prevailed, a campaign was out of the question, and the truce was successively extended. In view of the ‘near miracle’ achieved by Pessagno in keeping these garrisons in place, Arundel ought to have achieved much more.

The period from September 1317 to 1319 was another disastrous phase for the English, with enmity between Lancaster and Edward II threatening to plunge the country into civil war. No chevetaigne was appointed; and the Middleton rebellion caused the temporary loss of many minor fortifications.¹⁷⁸ By May 1318 Robert I had captured Berwick, taken Wark and Harbottle castles, and raided Yorkshire. In August, however, Lancaster and the king settled their differences in a compromise known as the Treaty of Leake. But by this time it was already too late for action on the marches, and an expedition had to wait until the following season.¹⁷⁹

Edward II’s presence at Berwick in the autumn of 1319 lent some temporary semblance of security to the eastern marches. On his retreat from Berwick and in reaction to the ravages by the Scots after Myton, on 28th September Edward appointed John Cromwell and Robert de Umfraville, Earl of Angus, as wardens of the march with full powers. Each contributed 30 men-at-arms of his own retinue and the king provided a further 140, making 200 men-at-arms in all. They were to keep the march, secure Newcastle, and maintain garrisons. Other contingents were added, and 249 men-at-arms were listed as staying on the march from 28th September until 26th June 1320. Aside from this, special provision was made for additional cavalry to be stationed in the Northumberland garrisons after the fashion of the Arundel plan, though on a smaller scale. Bamburgh was to have an extra 30 men-at-arms; Alnwick 20 men-at-arms and 20 hobelars; Warkworth four men-at-arms and eight hobelars; and at Newcastle, 10 men-at-arms and 46 crossbowmen. Noticeably absent from the list of castles are Wark, which had fallen to the Scots in May 1318, and Norham, currently under siege.¹⁸⁰ Cromwell and Angus’s force was to complement that which Andrew Harclay had built up in the west since he had been appointed keeper there in April. But the chevetaignes were not immediately commissioned. Arrangements were reviewed at a council meeting on 13th October; this decided that the king was to stay at York with 600 men-at-arms, and gave detailed instructions for an array of Yorkshire foot with special heavy armour. Simultaneously Edward authorised negotiations with the Scots.¹⁸¹ It appears that the commissioning of the wardens on 27th October (when a Scottish raid was expected on the eastern march) and the Scottish raid on the west march in November were part of the posturing by both sides for diplomatic leverage, prior to the two-year truce, declared at Christmas 1319. Cromwell and Angus’s forces were maintained until 31st January, when they were paid off.

These expeditions of the chevetaignes, which provided for forces to be on permanent standby in the north, may have seemed a reasonable response to the problem of hit-and-run raids. They were successful in reducing the degree of Scottish activity in England, but they were not popular with inhabitants of the region, as the chroniclers emphasise:

In past years the king had been in the habit of strengthening the March with wardens throughout the winter, but their oppression was more injurious to the people than the persecution of their enemies. For the Scots used to spare the inhabitants of Northumbria for a time in return for a moderate tribute, but those who were supposed to be set over them for their protection were constantly at leisure to oppress them every day.¹⁸²

Of these defensive expeditions, Arundel’s expedition was the largest by far and the most expensive. His field forces alone cost £9,272, and the additional forces in castles and peels an extra £4,380.¹⁸³ Pembroke’s expedition cost about £7,000; Cromwell and Angus (confined to the eastern march) would have cost £3,563 had the expedition not been cut short.¹⁸⁴ All three had some success in keeping the Scots out of England. But as defensive expeditions they could achieve nothing more, and none of them made any serious attempt to penetrate Scotland.

ANDREW HARCLAY: HOBELARS AND SCHAVALDORES

Besides royal expeditions against Scotland and occupations of the north by chevetaignes, local forces offered such resistance to the Scots as they could muster. Castle garrisons harried them where possible,¹⁸⁵ and there were many small-scale actions against Scots and schavaldores. But there was no organisation of local defence on the east march. Roving gangs of mounted outlaws terrorised Northumberland; among the analogies that suggest themselves are the American western frontier, or in the more recent past the ‘bandit country’ of the Irish border. Duels were fought, the most famous being that between Marmaduke and Neville on Framwellgate Bridge in Durham.¹⁸⁶ Reputations could be made. In an episode glamourised by Sir Thomas Gray and immortalised by Sir Walter Scott, the young knight Marmion arrived at Norham to win valour on the border.¹⁸⁷ No reputation stood higher than that of Douglas who, having seen off Arundel in 1317, slew Robert de Neville, ‘the peacock of the north’, and took prisoner his three brothers during a fight near Berwick on 6th June 1319.¹⁸⁸ Barbour relates:

When Neville thus was brought to ground,

And likewise Sir Edmund of Calhou,

The dread of the Lord Douglas

And his renown was so great

Throughout the marches of England

That all were in Dread of him

As the very Devil from Hell!

Barbour does not exaggerate the terror of the Black Douglas. In July 1326 one Hugh de Croxton was hauled before the court of exchequer and convicted of ‘telling falsely in public that James Douglas and other enemies and rebels of the king of Scotland had entered England, to the fear and trembling of the people and to the disturbance of the king’s peace’. He spent a week in Fleet Prison.¹⁸⁹

The activities of the chevetaignes were largely concentrated on the east march, and while conditions in the west are still unlikely to have been anything other than miserable, there are signs that this theatre underwent some recovery in the period 1316 to 1319, when there were no serious Scottish raids on the area. In 1319–20 John de Louthre, keeper of victuals at Carlisle, was able to obtain for the first time in the reign of Edward II a significant quantity of grain from Cumberland and Westmorland.¹⁹⁰ Each of these counties was able to present Edward II with a small aid for carriage of the king’s victuals for the invasion of Scotland in 1322, to ward off requisitioning of vehicles by royal officials.¹⁹¹ Most strikingly, Andrew Harclay seems to have amassed large numbers of light cavalry, which acted as a deterrent to all but the most powerful Scottish forces. Perhaps because it was well-protected, Moray offered truce to the west march in 1319.¹⁹²

Harclay had shown himself to be a formidable opponent. He had shown courageous leadership during the Scottish invasion of Christmas 1314, and his inspired defence of Carlisle in the following year encouraged retaliation for Scottish ravages. In August 1314 the Carlisle garrison ambushed the Scots returning over the Pennines from Yorkshire, and in November they raided Pennersaughs in Scotland.¹⁹³ Losses suggest that these actions were unsuccessful; but two important prisoners were taken in the aftermath of the siege of Carlisle, and heavy ransoms were extracted.¹⁹⁴ Harclay raided Annandale on 22nd August 1315, and in January 1316 he was involved in an action against the Scots at Morton near Carlisle. Undoubtedly his dominance of the west march was made easier by the absence in Ireland of the Lord of Galloway, Edward Bruce. When Harclay was finally captured by John de Soules, probably on 26th January 1316, it was in Eskdale, raiding Scotland yet again.¹⁹⁵ During Harclay’s imprisonment the aggressive policy was continued; Ralph fitz William tried to organise similar raids into Scotland. Harclay was back in power from 1319; and he may already have had the capacity to act independently of royal authority. He certainly had a powerful retinue. As warden of Carlisle in 1319 Andrew Harclay led three knights, 13 men-at-arms, 361 hobelars and 980 foot to aid Edward II at Berwick; and for the invasion of Scotland in 1322 he was able to assemble 113 men-at-arms, 1,435 hobelars and 2,069 foot.¹⁹⁶ As reward for his defeat of the Lancastrian rebels at Boroughbridge in 1322, he was created Earl of Carlisle.¹⁹⁷ From 1319, however, Robert I concentrated on the west march, either because it had recovered slightly from his onslaughts of 1315 and 1316, or because he perceived the growing threat. Harclay was forced into a succession of mistakes. He led all his forces to Berwick in August 1319, allowing Douglas’s raiders to slip into Yorkshire and return the same way. Harclay also followed the king to York after the campaign, leaving the west exposed to Robert’s raid of November 1319.¹⁹⁸ He was unable to prevent the raid into Lancashire in June 1322;¹⁹⁹ and after the royal expedition to Scotland, his forces disbanded too soon, allowing Robert to ravage for five days before riding through into Yorkshire.²⁰⁰ His subsequent failure to arrive in time to save the king from humiliation at Bylands lost him the favour he had enjoyed since Boroughbridge;²⁰¹ by this stage the raids of 1319 and 1322 had seriously weakened that area’s capacity for resistance.

Harclay therefore had his own reasons as a regional potentate for making a unilateral peace with Robert I in December 1322.²⁰² The abortive treaty stipulated that England and Scotland should be separate and independent kingdoms; that Scotland should be free from all claims of English overlordship; and that Harclay and Robert should bind themselves to impose the treaty on those who dissented from it – this of course being a reference to Edward II. Should Edward accept the treaty, Robert promised to found a monastery in Scotland for the souls of those killed in the fighting between the two kingdoms; to pay the English king 40,000 marks over ten years; and to marry his male heir (at that time Robert Stewart) to a blood-relation of the English king. The treaty survives in two versions; one is the authoritative version; the other differs in ways designed to attract support from among the northern English. The ‘English version’ describes itself as a treaty on behalf of ‘all those in England who wish to be spared and saved from war with Robert Bruce and all his followers’. Both refer to a committee of 12 lords, six Scottish and six English. But whereas in the authoritative version the committee of 12 was to settle points of dispute between Robert I and Harclay, in the English version this committee wass empowered to take all measures necessary for the common profit of both realms. This language was an echo of the Ordinances, and was intended to appeal to latent Lancastrian sentiment.

It was a remarkably generous offer from Robert I: security for the north was to be had in return for simple recognition of Scottish independence, and into the bargain Robert was prepared to pay an enormous cash sum for the peace. Harclay undertook to win the retrospective acquiescence of Edward II to this agreement, and to this end he began to extract oaths of adherence to the peace and to himself from individuals and communities.²⁰³ He was preparing to force Edward II to abandon the war, and his agreement that the English king should be distrained to adhere to the treaty was of course intolerable to Edward II. Harclay was sufficiently unpopular among the Cumbrian gentry to be arrested and executed with ease.²⁰⁴ Though he was grasping and rapacious, he deserves credit for defence of the western march to 1316 and for carrying the war into Scotland. It would be unfair to blame him for failure to prevent the Scottish raids of 1315, 1319 and 1322; the reality is that hobelar raids could not be guarded against. The only practical response was retaliation.

In the past Harclay has been lionised as a pioneer of hobelar warfare, but this view has now been discredited. It was to be expected that Irish mercenaries and irregular cavalry should gather around the city of Carlisle looking for employment. Following Edward I’s campaigns, some Irish hobelars apparently stayed on the Anglo-Scottish marches. In 1299 Clifford had ordered the receiver at Carlisle to pay Richard le Bret, an Irish hobelar, retained to spy on the enemy, ‘lest he should desert for want of sustenance’. Richard le Bret shows up again in 1303, leading 60 archers of Cumberland into Scotland; and again in 1307, leading 97 foot and 50 archers; he continued in the garrison at Carlisle until 1320.²⁰⁵ But early in Edward II’s reign few hobelars remained in the king’s pay: in 1311 there were 20 at Berwick, and in 1312 six at Carlisle.²⁰⁶ Following the success of Robert I’s mounted raids from 1314, the use of light horse came back into vogue, since light cavalry could be used to pursue the raiders and bring them to battle.²⁰⁷When the northern castles were garrisoned in late 1314, hobelars were again employed: 40 at Alnwick, and 30 each at Carlisle and Bamburgh.²⁰⁸ In preparation for his campaign Pembroke ordered 500 hobelars from his own Irish estates in 1315.²⁰⁹ But Pembroke’s expedition is known to have included 412 Northumberland hobelars, which proves that this style of warfare did not depend upon manpower from Ireland and must have been rapidly adopted in the north of England. In November 1315 a small number of Irish hobelars arrived to reinforce Henry Beaumont’s force holding the east march.²¹⁰ In 1316/17, 80 men-at-arms and 80 hobelars accompanied sheriff Adam de Swynburne in Northumberland.²¹¹ Arundel, as we have seen, had deployed hobelars all over the region; but the largest concentrations were still on the western march. Harclay tends to get the credit for introducing hobelar warfare;²¹² but their presence in the west predates Harclay’s rise to power and may simply have been due to the proximity of Ireland. Harclay had no monopoly in their use; in 1316–18 John de Castre (Harclay’s local rival) had over 70 hobelars at Carlisle.²¹³

The employment in garrisons of autonomous companies, Irish mercenaries and local bandits was however damaging to the fabric of society in the north of England, as they were wholly insensitive to the needs of local communities. Letters of marque were given to the leaders of armed bands from 1315, permitting the plundering of enemy goods. The letter granted to Thomas de Fishburn junior in December 1315 was typical. He could keep all the plunder he might gain from the enemy and the ransoms of prisoners, though the king might buy any of his prisoners for 100 marks. A similar privilige was granted to John de Whelpedale and his brothers, allowing them to keep all goods and moveables they could seize from the enemy, on condition that they did not interfere with people in the king’s peace or jeopardise local truceswith the Scots.²¹⁴ But there was no way of enforcing these conditions. The sort of anarchy that ensued is illustrated by a complaint in 1317 by Roger Mauduit, from which it appears that Mauduit had captured a band of Scots raiding Tynedale, but that Thomas de Fishburn junior and his gang stole his prisoners, set most of them free and claimed the reward for the most valuable one. Mauduit added that another set of his Scottish prisoners, whom he imprisoned at Mitford, were ransomed for his own use by the castellan at Mitford, John de Lilburne.²¹⁵ Free companies such as Fishburn’s, or that led by John le Irroys, could hardly be prevented from doing exactly as they liked to the detriment of all authority.

Hobelars were essentially an offensive arm, best deployed in hostile or occupied territory to destroy farms, disrupt the fabric of economy and society and make settlement impossible. In practice, there can have been little distinction between the hobelars andschavaldores, the mounted brigands of the east march. The earliest use of the word schavaldores or schavaldi dates from 1312, when Robert of Graystanes uses it to describe the outlaw John de Werdale.²¹⁶ The word is probably a form of chevalier, ‘a horseman’. But in this context its meaning is quite clear: a mounted bandit, often of the Pennine dales, a product of the militarisation of the border and of hobelar warfare. Its use is unknown outside this context.²¹⁷ Bishop Richard Kellaw wrote in 1312 that banditry was daily on the increase; and Graystanes writes approvingly of Kellaw’s curbing of outlaws in the bishopric.²¹⁸ It is highly significant in this respect that hobelars originated in the ‘land of war’, on the margins of the beleaguered Irish colony; and their increasing number in northern England was a far from healthy symptom. The bitterness expressed in a ‘Song on the Times’ seems relevant to the woes of the peasantry of northern England. It bemoans the increase in crime and robbery, and calls on the church to lay her interdict on all robbers, especially the mounted horsemen:

And those hobelars in particular,

Who take from the husbandman the tillage of the ground.

Men ought not to bury them in any church,

But to throw them out like a dog!²¹⁹

In summary, we may say that, given Edward II’s refusal to dedicate his resources to the recovery of Scotland, the survival of an independent Scotland was guaranteed. Edward’s reliance upon northern communities to purchase truces was tantamount to the surrender of revenues to the enemy. He himself could levy no taxation from the north after 1311. His neglect of northern castles, in terms of fabric, victualling and manning was unpardonable. Nowhere was the king’s attitude more explicit than in his reluctance to shoulder the financial burden of the northern castles. But his greatest mistake was to have squandered the early years of his reign, allowing Bruce to become entrenched. His reliance upon free companies of hobelars to defend the north was to have lasting consequences. There was a contemporary confusion between the terms ‘hobelar’ and schavaldor, which is telling. During the War of St. Sardos Edward II ordered schavaldores of Northumberland to be sent to fight the French.²²⁰ The careers of Gilbert de Middleton, John de Werdale and John le Irroys show how easily these troopers could turn bandit. If the man-at-arms (like the castle) reflected dependence upon lordship, the hobelar (and the peel) implied loyalty to no-one.

NOTES

1 SC1/34/179, printed by Chronicon de Lanercost, ed. J. Stevenson (Maitland Club, Edinburgh, 1839), p. 538.

2 Vita Edwardi II, pp. 11, 13–14.

3 Maddicott, Lancaster, p. 240.

4 Vita Edwardi II, p. 120; CDS iii no. 745, p. 139.

5 Vita Edwardi II, pp. 10–11; Maddicott, Lancaster, pp. 157–58.

6 Rot. Scot. i, 133; Maddicott, Lancaster, pp. 149–50 (1313).

7 W. Childs, ‘Finance and Trade under Edward II’, Politics and Crisis in Fourteenth Century England, ed. J.Taylor and W. Childs (Gloucester, 1990), pp. 19, 25, 26.

8 BL MS Stowe 553, ff. 56–62, 80–84; Fryde’s figure of 21,700 infantry in Tyranny and Fall, p. 128 includes 2,100 hobelars.

9 The sources for Charts 3 to 6 are as follows:

Berwick:	1298/91	BL Add MS 37654.
	1299/1300	Liber Quot., pp. 113–16.
	1302/03	BL Add MS 17360.
	1305/06	E101/369/11, f. 84.
	1310/11	BL Cotton Nero C viij, ff. 66–71.
	1311/12	Ibid., ff. 75–76d.
	1312/13	E101/375/8, f. 23–24d.
	1313/14	BL MS Cotton Nero C viij, ff. 153–178d.
Newcastle:	1316/17	Society of Antiquaries MS 120, ff. 40d–41d.
	1317/18	Society of Antiquaries MS 121, ff. 24–24d.
	1319/20	E101/378/4, f. 6d–8.
	1322/23	BL MS Stowe 553, ff. 51d–54.
	(July–October) 1323	Ibid., ff. 123–124d.
Carlisle:	1298/99	Liber Quot., pp. 120–21.
	1299/00	Liber Quot., pp. 122–25.
	1300/01	BL Add MS 7966A, ff. 58d–59d.
	1302/03	E101/11/19.
	1303/04	BL Add MS 8835, f. 35.
	1305/06	E101/369/11, ff. 83–84.
	1311/12	BL Cotton Nero C viij, ff. 77d–78.
	1312/13	E101/375/8, f. 22–22d.
	1316/17	Society of Antiquaries MS 120, ff. 42–43.
	1317/18	Society of Antiquaries MS 121, ff. 25–26.
	1319/20	E101/378/4, ff. 8d–14.
	May 1322–Jan 1323	BL MS Stowe 553, ff. 47–d.
	January–July 1323	Ibid., ff. 124–124d.

10 Provisioning at Carlisle is further discussed in on pp. 189–90 and 203-4.

11 (1309) Rot. Scot. i, 67–76; (1316) Ibid. i, 155–6; Society of Antiquaries. MS 120, f. 66; CCR 1313–18, pp. 426, 460, 524; (1317) Rot. Scot. i, 170–76; (1318) Ibid., pp. 183–9; (1323) CPR 1321–24, pp. 261–68.

12 N. Fryde, ‘Antonio Pessagno of Genoa, King’s Merchant of Edward II of England’, Studi in Memoria di Federigo Melis (Rome 1978), ii, 161–62.

13 BL MS Stowe 553, f. 49.

14 Powicke, Military Obligation, pp. 140–49; CDS v no. 615, pp. 241–42.

15 CCR 1318–23, p. 708.

16 Rot. Scot. i, 136–41; Phillips, Aymer de Valence, pp. 83–86.

17 Phillips, Aymer de Valence, pp. 92–93; CCR 1313–18, p. 310.

18 See below, p. 149.

19 Rot. Scot. i, 151; Historical Papers and Letters from Northern Registers, ed. J. Raine (R.S., 1873), pp. 285–86.

20 CDS iii no. 47, p. 9.

21 See for example pp. 79, 130 above.

22 Lanercost, pp. 185, 188.

23 Lanercost, p. 195; CDS iii no. 337, pp. 65–66.

24 Lanercost, p. 195.

25 CDS iii no. 186, p. 34.

26 Rot. Scot. i, 107, 111.

27 CDS iii no. 186, pp. 34–35 (dated by CDS v p. 81 to 1312).

28 Rot. Scot. i, 113–14; CPR 1313–17, p. 47.

29 See p. 58 above.

30 E. Gemmill and N. Mayhew, Changing values in medieval Scotland: A study of prices, money and weights and measures (Cambridge,1995), pp. 147, 163, 390. The author of the document claims however that the quantity stipulated amounted to in excess of a thousand quarters of grain, Sayles, Documents no. 155, p. 128.

31 Lanercost, pp. 195, 198, 199–200, 203; The Chronicle of St. Mary’s Abbey, York, ed. H.H.E. Craster and M.E. Thornton (Surtees Society cxlviii, 1933 for 1934), pp. 53–54; Vita Edwardi II, pp. 31, 48.

32 These include a negotiated loan of 1303, BL Add. MS 7966A, f. 54; payment of a fine for failure to provide foot soldiers, see p. 52 II; and the county communities of Cumberland and Westmorland in 1322 reached agreement with the king over provision of carriage, BL MS Stowe 553, f. 19.

33 DCD BAR 1313–14(B), dorse, £6.13.4, which includes the priory’s parish of Bedlington; BAR 1314–15 (A), dorse, 115s. for the manors alone.

34 RPD i, 208; DCD MC 4941.

35 The Northumberland Lay Subsidy of 1296, ed. C.M. Fraser (Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1968), pp. xxi, 181.

36 DCD BAR 1313–14(B), dorse; BAR 1314–15 (A), dorse; Lanercost, p. 198.

37 DCD BAR 1314–15 (A)

38 Merton College MCR, 5983, part ii, m. 1; DCD BAR 1317–18.

39 DCD BAR 1318–19.

40 Lanercost, pp. 199–200, 203, 211, 212; C. McNamee, ‘Buying off Robert Bruce: An Account of Monies Paid to the Scots by Cumberland Communities in 1313–14’, CWAAS new series xcii (1992), 77–89; Duncan, RRS v Introduction, pp. 145–46. A letter cited in Maddicott, Lancaster, p. 162 [C81/1706/17] suggests that the 1314–15 truce may have been only until Pentecost.

41 Chronicle of St. Mary’s York, pp. 53–54. This is a puzzling entry: et exhibitum fuit per Comitatum Karleolensem. Northimbria post vastacionem factam per idem R[obertum] viij^a libras; a Couplandia viij^xx marcas, which seems to imply that Copeland paid 160 marks, but that the men of Carlisle delivered the cash. The reference to Northumberland is puzzling.

42 CPR 1313–17, pp. 240–41.

43 McNamee, ‘Buying off Robert Bruce’, pp. 86–89.

44 See p. 57 above.

45 CPR 1313–17, p. 237.

46 Fraser, Ancient Petitions no. 22, pp. 26–27; Merton College MCR, 5978 dorse.

47 E101/378/4, ff. 6d–8d, 18d–32.

48 Scammell, ‘Robert I’, pp. 389–90.

49 See above pp. 52–53.

50 The sources are as follows:

1312-13	RPD i, 204, where 450 marks are paid, apparently as a moiety; Raine, Scriptores Tres, p. 94 states that the total cost of the truce was 1,000 marks.
1313	Lanercost, p. 200 ; DCD MC 4416; RPD i, 469; DCD BAR 1313–14 (B), dorse.
1314–15	Raine, Scriptores Tres, Appendix XCIV, p. cxiii; RPD i, 63; DCD MC 4702; DCD BAR 1313–14(B).
1315	DCD MC 4254. Raine, Scriptores Tres, p. 96 reports this as a truce until Christmas 1315 for 800 marks. But RPD iv, 159–65 reveals that the agreement was made on 25th November 1315 and that the sum involved was 1,600 marks, of which some had to be paid immediately. I suggest that Robert de Graystanes, the chronicler, has mistaken a termly instalment for the total cost of the truce.
1317–18	DCD MC 4111, 4265, 4712
1327–28	DCD MC 4354*, 4609
	A levy on benefices of 1325 is mistaken by Scammell as a collection of tribute for the Scots, ‘Robert I’ p. 369 citing DCD MC 4198; but DCD MC 5060 identifies this as a levy to replace the proceeds of a regular clerical subsidy which were taken from for Durham Cathedral treasury in 1315–16. See note 65 below.

51 Raine, Scriptores Tres, Appendix XCIV, p. cxiii.

52 RPD iv, 273–76.

53 RPD i, 191.

54 DCD MC 4111.

55 DCD MC 4605, 4606, 4607, 4607*, 4608, 4609, 4610, 4354.

56 Bishop Hatfield’s Survey, ed. W. Greenwell (Surtees Society xxxii, 1857), p. 51.

57 RPD iv, 273–76.

58 E.M. Halcrow, ‘The Administration and Agrarian Policy of the Manors of the Cathedral Priory of Durham’ (Oxford University B. Litt. thesis 1949), p. 137, compared with DCD MC 4607, 4605.

59 Scammell, ‘Robert I’, p. 397.

60 DCD BAR 1313–14(B), dorse; DCD BAR 1314–15(A).

61 DCD MC 4712.

62 RPD i, 204.

63 DCD MC 4091, 5055, 6035.

64 Raine, Scriptores Tres, p. 96; DCD MC 4254; RPD iv, 159–65.

65 E159/95, m. 112d; DCD MC 5060; H.S. Offler, ‘Murder on Framwellgate Bridge’, AA 5th series xvi (1988), 196.

66 DCD BAR 1313–14 (B); DCD BAR 1314–15(A).

67 Scammell, ‘Robert I’, p. 395.

68 DCD MC 4265.

69 DCD MC 3531, 3623, 4439.

70 DCD MC 4265.

71 DCD MC 4399.

72 DCD MC 4712.

73 See above p. 85.

74 Offler, ‘Murder on Framwellgate Bridge’, 193–211.

75 Fraser, Northern Petitions no. 128, pp. 173–74.

76 DCD MC 4086, 4399; DCD PNA 1314/15.

77 Lanercost, pp. 200, 216, 221, 230.

78 Fraser, Northern Petitions no. 131, pp. 177–78.

79 Lanercost, p. 216; CPR 1317–21, p. 482.

80 Lanercost, p. 221; CDS iii nos. 707, 858; CIM ii no. 452, pp. 111–12; Memorials of the Church of SS. Peter and Wilfrid, Ripon (Surtees Society lxxviii, 1886) ii, 86; KB27/240, m. 70d; KB27/ 250, m. 88d.

81 CIM ii no. 891, p. 222.

82 Melsa ii, 357; DCD MC 4105.

83 Vita Edwardi II, p. 48.

84 Fordun ii, 340.

85 CPR 1313–17, p. 210; CCR 1313–18, p. 160.

86 NCH x, 345.

87 Chart. St. Mary’s Dublin ii, 343; CIPM vii no. 537, p. 374.

88 Lanercost, pp. 219–20; Scalacronica, p. 60; Society of Antiquaries MS 121, f. 20 where ‘Wark’ can only mean Wark-on-Tweed; there was no significant castle at Wark-in-Tynedale.

89 Scalacronica, p. 60.

90 Duncan, RRS v Introduction, pp. 145–46.

91 R. Nicholson, ‘The Last Campaign of Robert Bruce’, EHR lxxvii (1962), 243–45.

92 NCH ii, 196–216; Maddicott, Lancaster, pp. 25–26; W.D. Simpson, ’Dunstanburgh Castle’, AA 4th Series xvi (1939), 31–42 and ’Further Notes on Dunstanburgh Castle’, AA 4th series xxvii, 1–28.

93 M. Prestwich, ‘Isabella de Vescy and the Custody of Bamburgh Castle’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research xliv (1971), 148–52; Rot. Scot. i, 167 ; NCH ii, 24–25.

94 BL MS Stowe 553, f. 56d.

95 CPR 1292–1301, p. 197; NCH viii, 83.

96 Furness Abbey, VCH Lancashire ii, 118; Cartmel Priory, J.C. Dickinson, The Land of Cartmel: A History (Kendal, 1980), pp. 18, 83. Kershaw, Bolton Priory, pp. 122–23. At Holm Cultram Abbey Edward I had built a peel, E101/369/11, f. 188, E101/369/16, f. 4d.

97 Inventory of the County of Westmorland (RCHM, 1936), pp. 57–62.

98 G. Tate, History of the Borough, Castle and Barony of Alnwick (Alnwick, 1866) i, 83–6, 134–42, 372–88.

99 W.D. Simpson, ’Warkworth: A Castle of Livery and Maintenance’, AA 4th series xv, 115–24.

100 NCH v, 26–31.

101 Extensive repairs had to be ordered in November 1316, CCR 1313–18, p. 374.

102 E372/172, m. 48d; Fraser, Northern Petitions no. 65, pp. 98–99.

103 SC1/21/25, dated 1336; RRS v no. 162, pp. 433–37.

104 R.A. Brown, H.M. Colvin, A.J. Taylor, The History of the King’s Works: The Middle Ages (HMSO, 1963) ii, 597–98; Reg. Halton i, 178–181; CCR 1313–18, p. 366; CCR 1318–23, pp. 15, 161; E101/13/36 (33); CCR 1323–27, p. 115.

105 Summerson, Medieval Carlisle i, 229, 257.

106 E101/619/61; The History of the King’s Works ii, 563–66; E101/68/1 (25c, 27); BM Add. MS 17360, ff. 12d, 28, where, however, the cost of the Douglas Tower is not included in the account; Lanercost, pp. 219–20.

107 The History of the King’s Works ii, 780.

108 D.J. Cathcart King, Castellarium Anglicanum, an Index and Bibliography of the Castles in England, Wales and the Islands (Millwood New York and London, 1983), ii, 81–101, 133–41, 243–51, 325–78, 489–96, 511–41.

109 NAI RC8/10, p. 212.

110 Cathcart King, Castellarium Anglicanum ii, 331, 341–2, 335; i, 85, 88 (No. 2), 91.

111 Fraser, Northern Petitions no. 104, pp. 137–38.

112 G. Neilson, Peel: Its Meaning and Derivation (Glasgow, 1893).

113 Cathcart King, Castellarium Anglicanum ii, 346, 350, 344; i, 93, 90; ii, 522.

114 Northumberland Record Office ZRI/1 (68); NCH x, 350–86; CPR 1321–24, p. 82; R. Surtees, History and Antiquities of the County Palatinate of Durham (London, 1840) iv (Part II), 94.

115 See above p. 79; Neilson, Peel, p. 19; and the treaty of 1319 seems to imply that Robert was building fortifications in southern Scotland, RRS v no. 162, pp. 433–37.

116 See M. Prestwich, ’Victualling Estimates for English Garrisons in Scotland during the Early Fourteenth Century’, EHR lxxxii (1967), 536–43.

117 E101/376/7, ff. 116d–117.

118 E.g., Bamburgh, NCH i, 37–9, citing SC6/950/3, m. 2d; also M. Prestwich, ‘English Castles in the Reign of Edward II’, Journal of Medieval History viii (1982), 164–65.

119 Lanercost, p. 235.

120 E159/88, m. 89, in CDS iii no. 524, pp. 100–1.

121 CDS iii no. 337, pp. 65–66.

122 Fraser, Northern Petitions no. 112, pp. 145–46; CIM ii no. 297, p. 75.

123 CPR 1313–17, p. 309; Fraser, Ancient Petitions no. 22, pp. 26–27.

124 E159/93, m. 14d.

125 Fraser, Ancient Petitions no. 133, pp. 159–60.

126 E372/166, m. 29.

127 Fraser, Ancient Petitions nos. 22, 156, 157.

128 CCR 1318–23, p. 40.

129 Fraser, Northern Petitions no. 112, p. 145; CIM ii no. 297, p. 75.

130 Charts 3–6, pp. 126–27.

131 CDS iii nos. 470, 477.

132 Summerson, Medieval Carlisle i, 215.

133 CCW 1244–1326, pp. 422, 424.

134 CDS iii no. 470, pp. 89–90. See below p. 217.

135 Fraser, Northern Petitions no. 30, pp. 59–61.

136 Maddicott, Lancaster, p. 162.

137 Tate, History of Alnwick i, 136.

138 Fraser, Ancient Petitions no. 131, pp. 158–9.

139 E 101/376/7, f. 62.

140 Prestwich, ‘English Castles in the Reign of Edward II’, p. 162.

141 CPR 1313–17, p. 163, where the king, having borrowed Norham Castle from the Bishop for three years, returned it before that term had elapsed; RPD i, 547, 598, 666, 670; ii, 1013; iv, 481, 488, 497, 506, 507, 510, 514, 521, 523, 528, 530; CDS iii no. 507, p. 97.

142 Fraser, Northern Petitions no. 104, p. 137.

143 CPR 1313–18, pp. 569–70; NCH v, 30.

144 Society of Antiquaries MS 120, f. 46 gives £17,065 for total of section entitled Garnistura Castrorum (1316/17); MS 121, f. 22 gives £10,465 (1317/18); I have deducted costs of field forces included in those sections.

145 In 1315/16 the Berwick garrison cost £4,993 for 208 days, or £8,761 per annum, E101/376/7, f. 113d; Carlisle cost £2,851 for the same 208 days, a rate of £5,002 per annum, Ibid., ff. 116–17.

146 Liber Quot., p. 154; BL Add. MS 7966A, f. 65; BL Add. MS 8835, f. 38.

147 Rot. Scot. i, 131; CDS iii no. 458, p. 86; Fraser, Northern Petitions nos. 31, 32; Fraser, Ancient Petitions no. 22, pp. 26–27.

148 NCH viii, 86–87, n. 1.

149 C.M. Fraser and K. Emsley, ‘Law and Society in Northumberland and Durham, 1290–1350’, AA 4th Series xlvii (1969), 66–7; NCH viii, 88–89.

150 A.E. Middleton, Sir Gilbert de Middleton (Newcastle, 1918), p. 34; Phillips, Aymer de Valence, pp. 126–27.

151 Fraser, Ancient Petitions no. 23, pp. 27–28; Just 3/74/4, mm. 1, 1d, 2, 3.

152 CPR 1313–17, p. 597.

153 Scotland in 1298, ed. H. Gough (London, 1888), pp. 127–28.

154 Rot. Scot. i, 129–30; E101/14/13, f. 9d; see above pp. 72–74.

155 See above p. 78.

156 Rot. Scot. i, 156–57.

157 See p. 84.

158 M.L. Boyle, ’The Early History of the Wardens of the Marches of England towards Scotland, 1296–1377’ (Hull University M.A. thesis 1980), pp. 66–67.

159 CDS iii no. 440, p. 83; Phillips, Aymer de Valence, pp. 88–91.

160 Rot. Scot. i, 143, 145.

161 The indenture is alluded to in E101/376/7, f. 59.

162 E101/376/7, ff. 60d - 62.

163 On 3rd October men were reportedly dying of hunger in Berwick, CDS iii no. 452, pp. 84–5.

164 Guisborough, p. 397.

165 Ibid., p. 90; Rot. Scot. i, 150.

166 Phillips, Aymer de Valence, p. 90.

167 Lancaster’s efforts at mounting a campaign are detailed in Maddicott, Lancaster, pp. 173–87.

168 Society of Antiquaries MS 120, f. 66.

169 Rot. Scot. i, 166–67; E101/68/2 (39); CPR 1313–17, p. 563; CFR 1307–19, p. 312.

170 Phillips, Aymer de Valence, pp. 107–11.

171 Ibid.; Society of Antiquaries MS 121, f. 40.

172 E101/68/2 (39).

173 Duncan, RRS v, Introduction, p. 140.

174 CDS v, no. 627, p. 244.

175 Fryde, ‘Antonio Pessagno’, p. 173.

176 ’Historia Aurea’, p. 208; Barbour, The Bruce XVI, 335–492; Society of Antiquaries MS 120, f. 52 dates the skirmish at Lintilee to March 1317.

177 See below pp. 213–14.

178 Fraser, Ancient Petitions no. 23, pp. 27–28; CPR 1317–21, pp. 73, 135, 141; JUST 3/74/4, m. 1.

179 Maddicott, Lancaster, pp. 225–29, 232.

180 E101/15/26, printed in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne 3rd Series, iv (1909–10), 21–25.

181 Maddicott, Lancaster, p. 251; Rot. Scot. i, 203–4.

182 Vita Edwardi II, p. 103; see also Lanercost, p. 195.

183 Society of Antiquaries MS 120, ff. 44–6.

184 E101/376/7, ff. 59–62d; Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle, 24.

185 Society of Antiquaries. MS 120, f. 53, shows that the Norham garrison lost 10 horses in the king’s service, February to June 1317.

186 Bridlington, p. 57; Scalacronica, p. 58.

187 Scalacronica, p. 62

188 Fraser, Northern Petitions no. 132, pp. 178–79; Barbour, The Bruce XV, 425–550.

189 Barbour, The Bruce XV, 551–557; E159/102, m. 138.

190 E101/378/4 f8d, 330 quarters of oats, all the grain that appears under that year.

191 BL MS Stowe 553, ff. 19.

192 Duncan RRS v Introduction, pp. 145–46.

193 E101/14/31, ff. 9d,10.

194 CDS iii, nos. 456, 515, 697.

195 E101/14/31, ff. 9d, 10; Barbour, The Bruce XVI, 516–30.

196 Summerson, Medieval Carlisle, i, 235; BL MS Stowe 553, f. 61d.

197 CPR 1321–24, p. 93, 25th March 1322.

198 I. Hall, ‘The Lords and Lordships of the English West March’ (Durham University Ph. D. thesis, 1986), pp. 328–30.

199 See pp. 98–99.

200 Lanercost, p. 239.

201 Fryde, Tyranny and Fall, pp. 130–31.

202 RRS v no. 215, pp. 480–85, and see also p.162; translation is given in Anglo-Scottish Relations 1174–1328, Some Selected Documents, ed. E.L.G. Stones (London, 1965), no. 39.

203 E159/103, m. 176; Lanercost, p. 242.

204 Summerson, Medieval Carlisle i, 230–56.

205 CDS ii, no. 1084, p. 275; BL Add. MS 8835, f. 77; E101/373/15, ff. 13–17d; CDS v no. 562, p. 230; P. Connolly, ‘Irish Material in the Class of Ancient Petitions’, Analecta Hibernica xxxiv (1987), pp. 7, 28.

206 E101/374/16, f. 5d; E101/375/8, f. 25d.

207 J.E. Morris, ’Mounted Infantry in Medieval Warfare’, TRHS 3rd series viii (1914), 87–91.

208 E101/14/39 (4); E101/14/31, schedule; E101/376/7, f. 62.

209 Rot. Scot. i, 143.

210 E101/376/7, ff. 60d-61, 62d.

211 Rot. Scot. i, 151; Society of Antiquaries. MS 120, f. 45.

212 Morris, ’Mounted Infantry in Medieval Warfare’, pp. 82–85; Hall, ‘Lords and Lordships’, pp. 372–73 sees no reason to credit Harclay with introduction of the hobelar.

213 Society of Antiquaries. MS 120, f. 45d; MS 121, f. 21d.

214 CPR 1313–17, pp. 372, 373. Rot. Scot. i, 131 to John de Whelpedale alone is the earliest of these letters of marque, 18th September 1314.

215 CPR 1313–17, p. 687.

216 Raine, Scriptore Tres, p. 94.

217 RPD iii, pp. ci-ii; Middleton, Gilbert de Middleton, Appendix.

218 RPD ii, 868; Raine, Scriptore Tres, p. 94.

219 T. Wright, Political Songs (Camden Society, 1839), p. 196.

220 P. Chaplais, The War of Saint-Sardos (1323–1325) (Camden 3rd Series, lxxxvii, 1954), p. 66.