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July 2004

Parish History Episode 39

Neville's Cross

By the 1330’s, King Edward III seemed to have given up hope of reversing his father’s defeat at Bannockburn, and he decided to seek loot and glory elsewhere. His foreign relations were dominated by his determination to remain friendly with the Count of Flanders, whose subjects were now bringing unprecedented wealth to England by buying up our wool. If he had a friend to the East, he had a consistent enemy to the West, in the great island of Ireland. However, the Irish were not united amongst themselves (have they ever been?), and they were not as dangerous to England as the Scots were. The Irish chiefs may have been able to prevent the English from enjoying the wealth of Ireland (a land which had been awarded to the English by a pope, a hundred and sixty years before, but which the English had not, as yet, succeeded in subjugating), but Ireland did not impose the threat that Scotland did, many Scottish kings having, in the past, actually mounted invasions of England.

So, England had a friend to the East, and enemies to the West and North. To the South lay the Kingdom of France. It was a Realm more populous and wealthy than England, and it had also often proved an enemy in the past. But a weak France was an opportunity as well as an enemy. The English Crown already held many fiefs in France, and if France were weak enough, those lands could be greatly extended. Maybe the whole of France could be subject, one day, to the English Crown.

So Edward III thought; and his opportunity came when the direct royal line in France suddenly came to an end, after three hundred and fifty years.

The Capets, the Royal House of France (also known as “the Third Race”, the heirs of Clovis and of Charlemagne forming the First and Second Races respectively), began in 987 when Hugh Capet, Count of Paris, had been proclaimed as King over a Realm devastated by Viking and Magyar invasions. There then followed, through three centuries, 987 to 1285, an extraordinary father-to-son succession of French kings, with ten kings, each the eldest son of his predecessor, ascending the Throne in turn (a natural succession, but still extraordinary, for it is very rare for such a simple succession to endure for so long, or for a line of kings to have such long reigns, each of them ruling for an average of thirty years). Then, in 1285, King Philippe III died, to be succeeded by his eldest son, that Philippe IV, who killed and robbed the Knights Templar, and who transferred the Papacy from Rome to Avignon; and who died in his turn in 1314. He left three sons, so the Succession appeared secure, and at least one daughter, that Isabelle who married Edward II of England. His three sons, Louis X, Philippe V and Charles IV, each in turn succeeded, but each of them died without leaving a male heir (except that King Louis’ wife, Clemence, was pregnant at the time of her husband’s death, and she gave birth, a few weeks afterwards, to a son, proclaimed as King Jean I, who was however a sickly child, and he died after only a few days of life).

Louis X died in 1316, Philippe V in 1322, and Charles IV in 1328: and that was the end of the House of Capet. The principal reason for this unnatural lack of male heirs seems to have been an increase in morality at the French Court - possibly a consequence of the persecution and extermination of the Templars: the sons of Philippe IV, being aware of the revulsion felt by so many at the sight of the those Knights of the Church being burnt alive at the stake, on charges which everyone knew to be untrue, attempted to win back the trust of their subjects by a more devout and puritanical life-style at Court. Most previous Kings of the House of Capet had enjoyed the company of mistresses as well as wives, and their Queens had often taken lovers, when husbands were absent on Crusade, or other duties. But now things were done differently, and when both Jeanne and Blanche, the wives respectively of Philippe and Charles, were detected in adultery, both were immured in dungeons for the rest of their lives (while their lovers were killed with great cruelty), before they had succeeded in conceiving sons, and thus, in condemning their own wives to life-long imprisonment, King Philippe and King Charles condemned themselves to die without heirs.

This unusual situation may suggest an excess of levity in French queens, but the superstitious have always claimed that Jacques le Molay, the last Grand Master of the Templars, burnt at the stake in 1314 (just before Philippe IV’s death), had been heard to call down a curse on the House of Capet, as he expired, and had prophecied that Philippe's sons would be the last Capets to rule in France. Others have suggested that servant maids in the service of Princesses Jeanne and Blanche, appalled at what had been done to the Templars, reported the infidelities of their mistresses to Jeanne’s and Blanche’s husbands, in order to make the “Curse of the Templars” come true.

Whatever did happen, Philippe’s third son, Charles IV, was to prove the last king of the House of Capet. And on his death in 1328, it was not clear who would now be king. An assembly of barons met in Paris, and they proclaimed Philippe de Valois, a nephew of King Philippe IV, as France’s new king. Besides his three sons, all now dead, Philippe IV had of course fathered a daughter, Isabelle, who had married Edward II of England. She was now dead, but her son was still alive, and he was by now King Edward III of England. The barons, however, denied his claim, and asserted that the French succession was bound by “Salic Law”, whereby the Crown could not be inherited by, or through, a woman. For the moment King Edward, pre-occupied by Scotland, did not contest this ruling.

But, after tiring of the Scottish wars, he turned his attention back to France, and his lawyers informed him that “Salic Law” no longer applied. Edward disengaged himself from Scotland, and, in 1337, invaded France with a large army. Among those who rode in his train was Bishop Bury of Durham. This would seem to indicate that he did not anticipate much trouble arising on his Northern border while he was campaigning in the South.

He should have realised that trouble would occur. The French had sent a certain amount of help and encouragement to the Scots during the struggles of the previous fifty years, purely out of a wish to embarrass the English and to try and nibble away at the English Crown’s possessions in France. It was the beginning of that relationship which the Scots would describe as “the Auld Alliance”: the need for England’s enemies to assist each other against the common foe. Just as, in 1914, the Franco-Russian Entente meant that Germany had to fight a war on two fronts, against both France and Russia, so, in 1337, England had, as a result of the Auld Alliance, to fight against both France and Scotland.

King Edward spent the next few years campaigning in France. Nothing very startling occurred in Northern England. Bishop Bury came back to Durham, to die, in 1345, and Thomas Hatfield was consecrated as his successor, and the new Bishop almost immediately went to France to meet the King. In the following year, things seemed to come to a head. The English armies were greatly re-inforced, and King Edward tried to bring the war to a conclusion. However, as a result of the weakening of English strength at home, King David II of Scotland resolved on a major invasion of England. Both campaigns culminated in an apparently decisive English victory.

The climax came first in France, on August the 26th, when the English won a crushing victory over the French at Crécy. Bishop Hatfield was still with the King’s army, though he took no active part in the fighting.

Meanwhile, the Scots had crossed the Border in force, and were pushing Southwards towards Durham. They plundered and destroyed numerous churches, abbeys and priories in Cumberland and Northumberland (a practice which helps to explain the present paucity of ecclesiastical ruins in those parts), and then crossed the Tyne to threaten Durham. In the absence of the Bishop, John Fossor, the Prior, called out the Haliwer Folc, the militia, including nine men from Houghton-le-Spring. He kept some of these men for the defence of Durham, while others were despatched to Bishop Auckland, where Sir Ralph Neville was assembling a field army to meet the enemy. Neville was reinforced by a force from Northumberland, led by Sir Henry Percy, whose home territory had been partly overrun by the Scots, although strong garrisons still held Alnwick and other castles. Neville was also being joined by a force from Yorkshire, under the command of the Archbishop, but the Yorkshiremen had not fully arrived, when Neville received news that the Scots were assembling for an assault on Durham’s walls, while their advance parties were moving down the Great North Road, to secure control of the bridges, and to requisition and store supplies for the main army when it continued its advance.

Neville decided to ride out from Auckland without waiting for the whole Yorkshire force to arrive. He met the Scottish vanguard at Ferryhill and destroyed it, and then met up with another Scottish party guarding Sunderland Bridge (near Croxdale), and annihilated that. He then moved on to take the main Scottish army, which was preparing to storm Durham from the West, in the rear. King David rallied his men, and took up defensive positions in the hills between the Wear and the Browney.

On October 17th, less than two months after King Edward’s spectacular victory over King Philippe VI, the first of the Valois kings of France, at Crécy, Sir Ralph Neville’s men fell upon the Scots, and slaughtered them in the hills to the West of Durham City. This area is now known as the Red Hills, and folk etymology derives the name from the corpses left upon the battlefield. The fighting seems to have centred round that area where the present A167 and A690 roads cross: the stump of a cross can be seen beside the cross-roads - was it there at the time of the battle, or was the cross erected to commemorate the fight ? It is now known as Neville’s Cross, and the victory is also known as the Battle of Neville’s Cross.

Prior John Fossor was not in Durham during the battle, but was at Neville’s side, in command of about a third of the Haliwer Folc, while the bulk of the local levies were manning Durham’s walls, and had a good view of Lord Neville’s victory. So too did the monks, who were apparently chanting psalms on top of the cathedral tower. Were they up there, because it was the nearest place to God? Or did they see it as the best place of refuge if the battle went awry? As it was, they witnessed a wonderful victory, which perhaps they attributed to the quality of their prayers and their singing.

King David’s body was not found amongst the corpses that littered the battlefield. But then one of Lord Percy’s knights discovered the Scottish King, still alive, but cowering under Aldin Grange Bridge (where the Durham-Bearpark road crosses the River Browney). He was brought before Percy, who, with the agreement of Neville, Prior Fossor and the Archbishop of York, decided to despatch Scotland’s King to London for safe keeping.

It was England’s greatest victory over the Scots, and, what’s more, it had been achieved by an army drawn solely from England’s three North-Eastern counties. It certainly gave the men of the North-East greater self-confidence and self-reliance.