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March 2004

Parish History Episode 35

The Church Beseiged

When King Edward I died in 1307, he may have felt that his life’s work was nearing completion. Wales seemed to be conquered (though that country would break away again a hundred years later, when England would be disturbed by a series of dynastic wars), and Scotland seemed to be settling down : Wallace had been executed, with great cruelty, in 1305, and only Robert Bruce seemed to be left in arms, to oppose the English. Two years later, Edward I marched once more against “the rebels”, but, an elderly man, he died on campaign with his work uncompleted.

He was succeeded by his son, Edward II, who abandoned the campaign, and returned to London. His temperament differed from that of his late father. He showed little interest in military matters, but seemed to prefer enjoying himself in the company of young men. His absence from Scotland did not, at first, seem to matter. There were plenty of English troops up there, including the ever-grumbling Haliwer Folc, and the new King left it to his commanders to deal with the troublesome Bruce.

But then things began to go wrong. Bruce secured control of Galloway, the South-West corner of Scotland, and used that as a base from which to invade Ulster (at least nominally part of the Kingdom of Ireland, over which the English had claimed suzerainty since the time of Henry II) and the Isle of Man (thus ending any connection between that island and the See of Durham). Bruce and his men then returned to Scotland, and in 1313, after short sieges, secured control of nine important cities, including Edinburgh. A tenth city, Stirling, was well fortified, and able to sustain a long siege, but by the end of that year most of the survivors of the English garrisons in Scotland had fled there for refuge, and it was clear that the food supplies would not last indefinitely, with so many mouths to feed.

The English commanders now persuaded King Edward that his troops would fight better if their king was at their head, and so he was persuaded to leave off his amorous adventures in London, and to take over the command of the relief force which was being assembled, to march on Stirling in the Spring of 1314, in the hope of relieving the garrison there. The King’s army cautiously advanced Northwards, and in June it arrived at Bannockburn, a village a few miles South of Stirling. Here the English were to meet with disaster. Their army was largely destroyed in a two-days’ battle, and most of its knights, archers and men-at-arms were slain. The King himself escaped, but he would die, in a much more horrible way, thirteen years later, when his barons, and other men more inclined towards making war than making merry, rebelled, and they placed his son, the third Edward Plantagenet, on the Throne.

By that time, the English of the Northern counties had paid a heavy price for the defeat that had been inflicted upon them at Bannockburn. Although Robert Bruce (now King Robert I of Scotland : he had been crowned at Scone by, among other churchmen, Beck’s old enemy, Bishop Wishart of Glasgow; but he had of course been unable to seat himself upon the famous Stone of Scone, which had been taken to Westminster Abbey) was unable to venture abroad on campaign, for he still had opponents in Scotland, many of his supporters did embark on raiding expeditions into Ireland and England. In Ireland, while enriching themselves with loot, the Scots succeeded in driving the English back to the “Pale”, a small area around Dublin, not much bigger than modern County Dublin. In England, while also enriching themselves personally, they achieved much less. But they succeeded in doing an immense amount of damage.

The most enthusiastic of the Scottish invaders at this period was a chieftain called James Douglas. Dispossessed of his home by English invaders, he had fought enthusiastically with Bruce, and had commanded the left wing of the Scottish army at Bannockburn. After that victory, he had begun a practice of invading England each summer. His incursions were greatly feared, and he earned a reputation as “the Black Douglas”. Tales were told of him, such as the story that, one moonlit night, he captured Alnwick Castle by a surprise attack, leading his men, himself the first to scale the castle walls. While securing a rope, to assist the ascent of his followers, he heard someone approaching. He slunk into the shadow of a tower, and then saw a woman walking along the battlements. A soldier’s wife, she was cradling a fractious bairn, and was crooning to the child,

“Hush thee, dinna’ fret thee,
Mammy’s bonny wee pet, thee,
Tha daddy shall protect thee,
The Black Douglas willna’ get thee!”

She was interrupted by the Black Douglas suddenly grabbing her, putting his hand over her mouth to prevent her shouting out, and telling her, “I wouldna’ be so sure o’ that, Hinny !”

In 1317, in an incident in which the Black Douglas was not directly involved, the Scots achieved their greatest triumph when they set up an ambush at Rushyford (on the Great North Road, between Aycliffe and Ferryhill), and captured a large party of churchmen, including Louis de Beaumont, on his way North to be installed as Bishop of Durham, and two cardinals from Avignon, who were due to preside at the ceremony.

There will be more about Bishop Beaumont’s adventures in next month’s article, but Houghton was to be more directly concerned with the Black Douglas’s great raid of 1319. He crossed the Border that year, and, aided by some English borderers, he and his men had ridden hard for Newcastle, hoping to surprise the city, but he found the gates barred against him, and the walls manned. Turning aside, he crossed the Tyne, presumably by fords above Newcastle, and then decided to ride hard for Hartlepool, County Durham’s most important seaport, with the hope of surprising that city. He rode through Gateshead and Chester-le-Street, causing devastation wherever he went, and then crossed the new bridge over the Wear, close by where Lumley Castle now stands (it would be built later that century, to control that crossing).

He soon reached Houghton. There was no attempt at resistance - many of the village’s younger men lay dead on the field of Bannockburn - and while some of the population hid in the countryside, in ditches or denes or copses, others took refuge in the well-built stone church. Such places of apparent safety could prove death-traps : a besieging army could pile brushwood against the church door, and burn or smoke the people out, but Douglas, who still hoped to surprise Hartlepool, had no time for that. After a few hours he gave up the siege, and pushed on towards his real goal.

There was however one fatal casualty. One young man, who had been observing the movements of the enemy from the top of the tower, lost his footing while descending to ground level, and fell and broke his neck. Incidentally, the report on this incident, sent to Bishop Beaumont at Durham, was signed by the curate. It would appear that Stephen Manley, the then Rector of Houghton-le-Spring, was absent from the parish at the time. This need cause no great surprise. As mentioned in previous articles, many of the rectors were, in those days, pluralists and absentees, and probably, at best, only visited Houghton occasionally, leaving curates to carry out their duties as parish priests.

Douglas did a lot more damage in the countryside around Houghton. Both the hamlets of West Rainton and Warden Law seem to have been totally destroyed. West Rainton would soon be rebuilt and reoccupied, but there would never again be a hamlet on the top of Warden Law, a very exposed site.

Despite lingering to commit all this destruction, the Black Douglas still seems to have reached Hartlepool before any effective defence could be arranged, and his men rode through the streets of the town, and down to the waterfront, where they burst open the doors of the warehouses, to take their pick of the imports and exports piled up there. Many of the citizens had boarded vessels in the harbour, and they were carried out to sea, out of range of Douglas’s archers, and were able to watch the destruction of their homes from the safety of the ships.

Douglas’s men loaded up as many horses as they could requisition, in order to use them as pack-animals to carry their loot home (they preferred not to use waggons : if they had used them, they would have been compelled to stick to the roads for their return journey). But on hearing that an English force was mustering to block their passage home, Douglas ordered his men to march in the opposite direction, and they crossed the Tees into Yorkshire. English patrols continued to harass his heavily-laden column, and for a time forced him into Swaledale; but he turned and inflicted a defeat on his pursuers in the Battle of Mytton, and then, satisfied at last, he returned home with most of his loot.

He did not pass through Houghton-le-Spring on his return journey. The people of our village presumably rebuilt their homes, and gradually began to get life back to normal again.