Tynedale In The 12th - 13th Centuries

It is not often appreciated just how late the Norman Conquest came to upper Tynedale. There is no evidence that North and South Tynedale were incorporated into the feudal structures of the Anglo-Norman kingdom before the reign of Henry II. This was long after much of South Wales had witnessed Norman settlement and many areas of lowland Scotland had experienced the installation of Norman, Breton or Flemmish lords by the modernising king, David (Ritchie 1954).

Indeed, both Barrow (RRS i, 111) and Kapelle (1979, 130, 268) have argued that these valleys did not even lie within the nominal boundaries of the English kingdom during the first half of the twelfth century, but fell under the authority of the King of the Scots instead, although the evidence appears inconclusive. Certainly, the local lord of north-east Cumbria, Gille, son of Boet, acknowledged Scottish overlordship and blocked Anglo-Norman expansion into the western end of the Tyne-Irthing gap, until the 1150s.

Thus it was not until 1157, that upper Tynedale acquired a feudal overlord, when the two valleys were granted by Henry II as a large fief to William, brother of the Scottish king, Malcolm IV, in partial recompense for having been peremptorily dispossessed of the earldom of Northumberland by Henry (Hartshorne 1858, 254; Moore 1915, 3).

At the same time the Barony of Gilsland (Gille's land) was established in north-east Cumbria and the small barony of Langley in South Tynedale was formed and granted to Adam de Tindale. This last measure usefully ensured that the Scottish kings did not have uninterrupted control over the Tyne-Irthing gap and with it communications between Newcastle and Carlisle. During the remainder of the twelfth century, under Malcolm II and William I, feudal subinfeudation progressed with the confirmation of land grants to individuals and religious institutions (RRS i, 103; ii, 79, 84, 143, 172, 197, 227, 529, 538; Moore 1915, 40-7, 84).