Local Sentiment and the “National” Enemy in Northern England in the Later Middle Ages

Abstract

On April 30, 1408, Archbishop Henry Bowet of York issued a commission ordering the deprivation of John, prior of the tiny and impoverished monastery of Hexham. The archbishop condemned the prior in the strongest terms, noting that, “to the manifest destruction of the English realm, he committed treason by receiving and cherishing the Scots and other false lieges of the king, grievous enemies of the kingdom all, and notorious traitors. In helping them to invade the realm he gave no heed to the danger in which he placed himself and the free men of the realm.” The archbishop went on to state that, when John abandoned his monastery in order to join the Scots, “there is no doubt that the prior perpetrated the infamous crime of lèse majesté.”A note to the printed edition of this commission remarks laconically: “a startling document, which shows how thoroughly disorganized was the state of society on the Borders.” But the grim determination to punish that is so apparent in Bowet's commission was entirely justifiable, for incidents of desertion to the Scots were troublesome and none-too-rare among northern land- and officeholders, and in 1408 the memory of the rebellion of the greatest of these, Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, was still fresh. In the eighteen months alone after Bowet issued his commission, the crown learned of another defection on the part of a formerly loyal Scottish cleric in England, as well as of the loss of one key border stronghold and the near loss of another, the results of treasonable conspiracies.