Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 St Cuthbert and the Border, c.1080–c.1300
- 2 John Hardyng, Northumbrian Identity and the Scots
- 3 Remembering the Legal Past: Anglo-Scottish Border Law and Practice in the Later Middle Ages
- 4 Scaling the Ladder: The Rise and Rise of the Grays of Heaton, c.1296–c.1415
- 5 Land, Legend and Gentility in the Palatinate of Durham: The Pollards of Pollard Hall
- 6 Local Law Courts in Late Medieval Durham
- 7 The Free Court of the Priors of Durham
- 8 Church Discipline in Late Medieval Durham City: The Prior as Archdeacon
- 9 Economy and Society in North-Eastern Market Towns: Darlington and Northallerton in the Later Middle Ages
- 10 Newcastle Trade and Durham Priory, 1460–1520
- 11 The Size and Shape of Durham’s Monastic Community, 1274–1539
- 12 Peasants, Landlords and Production between the Tyne and the Tees, 1349–1450
- 13 Wastes, the Margins and the Abandonment of Land: The Bishop of Durham’s Estate, 1350–1480
- 14 Framing Medieval Landscapes: Region and Place in County Durham
- Index
5 - Land, Legend and Gentility in the Palatinate of Durham: The Pollards of Pollard Hall
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 St Cuthbert and the Border, c.1080–c.1300
- 2 John Hardyng, Northumbrian Identity and the Scots
- 3 Remembering the Legal Past: Anglo-Scottish Border Law and Practice in the Later Middle Ages
- 4 Scaling the Ladder: The Rise and Rise of the Grays of Heaton, c.1296–c.1415
- 5 Land, Legend and Gentility in the Palatinate of Durham: The Pollards of Pollard Hall
- 6 Local Law Courts in Late Medieval Durham
- 7 The Free Court of the Priors of Durham
- 8 Church Discipline in Late Medieval Durham City: The Prior as Archdeacon
- 9 Economy and Society in North-Eastern Market Towns: Darlington and Northallerton in the Later Middle Ages
- 10 Newcastle Trade and Durham Priory, 1460–1520
- 11 The Size and Shape of Durham’s Monastic Community, 1274–1539
- 12 Peasants, Landlords and Production between the Tyne and the Tees, 1349–1450
- 13 Wastes, the Margins and the Abandonment of Land: The Bishop of Durham’s Estate, 1350–1480
- 14 Framing Medieval Landscapes: Region and Place in County Durham
- Index
Summary
On 22 August 1661 the new bishop of Durham, John Cosin, wrote to William Sancroft, later archbishop of Canterbury, relating details of the warm greeting he had received on his arrival into the bishopric from the south:
The confluence and alacritie both of the gentry, clergie, and other people was very greate; and at my first entrance through the river of Tease there was scarce any water to be seene for the multitude of horse and men that filled it, when the sword that killed the dragon was delivered to me with all the formality of trumpets and gunshots and acclamations that might be made.
That the reception given to Cosin in the middle of the River Tees made a favourable impression upon the bishop and his entourage is confirmed by another letter written to William Sancroft a day later by Miles Stapleton, the bishop's secretary, informing him of the ‘petty triumph’ which he had witnessed on Cosin's approach to the bishopric, during which, ‘when my Lord came, the usual ceremony of delivering a great drawne faulchion was performed’. This would not be the last time that Bishop Cosin would encounter such a sword or a legend associated with it. In 1662, a year after his triumphant entry into the bishopric of Durham, Cosin undertook a survey of the episcopal estate. Among a list of the customs and services due from Bishop Auckland, where the bishop had a major residence, it was noted that:
the freeholders in Bongate at Bishop Auckland are to present a fauchion to the Bishop at his first coming thither, called Pollard's fauchion, wherewith as that tradition goeth, he slew of old a venomous creature that did much hurt to man and beast in these parts, for by this present they hold their lands.
The sword presented to Bishop Cosin on his crossing of the River Tees in 1661 was a falchion, a type of broad curved sword rather like a machete, which belonged to the Conyers family of Sockburn, a manor on the most southerly tip of the county palatine of Durham. Five years later, in the summer of 1666, the palatinate was the subject of a heraldic visitation by William Dugdale, Norroy King of Arms.
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- North-East England in the Later Middle Ages , pp. 75 - 96Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2005