Act 6
Game of Thrones
1066 to 1200
The Kirkbymoorside (Chirchebi)
Estate from the eve of the Norman Conquest
We now find ourselves
in the century and a half before our ancestors first settled in Farndale. The
story takes us from the eve of the Norman Conquest to the chess games of the
great Norman noble Houses over the lands where our ancestors lived.
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introduction, and the AI generation sometimes gets the nuance a bit wrong
(for instance there are aspects of the relationship between the Stutevilles
and the Mowbrays that are more accurately to be found in the text and links
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which are dealt with in more depth below. |
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Some
introductory music to set the scene. |
Scene 1 – Harold and Tostig
The Final
Days
The
Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian overlord of the ancestral lands of the Farndale family
on the eve of the Norman Conquest was Orm
Gamalson who was associated with sixty one locations, including the estate
of Chirchebi, now Kirkbymoorside, the estate which included the lands
which would become Farndale.
Lands of
Orm Gamalson before the Conquest
At the same
time that Orm had rebuilt Kirkdale
Minster in the decade before the Norman Conquest, Tostig Godwinson became
the Anglo-Saxon Earl of Northumbria. Tostig was the third son of the
Anglo-Saxon nobleman Godwin, Earl of Wessex and Gytha Thorkelsdóttir,
the daughter of a Danish chieftain. So he had parental associations with both Godwins and Scandinavians.
In 1051,
Earl Godwin's opposition to Edward the Confessor’s policies had brought England
to the brink of civil war. The Godwins' opposition
led Edward to banish the House Godwinson in 1051. The banished Godwin family, including
Gytha and Tostig, together with Sweyn and Gyrth,
sought refuge with his brother-in-law the Count of Flanders. However. they
returned to England the following year with armed forces, gaining support and
they demanded that Edward restore Tostig's earldom.
Three years
later in 1055, Tostig became the Earl of Northumbria upon the death of Earl
Siward. His relationship with his brother-in-law, Edward the Confessor,
improved and in 1061 he visited Pope Nicholas II at Rome in the company of
Ealdred, the Archbishop of York. Tostig’s role in Yorkshire was to strengthen
the King’s influence in this, from the south’s perspective, unruly land.
Tostig
proclaimed Earl of Northumbria
Godwin and his sons
Tostig
wasn’t popular with the Northumbrian ruling class, who were an ethnic mix of
Danish invaders and Anglo-Saxon survivors. Tostig was heavy-handed with those
who resisted his rule. He murdered several members of leading Northumbrian
families. In late 1063 or early 1064, Tostig had Orm’s son Gamal and Ulf son of
Dolfin assassinated when Gamal visited him under safe conduct. Gamal was
murdered in his house at York, probably part
of the ongoing multigenerational feud.
This might
have been the start of a period of disorder, during which Tostig changed his
allegiance in 1066 from the West Saxon house in favour of the Scandinavian
side, to die soon afterwards at Stamford Bridge.
Tostig was
frequently absent from the court of King Edward in the south and was lacklustre
in his efforts against the raiding Scots. The Scottish King was a personal
friend of Tostig, and Tostig's unpopularity made it difficult to raise local
levies to combat them. He resorted to using a strong force of Danish
mercenaries known as housecarls as his main force.
Local biases
might have played a part in his unpopularity. Tostig was from the south of
England, a distinctly different culture from the north, and Northumbria had not
been governed by a southern earl for several generations. In 1063, still
immersed in the confused local politics of Northumbria, his popularity
plummeted. Many of the inhabitants of Northumbria were Danes, who had enjoyed
lesser taxation than in other parts of England.
On 3 October
1065, the thegns of York and the rest of
Yorkshire descended on York and occupied the city. They killed Tostig's
officials and supporters, then declared Tostig outlawed for his unlawful
actions and sent for Earl Morcar, younger brother of
Edwin, Earl of Mercia. The northern rebels marched south to press their case
with Edward the Confessor. They were joined at Northampton by Earl Edwin and
his forces. There, they were met by Earl Harold Godwinson, Tostig’s older brother,
who had been sent by King Edward to negotiate with them and had not come with
an armed force. After Harold, by then the King's right-hand man, had spoken
with the rebels at Northampton, he probably understood that Tostig would not be
able to retain Northumbria. When he returned to Oxford, where the royal council
was to meet on 28 October, he had probably already made up his mind.
Harold
Godwinson persuaded King Edward to agree to the demands of the northern rebels.
Tostig was outlawed because he refused to accept the deposition of Edward. It
was likely that Harold had exiled his brother to promote peace and loyalty in
the north. This led to confrontation and enmity between the two Godwinson
brothers. At a meeting of the king and his council, Tostig publicly accused
Harold of fomenting the rebellion.
When Harold
became King in 1066, his immediate priority was to unify England in the face of
the threat from William of Normandy, who had openly declared his intention to
take the English throne.
Tostig,
however, plotted vengeance. Along with his family and some loyal thegns, he
took refuge with his brother-in-law, Baldwin V, Count of Flanders. He travelled
to Normandy and attempted to form an alliance with William, who was related to
his wife. Baldwin provided him with a fleet and he landed in the Isle of Wight
in May 1066, where he collected money and provisions. He raided the coast as
far as Sandwich but was forced to retreat when King Harold II mobilised land
and naval forces.
Tostig
therefore moved north and after an unsuccessful attempt to get his brother Gyrth to join him, he raided Norfolk and Lincolnshire. The
Earls Edwin and Morcar defeated him decisively.
Deserted by his men, he fled to his ally, King Malcolm III of Scotland. Tostig
spent the summer of 1066 in Scotland.
Then, he
made contact with King Harald III Hardrada of Norway and persuaded him to
invade England. One of the sagas claims that he sailed for Norway, and greatly
impressed the Norwegian king and his court, managing to sway an unenthusiastic
Hardrada, who had just concluded a long and inconclusive war with Denmark, into
raising a levy to take the throne of England.
Scene 2 – Norman Conquest
Defeat
In 1066 the
Norwegian King Harold Hardrada, sailed his army up the Ouse, with support from
Tostig Godwinson and after the
Battle of Fulford, when they defeated Morcar and
Edwin, they seized York.
King Harold
of England then marched his army north to York
in four days to take the invaders by surprise. The rebels were defeated at the Battle
of Stamford Bridge, only thirty kilometres south of Kirkdale, in which
Harold Hardrada and Tostig were killed.
So far so
good for Harold.
The
trouble of course was that Harold then had to march his exhausted army south
again, to confront the second threat from William of Normandy, near Hastings,
and in that episode, he didn’t do so well.
After the
Conquest, Orm Gamalson was stripped of all his lands. The years immediately
following 1066 saw regime change with unparalleled thoroughness.
Domesday
After the
Norman invasion of England in 1066, the north was not immediately subdued under
Norman rule. However the harrying
of the north meant that the Kirkbymoorside estate was under the Norman
thumb by 1086, which was the date when the
Domesday Book recorded the extent of Norman domination two decades
after the invasion.
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The
ruthless suppression of our ancestral home by the Normans |
As well as
recording comprehensive regime change, the Domesday Book also evidences the
administrative efficiency of the new overlords. A millennium later, that
efficiency provides us with the tools with which to have eyes on the historical
events of our very distant past. The Domesday Book, written in Latin, recorded
every important place in the country, what was there, who owned it prior to the
conquest, and to whom it was transferred after the Conquest. It established the
taxable values of all the boroughs and manors across the nation. The record was
held in two large books, which are still held by the
National Archives and accessible at Domesday
Online. The surveyors visited 13,000 villages over the course of about a
year. The whole landed property of England then totalled a value of £37,000,
which puts subsequent inflationary increases into some perspective.
We therefore
know from the Domesday Book, that Chirchebi, of which the Farndale lands
were a part, was in the possession of Orm at the time of the Conquest.
The Domesday
Book also evidences the settlement patterns across wider Kirkdaleland.
The wider
estate of Chirchebi stretched 12 leagues (about 42 miles) long by 2
leagues (about 7 miles) broad. It included Kirkbymoorside itself, and also the
wider area stretching south to Kirkby Misperton and north to Gillamoor, the agricultural lands of Orm’s day.
One of the
lands held by Orm in the Domesday record, was an area of five carucates of
cultivated land which included ten villagers, one priest, two ploughlands, two
lord’s plough teams, three men’s plough teams, a mill and a church. This was
the community around the church at Kirkdale. A carucate was a medieval
land unit based on the land which a plough team of eight oxen could till in a
year.
The wider
holding also included cultivated lands at Hutton le Hole and Gillamoor up into the southerly ends of Bransdale and Farndale, though the extent of
cultivation did not reach into those dales. It included Hoveton
believed to have been around Fadmore, Welburn, Harome, Nawton, Great Barugh,
Normanby, Kirby Misperton, Marton and Little Barugh. So this helps us to
clearly define the area of the likely home of our Farndale ancestors in Roman,
Anglo Saxon, Viking and early Norman times, before Farndale itself was
cultivated.
Most of the
northern reaches of this large Norman estate was forested and probably largely
impenetrable, and certainly not settled. It may have been used for hunting.
However the lands to the south in the northwest corner of the Vale of York,
were ancient agricultural lands.
Within the
northern part of the estate, there lay a forested valley, which was then wild
and remote, but which was nestling quietly in those woods, the place which in
time would come to be known as Farndale.
Farndale was little more than a possession, and a place which the owner himself
did not likely know, and which after the Conquest, would continue to be
possessed, transferred, perhaps sometimes hunted within, for another two
centuries.
So our
ancestral home was to become the tactical theatre of two great noble houses to
play their political manoeuvres across. Our ancestors then must have been
pawns, crushed or saved, at the whims of the noble houses.
Scene 3 – The Games the Noblemen Play
The Noble
Houses
The House
Stuteville 1066 to 1106
After the
Conquest, the estate of Chirchebi was forfeited to Hugh Fitz Baldric,
Hugh, the son of Baldric, a German archer who had
served William the Conqueror and became the Sheriff of the County of York in
1069. Hugh died in 1086 and the estate passed to de
Stuteville family. So in the game of Norman barons,
Kirkbymoorside started in the possession of House Stuteville.
The House
Mowbray 1106 to 1154
However the
Stutevilles were deprived of the estate of Kirkbymoorside in 1106 when it was
granted to Nigel d’Aubigny, one of Henry I’s new
men. So now our ancestors were pawns to the whims of the House Mowbray.
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The
descendants of Robert de Stuteville to whom our ancestors owed their
allegiance in the eleventh and then from the late twelfth century |
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The
descendants of Nigel D’Aubigny to whom our ancestors owed their allegiance in
the twelfth century |
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The Royal Line and the Noble Houses The
relationship between the Royal Dynasties of England and the Noble Houses who
directly influenced our family history |
On Nigel d’Aubigny death in 1129, Roger became a ward
of the Crown and Gundreda administered the estate on
his behalf.
It was Roger’s mother Gundreda, administering the estate on behalf of her under
aged son Roger de Mowbray, who had made a grant of lands which included Middelhoved in Farndale to the sons of St Ecclesiff. The exact date of this grant is unclear from the
Rievaulx Chartulary where it is recorded, but it must have been prior to 1138
when Roger took his majority. On reaching his majority, in 1138, Roger de Mowbray took
title to the lands awarded to his father by Henry I both in Normandy including Montbray, as well as the substantial holdings in Yorkshire
and around Melton.
Roger de
Mowbray was a supporter of King Stephen, with whom he was captured at Lincoln
in 1141. The Mowbrays were significant
benefactors of several religious institutions in Yorkshire. In 1154, the name Farndale appeared for the first
time in the Chartulary of Rievaulx Abbey when Roger de Mowbray, gave
land to the abbey, which included Midelhovet and Duvanesthuat
in Farndale. This story is told in Act 1 of the Farndale
Story.
The lands
around Farndale, which Bede had described as
a land of monsters, of wild beasts and men who live like wild beasts,
was finally being tamed.
A period of
transition between House Mowbray and House Stuteville 1154 to about 1200
In that same
year 1154, Robert de Stuteville, grandson of the first Robert de Stuteville,
laid claim to the barony which had been forfeited by his grandfather. Roger
gave him Kirkbymoorside for 10 knights’ fees in satisfaction of his claim. This
arrangement however was not ratified in the King’s courts. This was the start
of a refreshed interest in the Kirkbymoorside lands from the House of the de Stutevilles.
At about the same time Robert gave to
Saint Mary's Abbey, who held the nearby Manor of Spaunton,
as much timber and wood as they required together with pasture and pannage of
pigs in Farndale. The records suggest that Farndale was provided primarily as a resource
of timber and pasture in the mid twelfth century, with limited evidence of
settlement.
Roger de Mowbray supported the Revolt of 1173 to 1174
against Henry II and fought with his sons, Nigel and Robert, but they were
defeated at Kirkby Malzeard and Thirsk.
The Stutevilles came back into favour with the
accession of Henry II and Roger de Mowbray was compelled to hand back
Kirkbymoorside, along with many others fees.
Robert III de Stuteville died in 1186.
The arrangement of 1166 between Roger
de Mowbray and Robert III de Stuteville had not been not ratified in the King's
courts, and the dispute broke out again between William de Stuteville, son of
Robert, and William de Mowbray, grandson of Roger, in 1200. However in time,
William de Mowbray confirmed the previous agreement and gave 9 knights' fees in
augmentum.
The House Stuteville from 1200
Robert de Stuteville had given the
nuns of Keldholme the right of getting wood for burning and building in
Farndale, and in or about 1209 the Abbot of St. Mary's obtained from King John
rights in the forest of Farndale which the king had recovered from
Nicholas de Stuteville. Keldholme Priory had right of pasture in Bransdale and
Farndale by grant of its founder, Robert de Stuteville.
In 1216, Joan de Stuteville was born,
the heiress of the Stuteville estates. She married Hugh Wake, feudal lord of
Bourne and later Hugh Bigod, Chief Justice of England, but as a widow she
continued to be known as Joan de Stuteville, the Lady of Liddell.
It is during
the time of Joan de Stuteville, that we meet the first settled inhabitants of
Farndale. It was now the Stutevilles who were the overlords of the
Kirkbymoorside estate and therefore of the lands of Farndale during the
following centuries, as our ancestors started to work on the land there.
By the mid
fourteenth century another Joan of Stuteville descent, had inherited the
estate. She married Thomas Holland, made Earl of Kent in 1360, and Joan became
known as the Fair Maid of Kent.
Later Joan married Edward the Black Prince and their son was Richard II.
You could
now remind yourself of Act 1 – the Cradle,
which tells of our family’s settlement in Farndale. Or you could go straight to
Act 7 – the
Poachers of Pickering Forest, to pick up the story with the second
generation of known ancestors.
Before you
do that you could:
Read about the House Stuteville
or just
There is a
are research notes with a chronological history of Farndale, with source
material, including its Norman history on the Farndale page.