William Smyth of Farndale
c1285 to c1360
The Smith of Farndale
%20-%20William%20Smyth%20de%20Farndale_files/image002.jpg)
The webpage
of William
Smyth of Farndale includes a chronology and reference to sources.
The Smith
with an unruly family
William was
a smith in Farndale, whose family engaged in poaching, on an increasingly
organised scale, for generations.
William
might have been born in about 1285 and may have been a son of William
Farndale, originally a smith himself, once charged with a poaching offence,
but who had moved to Danby by 1301.
There were
eleven individuals called Willemo in Farndale listed the
1301 tax subsidy, but if we are correct about when he was born, he was
unlikely to have been of age by that time.
It is
possible that William the Smith had two sons, John Farndale,
and William who also came to be known as William
the Smith of Farndale, the Younger. Both his sons engaged in poaching,
sometimes with violence.
In 1330 Roger
son of Emma, John de Bordesden, Robert Moryng, John son
of William Fabri (Smith) of Farndale, Robert Stybbing,
and William Bullock, about the feast of S. Bartholomew, captured one hind and
one calf at Rotemir."
It seems
likely that Rotemir is a place around Farndale, but it is possible it is a
reference to Redmire, west of Leyburn.
On Monday 2
December 1336, William, smith of Farndale himself came hunting in Lefebow
with bow and arrows and gazehounds. There is another reference to Leasebow
and it is likely that Lefebow and Leasebow are a place. There is a place called
Lease Rigg, near Grosmont and Egton, which is
the area that Johannes de
Farndale moved to in about 1301, so it is possible this is the place. Also
on 2 December 1336 John de
Farndale was bailed for poaching at Pickering.
On 17
January 1348 at Westminster, a Commission of Oyer and terminer was appointed to
Henry de Percy, Thomas de Rokeby, William Basset, William Malbys, William de
Broclesby, Thomas de Fencotes and Thomas de Seton, on a complaint that Edmund
de Hastynges and others including William
Smyth of Farndale the younger, broke their park at Egton, hunted therein, carried away his goods
with deer from the park and assaulted his men and servants, whereby he lost
their service for a great time. By fine of 1 mark.
William’s
great grandson was probably John Farndale who took
part in a large scale cattle rustling expedition in 1384.
|
How
does William the Smith of Farndale relate to the modern family? It is not
possible to be accurate about the early family tree,
before the recording of births, marriages and deaths in parish records, but
we do have a lot of medieval material including important clues on
relationships between individuals. The matrix of the family before about 1550
is the most probable structure based on the available evidence. If it is
accurate, William the Smith, was related to the thirteenth century ancestors
of the modern Farndale family, but his line of poachers and cattle rustlers
seems to have disappeared by about the fifteenth century. |
or
Go Straight to Act 7 –
Poachers of Pickering Forest