John Farndale

c1365 to c1450

Involved in a significant cattle and horse rustling expedition in 1384

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The webpage of John Farndale includes a chronology and source material.

The Cattle Rustler

John Farndale took part in a substantial cattle rustling expedition in County Durham in 1384. I think it is likely that his family had moved to that area by this time. I suspect that his great grandfather was William the Smith of Farndale (c1285 to c1350), who enjoyed a little poaching himself. His grandfather was probably John Farndale (c1305 to c1375), indicted for hunting in 1335, whose brother William the Smith of Farndale the Younger engaged in poaching with violence. His father, might have been another John Farndale (c1335 to c1400), who might have been a more upstanding member of society if it were he who joined a commission in 1390 to investigate dilapidations and waste at the Priory of Alberbury near Shrewsbury. Our John Farndale (c1365 to c1450) maybe stayed behind in County Durham with his grandfather and continued the old family tradition of illegal adventure.

This family had left the North York Moors and were living in the area of modern County Durham.

Indeed, he seems to have turned his traditional family sport of petty poaching offences into organised crime at scale.

There was a significant cattle and horse rustling expedition in 1384 involving John Farndale.

On 10 December 1384, At Westminster, Commission of Oyer and Terminer, was ordered to investigate and hear the case that John Farndale and others broke their close, houses and hedges at Wittonstalle and Fayrhils, in County Northumberland and seized 30 horses, 20 mares, 100 oxen and 100 cowes valued at £200 and carried them off with goods and chattels, assaulted his men, servants and tenants and so threatened them that they left his service. For 13s 4d paid the hanaper.

A hanaper is a drinking vessel, so perhaps there was a collection pot for the fines.

It is notable that John was referred to as John Farndale by this stage, not John of Farndale, so his family seem to have fully adopted the name by then, a sign perhaps that they had left the dale of Farndale far behind and were now inhabitants of a new place.

The scale of the rustling expedition is breathtaking. Perhaps the poaching tradition, initially driven by famine and hunger, had turned into something akin to organised crime, a foretaste of the Border Reivers who were starting to harass the border areas at about the same time.

£200 in 1480 would have purchased 141 horses or 526 cows, the wages of a skilled tradesmen for about 18 years, an equivalent twenty first century value of £140,000.

On 21 August 1385 at Durham, on Commission of Oyer and Terminer, the investigation seems to have continued regarding John Farndale, and others who broke their close, houses and hedges at Wittonstalle and Fayrhils, Co Northumberland.

Whittonstall is about 20 kilometres southwest of Newcastle, near Consett, on the line of the Roman Dere Street, only two kilometres from the site of the Roman fort of Vindomora. The location of Fayrhils is uncertain, but may be linked Fairley, which is adjacent to Whittonstall.

So this seems to have been a family who had left Farndale, but engaged in criminal activity at scale in County Durham.

On 2 May 1445, at Westminster, charges were brought for not appearing before William Babynton and his fellows when impleaded with Richard Coke of Cokewald, Co York…. Lawrence Hoggeson of Farndale and John Farndale of Stillyngton Co Durham, wright, to answer Thomas Bishop of Durham touching trespass. John might have been eighty years old by then, but we are not certain of his birth date.

This may have been a family who are ancestors of the modern Farndale family, but I have found other more likely candidates. I think it is more likely that this was a family who left the dale and settled in the Durham area, but disappeared as a group after John.

How does John 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, then John descended from William the Smith, who was related to the thirteenth century ancestors of the modern Farndale family, but this line of poachers and cattle rustlers seems to have disappeared by about the fifteenth century.

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