John de Farondell

c1352 to c1425

Henry Farendon and William Faryndon

John Farndale, and his brothers Henry and William, were archers and men at arms called to fight in Scotland in 1389

John became a butcher made freeman of York in 1408

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The Medieval Soldiers

John, Henry and William Farndale were probably brothers, the sons of Johannes de Farndall, freeman of York.

John Farondell, John Farnham, John Farendon and John Farodell was an archer and in one muster roll a man at arms in expeditions and standing forces in Scotland between 1383 and 1385 and again in June 1389. He appears in lists of medieval soldiers at this time. He served variously under Sir William Fulthorpe, Sir Henry Percy (1364 to 1403) Earl of Northumberland known as Harry Hotspur, John of Gaunt (1340 to 1399) Duke of Lancaster and Thomas Mowbray (1366 to 1399) Duke of Norfolk.

Also serving in the June 1389 campaign were Henry Farendon and William Faryndon or Farnham, who were almost certainly John’s brothers. Henry was a man at arms and William was an archer.

John served under the overall command of John of Gaunt on 1 February 1384, and the captaincy of Henry Percy. John of Gaunt was the Lancastrian patriarch, whose son Henry Bolingbroke seized the throne from Richard II in 1399 after landing with a small force at Spurn near Humber in 1399 and marching to his Pickering Castle, rallying supporters including the Nevilles from Sheriff Hutton and Kirkbymoorside. In the 1380s, he was still loyal to the Crown, the King’s uncle, but with growing tension between John of Gaunt and the King.

John served under the overall command of Henry Percy between 1383 and 1385 and directly under his captaincy on 1 February 1384. Henry Percy, Harry Hostpur was an English knight who fought in several campaigns against the Scots in the northern border and against the French during the Hundred Years' War. The nickname Haatspore or "Hotspur" was given to him by the Scots as a tribute to his speed in advance and readiness to attack. The heir to the leading Percy family in northern England (rivals to the Nevilles of Sheriff Hutton), Hotspur was one of the earliest and primary movers behind the deposition of King Richard II in favour of Henry Bolingbroke in 1399. He gave his nickname to Tottenham Hotspur FC.

The three brothers John, Henry and William served under Thomas Mowbray in June 1389. The Mowbrays were still feudal overlords of the lands of Kirkbymoorside and Farndale, John’s ancestral home, though effective control of those lands had long passed to the House Stuteville. Thomas Mowbray was banished by Richard II after his rivalry with Henry Bolingbroke, in 1399, but died soon afterwards in Venice.

Tensions between Richard II and John of Gaunt had been increasing over the approach to the war in France. While the King and his court preferred negotiation, Gaunt and Buckingham urged a large scale campaign to protect English possessions. However Richard II chose to send a so-called crusade led by Henry le Despenser, Bishop of Norwich, which failed miserably. Faced with this setback on the continent, Richard turned his attention instead towards France's ally, the Kingdom of Scotland.

As part of an agreement that brought the Second War of Independence to an end in 1357, the English had been allowed to occupy significant portions of southern Scotland, known as the English pale. However, during the 1370s, encouraged by Edward III's deteriorating health and English military reverses in France, the Scots had begun to gradually recover much of this territory, often through fairly violent means. The Scottish government's standard diplomatic line was that this was the work of over-mighty magnates that were not under control of the Scottish Crown. In reality the Scottish Crown were probably coordinating attacks on English-held territory. By the early 1380s the over-mighty magnates excuse was wearing increasingly thin, and in 1384 the Scots, whose confidence had been boosted by a decade and a half of military ascendancy, finally dropped all pretence of peaceful intention and began open war with England.

In February 1384, a Scottish force led by Archibald Douglas the Grim, Lord of Galloway, and supported by his cousin William, Earl of Douglas, and George Dunbar, Earl of March, captured Lochmaben Castle. The force was probably composed of men from the south-west, which would make sense given the location of Lochmaben. With Lochmaben, the English lost Annandale, the seat of the Scottish line of the House Brus, their last remaining possession in the west of Scotland. Thus they could no longer let Scottish military activity go unanswered and John of Gaunt's expedition was hurriedly organised.

On 3 April 1384, an English army entered into Scotland under the command of John of Gaunt, in direct response the fall of Lochmaben Castle.

John of Gaunt's army moved up the east coast and reached Leith, which was burned along with Haddington. However, the Scots had become adept at a scorched earth policy whenever the English invaded, and Gaunt's men seem to have struggled to find ways to overcome the Scots in any meaningful way. John of Gaunt himself seems to have shown some reticence in causing damage. He is known to have spared the abbeys of Melrose and Holyrood from destruction. In 1381 John of Gaunt had briefly fled to Scotland to escape the Peasants' Revolt, and this might have given him some sympathies within Scotland. During this time, John of Gaunt seems to have resided mostly at Holyrood, hosted by John, Earl of Carrick, the future Robert III of Scotland.

John of Gaunt is also known to have extracted a hefty sum of money from the denizens of Edinburgh to spare the town from harm, and this agreement may have included Holyrood as well. John of Gaunt had also been considered as a possible successor to David II of Scotland back in the 1360s, and in 1384 he may still have harboured vain hopes of some day pressing his claim to be King of Scots.

In all, the English spent less than three weeks in Scotland, and by 23 April 1384 Gaunt was in Durham handing responsibility for the defence of the marches to his rival Henry Percy, the Earl of Northumberland.

Later in 1384, the Scots resumed their aggressive policy towards England, this time with the earl of Douglas bringing Teviotdale back under Scottish control.

In 1385, the King himself led a punitive expedition to the north. The English King had only recently come of age, and it was expected that he would play a martial role just as his father, Edward the Black Prince, and grandfather Edward III had done.

On 8 July 1385 a force of French knights had marched south from Edinburgh wearing black surcoats with white St Andrew's crosses sewn on, alongside 3,000 Scottish soldiers. However the Scots hosts were not so cooperative with the French and relations deteriorated between them. The threat was repulsed by a counterattack from Henry Hotspur.

On 11 August 1385 the English army entered Edinburgh, which was deserted by then. Three days earlier Richard had received news from London that his mother, Joan, Countess of Kent, his principal mentor, had died the previous day. Most of Edinburgh was set alight, including St Giles' Kirk. According to the contemporary chronicler Andrew of Wyntoun the English army was given free and uninterrupted play for slaughter, rapine and fire-raising all along a six-mile front. The only reason Holyrood Palace escaped similar treatment was that John of Gaunt himself ordered it not to be touched. However there was indecision amongst the English military command whether to proceed or withdraw and the campaign came to nothing. The army had to return without ever engaging the Scots in battle.

Meantime the French threatened an invasion of southern England.

John of Gaunt remained in the north after the King returned to England to oversee the new truce with Scotland, but the relationship between the Lancastrian John of Gaunt and Richard II was worse than it had ever been.

The relationship between Richard and his uncle John of Gaunt was at an all time low after the military failure, and Gaunt left England to pursue his claim to the throne of Castile in 1386.

In 1388, Richard was aged 21 and starting to establish some authority when the north of England fell victim to a Scottish incursion. The Battle of Otterburn took place on 5 August 1388 as part of the continuing border skirmishes between the Scots and English. A Scottish attack on Carlisle Castle was timed to take advantage of divisions on the English side between Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland and Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland who had just taken over defence of the border and partly in revenge for King Richard II's invasion of Scotland three years previously. Henry Percy sent his two sons Harry Hotspur and Sir Ralph Percy to engage with the Scots, while he stayed at Alnwick to cut off the Scottish retreat. Despite Percy's force having an estimated three to one advantage over the Scots, Froissart records 1,040 English were captured and 1,860 killed whereas 200 Scots were captured and 100 were killed. The Westminster Chronicle estimates Scottish casualties at around 500. Hotspur's rashness and eagerness to engage the Scots might have added to the tiredness of the English army after its long march north.

The Scottish ballad, the Battle of Otterburn mocked, It fell about the Lammas tide, When the muir-men win their hay, The doughty Earl of Douglas rode Into England, to catch a prey.

The Battle of Otterburn

The Scottish Ballad which mocked the English.

In retort, the English Ballad of Chevy Chase told of Percy’s hunting party or Chase in the Cheviot hills, as an allegory to his chevauchée into Scotland.

John of Gaunt returned to England in 1389 and settled his differences with the King, after which the old statesman acted as a moderating influence on English politics. Richard assumed full control of the government on 3 May 1389, claiming that the difficulties of the past years had been due solely to bad councillors. He promised to lessen the burden of taxation on the people significantly. Richard ruled peacefully for the next eight years, having reconciled with his former adversaries.

Thomas Mowbray had been with Richard II during the Scottish invasion of 1385, but his friendship with the young King was waning. Richard had a new favourite, Robert de Vere, and Mowbray became increasingly close to Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel. The King already distrusted Arundel, and Mowbray's new circle included the equally estranged Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester. Together they plotted against the King's chancellor, the Duke of Suffolk who was impeached, and a council was appointed to oversee the king. However Mowbray gradually became disillusioned with his comrades and by 1389, he was back in the king's favour.

Mowbray returned to the King’s favour in early 1389 when he had his estates restored to him and was pardoned for having married without the King's licence.

In March 1389, Thomas Mowbray was appointed warden of the East March and castellan of Berwick Castle, receiving wages of £6,000 in peacetime and twice that in time of war. This was the context wherein John, Henry and William Farndale were part of the standing force in the East March of Scotland.

However Thomas Mowbray’s appointment was not a success and he fell out with the traditional lord of the north, Henry Percy. Mowbray held no lands in the north and had few contacts among the gentry, upon whom he needed to rely to raise his army. Mowbray's tenure in the East March was effectively doomed from the start.

His ineffectiveness became obvious in June 1389, when a Scottish incursion ravaged the north of England and, with little opposition, went as far south as Tynemouth. Mowbray, the Westminster Chronicle reports, refused the Scottish offer of a pitched battle and retreated to Berwick Castle.

The Butcher of York

Johannes Fernedill was probably the grandson of Johannes de Farnedale who had arrived in York in about 1340 to set up a saddle making business.

The Medieval Butcher

A reenactment of a medieval butcher at work.

It seems likely that John, the soldier, veteran of Scottish campaigns, returned to York, perhaps in about 1390.

Johannes became a butcher and it is likely that he worked in the street of butchers, known as the Shambles. The term Shambles is a medieval usage and refers to a meat market, or an open-air slaughterhouse where butchers would kill and prepare animal meat to be sold. Several urban centres in England have Shambles, including York, Swansea, Manchester, and Worcester. The Shambles of York is a narrow street, with many timber-framed buildings with jettied floors that overhang the street by several feet. By 1426 it was known as the Great Flesh Shambles, probably from the Anglo-Saxon Fleshammels, literally flesh-shelves, the word for the shelves that butchers used to display their meat.

The rears of the shops were slaughterhouses and since the buildings shaded the narrow street from direct sunlight, the meat on display could stay fresh for longer. When butchering took place, the guts, offal and blood were thrown into the street runnels that had a natural slope which helped it wash away after rain. These butchering practices long predated modern standards of hygiene and the street would have been unhygienic. The last butcher shops on the street closed in the early 20th century and although the butchers have now vanished, a number of the shops on the street still have meat-hooks hanging outside and, below them, shelves on which meat was displayed.

John probably worked at a butcher’s shop with a slaughterhouse at the back of the property, to help provide fresh meat. With little regulation of sanitation, the offal was washed out into the street where raised pavements helped to channel to blood and gore down the street and away.

In 1408, Johannes was made a freeman of York.

How do John, Henry and William 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, John, Henry and William were related to the thirteenth century ancestors of the modern Farndale family, and part of the York Line whose uncles settled in Doncaster from where the modern Farndales might descend.

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The webpage of Johannes Fernedill includes a chronology and reference to source material. You can also visit the webpages of John de Farondell, Henry Farendon and William Faryndon.