enduring to see the slavery of his country, raised a body of Northumbrians disgusted like himself by the Conqueror's severities, and, assisted by his brother Edwin, slew a great part of the Norman garrisons. The city of York was re-taken and William of Newburgh writes that 4,000 of the Normans were slain. The destruction of his garrisons so excited the rage and resentment of William, that he was often heard to swear in his march to the north, "that he would not leave a soul of the insurgents alive," and he soon began to put his threats in execution. From the Domesday Survey which we have already quoted, it will be seen that the manor of Easingwold was then greatly depreciated in value. In the reign of Edward the Confessor, it was worth £32, but at the time when the survey was made under William, it was only worth 20 shillings. This depreciation was in consequence of the destruction and devastation he had inflicted upon the inhabitants of Easingwold and their property. In order to punish the Northumbrians for their lengthened resistance, the Conqueror laid waste all the country betwixt York and Durham, and made it so desolate, that for nine years neither spade nor plough was put into the ground, and those who escaped the sword were obliged to eat the vilest animals and even human flesh to preserve their miserable lives. The historian Hume says, "the houses were reduced to ashes, the cattle seized and driven away, and many of the inhabitants perished in the woods from cold and hunger. The lives of one hundred thousand persons are computed to have been sacrificed by this stroke of barbarous policy." In several of the succeeding reigns we find this part of the country the seat of intestine wars and all its attendant horrors. The Scotch took every opportunity of invading the northern frontiers, and frequently penetrated as far as York, under the reign of Edward II. In the year 1314, an order was issued by the King, at York, to John, Lord Mowbray, who was then Governor of the city, to array all the defensible men in the wapentake of Bulmer, between the ages of sixteen and sixty, as well horsemen as foot, in order to their joining him in the expedition into Scotland. From Humber's streams, whose tumbling waves resound And deafen all the adjoining coasts around, To where the Tweed in softer windings flows, In the same year was the fatal battle of Bannockburn, in which the Scotch Historian' says, that fifty thousand Englishmen were slain upon the spot. The Scots afterwards entered England and laid waste the country with fire and sword. They came to Ripon and Northallerton, and received a thousand marks each to spare the towns. They burnt the towns of Skipton and Knaresbrough, and continued their depredations to York where they burnt the suburbs. The Archbishop raised an army and pursued them to Myton, about six miles from Easingwold, where the greater part of his forces were slain and himself defeated. In the year 1322, Edward pursued the Scots as far as Edinburgh, but on his return, he was suddenly' and unexpectedly attacked by Thomas Randolph and Sir James Douglas while resting his forces at Byland Abbey, and narrowly escaped to York. The defeat of his army on this occasion was attributed to the traitorous conduct of Sir Andrew Harcla, recently created Earl of Carlisle, who had conspired with the Scottish Chieftains and kept back part of the English army from joining in the conflict, for which he was afterwards degraded and executed. During the earlier portion of this stormy period, the manor of Easingwold was in the hands of the crown, for it paid scutage of £17. 6s. 8d. as such, on occasion of the Galway expedition, 33 Hen. II. (1187); and again the executors of Robert 7 Buchanan. 8 de Ayville were forbidden in 1244 to administer to his effects till an arrear of £9. 12s. 2d., due to the crown, for the farm of the mill at Easingwold was paid, but in 1265, after the battle of Evesham, it was granted by Henry III. to his second son Edmund Plantagenet, the first Earl of Lancaster, (Rotuli Hundred. Edw. I.) to whom, according to Dugdale, his nephew Edward the first, in 1291, granted a Fair to be held every year at his manor of Easingwold, on the eve and festival of our Lady. This connexion involved the place and neighbourhood in the turbulent proceedings of the second Earl, the celebrated Thomas of Lancaster, against Edward the second, which terminated in the battle of Boroughbridge, fought on the 16th of March, 1321, and the execution of the defeated Earl at Pontefract six days after. His honours and possessions however, were restored to his brother Henry, who was required by an instrument preserved in Rymer's Federa, (Vol. II. p. 704, Ed. 1821,) dated 1 Edw. III. (1327) to give an account to the Exchequer, of the profits and outgoings of the manors of Esyngwald, Hobi (Huby), and Barley, in the county of York, among other possessions stated to be held during the king's pleasure, on this condition, and to have been so held by the deceased Earl Thomas. Whatever were the limitations imposed by the crown, this manor with the rest seems to have gone in the regular course of descent, and at length to have devolved on John of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward III., who derived his title of Duke of Lancaster from his marriage with Blanch, daughter of Henry, who first bore the ducal title, and great granddaughter of Edmund, the first Earl of Lancaster. Joan, daughter of John of Gaunt by Catharine Swinford, was the second wife of Ralph Neville, called the Great, first Earl of Westmoreland, and probably brought him, (besides a family of thirteen children, in addition to nine left him by his first wife), the manor of Easingwold, of which as well as SheriffHutton, Raskelfe, Huby, Gillinge, Aldeburg, Sutton-on-Galtres, &c., &c.. he died seized 4 Henry VI. (A.D. 1425). This power Madox's History of the Exchequer, Vol. I. p. 631, and II. p. 183. Edit. 1769. E ful nobleman, scarcely inferior to his royal father-in-law in territorial importance, besides the hereditary domains of his family in Durham dependant on the castle of Raby, those derived from the Bulmers of which Sheriff-Hutton was the head, and those of the Granvilles and Fitz-Randolphs in Richmondshire, owing suite and service to Middleham Castle, had a grant for life of the Castle and Honour of Richmond, and was constituted warden of all the king's forests north of Trent. He was grandfather, by his second wife, to Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick and Salisbury, the king-maker, and while his ancestral honours and possessions continued with the children of his first marriage, till the time of Elizabeth, those which came to him from the daughter of John of Gaunt seem to have reverted to the crown on one of the various forfeitures incurred by her offspring, in whom the turbulent propensities of the first line of Lancaster were inherent to the last. At all events, we find the manor of Easingwold described as among the crown demesnes in the time of Edward IV., and so it appears to have remained, till Charles the First, in the ninth year of his reign, (A. D. 1633) granted it, with the manor of Huby, to Thomas Belasyse, first Lord Fauconberg, distinguished for his attachment to the royal cause in the civil wars of that unhappy period, with whose descendants in the female line. Sir George Wombwell, Bart., of Newburgh Hall, they still continue. In the same reign some important changes took place with respect to property in Easingwold. The estates which had been held on lease of the crown for terms of years, as portions of its ancient demesne, were enfranchised. The king also, by letters patent under his Privy Seal, at Canterbury, August 6th, 1638, granted George Hall, gent., (described at various times as of Oswaldkirk, Sinnington, and Easingwold,) and to his heirs and assigns for ever, a free market, to be held at Easingwold every Friday, also two wakes or fairs, to be held on the Feast of St. John the Baptist, and Holy-rood, and another market for cattle every other week on Fridays, to commence from the Friday after the Feast of St. Matthew the Apostle, and to continue to the Friday next before the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, with a Court of Piepoudre to be held at the time of the said wakes or fairs, with all tolls and profits arising from thence. In pursuance of this, which seems from records in the Duchy Court of Lancaster, to have been rather a revival and extension of privileges held from very ancient times by prescription, than an absolutely new grant, it was agreed, by inden ture dated August 31, 1646, by the bye-law men, on behalf of the inhabitants of Easingwold, to grant the present market-place to George Hall; he undertaking that the inhabitants within the manor should be for ever free from all tolls in the market; and that he and his heirs should repair the pavement in the market-place, and build and keep in repair a Toll-Booth or Town House, ten yards long, and six broad, with stone steps, wherein courts, bye-law, and other meetings might be held. These arrangements have been a fertile cause of unprofitable litigation to the present generation of inhabitants, which may vie with the case of "Poor Peter Peebles versus Plainstanes," as a specimen of the glorious and perilous uncertainties of the law; the validity of their claim to exemption from tolls and stallage having been argued four times at York, and six at Westminster, on points which the courts, after all, had left open to further argumentation, when the litigants thought it their wisest course to agree amongst themselves, the claim to exemption being admitted, and both parties paying their own costs. We now turn from the civil to the Ecclesiastical History of Easingwold. It is not likely that a place so near the centre of Christian Institutions both in British and Saxon times, itself also the head of a Saxon soke, would be long after the settlement of Christian prelates at York, without its church and presbyter. Easingwold shares however in the general obscurity which hangs over the early history of our parishes, and though the occurrence of references to the "field of Paulinus" and the 1 Piepoudre, a court for the speedy adjudication of small causes, the name of which, derived from the Norman French, is said to intimate, that its decisions were made while the dust was on the feet of the litigants. |