Act 1
The Cradle
The crags of Middle Head, Farndale,
where Edmund the Hermit used to dwell
The family story begins when the dale
first became known, and follows a chronology into the early thirteenth century,
when enserfed tenants started to clear the dale for agriculture.
I suggest
that you follow the Farndale Story in the order of the numbered Acts. This will
take you on a journey which starts in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
when Farndale the place first appeared in historical records and individuals
started to take its name. If you follow the Acts of the Story in the right
order you will then travel back to the age of Roman Empire Britain and follow
the story of the lands in the vicinity of Farndale through Roman, Anglo Saxon
and Scandinavian times, before continuing the journey forward from the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
|
This
is a new experiment. Using Google’s Notebook LM, listen to an AI powered
podcast summarising this page. This should only be treated as an
introduction, and the AI generation sometimes gets the nuance a bit wrong and
definitely mispronounces words. However it does provide an introduction to
the themes of this page, which are dealt with in more depth below. |
Scene 1 – Farndale emerges from the
mists of time
First
Contact
In 1154, the
year when the Plantagenets started
their long dynasty, Roger de Mowbray,
lord of the lands of Kirkbymoorside, gave land in perpetual alms to the
brothers of Rievaulx Abbey. The lands included Midelhovet where Edmund the Hermit used to
dwell and another meadow known as Duvanesthuat,
lands in the valley of Farndale,
together with common pasture rights and permission to take building timber and
wood, for those who stayed there. Duvanesthuat
is an Irish Norse personal name, but there is nothing to suggest that it was a
functioning settlement by the mid twelfth century. The whole area was regarded
as a private forest of the Mowbrays. The grant was made saving Roger’s wild
beasts, and it seems to have been anticipated that the monks would want to
build a new dwelling there, probably to use as a grange or cote.
Roger of Molbrai, to all the faithful, both his own and strangers.
Let it be known that I have granted to the Rievallis
brothers, in perpetual alms, Midelhovet - scil. that
meadow in Farnedale where Edmund the Hermit dwelt,
and another meadow called Duvanesthuat, and the
common pasture of the same valley - scil., Farnedale: and in the forest wood for material, and for the
own uses of those who remained there, save the salvage.
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Roger
de Mowbray was a descendant of Nigel D’Aubigny to whom our ancestors owed
their allegiance in the twelfth century |
Click on
the title in the box for more context
There had
been a previous grant of lands including at Middelhoved
during Roger de Mowbray’s minority, by his mother Gundreda
on his behalf. Roger became a ward of the crown in 1129 when his father Nigel d’Aubigny died and he reached his majority in 1138. It was
therefore in the 1130s that Gundreda managed the
estate on behalf of his son and the Crown. So whilst the earlier reference is
not dated, it was probably in about 1130.
Gundreda, wife of Nigel de Albaneius,
greetings to all the sons of St. Ecclesiff. Know that
I have given and confirmed, with the consent of my son, Eogeri
de Moubrai, God and St. Marise Eievallis
and the brothers there for the soul of my husband Nigel de Albaneius,
and for the safety of the soul of my son, Roger de Molbrai,
and of his wife, and of their children, and for the soul of my father and
mother, and of all my ancestors, whatever I had in my possession of cultivated
land in Skipenum, and, where the cultivated land
falls towards the north, whatever is in my fief and that of my son, Roger de Moubrai, in the forest and the plain, and the pastures and
the wastins, according to the divisions between Wellebruna and Wimbeltun, and as
divided from Wellebruna they tend to Thurkilesti, and so towards Cliveland, namely Locum and Locumeslehit, and Wibbehahge and Langeran, and Brannesdala, and Middelhoved, as they are divided between Wellebruna and Faddemor, and so
towards Cliveland.
These
lands, though part of the Kirkbymoorside estate, were at its periphery. They
were largely forested lands, part of a vast noble possession, used only rarely
for hunting. Edmund the Hermit who lived at Midelhovet was a holy man
who performed miracles, who some said was descended from Alfred the Great.
This was the
first time the name Farndale had been used, and the name first appeared in the
Chartulary of Rievaulx Abbey. The
grant by the House Mowbray was
made at the end of the lordship of that House over the settlements of our
ancestral lands. In the same year, 1154, Robert de Stuteville was reclaiming
the ancestral lands of that rival House, and by the end of the century, the House Stuteville were overlords.
|
The
descendants of Robert de Stuteville to whom our ancestors owed their
allegiance in the eleventh and then from the late twelfth century |
There were
ancient settled communities living on the Kirkbymoorside estate, but no farmers
had yet reached the forested inner dales. The settled communities of the estate
were focused in the small town of Kirkbymoorside, and in the more rural
cultivated lands around the church of Kirkdale. These folk, of Anglo Scandinavian
descent, farming only a few miles south of Farndale, were the ancestors of a
small group of villeins who would soon clear land in Farndale, and start
cultivation there too.
In 1154
those living in the communities of the Kirkdale lands would have wondered in awe at
the Elven halls of the Cistercians of Rievaulx
Abbey, which had risen out of the soil on a colossal scale in a nearby
valley in only twenty years since the Cistercian monks had first arrived there.
This was a Lord of the Rings world of strange lands of a Middle Earth,
which included such places as Midelhovet and Duvanesthuat,
dimly known to the folk of the shires around Kirkdale, where strange monks had so recently
arrived, bringing French Cistercian traditions and constructing wondrous
towering halls.
Tolkein’s Rivendell
Rievaulx
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This
history of the Cistercian monastery of Rievaulx, in whose Chartulary the name
Farndale was first recorded in 1154 |
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The breathtaking abbey ruins that must have been held
in astonished awe by our forebears when the abbey broke through the soil of
Ryedale, adjacent to Farndale, in only a couple of decades before it started
to take control of swathes of those lands |
By 1166
Roger de Mowbray had fallen out of favour with the
English King, Henry II, and the lands of Kirkbymoorside passed to the House Stuteville. In the Games of Thrones between
barons across the chess board of England, the folk of the Kirkbymoorside estate
had fallen under a new authority. In 1166 Robert de Stuteville granted rights
to timber and wood in Farndale to the Cistercian nunnery at Keldholme, close to
Kirkbymoorside town. In 1209 the Abbot of the Benedictine Abbey of St Mary’s in
York obtained rights
in the forest of Farndale from King John. By 1225 there was reference to pastures
in Farndale.
In 1229
Henry III decreed that the whole of the forest of Galtres
and the forest between the Ouse and the Derwent, and the forest of Farndale,
are ancient forests and that the people were deceived in exercising their
rights of perambulation of the forest, and the forest should be guarded. The
forest of Farndale had become part of the royal forests, reserved for the King.
However in 1233, the Abbot of St Mary’s came to an agreement with the Stuteville family granting
free passage through the wood and pasture of Farndale. There was a
reference to the Botine Wood and the Swinesheved, which suggests that cattle and pigs
were being grazed there. In that same year, Nicholas de Stuteville died, and the estate
passed to his daughter Joan, the wife of Hugh Wake, who was known as the Lady
of Liddell. By 1241, her first husband was dead and she married Hugh le
Bigod. In
1253, the King committed to Hugh le Bigod the whole forest of Farnedala, which the king had lately recovered by
consideration of the court against the abbot of St Marie Ebor, to be kept until
the return of the King from Vasconi, or as long as it pleased the king.
This was confirmed in 1255, for a payment of 500 marks.
So the
estate of Kirkbymoorside fell once again under the noble ownership of the Stuteville family by the
beginning of the thirteenth century. Joan, the Lady of Liddell, through
husbands Hugh Wake and Hugh le Bigod, held the primary interest in the cradle
of the Farndale family by 1233. The King withheld the forests, including the
Farndale forests, from 1229 as royal hunting grounds, but this did not appear
to stop the Stutevilles starting to clear small areas of land for agriculture
whilst the deeper forested areas had become royal hunting grounds. By 1253 the
Farndale forests passed back into Stuteville
hands for payment of a significant sum of money. Since 1154 the Cistercians had
interests in Farndale and may have used it first to supply wood to their
monastic empires, but might also have used meadows as pasture for the sheep
which in time provided a source of income. By the beginning of the thirteenth
century, there is evidence that pigs and cows were grazed there. There may have
been small and remote monastic communities in Farndale from the late twelfth
century.
The stage
for our family to build their new home was set.
Scene 2 – Making a Home
Settlement
In the early
thirteenth century the lands of Farndale, which had been the peripheral lands
where hermits used to dwell, were being cleared for agriculture, a process
known as assarting.
The House Stuteville were
putting serfs into their land holdings in Farndale, to clear the land, and then
for all time coming, or so they hoped, to allow them to eek
out a desperate living from the land, whilst more importantly paying rent,
agreeing to loyalty, and providing service when required, to the Stutevilles for the right to do
so. Thereby, in a clever rouse, the Stutevilles turned their useless
landholdings into a profitable enterprise.
The dale in
the early thirteenth century must have been a place of intense activity. Large
acreages of forest were assarted and the plough teams followed, to turn the
soil and begin cultivation. The people who did this work, were the villeins of
Anglo-Saxon-Scandinvian origin, under the
Norman Yoke for some two centuries, vastly
experienced agriculturists, whose own ancestors had cultivated these lands
since the Roman estates over a thousand years before them.
|
The
story of the dale of Farndale to 1500 in more depth, to accompany the family
story |
|
Rural
lifestyles from the Norman Conquest |
We might
suppose that the clearing of Farndale was undertaken by the villeins, the serfs
or peasants, who were then put onto the land to work it, compelled to pay rents
for tiny holdings of marginal land. The serfs who were relocated into Farndale
were likely to have been Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavians reduced to serfdom since the
Conquest. However the newcomers were an ancient people who had farmed the lands
only a few kilometres to the south for a thousand years through the years of
stability of the Roman empire, the periods of Anglo-Saxon dominance, and the
influx of Scandinavian influence. The evidence of rents being applied in
Farndale by 1276 suggest a campaign on a large scale. Though no doubt
suppressed by Norman domination for two hundred years, these ancient people may
have had influence themselves in this period of clearance of new lands.
The medieval
records provide us with three snapshots of the progress of settlement in
Farndale in 1276, 1282 and 1301.
The power
lay with their noble overlords, who had held the estate since the Norman
Conquest, arbitrarily distributed by the Conqueror to his supporters and battle
heroes. Until now the forested lands of the dales had been little more than
prestige holdings, where they sometimes hunted. Their estates provided them
with a simple way to pay their premiums in gifts of land to monastic houses in
their insurance deals with the Cistercian and Benedictine monks, to ensure
their continued good fortune after they died. As the new thirteenth century
dawned however, they found ways to use their more peripheral landholdings to
impose obligations in rent and service on those same folk, thereby deriving a
perpetual income.
It is
difficult to know the extent to which the agriculturalists of Kirkdale
and Kirkbymoorside were coerced
or saw opportunity. It was this band of folk, placed into the new lands of
Farndale in the early thirteenth century, who were the direct ancestors of the
modern Farndale family.
In the mid
thirteenth century, Lady Joan de Stuteville
successfully prosecuted the Abbot of St Mary’s York, for exceeding his rights
taking wood from Farndale and as she did so, she cleared a hundred acres of
land. With a rapid expansion of monastic interest across the region, it came as
a shock to some landowners that the monks were not all that was simple and
submissive; no greed, no self-interest and whilst the monastic expansion
continued there was evidence of clawback and even eviction from previous
grants.
Joan died in
1276, and an Inquisition
Post Mortem (“IPM”) recorded her landholdings as they passed to her
son, Baldwin Wake. IPMs
were held when members of the elite died and were recorded for the benefit of
the monarchy, to identify the income and rights due to the Crown. Nearly eight
hundred years later, this record gives us direct evidence of a farming
community within Farndale on a significant scale, paying a standard rent of 1s,
that is 12d, for each acre, providing a combined
rent of £27 5s 0d. Doing the maths, this suggests some 545 acres of the dale
were in production.
In 1280, we
are introduced to the first
individuals who adopted the name of their new home, when a group of lads
found themselves in trouble for poaching offences including Roger
son of Gilbert
of Farndale; William
the Smith of Farndale; John
the Shepherd of Farndale, and Alan,
son of Nicholas
de Farndale. In 1293, Robert,
son of Peter
de Farndale was fined at Pickering
Castle for poaching. Also in 1293 Roger
milne (or ‘miller’) of Farndale, another son of
Peter, was fined after he killed a soar and slew a
hart with bows and arrows.
It seems
likely that the three Dads, Gilbert, Nicholas and Peter, would have been born
in about the 1230s, just as the process of land clearance was building
momentum. Indeed so many of our distant ancestors were poachers in Pickering
Forest, that the earliest class of our family might be defined as the Farndale Poachers,
and we’ll explore them some more in Act 7. The first
individuals who introduce themselves to us in the records seem to have been the
hard working agricultural folk, pioneers of new lands at the edge of the North
York Moors, whose sons enjoyed the adventure of illegal expeditions into the
royal forests.
Joan’s son,
Baldwin Wake died only six years later when another
IPM was held. The Farndale rents now amounted £38 8s 8d together with a nut
rent and a few boon works. Astonishingly, assuming the same rent applied, the
cultivated acreage had increased to some 768 acres in only six years. This was
organised and planned agricultural development, led no doubt by Joan Wake of Stuteville descent, but a process
in which our ancestors were engaged throughout the thirteenth century. It must
have involved some hard ancestral graft.
By the mid
thirteenth century Farndale was a thriving community of two watermills. The
River Dove would have provided an optimal source of power for milling. There
was a nineteenth century watermill at High Mill on Mill Lane
south of Church Houses, Farndale, which is almost certainly the site of an earlier mill. The
hamlet of Low Mill was also the site of an earlier mill on the River Dove and
is located where the fast flowing West Gill Beck flows down from the high
ground to meet the River Dove. Both these mills were located centrally within
the valley.
In 1301 a subsidy
was imposed across Yorkshire to help Edward I pay for his wars with Scotland. A
detailed assessment was held in Farndale, which listed the 35 tenants
required to meet the subsidy demand.
They
included individuals defined by places within Farndale that are still part of
the landscape today.
De Willelmo Wakelevedy was William
of Wake Lady Green, which still lies today on the East Dale Road.
De Radulpho de Westgille was Radolf of the West Gill stream that runs into modern Low Mill.
De Willelmo de Monkegate was William of Monket Gate, now Monket House at the entrance to the West Dale Road.
De Waltero de Ellerscaye was Walter
of the lands which are now Eller House on the West Dale Road.
These were
settled tenants of sufficient wealth to be stung for royal taxes to pay for the
Scottish wars. By 1301 there were no individuals defining themselves by the
Farndale name left in Farndale itself. The inhabitants of the dale were more
settled, and they could not use the name of the dale to distinguish themselves
since they were all folk of the dale. Logically those who started to use de
Farndale to define themselves were those pioneers who left Farndale at the
end of the thirteenth century and settled in other places. In those other
places, by calling themselves de Farndale, they gave themselves a uniqueness to
serve as an identity. It seems likely that Nicholas
de Farndale, the bailer of his son in 1280, might have been De Nicholao de Ellrischaye listed in
the 1301 Lay Subsidy, who paid 4s 7d in subsidy, by then an established member
of society at Farndale defining himself more precisely than just a person of
the dale where all his community lived.
During the
thirteenth century, we have a picture of serfs, who together formed a body of
folk who must have included our ancestors, toiling the soil in a dreadful
battle of survival, but who by the end of that century seem to have acquired a
degree of wealth, sufficient to be tapped for royal taxes.
Activity
in and beyond the Dale
Our theory
that the individuals who actually used the Farndale name were the pioneers who
started to leave Farndale is borne out, because in the same subsidy of 1301, we
find two individuals living outside Farndale, who called themselves de
Farndale. De
Willelmo de Farndale had moved to Danby in the heart of the North York Moors in
the Wapentake of Langburgh, where he paid a
significant rent of 3s. He appears to have been a tenant of relative wealth. De
Johanne de Farndale had moved to Egton,
on the north side of the moors, at the boundary of modern Cleveland, where he
paid rent of 22d. Perhaps they were brothers who had left the dale to farm in
new places. Perhaps they were younger sons of Nicholas
de Farndale. Indeed it was the common fate of younger Farndale sons for the
following half millennium to leave the family farm to find new lands when their
elder brothers took over the family lands.
In the
1301 subsidy, De Simone Molendinario paid the
highest subsidy of 7s 9d for the King’s Scottish Wars. Molendinum
is Latin for Mill. So Simon seems to have been the miller of Farndale who by
1301 was perhaps the wealthiest of the Stuteville tenants. He had two sons, Adam
and Robert,
and may have had others.
In 1323,
another wayward son, Adam,
the son of Simon
the Miller of Farndale, took two hinds in Pickering
Forest and was delivered to the Keeper of Pickering
Castle to be imprisoned. In 1332, Simon’s son Robert
was fined at Pickering.
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c1230 to c1310 Perhaps the
earliest identifiable individual of the ancestral story, who cleared and then
settled in Farndale |
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c1264 to c1335 The wealthiest
tenant in Farndale in 1301 |
An
Inquisition in 1350 referred to an early fair
held in Farndale. In 1388 licence was granted to allow the inhabitants of
Farndale to celebrate
mass in the chapel there. One hundred years on from the first spade in the
ground, the dale had become a place of commerce, celebration, and religion.
The Close Rolls in 1361 recorded the transfer of
lands, including Farndale, from Thomas Holland, Earl of Kent to his widow
Joan, Countess of Kent, descendant of the Stutevilles but also
granddaughter of Edward I. Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent, then married Edward,
the Black Prince on 10 October 1361. The Black Prince, son of Edward III, who
earned his spurs at the Battle of Crecy, and his cousin Joan, Fair Maid of
Kent, of Stuteville descent
and landholder of the Farndales lands, would beget Richard II, last of the
senior descent of the Plantagenet line.
Through Joan our family story weaves its path into the heart of Plantagenet
power politics, shortly before Joan’s son, Richard II’s throne was seized by
the Lancastrian, Henry Bolingbroke.
|
Under
the heading The most beautiful woman in all the realm of England, the
more detailed history of Farndale tells the story of Farndale’s most exotic
proprietor |
As their
Anglo Saxon forebears before them, the Farndales were living at the heart of
the political landscape.
The First
Farndales
And so, it
appears that the earliest members of our family who took the Farndale name were
the hard working settled inhabitants of Farndale itself; the restless
sons who poached in the royal forests; and the pioneers who left Farndale not
so long after its early cultivation, to settle in new places.
Since the
pioneers were those who adopted the name of our ancestral home, it was the
adventurers who started to shape the family’s future lineage. As we meet many
Farndale pioneers in later ages, we might reflect that they were descendants of
ancestral pioneer folk. The adventure gene in the family is strong.
Although we
cannot be certain of family relationships before 1500, the wealth of evidence
does enable us to build a reasonable model. So it is possible to introduce the first family tree of
our family’s known ancestors into the most probable order of relationship.
|
A model which
relies on extensive medieval evidence, to suggest the most probable family
tree of the earliest ancestors of the Farndales |
However
before we take the family journey forward in time, the historical evidence,
whilst not revealing individual ancestors of those we encounter from the
thirteenth century, does allow us to explore the history the folk in the place
where we know our more distant ancestors lived.
If you follow the Farndale Story, as
I suggest, in the order of the numbered Acts, we will next travel backwards in
time, before later taking up the story again with the generations which would
follow, from Act 7.
Go Straight to Act 2, the Primeval Swamp
or
I suggest that before leaving this
period of our family’s history, you:
Read the story of Farndale to 1500
Meet Nicholas de Farndale and Simon the Miller of Farndale or the whole
family
Visit a viewpoint overlooking Farndale and then drive through Farndale to the 1301 locations and other key
features