The Barony of Alnwick and Manor of Ingram

Ingram formed one of the constituent manors of the barony of Alnwick which was held by the Vesci lineage. The Vescis were probably granted their barony by Henry I (1100-35), in common with the great majority of Anglo-Norman barons established in Northumberland (Kapelle 1979, 199, 207, 284, 287).

They were certainly well established by 1166 when Henry II ordered all his barons, or ‘tenants-in-chief’, to render account of the service by which they held their lands and the holdings of all knights enfeoffed by them (Liber Niger Scaccarii, 329-39; cf. Hedley 1968, 21, 209; 1970, 90, 272). In the return he made for the barony, William de Vesci listed a total of 13 knights’ fees created before 1135, plus a couple more established in the intervening thirty or so years, making it the single largest of all the Northumbrian lordships in these terms.

The earliest Vesci baron of Alnwick was probably Eustace`fitz John, William’s father, one of the ‘principal agents of (the first) Henry’s government in Northumberland’ (Kapelle 1979, 207). Eustace witnessed his first act concerning Northumberland in 1119 and by 1121 he certainly held land north of the Tyne (Kapelle 1979, 287, n.80), suggesting that the barony was established around this time, when Henry I was finally tightening the Anglo-Norman grip on Northumberland, fifty or so years after the initial conquest.

The Vesci line was extinguished when William de Vesci III died leaving no legitimate male heirs in 1297. Possession of the barony of Alnwick then passed to Anthony Bek, bishop of Durham, and in 1310 the bishop in turn sold the barony to Henry de Percy, who was establishing his family’s position on the border at that stage (Bean 1954; Tuck 1971, 33-5). Thereafter the Alnwick barony has remained in Percy hands to this day, forming the core of their Northumbrian holdings.

Ingram, or Angerham as it is generally written in medieval sources, was one of ten vills in the Alnwick barony, known as the ‘Ten Towns of Coquetdale’ which the Vescis granted or subinfeudated to another powerful baronial lineage, the Umfravilles. Eight of these townships formed a compact block on the north side of the upper Coquetdale, coterminous with the Parish of Alwinton, opposite the Umfravilles’ stronghold of Harbottle Castle in the Liberty of Redesdale, but Ingram and Fawdon lay much further north and were detached from the main block of the ‘Ten Towns’ (see Selected Sources and Surveys no. 1).

Medieval administrative geography could throw up some odd phenomena – Harbottle Castle, the capital of the ‘Liberty of Redesdale’, was actually in Coquetdale, for instance. Gilbert de Umfraville was the incumbent recorded in the feudal aid of 1242 (Liber Feodorum II, 1118).

Although it is not recorded in the 1242 feudal aid, the vill of Ingram was further subinfeudated to Geoffrey de Lucy, who, at some time around 1240, came to an agreement with Newminster Abbey regarding the boundary between Ingram and the monastery’s extensive holdings in Kidland (NC, 80; cf. NCH XIV (1935), 472). It was probably a grandson of the first Geoffrey – also called Geoffrey de Lucy – who died in 1284 possessed of the manor of Ingram, including the dependancies of Reaveley and Hartside, having held it from Gilbert de Umfraville II in return for regular attendance (‘suit’) at the Umfravilles’ court at Harbottle Castle and paying scutage (the tax paid in lieu of military service) whenever it was levied (NCH XIV (1935), 473).

It was at this level in the feudal hierarchy that direct manorial lordship was actually exercised at Ingram.  It was, for instance, Geoffrey de Lucy and his successors, rather than the Umfravilles or the Vescis, who held the advowson of Ingram church – i.e. the right to nominate nominate a priest to the rectory of the parish whenever the post became vacant.  Even so, Geoffrey did not permanently reside in the manor. He had other, doubtless more comfortable, estates in Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire (op. cit, 472), but his tenure of Ingram would have provided an excellent opportunity for some occasional hunting on the high Cheviot moors. In 1279 Geoffrey did indeed claim free warren in the moor of Ingram.

For most of the time, however, the Lucys would have been absentee landlords and manorial authority would have devolved to their bailiff, who would therefore have been one of the most important men in the area, effectively responsible for running the manor and maintaining a degree of order (see Selected Sources and Surveys no. 2).

The manor subsequently passed from Geoffrey’s heir first to the Leyburn family at the end of the 13th century and then to the Heton family at some point between 1333 and 1347. At his death in 1353, Sir Thomas Heton was said to have held Ingram from his feudal overlord, Gilbert de Umfraville III, by homage and fealty and payment of 15d. annual rent for cornage and suit at the Umfravilles’ court at Alwinton every three weeks (ibid.). Towards the end of the 14th century the manor was divided equally between three coheiresses of Sir Alan Heton and thereby passed into the hands of the Swinburne, Fenwick and Ogle lineages. The advowson was exercised by each family in turn.  This threefold division persisted for the next two and a half centuries.

On the failure of the Fenwick male line in 1459, their share of the manor passed to the Denton family, whilst Robert, lord Ogle granted his third of the manor to a kinsman, Cuthbert Ogle, rector of Ilderton, in 1526, whence it passed to Eglingham branch of the family, but none of this disrupted the essential tripartite structure of the manorial lordship during the late Medieval/Early Modern period.