148 Historic Notices of Hatujhton Castle. 



appear personally in Tyndale, before the Purification of the 

 Blessed Mary, to put the former in full possession of his lands 

 in Haluton and elsewhere. In the eighth year of Alexander III. 

 of Scotland, before his Justices Itinerant, a final agreement was 

 made at Nunwick (Nunewich) respecting the third part of the 

 manor, as it is now termed, of Haluton, with its appurtenances. 

 For the recognition of rightful lordship of this and other lands, 

 the said William gave to the said Eeginald fifteen marks of 

 silver ; and for licence, confirmation, etc., to the King a fine of 

 twenty marks was to be paid. In June of the same year, 1257, 

 and again in 1267, Alexander III. confirmed these grants of 

 the lands of Haluton or Haluchton. 



In 1273 valuable grants were made by the same monarch, 

 as he himself says, at the instance of Queen Margaret, " his very 

 dear consort," to " our beloved and faithful " William de Swyne- 

 burn, of Halvton Strother, in Tyndale, together with the adjacent 

 lordships or demesnes,*' 1 between Haluton and Nunewych, in free 



* Now called Haughton " Mains." Strother, designating a wide stretch 

 of level land in a valley by a river, perhaps cognate with the Gaelic Strath 

 occurs elsewhere on the North Tyne, e.gr., Chipchase Strother and Nunwick 

 Strother. though Haughton Strother seems to have been the most im- 

 portant. In the Iter of Wark, William de Swyneburn gives half a mark 

 for licence to make an agreement with John de Teket and his wife for 

 common pasture in Haulghton and Haulghton Strother — in the original, 

 'HalclitonaStrutherintsumieyvicke,' — the word being there thrice repeated. 

 It occurs also in the second cause of the Iter in an action between the 

 aforesaid parties, decided against the latter. (Feudal and Military Anti- 

 quities, chap, ii., p. 77 ; Appendix, p. xxx. ; and chap, xiii., p. 263.) The 

 ancient Northumbrian family of the Strothers were Lords of the manor of 

 Kirk-Newton in the barony of Wark on the Tweed, which Sir Henry 

 Strother held temp. Edwards II. and III., and Mark Strother, Esq., was 

 High Sheriff of the County in 1714, 1 George I. (Wallis's Northd., vol. ii., 

 p. 482.) 



This word Strother has puzzled all. the commentators of Chaucer's 

 Canterbury Tales. In the lieeve's [Bailiff or Steward's] Tale it is given 

 as the birthplace of two poor Cambridge scholars, verses 4011-13 : — 

 " John hight that one, and Alein hight that other, 

 Of one town were they born, that hight Strother, 

 Far in the North, I can not tellen where." 



Gilhllan, in his edition, vol. i., p. 225, merely repeats Tyrwhitt's note : — 

 ' Strother : I cannot find any place of this name in England ; there is a 

 Struther, or Strauther, in the shire of Fife.' The reference here seems to 

 be to the two Anstmthcrs, Easter and Wester. 



