Historic Notices of Haughton Castle. 149 



forest, with vert and venison, to be holden of the King by the 

 annual payment of one pair of white gloves, or twopence, at 

 Werk, in Tyndale, at the Feast of Pentecost. Haughton 

 Strother is described in the Iter of Wark in 1279 as containing 

 two hundred and fifty acres of grazing land available at all 

 seasons ; therefore no despicable gift. To account for the 

 interest taken in the Lord of Haughtou by Queen Margaret, wo 

 must remember that he held an official position that would bring 

 him into close relations with his royal mistress. There is a 

 letter written by her on his behalf to Walter de Merton, the 

 Chancellor of the King of Eagland, (formerly preserved amongst 

 the royal letters in the Tower of London, but now transferred 

 with the other public records to the custody of the Master of the 

 Eolls), which shows that William de Swyneburne was Treasurer 

 of Margaret, Queen of Scotland, and was held in high esteem by 

 her. She bespeaks the illustrious Chancellor's favourable con- 

 sideration of her just petitions, "pro dilecto nobis in Ohristo 

 domino W. de Swynburne thesaurario nostro" — the Lord W. de 

 Swynburne, our beloved in Christ, our treasurer." William de 

 Swyneburne speaks of his manor of Haluton in 1277; and it 

 is in this earlier part of the reign of King Edward I., while the 

 royal franchise of Tyndale was yet an appendage of the Scottish 

 crown, that Mr Hartshorne (Feud, and Miltt. Antiq., see anteaj, 

 thinks the castle of Haughton was erected by the powerful treas- 

 urer of Queen Margaret. It may have been, however, some years 

 before this time. Mr Longstaffe (in his MS. Notes on Haughton 

 Castle kindly sent to the writer some years since) says that the 

 Early English shell, or original structure in the nearly double 

 square or oblong form (it is 100 feet in length by 44 feet in breadth) 

 appears to be of the time of William de Swyneburne, about 1240, 

 Godwin, in "The English Archeeologist's Handbook" (p. 203), 

 has this brief reference in his "Alphabetical List of Castles," 



At one of the Strothers in North Tynedale, probably this of Haughtou, 

 a village of that name, instead of merely a cottage as now, may have 

 formerly existed, to which the word ' town,' still in local usage for a small 

 hamlet, would then apply. Our great poet makes his northern clerks rude 

 in speech as in act, using a broad northern dialect and words of obsolete 

 Saxon form. "Alein" (Allan) is a common Northumbrian Christian and 

 family name, and "John" swears "by Saint Cuthberd." This is, so far 

 as I am aware, the first attempt at the identification of the Chaucerian 

 place-name of Cf Strother." 



