320 JOHN DE RAYNTON 



Mayor of Berwick in 1331, under David II. (Bruce); and 

 in those days the office of Mayor was a royal appointment, 

 with a salary of £10 a year (a large sum) from the Royal 

 Exchequer. As a further mark of that king's favour, he 

 received from him a charter of the forfaultrie of Thomas 

 Riddle, in the town of Berwick (v. Robertson's Index.) In 

 the List of Burgesses and others of Berwick-upon-Tweed — 

 who took the oath of fealty to King Edward III., and got 

 letters of protection on 25th July 1333 — the name of John 

 de Raynton appears second, and amongst 72 others is Agnes 

 de Mordington,'^- now a widow, and apparently residing in 

 Berwick on some jointure or annuity out of the lands she 

 had resigned and conveyed. 



From the Scottish Exchequer Rolls it is ascertained that 

 John de Raynton, jointly with another, accounted for the 

 new Customs of the Town of Berwick ; and on 27th January 

 1327, at Dunbarton, he and Reginald More rendered the 

 amount due from 4th March 1326; and, further, in 1328, 

 the amount of said new customs is paid at Scone by Johannes 

 de Loudonia and Johannes de Rayneton, per Thomam de 

 Heton et Nicolaum de Mair, attornatos sues literatorie 

 constitutos ; apparently because the collectors found it incon- 

 venient to travel so far north as Scone; and again, in 

 1329, the customs are paid at Scone by de Loudonia and de 



* Agnes de Mordington seems to have had a chequered career. 

 When she married Sir Henry of Haliburton, she was the widow of 

 Philip de Coleville, through whom she held certain lands in North- 

 umberland in life-rent, viz., 20 messuages, 80 ox gangs, 110 acres of 

 lands, 1 acre of meadow, and a mill at Spyndelston near Belford. 

 These life-rents lands are said by an Inquisition at Newcastle, 1299- 

 1300, Ed. I., to be in the king's hands by forfeiture of Henry and 

 Agnes Haliburton, who are rebels, and burned churches and killed 

 men in England, when the king's Scottish enen^ies laid waste the 

 country — King Edward's stock excuse for forfeiture on the Borders! 

 Again, in 1302, by a brief issued by Edward at Linlithgow, it is 

 stated that Henry de Haliburton, a Scottish rebel, married Agnes de 

 Mordington, widow of Philip de Colville, and retains her in Scotland 

 against the king's peace, whereby the lands are in the king's hands. 

 — Vide " Bain's Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland," Vol. ii., 

 p. 288 and p. 343. 



