SESSIONS OF THE LIBEETY OF TYNEDALE. 171 



is convicted of selling a dolium of wine contrary to the assize. 

 Twelve jurors present that a certain unknown thief stole four 

 geese from the village of JNewbrough, and being taken, by the 

 order of Hugo de Farwithscheles they forthwith cut off his ear. 

 John de Halton, however, does not seem to be always the 

 aggrieved in the Court. Thus on the complaint of Thomas 

 F airman, it is stated in 1297 that he, with Thomas de Thirle- 

 wall, and others, came to Wark with force and arms, on the 

 Saturday before the feast of St. James, in the eighteenth year of 

 Alexander the King, and that he then seized thirty oxen, worth 

 ten shillings each, eighteen cows, each worth half a mark, one 

 bull of the same value, and two hundred sheep, both wether and 

 ewes, each of twelve pence value ; and then unjustly, and against 

 the peace of our Lord the King, he drove the said flocks and 

 herds to his dwelling at Sewingshields, where he shut them in 

 his park, and doth still retain them. These were wealthy reivers, 

 however, and a good money payment soon made all straight. 

 John Adamson, of Wark, is summoned for frequenting the society 

 of poachers, and for breaking the park of the King at Wark. 

 He is found guilty, and fined twenty shillings — no small fine in 

 those days. The canny Scots, even in those days, occasionally 

 made a raid into Tynedale. Alexander of Lothian, Arthur of 

 Galway, David of Clydesdale, and Hugh the Carpenter, broke 

 into the house of William de Fenwicke, at Simonburn, and tying 

 fast the said William, drove away the cattle. Gofton, near to 

 Wark, seems to have been an unlucky locality. Matilda, wife 

 of Elyas de Huntlaw, was drowned in crossing Gofton Burn, 

 and Huctred Wethird, of the same place, had his house broken 

 open, and his cattle carried off by thieves. John Davison killed 

 John Wrenne in the town of Wark itself; and Norman Batey 

 slew Adam Galfridson in the mill at Wark. The record then 

 gives evidence of numerous homicides. It is plain, too, that 

 coals were worked in Tynedale in those early times. Robert, 

 son of Adam, of Whitfield, was suffocated under ground while 

 digging coals, "fodendo carbones oppressus fuit." Juliana le 

 Kenbertre was found dead of cold under the park wall at Wal- 

 wick ; and John, the parker, dies by the bite of a dog, probably 



