Hello everyone and welcome to this lecture about the history of Lancaster Borough Charter. This is not the story of John of Gaunt, the famous Time-Honoured Duke of Lancaster shown here, but a story of more lasting resonance for the people of Lancaster. It will take you on a journey through some of the most interesting and tumultuous periods of English history, and how this shaped the story of the Borough Charter and by extension the City of Lancaster. It will be the story of a King, who began as a Count, and loved his North-West domain dearly, and whose pride to rule as a great mediaeval king and shake off the shadow of his ancestors led to his fall before a mutiny of barons and the issuance of the most seminal charter in English history. It will be a story of the growth of a town from humble origins in the shadow of a mighty royal castle, underpinned by an expanding population and commerce to become a formidable force in its district. It will be a story of suffering for the town of Lancaster, when invasion and civil war brought the town of Lancaster to its knees, and jeopardised the very survival of its Borough Charter. Yet, throughout it all, Lancaster survived and prospered, as the market town it was intended to be, and remains to this day in the Charter Market you see outside this Museum. Now, upon Lancaster Day for all to see, our Borough Charter stands as a proud testament to the history of the County Town of Lancashire, a town that has truly been honoured by time to stand among the best of county towns in the kingdom.
Count John of Mortain
Our story begins with the genesis of Lancashire as a county, arising from the turbulence of Anglo-Norman politics. The Honour of Lancaster, a vast stretch of estates in the northwest of England was created in 1093 for Roger of Poitou, who had aided William II Rufus in conquering Cumbria in 1092. When he rebelled against Henry I in 1102, his Honour was confiscated. The Honour was granted by Henry I to one of his court favourites, Stephen, Count of Mortain, who became King of England after the death of Henry I in 1135. After the Anarchy of the 1140s, a civil war with his cousin Matilda for the Crown of England, King Stephen kept the Honour of Lancaster within his family until his son William died. The Honour then passed into the hands of the Crown, until Richard I the Lionheart decided to go on the Third Crusade to the Holy Land to reclaim Jerusalem from Sultan Saladin. In 1189, the year of his coronation, Richard I made arrangements for running England in his absence. He was also very keen to prevent ambitious barons within his kingdom from taking advantage of his absence to enrich themselves at his expense, not least that of his younger brother John. In 1189, John was granted the County of Mortain and the Honour of Lancaster, the first major landed estate the future King of England would own, and with which he would retain a close affinity for the rest of his life. Richard I, however, retained royal control of Lancaster Castle, to prevent Count John from using it as a potential base for rebellion. He failed to prevent John from rebelling, for when Richard I was captured by Duke Leopold V of Austria on his return from the Third Crusade in 1192, John took the opportunity to rebel. This was the context against which the Lancaster Borough Charter would be issued in 1193.
John had powerful incentives for developing the town of Lancaster, which had lived in the shadow of the Castle for a century. The county of Lancashire was not yet formally in existence (that privilege would not come until 1267, when the county returned MPs to Parliament), but there remained significant potential for developing the town of Lancaster as a commercial centre for the nascent county. John was keen to develop the economic potential of his Honour of Lancaster estates to raise money for a potential bid for the Crown, building up a war chest upon his brother’s return, and according to the Pipe Rolls, or accounting rolls recording the revenue which came to the Treasury, the Honour of Lancaster lands provided a revenue of £200 per year. His efforts were in vain, for when Richard I returned to England in 1194 he chastised John for his rebellion and confiscated the Honour of Lancaster. However, the efforts of King John to establish a new locus for the civic development of Lancaster would have profound effects upon the future of the county town.
The 1193 Borough Charter
The Borough Charter granted by Count John of Mortain, and which is on display today in Lancaster City Museum, was issued at Dorchester on 12th June 1193. It reads as follows:
‘John Count of Mortain, to all his men and friends of France and England now and hereafter, greeting. Know that I have granted and by this my Charter have confirmed to my Burgesses of Lancaster all the Liberties which I have granted to the Burgesses of Bristol. Furthermore, I have declared the same Burgesses freed from Suit to my Mill and from ploughing and other servile customs which they used to do and that they shall not be compelled to shear for my service from henceforth as they have been accustomed to do. I have granted also to the same Burgesses, and by this my Charter have confirmed, the Pasturage of my Forest as far from the town of Lancaster as their Cattle can go and return in a day. I have granted also to them of dead Wood in my Forest as much as shall be needful to them for burning, and of other wood as much as shall be needed for building, under the survey of my Foresters. Wherefore I will and strictly command that the said Burgesses and their heirs shall have and hold of me and of my heirs all the Liberties and free customs aforesaid freely and quietly fully and entirely and that they may be free from the aforesaid servile customs and exactions.’
The privileges of the burgess of Bristol were quite extensive, indicating how far Count John was prepared to go in investing significant civic privileges upon what had been a very modestly sized town. The Bristol privileges included freedom from tolls levied at ports and bridges throughout the kingdom, freedom to marry without seeking permission from their lord, freedom to grind corn where they chose and all lands within the town to be held in free burgage tenure. Freedom from grinding corn at John’s mill was evidently most appreciated by the Lancaster burgesses, since heavy tolls would be levied for the privilege for grinding corn in lordly mills across England, and freedom from ‘other servile customs’ characteristic of being under feudal authority impacted greatly upon the civic identity of the new Borough of Lancaster. Establishing boundaries to this new civic authority was crucial, as can be seen in the grant of pasturage within the Royal Forest of Lancaster (near Quernmore) and the right to gather dead wood from the same Forest. The Forest in mediaeval times was not necessarily wooded; it was a defined area of natural environment dedicated for hunting, and there were strict Forest laws to protect the wildlife, such as deer and rabbits, from being poached. More than anything, the growth of Forests across England by the end of the 12th century symbolised the encroachment of arbitrary lordly authority, making these privileges granted to the civic authorities of Lancaster even more precious. Pressed between the overbearing royal presence of the Castle and the Forest, the Town of Lancaster was determined to make its presence felt, but would need royal patronage for its independence to be guaranteed.
King John and Lancaster Castle
In 1199, while besieging the castle of Chalus, on the border between France and Normandy, Richard I was hit by a crossbow bolt and died. Without leaving any male heirs, this meant that his brother John, erstwhile Lord of the Honour of Lancaster, could finally claim his inheritance of the Crown of England. During his reign as King John, he would go down in history as a cruel and oppressive tyrant, abusing the law to suit his own designs, assassinating anyone who stood to potentially claim his throne and taxing the citizens of his realms to the hilt, principally to fund his ever-expensive wars in France. As far as the town of Lancaster is concerned, however, King John can be said to have done a great deal of good, by laying the foundations for the municipal independence of its borough and investing in Lancaster Castle as a judicial centre for the nascent County of Lancaster. Our earliest records of Lancaster Castle being used as a prison date to c.1196, when Warin the Gaoler was appointed as “Janitor of the Gate”, effectively in charge of letting people in and out of the Castle, including those held prisoner in its dungeons. Speaking of dungeons, the Dungeon Tower (now occupied by C-Wing) was completed by c.1209, as was Hadrian’s Tower, built as part of a comprehensive replacement of the timber curtain wall surrounding the Castle with stone. In the case of Hadrian’s Tower, which still exists today, this took the revolutionary form of a circular stone tower, designed to deflect trebuchet blows, and hence to withstand prolonged sieges, in a manner which was borrowed from castle designs developed during the Crusades. According to the Pipe Rolls, King John spent approximately £640 on redeveloping Lancaster Castle between c.1209-c.1212, and in 1206 he was the first English monarch on record to visit Lancaster Castle, staying in a room known as “The King’s Lodgings”, which is believed to lie between Hadrian’s Tower and the old Crown Court. Extending a written due process of law across the counties of England had been an ongoing task since the institution of Itinerant Royal Judges by Henry II in 1166, and it could be argued that King John was bringing the ability of ordinary people in Lancashire to access independent arbitration more than had ever been the case before. It also meant that the power of the King to intervene in local disputes was increasing, and the burgesses of Lancaster needed to be assured that their rights, guaranteed while he was Count of Mortain, remained safe.
The 1199 Borough Charter
In 1199 King John cancelled the charter he had issued to the borough of Lancaster and the burgesses had to reapply for a new borough charter to be issued. It is this charter which forms the basis upon which the Borough and later City of Lancaster would develop. It was not uncommon for burgesses to seek confirmation of their existing rights under a new monarch, but King John appears to have set a precedent for forcing burgesses, especially of new towns like Lancaster, to pay to have their charters reissued. This was the case for Liverpool, which had to pay for its own charter to be issued in 1207 after King John designed a regular town plan for what had been a small fishing village on the River Mersey.
The 1199 Lancaster Borough Charter was broadly the same as the 1193 issue, but substituted the privileges of Bristol with the privileges of Northampton. Eager to confirm exactly what these privileges were, the Lancaster burgesses wrote to the Northampton burgesses in 1199, and they sent them a copy of the charter which they acquired from the king himself. The Northampton privileges included grant of fee farm (essentially freehold tenure), freedom from billeting or other exactions from Forest law officials, freedom from tolls throughout England and the right of retaliation on any borough which infringed on their liberties. Essentially, these liberties were modelled on large market towns such as London, Norwich and Lincoln; indeed, the Northampton burgesses often looked to London for forms and precedents. The Lancaster burgesses were clearly set upon establishing their town as a significant commercial centre, and this would set the seal upon the development of what has become known today as the Charter Market. While neither the 1193 nor the 1199 charters explicitly mention the establishment of a twice-weekly market, when Edward I inspected these charters in 1292 the liberties were confirmed, along with a weekly market on Saturday and a yearly fair at Michaelmas (28th September-12th October). The existence of a twice-yearly market only enters the historical record in 1337, when Edward III issued a now-lost charter confirming the 1193 and 1199 charters, and permitted the burgesses to hold a market on Wednesday as well as Saturday, with a second fair in Midsummer. The 1199 Borough Charter thus followed the course of many similar borough charters in having to continually fight to acquire and maintain documentary proof of liberties granted to the town. This is in many ways the story of the most famous charter in English history, which had a direct impact upon how Lancaster would develop.
Lancaster and Magna Carta
In 1204, King John lost all of his lands in France, including Normandy, to King Philip II Augustus of France. Determined to reclaim his French inheritance, he levied extraordinarily heavy taxation across England, which aroused particular indignation among the nobility in the North. King John entered into an alliance with the German Holy Roman Emperor and, following the disastrous Battle of Bouvines in what is now Belgium in 1214, all of that pain was in vain. Exasperated by the continual abuse of power and legal process which the king used to get his way, including to raise money for his foreign wars, the Barons of England forced him to come to terms on 15th June 1215.
On that day, at Runnymede near Windsor, King John sealed the Magna Carta, the Great Charter. The charter went beyond simply addressing specific baronial complaints, and formed a wider proposal for political reform, albeit one focusing on the rights of free men, not serfs. It promised the protection of the rights of the Church in England, protection from illegal imprisonment, equal access of all to justice and new taxation only with the consent of the realm, represented by the Barons. A council of twenty-five Barons would be created to monitor and ensure John’s future adherence to the charter, or they would seize his castles and lands until he adhered to their demands. John immediately obtained approval from Pope Innocent III to ignore Magna Carta, in return for a pledge to follow in his brother’s footsteps and reclaim Jerusalem for Christendom. Effectively, John had declared war upon the Barons in defence of his royal prerogatives.
Among the Northern Barons who was present at Runnymede was Gilbert FitzRoger FitzReinfred, Baron of Kendal. Through his marriage to Helewise de Lancaster, Gilbert FitzReinfred acquired extensive estates in Westmorland and Furness, and through his father Roger he remained connected with the royal court as an administrator. However, because of his allegiance with the Barons over Magna Carta in 1215, King John sent Reginald de Cornhill, High Sheriff of Lancashire, to arrest him. This appears to have backfired, for Reginald de Cornhill apparently converted to the Barons’ cause while in Lancaster, as he appeared in Rochester Castle in September 1215 and held the Castle against King John during one of the greatest sieges in English history. Over the course of two months, King John tried battering the walls with trebuchets, undermining the walls and setting the foundations ablaze with the burning fat of pigs, but in the end Rochester Castle fell to starvation among the defenders. Gilbert FitzReinfred was captured in 1216 and his son and some of his knights were held in custody at Rochester Castle until hostages were found from the Cumbrian land-owning class, and Gilbert was forced to agree to large retribution payments. Reginald de Cornhill survived John’s retribution, owing to his rich shipping interests on the Isle of Thanet, and was appointed Keeper of the King’s Ports and Galleys in 1216. Magna Carta, amidst the chaos of civil war, had been revoked but not forgotten. In 1225, it was reissued by Henry III alongside the Charter of the Forest, setting defined limits on Forest law in England, and by 1291 it was incorporated as the defining document for the development of the English Parliament. Thus, the chaos of civil war, the uncertainty of royal succession and dogged defence of liberty shaped the course of mediaeval documents which define how we relate to our past, and our present, even today.
The Growth of Mediaeval Lancaster
During the 13th century, as the addition of privileges to successive editions of the Borough Charter make clear, Lancaster would develop as a significant market town within the growing County of Lancashire. Indeed, the boundary of its market privileges extended as far as Cowan Bridge in Yorkshire, and the burgesses exercised exclusive rights over these privileges. The market was located at the Tolbooth, the site of the present City Museum, where weights and measures were regulated, tolls could be levied and commercial disputes settled. This was essentially where the Borough records would be located, including the 12th-century charters. The site of the Charter Market was a natural crossing point for goods moving north-south, with the importance of maintaining commerce indicated by a grant by King John in 1215 of wood from the Royal Forest of Lancaster to Furness Abbey to repair the mediaeval bridge over the River Lune (now the Millennium Bridge). Even when beset by rebellious Barons from all sides, he never forgot the liberties of the town which he first patronised. By 1316, the commercial activity of Lancaster is demonstrated by a murage grant, for a wall to be constructed around the town which was never carried out. Here, we can see goods such as wool, iron nails, beer, fustians etc. being traded in the market, giving a lively picture of what would have been a bustling scene in the heart of mediaeval Lancaster. However, this was also a time of trouble for the town, as trade routes also brought armies in their wake, intent on pillage and slaughter.
The 1322 Great Raid and after
In 1322, Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland, raided the whole of the North of England, in an attempt to goad Edward II of England into battle and recognise Scotland as an independent kingdom. The Scottish armies systematically looted the settlements which they came across en route to Lancaster, with the only ones spared who had paid blackmail to the Scots in return for not being plundered. Such an agreement was brokered by Furness Abbey in 1322, where in return for the Abbey lands in Furness not being plundered, as they had been to devastating effect upon the monastic community in 1316, Robert the Bruce stayed the night in the abbot’s house. He then proceeded to pillage Cartmel Priory before turning his attention upon Lancaster. The 1322 Great Raid, as it has become known to history, devastated the area around Penny Street and Church Street, as Inquisitions Post Mortem testify to the damage the Scots inflicted upon properties by burning houses, taking livestock, valuable metals and weapons. They even laid siege to Lancaster Castle and damaged the portion of the Castle now occupied by the Well Tower. There was a real danger that the 1193 Borough Charter could have been destroyed, and it is possible that the records were relocated inside the Castle during the period of the Scottish raids. Following the Great Raid came the Great Plague of 1349, in which it is estimated a third of the population of Lancaster (2,000 people remained out of a possible population of 8,000) were wiped out by the bubonic plague. It took the best part of three centuries for Lancaster to recover to a fraction of its former eminence, but the resilience of its Borough Charter remained.
During the 15th century, processes of mayoral election became consolidated, the judicial circuit of Assize Courts became established as part of the rhythm of town life, and the market privileges remained undisturbed. There was still a danger it would perish, for in 1454, retainers of the Earl of Derby broke into Lancaster Castle and destroyed court records testifying to abuses by retainers. By the 17th century, however, the greatest test for the survival of these mediaeval charters was yet to come.
The 1643 Civil War “Massacre of Lancaster”
In 1642, civil war broke out between Charles I of England and his Parliament over the principle of who wielded sovereign authority in the realm. Charles I maintained to the principle of the Divine Right of Kings, that kings were appointed to rule by God and were therefore above the law. Parliament maintained that the King had to rule in consent with Parliament as representatives of the people of England, and Magna Carta was directly invoked to justify this principle. The English Civil War was the bloodiest civil conflict in the nation’s history, with over a quarter of the English population perishing during the years 1642-1651. Lancaster was held by the Royalists from the outset of the war in 1642, owing to the presence of Lancaster Castle and the presence of country gentlemen who formed the backbone of most Royalist armies. In February 1643 however, following the taking of Preston by the Parliamentarians, a reconnaissance mission under Parliamentarian Major Thomas Birch succeeded in taking the Castle with a handshake. The Castle had been left with only a token Royalist garrison and, rather than resist a Parliamentarian assault, the Castle’s Constable and all of the prisoners in the Castle were released. The Royalist commander, the Earl of Derby, attempted to retake the Castle, but failed to secure sufficient artillery to man an effective assault. Instead, the Earl of Derby permitted his men to plunder Lancaster on 18th March 1643, setting fire to houses along the length of Penny Street, as if to punish the inhabitants of the town for their treachery. The 1193 Charter was very nearly among the casualties, for a note on the back of the charter itself attests that it was damaged as part of the raiding conducted by the Royalists in 1643. Lancaster would play little further significant part in the Civil War after this episode, but the Castle was partially slighted in the 1650s to prevent it being used as a military garrison. It remained for the rest of the 17th century what it always had been: a market town, with mediaeval privileges. From the 18th century onwards, it experienced commercial growth on a worldwide scale, culminating in Lancaster becoming a City in 1937.
The Borough Charter in 2024
What does the Borough Charter mean to us today? We take it to be not only an interesting mediaeval artefact but a testament to a town which has been honoured by time. Lancaster remains, as it always has, a commercial town, a town that has persisted despite what time has thrown at it, and a town that has a future as bright as its burgesses hoped for it in 1193. Let us therefore honour the privileges which this Charter has given to the City of Lancaster, the greatest being to call ourselves, with pride the County Town of the County Palatine of Lancashire. Thank you.
