Northumberland Castles and Fortalices in 1415

A list of the names of the castles and fortalices in Northumberland was preserved in the Harleian manuscripts which Cadwallader John Bates transcribed and printed in 1891. He carefully dated this to the first seven months of 1415, possibly July, and suggests it was prepared to inform Henry V in "whose hands he would leave the places of strength on the Scottish Border previous to his embarking on the expedition that led to the victory of Agincourt." The Gatehouse transcription of the list is below. However, Bates used a number of modified letter forms to reflect the hand of the scribe which can not be found in any online font so this is not an exact copy.

Selected notes from Bates (Most of Bates notes are biographical and about showing the date of the list to be 1415; These are omitted)

• ¹Sir Robert Ogle, Sheriff of Northumberland, 1417, dies 1437
• ²Henry Percy, son of Sir Thomas Percy
• ³Sir Thomas Grey of Horton is not to be confused with Sir Thomas Grey of Heaton
• ⁴In 1403 Henry IV. had declared the whole of Scotland south of the Tweed to be conquered and annexed to England. Roxburgh was taken by the Scots in 1460 when James II. was killed by the bursting of a cannon during the siege.
• ⁵The word 'Turris' has been erased and 'ffortalicium' substituted. The list copied by Hodgson has 'Graye' in the margin.
• ⁶Sic in Harl. MS. 309.
• ⁷The name of 'Thomas Haisandes' has somewhat unaccountably been made in to 'Thotton Sandes' in Hogson's version of this List (Northhd. III. i. p. 28n). Haysand (now corrupted into Hazon) was a manor of Alnwick barony, between Shilbottle and Guyzance.
• ⁸In the Harl. MS. 'numerous 73' has been written and erased. Hodgson's version of the List has 'Numerus 57' and before the names of the succeeding towers places the heading 'Quae sequuntur, aliquant' postaea scriptae fuerunt'
• ⁹The Master of the Hospital of St. Mary Magdalene at Bamburgh, for some account of which see Dugdale's Monasticon (ed. Caley) vi. p. 771.
• ¹⁰It is probable that the tower-vicarage of Ponteland was not the same as Sir Aymer de Athol's castle there.

Abbreviations and Latin

• Dni - Domini meaning my lord
• Epi - Bishop
• Chr or Chlr - Chevalier: Knight
• Regis - King
• Dom - Dominus: Lord
• Com - Comitis: Count
• eadem - of the same place
• eiusdem - of the same kind
• iuxta - next to; beside. Also spelt juxta

Dr Andy King has written an interesting piece on this list with the suggestion that 'Northumberland's gentry builders were anxious that their edifices should be graced with the name of 'castle', to be classed alongside noble, time-hallowed fortresses such as Alnwick, Warkworth and Bamburgh. The comissioners who compiled the 1415 survey may well have been subjected to lobbying by the owners of these buildings, who would would have been anxious to ensure that they were accorded the 'correct' status; the marginal annotations perhaps reflect the more considered opinions of the commissioners, after the process of compiling the survey had been completed, and they were somewhat removed from the pressures of their peers.'
King, Andy, 2007, 'Fortress and fashion statements: gentry castles in fourteenth-century Northumberland' Journal of Medieval History Vol. 33 pp. 396-7