The Two Norths: Identity and Hybridity in Yorkshire and Northumberland, 1066-1215

This study uses two baronial families: the de Lacy Barons of Pontefract and de Vescy Barons of Alnwick as a lens through which to examine wider identity within the regions. Previous work has generally taken a wider focus on the whole region, or over a longer period. This innovative approach to investigating wider identity will provide a framework for further comparative work in England’s borderlands. This thesis will provide an important study on local, regional and national identities in a period crucial to identity development in northern England. The two families at the centre of this study are also overdue a re-examination, with the last majorstudy on the Pontefract branch of the de Lacy family being carried out by W.E. Wightman in the 1960s. While meticulous in his assessment of landholding, Wightman was not particularly concerned with identity, and consequently his study ends some years short of major events considered by this thesis. Similarly, the de Vescy family has received relatively little attention, aside from Keith Stringer’s 1999 chapter examining the family from a transnational perspective. This project is able to build on this work to examine the barons of Alnwick in more detail. The project examines identity at a number of levels, dealing with both individual and group identity throughout. This is achieved by looking at familial identity, social identity and religious benefactions, political identity both within the honour and within the wider regnal community, and examining the relationship between these baronial families and Scotland given their position in a borderland. Woven throughout this analysis is the argument that there is a sense of ‘two Norths’, as Yorkshire became more integrated into the Kingdom of England during this period, while Northumberland remained a more active and hybrid frontier zone. Despite these differences, both regions clearly continued to form England’s borderland with Scotland.