Castle Characters - Adam of Alnwyk

Adam of Alnwyk is outwardly one of the most outwardly respectable of our Castle Characters. A holy friar of the Dominican order, sworn to poverty, chastity and obedience and living an austere life of religious devotion. But there’s more under the surface, that reveals something of the sordid underbelly of life in medieval Newcastle. Let’s dive in!

Blackfriars in Newcastle

Some of you may have popped down to Blackfriar’s Restaurant for a delicious meal from time to time and noticed that it purports to be the “oldest dining room in the UK”. This is perhaps a fair claim, as the buildings were part of the Dominican Priory that dates to 1239. The Dominicans were popularly known as the “Black Friars” among other names. So, who were they?

Firstly, we should note that although they looked similar, wearing simple robes and with their hair cut into the familiar tonsure, friars and monks are not the same thing. Monks in the medieval period lived a cloistered life, living in monastic communities and cut off from the sinful outside world. Their lives were dominated by regular daily prayers (often up to eight times a day), and they tended to be sited in rural areas where, in theory at least, the monks could live in seclusion away from the bustle of day-to-day life. When they weren’t praying, they worked at a trade, often copying books and other manuscripts, and many monasteries became centres of learning and scholarship.

In practice, monasteries often acquired a lot of land and wealth and became the centre of large estates farmed by numerous peasants, with the Abbott or Prior of the monastery (sometimes called a priory) acting as the feudal lord of the people living on their land. A good example of this in the Northeast is Tynemouth Priory, which for much of the Middle Ages acted as the ‘capital’ of the Liberty of Tynemouthshire, with the Prior not only being the head of a group of religious monks, but also being the hugely wealthy and influential Lord of many of the coastal towns and villages in south-east Northumberland, rivalling the influence of the merchants of Newcastle and the Earl of Northumberland.

In the 1200s in Europe, some Christians began to reject the monastic model for a religious life. Instead of cutting themselves off from the world, they believed that the job of the religious orders was to go into the world and preach to the people, especially the poor. Instead of monks, these people were known as Friars or Mendicants. They swore to own no property and lived instead entirely from the charity of others. Instead of being based in the countryside, their priories were based in the large towns and cities that were growing up, where they could preach to the growing numbers of poor urban dwellers who had little access to spiritual services. They were free to travel, hear confession and preach all over the country, staying in the priories belonging to their orders and often basing themselves in Universities like Paris, Oxford, and Padua where many friars became famous scholars.

St Dominic, portrayed wearing the white robe and black cloak of his order

There were many orders of friars, and by the end of the Medieval period, five priories of friars existed within the town walls of Newcastle Upon Tyne. The most influential of these orders were the White Friars (Carmelites) who were based in a priory to the rear of where Central Station now stands; the Grey Friars (Franciscans) on Pilgrim Street, and the Black Friars or Dominicans, whose priory is the only one still partially standing near the town’s West Walls just off Stowell Street.

The Dominicans first came to England in 1221 on the direction of their founder, Dominic, and established themselves in Newcastle in 1239. Their priory was built thanks to donations from three anonymous sisters and Peter Scot, the mayor of Newcastle at the time, showing that right from the start the friars had powerful backers. These “Black Friars” were distinguished by their uniform of a white robe and a black cloak and hood. Unlike the Franciscans, who went barefoot, the Black Friars also wore shoes, which led to some English people calling them the “Shod Friars”. Men wanting to join the order had to take vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, as well as almost continuous fasts, abstinence from meat and from wearing linen (which must have made their woollen robes rather itchy!)

Despite the individual friars being sworn to poverty, the order itself was allowed to hold money trust, and they soon had their work cut out for them in doing so. In the days of King Henry III (1216-1272), who was often in Newcastle, the order seems to have attracted royal favour. Apparently, Henry found the comfortable, quiet surroundings of the Dominican Priory more comfortable than the more military environment of Newcastle Castle, and Blackfriars became his favourite place to rest while he was in the town. Accordingly, he gave many gifts of land and wealth to the friars, who rapidly expanded their priory. We hear of him making right the damage caused by his retinue of followers, so they must have been enjoying quite rowdy evenings at the priory.

In 1264, they created a fountain and an aqueduct which they graciously allowed the townsfolk to use to supply themselves with fresh water. Under Edward I, they built a postern gate through the newly constructed town wall to allow themselves to get at their lands which had been rudely sliced in two by the new defences, while in 1318 under Edward II they acquired the land of Sir Gilbert de Middleton, who had a house in the town but had just been executed for treason.

In 1334 they reached perhaps the pinnacle of their power and influence. In that year, King Edward III of England stayed at Blackfriars with Edward Balliol, a claimant to the Scottish throne, as he plotted to launch a private invasion of Scotland, backed by English money and exiled Scottish lords, to overthrow the son of Robert the Bruce. While his invasion was less than successful (he fled back to England naked according to contemporary chronicles, having been so surprised by a Scottish attack that he forgot to put his clothes on), the Dominicans were obviously a wealthy and powerful order in Newcastle, seeing fit to host royalty for political discussions of the utmost importance.

A medieval illustration of a very naughty friar and nun enjoying themselves a little bit too much!

By the late 1300s, the initial idealism of the friars had rather worn off under the influence of all that wealth and power, and friars seem to have been stereotyped as greedy, licentious, and corrupt. Chaucer, in the Canterbury Tales, characterises his wandering friar as a bit of a lecher who uses his ‘holy’ status to travel the country begging fine foods and drinks from the pious, and using his charm and education to chat up young ladies along the way. Perhaps, given what he was involved with, we can imagine our own Adam of Alnwyk being just such a worldly friar.

Adam of Alnwyk may even have present at this historic meeting and seen the retinues of Edward III and Edward Balliol arrive at the priory. It is politics of an altogether different kind, though, that he would find himself embroiled in only a few years later. Moving, then, to Adam himself, what exactly do we know about him? As with many of the castle characters the answer is, frustratingly, very little. As we’ve observed before common people left few records of their lives sufficient to come up with a full biography of them. The one thing we can be reasonably certain of is that he was a native Northumbrian – despite the eccentric medieval spelling, “Alnwyk” is modern Alnwick, home to probably the most famous of Northumberland’s castles. In the 1300s, this was undergoing an extensive program of building and enlargement. The De Vesci family had left the Castle in the care of the Bishop of Durham, who promptly flogged it to the rising northern noble family, the Percys. Although he was probably born as a tenant of the Percy family, we do not know if Adam had any close links with them.

We don’t know anything, either, about how he became a friar. Although friars did often include teaching as part of their duties, sometimes running impromptu schools teaching the lower orders the rudiments of reading and writing, they seem to have been dissuaded from recruiting young people into the orders through these schools. Thus, unlike monasteries where children often lived as novices before becoming full monks, friars were often recruited later in life from people who had followed other careers and wanted to dedicate their lives to God. Thus, it is probable that Adam was an adult when he chose to join the order. The Dominicans were well known for education, so Adam could certainly read and write, and was probably well educated by the standards of the time.

When he appears in our records though, it is as a wanted fugitive. In 1344, Newcastle had gone through a period of political strife where two competing factions had tried to have their own candidate elected as Mayor of the city. The “contestants” were Richard Acton and John Denton. John Denton had been mayor once before in 1334, but was severely reprimanded by the King for allowing the Castle to fall into ruins and lawless gangs to run riot in the streets of Newcastle. Despite his removal, corruption of all kinds seems to have been rampant, and merchants complained to the King that the controllers of the customs in the town were defrauding the royal treasury of money and generally doing whatever they liked and getting away with it. Factions loyal to Acton and Denton had both tried to get their candidate elected, and each insisted that they had won the election. Eventually, the Acton faction got the upper hand and had Denton arrested, accusing him of having supplied the King’s Scottish enemies and even left the West Gate of the town open for them. Denton refused to cooperate with the kangaroo court set up to try him by his enemies, and was starved to death in prison.

A friar imprisoned in the stocks. He looks like he hasn’t learned his lesson.

A year later, Denton’s widow accused his killers of murder to the King, and Adam of Alnwyk was one of those accused of the murder of John Denton. While some of those accused alongside him suffered dreadful fates – “drawn and hanged”, in the case of Gilbert Dolfanby, and starved to death in prison himself in the case of Alan Chapman, Adam of Alnwyk had an altogether happier end. Although his time in prison was probably pretty miserable, especially seeing the fates of his co-conspirators, he finally received a royal pardon in October 1345, and was off the hook. Many of the other conspirators were outlawed and never returned to Newcastle. How Adam obtained this pardon is not recorded – perhaps the Prior of Blackfriars interceded with the King and traded some of that royal favour for a pardon for one of the brothers accused of this awful crime. Perhaps Henry Percy, one of the Lords ordered to investigate this murder by the King used his influence to get a former tenant of his let off. At any rate, it shows that the pious business of prayer, preaching and religious teaching was inextricably bound up with the murky world of medieval power politics, in which friars and monks played as ruthless a role as any.