The Ridale Family, Rather the De Ridales to Help Distinguish Them
Marritt, S. (2011) The Ridale papal letters and royal charter: a twelfth- century Anglo-Scottish baronial family, the papacy, the law, and charter diplomatic. English Historical Review, CXXVI (523). pp. 1332-1354. ISSN 0013-8266 http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/59664 Deposited on: 02 February 2012 Enlighten – Research publications by members of the University of Glasgow http://eprints.gla.ac.uk 1 The Ridale Papal Letters and Royal Charter: a Twelfth-century Anglo-Scottish Baronial Family, the Papacy, the Law, and Charter Diplomatic* Three original papal letters issued between 1156 and 1176 for the Ridale family concerning lands in Scotland and the North Riding of Yorkshire survive among the manuscripts of their descendants the Riddells of Whitefield, Hepple, Northumberland.1 The letters were well known in the nineteenth century but they have been little studied since, despite being amongst the earliest extant papal letters for a twelfth-century baronial family (indeed, the only Scottish examples) and, as a set of such documents, extraordinarily rare.2 As late as the 1820s, the Riddells also still held a King David I of Scotland charter granting Walter de Ridale land in Lilliesleaf and elsewhere in Teviotdale, Roxburghshire (1145x1153).3 It is now lost, but its text contains the earliest Scottish royal warrandice clause and one of the earliest Scottish references to tenure for a specified amount of knight service.4 Pope Adrian IV issued the first papal letter in 1156 for Walter’s brother Ansketill, confirming his possessions and especially Walter’s bequest to him by his testamentum of the Scottish estates. Such a bequest of land held by knight service to a secular beneficiary is another *I am very grateful to Professor Dauvit Broun and Dr Bryan Dick of the University of Glasgow for their advice and encouragement in the preparation of this article, to the readers for EHR for their perceptive suggestions, and to the staff of the Northumberland Collections Service at Woodhorn for their help with the manuscripts.
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