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'In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth'... and the first Crathorne seems likely to have been born William le Teuler, who was later knighted with the name of Sir William de Crathorne in 1327 and was killed at the battle of Neville's Cross in 1346. He left several children and founded the Crathorne dynasty that was to own lands in the village of Crathorne for over 500 years, with descendants spreading far and wide. This is the story of some of those descendants: their detailed family history is given in the Yorkshire pages. The village of Crathorne dates back to ancient times, being called Cratorne or Cratorna in the Domesday Book. The word Crathorne comes from the Norse language: kraka, a crow, and thorn, a thorn, so Crow-thorn became spoken as Crathorne. Quite why a crow would be in a bush in that exact place is anyone's guess, but in those days natural features were all that you had for orientation. Crathorne lies on the River
Leven towards the Durham boundary of North Yorkshire. The Domesday Book records that the land at Crathorne had been owned by Ulf in 1066, but by 1086 it all belonged to William the Conqueror, part of a huge land-holding he'd given himself in Yorkshire. Although the land and village had been worth £2.00 in 1066, by 1086 that had gone down to £0.00 - or was William just buying it cheap? King William's ownership in
1086 included Crathorne (left) plus all the other villages shown in red on the right. Over time, several prominent families owned lands there, including Arnald de Percy who sold two-thirds of the manor to John le Teuler in 1310. In 1322, John's son William bought the remainder of the land, making the whole manor of Crathorne into his estate. William le Teuler was clearly an influential person, not only with enough money to buy the estate, but with the connections to fight on the side of King Edward at the battle of Boroughbridge in 1322. This was a small but important battle in the various conflicts between Edward II of England and his rebellious barons, and took place near the bridge across the River Ure at Boroughbridge, northwest of York on the16th March 1322. Thanks to the tactics of a defensive wall of spears (copied from the Scots) and an offensive arrow storm, the royal side won a decisive victory, with the rebel leaders later executed. Read more about the battle at Wikipedia and more about the ancient history of Crathorne at British History Online. The part played by William le Teuler was clearly significant, as he was later knighted for his services, becoming Sir William de Crathorne in 1327, the year that the King himself was later deposed and murdered.
William married twice, first to Margaret Russell then Isobel Clervaulx, producing at least five children: the first generation of Crathornes - John, Thomas, William, Nicholas and Matthew. William also became Lord of the Manor of Ness, near Hovingham, which he was given by Alice, daughter of Joan of Potto, in 1333. Nearly twenty years after Boroughbridge, in the autumn of 1346, a Scottish army under King David II invaded England at the request of the French King Phillip VI. This was an attempt to divert English forces from their campaign in France, where King Edward III's army had already won a devastating victory at Crecy. Advancing into England, the Scottish army had destroyed buildings and taken Priories before they advanced south towards Durham. On the night of the 16th October, the Scottish army camped in the Bishop of Durham's great deer park of Beaurepaire, 2 miles north west of the city. With the King in France, Ralph de Neville, Henry Percy and the Archbishop of York had assembled a makeshift army in Auckland Park on the edge of Bishop Auckland, about 10 miles from the Scots. Sir William de Crathorne was one of the knights serving in this extra English army. After a skirmish with the Scots early in the morning of the 17th October, the main battle took place at Neville’s Cross, then open moorland just to the west of Durham. The English had already chosen the best ground before the Scots could assemble their army and so the invaders found themselves severely disadvantaged by the terrain. Despite the battle being evenly balanced for a time, the Scots were out-manoeuvred and gradually fled the field, all but abandoning their King.
The Battle of Neville's Cross was disastrous for the Scots. Not only was their King captured and imprisoned and many men killed, but the following year the English pursued their advantage and occupied almost the whole of Scotland south of the Forth and the Clyde. The two images below give some indication of the battle – from a contemporary illustration and a modern view. There's also more about the battle at Wikipedia.
Apart from being disastrous for the Scots, the Battle of Neville's Cross was disastrous for the Crathornes too as William was killed, one of only 4 knights lost in the battle. His widow Isabel, when applying for probate of his will, declared that he had gone into the church of Crathorne before he started for the battle and had there made his last testament. In this he left money for the church roof, his armour to his friend Galfridus Hunter, and the remainder of his estate to his wife and children. William is commemorated with a stone effigy in Crathorne church, still there to this day.
Just a few years after Sir William's death, the Black Death reached Crathorne village in 1349, killing unknown numbers more than all the battles of the previous decades. Some estimates put Crathorne's loss at two-thirds of the villagers. Across England between 30% and 50% of the entire population was killed – some 2 million people – in just a couple of years. The speed and magnitude of Black Death had a devastating impact on society, with all systems unable to cope: bodies were thrown into communal pit graves, whole villages and towns were abandoned, and farming changed forever. The strip cultivation of open fields, developed and continued for centuries, required people to till their strips with ox-plough. Without people these strips just grassed over, forming the ridge-and-furrow fields still seen across England today.
Some of the Crathornes survived, however, with a Nicholas de Crathorne witnessing charter documents in 1362 and 1365. A few decades later in 1398 Thomas de Crathorne and his wife Elizabeth had a monumental inscription created in the parish church. And in 1428 John de Crathorne is documented as holding all the land in Crathorne that Sir William de Crathorne once held. His successors in the manor were Ralph Crathorne, then Thomas, the first of his twelve children. Thomas's son and heir Ralph died without children in 1517, so the estate passed to his brother James, who lived until 1543. His will left £4 a year for a priest to sing mass for his father, mother and brother Ralph, his godfathers and godmother and himself, "with all his elders' soules that Almightie God wolde have prayde for". His eldest son was another Thomas, who succeeded to the manor then died in 1568, leaving a son – another Ralph. This Ralph was in possession of Crathorne at the Visitation of Yorkshire in 1584, dying in 1592, and was succeeded by his son Thomas. There are family history diagrams showing these relationships on the Yorkshire pages. In 1604 Thomas and his wife Katherine were described as 'recusants' – believers in the old Catholic faith rather than the new Church of England. Thomas's mother Bridget was said to have been a recusant for twenty years. In fact the Crathorne family – like many in northern England - had never abandoned the old Roman Catholic religion and suffered considerably over the years for their beliefs.
The estate of Crathorne was passed down through several generations of Crathornes before reaching Francis and George Crathorne in 1797. Francis didn't marry, but George married Barbara Tasburgh, a widow, and as part of her inheritance, her former husband had insisted that any future husband would take the name Tasburgh. George duly changed his name to George Tasburgh Crathorne, and following his death in 1825 and Francis's in 1833, the estate was inherited by George's only child, Maria Augusta Rosalia Tasburgh. On Maria's death in 1844, continuing financial problems led to the Crathorne estate being put up for sale. Over 500 years of Crathornes at Crathorne came to an end with an auction in October 1844, when the estate was purchased for £79,400 by cotton magnate William Dugdale of Burnley. The Dugdales later moved to Crathorne and built the huge new Crathorne Hall which when completed in 1906 was the largest country house built in Edwardian England, and is now a hotel. The first Lord Crathorne was Thomas Lionel Dugdale, born in 1897 and educated at Eton and Sandhurst, who was elected Conservative MP for Richmond in 1929, and served as Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries under Winston Churchill. His son James Dugdale, a lecturer and consultant in Fine Art, is now the second Lord Crathorne.
Before we leave the Genesis of the Crathornes, there is a little story about the le Teuler family, ancestors of Sir William, where his grandfather Stephen was involved in a legal dispute in York in 1297. It seems that Stephen had put a man from 'his court' in the stocks, but the man's wife had appealed to the lady of the village, Petronilla. She had ordered William de Kelkefeld and others to go to Stephen to bail out the man. But Stephen and his son saw them coming armed, and thinking that they were about to free the man, they rushed out of the house to stop them. In the ensuing strife Stephen was beaten and wounded, so he sued Petronilla, William de Kelkefeld and several others. The jury found no case against Petronilla, but awarded £10 damages against the other defendants. As to where Stephen le Teuler came from, we can only guess. Maybe it was a Norman name, coming over with William after 1066? Maybe it’s a mis-spelling of Tyler, which was quite a common name. Either way, all Crathornes can trace our origins back to that court record of 1297. Click on the 'Pre-1600' button below to go to the Exodus page, showing how different lines of Crathornes spread across the country in the 1500s. The 'Post-1900' page shows maps of Crathornes at the 1891 Census and in 1998.
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