Corner Surname

The two earliest precursors of the Corner surname to be recorded in northeast Yorkshire are Coroner (Yorkshire Inquisitions, 1297) and Cornay (Yorkshire Lay Subsidy records: Wapentake of Langbaurgh, 1301).  Handed down stories told of a relationship between the two names - both the later Corner and Corney variants perhaps once shared common origins and pronunciation.  Our Corner branch trace back to the start of Danby parish records on the North York Moors in the sixteenth century and the surname is present in earlier local records - the surname has continuity in the same region for a considerable length of time.

The medieval le Coroner family lived near Scarborough Castle, an English coastal royal fortress built in the twelfth century.  The Cleveland Cornay family lived thirty miles northwest of Scarborough towards the River Tees in the vicinity of Guisborough Priory founded by Robert I de Brus in the early-twelfth century.  Corner descendants living in the vicinity of the North York Moors bore the surname variations Corner and Cornay/Corney.  I include the known history of prominent families to throw light on the less well-recorded members of the general population that included our family.  Understanding is helped by looking at the wider historical context.  The activities of land-owning families affected the lives of their tenants as well as the servants and retinues who followed in their slipstream.

Fixed surnames were less common in thirteenth century Yorkshire - the region held on to the Anglo-Scandinavian tradition of using bynames (or epithets) and patronyms for longer than the south of England.  Transmissible surnames were brought north by Anglo-Flemish/Norman families and many adopted territorial surnames based on castles, villages and landscape features near where they lived - with the prefix 'de'.  Such surnames are well represented in the lists of North Riding families assessed for Lay Subsidy taxes in the early-fourteenth century and probably reflects population change in the region following the Harrying of the North.

Peter III de Brus of nearby Skelton Castle, Lord of Skelton, Danby, Kirkby, justice itinerant of Northumberland, Constable of Scarborough Castle and last of the senior de Brus male line died in 1272 leaving no heirs.  His Cleveland estates were broken up and shared between his four sisters and their husbands.  

Following the death of Peter de Brus III in 1272, his four sisters became co-heiresses of the de Brus estates. Agnes, the eldest, married Walter de Fauconberg and took, as her share, the manors of Skelton, Marske, Upleatham and Kirkleatham. Lucia, the second sister, married Marmaduke de Thweng taking with her the manors of Yarm, Danby and Brotton [plus Lealholm, Skinningrove and forest to the south of Skelton]. Margaret, the third sister, married Robert de Ross and had, as her share, the barony of Kendall; whilst Laderina, the youngest, married John de Bellew and had for her share the lordship of Carlton amongst other holdings., link

According to Barbara English's thesis notes the Fauconbergs who inherited Skelton Castle were descended from the châtelains de St Omer, seigneurs de Fauquembergue in the in the Hauts-de-France region near Boulogne.  They were originally from a line of Flemish nobility under the Counts of Flanders.  Cleveland's ties with Scotland and other Flemish-origin families in that country continued - in 1295 the body of Robert de Brus V of Annandale, John Baliol's main rival for the Scottish throne during the Great Cause and grandfather of King Robert the Brus of Scotland, was carried south of the Border to be buried in the family's ancestral resting place at Guisborough Priory.  This was the heyday of the chivalric francophone milieu of medieval Christendom in Britain and Europe.  New stone castles and wealthy abbeys with ornate towers, spires and large windows filled with colourful glass appeared on the skyline of Cleveland and North Yorkshire.  

The Corner surname may have Latin roots with origins that potentially link back to francophone areas of the near continent.  The fertile agricultural lands and forests of Eskdale in the North York Moors were geographically isolated - bounded by the North Sea and surrounded by miles of barren moorland.  Produce from the farms and other industries situated in the sheltered moorland dales were transported down the valley carved by the River Esk to the port of Whitby.  From there the region was connected to the wider world via the North Sea - access by land was impractical in the winter even until relatively recent times.  Local Navigator and Cartographer, Captain James Cook, would learn his trade in the region and go on his worldwide voyages of discovery on Whitby-built ships in the eighteenth century.  From their late-thirteenth century beginnings the descendants of the early Cleveland Cornay and Corner families radiated around the nearby North Sea coast and the valleys of Upper Eskdale.  The Corners, Cornays and Corneys  were farmers, mariners, merchants and clerics.

Skelton Castle, link

CLEVELAND HISTORY

Robert I de Brus, born c. 1070, was a Norman with Flemish origins who had lived in the Hainaut-settled part of the Cotentin in Normandy.  He was friends with King Henry I of England and King David I of Scotland.  Hainaut was a territorial lordship straddling what is now the northern French and Belgian border.  In February 2022 the University of Strathclyde announced that the yDNA line of Robert the Bruce, King of Scots from 1306 to 1329, might be FTB15831.  The parentage of the Bruces of Clackmannan (descended from Thomas Bruce in the mid- to late-thirteenth century) is not certain, however.  The FTDNA Haplotree shows that FTB15831 descends from the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age subclade DF27>ZZ12>Z46512/FTT1>FGC78762, as does Rox2.  The two lines, Bruce of Clackmannan and Rox2, diverged at that very early point.  A study by the University of St Andrews found the similarly Flemish-origin Douglas/Sutherland family to be DF27>ZZ12>FTT1>FGC23074>FGC23076>FGC23083.  All three lineages are DF27>ZZ12 but have been parallel lines since the Bronze Age.

King David I of Scotland's wife Maud Countess of Huntingdon was the daughter of Waltheof, Earl of Huntingdon and Northampton.  Maud's mother was Judith of Lens whose family were Counts of Boulogne in Flanders.  The Setons, relations of Judith de Lens and loyal supporters of the de Brus family, lived at Seton Hall on the North Yorkshire coast close to the de Brus castle at Skelton.  Judith and Maud's households consisted of noble Flemish families and their retinues who had followed them to England.  King David I of Scotland's sister Edith had married Henry I of England in 1100.  Edith was given the Dower Lands of Rutland in the East Midlands, an estate traditionally given to English queens as a wedding present and her younger brother lived with her for a time.  Many other potentially Flemish-origin Norman families had connections with the Midlands region of England in and around Huntingdonshire and Northamptonshire.  

Cleveland was heavily settled by Scandinavians before the Norman Conquest (see The Vikings in Cleveland Languages, Myths and Finds Translating Norse and Viking Cultures for the Twenty-First Century, edited by Heather O’Donoghue and Pragya Vohra, 2014) but was depopulated and partly desolate after the Harrying of the North by William the Conqueror in the winter of 1069/70.  By contrast Flanders, just across the North Sea, was becoming overpopulated.  

William's youngest son King Henry I gave Robert I de Brus much of his Yorkshire fee (a great tract of land called Langbaurgh between the lower Tees and the River Esk) soon after confiscating the property of William of Mortain following the battle of Tinchebrai in September 1106.  The Count of Mortain originally had control of land on the East Cleveland coast situated just north of Whitby held by the Fossards (Mulgrave, Lythe etc.) and Richard de Sourdeval (Seton, Aislaby).  Robert de Brus built castles at Castleton on the North York Moors and Skelton in East Cleveland and enjoyed extensive hunting rights in the surrounding Yorkshire moorland dales.  Robert I de Brus was buried at Guisborough Priory in 1142 and his descendants rebuilt the church on a grand scale as a family mausoleum.  The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a time of close family contact between the de Brus barony in North East England and the Kingdom of Scotland.  Accompanying retainers, clerics, administrators, monks, mariners, soldiers, weavers, farmers and their families from England, including a large French-speaking entourage from France, Normandy and Flanders moved back-and-forth across the Border between the two regions with the de Bruses.  

Migration from Flanders was partly motivated by the Flemish weaving trade's need for more wool, more than could be produced on increasingly overcrowded and water-logged lands at home.  Devastating floods in the provinces of Zeeland and Holland resulted in large numbers of farmers migrating to The Wash in England, link.  Flemings were also hired as soldiers, town planners/civil servants and castle builders.  The Cleveland Hills and North York Moors were rich in ironstone deposits and the Flemings were able to extract and process the natural resources.  There are old ironstone workings next Skelton Castle.  Salt making was another specialist skill and salt pans were constructed by the de Bruses on the coast at Coatham, nearby.  An early Cornay family member, William Cornay, is recorded as having one of the 'saltcotes' there in the early-fifteenth century, see below.  The flat coastal environment around the Tees estuary would have been a familiar one for many Flemings - a home from home.  

The Seaton/Seton family based at Seton Hall on the North Sea landing point at Seton-Staithes were heavily involved in the lucrative herring fishery (hareng-buss in Flemish) along the east coast of Britain - between Boulogne and Lothian in Scotland.  There were extensive salt pans in a similarly flat coastal landscape near the Setons' Scottish home in East Lothian, at Preston Pans.  Possibly one of the first coal mines in Britain was dug there by Cistercian monks from Newbattle Abbey in 1210.  Following the English victory at the Battle of Dunbar in 1296, the Setons in Scotland swore loyalty to Edward I.  The Setons in Yorkshire lost their land when King Edward I of England had Yorkshire-born Sir Christopher Seton executed in 1306 for his support of King Robert the Bruce.  Sir Christopher was married to Lady Christiana Bruce, Robert's sister.  The Seton ancestral lands 'Seton and Brunne' on the Yorkshire coast were forfeited and went to the Mauleys of neighbouring Mulgrave Castle. The new 'De domino de Seton' became Edmund de Mauley who had successfully campaigned in Scotland for Edward I.

William Rufus and Henry I of England had sent 'new men' closely attached to the royal court to Yorkshire after 1100, including Nigel d'Aubigny (of Thirsk), Eustace Fitz John (Lord of Knaresborough and Halton), Walter Espec (of Helmsley) and Robert de Brus.  They were members of a specialized northern judicial team that functioned in the court and in the countryside.  The magnates had probably all served Henry I before he became king and, once he gained the throne, were rewarded with lands and power on the understanding that they would govern the north for him.  Nigel d'Aubigny (c. 1070 - 1129) based at Thirsk Castle about thirty miles south of the de Brus bases at Guisborough and Skelton was of similar Hainaut-via-Cotentin ancestry.  He inherited the land, surname and title of Robert de Mowbray Earl of Northumberland after he rebelled against William Rufus on behalf of Robert Duke of Normandy.  The manors of Aubigny and Montbray were in Manche department in Normandy.  Nigel's son Roger de Mowbray, along with his mother Gundred de Gournay (died 1155), also lived at Thirsk Castle.  In the mid-1130s a group of twelve monks led by Abbot Gerald had fled to Yorkshire from a Scottish attack on their church at Calder Abbey near Corney in southern Cumbria and sought help from Gundreda at Thirsk.  In 1143 Gundreda and her son Roger founded the Cistercian establishment of Byland Abbey and installed the wandering monks there.  Roger also founded the great Yorkshire Cistercian religious house of Fountains Abbey and others: 

 in the years following the Battle of Tinchebrai in 1106 Nigel was rewarded by Henry with marriage to an heiress who brought him lordship in Normandy and with the lands of several men, primarily that of Robert de Stuteville. The Mowbray honour became one of the wealthiest estates in Norman England. From 1107 to about 1118, Nigel served as a royal official in Yorkshire and Northumberland. In the last decade of his life he was frequently traveling with Henry I, most likely as one of the king's trusted military and administrative advisors.  Link

The post-Conquest Norman/Flemish settlement of northern Britain began in Cleveland via the East Midlands/Lincolnshire and moved through Cumbria and up into the southwest of Scotland.  When King David I returned to Scotland to take the throne after an education in his youth at the Norman court in England and Normandy he encouraged Robert de Brus to relocate some of his Cotentin followers there.  David's wife also brought many of her Flemish and Norman relatives with her.  The main royal power base in Scotland moved south to the anglophone regions of Lothian and Teviotdale.  Like Henry I in the north of England, David would replace many established Scottish landowners with his Flemish and Norman friends and relatives in an effort to guarantee loyalty to the crown.  To secure his rule King David I made de Brus Lord of Annandale in Galloway, Scotland.  William Avenel was given the lordship of neighbouring Eskdale.  The Avenel lords of Eskdale built their castle at Abercorn in West Lothian on the coast of the Firth of Forth and the de Quincys and Setons had a presence in East Lothian in southeast Scotland.  Some families in Scotland at this time could trace their origins back to the barony of Cleveland, like the Setons, the Bairds (associated with Richard of Ghent) and Roger Wyrfalc (Cunningham).  David and Maud's son Henry married Ada de Warenne who was herself of Flemish descent and she too will have brought her countrymen to Scotland.  The numbers of Flemings in Scotland increased in 1154 when Henry II expelled all aliens competing for trade in England.

Above, horns depicted in the eleventh century Bayeux Tapestry

SURNAME ORIGINS

There are several different Corner and Corney families living in various parts of the British Isles and preliminary yDNA research using the little data that is currently available indicates that although they share identical or similar surnames they descend from different progenitors.  The y chromosome is passed from father to son and testing at a DNA genealogy company, like FTDNA, can indicate which particular paternal lineage one belongs to.  This page focuses on the family that originates in North East England but the various etymologies discussed below concern all families with the surname.  

An origin for the Corner surname that is regularly mentioned in surname dictionaries is a derivation from a contraction of coroner, the title of a medieval crown officer.  There were two contemporary medieval le Coroner families in North East England, one of them living nearby at Scarborough and the other further up the coast at Bamburgh, covered in more detail below.  

'Corn' could be applied to any horn-shaped object or topographical feature, i.e. any projecting point or extremity, be it 'a wart, a branch of a river, a tongue of land, the end of a bow or sail-yard, the peak of a mountain, a bugle, a wing of an army', link.  Those who lived near to a distinctive hill, often a site put to use as a defensive fortification, might gain the name of the landscape feature as a toponymic surname.  Cor Nez in Normandy and the Channel Islands and Cornaa/Cornay on the Isle of Man, both maritime locations, are pronounced phonetically as 'Cornay'.  Cap du Rozel in Manche department was known locally as Cor-Nez, also pronounced 'Cor Nay'.  In the above cases the 'corn' element probably relates to isolated, elevated natural landscape features.  

Abercorn on the south coast of the Firth of Forth in Scotland is situated at the mouth (Aber = mouth of a river in Celtic) of Cornie Burn, or river Corneth (Blaeu Atlas of Scotland, 1654).  The Latin word cornū is probably the basis of the Cornie/Corneth element and relates to the long, steep-sided crag that overlooks the Firth of Forth on which a castle once stood - Abercorn would therefore be an 'adjectival derivative' describing the 'hill by the river mouth'.  The Roman Antonine Wall was begun nearby in 142 AD and the hill at Abercorn with the deep gully of Cornie Burn providing additional natural defence on the south side of the headland may have been the site of one of their military camps.  However, no Roman archaeological evidence has yet been found on the much-disturbed site - the Avenels probably levelled the site during construction of their castle in the twelfth century and it was later destroyed in an assault and then razed in the fifteenth century.  The Cornet/Corneth and the Avenel families are covered in more detail below.  

Abercorn Castle's situation on a raised spur in the landscape is very similar to that of two castles on the northern French border with the same name element, i.e. Montcornet (Mont Cornu) in the Aisne department in Hauts-de-France and Cornay at Ardennes to the east on the borders of Champagne and Lorraine.  Cornay, home of the de Cornay family in Ardennes department Grand Est, was a strongly-defended border fortress built c. 1000 AD by the Counts of Grandpré.  Castle Cornet guarded St Peter Port on the island of Guernsey off the coast of Normandy and probably also got its name from the craggy promontory on which it stands.  See the 'Corn' Place Names page.

The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, Patrick Hanks, Richard Coates, Peter McClure, 2016, also suggests a derivation from 'horn' for both the Cornet and Corner surnames.  Animal horns were commonly converted into curved medieval drinking or storage vessels.  The term could be applied either to a musician or an officer in a medieval household who blew the horn to make a sound.  The twelfth century Scottish knight Glay Avenel was horn-blower, or steward, for his brother Gervase Avenel, written in Latin as Glaius miles cornarius ejusrlem (see more below).  As well as depicting several drinking horns the image from the Bayeaux Tapestry above shows the head of the household (on the left) calling William the Conqueror and his knights to dinner with a blast on his horn.  The French pronunciation of the word cornet, derived from the Latin: cornū meaning 'horn', might be heard as 'cornay' or 'corner' by an English speaker.  Horns were important communication devices used to make loud signals that conveyed messages or warnings over long distances.  In The Song of Roland, Charlemagne's knight Roland died while blowing a large horn (oliphant) made from an elephant's tusk in Spain.

A cornet might also be a medieval triangular pennant, like this one held by Count Eustace II of Boulogne depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry.  As with the use of horns to convey messages over long distances through sound, flags were used to send visual communications.  The word lived on as a British military rank for the officer who carried the troop standard, not the cornet musical instrument. 

The corno ducale (Italian for'ducal horn') was the headgear and symbol of the Doge of Venice.  It was a stiff horn-like bonnet that resembled the Phrygian cap, a classical symbol of liberty, link.  Strut-Harald, a petty king of Scania, gained his nickname from a horn-shaped hat worn as a sign of his dignity.  The horn that came to symbolize the House of Orange when heraldry came in vogue in about the twelfth century was said to be a pun on founder William of Gellone's name in French.  The pun/nickname was based on 'short nose' or 'crooked nose' from the French 'court nez' or 'corb-nez'; the homophone was 'cornet'.  Guillaume au Cornet was known variously as Willem met de Hoorn, Willem de Hoorndrager, William with the Short Nose, Wilhelmus of Aquitaine, Guillaume au Cornet, Guillaume d'Orange, Guillaume de Gellone (c. 752-812).  Possibly related to Charles Martel, in legend William got the nickname after a Saracen cut the tip of his nose off.  Variations of Cornet include: de Cornet, Cornett(e), Corné, Cornez, Cornee, Le(s)cornez, Cornut.

The French/Flemish name Cornet could derive from cornut 'to wear the horns' of a stag (an old symbolic term alluding to the mating habits of stags who forfeit their mates when they are defeated in the rut) - i.e. the nickname might be given to an illegitimate child.  William de la Corner (died 1291) was said to be 'a papal chaplain of illegitimate birth', link

According to some sources (e.g. A Topographical Dictionary of England 1848, Samuel Lewis) the Norman/Old French term cornage was related to horn-blowing and/or tax paid to the crown in cattle.  However, others state that cornagium/cornage is probably a natural contraction of coronagium and simply means crown rent, link.  Those tenants that paid cornage for their land were at one time exempt from foreign service but were required to defend England in wars against the Scots and Welsh - this is possibly where the local tales of horn-blowing and invasion by Scots had their origins.

All the tenants by Cornage are bound, at the King's command, to go with the Army to Scotland, serving in the vanguard in going, and in the rearguard in returning., Testa de Nevill, link

Another early possibility for the Cornet/Cornay/Corney surname's origin could be a derivation from the Scandinavian personal name or nickname Korni.  Korni means seed or grain and an íkorni is a red squirrel in Old Norse (pdf).  The term corn, now associated with maize in English speaking countries outside Britain, could be applied to any grain in Britain and Ireland.

Back in the day, English speakers could use "corn" to refer to any grain they felt like, though it usually meant the predominant crop in a given region. In England, wheat was "corn," while oats were "corn" in Scotland and Ireland, and even rice was "the only corn that grows in the island" of Batavia (a.k.a. the Indonesian island of Java), as described in a 1767 travelogue.  The Etymology of the Word 'Corn', link

The Scyldings in legend are said to be an old royal lineage descended from Scyld, a baby boy washed ashore in an empty shining boat (named 'icy') on the North Sea coast of Denmark holding a sheaf of corn.  The inhabitants raised the boy and he became their king and founder of their ruling house.  Scyld appears in the Old English epic peom Beowulf as Scyld Scefing and has a son named Beowulf.  Beowa was a god of barley and agriculture - hence the link with Scyld's small handful of corn (beow = barley).  J.R.R. Tolkien used the modern English spelling Sheave for Scefing, meaning a bundle of grain.  Seamus Heaney translates his name as 'Shield Sheafson'.  Old English folk legends were turned into poems and songs about John Barleycorn who is associated with the brewing of beer:

Kathleen Herbert draws a link between the mythical figure Beowa (a figure stemming from Anglo-Saxon paganism that appears in early Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies whose name means "barley") and the figure of John Barleycorn. Herbert says that Beowa and Barleycorn are one and the same, noting that the folksong details the suffering, death, and resurrection of Barleycorn, yet also celebrates the "reviving effects of drinking his blood"  Link

From The Book of the Settlement of Iceland, Ari Porgilsson (Frodi,1067–1148 AD):

Grimkel married Thorgerd, daughter of Valthjof the Old; their son was Thorarin Korni, he was of exeeding great strength, and lies in Korni's How.  Link.  

As in Iceland, howe means burial mound in northern England.  The place name Kornsá in Iceland means Korni's stream.  Cornabus on the island of Islay, in the Inner Hebrides, means corn farm or Korni's farm.  Cornaig on Tiree, also in the Inner Hebrides, may come from the Old Norse for corn bay, or Korni's bay.  A man named Korni may have been connected to Kornerup and Kornerup River near the ancient royal site of Lejre in Zealand, Denmark (image above, Google Street View) and also places in Normandy like Cornemare (Seine-Maritime), Corneville-la-Fouquetière and Corneville-sur-Risle (Eure, Normandy).  The place name Corneville developed from Cornus, or Korni's hus, meaning Korni's villa/house in Old Norse.  The Eure department in Normandy is also where the de Angulo family of knights is said to originate, in Saint-Germain-des-Angles about 25 miles from Corneville-la-Fouquetière.  De Angulo is linked with the anglicised  'de la Corner' surname variation.  Cornholme in Calderdale, West Yorkshire could derive from the Old Norse as in 'Korni's holme', or 'Korni's raised ground/islet' - or perhaps it simply relates to a raised settlement in a curved valley.

Corner and Cornet entries in The surnames of Scotland: their origin, meaning, and history, George F. Black, 1946, link

Additional 'corn' locations in Yorkshire include Cornborough/Corneburgh near Sheriff Hutton, north of York.  The name of this lost medieval fortified manor house, once occupied by the prominent de Thweng family of Yorkshire, might derive from Korni's burgh (i.e. 'castle'), link.  The origins of the name are lost but it might be an earlier pre-Conquest place name possibly dating back to Scandinavian occupation of Yorkshire in the period between the ninth and the eleventh century AD.  Alternatively, perhaps the name drives from a contraction of 'Coroner's burgh'.  Sir Marmaduke de Thweng (c. 1180-c.1235) was the coroner of Yorkshire and in 1200 acted as an attorney of his overlord Piers (Peter) I de Brus of Skelton Castle.  A descendant, another Sir Marmaduke (1234-1294), married one of the four thirteenth century de Brus heiresses, Lucy de Brus and inherited Danby, Lealholm, Yarm, Brotton, Skinningrove and forest to the South of Skelton, link.  The de Thwengs also had a castle at Kilton in Cleveland, not far from the de Bruses at Skelton.

There were also early examples of the Cornay and Corner surname in medieval southern Europe, see the Corners of Southern Europe page.

Scarborough Castle (ruin), link

CORONERS

As mentioned, surname dictionaries often list a contraction of coroner (the title of the holder of the Norman office of crown taxation and criminal investigation formally established in 1194).  There were two thirteenth century le Coroner families in North East England.  The earliest instance was the Northumberland family based at Bamburgh who gained the office title just after the Norman Conquest.  The word Coronator is the Latin rendering of the the Bamburgh and Scarborough le Coroner surname in some records.  Coronator translates from Latin as 'he who crowns', link.  In Carolingian Europe a Coronator would have been a bishop or archbishop who crowned a 'designated prince', link.  In post-Conquest England and Scotland the title was applied to those who served the crown, i.e. servientes regis.  Coroners replaced the earlier hundred serjeants, link.  A coroner’s position in the Norman hierarchy was usually secondary to the sheriff of an area.  There were some differences in North East England, however:

The one exception to legislation that, elsewhere in England, closely circumscribed the coroners' judicial responsibilities was the neighbouring county of Northumberland, where the coroner was frequently the official before whom suspects were indicted. But in Durham the coroners, one for each of the four wards into which the palatinate was divided, and a fifth for the episcopal wapentake of Sadberge, were very much the partners of the sheriff—and his equals—in the administration of the criminal law.  The Bishop’s Ministers: The Office of Coroner in Late Medieval Durham, Cynthia Neville.  Link

Provincial earls and lords were responsible for local government across regional areas and the sheriff was ‘on a par with the provincial earls and lords.', pdf.  Coroners were mounted on horseback, were identified by symbols of office and had active quasi-military functions.  They had the right to carry arms with some powers of summary justice and were quite different to the holders of the civic office today.

LE CORONERS OF SCARBOROUGH

King John [reigned 27 May 1199 – 19 October 1216] is known to have visited Scarborough several times and seems to have developed it, along with Knaresborough, as a major royal castle to control Yorkshire. He spent £2,291 on Scarborough, more than on any other castle in the kingdom.  Link

Peter III de Brus, Lord of Skelton and justice itinerant of Northumberland, was made Constable of the fortress situated on a high promontory off the North Sea coast of North Yorkshire, in 1269.  Sir Robert Ughtred (dead by 1310) of Scarborough was Sheriff of Yorkshire.  The Scarborough Ughtred family origins are not known but the surname suggests a potential link to Bamburgh and Northumbria.  A Robert le Coroner ('coronator') was named in writs in 1297 and 1298 concerning land in the town wanted by Friars Minors of Scardeburch for the building of their church.  

Piers Gaveston, a Gascon knight and great favourite of King Edward II, became Constable of Scarborough Castle in April 1312 after provoking several members of the English nobility to the point of civil war.  The earls (including Henry Lord Percy the previous custodian of Scarborough castle who was ejected to make way for Piers) hated Gaveston because of his wealth and power and the influence he had over the king.  He had also beaten many of them in armed tournaments and, to add insult to injury, mocked them with derogatory nicknames.  King Edward had left Gaveston in charge of Scarborough Castle while he moved on to York to raise an army to fight off the rebels.  In the event of Edward's death Gaveston was told he could keep the castle for himself and his heirs.  Gaveston was given a mandate to hold Scarborough indefinitely at all costs and he swore that he would not yield, not even to the king if he came as a prisoner.  The coastal location of this particular Yorkshire castle did however offer a potential escape route by sea.

In March Gaveston strengthened the castle garrison with his own forty-eight men-at-arms and foot soldiers, and soon he was joined at Scarborough by his brother, Arnand-Guillaume, who brought with him another eleven men from York. Between April and July 1312 a total of £48 was spent on repairs to the castle and provisions for its stores. To win the support of Scarborough’s burgesses, Edward confirmed their charters of liberty and granted them the right to levy and collect harbour dues or quayage for the next eight years.  Link

The earls Lancaster, Clifford, Percy, Pembroke and Warenne saw their chance and rushed to Scarborough.  In May 1312 Gaveston surrendered the castle following a three week siege.  The king applied pressure and offered incentives to the nobles and Piers was initially guaranteed safe passage at the altar of the Scarborough church of the Friars Preachers.  He was later hunted down and executed.  Robert le Coroner and his family witnessed the events in Scarborough and Robert looks to have been involved.  The king afterwards blamed the people of Scarborough for the loss of his friend and in revenge the town was harshly punished, losing all of its corporate privileges.  However, Robert le Coronner de Scardeburgh was one of four local men along with John Lok, Robert Fitzrobert and Reinard le Charetter, who were later pardoned by Edward II in October 1313.  Robert was an adherent of Thomas Earl of Lancaster, one of the leading rebels who lost his head in 1322.  Robert le Coroner had spent a year and a half in the prison of the Court of the Marshalsea in London, probably shortly after the events of Gaveston's capture in 1312.  He 'sued a writ of imprisonment against John de Rolleston, chaplain and Keeper of Scarborough Castle', but to avoid it Rolleston had illegally imprisoned Robert and the others at Marshalsea and had taken 'goods and merchandise without payment or warrant'.  Link

For the next fifteen years, as long as Edward II remained on the throne, Scarborough was subjected to the most ruthless exploitation to which its people retaliated with exceptional violence.

A succession of constables of Scarborough castle, who were also given the title of keepers or wardens of the town, now acted as virtual dictators. Scarborough was bought and sold like any market commodity.  Link

A reconstruction of the castle in about 1300, © Historic England (illustration by Chris Jones-Jenkins), via English Heritage, link

In the years between 1315 and 1322 a period of heavy rainfall and cold weather brought about a Great Famine that killed 10-15% of the population.  This combined with the hard times that befell Scarborough following the killing of Piers Gaveston, as well as incursions into Yorkshire from the marauding Scottish army, may have contributed to Robert son of Robert le Coroner of Scarborough owing money in 1323 (40s to John Ellerker) and 1325 (60s to John de Amwell parson of the church of Rasen, Lincoln), link.  40s, or £2, in the 1320s would buy two horses or four cows.  60s, or £3, would buy three horses or six cows.  In both cases Robert's land and chattels were at risk if he defaulted on repayment of the debts.  In 1328 John de Setrington of Scarborough owed Robert le Coroner the younger 100s.  Link

The elder Robert le Coroner, paterfamilias of the Scarborough le Coroners, was born in about 1240 and either he or his son Robert was Scarborough's Member of Parliament in 1305.  Robert le Coroner senior's son Robert born c. 1270 is probably the Robert who was involved in the Edward II/Gaveston episode at the castle.  Robert was a representative for the borough of Scarborough in parliament in 1328 and possibly 1340.  This Robert may also have had a son named Robert born c. 1300 who could have been the Scarborough MP in 1340 and 1358.  A Henry and Thomas le Coroner were also Scarborough MPs at around the same times in the first half of the fourteenth century.  There was a Robert le Corouner living to the south of Scarborough down the North Sea coast at Grimsby in 1319 who was one of six out-of-pocket merchants with trade links in the Pomeranian Baltic port of Stralsund, (pdf).

It was a breach of medieval Yorkshire forest laws to hunt game, the wild animals belonged to the king.  The Forest of Pickering near Scarborough was, and still is, a royal forest.  However, hunting was a popular activity in the early-to-mid-1300s and many of the young inhabitants of the North York Moors were involved in the exciting fast-paced sport despite the risk of prosecution and heavy fines.  The scarcity of food due to climate change probably contributed to the participants' willingness to break the law.

A writ of 1332 records the 'Homicide of Thomas servant of Robert le Corouner the younger, by John le Mareschal at Scarborough'.   A Robert son of Robert Corner (Robtus filius Robti Croner de Scardeburgh), possibly Robert le Coroner senior's grandson, was tried before the Royal Justices at Hackness in 1333, link.  Hackness is an ancient parish within Whitby Forest that was once connected to the seventh century Anglian abbey of St Hilda on the coast to the north and was still within the Liberty of the Abbot of Whitby in the fourteenth century.  On Thursday 12 August 1333, William Page and Robert Corner hunted and carried away a red deer stag from Ayton Wood to the house of  Lord of the Manor Gilbert de Ayton, heir to the manor of Malton and its castle following the end of the Vescey line.  Robert (son of Robert le Corouner of Scarborough) was fined (bail) of 6s 8d.  That sum of money in the 1330s would pay a skilled tradesman's wages for sixteen days, link.  Robert's companion the woodward of Ayton was outlawed.  The pair were said to have used John Daniel of Everley's horse to transport the stag without his knowledge.  John Daniel was himself not averse to hunting and was listed as an offender elsewhere in the records.  In 1332 Adam Levedy, apparently a repeat offender described as a 'common poacher', killed a hart in Ayton Wood and the above mentioned John Daniel and wife took the animal back home to Everley in their cart.  Adam was outlawed.  Several other familiar North Riding family surnames appear in the medieval offender lists that still endure in the region 700 years later.

Unlike Robin Hood who in legend 100 years earlier 'robbed from the rich and gave to the poor', Robin Corner had robbed from the rich and given to the rich.  It was possibly his father Robert son of Robert le Coroner (Robtus filius Robti le Coroner) who was outlawed 22 years earlier on 26 May 1311 when he and nine others: 

came poaching in the common fields of Scalby and Newby, [also near Scarborough] with bows, arrows, cross-bows and gazehounds, and took a hare.  Link

Offenders were regularly apprehended by the foresters and verderers in the neighbourhood of Hackness in the early fourteenth century.  Some of the forest officials were attacked while performing their duty and one had his dog killed and hung up.  In 1334 a large group of local knights, including Meynells, Percys, de Mauleys and Setons, were imprisoned and heavily fined when they:

took forty-three harts and hinds, of which they cut off the heads of nine and fixed them upon stakes in the Moor.  Link

There was a period of recovery and prosperity in the 1330s but the Black Death would arrive in 1348.  The Roberts, Henry and Thomas le Coroner were Members of Parliament for Scarborough between 1305 and 1358.  Coroners at that time did not usually take their office title as a surname, they were elected for a relatively short time and would add the title after their own family name, e.g. 'Richard de Whatton, coroner'.  Additionally, despite their surname, none of the thirteenth and fourteenth century Corner family of Scarborough were ever listed as performing the duties of coroners.  However, the office title had been adopted as a surname by an earlier family living near the neighbouring royal fortress at Bamburgh.  The le Coroner title had been passed down there over generations through the performance of crown tenure obligations in North Northumberland since the Norman Conquest of 1066.  See the chapter LE CORONERS OF BAMBURGH, below.  The two parallel le Coroner families were contemporaries in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and William le Coroner senior of Bamburgh was about the same age as Robert le Coroner senior of Scarborough - both were probably born c. 1235-1240.

Scarborough Castle, said to then be the strongest royal fortification on the east coast, dominated the medieval borough and the townsfolk lived in its shadow.  Henry Coroner was made bailiff of Scarborough Castle along with Henry de Ruston in 14 May 1341 and again with Adam of Seamer in 1344.  A Corner family was still living near Scarborough 200 years later in the sixteenth century.  They were descendants of John Corner (c. 1560 - 1623) of Harwood Dale and his sons were situated in-and-around Hackness, Everley and Mowthorpe (Multhorpe): The Register of the Parish of Hackness, 1557 - 1783, pdf.  Harwood Dale, once in the parish of Hackness, became a separate parish in 1866.  John was the son of Johan Corner who died in 1588 and grandson of an earlier Johnis Corner who was probably born in the same general area in the late-fifteenth or early-sixteenth centuries.  Another John Corner (c. 1570 -1635) lived at nearby Brompton-by-Sawdon with his family.  Henry is a first name that was unique to the Hackness Corners.  Churchwarden Henry Corner (1585 -1654) was a son of John Corner of Harwood Dale.  Perhaps it was a family name inherited from fourteenth century Scarborough.

There were four main clusters of northeast Yorkshire Corner families when parish records began to be kept in the mid-1500s, i.e. 1. Lythe parish (near Whitby), 2. Guisborough (near Normanby and Eston), 3. Danby (Upper Eskdale) and 4. Hackness (near Scarborough).  Harwood Dale in Hackness parish is only 13 miles southeast from my ancestors' sixteenth century home in Glaisdale in the parish of Danby (as the crow flies across the sparsely-inhabited moors and farmland).  The Corney and Corner surname variation was present in roughly equal numbers in the first three locations but the Corner variation is found exclusively around Hackness.

Members of Parliament for Scarborough: 1295-1540

The constituency was created in 1295.

1305: Robert de Coroner, John Hammond (note the 'de' prefix - perhaps a mistake in the transcription)

1328: Robert le Coroner, John le Skyron

1332: Henry le Coroner, Henry de Roston (Henry Coroner was Bailiff of Scarborough Castle with Henry de Ruston, 14 May 1341 and again with Adam of Seamer in 1344)

1333: Henry le Coroner*, Henry de Roston

1334: Robert de Helperthorpe, Henry le Coroner

1337: Henry de Newcastle, Thomas le Coroner*

1340: Henry de Roston, Robert le Coroner

1358: Robert le Coroner, John Hammund

* Thomas le Coroner died in 1349.  His Will is listed in York Archbishops' Registers, link.  He is listed as Thoma Corner in a Lay Subsidy list of Scarborough burgesses c. 1330.

* Henry Coroner owned a ship named the George (20 tons) along with William Sage & Robert of Hutton at the port of Scarborough in 1339 and was bailiff of Scarborough Castle in 1341 and 1344, link.

LE CORONERS OF BAMBURGH

David I of Scotland considered Bamburgh Castle, ancient citadel of Northumbria, to be the inheritance of his son Henry but was denied access by the English crown.  It was captured by the Scots in 1141.  Henry, maternal grandson of its former incumbent Earl Waltheof, became Earl of Northumbria and his father David became the virtual ruler of the far north of England.  For a period of around two decades in the mid-1100s Northumberland was part of Scotland with the exception of royal castles and the Palatine of Durham.  Then in 1174 after the capture and imprisonment of William the Lion by Henry II Scotland's independence was completely surrendered with the signing of the Treaty of Falaise.  The treaty was annulled in 1189 when Richard I of England was in need of an immediate sum of money to finance his expedition with Phillip II of France and Frederick I Holy Roman Emperor on the Third Crusade, or the Kings' Crusade (1189-1192).   Bamburgh was on the front line.  Cross-border relations could be turbulent but both sides of the border had much in common and the thirteenth century was relatively peaceful and prosperous until the death of Alexander III of Scotland in 1286 and the arrival of Edward I of England's forces in 1296.

Lothian had once been part of the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria and by the 1060s the earls of Northumbria at Bamburgh probably ruled over a territory that stretched (with blurred edges) from around Dunbar in the north to the Tees in the south.  From at least the tenth century the county of Northumberland was divided for administrative purposes into two districts, the core of the southern district being between the river Tyne and the river Coquet.  The le Coroner family of Bamburgh were responsible for the northern district between the Coquet and the Tweed and held a large parcel of land at Bamburgh in return for that service.  Thirteenth century North East England coroners were hereditary serjeanty tenants.  There were no hereditary coroners outside the region, link.  Serjeanty was a form of land tenure granted in return for the performance of a specific service to the king.  In the four wards of the City of Durham (Chester Ward, Easington Ward, Darlington Ward, Stockton Ward) the coroners were appointees and employees of the bishop.  At some points the coronership of Chester ward was hereditary - it was in the hands of the Lumley family for generations until the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536), link.  The Lumleys were descended from Ligulf, sheriff of Bamburgh and the Northumbrians.  Sadberge in County Durham (part of Northumberland until 1189 with significant tenurial links to Yorkshire and the de Brus, Balliol and Seton families) also had a hereditary coroner tied to holding specific lands by serjeanty.  

Coroners of North East England were chosen from the tenants-in-chief and manorial lords.  Many were appointed for life and their son might go on to inherit the occupation, as with John Birtley of Birtley, coroner of Chester Ward from 1410 - 1419.  John was son and heir of Gilbert Eglin who was made coroner for life by Bishop Fordham in 1382.  The names of most of the Durham coroners are known and none look to have adopted the title 'le Coroner' as a surname.  John Waryn, coroner of Sadberge (active in his role in 1313 and died in 1377), did not pass down the office title as a surname to his son.  The coroners in Northumberland at that time were expected to vigorously prosecute cross-border crime on behalf of the king of England but did not adopt the office title as a surname, e.g. Robert de Eslington and William de Shaftoe, pdf.  Thomas Withewel was coroner of Newcastle in 1272 and Magister Roger de Hecham was appointed coroner for Northumberland in 1293, link.  The official coroner of Northumberland in 1305 was William de Tyndale.  In the late-thirteenth century the le Coroner family of Bamburgh's occupation was 'making summons and attachments at the command of the coroners' (Assize  Roll, Northumberland, 7 EDW. I), link.  Despite their surname it appears that they are working for the elected coroners at that later period.

The adoption of 'le Coroner' as a hereditary surname by the family that held land by ancient right at Bamburgh had happened at a much earlier time - probably long before the formal establishment of the office in 1194.  According to Cynthia Neville, Northumberland coroners began indicting suspected criminals themselves without the involvement the sheriff.  The Serjeants of the Peace in Medieval England and Wales, R. Stewart-Brown, 1936:

It seems very likely that the sheriff of the late twelfth century found it necessary to depute to one of his subordinates the duty of looking after the increasingly important pleas of the crown, in respect of which the sheriff's jurisdiction was passing to the justice in eyre; that this under-officer at first attended to summoning, arresting or securing the attendance of the necessary parties and the keeping of records against the coming of the justices; and that in course of time and after these duties had in some cases become feudalized and hereditary, it became evident that in the interests of the crown the office of coroner must be completely separated from that of sheriff and entrusted to persons under the direct control of the crown.  Link

William Avenel 'le Coroner' (William Coronator/William le Corner) was the husband of the heiress of the le Coroner family of Bamburgh, Betricie (Beatrice) 'le Coroner' de Bamburgh.  They lived at Bamburgh in the mid-thirteenth century.  According to The Early Medieval Shires of Yeavering, Breamish and Bamburgh, Colm O’Brien: 

In 1236 William son of Avenell held a carucate of land in Bamburgh in the right of his wife Beatrice by the exercise of a sergeanty in the bailey of Bamburghshire.

Bamburgh Castle, once the capital of the Anglian Kingdom of Bernicia, was built on an isolated North Sea headland like Scarborough Castle further down the coast.  Bamburgh and Scarborough were in the same North East England maritory.  From A History of Northumberland, Edward Bateson, 1893:

In 1256 William's mother, Beatrice de Bamburgh, was in the gift of the king and was to be married. Her land was worth a hundred shillings a year. Beatrice de Bamburgh, otherwise Beatrice le Coroner de Bamburgh, was the wife of William le Coroner and daughter of William, son of Odo. She was the sister of Simon. On May 7th, 1258, Ralf de Fissheburn made a fine with the king for having the marriage of Beatrice, who was the wife of William le Coruner. She seems afterwards to have married William son of Avenell, as, according to the Testa de Nevill, he held lands in right of his wife Beatrice, which William, son of William le Coruner, afterwards held. It is stated that in 1279 William le Coroner held an estate in Bamburgh, and that this estate consisted of fifty-two acres of land and was worth £10 a year.  Link

Some of that is incorrect.  As mentioned by Colm O'Brien above, the Liber Feodorum or The Book of Fees, commonly called Testa de Nevill (p. 598) records that William son of Avenell, the husband of Beatrice de Bamburgh, held their land at Bamburgh in 1236.  A History of Northumberland suggests that Beatrice married William son of Avenell after both William le Coroner and Ralph de Fishburn.  The confusion stems from William son of Avenell being the same person as the first William le Coroner who, through marriage into Beatrice's family, had acquired their ancient hereditary office title as his new surname along with the accompanying estate at Bamburgh 'in the right of his wife'.  The couple had a son named William le Coroner who also had a son of the same name.  William son of Avenell (le Coroner) died a couple of years before 1256 when Beatrice became 'in the gift of the king to be married'.  Ralph de Fishburn sought to marry Beatrice in 1258.  Beatrice's suitor was a prominent knight of the Bishopric of Durham and was at the Battle of Lewes in 1264.  He also witnessed and issued charters in the area and had a son named Simon de Fishburn by his previous marriage.  William Avenel held the family land at Bamburgh through his wife and their son, William le Coroner senior de Bamburgh, born c. 1236, later held it through inheritance from his mother after her death in the 1270s.

A History of Northumberland is in error elsewhere.  Regarding an endowment of land to the leper hospital of St Mary Magdalene at Bamburgh it states that in 1258 William son of Odo, father of Beatrice le Coroner, gave nine acres of the land which he held as coroner 'to the hospital of Bamburgh to celebrate mass for the soul of the lord king.'  In fact it was Beatrice who left the land to the hospital etc. in 1258 'to celebrate mass for the souls of the king and of William son of Odo father of the said Beatrice.'  Inquisitions Post Mortem, Henry III, File 21, entry 414, regarding  Beatrice la Coroner late the wife of William le Curuner, (Writ (missing). Inq. Thursday after SS. Tiburcius and Valerian, 42 Hen. III.):

She holds 155a. land (unspecified) of the king in chief by service of being coroner between the Tuede [Tweed] and Koket [Coquet], of which 9a. are given for ever to the hospital of Baunbug' [Bamburgh] to celebrate mass for the souls of the king and of William son of Odo father of the said Beatrice.

Her marriage pertains to the king, and is worth 100s. only, because she is much burdened with debts and the cost of her boys, and is beyond the age of child bearing, and great poverty threatens there.

Annexed are letters patent, dated 7 May, 42 Hen. III, granting the said marriage to Ralph de Fisseburne.  Link

Therefore:  1. Beatrice's land was not worth 100s, her marriage was worth 100s to the king for reasons outlined above.  2. Beatrice did not marry William son of Avenell afterwards, he was her first husband and father of William le Coroner senior and at least one other son.  Beatrice was beyond child bearing age when she married Ralph de Fishburn in 1258.  Although her husband had died just a few years previously, only the souls of Beatrice's father and King Henry III are mentioned in the donation of land to the leper hospital.

Henry III, the king at the time of the above donation, was born in 1207 and was about the same age as Beatrice.  The teenage king had visited Bamburgh in 1221 and made the drafty old North Sea castle more comfortable.  He ordered a great hall to be built, had glass windows installed and improved the heating system with fireplaces and proper chimneys.  William Fitz-Odo de Bamburgh probably introduced his daughter Beatrice to the king at the time.  In the same year King Alexander II of Scotland married Henry III's sister Joan at York. 

William Avenel could have been around 25-30 years older than Beatrice when they married.  It is apparent that Beatrice and William had more than one son because Beatrice mentions the 'cost of her boys'.  The price of educating and/or equipping sons for knighthood was high at the time.  William died c. 1254, leaving Beatrice a single parent with at least two teenage boys.  Their known firstborn son and heir William was probably named in memory of his maternal grandfather and his father.  A likely candidate for a baptismal name for William and Beatrice's second son would be his paternal grandfather's name, Robert.  Given her financial circumstances Beatrice's younger son, probably named Robert le Coroner, would be likely to move elsewhere as soon as he came of age, probably in the late-1250s.  Beatrice le Coroner de Bamburgh died in the early-1270s.

William le Coroner senior, son of William Avenel le Coroner and Beatrice le Coroner de Bamburgh, was Member of Parliament for Bamburgh with John de Greystang c.1262 (23rd parliament of King Edward I) and the 'model parliament' of 1295.  His sureties were Germanus de Brokisfeld, Ralph Sturdy, Robert Cryde and John Gleye.  A Northumbrian Inquisition dated the 29th year of the reign of Edward I (1272-1307), so around 1301, names 'WILLIELMUS LE COROUNER alias COROUNER SENIOR' and his son William le Coruner junior as his nearer heir, link.  It states that William junior was thirty one years of age 'at the feast of Pentecost last. [Inquisition taken on the Sunday after the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross]'.  Pentecost is a moveable feast and is the fiftieth day after Easter.  The Feast of the Cross was held on 14 September.  William le Coroner junior was born in 1270 and his father William le Coroner senior was probably born in about 1235-40.

A William le Coroner witnessed thirteenth century charters regarding gifts to the monks in the nearby Farne Islands.  In 1275 when his son William was five years old William le Coroner senior held the estate in Bamburgh by inheritance from Beatrice his mother 'by the service of making summons and attachments at the command of the coroners in the bailiwicks throughout the whole county beyond Coket'.  Beatrice had probably died shortly before.  The family seem to have continued in occupation of their land through long tradition but their situation was by then becoming precarious.  William le Coroner senior had to follow the family tradition of defending his land from those in authority who wished to take it from him.  He is before the justiciars in 1279 (Assize  Roll, Northumberland, 7 EDW. I.) where it is revealed that Henry III held his land for four years and that 'it is not known how that land came out of the hand of the Lord King', link.  The new king Edward I now wanted the land.  The dispute had evidently been simmering for a long time, the CURIA REGIS ROLL NO. 151 Michaelmas to Trinity, 37-38 Hen. III [1253-4] for the third week of Easter states:

William Avenel and Beatrice his wife were summoned to answer to the king by what warrant they hold 52 and a half acres of land with the appurtenances in Baunburg, which, without the assent of the king and of his predecessors, kings of England, are alienated from the demesne of the king's castle of the same town. William comes, but Beatrice comes not, and they were essoined [excused] for another day. Therefore let the said land be taken into the king's hand for default of Beatrice, and a day, etc. and let them be summoned three weeks from Michaelmas.  Link

It appears that the king took the land anyway but only held it for four years.  By the reign of Edward I it was not known how it had passed back to the le Coroners but Beatrice managed it.  Perhaps neither Beatrice nor William turned up to the adjourned 1253 inquiry for William Avenel had died soon after.  Beatrice was probably acquainted with King Henry III - they were both teenagers when he visited Bamburgh in 1221 - and perhaps their friendship helped Beatrice's case.  Towards the end of his reign in 1265 Henry III founded a Dominican Friary on the western edge of the borough of Bamburgh. 

In 1279 William senior successfully fought a false claim of ownership of twelve acres of his land in Bamburgh by Roger le Fulur (Assize Roll, Northumberland, 7 EDW. I.).  This may be the same Roger 'the son of Mabilia' who claimed twelve acres from his parents William Avenel and Beatrice 26 years earlier in 1253 and again in 1256 following the death of William.  From the book NORTHUMBERLAND PLEAS, FROM THE CURIA REGIS AND ASSIZE ROLLS 1198-1272, 1922:

Roger son of Mabel demanded v. William le Corner and Beatrice his wife twelve acres of land with the appurtenances in Bamburk, as his right, etc. William and Beatrice come and ask for a view thereof. Let them have it. A day is given them in the quindene of Easter, etc. and meanwhile, etc.  Michaelmas [37-38 Hen. III, 1253] Pleas at Westminster, Michaelmas term.  Link

Judging by the above entries it is clear that William Avenel is William le Coroner, husband of Beatrice.  In 1253 he is named as William le Corner and as William Avenel in the summons to the king.  William Avenel/le Corner died between 1253 and 1256.  In 1256 'Roger, the son of Mabilia, claims against Beatrice, who was the wife of William the Coronator'.  Beatrice had to deal with Roger's continuing claim alone and asked to contest it at Carlisle, link.

In the Assize Roll of 1292 a William le Coroner was accused of not performing his duties as coroner.  William agreed, explaining that he had tried to do his duty but the sheriff would not allow him to do it.  In August 1295 William le Coroner (probably William junior who would be in his mid-20s) wrote a Petition to King Edward I regarding 45 acres that the king had taken through a 'legal technicality and subsequently found to belong rightfully to William'.  

Edward spent much of his reign reforming royal administration and common law. Through an extensive legal inquiry, he investigated the tenure of various feudal liberties, while the law was reformed through a series of statutes regulating criminal and property law.  Link

The land was restored to William 'to hold at the king's pleasure' but his accompanying request to the Exchequer for £4 10s looks to have been turned down.  The crown's requisition of the le Coroner land in the vicinity Bamburgh Castle occurred on 20 January 1293 soon after the inauguration of John Balliol as king of Scotland at Scone on St Andrew's Day, 30 November 1292.  The politics of the time probably meant that for security reasons the king needed full control of the whole demesne surrounding the castle.  Three years later Edward I and the English army moved through the region to sack Berwick on their way to victory in the First War of Scottish Independence in 1296.  More can be read in Calendar of the Close Rolls taken on Nov 5, 1298 at Durham, link.  The king eventually restored William's land 'on condition that he answer the king when he shall wish to speak against him in this matter'.  King Edward I, known as 'Longshanks' due to his height and later dubbed 'Hammer of the Scots', was one of the more ferocious kings of England.  From the accommodation shown it might be assumed that William le Coroner was on reasonable terms with the crown following the expedition to Scotland, although William was perhaps not looking forward to their chat.

The contested family land appears to have been in-and-around Bamburgh village in the demesne (a piece of land attached to a manor and retained by the owner for their own use) of the castle itself.  On the event of her wedding to Mathew of St Oswald Alice, daughter of William le Coroner senior and Margaret, was given 'three acres in Kyrkflat, of which two acres lay between the land of the prior of St. Oswald on the north and the land of Simon de Aula on the south. The third acre lay near the gardens of the Spittlegate'.  Spittlegate was the road from the castle that led to St Mary Magdalene's leper hospital on the outskirts of Bamburgh village, link. 

By 1279 the le Coroner de Bamburgh family's ancestors had potentially possessed that land through an ancient tradition of hereditary tenure obligation to the crown for 200 years, possibly since the time of Waltheof Earl of Northumbria who died in 1076.  However it appears that physical written evidence of this right may have been ambiguous or missing.  The Norman People (1874, link) mentions Beatrice's father William Fitz-Odo: 'In 1201 William Fitz-Odo held Bambrough by tenure from the Conquest (Hardy, Obl. et fin. 114).'  The county of Northumberland, with traditions tracing back to the 'golden age' of the Kingdom of Northumbria in the seventh century, initially gained more leeway than other areas of England after the Norman Conquest.  Northumbrians were robust and strong-willed in the face of destruction by Danes in the ninth and tenth centuries.  They continued to show tenacity - maintaining their borders without external aid through the eleventh century.  Members of some of the established native families held on to their former status for a time and even some Normans became independently-minded when raised in Northumbrian society, as in the case of Robert de Mowbray, see below.  By the twelfth century the hereditary rights of Queen Maud, grand-niece of William the Conqueror, daughter of Earl Waltheof and wife of David I, were probably a factor in the accommodation that Northumberland was given.  By contrast, the vast majority of the Anglo-Scandinavian aristocracy in Yorkshire had been dispossessed and had lost their social standing following rebellions against Norman rule and the subsequent retaliatory destruction associated with the Harrying of the North in 1069-70.

Bamburgh was closely identified with the shrieval operation and shrieval personnel. Certain property in the borough, so the survey of 1212 found, was held by the performance of services connected to the management of the county and the upkeep of the castle community; one William fitz Odo, for instance, held his land by the collection of the king’s debts and the carrying of the king’s writ between the Tweed and the Coquet. A jury empanelled coram rege in 1237 remembered that John le uicomte had been ‘sheriff of Northumberland and the king’s constable of Bamburgh’. John’s family entertained hereditary claims to the shrieval office, reflected in their use of the surname le uicomte.  Link 

An early sheriff of Northumberland based at Bamburgh Castle was Odard/Udard (Odardus uicecomes, died before 1133), son of the Anglo-Scandinavian noble Liulf/Ligulf de Bamburgh (also sheriff of Northumberland), possibly the son of Eadulf Rus/Eadwulf.  Ligulf had married Ealdgyth the daughter of Ealdred Earl of Bernicia.  Ealdgyth's sister Aelfflaed was the mother of the executed Earl of Northumbria, Waltheof.  The family were descended from the house of Bamburgh with links stretching back to the Anglian kingdom of Bernicia - therefore the Uicecomes family were related to Queen Maud of Scotland, David I's wife.  The Lumley family descend from Ligulf the sheriff - his grandson William is said to have adopted the Lumley name when made a baron of Durham by Bishop Pudsey.  

The coronership of Chester ward in Durham was hereditary and held by the Lumley family.  Odard, sheriff of Bamburgh and the Northumbrians, was a contemporary of Henry I's leading judicial magnates in the North, mentioned above (i.e. Nigel d'Aubigny, Eustace Fitz John, Walter Espec and Robert de Brus) and witnesses charters with them.  Odard had four sons named William, John, Adam, Ernald and a daughter named Gunnilda.  An alternative name for Odard's son William, died c. 1140, is William Fitz-Odard of Bamburgh (Willelmo filio Udardi de Baenburg) who inherited his father's lands in 1133 (PoMS entry: link).  There are obvious similarities with the names of Beatrice de Bamburgh's father and grandfather, i.e. William and Odo, but the chronology does not fit - Beatrice's grandfather Odo appears to have lived at least one generation after Odard Uicecomes.  Odard's descendants inherited the surname le Viscount/Viscomte/Uicecomes, not le Coroner.

The term "viscount" (vice-comes) was originally a judicial honorific, long used in Anglo-Norman England to refer to a county sheriff. It was only turned into a noble title, with hereditary dignity, in England by Henry VI in 1440, following the similar transformation of that title in France.  Link  

Henry I granted a confirmation of William's right to his family's lands after Odard's is death in about 1132.  King Stephen confirmed the grant made by Henry I, pdf:

He [Odard] was Sheriff of Northumberland under Henry I and one of the witnesses to the foundation charter of Selkirk Abbey made by David I, king of Scotland (Bateson, pp.10-14). Odard was the first of the family to use the surname Vicecomes (sheriff) [later spelled as Viscount] as the office of Sheriff of Northumberland became hereditary in his family during this time.  (pdf)

Beatrice le Coroner of Bamburgh's grandfather Odo was probably born c. 1140 during the lifetime of the le Viscount sons of Odard sheriff of Bamburgh and of the Northumbrians.  The le Viscounts held one carucate at Bamburgh by performing the hereditary duties of sheriff.  Beatrice's family also held a carucate at Bamburgh through the performance the hereditary duties of coroner for the crown.   As mentioned by Cynthia Neville in The Bishop’s Ministers: The Office of Coroner in Late Medieval Durham, coroners in North East England were partners of the sheriffs and had equal powers.  Beatrice's father, who was out of England at the time of his father Odo's death, held 'one carucate of land with appurtenances in Baenburg [Bamburgh], of which his father and other ancestors were seized since the conquest of England'.  The two old Northumbrian families would have at least known each other and may well have been related by descent from the native Bamburgh families.  Liulf, Odard le Uicecomes's father, is one of the earliest recorded men to bear the hereditary crown office title of county sheriff.  The le Coroner surname appears equally as old in Northumbria, long-predating the establishment of elected coroners.  The le Viscomtes continued to inherit the surname many years after their initial shrievalty ended, as was the case with the le Coroner family of Bamburgh and Scarborough.

Bamburgh Castle, link

William Fitz Odo offers 10 marks to have seisin of one carrucate of land with appurtenances in Bamborough, whereof his father and his other ancestors were seised at the conquest of England and which was seized into the King's hand after the death of the same Odo, because he was then in Scotland.  Rotuli de oblatis, p. 114, link

Odo of Bamburgh probably died in about 1198 during the reign of King Richard while his son William, Beatrice's father, was in Scotland.  On his return after 1200 William Fitz-Odo had to pay five marks to King John (reigned from 1199 until his death in 1216).  However, it appears that he was discharged and the money and the family's ancestral land was returned.  Beatrice was born at Bamburgh at around this time.  In this Pipe Roll William's father is described as Odo the Welchman - perhaps there was some connection with the seafaring Cambro-Norman de Carew family who potentially gave their name to nearby Seaton Carew - a Peter Carou held a knight's fee in Seton and Oviton in 1189, link.  The land later went to the the Lumley family, mentioned above as being descendants of Ligulf sheriff of Bamburgh, who also held land at Stranton.  

King William I (The Lion) of Scotland offered to buy Northumbria in 1194 but for security reasons King Richard 'The Lionheart' of England (reigned 1189-1199) could not let the Scottish king have control of the castles there and William withdrew the offer.  The national allegiances of interrelated families living in the Borders could be fluid.  Anglo-Scottish relations were tense in the early-thirteenth century with disputes between the ageing William I of Scotland and King John of England over the right to rule Northumbria.  In 1198 the services of the serjeanty at Bamburgh are described in the Book of Fees as breviandi et faciendi distracciones, or 'shortening and creating problems'.

Philip of Oldcoates/de Ulkotes was sent in by King John and became Sheriff of Northumberland between 1212 and 1220.  He was also in charge of the isle of Guernsey (Castle Cornet link) where he was supplied with provisions by Geoffrey fitzPeter, the justiciar.  It is said that during his time as sheriff he interfered with the duties of the coroner in the southern district of Northumberland and acted as coroner himself, link.  That southern district of Northumberland was said to be under the hereditary serjeanty of the Byker family, link.  King John made Philip administrator of the vacant bishopric of Durham and he was given custody of Bamburgh Castle and Newcastle Castle.

William Fitz-Odo's daughter Beatrice de Bamburgh was heir to her brother Simon and inherited the family estate after his death.  The hereditary claim to their land passed by marriage to William Avenel (Willelmus filius Auenelli), Beatrice's husband, by 1236.

100 years earlier a man named Avenell had been given the nearby Bamburgh barony of Bradford by Henry I (reigned 1100-1135), link.  This was soon after Bamburgh Castle had been besieged by King William II to extract the Earl of Northumbria Robert de Mowbray who had joined with Robert Curthose against the king in 1095.  The king took over the estates of the earldom and some were given to the barons who had helped to overthrow Mowbray.  Several were given to Norman families (e.g. de Vesci, Tison and de Crawcestre) who were already settled in Cleveland and Yorkshire, link.  

Avenell is a surname and at that time in the early Feudal Ages the patronymic of the great Norman families was not used as a baptismal name.  The manner in which William son of Avenell and Avenel de Bradford's names are recorded, i.e. the lack of a Christian name with an apparent assumption that the use of the family name in lieu of the first name would be understood in the locality, probably refers to the then-head of the family.  The early-twelfth century Avenell in the company of Henry I at Northumberland might be a near relation of Robert Avenel born c. 1115, probably his father William Avenel.  The Avenels are said to have come from the Norman barony of Des Biarz (or the Biards/Biars) near Mortain in Manche department after the Norman Conquest.

Willelmus filius Auenelli tenet de jure Betricie vxoris sue in capite de domino Rege vnam carucatam terre in villa de Bamburg' per seriantariam in balliua de Bamburgsir', et ent pro seruicio suo intendens negociis domini Begie sicat seruiens comitatus, et debet receipere namia in north de Koket pro debito domini Regis in parco suo.  Link

THE AVENELS

The father and head of the Avenels in mid-twelfth century northern Britain was Robert Avenel (c. 1115-1185) lord of the former Northumbrian province of Eskdale in Dumfriesshire, located in the Scottish Borders just to the east of the de Bruses at Annandale.  Robert was given Upper and Lower Eskdale by David I in reward of military services.  He became a councillor of Malcolm IV and a courtier of William I 'the Lion'.  His wives were Eve and Sybil.  He, or his father William Avenel, was granted the estates and the defensive site of Abercorn Castle on the south coast of the wide Firth of Forth in Lothian by David I.  There may have been a strategic fleet anchorage there.  The site is near Queensferry where the road and rail bridges cross the Firth of Forth.  In the seventh century land around the still-surviving kirk opposite the castle site was the location of Bishop Trumwine's Anglian monastery.  Northumbrian monk The Venerable Bede called the monastery Aebbercurnig.  In Place-Names of Scotland, 1892, James B. Johnston writes:

ABERCORN (S. Queensferry). Bede, 'Monasteriurn Aebbercurnig;' a. 1130, Sim. Durham, Eoriercorn. The burn, formerly called the Cornac, is now the Cornar, a name of doubtful meaning.  (pdf)

As with other cases of Cornay and Cornet in northern France, Belgium and Guernsey discussed on this page, the corn name element's etymology probably derives from Latin or old Celtic and relates to the topographically distinctive 'hill by the river mouth' on which the Avenel's castle once stood.  The site of the Northumbrian monastery is separated from the castle by the rocky gorge of the Cornie Burn.  Near the kirk and monastery site there are Norse hogback grave markers and fragments of seventh century Northumbrian crosses.  Construction of the Roman Antonine Wall began nearby in 142 AD and William Camden in his 1586 Britain, or, a Chorographicall Description of the most flourishing Kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland (Philemon Holland's English translation of 1610, based on Camden's final edition of 1607) writes:

The author of Rota Temporum calleth it the wall of Aber-corneth , that is, of the mouth of the river Corneth , where in Bedes time, there was a famous monasterie standing, as hee hath recorded, upon English ground, but neere unto that frith or arme of the sea which in those daies served the Lands of the English and the Picts.

The Roman wall began at Carriden, a few miles west of Abercorn.  After the defeat of Northumbrian King Ecgfrith at the Battle of Nechtansmere in 685 Bishop Trumwine of Abercorn retired to Whitby Abbey where he was buried.  The castle was completely destroyed by James II in the fifteenth century after its then-owners, the Douglases, rebelled.  The overgrown site is now known as The Wilderness.  A grassy mound contains the remains of the castle's shattered stonework.

For two decades of Robert Avenel's lifetime Northumberland was part of the Kingdom of Scotland and by 1139 the border with England was effectively the River Tees.  Robert Avenel was a leading patron of Melrose Abbey, founded in 1136 by King David I.  While Norhamshire, where Bamburgh Castle is located, wasn't part of Scotland most of Northumberland belonged the Kingdom of Scotland in the middle decades of the twelfth century when rule from England was weak due to the conflict between Stephen and Matilda - a time of civil war in Normandy and England known as The Anarchy.  As mentioned, David's wife Maud was the daughter of Waltheof Earl of Northumbria and Judith de Lens and their children had an ancestral right to Northumberland.  David's sister Edith was married to Henry I of England.

His monasteries were in areas of Scotland that had once been part of the Kingdom of Northumbria and it was as if he was attempting to revive the golden monastic age of Northumbria within his Scottish realm. Ailred, the Abbot of Rievaulx in Yorkshire who was an associate of David writes an epitaph to him which reads: “O desolate Scotia who shall console thee now? He is no more who made an untilled and barren land a land that is pleasant and plenteous.”  Link

Melrose Abbey became the mother church of the Cistercian order in Scotland.  Its first community came from Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire, founded by Walter Espec in 1132.  Sir Walter Scott's Waverley historical novel series features the Avenel family - they appear in The Monastery and The Abbot.  At the end of his life Robert Avenel joined the monastery at Melrose where he lived as a monk and was buried in the Chapter House in 1185.  Robert owned lands in the coastal parish of Innerwick between Dunbar and the Berwickshire border and witnessed many charters of David I and his sons, Malcolm IV and William I.  Robert was Justiciar of Lothian with Robert de Quincy, Richard Comyn and Geoffrey de Melville from 1170 - 1180.  The Avenels and others with connections in the Honour of Huntingdon moved to Scotland with David I.  Robert III de Brus married Isabel of Scotland (Isabella Mac William) in 1183.  Isabel was the illegitimate daughter of William I 'The Lion' of Scotland (c. 1142 – 1214) and Robert Avenel's daughter (Isabel or Avice?), King William's mistress.  Robert III de Brus died before 1191 and the couple had no children.  Isabel would go on to marry Robert 'Farfan' de Ros (d. 1226), lord of Helmsley Castle in North Yorkshire.  They had four sons, William, Robert, Alexander and Peter de Ros.  Robert 'Farfan' de Ros was a member of the Order of Knights Templar and was buried in Temple Church in London.

From: Sir Walter Scott, The Monastery: A Romance by the Author of 'Waverley'. London: Hurst, Robinson & Co., 1821.  The plate depicts the White Lady, guardian spirit of the Avenel family, appearing to Halbert Glendinning, hero of The Monastery (ch. 20), link

Alexander II of Scotland married Henry III of England's sister Joan at York in 1221.  The border between England and Scotland would become fixed in its present position by the agreement of Henry and Alexander in 1237, one year after William son of Avenell is mentioned at Bamburgh in the Testa de Nevill.  Disputes between the two countries rumbled on, however.  With regards to the identity of William who had married Beatrice de Bamburgh by 1236, it appears that there were a few contemporary William Avenels.  William was a common first name in the family.  From The Scottish Avenels, R.C. Reid, 1960: 'There are a number of other Scottish Avenels who must surely be descended from the original Robert though the evidence is lacking'.

In that era a William Avenel was a knight in the service of Robert of London (c. 1170-1225), eldest (illegitimate) son of King William I 'The Lion' of Scotland and an unknown mother.  Robert possibly married the heiress of the de Lundins, a Norman family that had been close to the Scottish royal family, and adopted their surname.  Other accounts (PoMS) suggest that his mother was of the de Londres family and that Robert did not marry.  Robert of London was very close to his father King William I, witnessing fifty six charters with him after 1185.  He drew some members of his household from his estates in southwest Scotland that included the Malleverers from the de Brus lands in Annandale-via-Yorkshire.  William I of Scotland died of natural causes at Stirling in 1214 and Robert's brother Alexander II took the throne.  Robert of London had received a large amount of money (£111 and 14s every year) from King John of England in the mid-1210s and looks to have worked for the English crown - possibly into the reign of Henry III (1216-1272).  Robert sent a letter, one of the first instances of a letter being signed with a personal name, to Hubert de Burgh, justiciar of England, asking why his money had stopped - possibly following the death of King John in October 1216.  That sum of money was the equivalent value of a typical barony in England.  Robert suffered serious ill health in the mid- to late-1210s that confined him to Scotland (mentioned in the letter) and he died towards the end of 1225.  William Avenel was around the same age as his lord.

In The Haskins Society Journal 19: 2007. Studies in Medieval History, edited by Stephen Morillo and William North, Alice Taylor suggests that Robert of London's household knight William Avenel (miles Roberti de Londoniis) was probably the third son, or at least a younger son, of Robert Avenel Lord of Eskdale, link.  The reason given is that William Avenel appears on a surviving record from the late-1180s and he attested a deed of Roxburghshire lord Richard of Lincoln in second place (Chrs. Melrose, no. 136), immediately behind Gervase Avenel son of Robert - it is the only time they appear together.

William was probably born in-or-around the 1170s and could indeed be the 'William son of Avenell' named in the 1236 Testa de Nevill entry regarding land at Bamburgh that he held 'in the right of his wife Beatrice' - the identification of his descent from Robert Avenel, the well-known head of that prominent family, would be clearly understood at the time.  Robert Avenel might have been around fifty years old at the time of William's birth.  William son of Robert Avenel would therefore be the younger brother of Robert Avenel's daughter, who was King William I of Scotland's mistress.  William I's illegitimate daughter from that union, Isabel of Scotland, would go on to marry Robert III de Brus in 1183 and later Robert de Ros lord of Helmsley in North Yorkshire.  Isabel of Scotland was the sister of Robert of London as well as being half sister of King Alexander II of Scotland whose mother was Queen Ermengarde de Beaumont. 

William Avenel, uncle of Isabel of Scotland and household knight in both Robert of London and his brother Alexander II's royal households, was almost 'one of the family'.  He had joined King Alexander II's court after the death of Robert of London by 1227- as marischal [marshal] of the king's household (CDS, i.no. 970).  The major royal offices in Scotland were Steward, Chamberlain, Constable, Marischal and Lord Chancellor.  The role of early Scottish marischals, a name derived from the French: Marechal, is not well-recorded but was probably military in nature with some diplomatic duties.  The later Earl Marischal's duties included protecting the king when attending parliament and guarding the royal regalia.  The office was hereditary and was usually occupied by the Keith family.  Hervey (son of Philip the marischal of Keith, PoMS), Alexander's previous marischal, was a former steward in Queen Ermengarde's household. 

The Marischal seems to have initially been the king’s farrier, before the job evolved into something like a commander of cavalry, a master of ceremonies, and, before the roles were fully formalised, they shared some responsibility with the Constable and the Lord Lyon in matters of chivalric precedence. But there is no written description of the role, aside from mentions of the responsibility for maintaining order within whichever building parliament was being held.  Link

Despite being Alexander II's marischal William Avenel is absent from witness lists from 1227-1249, link.  It's possible that he was serving elsewhere - the Sixth Crusade (1228-1229) departed for Acre in 1227.  However, it seems that, like his previous lord Robert of London in whose household he served, William had connections south of the Border in the English court of Henry III.  On 28 April 1227 King Henry III:

having  granted to William Avenel, marshal of the household of A[lexander] K. of Scotland, freedom from serving on assizes and juries, directs the Sheriff of Leicester not to place him thereon without special orders. Westminster. [Patent, 11 Hen. Ill, p. 1, to. 7.], link.

Nov. 23. 986. Hugh de Neville is commanded to give William Avenel, the servant of the K. of Scots, four oaks in Sherwood forest to lodge himself, by the K.’s gift. Newark. [Close, 12 Hen. III. m. 14.], link.

William's previous lord, Robert of London, had a well-paid position in England towards the end of the reign of King John (died 1216) and his close retinue would have probably been with him at the time.  Given these earlier connections and his role as marischal for new Scottish king Alexander II, William Avenel would be well-placed to journey between the two kingdoms on diplomatic missions - he was an experienced knight already familiar with the English court.   As mentioned above, it is possible that Henry III and Beatrice le Coroner became acquainted as teenagers when he visited Bamburgh in 1221.  Henry III's sister Joan was married at York to William Avenel's new lord Alexander II in the same year.  Maybe the king's gift of four English oaks in 1227/28 was intended for the building of William's lodgings while in England or perhaps King Henry gave the timber to William and his bride-to-be, Beatrice, as a wedding present to be used in the construction of a new house at Bamburgh.

It is likely that when William Avenel married Beatrice in the early-mid-1230s he was advancing in years and may have been injured or compromised in some way during service for the king of Scotland.   A move to Northumberland to marry Beatrice de Bamburgh, just south of the new border, would be an explanation for his absence from Scottish royal records.  Bamburgh was some distance from the royal courts of both countries.  As with Robert of London, William appears to have married the last surviving female member of another family and adopted their name.  At that time relations between the two young nations could be difficult for families living on either side of the contested border.  William's marriage to the le Coroner heiress of Bamburgh in his later years may have necessitated, or have been the result of,  a change in national allegiance - resulting in the adoption of a new role in Northumberland.  

In 1241 Henry III (1207-1272) at the instance of Philip de Albini (d'Aubigny/Mowbray) again granted to a William Avenel 'freedom for his life from assizes, juries, or recognizances'.  Westminster. [Patent,  19  Hen.  III.  m.  5.] link.  

Members of the English branches of the Avenel family had land in Nottinghamshire and elsewhere in the Midlands, link.  The Avenels had seats in other areas of England - a William Avenel at that time had links with Gamlingay in western Cambridgeshire.  Other early Avenel branches were at Bicknor on the boundary with Herefordshire and Monmouthshire, Upcott Avenel in Devonshire, Bickhurst, Crux Easton, Haddon in Derbyshire and Sandhurst.

An interesting piece of text from The Scottish Avenels, R.C. Reid, 1960, relating to Gervase and Glai, grandsons of Robert, link:

The progenitor of the family of Gley was this Glai nephew [nepos] of Robert Avenel. In a charter prior to 1199 of some lands in the Molle area granted by William son of John son of Horm to Melrose, Gervase Avenel and Glaius miles cornarius ejusrlem are amongst the witnesses (Reg. de Melros, i., 122).

The description Miles cornarius is similar to the name of Miles Cornet (rendered in charters as Corneth or Corneht), prior of St Germains in East Lothian mentioned below and in more detail here.  The PoMS (People of Medieval Scotland, 1093-1371) website translates Glaius miles cornarius ejusrlem as 'Glay, knight, horn-blower of Gervase Avenel', link.  Glay is mentioned in a charter of Melrose relating to a land transaction twenty six miles southwest of Bamburgh (at Hownam) dating between 1180 and 1196.  The occupation of horn-blower is one of the several potential sources for the Corner surname.  In this case it probably indicates that Glay's role was knight in charge of security of the Avenel lord's estate and household - traditionally the horn-blower would keep watch and coordinate defence.  Perhaps Glay performed the duties of steward in the Avenel household where a horn was traditionally blown to summon the family to dinner, as depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry.  Nepos or nepote can have a variety of relationship meanings including grandson and nephew.  Glay was probably Robert Avenel's grandson.  Charters of the Abbey of Coupar Angus, Scottish History Society, D. E. Easson, 1947, lists:

Rogero filio glay ; Roger son of Glay, witnesses charters of Alexander II from 9 Oct., 1232 (Bamff Charters, 1) to 1 June, 1235 (Oliphants, 4). He also attests a number of charters granted by Walter, son of Alan, the Steward (RPSA., p. 258 ; Passelet, pp. 19, 21, 22, 24, 66, 87, 401 ; Melros, 46, 62, 72, 81 ; Balmorinach, 21). 

Glai, ‘nepos ’ of Sir William Avenel, appears (Melros, 39, 40, 41) ; while William, son of Glay, is mentioned (ibid., 204 ; Lennox, ii. 7 (c. 1240), 8 (c. 1248)). Roger, son of Glay, grants land in Innerwick to Melrose (Melros, 60).  (pdf)

Charters recorded on the PoMS website indicate that a man named Glay Avenel had a son named William.  Glay would have been the nephew of William son of Robert Avenel who served in Robert of London and Alexander II's households.  William son of Glai was not the 'son of Avenell' in the sense of being a son of the head of the household.  William son of Glay Avenel was still witnessing charters in the late thirteenth century, long after William son of Avenell of Bamburgh had died in the mid-1250s.  William son of Glay was the great-grandson of Robert, Lord of Eskdale.  In an Avenel charter (dated between 1214 and 1249) 'William son of Glay' gave land to Melrose Abbey, link.  Roger son of Glai owed service to the Stewarts for lands in Innerwick, thirty seven miles northwest of Bamburgh.  According to George Black's Surnames of Scotland the line of Glay ended in an heiress in 1408.  The senior line of Avenels in Scotland finished in an heiress in 1243 when Roger Avenel's lands passed to his son-in-law Henry de Graham of Dalkeith.  The Grahams then took over control of Abercorn Castle.

Bradford was a small barony near Bamburgh and is now a hamlet.  An Avenell (Avenell de Bradford) was given the manor by King Henry I in the early 1100s.  The Liber Feodorum records William le Coroner as 'son of Avenell' in 1236, not 'de Bradford', so it's unlikely that William came from that family.  By that time a gap of 100 years had passed since Avenell was given the barony by Henry I.  In the 1230s a contemporary of William son of Avenell le Coroner of Bamburgh named Alexander de Bradford held the barony of Bradford.  Alexander was probably descended from the early-twelfth century Avenell head of the family.  None of the previous de Bradfords look to have been named William, their traditional male baptismal names were Alexander, Robert, John and Thomas.  The Avenell who was initially given Bradford might have been William Avenel born c. 1070 - Robert Avenel's father.  Alexander de Bradford died in about 1244 around ten years before William Avenel le Coroner.  The male line ended in 1398 with the death before full age of John de Bradford, a ward of Richard II.  

The most likely candidate for 'William son of Avenell' who had married Beatrice de Bamburgh before 1236 is William Avenel, household knight of the Scottish royal family and the younger son of Robert Avenel Lord of Eskdale.

Avenel coat of arms

Local historian and editor of Country Life, Beryl Platts, in her Scottish Hazard Volume Two: The Flemish Heritage, 1990, says that the Avenel family's earliest origins were in Hainaut via William de Warlaing's Mortain lands in Cotentin peninsular. 

In Domesday England they were treated with little respect by William the Conqueror, being given no more than a sub-tenancy under Roger de Montgomery; but in Scotland, like Robert de Brus, they found themselves welcomed with honours and lands by David I and his wife, and the great lordship of Eskdale bestowed on Robert Avenel marched with that of Annandale.

She also suggests that the Avenel name derived from Avesnes (Avesnois region) in Hainaut and that they had a presence further west in Cotentin from at least 1030 where they were hereditary seneschals, or stewards, of the Warlaing counts of Mortain: 'The lords of Avesnes were nobles of Hainaut, eminent at all times but powerful enough in later years to sit on Hainaut's throne.'  According to online pedigrees the Avesnes family appear to descend from the d'Oisy family of Oizy, Namur, Belgium.  The name Avenel is said to perhaps derive from the Old French for 'a place with a pasture of oats'.  Surnames of the United Kingdom (1912) by Henry Harrison: 

The French Avenel, from the place-name Avenelle (Orne) or Aves-nelles (Nord) = the Oat-Fields. [Cp. Low Latin avenariæ, from Latin avena, oats] Victe. et Victesse G. d'Avenel. - Paris Directory.

But the name also appears to be a per­sonal one (with the diminutive suff. - el), poss. of Celtic origin: there is, however, much ob­scurity.

Perhaps another source for the surname's origin lies with the word aven, a term possibly related to 'haven', meaning harbour or river mouth.  As mentioned, the word aber means 'river mouth' in Gaelic, as in the place name Abercorn.  The name element is present in the Welsh and English names for the port of Milford Haven in Wales.  The town is called Aberdaugleddau in Welsh and means 'mouth of the two Rivers Cleddau'.   Hafn or Havn is West Norse for 'harbour' and was the original name of Copenhagen in Denmark.  The Normandy port of Le Harvre derives from the same etymology and translates in English as 'the harbour'.

A Hainaut Norman origin would give the Avenels the same background as the other Cleveland and Lothian families already mentioned - they would be kinsmen associated with a move north with David and Maud's entourage of the Huntingdon/Northamptonshire-via-Cotentin Flemings.  According to Platts, 'Most of their lands lay in the old Mortain pagus of Bauptois.'  It was 'a choice landholding, usually either kept within the family of the Duke (or the King in some cases), or more often it was granted to a Lord in return for royal service and favor.', link.  Several genealogists track the earliest paternal Avenel ancestor via the Norman barons de Biarz/Les Biards (from the Lordship of Biarz) and de Say (either the sea or in Sai commune in the Orne department in north-western France).  The fortress of Biards was at a strategic point in a chain of citadels that defended Normandy against Brittany.

Les Biards was once a stronghold of prime importance thanks to its fortified castle, one of the oldest and most formidable in the region, located in the natural site of the Sélune valley, completely submerged in 1932 when the dams were built.  Link

However, in most other accounts the Avenel progenitor is not traced to Hainaut but Denmark/Dacia in the person of 'Harold the Dane', said to be a 'companion and kinsman of Rollo'.  Dudo of St Quentin (born c. 965) refers to Richard I Duke of Normandy (932-996) as being a close relation of  a 'King of Dacia' named Haigrold [Dudo iv, 84-88 (pp. 114-20 passim)].  It has been suggested that Harold the Dane might be Harald Sigtryggsson who is recorded as dying in 940 in the Irish Annals of the Four Masters:

Aralt ua Ímar, i.e. the son of Sitric, lord of the foreigners of Luimneach (Limerick) , was killed in Connacht by the Caenraighi of Aidhne.

Harald Sigtryggsson may be synonymous with Harald of Bayeux, although according to the Annals the former died before Harold of Bayeux who was still active in 954 when Hugh the Great campaigned against him in Cotentin.

In 944  King Edmund of England had expelled Norse leaders from York and Northumbria and several of them, possibly including Harald, ended up with their crews off northern France.  In 945 King Louis IV of the West Franks was captured by Harald of Bayeux.  Contemporary chronicler Flodoard of Rheims called him Hagroldus Nordmannus, qui Baiocis præerat, 'Harold the Norseman who used to lead the people of Bayeux’ (link).  After 954 Harold and his family may have moved north to the Isle of Man region of the Irish Sea to become founders of the Meic Arailt clan represented initially by Harold's sons Gofraid mac Arailt and Maccus mac Arailt.  Maccus/Magnus could be a contraction of mac Arailt (a mistake in later records) and be the same person as Gofraid.  Gofraid would become the first Norse King of the Isles to be recorded in Irish sources and the Meic Arailt dynasty (Haraldssons) would go on to compete with their relations, the descendants of Olaf Cuaran (Olafssons) of Dublin, for control of the kingdom that included the islands of the Hebrides and Irish Sea.  Historian Ben Hudson in Viking Pirates and Christian Princes, 2005, suggests that Gofraid was the son of Harold of Bayeux, although others have doubts (Clare Downham and Alex Woolf).

Some sources suggest a connection with Harald 'Bluetooth' Gormsson (911-985), son of Gorm the Old who is said to have plundered in Limerick with his brother Cnut in 922, but there is no evidence that Haraldr went to Normandy.  In Normandy the port of Harfleur's name could mean 'Harald's estuary', the suffix 'fleur' derives from Flöthe in Old Norse meaning an 'estuary, river mouth'.  The port is forty miles east of Bayeaux where Harold of Bayeux was in charge in the days of Richard I, Duke of Normandy.  Whatever the case, it seems that Harald/Haigrold/Aigrold was probably a sea king who raided in Francia.  Historians also cite thirteenth century Dominican friar Vincent de Beauvais.

According to Vincent de Beauvais, an historian of the thirteenth century, one Harold Avenel was the first of the family who settled in Normandy, whither he had accompanied Rolf, of whom he was a kinsman as well as of the Paynels, the Taissons, the Giffards, and others of Scandinavian origin, and his statement, though not always to be relied upon, is in this instance fairly supported by documentary evidence.  The Conqueror and his Companions, J.R. Planche, 1874: (pdf)

Although the Avenels do not appear to have gained much land in England immediately after the Conquest they later acquired significant territories in Derbyshire.  Coincidentally, the arms of the Haddon Avenels in Derbyshire were six annulets (rings) in a downward-pointing triangle and, similar to those of Eudes de Cornay in Ardennes (nine annulets in three rows of three) described below, might indicate a badge of office or rank.  Platts suggests they are comital rings (finger rings) and were state badges of authority worn by the counts of Flanders at around the time of the murder of Charles the Good.  The arms of Avenel Des Biards, Princes of Biards in Normandy, were three silver eagles, link.

Cleveland/North Yorkshire families who also have origins in Manche department, Cotentin, Normandy include the Mowbrays/Montbrays based at Coutances, the capital of Manche.  The de Brus Lords of the former Mortain lands of Cleveland and of Annandale in Scotland came from the Cotetin Peninsular.  The manor of Aubigny was also in Manche department and Roger d'Aubigny/de Mowbray and his mother Gundred de Gournay lived at Thirsk Castle, North Yorkshire.  Thirsk Castle was only about twelve miles west of Helmsley Castle where Isabel de Ros of Scotland (her mother was an Avenel) lived with Robert 'Farfan' de Ros.  Helmsley is twenty two miles south of the de Brus base at Skelton Castle.

William de Warlaing Count of Mortain, who according to Platts was also originally of Hainaut origin, was deposed in about 1055 and the title of Count of Mortain passed to the Conqueror's Norman half brother Robert.  The Barons of Biards had their castle razed and lost the barony in 1110 after supporting Robert de Vitré in his bid for possession of Mortain against Stephen of Blois who was supported by Norman lords loyal to Henry I of England, link.  Robert de Vitré was Count of Mortain from 1106 until 1112.  His predecessor William of Mortain had opposed Henry I and following the battle of Tinchebrai in September 1106 was stripped of his baronies.  

From childhood, he [William of Mortain] harboured a bitter dislike for his cousin Henry I of England, and proudly demanded from him not only his father's earldoms of Mortain and Cornwall, but his uncle Odo, Bishop of Bayeux's Earldom of Kent.  Link

King Henry I confiscated William of Mortain's extensive lands in Cleveland and Yorkshire and gave them to his friend Robert de Brus.  The Avenels, being hereditary seneschals of the counts of Mortain, had probably been caught up in the House of Normandy's family dispute and their post-Conquest fortunes in England may have suffered as a result.  Robert Avenel, and/or his father William, was associated with the court of David I and Maud and had moved to Scotland with them and initially fared better.  Regarding Maud Queen of Scotland, Beryl Platts writes: 

The Yorkshire lands of Robert de Mortain were passed to Robert de Brus in the reign of Henry I and Adeliz - his Flemish queen who would later marry William d'Aubigny. Henry was the Norman son of a Flemish mother, with a French king's name; and a wife whose father numbered among his titles that of Count of Louvain. The history of the Cotentin pagi must have been well known at the English court; and indeed at the court of Scotland, whose own queen was great-granddaughter of Maud de Louvain, daughter and heiress of Count Lambert who was brother of the Count of Hainaut. No wonder Robert de Brus was so devoted to her.

CORNET FAMILY, EAST LOTHIAN, SCOTLAND

There was a twelfth century Cornet family based on an estate near Tranent connected with the Flemish de Quincy family, fellow countrymen and companions of the Yorkshire-based de Bruses and Seatons - as well as David I of Scotland's wife Maud of Huntingdon.  Miles Cornet was born c. 1160 and was prior of St Germains in East Lothian, Scotland in the early-thirteenth century.  The priory was founded some time between 1170-80 by the de Quincys for the Knights Hospitallers of the Order of the Star of Bethlehem as a hospital for the care of sick and injured knights returning from abroad.  Miles was probably the prior in charge of the care of casualties from the Fifth (1217-1221) and Sixth (1228-1229) Crusades.  The Cornet lands, see map above, were known as Myles, or Mylis, and a Myles Farm is still located there today. 

There is a potential toponymic connection between Miles Cornet's surname, Abercorn and the Avenels.  William Camden in his 1586 Britainnia calls Abercorn Aber-corneth.  As mentioned, Cornie Burn at Abercorn is a small river that was rendered as River Corneth in Blaeu Atlas of Scotland, 1654 and Johnston in Place-Names of Scotland gives its name as Cornar in 1892.  Corneth was the ancient name of the site of the Avenel's castle, it was a high ridge overlooking the Firth of Forth in West Lothian.  Its name was rendered in the same the way that prior Miles Cornet's surname was written in twelfth and thirteenth century charters, i.e. Milone Corneth or Corneht.  See this subpage for further notes on the family:

 Cornet Family, Lothian

NORTH YORK MOORS

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries families bearing the Corner and Corneye/Corney surname variations are recorded in the earliest North York Moors and southeastern Durham parish records.  It was not unusual for the Corney and Corner renderings to be applied to the same person at that time and the manner of spelling the name with an 'r' or a 'y' was often arbitrary.  Local tradition suggested that the different renderings once had a common origin and there is room for confusion in family trees if a member of one Corner/Corney family moved to a nearby area that had been settled by another family of the same name.  A distant cousin from our late-seventeenth century Quaker Corner/Corney branch (Danby) joined the household of a Conformist Corner branch in a neighbouring parish (Lythe) aged sixteen.  The two families had no known documented paper trail connection since the time that parish records began to be kept 150 years previously but it appears that there was knowledge of a distant relationship.  The Danby Corner who relocated to Lythe went on to marry locally and leave many descendants in Lythe and nearby Sandsend and Whitby.

Evidence of the natural variation in the spelling of the family name is seen in the parish records.  Our direct paternal ancestor Miles who was recorded as Milo Corney in 1627 at Danby but was buried in 1700 as Milo Corner at Thomas Watson's Quaker Burying Place, Horsehouses, Lealholm.  Miles' father was Robart Corney a farmer at Glaisdale, born c. 1570, who married Agnes Campion in 1601, Agnes Boyes in 1614 and Ursula Cudworth in 1624, all at Danby.  His father might have been Richard Corneye of Danby (c. 1540-1611) and his father might have been Robert Corney of Danby (c. 1500-1567, Danby Wills).  In Danby parish records a Johes. Corney son of Aliciae died in 1594 and a Johanes Corney died in August 1602.  The potential common ancestor of these branches looks to trace back to at least the fifteenth century when several Cornay clergymen are recorded at the region's priories, churches and abbeys.  Early members of the nearby Hackness Corner family consistently used the first name John as well as preferring the Corner (not Corney) spelling in parish records.  Sir Thomas Cornay, a priest in the Danby area in the mid-sixteenth century, is recorded with both the Cornay and Corney rendering in the same Westerdale Will of 1552.  A Westerdale Inventory of 1570 gives the Corner variation of the name for a Xpofer (Christopher) Corner of Guisborough.  A Helen Corner, wife of William Corner of Upleatham, was buried in 1601 and Mark Corner of nearby Ormesby, son of Robert Corner, was buried in 1636.  The traditional boy's first names in our Danby Corner branch were Robert, Miles, William, Peter, John or Thomas.

Stone marker post on Glaisdale Moor.  Image from Wikipedia

ST GERMAINS IN CLEVELAND

The de Angulo family of knights is said to originate in Saint-Germain-des-Angles about 25 miles from Corneville-la-Fouquetière.  De Angulo is linked with the anglicised  'de la Corner' surname variation.  The dedication of religious establishments to St Germain was introduced and brought north by the Normans and their allies and France and Normandy have many instances of the St Germain place name.  Miles Cornet's St Germains priory in East Lothian, Scotland was founded by the de Quincy Norman/Flemish followers of King David I in the decades following the Norman Conquest of England.  There was also a St Germains church near the early Cornays at Marske on the North Sea coast at Cleveland, close to the de Brus castle at Skelton.  St Germains at Marske was owned by Robert de Brus in the early-twelfth century and was given to Guisborough Priory at its foundation in 1119.  It was appropriated by the canons in about 1270 just before the last male Yorkshire de Brus, Peter de Brus, died in 1272.

The church is said by Simeon of Durham to have been consecrated by Bishop Æthelric (Bishop of Durham 1042–56) and to have been given by Copsi, while holding Yorkshire under Earl Tosti, to the monastery of Durham.  Link

In 1051 Tostig Godwinson, brother of King Harold, married Judith, half sister of Baldwin V count of Flanders and regent of France - he had close links with Normandy and Flanders.  Judith's mother was Eleanor of Normandy, daughter of Richard II of Normandy.  Tostig and Judith returned to England from exile in Flanders with Harold in 1052 and he became earl of Northumbria. 

One mile northwest of Skelton Castle and not far from St Germains in Marske, near the old ironstone workings, there is an area known as Cornegrave - possibly derived from Korni's/Corner's griff.  A griff is a Yorkshire word for a steep wooded area in a valley, it derives from the Old Norse: grifja, 'a hole, a pit, a hollow'.  The name could simply mean horn-shaped hole/valley or perhaps it relates to the ironstone mining pits.  The site is now occupied by Corngrave Farm.  Cornegrave is named in Inquisitions Post Mortem, Henry III (reigned 1216-1272):

Mersk (extent given with names of tenants), including a pasture called Dunesdal ... ½ carucate land and 3 assarts called Pyleflat, Wudeflat and Cornegreve, with 12a. land in Uplithum.

Cornegreve is listed as an assart, i.e. forest land cleared for agricultural use.  A new arrival to the area might be given unoccupied and uncultivated assarts to turn them to more profitable use.  Early iron making required lots of timber for charcoal.  There was said to be a fish pond and a corn mill to the east of Skelton Castle.

PLACES NAMED CORNAY

There are several places in England, as well as some in Belgium, France and Channel Islands with names that are close to the Cornay rendering but none are found in Cleveland or North Yorkshire.

The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, Patrick Hanks, Richard Coates, Peter McClure, 2016 state that the locative name Corney was sometimes pronounced Cornah, Corner, Cornall, Gorney and Gornall.  The European instances and five Corney locations in the British Isles are covered in detail on another page (click link below): 

1. Corney, Lancashire; 2. Corney, Cumbria; 3. Cornsay, Durham; 4. Cornay, Isle of Man; 5. Cornet, Guernsey.

'Corn'-derived Place Names

CLEVELAND CONNECTION

The Scottish/English Border became fixed in 1237 but there remained close communication between related families in the 'Scoto-Northumbrian Realm' either side of the Border for centuries afterwards.  The deep connection that the Scottish de Brus family had with both Cumbria and Cleveland are highlighted in 1304 when Robert de Brus, 6th Lord of Annandale, father of the future King Robert of Scotland, was buried at Holm Cultram Abbey in Cumbria, founded on land originally granted by David I of Scotland and Prince Henry.  Robert's father Robert de Brus 5th Lord of Annandale was buried with great ceremony in the family mausoleum containing the remains of his ancestor Robert I de Brus at Guisborough Priory, Cleveland in 1295.  Local men John Cornay and his son Thomas of Normanby and Eston would have probably witnessed the occasion.  More on the Cleveland and North Yorkshire Corner family history after that time can be read by following the link below:

Cleveland Corners

Above, The different provinces in the Low Lands. Map by David Cenzer, link

DISCUSSION

From a yDNA perspective northern European DF27 has its highest present day frequency in France with a potential northern 'hot spot' in the region of the former County of Boulogne and Flanders in the eastern reaches of the English Channel/southern North Sea.  Viking Age (2021) and Anglo-Saxon (2022) ancient DNA studies have shown that an established and diverse mix of DF27 subclades also potentially lived in areas of continental Europe and the Scandinavian peninsular in the Early Middle Ages. See the Medieval DF27 page.  DF27 is also found in countries that form the shoreline of the rest of the North Sea basin at a frequency of about 10% of R1b.  As mentioned, medieval family and ecclesiastic networks and connections between the different regions of northern Britain and northern France/Flanders were close and a move by a resident or tenant in one region to another would not be out of the ordinary.  Cleveland and Lothian are maritime areas on the North Sea coast.  The often closely related principle feudal families were mobile, unlike the general population, but key workers and servants from their households and retinue would move between regions in their wake.  

The Cotentin Peninsular in Normandy and the banks of the Seine Valley had long been settled by families from Hainaut.  Flanders and Hainaut were often feuding neighbours and, although some remained, several families were driven west after the annexation of regions of Hainaut in the late-tenth century.  The ancestors of the Normans, the vikings and Scaldingi from the area around the North Sea island of Walcheren, were active along the southern North Sea coastline.  Clans from the Scheldt delta region would also be involved in seaborne invasion of the British Isles, Ireland and Normandy from the ninth century.  Later pressure and conflict between rival groups displaced prominent families settled in Cotentin.  There were significant tenurial connections between lands held by the Hainaut/Cotentin Norman families in both Yorkshire and Scotland/Northumberland.  Rox2 yDNA matches in general are numerous in areas of northern Britain settled by Anglo-Flemings/Normans, i.e. Cumbria, southwest Scotland, Perthshire and Lothian/Northumberland/The Borders.

Robert de Brus (c. 1078 - 1142) Lord of Cleveland was based in Cotentin under the Counts of Mortain before his arrival in England.  The Setons based nearby on the coast of Cleveland were Flemish friends and kinsmen of the de Bruses and were relations to Maud wife of David I from the Honour of Huntingdon.  At Thirsk Roger d'Aubigny (de Mowbray) and his mother Gundreda de Gournay, also from Hainaut-via-Cotentin-via-Brittany, founded large Cistercian monasteries in North Yorkshire as well as back in Normandy.  The four de Brus sisters, heiresses of Peter de Brus III, inherited the de Brus estate after 1272 and married into families of the same Flemish/Norman origins (Fauconberg, de Thweng, de Ros).

The Cotentin Avenels, hereditary seneschals of the counts of Mortain, were also associated with the above mentioned families and their descendants in Britain.  In Northumberland William Avenel married Beatrice 'le Coroner' de Bamburgh in the early-thirteenth century.  Since the time of the Norman Conquest the ancestors of Beatrice de Bamburgh, daughter of William Fitz-Odo, held a large estate through the hereditary tenure obligation of giving out writs for the crown between the Northumberland rivers Tweed and Coquet.  The Bamburgh le Coroners are an early localized instance of the coroner office title being adopted and handed down to later generations - a title that passed from the last surviving female descendant to her husband and their children.  Records give a sense that Beatrice le Coroner was an indomitable woman with the weight of family tradition guiding her.  When the couple were summoned by King Henry III to appear before the King's justiciars to produce a warrant that proved their claim to their ancestral land at Bamburgh in 1253 the elderly and ailing William duly appeared but Beatrice didn't - resulting in a postponement.  William died soon afterwards.  Henry III took the land but it had mysteriously (to Edward I, at least) returned to Beatrice four years later.

The contemporary Scarborough le Coroner/Corner family were associated with Bamburgh's neighbouring royal fortress, located 130 miles to the south in the same North East England maritory.  That family was headed by Robert le Coroner who was born c. 1240.  There is no record of anyone else with the surname living in that area before the late-thirteenth century.  The Inquisition Post Mortem record of Beatrice le Coroner of Bamburgh in 1258 showed that Beatrice and William Avenel had more than one son.  However, only their eldest son William  le Coroner senior is mentioned in existing records.  Robert le Coroner senior of Scarborough is a likely candidate to be William le Coroner senior of Bamburgh's younger brother.  Both contemporaries William le Coroner of Bamburgh and Robert le Coroner of Scarborough lived in the shadow of royal North Sea fortresses and both families had parliamentary careers in the late-thirteenth-early-fourteenth century.  

The le Coroner hereditary lands were very close to Bamburgh Castle and were of strategic value to the crown.  Over the generations several attempts were made to take land from the family.  Edward I took the land just after King John Balliol was inaugurated in Scotland in November 1292.  It appears that ongoing difficulties with their neighbours in the castle led William le Coroner to protect his estate with physical barriers.  In the late-1310s Roger de Horsley, Constable of Bamburgh Castle petitioned King Edward II to settle a dispute after he had destroyed ditches that William had built to defend his fields, link.  William le Corouner junior, born in 1270, was still witnessing charters at Bamburgh in 1326.  As the fourteenth century progressed warfare, famine, plague and a decline in prosperity hit the Borders.  Northumberland suffered numerous destructive armed Scottish raids that swept through the area - led by a descendant of the de Brus family of Cleveland, King Robert the Bruce.  By the 1350s the remaining Coroner's lands at Bamburgh look to have gone into the hands of the Heron family and Adam de St Oswald (Richard Heron married Johanna de St Oswald in 1351).  The Herons' ancestors and relations included governors of Bamburgh, Pickering and Scarborough castles and a sheriff of Northumberland.  Adam and Johanna de St Oswald were grandchildren of William le Coroner senior.

William le Coroner junior had a son named Thomas and a daughter named Cecily (who married William del Henedrawe of Baumburgh).  In c. 1338 a Thomas le Corouner of Bamburgh (aged twenty six, so born in 1312) gives evidence in a Northumberland Inquisition, link.  A Thomas le Coroner (Thoma Corner) MP for Scarborough in 1337 died at Scarborough in 1349.  This might be the same Thomas (originally from Bamburgh) or a son of Robert le Coroner the younger of Scarborough.  The embattled old Bamburgh family look to have held on to their land through tenacity and an ongoing tradition of occupation in the region.  That grip appears to have loosened with the death of Beatrice de Bamburgh in the late-1200s.  The le Coroner family of Bamburgh disappear from records following the above mentioned chaos that displaced many of the old Northumberland families.  A future Pope, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, travelled through the county in 1435 and commented that ‘Northumberland was uninhabitable, horrible, uncultivated.’, link.  

As with other surname variants le Coroner was liable to mutation and contraction (e.g. Croner, Cruner, Cornor, Cornur, le Corner).  The word coroner probably became abbreviated through familiarity and repetition over the centuries in the brusque North Riding dialect.  The crown tax coronagium became known as 'cornage' through a similar natural contraction in the north of Britain.  The Corner surname endured and was recorded south of the Borders in Durham and Cleveland in the North Riding of Yorkshire when parish registers first began to be kept in sixteenth century.

Most surname dictionaries note that 'Corn' surnames may derive from the Latin: cornū 'horn'.  That etymology relates to a distinctive raised/curved area or protrusion of land and the toponym was applied to the landscape of at least four different places associated with fortresses built upon projecting crags, i.e. 1. Abercorn, castle of the Avenels on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth in Lothian, 2. Cornay in Ardennes, 3. Montcornet in Hauts-de-France and 4. Castle Cornet on Guernsey in the Channel Islands.  The toponymic surname appears to be associated with people living at these frontier points and fortresses.  The locative name, Cor Nez  also describes raised promontories or headlands in the coastal landscapes of Normandy and northern France.  The origins of some Corney place names might lie in the earlier Scandinavian personal name or nickname Korni in Britain as well as in Normandy (inferred from the supposed Latinised variant of Korni found in Cornemare and Corneville (Cornus, or Korni's hus) place names in Normandy).  Further derivations from locations associated with the growing, processing, shipping, storing or selling of grain/corn might be an explanation for other 'corn' surname variations and place names.

Sir Peter Cornet, Governor of Guernsey in 1167, would have been a contemporary of Miles Cornet, prior of St Germains, East Lothian.  Robert Avenel Lord of Eskdale, Miles Cornet/Corneth prior of St Germains and Sire Miles de Quarnay, Lord of Quarnay/Cornay in northeastern France were contemporaries - both Miles' were witnessing early-thirteenth century charters in Scotland and northeastern France respectively.  Miles Cornet was a contemporary of Glay Cornarius (Glaius miles cornarius) horn-blower for Gervase Avenel.  William Fitz-Odo, father of Beatrice le Coroner de Bamburgh, was also a contemporary of Miles Cornet and was abroad in Scotland in about 1200 when his father Odo died.  William le Coroner and Beatrice of Bamburgh would have  been contemporaries of Miles Cornet prior of St Germains and his son John Cornet, as well as Edward de Cornay, seneschal of Millom Castle in Cumbria.  Captain Robert de Cornay, French knight in charge of security in King Charles I's lands in Italy, was a contemporary of Simon Cornet grandson of Miles Cornet who resigned the Cornet lands at Myles, Tranent in 1285.  

William le Coroner senior of Bamburgh born c. 1240 was a close contemporary of Robert le Coroner senior of Scarborough who was born at around the same time.  William le Coroner junior born c. 1270  MP for Bamburgh was a contemporary of Robert le Coroner junior MP for Scarborough who was born around the same time.  John Cornay of Normanby and Eston in the de Brus barony of Cleveland was possibly born at around the same time as William le Coroner senior of Bamburgh and Robert le Coroner senior of Scarborough, c. 1240-50.

The site of Abercorn Castle beneath the trees on the '^'-shaped crag (The Wilderness), above, via Magic Map

SUMMARY

Estimates for the time of rapid expansion of several parallel subclades/branches of Rox2 appear to coalesce a few hundred years after the time of the founder at around the time of the Norman Conquest.  Some familiar Rox2 surnames are said to trace back to Hainaut/Flanders (Scottish Hazard Volume Two: The Flemish Heritage, Beryl Platts, 1990).  The le Coroner/Corner surname is an hereditary occupational name associated with thirteenth century Bamburgh and Scarborough, both on the North Sea coast of North East England.  The Bamburgh branch is the elder lineage and traces back to the era immediately following the Norman Conquest there.  The paternal lineage descends from William Avenel 'le Corner' of Bamburgh after a break in the original le Coroner paternal line c. 1230.  Following wars, turmoil and decline in the fourteenth century the le Coroners disappear from Northumbrian records. 

Le Coroner was probably abbreviated to Croner and Corner in North Yorkshire and Durham -  the surname le Coroner/Coronator/Corouner/Cornour is sometimes transcribed as Corner, e.g. Robtus filius Robti Croner de Scardeburgh became Robert son of Robert Corner.  Thomas le Coroner MP for Scarborough in 1337 was listed as Thoma Corner in the fragmentary 1327 Edward III Lay Subsidy list of Scarborough burgesses; whereas his close relative Henry le Coroner, MP in 1332 and 1333 and later bailiff of Scarborough Castle is named in the same list as Henrico le Coroner (The Honor and Forest of Pickering, R. B. Turton, 1897).  William Avenel, husband of Beatrice de Bamburgh, is named as William le Corner in Michaelmas [37-38 Hen. III, 1253] Pleas at Westminster.

The Cornay family of Normanby and Eston and the le Coroner/Corner family of Scarborough might well have originally been be two unrelated families in the thirteenth century.  However, they were both contemporaries of the le Coroner family of Bamburgh and, although there is no primary documentary evidence, their names, locations and family associations outlined above indicate some commonality.  In Inquisitions Post Mortem, Henry III, in 1258 Beatrice le Coroner mentioned 'her boys' but only the eldest son and heir William le Coroner senior is named in records found so far.  He was probably named William after his father and maternal grandfather.  Robert would be a likely baptismal name for the Bamburgh le Coroners' second-oldest son if he was indeed a grandson of Robert Avenel.  Robert le Coroner is likely to have moved away from home (to the neigbouring English royal castle further south) when he came of age in the late-1250s.  

The early Corner surname would sometimes be rendered as both Corner and Corney in different records referring to the same family.  Anecdotal accounts suggest that the families believed they once had common origins and that Corner was pronounced 'Cornay' until the nineteenth century.  There is a clear difference between the rendering of Cornay and le Coroner.  The pronunciation of Cornay (Cleveland) leans more towards that of Cornet (Lothian).  The inflection of Cornet in modern French sounds close to the way that Corner is pronounced in North East English dialect, i.e. it sounds like 'Corn-eh'.  To the unfamiliar ear it could also sound like 'Cornay'.  The lack of the prefix 'de' differentiates the Cleveland and Lothian Cornet/Cornay families from those elsewhere who are known by the toponymic 'de Cornay' at that early stage.  As mentioned, the name Avenel is said to describe a pasture of oats (avena = oats in Latin) and the term corn could once be applied to any of the predominant types of grain.  The Old English folkloric character of John Barleycorn was associated with beer brewed from barley.  In the cool and damp climate of Scotland and Ireland barley and oats were the predominant corn.  It is a stretch but the formation of Cornet may contain puns or allusions that combine to obliquely refer to an origin, i.e. Corn (oats), Corneth (Abercorn), Cornut (French/Romance Flemish for a 'NPE'). 

Old variants of Abercorn in West Lothian include Ebbercurnig, Aebercurnei and Aeborcurnit, link.  Corneth was the ancient topographical name of the crag on which Abercorn Castle was built overlooking the Firth of Forth.  Dominus Milone Corneth, or Sir Miles Cornet, was born c. 1160 at the time that Robert Avenel (c. 1120-1186) was seated at Abercorn Castle.  Miles became prior of nearby St Germains at Tranent, about twenty miles further east along the coast of the Firth Forth at East Lothian.  He had a son named John c. 1200 and a grandson named Simon c. 1230.  Simon Cornet/Corneth, then probably over fifty years of age, quitclaimed the family estate of Mylis to his Preston maternal cousin in 1285.  John Cornay/Corney born c. 1250 appears in records south of the border in Cleveland with his son Thomas in 1301.  There is no indication in the available records of Simon Cornet having any children.  However, John was a family name for the Lothian Cornets - John Cornet was Simon Cornet's father.  Perhaps the Cornay origins were in The Wilderness.  It is an interesting coincidence that the Cornet and le Coroner surnames, from East Lothian and Bamburgh respectively, both potentially link back to Abercorn in Lothian.  Alternatively, when applying Occam's razor, Cornay might simply be a location name derived from Corney and/or Cornay/Cornaa situated on either side of the Irish Sea in Cumbria and the Isle of Man respectively - as covered in the 'Corn' Place Names section.

Corner families settled and increased in number over the following centuries on the more peaceful and sparsely-populated North York Moors.  Cornay, Corney and Corner name variations are recorded in that rural district.  There is a gap of just over 200 years between the time when the first Cornay/le Coroners appear in early-fourteenth century records and the time when parish records start being kept in the sixteenth century.  Medieval records show continuity in that district during the intervening centuries.  How they were recorded probably depended on family tradition as well as how the name was heard by parish clerks and other officials who may or may not have been familiar with it.  Those families were generally north country farmers and/or mariners, merchants and priests and there was an understanding of potential common origins between them.  

'NPEs' can happen in any lineage at any time and go undetected.  So far our Danby branch is the only representative of the surname to have taken a yDNA test that matches 'Rox2', found downstream of haplogroup R1b-DF27 (see the FTDNA Corner-Corney DNA project).  Further yDNA testing by others with the Corner or Corney surname would reveal more and all Corners and Corneys are welcome to join the project.  Several Corner/Corney families appear to be already well dispersed around the North Yorkshire moorland dales by 1500 AD; one (ours) with a  fourteenth-fifteenth century nucleus around the parish of Danby in Upper Eskdale, North Yorkshire and the other with a fourteenth-fifteenth century nucleus around Guisborough.

View towards Corney in Cumbria from Port Cornaa on the Isle of Man.  Image, Google Earth 2022

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