The reference to the Scottish raid as far south as Rievaulx Abbey touches an event of great interest.  In 1322 the Scots, led by Robert Bruce, had entered England and plundered many places, including the splendid Cistercian monastery just mentioned, and the following record shows that the Vale of Pickering purchased immunity for 300 marks.

“John Topcliffe Rector of Semer Wm. Wyern & John Wickham with others of Pickering with the assent of the whole community, on Tuesday 13th Oct. 1322 purchased from Robert Bruce through the Earl of Moray for 300 marks, to be paid at Berwick, half at Candlemas next & the other half at Trinity next, the immunity of the Vale of Pickering from the River Seven on the west to the sea on the east.  Further they say that Nich’s Haldane, Wm. Hastings and John Manneser, at the request of the men of the whole community, surrendered at Rievaulx to Robert Bruce on Saturday the 17th of Oct. following, to sojourn as hostages in Scotland until the 300 marks were paid.  Further they say that the 300 marks are still unpaid, for afterwards the men of the community refused payment and once for all.  Further they said that the said Nicholas William and John are still in prison in Scotland, and all the men and all townships, manors, hamlets, lands and tenements of the said Vale within the bounds aforesaid were preserved from all damage and injury whatsoever through the above-mentioned ransom.”

From the Chronicle of John Hardyng we find that Richard II. was imprisoned at Pickering before being taken to Knaresborough, and finally to Pontefract.  The lines in his quaint verse must have been written between 1436 and 1465.

  “The Kyng the[n] sent Kyng Richard to Ledis,
    There to be kepte surely in previtee,
  Fro the[n]s after to Pykeryng we[n]t he nedes,
    And to Knauesburgh after led was he,
  But to Pountfrete last where he did die.” [1]

[Footnote 1:  The Chronicle of John Hardyng, edited by Henry Ellis, 1812, p. 356.]

There seems little doubt that the story of the murder of the king at Pontefract Castle by Sir Piers Exton is untrue, but “nothing is certainly known of the time, place, or manner of his death.”

The records of the Coucher Book contain a mass of interesting and often entertaining information concerning the illicit removals of oak trees from the forest, hunting and killing the royal deer and other animals, as well as many other offences.

At the forest Eyre, a sort of assizes, held at Pickering in 1334 to deal with a great accumulated mass of infringements on the rights of the forest, the first case is against Sir John de Melsa, Lord of Levisham, who was, according to the jury, “in the habit of employing men to make and burn charcoal out of browsewood and dry sticks in his woods at Levisham, which are now within the bounds of the forest, and he exposes the charcoal for sale, injuring the lord and annoying the deer, by what right they know not.  Sir John is summoned,