In this slim volume, published by the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, Keith Stringer provides an exploration of the liberty of Penrith in northwestern England through the thirteenth century. More precisely, Stringer concentrates his attention on the period from Henry III's promise to provide Alexander II with £200 of land in Northumberland and Cumberland in the 1237 Treaty of York to the fundamental shift in Anglo-Scottish relations in 1296. Within these chronological boundaries, Stringer dwells primarily on the operation of law, financial administration, and lordship within the liberty, with the issue of identity addressed in more scattered passages. Those interested in the region's history for its own sake will find this book has much to offer. But it holds more than just local interest, since the liberty was held by the kings of Scotland (Alexander II and Alexander III) from the kings of England (Henry III and Edward I), and thus provides a window through which to view a range of important themes played out against both the nature of liberties in “middle Britain” more generally and against the political relations between England and Scotland in a time of relative peace. Indeed, the great strength of Stringer's work on Penrith is his ability to illuminate the liberty in its own right while placing it within a set of broader contexts engaging high politics, the nature of English and Scottish governance, and the conduct of royal and local officials.

The book is organized thematically: the bulk of the text (5–73) examines the creation of the liberty; lordship and local society; the workings of civil, criminal, and forest law processes in the liberty; and other areas of fiscal and administrative jurisdiction. These areas are examined through both published and unpublished records, and Stringer's mastery of his material allows him to penetrate to the heart of what it actually meant to be lord of Penrith. Stringer establishes that the liberty was of significant regional importance and that its character was mixed, being withdrawn from the direct authority of the English crown to a lesser extent than some of the other liberties of northern England. The inhabitants of the liberty were able to prosecute civil pleas in their local courts, rather than in the central courts of the English kings. Similarly, the fiscal burden of public taxation did not generally fall on the residents of the liberty, and they were exempt from tallage. Both of these privileges were protected by the two Alexanders, who appear here as generally benevolent lords. The role of the English sheriff, too, was limited by the liberty's privileges, with the officials of the Scottish lord responsible for the execution of royal writs within the liberty. However, with regard to pleas of the crown, the liberty was opened up to the workings of the English judicial system and, just as importantly, the interpretations and ambitions of the men who staffed it. For instance, the full weight of a general eyre was felt by the liberty in 1278, while a forest eyre in 1285 proved to be even more burdensome. Whatever the wishes of Edward I, who seems to have supported Alexander III's rights in the liberty as long as he perceived them to be compatible with his broader notions of justice, English officials frequently attacked the privileges enjoyed by the lord/king and the inhabitants of the liberty, both within and outside of the eyres. In 1278, the English justices even confiscated the liberty for a brief period on the grounds that Alexander III had not appeared before them with his “charter” proving royal warrant for possession of the liberty before Edward I restored possession to the Scottish king.

Thus, Stringer brings the tension between royalist interpretations of power and local rights to the fore of his account by focusing on the actions of English officials as they encountered the patchwork of privileges comprising the liberty. In the next section of the book (73–84), Stringer places these finding in a wider perspective and offers some thought-provoking and powerfully argued conclusions for the wider importance of the liberty of Penrith to our understanding of England and Scotland in the thirteenth century. Perhaps the most important of Stringer's arguments is that the possession of the liberty of Penrith by the kings of Scotland—subject to the intervention of the English crown in some important ways—played an important role in an “intensification of perceptions” within thirteenth-century Scottish political society, which “served to demonstrate in stark terms what the likely consequences would be if Scotland ever failed to maintain its sovereignty and was incorporated into an English ‘super-state’” (80). While this suggestion may be hard to establish concretely, it tallies well with what this book and other work has revealed about the differences in the nature and intensity of the royal governance experienced by the two realms, and it deserves to be incorporated into future reflections on the subject.

This book is attractively produced and is supported by notes, two appendices, a bibliography, and an extensive index, as well as a glossary of terms. In this book, Stringer provides salutary lessons for those still inclined to regard the development of the Scottish polity as an echo of an English “core” and, by engaging with wide and important historical themes, uses the history of the liberty of Penrith to make a series of valuable contributions to our understanding of the divergences between the English and Scottish polities in the thirteenth century.