Hetherington

The Hetheringtons were a ‘disordered surname’ not active raiders probably because of being relatively small in numbers, but records indicate that they were involved in feuding and local reiving with their neighbours. Their ancient feud was always with the English Grahams and those north of the border in Scotland. The Grahams in one specific instance burned the house of one Hutcheon Hetherington to force him into the open so that they could cut him to pieces. The Hetheringtons were frequently mentioned in connection with blackmail, both receiving and paying, when they apparently insisted on ‘protecting’ more vulnerable groups at a price. In his book “The Steel Bonnets”, George Macdonald Fraser (who married Kathleen Hetherington) states that the Hetheringtons were deeply involved in a conspiracy to murder the Bishop of Carlisle in 1596.

Charges laid against Richie Graham of Brackenhill in 1596 were that he extorted rent (or protection money) from more than sixty tenants in the Lanercost and Gilsland area. Payment was encouraged by “evil speeches and threatenings”. Richie Graham ran this racket with the help of his special factors: William Hare and Thomas “the merchant” Hetherington, who appears to have elevated the extraction of blackmail or protection money to a full-time profession.

“With the exception of one ‘Widow Smyth’, who had paid blackmail, those tenants who had not paid blackmail had all their goods spoiled and carried off by the nephews and kinsmen of said Richard Grame, Scotsmen [the marvellously-named Jock “Stowlugs” Armstrong and friends]. These Scots kinsmen, before the robbery, inquired where the widow who had paid blackmail dwelt, and then harried all the rest, except her.”

When one of the unfortunate tenants who had been ‘spoiled’ sought help from Thomas Carleton, Land Sergeant of Gilsland, he found the law officer socialising with none other than Richie Graham!

According to an alternative tradition, the surname may have originated at the medieval township of Hetherington, now the name of a single farm, on the edges of Wark Forest in Northumberland, first formally recorded in 1279 when it was held by David of Hetherington. The name may have come from the Anglo-Saxon term “haeth-“, adopted to describe the surroundings of the early settlement as being heath, that is to say, wild and wind-swept uplands; and “-ing”, which indicates a place;  and “-tun”, a settlement or farm, meaning “the enclosed settlement belonging to the people who dwell on the heath” (village of the dweller on a heath).

In the medieval period, Wark was an administrative centre and the head of the Lordship of Tynedale, part of Scotland in the 13th-century, and not fully integrated into the rest of Northumberland until 1495.

Suits recorded in the Iter of Wark in 1293 show that Hetherington had been held by David of Hetherington, now dead, who was succeeded by his son Reginald. Another son, William, was dead, and had left two daughters, Emma and Joan, under age, to whom Reginald was to pay 40s of sterling gold. Reginald of Hetherington, with Roger and William of Hetherington, probably his sons, accused Richard the multgrave and others of unjustly seizing their horses in the township of Hetherington and taking them to Wark and keeping them until they each paid 40d. The defendants stated that the three Hetheringtons had been appointed collectors of the king’s ferm, and had made fine of 40d. with the multgrave to be relieved of the office, and this was the only way in which he could levy the fine; accordingly he was acquitted.

Hetherington next appears in the Border Survey of 1604, when George Hetherington, a free tenant, held the Lower Steads and the Whole House, or Hole House as it is called elsewhere.  Since 1817, only one farm named Hetherington has stood there; some earthwork remains of earlier buildings are visible on the north and east sides of the farmstead. This Romano-British settlement was excavated in 1957 and provisionally dated to the mid-second century AD. It contains “cobbled and flagged yards, circular huts, hearths, and small, stone-lined storage pits.” Excavations in 1972-3 confirmed a timber palisade and revealed the existence of a timber round house beneath a later stone house.

Coats of arms are the personal, heritable property of one person and just because someone shares a surname does not mean that they can use these arms, but interestingly one of the five armorial bearings held by George Hetherington, died 29th December 1619, which appears in “The General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales” by Sir Bernard Burke, Ulster King of Arms, is listed as: Per pale [divided by a vertical line] Argent [silver] and Gules [red] a lion rampant counterchanged, armed and langued Azure [blue]. Crest: Out of a ducal coronet Or [gold], a tower quarterly Argent [silver] and Gules [red].

There is no definitive origin of the name Hetherington. The meaning of the name remains debatable. In the end it must remain with individual bearers of the name to decide the matter for themselves. However, there is strong evidence of Hetherington presence at Hethersgill. This adds some credibility to the suggestion that they were a family of great antiquity seated with manor and estates at Walton in Cumberland on the north side of the River Irthing, ten miles from Carlisle and three miles north of Brampton, near Hadrian’s Roman Wall, and dispensing justice in that locality. The large number of graves of the name Hetherington contained within present-day St. Mary’s churchyard in the village of Walton supports the notion that the family remained localised. 

Variant forms of the surname are Heatherington, Etherington,  Hetherton.

This information was provided for the Border Reiver Heritage Society by Keith Murray-Hetherington, Esq., J.P., FSAScot, in whose own veins runs the blood of the Border Reivers. Copyright © 2024.