Sir Hugh de Cressingham

Despite his illegitimate birth, De Cressingham became an important English cleric and Chief Justice of the North of England. He was made Treasurer of Scotland by Edward l, whereby he gained control of the entire occupation-regime. His own brand of cruelty made him hated by the Scots, second only in loathing to Edward himself. One of his acts was to order that all wool produced in Scotland (then the prime national export) was to be confiscated and sent to England. Fighting as a knight, he supervised the battle of Stirling Bridge, only to fall at the hands of the Scots. So great was their hatred of De Cressingham, they flayed his body and sent pieces of his skin all over the land, to be displayed at the entrance to the towns and cities as a reminder to all to defy the invader. That resistance culminated at Bannockburn (23 June 1314)
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Hugh Cressingham is described as a portly ecclesiastic. sensual and money- loving: on him devolved the unpopular task of collecting the King's rents and..
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In 1294, Sir Hugh de Cressingham occurs rector of Great Cressingham, Norfolk, rector also of Enderby, Kingsclere, Hatfield, Chalk, Borles, Barnton, Dodington, Reymerston, Rudderly, &c. prebendary of St. Paul's, and in several cathedrals, treasurer of Scotland, taken by the Scots in the battle of Stryvelin, and flayed alive by them; he was born in this town; there was a family of good account of the said name. (History of Norfolk by Charles Parkin.)
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After the battle the rebels systematically stripped the dead of their armour and weapons, where they came across the body of Hugh Cressingham, the much hated Treasurer of Scotland. Not content in stripping the corpse of its armour and clothing, the rebels flayed and mutilated him, and as a token of their hatred towards the man they distributed his skin among themselves. For which the chronicle of Lanercost Priory reported that the rebels dried and cured Cressingham's hide and 'of his skin William Wallace caused a broad strip to be taken from his head to the heel, to make therewith a baldric for his sword'.
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CRESSINGHAM, HUGH DE. Just. Itin. 1292. Hugh de Cressingham was an officer of the Exchequer. In 10 Edward I. he went to Chichester, and took bail for several persons charged with certain transgressions against the property of the abbot of Ramsey 8 ; and in the eighteenth year he is called seneschall of the queen, and was one of her bailiffs for the manor of Haverford. In 20 Edward I., 1292, he was appointed with two others to investigate and audit the debts due to Henry III. , and in that and the three following years was at the head of the justices itinerant for the northern counties. Being also, as usual, of the ecclesiastical profession, he held about this time the parsonage of Doddington, and the rectory of Chalk in Kent. When the king defeated the Scotch and Baliol renounced the throne in 1296, Cressingham was appointed treasurer of that country, and, on the disorders which followed Edward's departure, was commanded not to scruple to spend the whole money in the exchequer to put them down. Proud, ignorant, and violent, he made himself hateful to the Scots by his oppressions ; and on the rising of Wallace in the following year, preferring the cuirass to the cassock, he joined the Earl of Surrey in leading the royal army to Stirling. Wallace left the siege of Dundee, in which he was engaged, and by a rapid march drew up his army on the other bank of the river Forth before the arrival of the English forces. By Cressingham's rashness the latter were led over the bridge, and were terribly defeated, he being among the first who fell. So deep was the detestation in which his character was regarded, that his body was mangled, the skin torn from his limbs, and in savage triumph cut to pieces." It is said that Wallace ordered as much of his skin to be taken off as would make a sword-belt ; a story which has been absurdly extended to its having been employed in making girths and saddles. The Scots called him "non thesaurarium sed trayturarium regis." He held the town of Hendon and land in Finchley in Middlesex, with the manor of Coulinge in Suffolk.