These extracts from a dispute between the civic authorities of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and the Prior of Tynemouth are not strictly speaking a commentary on a particular town, still less upon towns generally. They nonetheless have the effect of painting a picture that reveals some characteristics of towns. At the core of the dispute is a settlement aspiring to become a town, but facing a challenge from a neighbour that already has such status. The contest highlights economic elements in the definition of a town:

• an exchange of goods and services, involving not only the local population but visitors who come specifically to effect such an exchange, and involving goods produced both locally and externally;
• the possession of formal institutions to facilitate this exchange, notably a market, but in some cases also, or alternatively, a port;
• authority to license, regulate, police and tax activities and transactions occurring through such institutions.

Although urban society was well established before the close of the Anglo-Saxon period, the Norman conquest gave urbanization new impetus, as the conquerors attempted to bring the country under their control. Urban development was part of the plan to achieve this. In 1080 one of the Conqueror's sons, returning from a campaign against Scotland, built a castle on a site controlling a crossing point over the river Tyne. Not surprisingly, particularly in a part of the country with few towns of any size at that time, settlement took place adjacent to the castle, both to service its needs and to take advantage of its protection.

The urban and mercantile character this quickly acquired is reflected in a set of local laws governing affairs in the Newcastle settlement. It acted both as a marketplace for the region, whose soil was better for pasturing cows and sheep than for growing crops, and as a port for coastal and foreign trade, despite being several miles inland from the coast. In particular it was able to capitalize on the trade in wool (although local wool was not of the best quality), hides, and coal mined in the north, including around Tyneside. Its early prominence in the commerce of the region Newcastle sought to protect, claiming certain trade monopolies not only within the town but also in the surrounding countryside; for instance, visiting merchants were only allowed to trade with burgesses, not with each other, and any bread made for retailing (i.e. non-personal use) had to be baked in the town ovens. By 1334 it was ranked as the fourth wealthiest town in the kingdom, thanks in part to its importance as a military base for the war effort against Scotland.

Its dominance did not go unchallenged. It was not only the king who encouraged the development of towns (by, for instance, granting Newcastle control over its own affairs in 1214, via a fee farm arrangement). Local landlords, both lay and ecclesiastical, sought to capture a share of the economic benefits that could come from town-founding; a few men, like William Brewer or the Bishop of Winchester, took a quite entrepreneurial approach to the task. Settlement adjacent to monasteries and castles was a mutually beneficial affair: supplies and perhaps particularly services (e.g. construction workers, merchants) were more conveniently available for those establishments, while the settlers had employers/consumers close at hand. Such settlements could act as points of distribution and exchange for the regional population, many of whom were dependants of the religious houses or castle owners. Furthermore, rents from houses in towns would normally produce a higher return than income from the same land if put to agricultural use. In north-eastern England several dozen settlements grew to the point of aspiring to urban status; the Church was the major player in the process. River mouths and crossings were notable target sites for attempts to grow towns.

Tynemouth Priory had originally been founded, it is believed, by a seventh-century Northumbrian king, on the northern bank of the Tyne close to the sea; but it declined after being devastated by the Danes. It was refounded in 1090 as a Benedictine cell of Durham, although jurisdiction was transferred to St. Albans in 1093. Its endowment included much of the land between the coast and Newcastle. By charter of King John (1202/03) it received a number of privileges. During the reign of his successor the monks were draining marshy areas around the river's edge, apparently with a view to encouraging greater lay settlement there. Tynemouth and what is now known as North Shields were the result, probably in the form of fishing villages. The derivation of "Shields" is a Scottish/Scandinavian term meaning a shepherd's hut, or by association the pasturage adjacent to the hut; the term was also applied to fishermen's huts.

The first sign of a combative rivalry was in 1265, when the mayor and one of the leading merchants of Newcastle, Thomas de Karliol, led a band of armed townsmen to North Shields to demolish a mill that had just been built there; for good measure, they set fire to several houses of what may already have been a largish village. In 1279 the prior was defending his claim to have a market at Tynemouth. However, this was rejected.

The role of Tynemouth and North Shields as ports was what primarily concerned Newcastle in 1290. The prior had built a quay at North Shields. The intent was doubtless to draw away some of Newcastle's commerce – and control over the river mouth may have helped in that – and perhaps in particular to develop the priory's share of the coal trade. There was an outcropping of coal at Tynemouth itself, and North Shields was used by the priory for shipping coal from other quarries on its land. South Shields was planted on the southern bank of the Tyne by the Prior of Durham in the same period, and presumably with much the same purpose.

The Newcastle authorities were determined that coal quarried in the vicinity should only be sold and exported through the town. Monopoly over this trade and control over shipping on the Tyne were thus the main concerns. To defeat its rivals, Newcastle also aimed to assert other monopolies which it associated with urban status.

In the consequent picture of North Shields/Tynemouth that emerges from the dispute brought before the parliament of Easter 1290, we see the outline of a good-sized settlement that was still growing: the prior of the time had erected 26 houses to attract new tenants, and his predecessor had built others. It had sufficient urban features that both parties to the dispute could agree on characterising it as a town. North Shields had a quayside that was the home base for a small fishing fleet, and where sea-going vessels unloaded cargoes for sale on the quayside or in the Tynemouth marketplace, attracted in part by the clientele of the priory. This community and the mercantile visitors were being serviced by four bakers – who were leasing communal ovens built by the priory – and by an unspecified number of butchers, fishmongers and brewers, as well (it is implied) by inns; despite this occupational heterogeneity, there seems to have been little local industry, for there were no tanners in the settlement. Some of the bakers and brewers had been attracted away from Newcastle by the prospects of making a better living at North Shields. The bakers were supplied with grain from priory estates, and there may well have been another mill built on priory land, or the earlier one had been rebuilt. Hides were being exported through North Shields, likely by agents of the priory. The prior was exercising various legal jurisdictions within this settlement. All these added up to losses in revenues for Newcastle, jeopardizing its prosperity and its ability to pay the fee farm upon which depended many of the privileges giving it a competitive advantage. Port dues represented the chief element of the borough revenues. The threat was not a new one; similar complaints had been made before an eyre in 1279, but no action had been taken on them.

The commission of enquiry that was instituted as a result of Newcastle's complaints, although it had to tread carefully because of the prior's claims of privileges granted by Richard I (whose charter to the priory of 1189 had been read into the record), appears to have come out squarely on Newcastle's side; it agreed that the unwarranted growth of towns and of urban ambition at both North and South Shields was to the detriment of Newcastle and thereby of the king, who earned revenues through commerce conducted at Newcastle. It was not in the king's interests to jeopardize a town that played host to his armies and himself on occasion, served as a commissioning point for naval forces, and whose merchants supplied both with food, transport and other necessaries for campaigning. The prior was prohibited from holding a market or claiming port privileges at either Tynemouth or South Shields, and was ordered to tear down any signage that advertised the locations as market or port. Further investigation resulted in the judgement, in July 1292, that the priory's involvement in commerce went well beyond its needs for supplying itself, and it was ordered again that ships not treat North Shields as a port, merchants were not to be allowed to buy there, and wharves there were to be demolished. In consequence of this reversal, Newcastle was able to maintain its regional dominance.

The struggle was not yet over. In 1303 the king left his new queen under the protection of Tynemouth Priory before heading north to another campaign; upon his return the following year the monks were rewarded with a grant of an annual fair for Tynemouth and North Shields. The first parliament of 1305 saw the prior trying to obtain confirmation of royal charters granted the priory by the Henry II and Richard I, and permission to exercise privileges which had not been used. Newcastle countered at the same parliament with a complaint that Tynemouth's new fair was once more encouraging ships to unload and sell their cargoes there; they relied on much the same argument as in 1290: the fair drew commerce away from Newcastle, thus depriving the king of customs and the burgesses of other tolls applicable to the fee farm and to murage, which would have been collected had the ships continued upstream to unload at Newcastle. The king subsequently revoked the grant of the fair.

In 1376 town and priory butted heads again, although this time the issue was jurisdiction over Fenham, a hamlet on the west side of Newcastle. A judicial enquiry in 1447 suggests that during the previous several decades, the prior had again been trying to develop North Shields into a substantial settlement, building houses, wharves and communal ovens, and licencing inns, taverns, shops, and fish-drying houses. We have to view this in the context of prolonged financial difficulties Newcastle had been experiencing, leading to the king having to exempt the town from contributing to a series of annual taxations. Whether loss of revenues to North Shields was a factor in this is not explicit, but we may guess so. Yet regardless of any growth there, North Shields did not obtain any official recognition as a borough. The incipient urbanity of Tynemouth and North Shields had already been nipped in the bud, and they would have to wait for the ship-building industry of the eighteenth century to see their fortunes revive.

North Shields and Tynemouth were not the only local threats to Newcastle. Newcastle's royal charter of 1298 embodied a clause prohibiting ships from loading or unloading at Pandon, just east of the town, without the burgesses' prior consent. In the fourteenth century Newcastle would fight a battle against Gateshead, on the south bank of the Tyne, a manor of the Bishop of Durham. The bishops were trying to develop it into a town, having at some point in the second half of the twelfth century granted the residents all liberties that Newcastle burgesses had. But these efforts met with little success, for the settlement remained small and never seems to have obtained royal recognition as a borough. Nonetheless it was a sufficiently significant rival that Newcastle battled over issues such as control of the bridge connecting the two places, and over the Tyne fishery and coal trade. In 1454 Newcastle won an important victory by obtaining full control over that part of the Tyne stretching to the coast.

In the context of a flourishing economy and expanding population in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there was a vogue for founding new towns or trying to develop villages into towns. To succeed, these places needed to obtain official licence for marketplaces (royal grants growing in number over the course of the thirteenth century), to attract tradesmen and merchants to settle, and to capture a share of regional commerce, often in competition with other new foundations in the area. Few of these efforts amounted to anything of more than local importance, and by no means did all of them acquire a size or status that makes us think of them as towns. Either there were too many competitors, or there were longer-established towns which could not be supplanted. Foundations on the coast seem to have fared the best, when able to obtain recognition as ports. Newcastle presents the example of a new town that took on great importance, while neighbouring Tynemouth/North Shields, the example of one that failed.