Lady Nicholaa de la Haye (b. before 1169 – d. 1230

When King John visited the cathedral city of Lincoln during the civil war in 1216, a remarkable meeting took place between the king and Lincoln’s castellan, a noblewoman by the name of Lady Nicholaa de la Haye. The meeting left such an impression on the people of Lincoln that it was preserved for posterity in writing, when a set of records was compiled sixty years later from the testimonies of local jurors. On King John’s arrival at Lincoln, Lady Nicholaa, who was then a widow in her fifties or sixties, offered him the castle keys and tendered her resignation as castellan. As Lady Nicholaa explained, ‘she was a woman of great age and had endured many labours and anxieties in the […] castle and was not able to endure such [burdens] any longer’. King John, for his part, had replied ‘sweetly’ to these protestations, but instructed her to keep the castle. This conversation between King John and Lady Nicholaa represented more than a simple exchange of social pleasantries. The king, it seems, appreciated Nicholaa’s talents in holding Lincoln castle for the crown. Further proof of Nicholaa’s high esteem in King John’s eyes came on 18 October 1216, when she was appointed joint sheriff of Lincolnshire, alongside Philip Mark, one of John’s most notorious henchmen, whom  Magna Carta had sought to remove from office. Nicholaa was still sheriff of Lincolnshire in May 1217, when she doggedly led the defence of Lincoln castle against the forces of the French prince Louis during the battle of Lincoln, one of the decisive battles that helped draw the civil war in England to a successful close for those loyal to John’s young son and heir, King Henry III.
The appointment of a woman as a sheriff was highly unusual in an age when women, as members of ‘the weaker sex’, were usually barred from public life. Lady Nicholaa’s appointment as sheriff in Lincolnshire in 1216 owed a great deal both to her inherited lands and connections, and to her strong track record of loyal service to King John. 

Part of the Lincoln Knights Trail.