A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



malmanni or molmen appear in the Royal Pipe Rolls as ' small-men,' and 

 are classed with the drengs. They are found most numerously at Norton,, 

 Sedgefield, and Stockton, but they also occur at Bedburn and Blackwell, but 

 in Boldon Book we find them only at Newton by Boldon. It has been 

 suggested that the prefix ' mal ' has nothing to do with ' small,' but should 

 rather be referred to the Anglo-Saxon ' mal '=tribute.^ In this case it is 

 possible that the preferential terms they received from the bishop may be 

 the reward of efforts made to resist invaders who attacked the bishopric by 

 way of the Tees or Tyne, and both they and the drengs may have originally 

 been a kind of small episcopal standing army. The services paid by the 

 molmen were not the same everywhere, but although their holdings were 

 a little smaller than those of the ordinary villeins (24 acres as compared with 

 30 at Boldon) they paid more in money and less in personal service ; hence, 

 perhaps, their name. 



It is curious that the tenants, e.g. at Norton, who are called malmamit 

 sive Jirmarii in Hatfield's Survey, appear 2>.%Jirmarn only in Boldon Book, and 

 seem to have become blended into the more general heading Jirmani. Cer- 

 tainly in the bailiff's accounts^ the villein or bondus is distinguished from the 

 molman as late as 1338, and after the Black Death the molmen cease to be 

 a class. Then we begin to find in the Halmote Rolls 'land of the malmanni,' 

 'maleland,' or ' mailand,' and finally we are told that in 141 1 a certain 

 Robert Johnson paid a fine of 40J-. to hold ' by custom of the court ' a tenure 

 he had hitherto held as maleland,' and that all the tenants of maleland in 

 Stockton and Norton commuted their special mowing works at the rate of 

 8^. for every acre they held.* The evidence tends to show that the various 

 tenures gradually became merged into the commonest — the holding by 

 custom of court, although the meaningless names lingered on. 



The firmars or firmarii form the remainder of the alien tenants of the 

 village, if, indeed, they can be distinguished from the molmen. They are 

 an alien element, because they seem to have formed no part of the original 

 village community of Durham so far as we can judge from the rents and 

 services they paid. If they were not always identical with the molmen, 

 and perhaps it is unsafe to make the identification absolute, we must place 

 the origin of those who were not molmen at some period between the 

 Norman Conquest and Boldon Book, most probably when the great re- 

 organization took place, whether under William of St. Carileph or Ranulf 

 Flambard. Boldon Book shows us new vills, such as 'Old Thickley, which 

 was made out of the territory of Redworth,' and we come across several vills 

 such as Warden or Morton, where all the tenants are firmars with identical 

 holdings and services. A comparison between the composite rents paid by 

 the villeins of Boldon and the fairly simple dues of the firmars is a strong 

 argument in favour of the later creation of the second tenure. In the Court 

 Rolls we frequently find men taking so many acres of bondland and so many 

 acres of land of the malmanni or land of the exchequer, but as in each case 

 the tenure is ' by doing to the lord and neighbours the things incumbent ^ 



' Cf. Dur. Curs. No. 29, m. \(^d. where we read that three messuages in Durham city were burgage* 

 held by the service of ' land-male,' viz. of paying \d. yearly at the Tolbooth of Durham. 

 ' e.g. Auckland Roll (in Surtees Soc. xxxii), 208. 

 'Dur. Curs. No. 14, fol. 420. * Ibid. fol. 422. 



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