SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



we may assume that the land Hes within the town fields, although probably 

 in the exterior ' flatts ' taken in from the waste. ^ It is tempting to suggest 

 that the firmars were the personally free and the villeins and cotters the 

 personally unfree tenants in Pudsey's time, but the evidence is too scanty to 

 make this more than a possible solution. Certainly where we find firmars 

 and villeins in the same vill the services and holdings differ rather in quantity 

 than quality, except in so far as the villein services by their complexity point 

 to an earlier form of tenure. 



If there seem to be a connexion between the molmen and the firmars 

 there is probably a closer one between the tenentes scaccarii^ or chekermen, 

 and the firmars. There is actually an entry ^ in the Halmote Books under 

 Blackwell in 1468 referring to a lease of 'two oxgangs of maland otherwise 

 called Exchequer-land.' Boldon Book tells us that there were five firmars at 

 Blackwell holding four bovates, who rendered and did services as the firmars 

 of Darlington. However, we are told that the latter did no works, but paid 

 a firm jj. for each bovate as the villeins did. Hatfield's Survey, borne out by 

 Langley's Survey thirty years afterwards, tells us that the firmars or molmen 

 of Darlington and Blackwell had become tenentes scaccariihy 1380, i.e. tenants 

 who paid a money rent only to the treasury.* What happened at Darlington 

 or Blackwell is typical of the gradual commutation of tenures in the 

 bishopric. As population increased fresh land was taken in from the waste. 

 At first this land was given to freemen for life, partly for a money rent, 

 partly for services. In some places, as at Blackwell and Darlington, these 

 services were wholly commuted, and there would be a tendency on the part 

 of both lord and tenant to prefer a money rent, especially as services were 

 not needed by the lord and had become attached to the land rather than to 

 the person of the tenant.* At other places, such as Norton and Stockton, 

 we find in Bishop Hatfield's Survey distinct classes of malmanni she Jirmarii, 

 and terrae scaccarii, but the latter are generally small and described in 

 language which makes it clear that they are but recently won from the 

 waste,^ while in the case of the former we are distinctly told the prices at 

 which the various services had been commuted. Perhaps at first, cheker- 

 men had formed a distinct class from the firmars and molmen, but it is plain 

 that by 1380, perhaps even before the Black Death, terra scaccarii or cheker- 

 land described the land for which money rather than services was rendered. 

 That the chekermen were in a more favoured position than the ordinary 

 villeins is clear from the fact that they only paid one measure in sixteen ° to 

 the mill at which they ground their wheat compared with the one in 

 thirteen paid by the villeins. Light as this was in comparison the chekermen 



' Cf. Bp. Hatfield's Surv. (Surtees Soc. xxxii), 89. 'The jurors say that the parson of Gateshead holds in 

 different placet of the field there, xiv acres of land, which they believe to be the land of the exchequer.' 



•Dur. Curs. No. 16, fol. 178 a'. 



' Hatfield's Survey and Langley's Survey each contains a clause stating that the tenentes scaccarii are 

 jointly liable for the ' operationes ' of the four original ' cottages ' at Darlington, due to the mill and at 

 harvest, until the ' operationes ' could be attached to the proper cottages. The meaning of this is clear when 

 we remember that the original ' firmar-holdings ' had been swamped by the fresh land taken in from the 

 waste ; Bp. Hatfield's Surv. (Surtees Soc. xxxii), 5-6, enumerates about thirty tenentes scaccarii, some of whom 

 have holdings described as ' captum de vasto Domini.' 



* Ibid. 



''Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 7, says : ' And for the three acres and a half of new land he shall 

 pay the firm to the Treasury.' 



* Dur. Curs. No. 12, fol. 1 29, but fol. 82 d. seems to make the rate one in twenty-four. 



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