A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



lashed to it, and, let us hope under the superintendence of the reeve or 

 constable, was ducked in the village pond, to cool her ardour. This was a 

 punishment akin to the ' branks ' or scold's bridle, and the stocks which can 

 even now be found as venerable relics in the more primitive Durham villages. 

 At Shields the peasantry were not eager to incur fresh expense, and repeated 

 orders to make a thewe were of no avail until the collectors of the vill were 

 commanded to collect sufficient money under a penalty of 6s. 'id} 



The Halmote Rolls do not give one a very favourable picture of life in 

 the mediaeval villages, but they are from one point of view a little better than 

 a Newgate Calendar and only mention the offences as sources of revenue to 

 the lord. The passive heroism that endured the terrible monotony of 

 winter and the ceaseless labour of summer are treated as matters that did not 

 concern the lord. We can only infer the existence among the Durham 

 peasantry of the virtues of family affection and neighbourly kindness, because 

 without such virtues the mediaeval system of agricultural and social life 

 could not have existed. We must remember also that our information is 

 fullest on the very eve of the breakdown of that system, and we know very 

 little of its conditions even in the thirteenth century. The bishops of 

 Durham and their officials tried to combine the old English system of local 

 government with a centralized control that was bound to kill it sooner or 

 later, and the picture given by the Halmote Rolls is that of a dying order of 

 society existing side by side with proclamations and orders from the bishop 

 or prior. For generations it had not entered anyone's head to defy the 

 halmote or to refuse to pay the fines it inflicted, and so the reeve and jury 

 were able to ensure the peace. But individualism grew in the vills, and we 

 find that the halmote had to call in the constable — an episcopal, as opposed 

 to a popular, official — to arrest the body of a man who defied it and refused 

 to pay the fine it inflicted.^ Such a step was equivalent to an abdication of 

 its power by the halmote and it was allowed to decay away into a mere 

 formal land registry, while self-government came to mean the reign of the 

 justice of the peace — in Durham the deputy of the bishop as elsewhere in 

 England of the king. 



The village parson deserves a word in passing, but he will be dealt with 

 more fully in other articles. So far as we can see, the priesthood was recruited 

 from the ranks of the peasantry and shared their pleasures and work. His 

 rectory or vicarage was generally built near his church and he had strips in 

 the town fields which formed his glebe and were tilled on the same system as 

 other men's lands, but we sometimes find that he took other land from the 

 lord to farm," although the practice became more common in the fifteenth 

 century. In most villages there were one or more chaplains who served at 

 the chantry altar in the parish church or in a separate chapel. They were 

 of lower standing than the incumbent and on week-days worked as the other 

 peasants upon their land. From the frequent mention of the chaplain's 

 'cottage' in the later rolls, it is probable that their holdings were not very large. 



The rolls throw some interesting light upon the question of clerical 

 marriage in the Middle Ages. It is not too much to say that the injunctions 

 to clerical celibacy were wholly unregarded. We read of a daughter of i 



' Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 38, 44, 39. ' Ibid. 168. 



• Dur. Curs. No. 16, fol. 232 ; Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 129. 



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