A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



The exterior of the hovel was no more inviting than the interior. At 

 the very door stood the ' mixen,' a collection of all the refuse of the family, 

 and, after rain, streams of filthy liquid flowed down to the little brook that 

 often ran through the village. They might fertilize the meadow through 

 which they passed, but they would certainly pollute the source whence the 

 inhabitants drew their water supply, with the natural result of disease or 

 sickness. Close by the house, if not leaning against it, would be the various 

 outbuildings, such as barns, stables, piggeries, &c., in the case of a more 

 important tenant. The buildings stood in the centre of a kind of yard or 

 garden called a toft. After the Black Death, attempts were made to force the 

 tenant to build a wall or fence about his toft so as to prevent straying animals 

 from eating up his cabbages or herbs. ^ Sometimes close at hand, at other 

 times a little distance away, would be a croft or small inclosure into which 

 the peasant might turn his animals, the presence of which would fertilize it 

 for a crop of hay or perhaps of grain. Tofts and crofts might differ in 

 detail and be larger in the case of an outlying tenement, but the use made of 

 them was similar, except perhaps when a more enterprising tenant paid for 

 permission to keep a pigeon-cote and maddened his neighbours by the sight 

 of their crops being devoured for his benefit.^ 



In dealing with the position of the peasant and his transition from the 

 status of one who paid in kind and in person to that of one who was a copy- 

 holder or renewable leaseholder, it is superfluous to discuss whether all the 

 tenants were originally pure serfs (or nativi, as the rolls call them). It is 

 enough to say that in the thirteenth century there were already two distinct 

 classes of men who held by servile tenure. The first were said to hold ' at 

 the will of the lord because a nativus,' the second held ' for the term of their 

 life.' The former for the most part were unquestionably of servile birth and 

 will be dealt with later ; the latter may have been largely of servile descent 

 though themselves personally free, or they may represent the original free- 

 men who preserved their freedom from the earliest times, but took land 

 from the bishop or prior on servile terms. Boldon Book is too vague to 

 help us to determine whether all who held by villein tenure (that is, formed 

 part of the original village community) were personally unfree, but Hatfield's 

 Survey two hundred years later is quite explicit upon the point. It states 

 by implication that all tenants not definitely called nativus are personally 

 free. 



These personally free tenants who held for life had acquired a legal 

 estate in their holding by the thirteenth century, but this estate was con- 

 ditional upon their doing the accustomed services,' or paying an equivalent, 

 and upon their working the land in a sufficient manner.* For example, at 

 Billingham in 1296, we find that Agnes, the widow of Roger Staf, was 

 allowed to take her husband's place upon his death by paying the usual fine,^ 

 but had she not tilled it carefully she would have experienced the fate of 

 William the Miller, who was declared incompetent to hold his land because 

 he had allowed one of his buildings to be destroyed by fire and the rest to 

 fall into ruins.^ Alan, son of Peter of Fulwell, on the contrary, paid all the 

 lord's dues and so in his childless old age he was allowed to bargain with a 



' Dur. Halmole R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 38, 92, &c. ' MS. Prior's Halmote Book, ii, fol. 61. 



' Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 10. * Ibid. 9. ' Ibid. i. * Ibid. 12. 



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