A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



can say is that perhaps in the stress of the Black Death the old distinctions 

 were waived in favour of the nativi, but why a freeman consented to be a 

 mere tenant at will is not clear. 



The personal rights or disabilities of the nativus are much better known 

 to us. His lot in early times could only have been tolerable if shared with a 

 large majority of his neighbours, and the frantic efforts to escape from their 

 bonds made by the surviving nativi of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries 

 are very intelligible. He felt the sting of his lot from his very birth. Were 

 both his parents serfs he could only hope to gain freedom by manumission or 

 flight. The child of a nativus and a freewoman was in law only a nativus and 

 his mother's holding escheated to the lord.^ If a freeman married a nativa, 

 or female serf, he had practically to buy her freedom of the lord, as when 

 Adam Coke of Cleadon paid 20s. to the lord for permission to marry a 

 nativa.^ When the woman was free but the man a nativus the lord only 

 exacted 2s. because his possible loss of help was less.^ Merchet was of course 

 paid as usual when a female serf married in her own station, and an obscure 

 passage in the Prior's Rolls seems to indicate that until merchet had been paid 

 the marriage of a nativa was not valid.' However, when the lord recognized 

 the marriage, the nativa had nothing more to fear. She and her husband 

 could generally obtain a cottage or messuage with land and work, and they 

 never experienced the misfortunes of their class outside the bishopric. Both 

 the bishop and the prior seem to have been considerate landlords till 1350, 

 and we find no cases of selling serfs either as whole families or separately. 

 After 1350 the serfs passed through a half-century of oppression, but that 

 period will be dealt with later. 



In Durham, as elsewhere, the serf had no rights against his lord and could 

 own nothing. However, in practice, especially by the fourteenth century, 

 the lord was always considerate. In the serf's lifetime he was allowed to live 

 in unmolested enjoyment of his possessions, but at his death his goods were 

 valued by the jury, e.g. on 6 December, 1409, the jury of Easington pre- 

 sented that Richard Watson, a nativus of the lord had died on the Thursday 

 before the feast of St. Martin last, possessing the following goods and 

 chattels, viz. : one horse worth 6s., three oxen worth 30J-., one cow worth 6s. Sd., 

 sixteen sheep worth 16s., three pigs worth 3J. And they were ordered to 

 give an account of his household goods and dead stock, concerning which they 

 report later that his household goods were worth 6s. SJ., and that there were 

 likewise three quarters of wheat worth 24J., four quarters of barley worth 24J., 

 seven quarters of peas worth i6s., six quarters of oats worth 15J., four acres 

 of sown wheat worth 26s. 8^., and one plough with its gear worth 3J-. 2d.* 

 A few pages afterwards we find — 



Be it remembered that the goods and chattels of Richard Watson nativus of the lord, 

 now dead, are valued as appears in the court last past at ^^8 ijs. id. From this sum an 

 allocation of 135. ^d. was made to Walter Peirson the Collector this year for the firm of 

 the said Richard at the Martinmas term last past. And an allocation is also made to 

 Margaret, who was the wife of the said Richard and is now tenant of the lord of one 

 messuage and one husbandland which were the said Richard's while he lived, to complete 



' Dur. Curs. No. 12, fol. \7 d- We find from Dur. Curs. No. 12, fol. 90 <^. 91 d.. that the husband was 

 allowed a life interest in his wife's land after her death, but at five times the firm she paid. 



' Dur. Curs. No. 12, fol. 25. ^ Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 126. 



* Dur. Curs. No. 14, fol. 307. 



206 



