SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



of an albanaria, rather than a pure manumission, and, after the conventional 

 salutation, runs : 



Know ye that we have liberated from servitude William Picot, a neif, and have quit- 

 claimed the same to Edmund the reeve of Durham for five mancae (or thirty shillings) which 

 the same Edmund had given us. But on the understanding that the aforesaid William 

 shall give us each year 12 pence at Rogationtide by way of recognition (? of his servitude). 

 Witness, etc. 



If we read the scanty evidence aright the bishop and prior became less willing 

 to grant albanariae after the Black Death, and the conditions became more 

 stringent. For instance, when John Kressh of Easington gained the coveted 

 licence to migrate it was on condition that his employer became surety for 

 payment, and it only held good if successive masters toolc up the pledge.^ 



However, as population increased and harvests were good in the early 

 fourteenth century the lord made no difficulty about exchanging the unwilling 

 serf for an eager free tenant who often commuted the labour services of the 

 holding. The scanty information we possess about the period just anterior to 

 1349 all bears out Thorold Rogers' belief in the general prosperity of the 

 country." Rents were rising, for men were eager to obtain land. Fresh 

 strips of the waste were taken into the common fields, and in some places, as 

 at Darlington, the very demesne lands were cut up into fresh bondage 

 holdings.' Elsewhere, as at Boldon, the villein whose sons and brothers could 

 not obtain separate farms rented a share of the demesne and thus found them 

 employment.* Even the ravages of the Scots ceased for a time about 1328, 

 and Scotland attracted the northerners in turn by the attractions it offered for 

 plunder. Neville's Cross in 1346 ended the last serious ravaging of Durham 

 by the Scots for many years. It seemed as though serfdom and labour-rents 

 would disappear from purely economic causes, as a freeman eagerly helped 

 the serf to escape that he might have his land at a money rent.° Everywhere 

 was prosperity, and on the first page of the mutilated Halmote Book of 

 Bishop Thomas de Hatfield we see his steward reckoning up the increase of 

 rents for the past term.* We are told in the Prior's Rolls that before 1349 

 every holding had a separate tenant,'' and we know that none were unoccupied. 

 But in the summer of 1349 the blast of the Black Death swept across the 

 bishopric and left desolation and poverty behind. 



Ill — The Black Death 



In the Halmote Rolls the Black Death is almost invariably referred to 

 as the prima pestilencia. It was the first of the six great epidemics of the 

 Middle Ages, and is said to have originated in the centre of China about 

 1333. It reached Europe along the great caravan routes, and first appeared 

 in England at Weymouth on i August, 1348. Its progress was heralded by 

 stories of horrors, which made men easier victims by exciting their fears. 

 Not content with describing the dark purple patches that appeared on the 

 skin of those attacked, men told how everywhere its approach was 



' Dur. Curs. No. 1 2, fol. 23 I d". * Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages, i, 2 19. 



' Bp. Hatfield's Surv. (Surtees Soc. xxxii), 3 ; these were doubtless let at a definite money rent from 

 the first. 



' B/>. Hatfield's Surv. (Surtees Soc. xxxii). ' Dur. Curs. No. 12, fol. 3. 



* Ibid. No. 12, fol. I. ' Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 121. 



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