SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



field in defiance of the steward's order. ^ Elsewhere we learn how men re- 

 fused to sow the outlying ' rigs ' of their holdings/ and it was even necessary 

 to order that when a man took two bondages he should work both equally 

 well.* The fact is that the open-field system was doomed after the depopu- 

 lation of 1349, but Durham, thanks to her wastes, escaped the worst horrors 

 of fourteenth-century inclosures. The Durham inclosures which occurred 

 mainly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were for tillage rather 

 than for pasture. Till those days came the open-field system survived in a 

 curious welter of confusion, and the only clear fact is that the land became 

 less fertile and of continually decreasing value. 



A good example of another kind of difficulty caused by the Black 

 Death is furnished by the three vills of Quarringtonshire, who owed service 

 to the grange at Quarrington, or ' Wheringdon,' as the rolls term it. Accord- 

 ing to Boldon Book these vills of Shadforth, Sherburn, and Cassop worked as 

 Boldon did, but we have bailiffs' rolls for 1350 which prove that they had 

 already commuted their services.* As usual a difficulty arose because the 

 bailiff^ of Quarrington Grange could not obtain hired labour enough for the 

 commutation money. In January, 1355, the bailiff", a certain William de 

 Coupland, was examined as to the nature of the commuted works.^ We 

 learn that each bondager owed four autumn works with his whole family, 

 except the housewife, and at the time of sowing of wheat and oats in each 

 season one day's work with his plough. Each bondager had to reap, bind, 

 and collect into stooks three roods of whatever crop there was, and each 

 cotter had to do three days' work in autumn for himself alone. Each hus- 

 bandman and cotter was to receive per day in autumn one penny only. We 

 are told that the point at issue was the interpretation of the clause ' with his 

 whole family except the housewife,' for, as the roll puts it, ' there might 

 well be as many as five in some households.' If the bailiff^ could make all 

 the members of such a household work or commute, he could manage very 

 well. It is probable that the clause in question had not been construed very 

 strictly in times of prosperity, for even in 1350 the fifty-one bondagers only 

 paid 3 8 J. \d. altogether for the 460 works due in autumn.* 



This works out at about ()d. a family for the four days, and as the rate 

 we are told was \d. per work it is plain that each household was assumed to 

 contain only three working members. As usual the steward's good sense 

 smoothed things over. He got the peasants to admit that they must allow 

 the lord to estimate the cost at which he could procure hired labour to per- 

 form the commuted works, and this cost was to be defrayed by the tenants. 

 Then a day was appointed at which the tenants were to go to Durham to 

 arrange the commutation rate for the six following years. 



It is unfortunate that we know so little how these various commutation 

 schemes ^ fared in after years. Hatfield's Survey owed its existence to the 

 necessity for registering all these alterations or commutations of tenure, and it 



' Dur. Curs. No. 12, fol. 121 ; cf. Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 122. 



' Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 65. ' Ibid. 177. 



* Bp. Hatfield's Surf. (Surtees Soc. xxxii), 229 et seq. ' Dur. Curs. No. 12, fol. 140 1/. 



° B/>. Hatfield's Surf. (Surtees Soc. xxxii), 232. 



' The lost rental of Bishop Beaumont (13 18-33) probably cont-iined the commutation rates before the 

 Black Death, and would be invaluable. It is referred to in HatJieWs Survey, i.e. ' videatur antiquum rentale 

 Ludovici ' (Surtees Soc. xxxii), 51. 



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