SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



regard of danger, not to say comfort, and we hear of one peasant of Billingham 

 who made fish-oil in his dwelHng till even his hardened neighbours complained.^ 



The fifteenth century was one of constant alarm as to possible invasions 

 by the Scots. Commissions of array were frequent,** and orders to keep the 

 war beacons ready for use^ proved how real the alarm was to men of that day. 

 At last in the middle of the century occurred the Wars of the Roses, and the 

 Palatinate fared ill at times, as one of its bishops, Lawrence Booth, was a keen 

 Lancastrian and had a greedy neighbour in the great Yorkist house of Neville. 

 The bishop fell very low indeed. Booth saw his temporalities seized by 

 Edward IV in 1464.* We find that his predecessor, Robert de Neville, had 

 imitated his great relations by enrolling retainers in 1439 despite the royal 

 commands against the practice,^ and Booth himself, according to the Halmote 

 Books, tried to strengthen himself by exacting oaths of homage and fealty 

 against all men except the king when he regained his possessions. ° 



However all these precautions were useless. The bishop steadily grew 

 weaker in the fifteenth century, and collapsed entirely before the Tudors. 

 So far from being the chief man of the North he could not even guarantee 

 protection to his clients. As early as 1446 the prior and convent had come 

 to look upon the bishop as a broken reed, and so they hired Sir Thomas 

 Neville ' to maintain and protect ourselves and our tenants.' ^ The Durham 

 Account Rolls of this period are full of instances of payment for the use of 

 influence, and we see the king and the great men unblushingly providing for 

 their dependants at the prior's expense. 



Among the lower classes misery and vice were rampant. The free 

 labourers were especially vicious, and according to the Chancery Rolls 

 responsible for many crimes of violence. A disquieting feature of the time 

 is that the most barbarous crimes committed by them were pardoned by the 

 bishop on the intercession of the Nevilles or other great men,* and we can 

 believe that in each case one more ruffian was added to the already promising 

 band of the Neville retainers. We have already referred to the local bully 

 who dispossessed his neighbours of their land, but an even more striking proof of 

 the utter disorganization of the Palatinate is afforded by instances where men 

 kidnapped their neighbours and sold them as prisoners of war to the Scots 

 that they might share the ransom.® These things were the Nemesis of our 

 predatory excursions into Scotland and France in the thirteenth and especially 

 in the fourteenth century. Every parish in Durham had been called upon 

 at some time or other to furnish its quota to the conquering armies,^" and after 

 many days it received back a fresh instalment of ruffians inured to lawlessness 

 and plunder, and more ready to join the bands of the great lords than to till 

 the soil. Nothing is more striking in the rolls than the sudden appearance 

 of crimes against the person when the failure of Edward III in France sent 

 back discharged soldiers." Before the effects of the Black Death had worn off 

 these new disturbances arose and pestilence and war helped on the work of ruin. 



' Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 39. 



' Dur. Curs. No. 35, m. 15 </. 31; ibid. No. 36, m. 14, and passim. 



' Ibid. No. 36, m. 13. " Ibid. No. 16, fol. 108 (227). 



' Ibid. No. 37, m. I 2 (/. ; ibid. No. 43, m. 2, and ibid. No. 46, m. 13. 



« Ibid. No. 16, fol. 187 (385). ' Dur. Acct. R. (Surtees Soc. ciii), 631. 



' Dur. Curs. No. 36, mm. 8, 9, 14, &c. ' Ibid. No. 33, m. 32. 



'" Reg. Pal. Dun. (Rolls Ser.), i, 16. ^^ Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 153, 154, ind passim. 



229 



