A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



V — The Age of Reconstruction 



In Durham as elsewhere, the sixteenth century was a time of recon- 

 struction, but the result was largely due to the play of circumstances rather 

 than the intentional creation of man. We can trace three main factors in the 

 change — Scottish raids, pestilence, and the Reformation. At the end of the 

 fifteenth century the Scots again became restless, and it was probably due 

 to the organizing genius of Henry VII that we find a change made in the 

 tenure of land in Durham. The bishop once more exacts oaths of fealty 

 from his tenants, but there is added the duty to accept the bishop's livery to 

 be under the conduct of the bailiff of the ward to follow the king against 

 the Scots.^ It is certain that the liability was shared by the tenants of other 

 lords, although the prior's Halmote Books do not refer to it. Of course it 

 would cease to mean anything after 1603, but the liability was bound to 

 suggest to the tenants, at least to the copyholders, that they had acquired an 

 additional claim to their tenure. The leaseholders, who had hitherto contented 

 themselves with the customary leniency of the prior and convent, were soon 

 to experience a rude awakening. 



It is impossible in the space at our disposal to go into the quarrel of the 

 chapter and their tenants at any great length. At the time when the king 

 handed over to the new dean and chapter of Durham the lands of the dis- 

 solved prior and convent as the major portion of their endowment, he could 

 only give them as good a title as he received from the prior and convent. 

 Circumstances had made all these lands renewable leaseholds of the peculiar 

 type already explained, and since the tenants were obliged to serve for fifteen 

 days at their own expense, on the borders, as the copyholders of the bishops 

 did, they naturally held that the difference in tenure was largely formal. It 

 is possible that, as the Durham Statutes were only legalized by Queen Mary 

 about 1556, the old system was followed in the meantime, but soon after that 

 date the dean and chapter refused to grant leases of the old type, or recognize 

 any tenant-right, and from this refusal the difficulty arose. 



Most of the old tenants flatly denied the right of the dean and chapter 

 to treat their lands as ordinary leaseholds, and as they preferred to let their 

 old leases run out and defy the chapter to eject them, the -situation became 

 serious. The leaders of the tenants were Roland Seamer and John Robinson 

 of Mid Merrington.^ Naturally the Protestant prebendaries were not popular 

 in Durham, and their unconciliatory attitude was probably largely responsible 

 for the keen enthusiasm with which the men of Durham joined in the Rising 

 of the North in 1569. Elizabeth had no delusions as to the possibility of 

 using military force to compel lasting obedience, and so finding that, despite 

 their misfortunes, the tenants were still obdurate, she referred the whole 

 question of the tenants' rights to the Council of the North. As their decision, 

 which was given in i 577, is easily accessible, the main points alone will be 

 referred to here.* 



' Dur. Curs. No. 19, fol. 140 ; cf. Reg. Pal. Dun. (Rolls Sen), i, 92. 



' It is interesting to note that life tenures lingered in Merrington almost as long as at ' Sheles.' The 

 last life-tenant mentioned fined in 1436 (MS. Prior's Halmote Bks. i, 14.51*'.) ; cf. Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees 

 Soc. Ixxxii), 237. 



' See Hutchinson, Hist, of Dur. ii, 149. A more correct version can be found in Dur. Halmote R. 

 (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 37. 



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