BOLDON BOOK 



tribunals which we are accustomed to think of as manorial courts, but it is 

 very noticeable that the word * manor' does not occur in them until the Middle 

 Ages are past. They begin normally with the formula ' Pleas of the halmote 

 of A, held at such a place on such a day.' All the halmotes of the bishopric 

 were held by the bishop's steward, either in person or by deputy, 1 who for 

 this purpose made a circuit, called the ' turnus halmotorum,' three times a 

 year. The court was ordinarily held at a certain vill about which a number 

 of others were grouped. This arrangement is extremely important for our 

 purposes, and will presently be considered in greater detail when we deal with 

 the matter in its economic aspect. At present it should be remarked that for 

 judicial purposes the arrangement was very elastic. Thus in the pontificate 

 of Bishop Hatfield (13451381) there are three instances of the halmote of 

 Sadberge being held at Stockton. 1 This is particularly striking, for Sadberge 

 had, as we shall presently see, a greater unity than any other subdivision of 

 the episcopal estates. Then in Bishop Skirlaw's time (13881405), the court 

 of the Middleham group was held sometimes at Middleham and sometimes at 

 Sedgefield, another member of the same group. 1 In the eleventh year of the 

 same pontificate the halmote for four vills belonging to the Easington group 

 was taken at Sadberge.* Twice in the same pontificate Durham, usually 

 grouped with Chester, was taken at the court held at Easington.' These 

 appear to be the only cases of such redistribution in the fourteenth century, 

 but there are numerous instances of it in the records of the fifteenth and later 

 centuries. In the fifteenth century, indeed, there is a striking case of a single 

 court being held for all the bishop's vills.' Finally, the records of all these 

 transactions were returned into the bishop's chancery, where they were 

 engrossed and became part of the official records of the whole palatinate. 

 Now the obvious inference from all this would be that the bishops were 

 dealing with their vills as members of one vast manorial estate, or let us say 

 rather of a great franchise which was 5 manorial in so far as its proprietor 

 exercised rights of landlordship over certain parts of it. But no sharp line, it 

 would seem, was drawn between the exercise of these rights and those of a 

 political and administrative character in virtue of which the bishop enjoyed 

 his regality. But things can not always have been in this condition. Several 

 considerations enter into the account, and we must try to discover at what 

 time and under what circumstances the bishop became the landlord of the 

 vills in question, whether there was not some economic reason for their 

 arrangement in the way we have seen, and how they were administered before 

 the development of the complicated palatine judiciary. 



Before dealing with these questions we must follow the fortunes of the 

 word 'manor' in connexion with the vills of the bishopric. In the survey 

 made by Bishop Hatfield at the close of the fourteenth century, 7 we find that 

 vills are grouped not in manors but in wards, a term which commonly 

 answers to the hundreds and wapentakes of other counties. 8 Still within 



1 Lapsley, Co. Pal. ofDur. 78 ; Dur. Cursiton Rec. No. 42, m. I. Rec. Off. 



1 Ibid. No. 12, fols. 121, I29d, i82d. Ibid. No. I3,fol$. I4d, I24d. 



Ibid. fol. 2gid. * Ibid. No. 13, fols. 354, 396. 



Ibid. No. 16, fol. 252. ' HatfitU Sure. (Surtees Soc.), 1857. 



8 In the general receiver*! roll of Bishop Fordham (who succeeded Hatfield) the onus of every ward is 

 given followed by the quota of the vills comprised in the ward, the manorial arrangement appearing only from 

 the order in which the vills are enumerated. Ibid. 260-275. 



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