BOLDON BOOK 



one thing, the institution that was occasionally called a manor had nothing to 

 do with the bishop's financial administration. To what extent may we regard 

 it as having served administrative and judicial ends ? 



We have suggested that in the fourteenth century and later the halmote 

 groups in Durham lacked the individuality of the contemporary manor 

 owing to a system of judicial administration which regarded them all as 

 forming part of a single great estate and subject to a single tribunal which, 

 although presided over by a single officer and constituted under a single 

 authority, was for convenience sake held in various places. Now owing to 

 very different reasons something of the same sort may have been true at a 

 much earlier period. The tradition of the formation of the patrimonium of 

 St. Cuthbert is preserved in the eleventh-century compilation known as the 

 Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, and the twelfth-century chronicle that goes by 

 the name of Symeon of Durham. Although we must make a large allowance 

 for the bias of these documents, and the fact that they contain only the reflection 

 of vanished grants or instruments, we may still draw from them the main lines 

 of the development. The franchise of the see that was to be Durham began in 

 grants of land in what are now Northumberland and York. The bishop's 

 authority extended itself over the intervening region between Tyne and Tees 

 as forming part of his diocese. To this authority was added, either by 

 prescription or direct grant, some immunity (sake and soke) in the same 

 region. This political power (quite independent of any proprietary right 

 growing out of landlordship) seems at first to have been disregarded by the 

 Danish invaders, and then as they settled and assumed Christianity to have 

 been admitted and even perhaps extended. 1 Meanwhile the bishops seem to 

 have been extending their proprietary rights in the region in question by 

 purchase, perhaps by grant, and further by some form of internal coloniza- 

 tion. We get only indirect notice of this last and most important method, 

 but it may fairly be inferred from certain passages in the Historia Ecclesia? 

 and the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto. Bishop Egred gave to the see Gainford 

 and its appurtenances from Tees to Wear, * quarum ipse conditor fuerat,' 

 says Symeon : * * et . . . sedificavit duas villas . . . et dedit eas,' says the 

 Historia.* 



The development of the political side of the franchise has been traced 

 elsewhere/ One thing is clear, at the time of the Norman Conquest and 

 probably much earlier the bishops were holding a court, a single court, in 

 which all their judicial business was transacted and which did not begin to 

 develop and subdivide until the second half of the twelfth century. Such a 

 tribunal would have included all those subjected to the bishop's jurisdiction 

 whether for tenurial or political reasons ; but until the palatine judiciary 

 began to develop upon the pattern of the royal judiciary this distinction 

 would naturally not be taken into account. 



1 So much we may gather from the obviously legendary transactions ascribed to the Danish Guthred 

 and King Alfred, and from the striking passages in the Hist, de S. Cuth. 'Nam Ethred tupradictui 

 abbas emit a prxfato rege Guthred, et a Danorum ezercitu, qui sibi sub eo terram diviserant, has villas 

 et eas Sancto Cuthberto contulit.' ' Eodem tempore Cuthardus, cpiscopus fidclis, emit de pecunia sancti 

 Cuthberti villam quac vocatur Ceddesfeld, et quicquid ad earn pertinet, praeter quod tenebant tres homines, 

 Aculf, Ethelbriht, Frithlaf. Super hoc tamen habuit cpiscopus sacam et socnam.' Symeon of Durham (Rolls 

 Scr.), i. 107, 208 



1 Ibid. i. 53. Ibid. aoi. 



* Lapslcy, Co. Pal. ch. r. 



263 



