A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



not actually free, still formed no part of the villein community, and paid rent 

 instead of rendering services. Under these circumstances, with an abundance 

 of waste land and a population more readily mobilised than the ordinary 

 villein class, the rapid growth of new vills, which naturally retained a 

 connexion with the parent settlement, is readily accounted for. 



Lanchester Group in the Halmote Rolls : Benfieldside, Billingside, 

 Butsfield, Satley, Broomshields, Kyo, Pontop, Broom-with-Flass, Roughside, 

 Rowley, Lanchester. 



Vills in Boldon Book : Lanchester. 



Lanchester, like Wolsingham and Stanhope, was a forest vill, and the 

 same opportunity for growth would exist here as there. These new places 

 are duly recorded in Hatfield's Survey. 



Bedlington Group in Halmote Rolls : Bedlington, East Sleckburn, West 

 Sleckburn, Cambois. 



Vills in the Boldon Book : Bedlington, West Sleckburn, Netherton, 

 Choppington, Cambois, East Sleckburn. 



The region known as Bedlingtonshire is locally situated within the 

 county of Northumberland. It came to the see, like Sadberge, en bloc and 

 by purchase, and seems as early as 901 to have had a certain organization. 1 



From all this we shall be safe to conclude that from a pretty early time 

 the bishop's vills had for administrative and possibly judicial purposes been 

 arranged in groups which a later age had no difficulty in recognizing as 

 manors. What went on within these groups or how far they entered into the 

 public law relations of the bishopric are questions which it is easier to put 

 than to answer. The difficulty is that we are dealing with a single great 

 estate, the lord of which is also ' in loco regis ' in the county in which it lies. 

 It is hard to be sure, then, whether in any doubtful case the bishop is 

 exercising lordship or sovereignty, and one is fain to exclaim with the per- 

 plexed thirteenth-century reporter whom this double status confounded, 

 ' Quo teneam vultus mutantem Protea nodo.' * Unhappily we cannot tell 

 how the bishop dealt with other people's manors, whether when a tax was 

 raised it was levied on the manors or on the vills composing them, or in 

 what relation the manorial courts stood to the palatine judiciary. General 

 taxation in the bishopric was irregular, extraordinary, and probably of late 

 introduction, 3 and the late and meagre judicial records which we command 

 afford no illustration of the second point. The earliest sheriffs account is of 

 the fourteenth century, and, as we have seen, the Halmote Rolls do not begin 

 until the same period. All we can say then is that for financial purposes 

 the bishop dealt with his own estates on the basis of vills, not of manors. 

 The inference therefore remains that manorial organization existed solely for 

 purposes of local administration, whether agricultural or judicial. In these 

 circumstances it may be assumed to have come into existence as early or as 

 late as the like organization of the rest of the kingdom. The name, of 



1 Emit etiam idem cpiscopus (sc. Cuthardus) de pecunia sancti Cuthberti villam quae vocatur Bedlingtun 

 cum suis appendiciis, Nedertun, Grubba, Twisle, Cebbingtun, Sliceburne, Commer (Symeon of Durham (Rolls Ser.), 

 i. 208). On the identification of these names see the same work in Mr. Hodgson Hinde's ed. of Symeon (Surteej 

 Soc.), 1868, p. 147. 



8 Rot. Cur. Reg. 7-8 Joh. No. 36, m. 13-, printed in Albrev. Plot. (Rec. Com.), 94, and in full in 

 Lapsley, Co. Pal. of Dur. 313-31 4. The quotation b of course from Horace. 



* Lapsley, op. tit., 116-120, 271-275. 



268 



