A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



favour, and upon sufferance. 1 Three of these vills are noted in Hatfield's 

 Survey as paying cornage, and might therefore have been assimilated to our 



first class. 8 



In the second place, Boldon Book enumerates fourteen vills which render 

 a money payment only. 8 Since there is no mention either of a tenant or of 

 the services and obligations of the villeins, three possible explanations are 

 open to us. We may believe that the vill was in the hands of an unnamed 

 tenant who would be holding by fee-farm, or that it was being farmed for a 

 term of years either by an individual or by the villata, or body of villeins. I 

 am inclined to think that the first is the true explanation, partly because 

 either of the other arrangements would lack the relative permanence of fee- 

 farm, and partly because they occur and are specifically described in other 

 parts of Boldon Book. But the capriciousness of records of this kind in such 

 matters makes it almost impossible to argue from their silence, or to ascribe 

 much self-consistency to them, and it will be safer therefore to regard these 

 vills simply as held in some sort of farm. 



Finally, there are five vills which, although no tenant is named, are 

 recorded as rendering the fractional part of the service of a knight's fee. 4 Here 

 we must suppose either that there was an unnamed tenant or that the vill was 

 in the bishop's hand ready to be granted out in return for the specified ser- 

 vices, which would then be in reality a valuation. 



It is clear, then, that in essentials the villein community did the same 

 manorial work in all parts of the bishop's estate, although the adjustment 

 and some of the incidents of their renders and services differed with their 

 environment. The most difficult and perhaps the most important of all of 

 these incidents, the exact nature of which now demands our attention, is the 

 render known as cornage. 



In the medieval records, whether national or local, that relate to the 

 four northern counties of England, the term cornage' occurs with some 

 frequency from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. The question of the 

 origin and nature of the institution to which this term applied has been 

 discussed with various degrees of learning and acumen since the time of 

 Littleton, without, unhappily, producing any explanation that has passed 

 unquestioned. The truth is that the documents at our disposal appear to 

 contradict one another, to lack self-consistency. The term cornage would 

 seem to describe now one thing, now another, according to the date of the 

 document or the region from which it emanates, and yet there is evidence 

 of an original and underlying unity which cannot be disregarded. 



Here we must restrict ourselves to the discussion of the Durham evidence, 

 although we may presently indicate some ways in which the general antinomy 



1 Newton-by-Durham, Pelaw, Picktre, Newton-by-Boldon, Hardwick, Grindon, Ketton, Hunwick, 

 Frosterley, Consett, Heley, Migley, Langley, Smallees, Stella. 



2 Whitwell, Herrington, Sheraton. 



8 Chester, School Aycliffe, Old Thickley, Harperley, Medomsley, Edmondsley, Crook, Pokerley, Newsham, 

 Barford, Hulam, Cornhill, Newbiggin, Upsedington (Ladykirk). 

 Ulkill's Biddick, Tillraouth, Heton, Twysell, Duddoe. 



6 Other terms were also employed : ' geldum ' or 'cornagium animalium' in thePife-RoUo/j l Hen. I. (Rec. 

 Com., 1833); 'gablum animalium 'in a chart. otHen.l.,4bbrev.PIac. (Rec. Com., 181 l),66b,67a ; 'noutegeld' 

 in Pipe-Roll for the Cos. ofCumb., Westmorland, and Dur., during the Reigns of Hen. II. , Ric. I., and John (Soc. 

 of Ant. of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1847); ' hornegelde,' Bracion't Note Bk. (1887), No. 1,270; cf. V.C.H. 

 Cumb. i. 314-315. 



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