A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



adjusted and attached. Accordingly we pass from the villeins to consider 

 this penumbra of manorial population, which we shall attempt to decompose 

 into its elements, dealing with them in order. 



Putting aside those tenants whom Boldon Book itself classifies for us, 

 such as the farmers, the cottiers, and the bordars, we are confronted with a 

 long list 1 of persons whose names, holdings, and services are recorded 

 separately, showing that they stood outside the narrow land community, 

 but who seem at first to have no other characteristic in common. Still, an 

 attentive examination of this list will enable us to arrive at some sort of 

 a classification. In the first place a number of these tenants may safely be 

 allotted to one or other of the categories furnished us by Boldon Book itself. 

 Thus, when we read that at Newbottle, John, son of Henry, held one toft and 

 12 acres and rendered ia</., we shall not be far wrong if we describe him 

 as a prosperous cottier, for, as we have just seen, the usual holding of 

 members of this class was a toft and croft and a few acres beside. In like 

 manner we may dispose of the tenure of Robert Blunt at Blackwell, who 

 had a ( parva terra ' and rendered 6</., or of that widow at Whessoe who had 

 one toft and croft who rendered 6d. and did six days' week-work and four 

 boon days. 



The remaining tenants of this sort may be arranged for purposes of 

 discussion in seven classes. In the first place there are the drengs. The 

 discussion of this subject will carry us somewhat far afield, and outside the 

 limits of the vill within which for the moment we have fixed our attention, 

 for it is more common to find a man holding a vill of the bishop in drengage 

 than to find one who is holding in drengage of the bishop in a vill. Still, the 

 second case occurs a number of times and the whole subject maybe examined 

 at this place. 



The institution of drengage has already been the subject of pretty full 

 treatment at Professor Maitland's hands, 3 and those who essay to follow him 

 will generally find that he has reaped the corners of the field and gathered 

 the gleanings of the harvest. Still, the matter cannot be neglected here, and 

 we may even hope to produce a little evidence that did not perhaps serve 

 Professor Maitland's purpose. 8 This tenure, the peculiarity of which in the 

 feudal age was to show attributes at once of the knight-service, serjeanty, and 

 villeinage, is indeed ' older than the lawyer's classification, older than the 

 Norman Conquest.' 4 Professor Maitland has dwelt at length on the 

 similarity between the riding men of Bishop Oswald of Worcester in the 

 tenth century, the radchenistres of Domesday Book, and the drengs of the 

 eleventh and twelfth centuries, 6 and has brought together a good deal of 

 evidence illustrating the social and legal position of the post-Conquest drengs. 8 

 Before the Conquest the term dreng seems to have been used to describe a 

 fighting-man, one whose business in life was warfare ; 7 but what relation it 



iVid. inf. App. No. i. 



i Eng/. Hist. Rev., v. 625 ff. ; Hist. ofEngl. Law, i. 258, 356 note ; Dam. Bk. and Beyond, 308-309. 



8 The whole subject has been treated from a point of view somewhat different from that adopted here, 

 in an article by the present writer in the Amer. Hilt. Rev., be. 670-695, to which the reader has already 

 been referred. 



4 Hist. ofEngl. Law, loc. cit. * Dm. Bk. and Beyond, 304-309. 



6 Engl. Hist. Rev., v. 625 ff. 



7 Toller-Bosworth, Anglo-Sax. Diet., s.v. Dreng, citing ByrhtnotKs Death (A.D. 991) and Layamon's 

 Brut (A.D. 1200-1204). 



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