BOLDON BOOK 



co-operation with it, although his land in the open field might be intermixed 

 with theirs. 1 I do not, of course, intend to identify pre-Conquest drengage 

 with the Prankish ' beneficium,' but merely to suggest that in the eighth, 

 ninth, and tenth centuries relations of a strikingly similar nature existed 

 between the owners and occupiers of land on the Continent and in England. 



Now returning to Boldon Book we find that there are twelve vills held 

 in drengage and thirteen others containing drengs, generally only one, although 

 there are two at Great Haughton and eight at West Auckland.* We have 

 argued elsewhere in respect to cornage that that due became a real burden, 

 and that when a cornage-paying tenement or vill passed into the hands of 

 a free tenant he became at once a sort of middleman who collected and 

 turned over to the chief landlord the render that was always due to him, that 

 the mesne lord always owed him no matter into whose hands it might have 

 come. Keeping in mind the position of the early bishops as great immunists, 

 standing on the doubtful border between landlordship and sovereignty, and the 

 special situation of the pre-Conquest drengs, it may be possible, provisionally 

 at least, to extend this reasoning so as to cover all the servile incidents of 

 drengage tenure. Thus if a dreng received an entire vill he would become 

 answerable to the bishop, though scarcely in his own person, for part at least 

 of the services which the villeins used to render their lord. This would 

 constitute a restricted form of gift or loan by which the lord reserved not 

 only his rights of regality but part of his domanial profits as well. Then 

 where the grant consisted only of certain lands in a vill the same system could 

 still be applied, although in either case the special services and special status 

 of the dreng would distinguish him from a mere predial tenant as much as 

 the predial aspect of his tenure set him apart from the more purely military 

 land-borrowers or land-holders of the bishop. Something of this sort is 

 suggested by the texts which we have already considered. The Pache charter 

 shows us the prior's tenant assuming a good many agricultural duties and 

 agreeing to pay a money composition for others ; and yet in common reason 

 we must suppose a fair margin of profit for the tenant himself. Then in 

 Boldon Book we have the case of Sheraton. The vill is divided into two parts ; 

 John holds one of them for three marks ' and is quit of the works and services 

 which used to be performed for the half of that drengage for Crawcrook 

 which he quit-claimed to the bishop.' Thomas holds the other half of the 

 vill, and it is a fair inference that he is answerable for the other half of 

 the drengage. Let us see what is required of him. He renders 30-1-. cornage 

 and half a milch cow and half a castleman and four scot-chalders of malt, 

 meal, and oats respectively. Compare this with the obligations of the Boldon 

 villeins and it will be seen that Thomas is answering to the bishop for certain 



1 See an instructive presentation of this matter in, G. Seeliger, Die tnuak unJ ptRt'ucbe Bedeutung dtr 

 Grundhtrrschaft im frliheren Mittelalter, 27-44. Waltz, Roth, and Brunner, in their treatment of the ' beneficium,' 

 do not develop the aspect of the question which it of importance for our subject, and which Professor Seeliger 

 has well emphasized. 



* The fact that the vilh enumerated in the first list were held in drengage is a fair inference from their 

 services described in Boldon Book, particularly as both that record and Hatfield's Survey explicitly describe two 

 of them Oxenhall and Sheraton as held in drengage. With regard to the second list, Boldon Book is explicit in 

 all cases except West Auckland and Carlton, where we have to supplement its information from Hatfield's Survey. 



I. Plawsworth, Little Usworth, Washington, Little Burdon,Twisell, Oxenhall, West Thickley (Nova villa, 



juKa Thickley), Lutrington, Henknoll, Cornsay, Helley, Sheraton. 



II. Great Haughton, Whessoc, West Auckland, Great Usworth, Herrington, Hutton, Sheraton, Butter- 



wick, Brafferton, Binchester, Urpeth, Carlton, Thornton. 



i 289 37 



