A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



unfree persons, it still affords indirect evidence that personal servitude existed in 

 the bishopric at this time, and continued to exist there at least as late as the 

 middle of the thirteenth century. From the outlying districts of Norham 

 and Bedlington, both locally within the county of Northumberland, we get 

 indications that Bishop Pudsey had been setting his bondmen free. At West 

 Sleckburn, in Bedlingtonshire, Turkill, who had been ' the bishop's man,' 

 renders 1 2 hens ' de acquietatione sua erga Episcopum,' and there are similar 

 cases at Netherton and Cambois. Then from the interpolations in the text of 

 Boldon Book we find that Bishop Walter de Kirkham (1249-1260) ' absolvit 

 Johannem filium Thorns de Bedlyngtona imperpetuum a servitute,' and that 

 in that bishop's time John son of Eustace and Alexander his brother of West 

 Auckland, ' qui fuerunt irretiti de servitute, quieti sunt per patriam.' Still 

 the silence of Boldon Book on the subject must be taken as evidence that the 

 absolutely unfree could neither have been very numerous nor of any great 

 economic importance in the second half of the twelfth century. 



From the rural population, the men who occupied and cultivated the 

 bishop's land, we turn to study the land itself. We shall expect, and we 

 shall not be disappointed, to find it arranged in the familiar categories of 

 arable (including demesne and land in service), meadow, pasture, waste and 

 forest. Further, too, we shall ask about the stock and the improvements, the 

 mills, bakehouses, fisheries, the beasts and the instruments of tillage. All 

 these we shall pass in rapid review, endeavouring rather to emphasize those 

 points at which the Durham vills departed from the usual custom than to 

 give a detailed and methodical account of the whole matter. This course is 

 indicated partly because, as in the case of the rural population, such accounts 

 exist, and partly because the material yielded by Boldon Book is very often 

 meagre and the comparative method is in the present circumstances not 

 admissible. 



To begin then with the arable, we find the usual distinction between 

 * terra dominica ' and ' terra servilis,' although these convenient terms do not 

 actually occur. It appears also that as was general in other parts of England 1 

 the demesne was composed partly of separate closes and partly of intermixed 

 strips in the open-fields. At the recently erected borough of Gateshead the 

 burgesses held three parts of the arable land at a money rent ; ' the fourth part 

 of the arable land with the assarts which the lord bishop caused to be made 

 and the meadows are in the hand of the lord bishop, with the stock of two 

 ploughs.' An even better example comes from Lanchester, where it is noted 

 at the end of the entry, * moreover 5 bovates of villeinage are waste and 

 1 8 acres which used to be of the demesne.' Then if we turn to such an entry 

 as that which occurs at Houghton, ' the demesne of three ploughs and the 

 sheep with the pasture are in the bishop's hand,' we shall see that the demesne 

 consisted of something more than arable land. It included indeed pasture and 

 woodland, stock, and of course buildings of various sorts, but these will be 

 considered in another connexion. 



We must notice next that in many cases the demesne was common to 

 two or three vills, or, to put it more logically, that two or three vills were 

 dependent on a single demesne. This point has already been treated in 

 connexion with the development of the manor, and here it need only be 



1 Ashley, Econon'u Hist., i. 7 ; Vinogradoff, Growth of the Manor, 3^-313, 330-331. 



294 



