A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



it is now, at a time when for many months in the year the mass of the people 

 had to eat salted meat or else go without meat at all, and when all the world 

 was obliged to eat salt fish for six weeks in the spring. In England salt was 

 produced only by solar evaporation, but a better quality could be imported 

 from the south-west coast of France. 1 Although the English product was 

 generally restricted to the southern and western counties, 2 the fact that in 

 1211 salt was sent from Durham to Ireland along with such unmistakably 

 local products as salmon and iron 3 would indicate that it must have been made 

 in the north as well. Still salt had to be imported into the bishopric, for in 

 Bishop Pudsey's charter to Wearmouth it is provided that all merchandise 

 brought by sea must be landed, except salt and herrings, which may be sold 

 on board.* Three times a year the bishop's tenants at Darlington were 

 obliged to cart wine, salt, and herrings. 



The origin and development of the English municipalities is one of the 

 most intricate and troublesome questions with which scholars have had to 

 deal. It is necessary to determine first the elements of the institutions and 

 their environment, and then to ascertain what forces were acting on those 

 elements to produce the changes and combinations which followed. This 

 study is peculiarly one that requires such a comparative method as the condi- 

 tions of the present work forbid. It is impossible to isolate the boroughs of 

 the bishopric and treat them as local phenomena. Again, in dealing with 

 the question of origins we must turn to the period before the Conquest, and 

 study it either in the light of the Anglo-Saxon documents or by the reflected 

 illumination of Domesday Book. But for Durham we have neither Anglo- 

 Saxon documents nor Domesday Book. 6 Boldon Book, on the other hand, 

 notifies us of the existence of five boroughs, and we are confronted with the 

 problem of accounting for their origin and trying to form some idea of their con- 

 dition in the year 1183. Such a study under such conditions can only produce 

 results that are merely provisional, or at best incomplete. It must none the 

 less be undertaken, and we shall naturally begin with the city of Durham, the 

 centre of the civil as well as of the ecclesiastical administration of the county. 



Boldon Book affords us but little information with regard to Durham. The 

 city, 8 we are told, is at farm, and renders 60 marks. But some further light is 

 forthcoming from an unpromising quarter, namely, the charters in the feodary 

 of the prior and convent. From this source we learn that the monks had a 

 little borough in a suburb known as Elvet, and divided from Durham only 

 by the course of the river Wear, which was bridged at that point. The land 

 had been granted or restored to the convent by Bishop Ranulf, 7 and a borough 

 community, an offshoot no doubt of the larger town, seems to have grown up 

 there before the accession of Bishop Pudsey. 8 He rebuilt the bridge which 



1 Rogers, op. cit., 95-97. a Rogers, op. eit., 95-97 ; Ashley, of. at., i. 37. 



* Pipe R. 13 John, in Boldon Bk. (Surtees Soc.), App. p. xviii. 



* Boldon Bk. (Surtees Soc.), App. No. iv. 6 Lapsley, County Palatine, pp. 25-27, 329. 



Durham is distinguished from the other boroughs in Boldon Bk. by the use of the word ' civitas,' which 

 was technically restricted to the seat of a bishop or a county town. Cf. Maitland, Dom. Bk. and Beyond, 

 '83 n - 7 Feed., 191-192 nn. 



* This appears from a fourteenth-century document of an historical nature compiled from much older 

 materials ; here is the passage : ' Et si quare vocatur Vetus Burgus, respondeatur quod sic dicitur ad duracionem 

 burgi erecti in Elvethalghe tempore Hugonis Episcopi, qui in cartis et aliis munimentis vocatur Novus Burgus, 

 per Hugonem Episcopum constructum.' Feod. 194-195^ This is corroborated by a passage from the 

 Historia Ecclesiastica to the effect that in 1141 William Cumin and his followers 'partem quoque burgi qua 

 ad monachorum jus pertinebat igni tradiderunt.' Symeon of Durham (Rolls Ser.), i. 159. 



306 



