BOLDON BOOK 



Durham, the castle of Norham, the sea-port at Wearmouth, the high-road at 

 Darlington, and the neighbourhood of a great town at Gateshead which we 

 have described as practically a suburb of Newcastle. 



The question of the introduction of Continental feudalism into England 

 is at best a difficult and thorny one. Even when we have Domesday Book to 

 work from, much remains obscure and indeterminable. The question 

 immediately at issue is one of form rather than of substance, since there is no 

 doubt that many elements of feudalism existed in England before the Norman 

 Conquest. But we must still ask ourselves how the system of jurisdiction 

 and personal relations, and the mode of land tenure which we call feudal, 

 fastened itself and its terminology upon English soil. Under the influence of 

 Germanism and the evolutionary ideas of Freeman and his followers, it used 

 confidently to be taught that the process was one of slow and natural growth, 

 a gradual passage from one form to another and cognate one, until William 

 Rufus, prompted by Ranulf Flambard, discovered that an insistence upon 

 the logic of feudal forms could be made a source of revenue, and rigorously 

 applied that logic throughout his kingdom. Recently there has been a 

 reaction against this ' anti-cataclysmic ' doctrine, which tended to reduce the 

 dynamic action of the Conquest and the Conqueror's administration to 

 insignificance, if not altogether to eliminate it. Mr. Round, in his brilliant 

 essay on the Introduction of Knight Service into England, 1 has argued that 

 the Conqueror stamped every allotment of land to a tenant-in-chief with the 

 feudal form by burdening it at the time of the grant with a fixed amount of 

 knight-service, regardless of what subinfeudation might or might not sub- 

 sequently be made by the donor. On this hypothesis feudalism, or rather 

 feudal forms, would have grown in England from the top downward, not 

 from the bottom upward. With this introduction we turn to the question of 

 the feudalization of the bishopric of Durham. 



In the year 1071 the bishopric was in the king's hands and he proceeded, 

 in co-operation no doubt with Lanfranc, to fill it up with a certain Walcher, 

 a secular priest and a Lorrainer by birth. 2 To him the king confided the 

 temporal government of the county of Northumberland on the deposition 

 of earl Waltheof in 1077.* This duty the bishop discharged through the 

 agency of his nephew Gilbert, like himself, of course, of foreign birth. But in 

 the general administration of the bishopric and the county the bishop relied 

 on a council, two members of which are closely connected with the events 

 which we have to follow.* Both were Englishmen ; the one, Leobwine, was 

 the bishop's chaplain and had been his favourite until he was displaced by the 



1 Round, feudal England, 225-317. 



* The events that produced the vacancy are of importance as showing that the king's rights over Durham 

 were practically those of a conqueror. Egelwine, the English bishop, was deposed the year after the harrying 

 of the north, ostensibly for having deserted the see, but really for his share in the movement of the previous 

 year ; see Symeon of Durham (Rolls Ser.) i. 105 ; jlnglo-Saxon Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i. 342-343, 346-347 ; cf. 

 Hunt and Stephens, Hist, of the Engl. Church, ii. ch. 3. 



8 The events of Walcher's pontificate and his murder are recorded in Florence of Worcester, ii. 13-16 ; this 

 account is mostly reproduced in Symeon of Durham (Rolls Ser.), i. 1 16-1 18 and ii. 208-21 1, but Symeon adds 

 certain details of importance. The jfng/o-Saxon Chron. dismisses the affair in a few words, i. 351, and William 

 of Malmcsbury, Gist. Pont., does no more than condense Florence. With regard to Walcher's temporal position, 

 it is important to notice in the first place that the king had built the castle of Durham (1072) ' to protect the 

 bishop and his men against invasion,' and in the second place that Waltheof (who was executed for 

 his supposed share in the Norwich Bride- Ale) was appointed as the ' legitimate ' earl, and was on terms of 

 great intimacy with the bishop. Cf. Ramsay, Foundations of England, ii. 95, 103106, 118-119. 



* Lapsley, Co. Pal. of Dur., ch. iv. 



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