A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



feudal institutions. As we have seen, of the 141 vills enumerated, only six 

 were being held of the bishop by military service or alms, five others were 

 valued in feudal terms (fractional parts of a knight's fee), and fourteen others 

 were possibly held in fee-farm 25 out of 141. In order to place this matter 

 in its right relation, we must keep in mind what the compilers of Boldon Book 

 had proposed to themselves. They were making a survey not for a king, but 

 for a landlord ; the document is domanial, not sovereign. Again, there was 

 no question of general taxation, and whatever profitable rights the bishop 

 enjoyed over the baronies of the bishopric are not noticed in the survey. To 

 put a specific case, we look in vain in Boldon Book for the sort of information 

 afforded by the returns in the Testa de Nevill and the Red Book. We have to 

 deal, in short, with such a document as might have been produced had the 

 king in his capacity of landlord commanded an extent of the crown lands. 

 All this applies equally to Hatfield's Survey, with which we may check and 

 supplement the testimony of Boldon Book. For although the later record 

 shows some diversity in the disposition of its material (there is a definite 

 grouping by wards), and, of course, enumerates the new settlements which 

 sprang up between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries, it includes the 

 feudal tenants only as they are holders in, and not of, the episcopal manor. 1 

 This limitation of Boldon Book was observed by Canon Greenwell, who wrote, 

 ' Perhaps the nature of the document would lead us to expect this omission 

 [of the free tenants], for it is not so much an enumeration of all the holders 

 of land under the see as of the services and customs due from the land ; now, 

 as free tenure rendered nothing of that kind, it does not come into considera- 

 tion in such a record as Boldon Book professes to be.' 3 The case is not quite 

 fully stated here, however, for we have seen that Boldon Book actually does 

 enumerate a fair number of free tenants. In the case of any of those fifty-six 

 vills of which the services and renders are not recorded, 8 feudal relations 

 might have existed between the bishop and the tenant, although in point of 

 fact such relations are to be found in less than half of them. 



We may ask ourselves next what we might reasonably expect to find had 

 a survey like Boldon Book been undertaken by one of the bishop's tenants-in- 

 chief in the twelfth century. I cannot see any reason to suppose that such a 

 document would have disclosed conditions more feudal than those which 

 confront us in the episcopal estates. Indeed, we shall presently see evidence 

 that the prior at least was following rather than leading the bishop in the 

 sense of feudalization. 



Let us begin with the general proposition that Bishop Pudsey introduced 

 many changes on his estates with the deliberate policy of normalizing tenures 

 in a feudal sense, of furthering, to put it in another way, the internal feudaliza- 

 tion of the bishopric. We have first the evidence of the monkish chronicler 

 Geoffrey de Coldingham, a contemporary of Bishop Pudsey. The bishop, 

 says Geoffrey, did not observe the old laws in dealing either with his clergy 

 or his barons, but treated them high-handedly, ' ut quorundam haereditates et 



1 e.g., at Houghton, Robert Conyers, let., and Richard de Burnynghill hold the vill of South Biddick, 

 p. 153. A vill held in that way, as a member of a manor, is often described as itself a manor ; thus, at 

 Easington, Walter of Edderacres holds the manor of Edderacres, and Lady Isabella de Claxton the manor of 

 Pespole ; both these are enumerated in the list of free tenants, p. 127. 



3 BolJon Bk. (Surtees Soc.), pref. p. vii. 



1 Vid., sup. pp. 271-2. 



