

BOLDON BOOK 



manor, Adam son of Walter of Stockton, holds a half-carucate for ICM. only. A fair inference 

 from all this is that Walter was the tenant at the time of the survey, that his son succeeded him, 

 increased his holding and compounded for his services, and that the record of the change crept into 

 the text of Boldon Book. To sum up, then, X cannot possibly have been the original survey, but 

 must be regarded as a thirteenth-century copy. The ' terminus ante quem ' is the first year of 

 Bishop Walter's pontificate, 1249, and tne several allusions to Bishop Philip incorporated in the text 

 bar the assumption that the passage in which Bishop Walter is mentioned was simply imported 

 wholesale into the original. But we have means of arriving at a ' terminus post quem ' for X as 

 well. A, as we know, is written in a hand that cannot be later than 1300, but this rough identifi- 

 cation of period may be confirmed and made more accurate by the comparison of the various passages 

 in our texts. These are from the record of Bishop Walter's concession ; I give them in parallel 

 columns on the one hand, under M, the form in which this passage occurs in A, C, and D ; and, on 

 the other, under B, that in which it occurs in the Exchequer MS. : 



M. ' Dominus autem Episcopus concessit B. ' Dominus Antonius Episcopus, concessit 

 Roberto,' etc. Roberto,' etc. 



The interpolation begins, it will be remembered, by an account of the bishop's concession, and 

 this stands at the opening of a fresh paragraph. Bishop Anthony Bek sat at Durham from 1284 

 until 1313,* and the splendour and opulence of his pontificate tended to obscure in men's minds the 

 memory of his predecessors. During and after his time, therefore, the misreading of ' Antonius ' for 

 ' autem ' would be natural enough. Before his time, on the other hand, it would have neither 

 excuse nor explanation, for he was the first bishop of Durham to bear the name of Anthony. For 

 all the mystery of iniquity that worked through the mediaeval copyist, we can scarcely imagine him 

 violating the sense of a passage capriciously to introduce an hitherto unheard-of Bishop Anthony. 

 A, then, would seem to have been written down before Bek's accession in 1284. We have reached 

 the conclusion, then, that X, the common original of A, C, and D, was a copy of Boldon Book made 

 between the years 1249 an< ^ 1284. 



It is plain enough from what has gone before that B was not copied from X, but derives from 

 another original. It must now be shown that X is older than the original of B, which we may 

 call Z, and represents more nearly the primitive text of Boldon Book. There is, indeed, an antecedent 

 probability that this is the case. B is evidently a practical record designed for use in the business 

 of the exchequer, and it would be the aim of its compiler, therefore, to notice and incorporate, as 

 far as possible, the details of the changes that had taken place between Bishop Pudsey's survey and 

 that of Bishop Hatfield, to which, it will be remembered, this document forms an appendix. 8 With 

 this in mind we may turn to the evidence supplied by the text itself. The passage on page 3, 

 'Johannes filius Eustacii . . . constitutes/ contains a reference to Bishop Walter and is, therefore, 

 an interpolation, but it occurs in B only. Geoffrey Hardwick holds Norton-by-Hardwick in A, C, 

 and D ; in B the tenant is given as Adam son of Gilbert of Hardwick. This, naturally, has no 

 probatory force unless our hypothesis be established by other evidence, but in that event the 

 divergence will become significant and the passage is accordingly noted here. The striking case of 

 Whitworth has already come before us in another connexion, but it may not be omitted here. 

 B simply notes that Thomas de Acley holds the vill for the fourth part of a knight's fee, and this, 

 as we know, was by grant of Bishop Philip. A, C, and D, however, retain the record of what 

 was obviously the earlier condition. 'In Whitworth there are sixteen villeins, every one of whom 

 holds one bovate of 20 acres," etc., then follows the note of Thomas's tenure by military service. 

 An equally striking case may be found at Heighington. A, C, and D give in the body of the entry 

 the tenement of the reeve followed by that of Hugh Brunne, who had certain lands during the 

 lifetime of his wife ; finally, quite at the end of the whole entry, occurs this passage : ' Simon 

 hostiarius ibidem tenet terram qua- fuit Utredi cum incrementis quae Dominus Episcopus ei fecit 

 usque ad Ix acras, et reddit pro omnibus i besancium ad Penthecostem.' In B the reeve's holding 

 has dropped out and its place in the record is filled by the introduction of Simon's tenement, but 

 instead of naming Simon's predecessor Utred, the land is simply called ' terra vetus.' Finally, Hugh 

 has disappeared and his place is assumed by Thomas de Pemme, who 'tenet ii bovatas quas fuerunt 

 Hugonis Brun.' Now these changes must have taken place after the composition of Boldon Book 

 in 1183. Simon the doorward seems to have been a person of importance at the close of Bishop 

 Pudsey's pontificate and during that of his successor Bishop Philip. He witnesses Pudsey's charter, 

 and in 1197 appears among the servants of Bishop Hugh who owe fines. 8 Then we find him 

 witnessing a charter which is dated in the monastic rental 1207,* and he is described as having 

 made a clearing in a place called Bereford in a charter of Gilbert son of Meldred, the grandson of 



1 Le Neve, Faiti, iii. 88. * Boldon Book (Surteei Soc.), pref. viii. ; Bishop Hatfield died in 1381. 



1 FnJ., 177 n. ; Pipe R., 8 Rich. I., in BoUm Book (Surteet Soc.), App. x. * FetJ., $5 n. 



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