BOLDON BOOK 



THE record known as Boldon Book affords the elements of a 

 picture of the social and economic conditions of the bishopric of 

 Durham at the close of the twelfth century, which, although it 

 may not be complete, will, as far as it goes, be accurate. The 

 nature and contents of this document have not always been correctly 

 described. It has been an accepted commonplace to say that Boldon Book 

 is the Domesday of the palatinate ever since Sir Henry Ellis printed the 

 record among the appendixes to the official edition of Domesday Book. And 

 yet this saying is far from representing the actual state of the case — 

 would, indeed, that it did so. Boldon Book approaches more nearly the 

 type of a rental or extent than that of a survey ^ in the sense in which the 

 word is used in connexion with Domesday Book, and although it appears to 

 describe itself as a survey, it is in reality no more than a polyptichum designed 

 to meet the administrative needs of a great estate. It is not even what we 

 might under the circumstances have hoped for — a chartulary. The antiquity 

 of the see and the peculiar position of the bishop, which was already passing 

 from landlordship to sovereignty,^ made the preparation of a true chartulary at 

 once difficult and superfluous. The ' patrimonium Sancti Cuthberti ' was 

 already formed and organized, and the traditional record of it preserved in the 

 Durham Chronicle and a few forged charters.^ Moreover, since the great 

 re-adjustment at the close of the eleventh century, by which a convent of 

 monks was introduced into the cathedral church and the endowment of the 

 see divided between them and the bishop * — the appointment, as they would 

 have said across the Channel, of a ' mensa episcopalis ' and a ' mensa capitu- 

 laris' — there was none to bring the bishop's rights seriously into question. 

 The far-off royal government was destined not to molest him for two centuries 

 to come, and then the bishop would have his answer ready, a warrant better 

 than Warenne's rusty sword, and yet consisting essentially of general words 

 which, by exception, would succeed in ousting the king. So the legal side of 

 Boldon Book is scarcely apparent, and its economic side consists of what is 

 rather a report on the conditions of a great estate than the survey of a county. 

 Still it may be fairly assumed that what went on in the bishop's vills was 

 equally going on in those of the prior or the lay barons, and that Boldon Book 

 therefore affords enough material for a number of generalizations with regard 

 to what we may call the Third Estate of the bishopric at the close of the 

 twelfth century. Something may be said as well about the social superstruc- 



1 'Fecit Dominus Hugo Dunolmensis Episcopus in presentia sua et suorum describi omnes rcdditus totius 

 Episcopatus sui assisas et consuetudines, sicut tunc erant ct ante fucrant,' Boldon Book (Surtees Soc), p. i. 

 ' Lapsley, Co. Pal. of Dur. chs. i. ii. v. 



* Symcon of Durham (Rolls Scries), 2 vols. ; L'xbcr Fita Eccla'ta Dundmcns'it (Surtees Soc.) ; and Canon 

 Greenwell's valuable discussion of the subject in Feodaiium Prioratus Dundmeniis (Surtees Soc.) (henceforth 

 FeoJarium), pref. 



♦ Grcenwell, loc. cit. 



259 



