BOLDON BOOK 



may have borne to the more familiar term thegn does not appear. Hinde 

 thought that the two were the same.^ Spehnan, followed by the editors of 

 Du Cange, suggested a Danish origin, which seems the more probable as 

 there is a cognate Danish word having an appropriate sense, and as the 

 earliest example of the use of the word in England, which the Toller- 

 Bosworth dictionary can cite, is as late as 991.' One phase of Anglo-Saxon 

 drengage must be emphasized. The dreng was by no means a base or 

 agricultural tenant, but rather a person of condition. This is illustrated by 

 a passage in Symeon of Durham's Historia Regum relating to the translation of 

 the body of Bishop Alchmund of Hexham, in the year 1032. The event 

 was naturally one of local importance, and it is to be remarked that the chief 

 figure in the transaction, the director as it were of the whole business, since 

 he was made the object of no less than two visions, is described as a certain 

 dreng, ' quidam Dregno.' Symeon lets us see him, moreover, as a personage 

 in the community, ' eum omnes vicini sui in magno honore habebant.' ^ 



The drengs of Domesday Book, have been sufficiently described by Professor 

 Maitland in the essay already cited. But the Durham records illustrate the 

 survival of this class in a region not included in the Great Survey. An English 

 charter of Bishop Ranulf Flambard (a.d. 1099— i 128) is addressed to all his 

 thegns and drengs of Islandshire and Norhamshire.* Then there is a curious 

 document which, although it has reached us by devious ways and in its 

 present form is certainly post-Conquest, may still be cautiously admitted as 

 casting some light on the subject in hand. This is a memorandum that 

 stood at the head of a Durham gospel book that has now perished, recording 

 the ' consuetudo et lex sancti patris Cuthberti . . . antiquitus instituta.' 

 Before the solemn celebration of the feast of St. Cuthbert, in September, 

 ' omnes Barones, scilicet Teines et Dreinges, aliique probi homines, sub 

 Sancto prsdicto terram tenentes ' assembled at Durham to renew and con- 

 firm the peace of St. Cuthbert.^ The point need not be further laboured ; 

 it is clear enough that up to and at the time of the Conquest the drengs 

 were persons of social consequence. 



' Hodgson, Hist. ofNorthumb., i. pt. i. 253 ff. 



' Spelman, Ghss. Arch., s.v. Drenches ; Du Cange, Gloss., etc., s.v. Drench. 



* Symeon of Durham (Rolls Ser.), ii. 47-50. See Mr. Arnold's editorial note in which he describes the 

 drengs as 'a class of respectable franldins introduced into the country by the Danish conquest.' But I cannot 

 agree with his further statement that their services were civil, not military : cf. Robertson, Historical Essays, 

 Introd. xlvi. 



* FeoJ. 98, note ; also printed in Surtees, Durham, i. App. cxxv. No. I, and by F. Licbermann, in 

 Archiv fur das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Litteratur, Bd. cxi. hft. 3-4.. 



5 //;//. Dunelm. Script. Ires., App. ccccxxx., No. cccxxxii. The gospel book containing this entry is described as 

 an offering of King Athelstane to St. Cuthbert, and was certainly earlier than the Norman Conquest. A record 

 of its donation is preserved in the compilation cilled the Historia de Sancto Cuthbcrto, which dates from the 

 first quarter of the eleventh century (Surtees Soc), p. 149. It passed from Durham into the Cottonian 

 collection and was destroyed, or nearly so, in the fire of Ashburnham House in 173 1. See the report of the 

 commissioners appointed to examine the Cottonian manuscripts after the fire, in Reports from Committees of the 

 House of Commons (reprinted, Lond. 1803), Misc. 1715-1735, i. 471. The manuscript in question was 

 classed as Otho B. IX. The entry cited in the text had been copied by John Rowcll into the register of the 

 Dean and Chapter of Durham, and in 1715 this copy was collated with the original by Mickleton, the Durham 

 antiquary ; see Canon Raine's note in Scriptores Ires., loc. cit. This is not the place to enter into the 

 •Quellcnkritik' of this curious document, but it may be remarked that, whatever the date of the form (and it 

 is manifestly post-Conquest), the assembly described in it cannot be older than a.d. 991, the year of the 

 translation of the body of St. Cuthbert, the event commemorated by the September feast ; see Acta Sanctorum 

 Bollandiana, Scptembris Tomus Secundus, 2 ; Martii Tomus Tertius, 1 26. The existence of the special peace 

 or grith might safely be referred to a somewhat earlier period. 



285 



