A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



profits that the villeins used to render. But there is a margin of profit for 

 Thomas. His tenants must, we are told, perform certain specified works for 

 the bishop which fall far short of what he was getting at Boldon. We must 

 not, of course, lay too much stress on evidence of this sort, which marks at 

 best a survival, but we may still find it significant in helping us to frame a 

 consistent notion of what this relation might have been in its prime. A little 

 more help may be forthcoming if we turn our eyes to the Continent again and 

 recall some of the attributes of an extensive class which in Germany was 

 embarking on a career of successful growth just as the English drengs were 

 declining and disappearing. The ' ministeriales ' or ' Dienstmannen ' of the 

 German kingdom may be defined by a paradox if we call them unfree 

 knights. Their history begins in personal servitude and ends in assimilation 

 to the great order of knighthood.^ Their status on the one hand is marked 

 by the legal proverb ' Dienstmann ist nicht Eigen.' Yet in the time of their 

 development in the eleventh and twelfth centuries we find them holding 

 allodial land, owning serfs,^ and even exhibiting a certain feudal capacity. 

 Their great advantage lay in the character of the services with which they 

 were especially charged, suit of court, namely, and fighting. For these 

 purposes the German lords found that unfree persons were at once more 

 manageable and cheaper, and were willing therefore to grant them many 

 privileges. But these particular services have a distinction of their own, and 

 what was better, they have a public-law quality. Again, in Germany there 

 was no strong normalizing central government eager to stretch all existing 

 institutions on the Procrustean bed of its own system, and feudalism organized 

 itself by a more evolutionary process than was the case in England. So it 

 fell out that just as the Dienstmannen were securing their position by getting 

 their privileges written down and people were beginning to recognize a 'jus 

 ministeriale," a movement in the opposite sense was going on in England 

 among a similar class of persons, and the drengs disappear rapidly, partly by 

 absorption and partly by transmutation. The Norman Conquest, as we are 

 coming to recognize, blocked many lines of development, opening instead of 

 them other paths leading to the same end. Thus the development of drengage 

 was interrupted and for the more part the institution became of no consequence. 

 The goal was reached by another process, which resulted in serjeanty and free 

 socage. Drengage became a mere curious survival, kept alive partly by the 



' The older learning on this subject, including many texts, may be found in Waitz, Deutsche Verfas- 

 lungigeichichle, v. pp. 289-350, 428-44.2 ; the newer literature and criticism is well summarized in Schroder, 

 Lehrbuch der Deutschen Rechtsgeschkhte, 4 ed. par. 42. A brief and useful account in French may be found in 

 Blondcl, Fridhk II., etc., 80 fT. 



* There is a case of a Northumbrian drcng in the thirteenth century having both free and bond tenants, 

 hlorlhumb. Assize R. (Surtecs Soc), p. 46 ; Hist, of Northumb. (Co. Hist. Com.), i. 209-212. 



' This phrase may possibly afford us a valuable clue. If we regard the thcgn as originally a domestic 

 ioldier and the development of the class as a movement from unfrcedom in the household of a lord toward 

 free service on land granted by that lord, then we may perhaps reg.ird the cl.iss of drengs as having much the 

 same origin, although later in time, a second wave as it were. We should then rcg.ird the Norm.in Concjucst 

 as having arrested the development of ihc drengs before they had secured themselves by a written dreng-law. 

 This is not pure hypothesis. Alfred described as thegns a class of men whom Hcdc would call now 'miles' 

 and now ' minister,' and the Anglo-Saxon laws from Wihtraed to Knut furnish security enough for the rights 

 and position of the whole class. Then the fict that drengage is found only in the northern counties goes to 

 •upport our suggestion that it was due to a recurrence of earlier conditions, for that is after all what the Danish 

 settlements brought about in England. This is merely thrown out as a suggestion. The post-Conquest thanes 

 and thane-land need careful examination. Hut see a stimulating and iubtructlve passage in Guilhicrmoz, 

 Origtne Je la Noblesse en Fr,wee, pp. 86-96. 



290 



