BOLDON BOOK 



obstinate conservatism of the English, but mostly by the slow and at first only 

 superficial feudiilization of the northern counties, which, as we shall argue 

 hereafter, did but draw a veil between the king's eyes and the actual conditions 

 in this region. 



We have been speaking of whole vills held in drengage of the Bishop 

 by great persons. Where the tenant and the tenement were smaller the 

 process would be somewhat different. Either there would be a deliberate 

 extinction of the drengage for a consideration, a transaction of which we 

 have a number of examples,' or else there would be a gradual assimilation of 

 the dreng to the free tenants of the manor in which his land lay. The steps 

 of this process escape us, but the result is pretty evident to anyone who will 

 compare the Boldon Book with Hatfield's Survey. 



Returning to the miscellaneous population of the vill, we have next to 

 consider a class of persons having relatively large holdings which are burdened 

 with no obligation except that of a money rent. At Boldon, for example, 

 Robert holds 36 acres reckoned as 2 bovates and renders a half-mark. At 

 Stockton, again, Adam son of Walter holds i carucate and i bovate and 

 renders i mark ; at Wolsingham, William the priest holds 40 acres and 

 renders i mark, and so on. These holdings we may suppose to be either very 

 recent grants, by which the bishop had conveyed villein land to free persons 

 upon special terms, or again they may be the outcome of progressive money 

 compositions for renders and services which had at length been completely 

 successful, an hypothesis which would, of course, leave open the question of 

 status. The first assumption receives some corroboration from the case of 

 Simon the doorward (hostiarius), who is recorded as holding 60 acres at 

 Heighington and rendering i besant. This grant was probably made at the 

 close of Bishop Pudsey's pontificate, but there is no reason to suppose that 

 similar grants might not have been made at an earlier period and duly recorded 

 in the first recension of Boldon Book. The indications are that this Simon 

 was a person of consequence and certainly of free condition ^ ; for he is else- 

 where recorded as holding by knight service. 



The existence, on the other hand, of a class of persons having holdings 

 of the same order as those now occupying our attention, and not only paying 

 a money rent but rendering services as well, points to a progressive composition 

 for services and renders which would in the first case be complete, and in the 

 second either arrested or still going forward. It is possible that members of 

 this class represent the free tenants of the later manor. The priest men- 

 tioned in the Wolsingham entry we have just now quoted was of course a 

 freeman, but the conditions of Adam's tenure at Stockton do not differ from 

 those of the priest. Regardless also of the status of the tenant, the land that 

 paid rent but did no work was reckoned free land.' This of course would 

 work both ways, but at least it leaves room, as it seems to me, for the 

 possibility that most of these tenants were free. 



It has been said by a writer well qualified to speak on this subject, that 

 ' in a vast majority of cases rent-paying land retains some remnants of 



1 Vid. inf. pp. 312-5. 



' \'id. inf. pp. 321-5. On the office of doonvard cf Larson, Tie King's Household in England before the 

 Herman Conquest, Madison, 1904, p. 181, and the literature there cited. 

 » Cf. VinogradofF, Villainage, 167-171, 



291 



