A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



position from that of the holders of one or two manors who held their lands 

 by knight service, often however coupled with a money payment. No one 

 of his barons was a serious rival authority to the bishop, but the prior and 

 convent held a number of vills, especially in the north-east and south-east of the 

 county, and from the existing records of these vills it is perhaps permissible to 

 assume that the conditions of the bishop's vills were common to all in the 

 bishopric. Boldon Book is by no means a satisfactory substitute for a Domes- 

 day of Durham, and so it is impossible to mention the number of free and 

 servile tenants in the county. All that can be said is that the wide pre- 

 valence of copyhold and leasehold tenures in the modern county points to a 

 scanty free population in early times. Such free tenants as we do meet with 

 in Boldon Book may represent Saxon freemen who did not wholly lose their 

 rights at the Norman Conquest, but they do certainly in some cases represent 

 nothing more than favoured servants of former bishops. 



The Anglo-Saxon thegn 1 is mentioned so late as the Pipe Roll of 1 130* 

 together with the dreng and the 'smalman.' He has disappeared by 1183 

 and the dreng and the smalman have become semi-servile. 



The servile tenures of Durham are most interesting, and the degrees of 

 servitude range from the once free dreng, perhaps a royal or episcopal atten- 

 dant in earlier times, to the selffbde of Hatfield's Survey. Roughly speaking, 

 freemen held their lands by military service, while servile land was liable for 

 personal service, actual or commuted, but we do hear of land held in socage 8 

 although that is not until later times. It is, however, difficult to insist upon 

 the distinctions free and servile except as regards the land itself, for even 

 Boldon Book deals rather with the condition of the land than with that of the 

 inhabitants. The dreng was probably free in person from the beginning, but 

 the tenure of drengage would be looked upon as an unfree one by the Norman 

 lawyers, because the services were not in the feudal sense purely military. 

 Probably Professor Maitland* is right in tracing a connexion between the 

 rod-knights or riding men of Domesday and the drengs of Durham, but the 

 drengs as a distinct class died out soon after the Conquest or were merged into 

 the ordinary bondmen. However, drengage as a tenure lasted in theory far 

 into the sixteenth century. 6 According to Boldon Book the dreng was bound 

 to plough, sow, and harrow a certain portion of the demesne land of the bishop, 

 to make precariae in the autumn, to keep a horse and a dog for the bishop's 

 use, to help in the great roe-hunt in Weardale with dogs and ropes, to cart 

 wine and to go messages. Apparently his services were not so onerous as 

 those of the ordinary villeins and they could be performed by deputy. In 

 Ranulf Flambard's time all the permanent landowners in Northamshire and 

 Islandshire were drengs, for a thegn was only a dreng who held more than one 

 estate. 6 They paid a money rent instead of service, but like the drengs of 



1 According to Canon Greenwell's interpretation of the returns in the Testa de Nevill for Northumbria 

 (Record Series, pp. 381-96), the thegn was only a dreng who held more than one manor ; see Boldon Book 

 (Surtees Soc. xxv),App. Iviii. 



1 In Boldon Book (Surtees Soc. xxv), 1 6, we are told that ' Gilbert holds Heworth for three marks and is quit 

 of the old works and service which thence as of theinage he was used to make for Ricknall which he quitclaimed.' 



* e.g. Dur. Curs. No. 15, fol. 9. 4 In Engl. Hist. Rev. v, 625-32. 



6 Dur. Curs. No. 19, fol. 322, mentions a case at Redworth. An instance is given by Canon Green well 

 (Surtees Soc. xxv, App. 43) in which Bishop Philip of Poitou (1197-1208) changes a drengage holding at 

 Whitworth into a holding by one quarter of a knight's fee and probably similar cases are not rare. 



6 Boldon Book (Surtees Soc. xxv), App. Iviii. 



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