SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



other work. There were due also mowing at Houghton, works of carting 

 and lodge building, perhaps as alternatives to week-work, and at these he 

 received food. 



Perhaps the Durham peasant had not been so successful as those about 

 Abingdon and Peterborough 1 in commuting his services by 1183, but it is 

 probable that the process had already begun and it was certainly helped by 

 the growing disinclination of the lord to work his own demesne lands. 

 There were already a few rent-paying peasants at Boldon besides the cotters 

 who did works proportionate to their holdings. Halfway between came the 

 molmen of Newton. 



Other dues from the peasants were cornage, milch cow, castleman, 

 yolwayting, and michelmet. Few paid all, and the last two were confined to 

 a group of villages around the bishop's hall at Heighington. Yolwayting 

 may be some duty formerly exacted at Christmas, but afterwards commuted, 

 while michelmet may refer to works of reaping about Michaelmas or else to 

 some meeting or moot at that time. Castleman generally occurs in connexion 

 with the village where a dreng is found or which is near the bishop's hall at 

 Heighington. In Boldon Book it was paid by the actual service of a ' castle- 

 man ' perhaps at Durham, but in Hatfield's time it was commuted. The 

 ' castle ' points to a post-Conquest origin, but it may be a reorganization of 

 the military service of the pre-Conquest dreng. 1 



Cornage and milch cow are too often found together not to have a com- 

 mon origin. Generally the liability to provide a milch cow is commuted in 

 Hatfield's Survey at the rate of 6j., but unlike cornage it was a payment in kind 

 in 1183. It may represent either the increase of the flock which fell to the 

 lord, or more probably his right to sustenance when in early times he 

 travelled from vill to vill. Cornage is a much thornier subject, but one 

 explanation, 8 that it refers to tenure by blowing a horn to give warning of 

 the Scots' approach, may safely be dismissed. In the vocabulary of an old 

 Durham book* we find ' Hornebiel (in margin Hornegeld) this is to be 

 free from a certain custom exacted by tallage throughout the land.' Probably 

 we see an explanation of cornage in this, for a charter of Henry I to the 

 monks of Durham ' tells us that the cornage of Borton was at the rate of 

 zd, for every horned beast. Cornage is not paid by all vills in Boldon Book, 

 and we are distinctly told that the men of Norton escaped it because they 

 lacked pasture. 



Probably the vills which did pay cornage were primarily pastoral in pre- 

 Conquest times, but the tax became somewhat arbitrary in later times and we 

 find apparently new vills paying it and the assessments of older vills increased. 

 The tax was sometimes levied on the whole vill, at other times on the 

 villeins or each villein paid separately. Probably in time the incident like 

 others became attached to definite holdings. The Stockton ward had only 

 three episcopal cornage-paying vills. The due, together with milch cow, was 

 paid at several of the prior's vills as late as 1507, and probably in episcopal 

 vills also, but the origin had long been forgotten. 



1 Norgate, Engl. under the Angevins, ii, 472 et seq. 



' In post-Conquest time* one of the Bulmers of Brancepeth built the church of St. Mary the Less in 

 Durham for the use of hi men when they performed Castle-ward. 



' By Littleton and Spelman. ' The Rcgistrum Primum belonging to the dean and chapter. 



' Printed in FeoJarium (Surtees Soc. Iviii), 145 n. 



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