A HISTORY OF DURHAM 







Death, at least when the holding passed to a fresh family. 1 At harvest-time 

 the lord could claim the services of the tenant's whole family except the 

 housewife, but at other times the service due was personal to the tenant 

 alone. This claim was the cause of another. When the tenant of a bondage 

 or cottage gave his daughter in marriage he was bound to pay a fine called 

 merchet, to recompense the lord for the loss of her services at harvest-time, 

 when she became a housewife. This payment ranged from sixpence up- 

 wards, in the case of a very poor man according to the means of the father. 

 Sometimes the brother paid it or even the woman herself. It persisted in 

 Durham certainly as late as I4o6, 3 but it became very unpopular and jurors 

 obstinately refused to present for it, s possibly on the ground that as services 

 had been commuted, merchet should not be exacted. Coke, in the article 

 on villeinage in his Institutes, maintains that even in the seventeenth century 

 bondage-holders on some manors, though personally free, were liable to 

 merchet if the lord cared to exact it.* The frequency with which we find 

 the same people liable for leyrwite the fine for incontinence and for 

 merchet, the fine on marriage, is eloquent of the state of morality among 

 the mediaeval Durham peasantry. 6 



With the tenant in his toft lived his children and sometimes his parents, 

 if old, or other near relations. However, it sometimes did occur that the 

 tenant died leaving young children without any near relative, and a case at 

 Shields in 1345 shows us how secure the tenant's right was in his holding. 

 When the widow of William de Blenkowe died seised of a toft she left two 

 sons, William and John, who were under age. Their right to half of the toft 

 each was recognized, but because of their helplessness William son of Eda 

 was appointed their custos and curator for the eight years following. He was 

 to have the benefit of the toft in return for keeping it in repair and providing 

 the boys with food and clothes. At the end of the time the toft reverted to 

 the boys. 6 This care of the poor and helpless in mediaeval times is a pleasing, 

 and to some extent unexpected, thing. For the children were found protectors, 

 the old man 7 and the widow 8 might retain their old home while others 

 worked their lands, and the very poorest had the fines and dues lowered for 

 them. 9 At harvest-time they might glean among the crops of their more 

 prosperous neighbours, 10 and the poorest would have some animals or at least 

 a few fowls or geese. We find even in Boldon Book that land and flocks 

 were set aside under the control of Kepier Hospital for the use of the poor, 11 

 and we have no reason to believe that in later ages the bishop was less 

 generous than the prior of whose chanties we can read in the Durham 

 Account Rolls. The idea of a village community in which every inhabitant 

 had a share could not survive the Black Death, which brought in fresh 

 economic relations, but we have every reason to suppose that before the 



1 Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 6. 



' Dur. Curs. No. 14, fol. 51 ; but we find leyrwite exacted in 1424. Dur. Curs. No. 14, fol. 1317. 

 However, even in mediaeval times some tenants possessed charters of exemption dating back in some cases to 

 the time of Bishop Walter de Kirkham (1249-60); cf. Boldon Book (Surtees Soc. xxv), 72, and Dur. Halmote R. 

 (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 59. 



3 e.g. Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 184. 4 Liber 2, cap. 2, sec. 209. 



6 e.g. Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), I ; from Alice d. of Ranulph for leyr and merchet I zJ. (in 1 296). 



6 Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 18 7 Ibid. 9. 8 Dur. Curs. No. 12, fol. 82. 



8 e.g. Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 1 6, 32. 10 Ibid. 144. 



11 Boldon Book (Surtees Soc. xxv), 32. 



202 



