SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



calamity the condition of the peasantry was at least as favourable as at any 

 time since, and grinding hopeless poverty seems to have been unknown. 

 Custom effectively restrains any harsh exercise of seigniorial rights, and even 

 the serf could obtain permission to migrate or, in some cases, to purchase his 

 freedom outright. If a man was able-bodied, but poor, the lord would let to 

 him a holding stocked with cattle, implements, and seed. 1 



In some villages free tenants were found. Such men held their land as 

 some fraction of a knight's fee, or by rendering military service (or an 

 equivalent fine in money) outside the bishopric. But the tenure was a very 

 vague one, and probably meant little more than that the lord's dues were paid 

 in money or military service, rather than in kind, and by agricultural services. 

 The free tenants' holdings ranged from whole vills down to a rood of meadow 

 land which paid \d. a year. The less important ones were certainly admitted 

 to their holdings in the halmote, which served as a court baron," but the 

 halmote's power over them was limited to the right to attach free tenants to 

 be present at the free court of the prior* or of the bishop,* or at the county 

 court of Durham, 1 or at the sessions of the justices,* to answer for offences. 

 In Bishop Hatfield's time the steward entered admissions to free tenements 

 and payment of fines and reliefs in the same volume as the ordinary bondage- 

 holders, but on separate pages. 7 The freeholders generally paid a money rent, 

 but they were liable to a certain share in repairing the roads 8 and the mill,' 

 and in at least one case the free tenant was bound to mow one day in the 

 autumn without food, or two days with food. 10 The incoming tenant, at any 

 rate, of an extensive holding had to pay a relief, 11 and in some cases the lord 

 took as heriot the ' better beast ' of the dead man and a sum of money, but 

 nothing for relief." However, the heriot was displaced quite early by the 

 Norman relief. 



In those villages where it existed the ' manerium,' or manor-house of the 

 lord, was by far the most important building. It stood within its own court- 

 yard, fenced off by a hedge and a ditch, and consisted of dwelling-house, barns, 

 stables, &c., which were repaired by the bond-tenants. It is possible that in 

 early times the lord had a bailiff in every village, but when Boldon Book was 

 drawn up this was by no means the case. Often the demesne lands and the 

 manerium were let together to one or more firmars who paid a definite rent 

 for a term of years, and in return were allowed to exact the same labour 

 services from the villeins as the lord's bailiff did where he worked the 

 demesne lands. What these services were has been already explained, and we 

 have preserved to us a number of compoti or bailiffs' account rolls dating 

 from 1337, which give us a vivid picture of bailiff farming in Durham, but 

 unfortunately only in its decay. 



We know from Walter of Henley that the lord had a great difficulty in 

 getting work out of his tenants in the thirteenth century, and that difficulty 



1 Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. lxii), I. ' Ibid. 109. ' Ibid. 22, 37. 



4 It seems probable, however, that the ' free court of the bishop ' was the 'County Court.' In that case 

 we may see in the ' free court of the prior ' a desperate attempt to preserve a certain amount of independence. 

 However, he lost his 'pit and gallows' and his free court followed in 1464, as the tenants refused to do 

 homage unless distrained ; Feodarium (Surtees Soc. Iviii), 252 and 207. 



Dur. Curs. No. 12, fols. 6J. 264. ' Ibid. 71. ' Ibid. 31 d. 48. 



Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. boudi), 104. * Ibid. 86. 



' Ibid. 30. " Dur. Curs. No. 12, fob. 31 d. 48. " Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. luotii), 75. 



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