SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



refusal. 1 Sometimes, however, the tenant denied that his tenement was liable 

 for certain services, but he generally had great difficulty in persuading a jury 

 to relieve him of a burden that would inevitably fall on themselves.* When 

 bailiff-farming was given up by the lord, the question of works was simplified. 

 The commutation money was paid to the treasury of the bishop or prior at 

 Durham (at times it seems after being long in arrears), 8 or as frequently hap- 

 pened the vill leased the meadows and demesnes to which the works were 

 due just as the old firmars had done. For instance, at Middridge in 1 394 the 

 thirteen or fourteen bond tenants of Hatfield's Survey had decreased to eight, 

 and these eight were allowed to take the fifteen bondage holdings (450 acres) 

 and 42 acres of the demesne for twelve years at izd. an acre. It is true 

 there is a proviso that their right lapsed if anybody else offered to work the 

 land at the old rent, but that contingency was not very likely.* In Hatfield's 

 Survey only two of the bondages were professedly at penyferme, but it is 

 noted that this arrangement held good for six years only. The tenants, who 

 commuted their week-work in the usual way, only paid about \\d. per acre 

 for their holdings, but we are told that they owed works in the meadow and 

 at the hay harvest, and these works would represent the j\d. difference. 

 The men of Sedgefield, Middleham, and Cornforth in a similar way leased 

 the meadows and the works they owed to them for twelve years,' but at 

 Stockton and Norton the tenants of maleland were only allowed to commute 

 the meadow-works at 8</. a day each so long as the bishop chose. 4 



The bishop and the prior were each faced by the same difficulty. There 

 were not enough husbandmen alive to work the land in the old way, and the 

 solution of the problem by inclosing the better land for separate farms did not 

 occur to them for some time. It is pathetic to see, time after time, the same 

 condition inserted in all agreements : A.B. may have the bondage at a 

 reduced rent until a tenant shall come who will pay the old rent. As this 

 tenant never did come, we find the bishop and prior trying to make the 

 remaining tenants responsible for the vacant holding. These tenants were of 

 two kinds : the personally free bondager who could in theory leave the land 

 upon paying his debts, but not before, and the serf or nativus who could be 

 compelled to work the land on the lord's terms and could even be brought 

 from a neighbouring village to hold land in his birthplace. When the 

 original holder and his family had died out, the steward would order the reeve 7 

 or the vill 8 to work the land and answer for the rent, despite their protests. 

 As a sequel the jury would present that certain of the tenants were able to 

 hold an extra bondage, 9 and we thus have the phenomenon, so common in 

 Hatfield's Survey, of a man holding two tenements. Sometimes a peasant 

 wished to leave the vill, perhaps hoping to fare better as a free labourer else- 

 where. The steward thereupon forced the pledges of the defaulters to be 

 responsible for the holding till someone else would take it. Not infrequently 

 the wanderer did return disillusioned and ready to take up his old holding, 

 and he did not find the bishop a hard creditor for the arrears. 10 Sometimes a 

 peasant to whom an extra holding had been committed by the steward and 

 his neighbours threatened to leave the lord's lands altogether, in which case 



1 Dur. Cun. No. 16, fol. 185. * Ibid. No. 12, fol. 231. ' Ibid. fol. 237 </, 238. 



Ibid. No. 1 3, fol. 155. ' Ibid. fol. 223 < ' Ibid. No. 14, fol. 422. 



7 As at Shotton, Dur. Cun. No. 12, fol. 61. ' As at Easington, ibid. fol. 6j J. 



Dur. Cun. No. 1 2, fol. 82. 10 Ibid. fol. 138. 



219 



