Mr Tate on Longhoughton, &c. 75 



bondagia, each rendering yearly to the lord 16s, ; but 10 

 others were desolated and laid waste, and produced only 

 6s. 8d. each. Besides these there were 18 cotagia, each render- 

 ing 20d. ; and 11 others, which lying waste, yielded only Is. 

 each for herbage. Perquisites amounting to 3s. 4d. yearly 

 were also derived by the Lord from Halmote — the Hall Meet- 

 ing, or Manor Court, in which offences against the lord, all 

 common nuisances and differences between the tenants of the 

 manor were tried and determined. This record presents a 

 dark picture of the period when war was almost continually 

 waged along the borders ; and it evidences how much pro- 

 perty was wasted and destroyed by the ravages of the Scots. 

 I have used the mediaeval Latin terms bondagia and cota- 

 gia, because there are no corresponding English words pre- 

 cisely descriptive of these tenures. The bondagers and cot- 

 tagers of modern times are an entirely different class from the 

 bondmen and cotmen who enjoyed these tenures ; the former 

 are either mere servants or labourers ; but the latter were 

 small landowners. Between the bondagium and cotagium 

 there seems to have been little difference excepting in the 

 extent of the property ; each had its dwelling-house, its toft 

 and croft, its parcel of cultivated ground and its right of 

 pasturage over the moor or common ; but the bondagium had 

 attached to it an husbandland of land, a variable quantity, 

 but which in Longhoughton amounted to 30 acres, while the 

 cotagium had annexed to it only a selion of land — that is a 

 ridge, a quantity varying from about half an acre to one and 

 a half acres ; at Gateshead it was only half an acre, but at 

 Denwick each cotagium had five roods of land. 



Originally both bondmen and cotmen belonged to the large 

 class of villans under the feudal system, who were so called 

 probably from the Vill in which they iisually lived. Their 

 condition was servile, for they were bound to the land, and 

 obliged to work a certain number of days on the lord's 

 demesne in ploughing, reaping, and other agricultural 

 labours, as a kind of payment for the lands which they them- 

 selves held. But the condition of the villan — of the bond- 

 man and cotman — gradually improved ; services at first arbi- 

 trary and oppressive became fixed and regular both as to 

 quantity and time ; and ultimately they were commuted 

 into a money payment ; the villan rose to the dignity of a 

 free man, and common law recognised his title to his land 

 on payment of the customary rents and fines. This change 

 had to a great extent taken place with the Longhoughton 



