A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 
tenure has been denominated a serjeanty in the ‘Testa de Nevill.’ The 
other forms which we meet with in local documents display few features 
of special interest. There were the serjeanties of maintaining the three 
gates of the city of Carlisle ; of providing bark for the king’s pannage 
and keeping his swine till they were valued ; of carrying his letters 
or writs in the county ; and of purchasing stores for the king while he 
sojourned in Yorkshire. It needs scarcely to be pointed out that all these 
tenures were confined to the demesne lands or the forest of Cumberland ' 
and that several of them were connected with sport. 
The king’s serjeanties in Cumberland and Westmorland were 
entered among the pleas of the Crown in 1198, and the justices itinerant 
were instructed to inquire about their present holders, by whom they 
were enfeoffed, their value, and their service.” From king John’s deal- 
ings with this tenure, we learn that serjeanties were claimed by him to 
be inalienable without licence, for he ordered the sheriff of Nottingham 
and Derby * to make inquiry about such alienation and the sheriff of 
Lancaster ‘ to seize all that had been alienated since the coronation of 
Henry II. The same policy was pursued by Henry III. when he sent 
out Robert Passelewe® to ‘arrent’ the alienated serjeanties, that is, to 
change them to knight’s service or socage. The results of the inquisition 
for Cumberland are contained in the ‘Testa de Nevill,’ where the alienation 
of such serjeanties as Penrith, Carleton and Hoton, and their change to 
knight’s service, will be read with interest. From the list of the four 
serjeanties stated to have been changed to military service it will be 
noticed that they were reckoned at a value ranging from the tenth to 
the thirtieth part of a knight’s fee. It is quite evident that whatever 
restraints were laid on alienation or whatever theories the lawyers may 
have held about their impartibility, they were disregarded in the north- 
western county. Several of the serjeanties in the list of Passelewe were 
not only ‘lacerated’ by partition among co-heiresses, but they were 
alienated in whole or in part by subinfeudation and in other ways. 
Few instances of tenure by drengage have been found in Cumber- 
land, though in the neighbouring county of Westmorland the tenure was 
common enough. The manors of Gamelsby and Glassanby, held in dren- 
gage by Gamel son of Bern and Glassam son of Brictric in the time of 
1 Hutchinson tells a curious story about the tenure of some ten of the principal estates in Castle- 
sowerby, a parish in the forest of Cumberland between Carlisle and Penrith. He says that these estates 
went by the name of the ‘ red-spears,’ for the owners of the lands were obliged to ride through the town 
of Penrith on the Tuesday in Whitsun-week, brandishing their spears, for which service they were known 
as the ‘red-knights.” Some of the spears about nine feet in length remained, he says, in the pro- 
prietors’ houses, where they were usually deposited, till within the eighteenth century (History of Cum- 
berland, i. §20). If this story be true, we have in it one of the most ancient features of serjeanty. ‘The 
‘ red-spears’ of Castlesowerby were doubtlessly survivals of the ‘rod-knights’ of Bracton and the ‘ rad- 
chenistres’ and ‘ radmanni’ or ‘ radmans’ of Domesday found in large groups in the western counties 
(Ellis, Introduction to Domesday, i. 72-4), whose service consisted in riding with their lords or on their 
lords’ errands (Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, i. 286, 289). 
2 Hoveden, iv. 61-2, ed. Stubbs. 3 Liber Rubeus, ii. p. cclxxxv. ed. H. Hall. 
* Chose Rolls, 7 John, m. 11 (i. 55¢, ed. Hardy). 
5 Ibid. ii. 38 5 History of English Law, i. 334-5. 
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