THE DOMESDAY BOOK 
Henry I., and their enfranchisement to free service by that king’ have 
been already spoken of. The only Crown manor of this tenure men- 
tioned in the feodaries of the Exchequer is Ulnesby or Ousby, which 
often appears in the Pipe Rolls for various reasons. When king John 
was making experiments in assessments for scutage, every class of Crown 
tenants was included in the tax. In 1204 the owners of Ulnesby contri- 
buted to the scutage of that year in common with tenants by serjeanty 
and cornage,” but the experiment does not appear to have been repeated. 
The drengs of Westmorland were treated in a similar manner. In 1201 
seventeen of them, whose names are on record,’ paid the king 50 marks 
as the price of their exemption from service beyond the sea (ut remaneant 
ne transfretent). But this isolated reference can scarcely be taken as in- 
vesting the tenure with a military character, inasmuch as the king was 
dealing with his tenants in an unprecedented way and exacting services 
for which there was no excuse except the necessities in which he found 
himself.* That a base tenure like drengage should have been included in 
this assessment goes a long way to prove that the tenures of the north- 
western counties, other than tenure by knight’s service, were free from 
royal service beyond their own borders and that the king’s claim to assess 
them to scutage could not be maintained. It must not be taken, because 
the manors held of the king by drengage were situated close together on 
the confines of Westmorland, that the tenure was unknown elsewhere in 
the county. There are traces of it in important manors in other parts of 
Cumberland, notably on the western coast, but of course not as tenancies 
in chief. The vill of Helsingham was held in drengage ° about 1140 by 
a certain Alan, who had inherited the vill from his ancestors, when Roger 
fitz Gilbert gave it to the monks of St. Bees. Early in the thirteenth 
century Alice de Romili daughter of William fitz Duncan substituted 
free service for the drengage by which William de Ribton held the 
manor of Ribelton, as his father Gamel had done before him. The 
condition of this enfranchisement is not without interest. In addition to 
a fine of 20 marks paid by the tenant, the reddendo of the charter is 
reckoned at 20 shillings yearly and the free service due by her other 
tenants, but ‘ saving the king’s forinsec service.’® In this she was follow- 
ing the precedent which Hugh de Morevill had set in Westmorland, 
when he converted the drengage of some of his tenants into free service.’ 
In 1179 a similar conversion was made in favour of Walter son of 
Durand, when he paid an annual fine for the quittance of his land 
from drengage by the king’s charter." 
Little more may be added to what has been said about the docu- 
1 Coram Rege Roll, 2 John, No. 41, m. 9; Abbrev. Placit. p. 674. 2 Pipe Roll, 6 John. 
8 Odlata, 2 John, m. 5 ; Pipe Roll, 3 John (Westmorland). The number is reckoned as eighteen 
in the Pipe Roll. 4 Stubbs, Constitutional History, i. 555, 562, 4th edit. 
5 Register of St. Bees, MS. (Harleian, 434), L. i. 6. 
6 Ibid. L. xili. 13. 7 Pipe Roll, 24 Hen. II. (Westmorland). 
8 Ibid. 25 Hen. II. Compare the remarks made by J. Hodgson Hinde on this tenure as it obtained 
in the northern counties (Hodgson’s History of Northumberland, pt. i. pp. 253-8). E. W. Robertson 
shows that the tenure was well known in the southern counties of Scotland (Historical Essays, pp. xlvi. 
seq. 138, 139, 165). The liabilities of the dreng will be found in the Bo/don Buke (Surtees Society). 
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