them at discretion; he exacted from them the mercheta or gersume, a fine for the marriage of their daughters and sisters; and did not permit them to sell their cattle out of the manor, until they had purchased the permission in his Court.

In the northern counties of England we meet with a

are very clearly laid down, and we find frequent indications of the rise of the peasant class into a higher order of proprietors.

The Record throws great light on the nature of the services which the different tenants rendered to the lord, and we may gain from it a very just idea of what the life of the villan was, for we can with no great difficulty accompany him in his work, through each week of the year. There is one striking omission in the Survey, and that is, the little notice we find of free tenants; in some manors we have no mention of them at all; and throughout the Record, their name is of rare occurrence. Perhaps the nature of the document would lead us to expect this omission, for it is not so much an enumeration of all the holders of land under the See, as of the services and customs due from the land; now as free tenure rendered nothing of that kind, it does not come into consideration in such a record as Boldon Buke professes to be,

The original manuscript of Boldon Buke is not preserved. Four copies are known to exist, the earliest of which (now in the library of Lord Ashburnham) was probably made about one hundred years after the compilation of the Survey. Another manuscript is preserved in the Auditors' Office in the Exchequer at Durham, appended to a survey made in the time of Bishop Hatfield, and transcribed apparently just after his death, in 1381. [The Rev. William Greenwell adopted this copy as the text in his excellent edition of the "Boldon Buke" published by the Surtees Society in 1852.] There is a copy in the Registrum Primum of the Dean and Chapter of Durham, written about the year 1400, or perhaps a little later; the fourth and last manuscript is clearly a transcript of the Chapter copy, and was once in the possession of Bishop Tunstall, and is now preserved in the Bodleian. Sir Henry Ellis printed from this in the Appendix to Domesday, in 1816.

The drengh, who

class of land-holders called drenghs. may be called a half-freeman, was the lowest holder who had a permanent interest in the land, and his position was mid-way between the free tenant and the villan. His services were in some respects the same as those of the villan, as we learn from Boldon Buke, he ploughed, harrowed, and sowed a certain proportion of the demesne land of the Bishop, made precations, carted wine, kept a dog and a horse for the Bishop's use, attended the great chase with dogs and ropes, and went on messages. The agricultural services he rendered were neither so many in number nor for so long a time as those rendered by the villans, and he differed in this also, that himself and his own household were always exempt from performing them, the villans only attached to him and holding under him being liable. His tenure was a very inferior one to military or free tenure, from having these menial services attached to it, but was far superior to villenage from his being a permanent tenant, and from being himself free from servile work. This tenure seems to have been confined to the ancient kingdom of Northumbria. In Domesday drenghs occur in that part of modern Lancashire, called then 'terra inter Ripam et Mersham,' which formed a part of ancient Northumbria: they occur also in York

Boldon Buke has been produced and admitted as evidence in several trials at law, on the part of succeeding bishop's, to ascertain their property.-Preface to Greenwell's Translation of the Boldon Buke. Hutchinson's Durham.

* Dreng, Drengh, Drengus, Dreinnus, Dringagium. From Anglo-Saxon Dreogan, to do, work, bear, the root of our English word drudge. The cabin-boy on board a Norwegian vessel is now called the cabin-drengh.-Greenwell.

shire and in the four northern counties. In Bishop Flambard's time [1099-1128], all the permanent land-holders in Norhamshire and Islandshire would seem to have held in drengage. In a charter in the vernacular tongue by him relating to Allerden in North Durham, he says R. Biscop greteth well all his thanes and drenghs of Ealandscire and Norhamscire.' Here we have no mention of military or free tenants, for the 'thane' was only a drengh who held more than one manor in drengage, as is evident from returns in the 'Testa de Nevill,' which describe the two tenures as identical in services, and differing only in this, that the one implied the holding of one estate, the other, the holding of more than one, so that if a drengh became the holder of more estates than one, he became dignified with the name of thane. The drenghs in Northumberland paid a fixed money rent, and were subject to tallage, heriot, and merchet. We have an instance in the Pipe Rolls of Westmoreland 25 Henry II. of the enfranchisement of one drengh, some had been enfranchised before by Hugh de Morvill when he held the honor, and we find 18 drenghs who remained paying a fine that they might be exempt from foreign service. These particu

Heriot. Originally the old German heergewate', military equipment, and consisted of the arms of a vassal, which were given up on his death by the heir to the lord. Ultimately it extended to the best chattel of a vassal, either a beast, an article of dress, or a piece of plate, which was given to the lord on a tenant's death. It was always a personal chattel, and no charge on the land. Like other returns, it became in time commuted for a money-payment. Heriots have often been confounded with reliefs, but the difference between the two is clear: a heriot was for the tenant who died, and was out of his goods, a relief was for the tenant who succeeded, and was out of his purse. Appendix to Greenwell's Translation of the Boldon Buhe,

lars show that drengage was not a free tenure, for we see here instances of drenghs being enfranchised, and Boldon Buke, and the Northumberland records, give the services attached to it, which approach nearer to villenage than to free service.*

The villant formed that large class, including under this general name cotmen, bond-tenants, and farmers, the members of which, though not slaves, and holding under the lord some small portion of land, had neither a permanent interest in the land, nor could be called freemen. They have been divided into villans regardant, those attached to the land, and villans in gross, those attached to the lord's person, and transferable by him to another. No real distinction, however, seems to

"Appendix to Greenwell's Translation of the Boldon Buke."

+ Villan. Probably from villa, the vill, village, town, or hamlet in which the villan lived. The villa appears to have borne much re semblance to the village of a German tribe. The house of each villan, cottar, or farmer, was situated in a toft with one or more crofts adjoining, the houses being in this way separated from each other. Many of our villages still show the old form, each cottage standing apart in its garden, and backed by a small close, the croft. In some villages there was also the demesne house (aula) of the lord, and the dwelling of one or more free tenants, perhaps not much superior in convenience and accommodation to the cottage of the servile holder. Attached to the village, with its enclosed parcels of ground, was the common field where each tenant held his own portion of acres of arable land under the name of oxgangs, and beyond that was the pas ture where the cattle fed in common, under the charge of the village herd; in some cases there was also the lord's waste or forest, in which his tenants had various rights of pasturage, swine-feeding, and of cutting turf and firewood. At the period when Boldon Buke was com piled, the aspect of the country must have differed widely from its present one. In the midst of moorland or extensive woods, there

have existed, and this division probably originated from confounding the villan with the serf, who was a mere personal slave, and had no interest, even of a temporary nature, in the land. The villan could not leave his lord's estate, nor indeed give up the land he held under him, he was a servant for life, receiving as wages enough of land to support himself and family. If he left his lord, he could be recovered as a stray, unless he had lived meanwhile for a year and a day in a privileged town or borough, in which case he obtained his freedom. He could accumulate no property, everything he possessed being his lord's. His services consisted in servile work done by himself and his household on the ford's demesne land, such as ploughing, harrowing, mowing, and reaping, carting dung, and all other agricultural operations; these could be changed at any time by the ford, though they naturally had a tendency to become of a permanent and settled character, and in the end became quite regular and stated in quantity and time. We see indications of this in Boldon Buke; in fact, every entry there relating to the villan shows a settled system of

was every here and there the large open pasture and cultivated field of each village, without hedge or any division save a strip of grass, called now in East Yorkshire a balk, which bordered each tenant's holding, and by the side of the stream or where the best land lay, snugly ensconced each in their little fields with their hedge-row trees, rose the cottages of the humble tillers of the soil, clustering round and sheltered by the hall of their lord. Each village had its herds for looking after the stock of whatever kind, its pounder for taking care of stray cattle, and its smith and carpenter. All the people were the servants of the lord, and in return for the work they rendered him, they had each his little holding which provided for the daily wants of the family.-Append. to Greenwell's Translation of the Boldon Buke.