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THE ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW NO. XX.—OCTOBER 1890 Downloaded from Northumbrian Tenures http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ N the thirteenth century there might be found inNorthumbria— I by which name I intend to include our five northernmost counties—certain tenures of land bearing very ancient names; there were still thegns holding in thegnage and drengs holding in drengage. These tenures, though common enough in the north, seem to have given the lawyers at Westminster a great deal of trouble by refusing to fit neatly into that scheme of holdings—frankalmoign, knight's at Johns Hopkins University on June 9, 2015 service, serjeanty, socage, villeinage—which was becoming the classical, legal, scheme. Were they military tenures or were they not ? They had features akin to those of serjeanty, other features akin to those of socage; nor were there wanting yet other features which according to some generally accepted rules would have been deemed to be marks of villeinage. I propose to collect here a little of what may be learnt about them. And in the first place let us remark that in Northumbria the duty of military service occasionally appears under a very antique name; it is still ' the king's utware.' • When a man is making a feoffment, it is of course a very common thing that besides reserving some service to be done to himself, he should also stipulate that the feoffee should discharge the service which the land owes to any overlords that there may be, and in particular the service, usually military service, that it owes to the king. Such a stipulation is, we may say, the medieval equivalent for the clause common in modern leases which throws on the tenant the burden of rates and taxes. So the feoffor stipulates for rent, or it may be for prayers, pro omni servicio salvo regali eervicio, or sdho forinseco servicio;. for, as Bracton explains, the service which was due from the tenement to the king while it was in the feoffor's hands is ' forinsec service' as between the feoffor and the feoffee; it, so to speak, stands outside 626 NORTHUMBRIAN TENURES Oct. and is foreign to the bargain that they are making.1 On the other hand, the feoffor may undertake that he himself will see to the dis- charge of this forinsec service. Now in Northumbrian charters, instead of reading about ' royal service ' or ' forinsec service,' we frequently read of the king's ' utware:'—thus one gives land liberam et quietam ab auxilio et ab omni alia conmetudine excepta uthware quae ad dominum Regan pertinet1—Ubere et qviete nomi- natim a servicio Regis quod dicitur tUware *—et a tervicio Regis quod dicitur Wticare.* Sometimes as between feoffor and feoffee it is the one of them, sometimes it is the other of them, who is to be answerable for the ' utware.' On meeting with such clauses our Downloaded from thoughts will at once go back to the well-known fragments of ancient English law, which teach us the rights of the thegn who had five hides to the king's utware, and of the ceorl who was so rich that he had five hides to the king's utware.8 That this term had once referred to military duty there seems no doubt, and I think http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ that it must have the same meaning in the charters of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is a northern equivalent for regale ser- vicium or forinsecum servicium, and though these terms were wide enough to cover other services besides military service, though they would for example cover the duty of doing suit to the communal courts, still the pleadings of the thirteenth century constantly put before us scutage as the typical royal and forinsec service, the incidence of which feoffors and feoffees have to settle by their agree- at Johns Hopkins University on June 9, 2015 ments. Even in the fourteenth century the drengage tenants of the bishop of Durham were still nominally liable to do ' outward,' though whether they well knew what this meant may perhaps be doubted.8 Another term frequently meets us which demands some explana- tion since it has become a progenitor of myths, namely, ' cornage.' Every one knows Littleton's tale about the tenants by cornage in the marches of Scotland, who are bound to wind their horns when they hear that the Scots will enter the realm.7 Obviously it is an idle tale; one glance at the Boldon Book will teach us that. We can- not suppose that vast masses of men held by this horn-blowing tenure; but they paid cornage. It will be shown hereafter that near two centuries before Littleton's day, the origin of the payment 1 Brae ton, f. 3C : ' et ideo forinsecum dici potest qnia sit [corr. fit] et capitur foris sive extra sorvitium quod sit [corr. fit] domino capitali.' Note that a tenant's doininus capitalis is his immediate lord. • Rievanlx Cartulary (Surtees Soe), p. 215. » Newminater Cartulary (Surtees Soc), p. 19. • Newminster Cartulary, pp. 86, 87, 118, 110. • Schmid, Octette, Ann. v. 8 ; Anh. yii. 2 § 9. • Bp. Hatfield's Survey (Surtees Soo.) p. 0 : etfacit ouUward in episcopaiu quan- tum pertinet ad iiij. paries untiu dringagii; p. 10 : et faciunt oughiward quantum pertinet ad iiij.partesj. dringagii. ' Tenures, sec 166. 1890 NORTHUMBRIAN TENURES 627 had become obscure, and that the Northumbrians had already in- vented another fable about it, quite as marvellous as that which Littleton repeated. A passage in the one extant Pipe Boll of Henry I's day will direct our eyes to a more hopeful quarter. The see of Durham is vacant and the custodian of the temporalities accounts to the king for llOi. 5s. 5d. de cornagio animaUum episcopa- tw.* A charter of Henry I is pleaded in John's day by which the king gives land which belonged to certain of bis drengs to Hildred of Carlisle, ' rendering to me yearly the gablum animaUum as my other free men both French and English who hold of me in chief in Cumberland render it.'9 Often in northern charters we Downloaded from read of neutegeld et liorngeld. In 1200, Gilbert fitz Roger fitz Reinfred held land in Westmoreland and Kendal by paying 14Z. 68. 3d. per anrmm of neutegeld. He obtained the king's charter commuting his service into that of one knight.10 In 1288 a Cumbrian tenant holds by cornage quod Anglice dicitiir horngeld.11 http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ Cornage, horngeld, neutgeld, beasts' gafol, must in all probability have originally been a payment of so much per horn, or per head for the beasts which the tenant kept and turned out on the common pasture. But we only know it as a fixed sum, a sum which does not vary from year to year; very commonly a township as a whole is liable to pay a lump sum for cornage. Name and thing were known in Normandy also. Delisle gives an instance from 1451 : Jean du Merle says that in his land of Briouse he has a right called at Johns Hopkins University on June 9, 2015 cornage, that is to say, so much for every beast.12 A much earlier instance may be found in a charter of 1099 by which Richer de Laigle grants the monks of St. Evroul freedom from cornage, passage, and toll.13 The interest of Littleton's fable does not lie within the fable itself, for that belongs to a very common class of antiquarian legends,1* but in the necessity for it. We only know cornage as a fixed and substantial money rent; as such it appears even in surveys of the fourteenth century ; but according to Littleton tenure by cornage is not reckoned as a mode of socage, it is accounted sometimes a tenure by grand serjeanty, sometimes a tenure by knight's service.18 How can this be ? We turn to the fate of the northern thegns and drengs. Thegns, of course, are to be found in all parts of Domesday Book; but we have special information as to certain thegns who held of the king in the land between the Ribble and the Mersey. Here the thegn I Pipe Boll, 81 Hen. I, p. 181. • Plac. Abbrev. p. 67. The printed book has TaUum animaUum. '• Rot. Cart. p. 50. " Bracton's Note Book, pi. 1270. II Etudes tUT la condition de la classe agricole en Normandie, p. 66. " Appendix to Prevost's edition of Ordcricut VitaUa, vol. v. p. 195. " See in Whitby Cartulary (Surtees Soc.), i. 129, Mr. Atkinson's very interesting note about the duty of horngarth. u Littleton, Tenures, sec. 156. 628 NORTHUMBRIAN TENURES Oct. is generally described as holding a manerium—one of them holds six mantria—though the hidage of their manors is small. They pay a rent of 2 ores per carucate ; ' by custom' they, ' like the villani,' make houses for the king, and fisheries, and inclosures, and buck- Btalls (stdbilituras) in the woods, and on one day in August they send their reapers to reap the king's crops; the heir pays forty shillings for his father's land; if one of them wishes to quit the king's land he must pay forty shillings, and may then go where he pleases; the criminal tariff applicable to them is in some respects unusually mild ; they attend the shiremoot and the hundredmoot. They seem bound to obey the orders of the serjeant of the hundred Downloaded from when he bids them go upon the king's service—this probably implies military duty—but if they make default they only pay a fine of four shillings.