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July 2003

Parish History Episode 27

The Boldon Book

By the close of 1144, the Scots were out of England, save only for the counties of Northumberland and Cumberland. The following year Queen Matilda withdrew to Normandy, and most of England appeared to be under King Stephen's rule. His position was still, however, exceedingly shaky, and barons seemed to please themselves whether or not to recognise the King's authority. Then in 1152 and 1153 Prince-Bishop William of St. Barbe, King David I of Scotland and Queen Matilda all died. Matilda, still ruling most of Normandy, was succeeded by her son Henry, the child of her marriage with Count Geoffrey Plantagenet of Anjou. This Henry was to be the founder of the Plantagenet or Angevin Dynasty of England. He carried the war back to England, where he landed in 1152. King Stephen was by now at loggerheads with the Church, Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury having refused to crown Stephen's son Eustace as joint king with his father; and then Prince Eustace was killed in an accident, leaving Stephen without an heir. His heart seems to have then gone out of war-making, and in 1153 he made peace with Henry, by whom England was briefly partitioned, and he agreed to recognise Henry as his heir. The following year he died, and Henry Plantagenet became King of All England: well, not quite all yet. He soon marched North against Malcolm IV, the successor of David I on the Scottish Throne. King Malcolm agreed in 1157 to evacuate Cumberland and Northumberland, except for a few castles, chiefly in Upper Tynedale. For these castles, and also for those estates in the English Midlands once held by his grandfather David I as Earl of Huntingdon, he did homage to the King of England.

(These Acts of Homage, to be required of King Malcolm's successors as well, were to bedevil relations between England and Scotland for the next two centuries, the English kings choosing to believe that the Scottish kings were paying them homage for their whole kingdom, not just for their English lands; and the Scottish kings interpreting the situation very differently).

King Henry II is chiefly remembered in English history for his quarrel with his Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, culminating in Becket's murder. But the new King of England never quarrelled with the new Prince-Bishop of Durham, Hugh Puiset (sometimes written "de Puiset", or anglicised as "Hugh Pudsey”).

Hugh may perhaps be regarded as the greatest of the Prince-Bishops. He succeeded William of St, Barbe as the ruler of a land which had been ravaged by civil war, and he was to bring the Palatinate to a level of economic prosperity that it had probably never known before, not since the Roman Legions had departed, eight long centuries ago.

Everywhere - in Houghton-le-Spring, in Dalton-le-Dale, in Easington, in dozens of other communities - churches and villages lay in ruins, and the human population was gone, either slaughtered in the wars, or carried off captive, or fled from their homes. Bishop Hugh needed fresh settlers to come in and replace those who had died, and he needed money to pay for their settlement and to rebuild the economy of the Diocese. Fortunately he was able to sell title to many estates which had been abandoned by their owners, who had made the mistake of siding with the Scots when the invaders appeared to be winning. With this money, and with rents and taxes he imposed on the whole Diocese, he was able to restore fortifications intended to reduce the likelihood of any further Scottish invasions; to repair war damage suffered by Durham Cathedral, and to make some additions to the structure, notably the Galilee Chapel; to help in the restoration of numerous ruined villages such as Houghton-le-Spring; and to increase the population of the Diocese by planning and founding new settlements such as Newbottle (= New Buildings), Tunstall and East Boldon (originally Newton).

(These new villages were built all to the same plan - a ring of houses round an oval village green. This plan is still evident at Tunstall, but reference to a street map will show that Newbottle and East Boldon were built on the same plan, the present village centre, built on a lost village green, being enclosed within an oval road).

To understand his financial position, Bishop Hugh ordered a survey to be made of the Diocese's assets, and this survey is known as the Boldon Book, and the original manuscript is still held in the Durham Cathedral Library. It shows the situation as in 1183, late in Bishop Hugh's episcopate, and it is interesting to consult the survey to see what the situation was in Houghton-le-Spring, eight hundred years ago. (The survey was compiled in Latin, and the name of our community is given as Ottona).

Our entry reads as follows:
"In Houghton there are thirteen cottagers who hold, work, and pay rent in the same manner as those of Newbottle" (where the villeins (peasants) worked two days a week for their lord, and who, with their children, but not their wives, provided extra services at harvest-time and other occasions, and who also paid rent in eggs to the Bishop; but this was a better bargain for the villeins than was the standard "contract", whereby the villains gave three days a week in labour, and had to meet many other impositions ) "and three half-cottagers who work in the same manner as the half-cottagers of Newbottle. Henry the Reeve holds two bovates of twenty-four acres in return for his services. The smith has twelve acres for his services. The carpenter has one toft and four acres for his services. The pinder has twelve acres and gets thraves of corn from the ploughs of the same township, and of Warden Law and Morton, and renders sixty hens and three hundred eggs (per year?) The mills of Newbottle and of Biddick, with half the mill of Rainton, yield fifteen marks. The Lordship Farm, with four ploughs and with sheep and pastures, is in the hands of the Bishop."

The le Springs had evidently abandoned or been evicted from Houghton's Lordship Farm, and the Bishop's officers took all the rents and dues for their master. Henry the Reeve was the Bishop's overseer, the man who saw that the villains laboured as required on the Bishop's land, the man who, when required, stood over them with a stick and saw that they laboured well. As his own reward he held twenty-four acres, twice the amount of the thirteen cottagers, four times that of the half-cottagers. The smith had only the standard twelve acres, but he was free of all servile duties. The carpenter had only four acres, but he also held a toft (a garden) of unknown size. In later times a pinder would be the man who looked after strayed livestock in the town pound, but here it probably means a man who looked after stock for others ( working horses and plough-oxen perhaps), not only in Houghton but also in Warden Law ( where there is little or no arable farming now ) and in Morton (Fencehouses). He drew his own tithes from the produce of all three villages, and he also held the standard twelve acres for his own sustenance, but paid a heavy tax in eggs to the Bishop. The mill at Rainton was presumably a water-mill at the site
where there still stands a Mill Inn, and that at Biddick may also have been a water-mill; but that at Newbottle, a new village, was probably one of the new windmills.

( Windmills seem to have been first brought to Europe, from the East, by returning Crusaders. Other innovations they introduced included sugar, silk and cotton. Less welcome was leprosy, but Bishop Hugh built leprosaria at Witton Gilbert, Sherburn and Greatham for the isolation and support of lepers, and hospitals still exist at each of these sites. A fourth leprosarium, known as Kepier, was built just outside Durham, at Gilesgate, and the name of that hospital will later come to be used for a school at Houghton).

Neighbouring villages described in the Boldon Book include Morton, Warden Law, Penshaw and Herrington ( all in Houghton parish ), and Sunderland, Easington, Shotton, Shadforth and Sherburn. The Raintons were the property of the Prior and monks of Durham ( not the bishop) and they probably held the other half-share in Rainton Mill. There were villages, also in Houghton parish, at Helton and Eppleton, but the local lords had remained loyal to the English cause throughout the civil wars, and Bishop Hugh had no excuse to seize those villages, and so they are ignored in the Boldon Book.