the same occurred elsewhere, during the progress of the Inquisition, were satisfied to describe them as the same with those of Boldon. The name of Boldon, therefore, repeatedly occurring, the record itself became popularly spoken of as the Buke of Boldon.

The survey was compiled, as we are told in its opening paragraph, at the feast of St. Cuthbert, in Lent, in the year 1183, by order of Hugh Pudsey, then Bishop of Durham, one of the most magnificent and powerful prelates who at any time occupied the episcopal chair. The same paragraph gives us a concise account of the document; it is a description of the revenues of the Bishoprick, and an enumeration of the settled rents and customs renderable to the Bishop, as they stood fixed at the time of its compilation.

Boldon Buke may be called the Domesday of the Palatinate. It is impossible to overrate its importance to the historical enquirer, whether he be interested in the nature of early tenures, the descent of property, or the social condition of the tenants, in whatever rank, of that day. No one can go carefully

through the record without

attaining a considerable

insight into the state of the country and its inhabitants, as far as the Palatinate is concerned, at the end of the twelfth century. Many parts of the relations between the lord and his tenants

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 in 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, and the time of its disappearance is unknown. The following extracts from letters of Bishop Tunstall, and from a Roll of payments in his seventh year, give a clue to the loss of many of the muniments of the See. A letter of the Bishop has the following passage,"In the recovery of such charters and writings belonging to the Churche of Durham as by reason of my La Cardinal, were comon to the King's hand, which I have received." Another letter; "The chauncery of Durham, where al the records lay, was spoyled as wel of records as off all odyr stuff that was ther."-Roll of payments 7 Tunstall. "Paid the

morn after St. Luke's day to Marmaduke Clargenet (5s.) and other of his company, and Robert Lewyn (5s.) for helping to save the records in the Chauncery, in the time of spoyling of the same, 10s."

Four copies are known to exist, the earliest of which was probably made about one hundred years after the compilation of the Survey.

The text adopted in the following pages is that of a Manuscript preserved in the Auditor's office in the Exchequer at Durham, which is appended to a survey made in the time of Bishop Hatfield, and transcribed apparently just after his death, in 1381. It is in the same hand as Hatfield's Survey, and has been chosen as the text, from its preserving the names of places and persons in an older form than in the Chapter Manuscript hereafter mentioned. It has, however, in some places been altered in the case of holders of land, for instance at p. 25, the Auditor's Manuscript reads, "Umfrid the carter holds 6 acres, which were Ulf Raning's." The Chapter Manuscript has instead a notice of the earlier holder: "Ulframming holds 5 acres."

Some additions to all the Manuscripts have been made, but they are few, and if we were in possession of the very record which was laid before Bishop Hugh, we should probably find but few differences from the text as it stands in this book. The text has been collated with two other Manuscripts; one in the Registrum Primum of the Dean and Chapter of Durham above alluded to, written about the year 1400,

or perhaps a little later; this is called C in the various readings at the foot of the page; the other, called B, is clearly a transcript of the Chapter Manuscript, and was once in the possession of Bishop Tunstall, and is now preserved in the Bodleian. Sir H. Ellis printed from this in the Appendix to Domesday. Another and the earliest copy, once in the Stowe Library, and now in that of Lord Ashburnham, remains to be mentioned. It is contained in a volume with other Durham records, and is probably a transcript made not later than the year 1300, and therefore nearly one hundred years earlier than the copy in the Auditor's office. It would have been most desirable to have had a collation of this Manuscript, and application was made for that purpose to Lord Ashburnham. This request was, however, refused.

A translation of the Survey has been given, as the Society was anxious that a record of such importance should be made available to those to whom the base Latin of that day might not be very intelligible; and here the Editor would wish to say, that for the mistakes in Grammar in the text he is not responsible; the compilers of Boldon Buke evidently considered accuracy in Grammar as a matter of little importance.

The Editor has added some illustrations, by way of Appendix, of which, perhaps, a short account should be given. The first is a translation of an extract from the Pipe Roll of 31 Henry I., whilst the See was vacant after the death of Bishop Flambard in 1128: this Roll

has been printed by the Record Commission, in a publication entitled Magnus Rotulus Pipa, 31 Henrici I. It is a valuable illustration, as it tells us something of the state of the Palatinate before Boldon Buke was compiled. Translations of Pipe Rolls of 8 Richard I., 1197, when the See was in the hands of the Crown, on the death of Bishop Pudsey, and of the 13 and 14 of John, 1211-2, when the See was vacant on the death of Bishop Philip de Pictavia, have also been given. These are printed in "The Pipe Rolls for Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham," published by the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. These documents afford much information respecting the possessions of the Bishop, and are the more peculiarly valuable as they relate to a period just subsequent to the compilation of Boldon Buke. The account of the scutage in the Roll of 8 Richard I. supplies what is wanting in that survey, where it gives us a list of tenants in chief.

The above documents are followed by a Great Roll of receipts and expenditure of the twenty-fifth year of Bishop Bec, 1307, the year in which he received restitution of the temporalities of the See after the death of Edward I. It is preserved in the Auditor's Office, and has never been printed. No other general roll of the receipts of the See, of that period, remains; all have been destroyed with this exception, and the Series does. not commence until many years afterwards. It is a document of the highest interest, not only as throwing light on Boldon Buke, but as giving much additional