1. The National Archives: Public Record Office, London, UK (hereafter TNA:PRO) DURH 3/12 ff. 2v–8v; Britnell, Richard H., “Feudal Reaction After the Black Death in the Palatinate of Durham,” Past and Present 128 (1990): 31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. “Customary tenant” here refers to a holder of land regulated by customary law rather than by Common Law; in this case, lands regulated by the halmote. These lands, held for life in exchange for defined rents and services to the lord and communal obligations to fellow villagers, later would become copyhold lands (Durham bishopric) or leasehold (Durham Priory main estate). Poos, L. R. and Bonfield, Lloyd provide an excellent introduction to customary law and customary tenures in the introduction to their Select Cases in Manorial Courts 1250–1550: Property and Family Law, Selden Society vol. 114 (London: Selden Society, 1998), xv–lxxiiiGoogle Scholar. For the leasing of priory lands, see Richard A. Lomas, “Durham Cathedral Priory as a Landowner and a Landlord, 1290–1540” (PhD thesis, University of Durham, 1973), 24–45, passim.

3. On the centrality of juries (and participation in government) in English state-building, see Masschaele, James, Jury, State, and Society in Medieval England (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. The scholarship on the manor and leet courts is expansive; good introductions to the literature and problems include Bailey, Mark, The English Manor, c.1200–c.1500 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 167–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Poos and Bonfield, Select Cases in Manorial Courts, xv–lxxiii; Razi, Zvi and Smith, Richard M., eds., Medieval Society and the Manor Court (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beckerman, John, “Procedural Innovation and Institutional Change in Medieval English Manorial Courts,” Law and History Review 10 (1992): 215–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Select Pleas in Manorial and Other Seignorial Courts, Vol. I: Reigns of Henry III and Edward I, Selden Society vol. 2, ed. F. W. Maitland (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1889).

5. Homans, George C., English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprint, New York: Russell & Russell, 1960), 312 (all page references are to reprint edition).

6. See Raftis, J. A., “Social Structures in 5 East Midland Villages: A Study of Possibilities in the Use of Court Roll Data,” Economic History Review n.s.18 (1965): 85Google Scholar; DeWindt, Edwin B., Land and People in Holywell-cum-Needingworth: Structures of Tenure and Patterns of Social Organization in an East Midlands Village, 1252–1457 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1972)Google Scholar; DeWindt, Anne R., “Peasant Power Structures in Fourteenth-Century King's Ripton,” Mediaeval Studies 38 (1976): 247–48, 252CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Britton, Edward, The Community of the Vill: A Study in the History of the Family and Village Life in Fourteenth-Century England (Toronto: Macmillan, 1977), 13, 95–99Google Scholar. For examples not based on Ramsey sources, see Lennard, Reginald, “Early Manorial Juries,” English Historical Review 77 (1962): 512–16Google Scholar; Hilton, R. H., A Medieval Society: The West Midlands at the End of the Thirteenth Century (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966), 152Google Scholar; and McIntosh, Marjorie K., Autonomy and Community: The Royal Manor of Havering, 1200–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 203–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The system of village reconstruction used for many Ramsey Abbey villages categorizes families based largely on participation in local offices and in court life in general; for a critique, see Razi, Zvi, “The Toronto School's Reconstitution of Medieval Peasant Society: A Critical View,” Past & Present 85 (1979): 146–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. See E. DeWindt, Land and People, 18, 211–20; and A. DeWindt, “Peasant Power Structures,” 246–47. Britton implied that jurorship served a more limited segment of the village, yet his data on participation and frequency of service is quite similar to the other studies of Ramsey Abbey villages (Community of the Vill, 95–98).

8. Olson, Sherri, “Jurors of the Village Court: Local Leadership before and after the Plague in Ellington, Huntingdonshire,” Journal of British Studies 30 (1991): 240–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. Olson, Sherri, A Chronicle of All That Happens: Voices from the Village Court in Medieval England (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1996), 118–31Google Scholar, 151 (quotation from 128). Cf. Dyer, Christopher, An Age of Transition? Economy and Society in England in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 74–75Google Scholar.

10. Olson, Chronicle of All That Happens, 40. At one session per roll, there should have been 724 court rolls produced (181 years, two courts per year, per village). E. DeWindt had only fifty-three court rolls covering forty-seven years for Holywell-cum-Needingworth. Of these, thirty-nine are for the court leet, which if held twice a year means that only 11.47 percent have survived, and while the rate for the other court rolls cannot be calculated, even if there were one roll per year, that is only a rate of 8.24 percent (Land and People, 18). Britton is on firmer ground, but even his thirty-four rolls mean a survival rate of 32.08 percent, leaving two-thirds of his period in the dark (Community of the Vill, 275–77).

11. Razi, “Toronto School's Reconstitution,” 147–49.

12. This is despite the regular activity of the bishops and other Durham men in offices and business outside the county. The standard work on the palatinate is Lapsley, G. T., The County Palatine of Durham: A Study in Constitutional History (New York: Longmans, 1900)Google Scholar. Other important treatments include Fraser, Constance, “Edward I and the Regalian Franchise of Durham,” Speculum 31 (1956): 329–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Scammell, Jean, “The Origins and Limitations of the Liberty of Durham,” English Historical Review 81 (1966): 449–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the absence of Frankpledge, see Morris, W. A., The Frankpledge System (New York: Longmans, 1910), 45Google Scholar.

13. There are no traces of an actual hundred court in Durham, although the other public or royal courts (county court, justices of the peace, and assizes, and so forth) did operate in the county. The basics of the Durham halmote court have been described to varying degrees in Emsley, Kenneth and Fraser, Constance, The Courts of the County Palatine of Durham from Earliest Times to 1971 (Durham: Durham County Local Historical Society, 1984), 4–8Google Scholar; Britnell, “Feudal Reaction,” 29, 34; R. Lomas, “Durham Cathedral Priory,” 45–59; and Larson, Peter L., “Local Law Courts in Late Medieval Durham,” in North-East England in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Britnell, Richard and Liddy, Christian (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2005), 97–109Google Scholar, and Larson, Peter L., Conflict and Compromise in the Late Medieval Countryside: Lords and Peasants in Durham, 1349–1400 (New York: Routledge, 2006), 34–37, 60–61Google Scholar.

14. Larson, “Local Law Courts,” 99–100, 107–9, and Conflict and Compromise, 182–83, 218. On the free courts, see Emsley and Fraser, Courts of the County Palatine, 8–12, and Constance M. Fraser, “The Free Court of the Priors of Durham,” in Britnell and Liddy, North-East England in the Later Middle Ages, 111–17. There are extant records from the prior's free court, but not from the bishop's free court (unless it was the same as the county court, for which one roll survives).

15. The priory main estate, sometimes referred to as the bursar's estate, was only part of the house's holdings, as many obedientiaries administered smaller estates to support their offices; see R. Lomas, “Durham Cathedral Priory,” 6–12, 27–28, 156–261; and Lomas, R. A. and Piper, A. J., eds., Durham Cathedral Priory Rentals, vol. I, Bursars’ Rentals, Surtees Society vol. 198 (Durham, 1989), 7–8Google Scholar.

16. For the priory, the summer tourn was considered the first tourn; for the bishopric, the autumnal tourn was first. In terms of frequency of meetings, there was considerable variation throughout England; besides the studies of individual estates, see Ault, Warren O., Private Jurisdiction in England (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1923), esp. 139–40Google Scholar; and Bailey, English Manor, 169, 180–81.

17. Pollock, Frederick and Maitland, Frederic William, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I (1898; reprint, Union, N.J.: Lawbook Exchange, 1996)Google Scholar, I:580–94 (all page references are to reprint edition); on the Durham manerium, see note 72 below.

18. The earliest surviving bishopric halmote book contains records of fines and reliefs in or appended to the records of individual tourns. However, these are lists, and the lands were not necessarily taken at the court, and in several cases record fines for lands entered without proper livery of seisin (TNA:PRO DURH 3/12).

19. Enforcement of weights and measures for brewing and baking was handled for the priory estate by the Marshalsey court, although it is possible that the courts met concurrently (Lapsley, County Palatine, 194; and Larson, Conflict and Compromise, 258n10). Some of these records are printed in Extracts from the Account Rolls of the Abbey of Durham, vol. 3, ed. J. T. Fowler, Surtees Society vol. 103 (Durham: Andrews, 1901), 327–71; I am grateful to Mr. A. J. Piper, Durham University Library Archives and Special Collections, for this reference. On enforcement of the Assize of Ale, see Bennett, Judith M., Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women's Work in a Changing World, 1300–1600 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 4Google Scholar.

20. For a dispute over the suit of drings, see Larson, Conflict and Compromise, 102.

21. Larson, Conflict and Compromise, 180–81.

22. The only surviving evidence of different records series comes from Durham Cathedral Muniments, Durham University Library, Archives and Special Collections, Durham, UK (hereafter DCM) Locellus IV:250 and Halmote Rolls, Autumn 1395, covering Pittington and East and West Rainton, where the missing business relates to the Marshalsey court; see note 19 above.

23. This is particularly true for the election of juries; the rare record of such an election underscores their general absence, implying that the elections themselves were unusual (Larson, Conflict and Compromise, 40–41; “Local Law Courts,” 102).

24. For this and other examples, see Larson, “Local Law Courts,” 102–9. On the forty-shilling rule, usually attributed to c. 8 of the 1278 Statute of Gloucester, see Palmer, Robert C., The County Courts of Medieval England 1150–1350 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), 250–59Google Scholar. Beckerman, John argues that the forty-shilling limit on debts and detinue was not connected to the Statute, and instead dated back to earlier attempts to maximize profit and minimize congestion in royal courts (“The Forty-Shilling Jurisdictional Limit in Medieval English Personal Actions,” in Legal History Studies 1972: Papers Presented to the Legal History Conference, Aberystwyth, 18–21 July 1972, ed. Jenkins, Dafydd (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1975), 110–17)Google Scholar.

25. Larson, “Local Law Courts,” 105; Hyams, Paul, Kings, Lords, and Peasants in Medieval England: The Common Law of Villeinage in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), 162–63Google Scholar.

26. This elision of presentment and verdict was common in many manorial courts (Masschaele, Jury, State, and Society, 46n3).

27. TNA:PRO DURH 3/14 52r; for a similar example, see 183r. This case demonstrates some of the challenges in studying the halmote records, as here the verdict is followed by the (original?) complaint and then the resolution and amercement; there is no complaint in the preceding tourns, so either this is the original or the process began informally outside of court.

28. TNA:PRO DURH 3/14 101r. The increasing number of unusual cases in the early fifteenth century indicates some change, either of procedures or record keeping, but though more common these instances are still the exception.

29. See Beckerman, “Procedural Innovation.”

30. DCM Halmote Rolls, Spring 1365, following the record for Wolviston. Extracts of the Priory Halmote Rolls up to 1384 have been printed as Halmota Prioratus Dunelmensis, ed. W. H. Longstaffe and J. Booth, Surtees Society vol. 82 (Durham: Andrews, 1889). On the role of suitors in judgment, see Beckerman, “Procedural Innovation,” 200–201, 212–13. The reduction or pardon of fines and amercements by priory officials could point to the jury acting as affeerers, but it could just as likely reveal the ability of tenants to appeal their fines.

31. Select Pleas, xxxiv–xxxv. See also Phillipp Schofield, “The Late Medieval View of Frankpledge and the Tithing System: An Essex Case Study,” in Razi and Smith, Medieval Society and the Manor Court, 408–49, esp. 426–27.

32. Leges Henrici Primi c. 7 §7b, in Leges Henrici Primi, ed. and trans. L. J. Downer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972; reprinted, 1996), 100–101 (all page references are to reprint edition). Lennard found that “there is not much trace in these juries of the representation of the vill … by the priest and reeve and four de melioribus villae who were potential representatives of it according to the Leges Henrici” (“Early Manorial Juries,” 513). See Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, 1:547; Select Pleas, xxxiii; Vinogradoff, Paul, Villeinage in England: Essays in Medieval English History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1892; reprint, 1968), 188–90Google Scholar (all page references are to reprint edition); and Cam, Helen, The Hundred and the Hundred Rolls: An Outline of Local Government in Medieval England (New York: Franklin, 1930), 119Google Scholar. Bennett, H. S. states that the reeve and four men were called before the justices in eyre in Life on the English Manor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1937; reprint, 1999) 173Google Scholar (all page references are to reprint edition). Based on his study of a few vills, Lomas concluded that the reeve was the lead juror in Durham (“Durham Cathedral Priory,” 47–48). This was not always the case, however.

33. There were some jury elections in Billingham in the fifteenth century, but they do not appear to have been annual. There were no elections recorded on the bishopric estate for either 1349 to 1362 or 1388 to 1424; on the priory main estate, there were seventeen recorded jury elections between 1364 and 1400: South Shields (1381, 1395, 1396, 1397, 1399, 1400), Aycliffe (1396, 1397, 1398, 1399, 1400), Monk Hesleden (1397, 1400), Ferryhill (1376), Wolviston (1397), Cowpen Bewley (1397), and Harton (1397) (DCM Halmote Rolls, 1381 to 1400 passim). All but two elections occurred between 1395 and 1400, a period of high mortality and administrative instability on both estates with unusually high numbers of elections for other village officers (Larson, Conflict and Compromise, 219–22).

34. There are fewer examples of this than of an elected jury. There are very rare occasions where a man paid a fine for a one- or two-year respite from service as reeve or juror; this could indicate some sort of seignorial approval process, or it could be a political move to guarantee return to the panel when other jurors might disagree, by securing a legal record.

35. This in turn raises thorny questions about the “election” of the reeve: Was he reeve because he was a juror or was he a juror because he was reeve?

36. The only instance where the change of seignorial personnel coincides closely with a significant change on the jury is for Billingham. In 1391, John of Hemingbrough took over as prior, and in 1392 to 1393 there was an almost complete change of the men on the jury; however, there is no evidence for any connection. I am grateful to Mr. A. J. Piper of Durham University Library Special Collections for a list of priory officers and their dates in office (private communication).

37. Halmota Prioratus Dunelmensis, 2–20. Unfortunately, the jury lists were not printed, and it is unclear whether they appeared in all of the original rolls, but some of the cases refer to small juries usually of four men (DCM Halmote Rolls, c. 1295).

38. DCM Halmote Rolls, Autumn 1340 and Summer 1345.

39. The latter half of the thirteenth century saw throughout England both an evolution from presentment by suitors or homage to presentment by jury and the separation of presentment, inquest, and trial juries (Beckerman, “Procedural Innovation,” 218–50). This is one more indication of the different legal culture of Durham.

40. There were exceptions, but again these reinforce the regular use of the halmote jury. When business touched on several villages, the panels could be combined. Very rarely, a special jury of old men was employed to provide information from their memories (see note 60 below). To provide lists of the prior's unfree population, sometimes there was a separate jury of irregular size (from nine to thirteen) but at other times the regular halmote jury provided the list; see Larson, Conflict and Compromise, 156–58. A separate jury was used to compile Thomas Langley's survey, and Richard Britnell found that the jurors used to vet the information were not the halmote jurors (“The Langley Survey of Durham Bishopric Estates, 1418–21,” Archaeologia Aeliana 5th ser. 16 (1988): 218).

41. This variety does not appear to be significant for the bishopric estate; preliminary analysis of data for all the bishopric villages between 1388 and 1405 indicates that the patterns below for Norton are typical of the entire estate.

42. On the agrarian history of southeastern Durham, see Timothy Lomas, “Land and People in South-East Durham in the Later Middle Ages,” (PhD thesis, Teesside Polytechnic, 1976). One crucial difference between Durham and southern England was that Durham townships usually were located some distance from each other; see Britnell, Richard, “Fields, Farms and Sun-division in a Moorland Region, 1100–1400,” Agricultural History Review 52 (2004): 20–37Google Scholar; and Dunsford, Helen and Harris, Simon J., “Colonization of the Wasteland in County Durham, 1100–1400,” Economic History Review 2nd ser. 56 (2003): 34–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43. Bishop Hatfield's Survey, ed. William Greenwell, Surtees Society vol. 32 (1857; reprint, London: Dawson & Sons Ltd., 1967), 172–77 (all page references are to reprint edition); Durham Cathedral Priory Rentals, 96–104, 208–9. On the complex relation of personal and tenurial systems, see Larson, Conflict and Compromise, 62–67.

44. Durham Cathedral Priory Rentals, 96–104. This assumes that persons in the rental with the same name are the same person; thus, the number could be higher if there were more than one person with the same name, or lower in the less likely instance that a single individual was listed under more than one name. For both Billingham and Norton, the acreage is an underestimate because the size of holding was not always recorded.

45. Bishop Hatfield's Survey, 172–77. This includes the tenants of the four forges in Norton.

46. Regarding exchequerland, see Frederick Bradshaw, “Social and Economic History,” in The Victoria History of the County of Durham, vol. 2, ed. William M. Page (1907; reprint, London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1968), 183 (reference is to the reprinted edition); and Dunsford and Harris, “Colonization of the Wasteland in County Durham,” 41–46. The dringage lands of Norton are of little concern here, since at the time they were held by Sir Roger Fulthorp (Bishop Hatfield's Survey, 172).

47. Full village reconstruction would be necessary for precision, since some of the surnames belonged to outsiders not resident in the village; however, there may have been families in the village who did not appear in court, so a reconstruction would not be foolproof.

48. Acreage is a slightly different matter: Holywell-cum-Needingworth contained around 1,200 acres, Broughton about 1,000 acres of customary land and 120 acres of freehold, Upwood had 2,141 acres and Ellington 2,700 (E. DeWindt, Land and People, 28–33; Britton, Community of the Vill, 77–86; and Olson, Chronicle of All that Happens, 29).

49. E. DeWindt, Land and People, 55–56; Britton, Community of the Vill, 13; and Olson, Chronicle of All that Happens, 32.

50. The data was extracted from TNA:PRO DURH 3/12-14 (bishopric halmote books) and DCM Halmote Rolls, Autumn 1364 to Autumn 1400, passim; unless specified otherwise, all further references to the Halmote Rolls are found under Billingham. Later priory rolls survive up to Autumn 1507 with considerable gaps. The calculated survival rate assumes three tourns per year per village, for seventy-six years, plus two known extra tourns for Norton. As there occasionally were four tourns in a year rather than three, there is the chance that the survival rate was lower, but the infrequency would render such a difference insignificant.

51. There are no surviving bishopric halmote books for 1362 to 1388, although there are fragmentary halmote rolls for 1381–1382; TNA:PRO DURH 3/135.

52. This includes two years (1392 and 1419) with four sessions.

53. This includes two partial lists: DCM Halmote Rolls, Spring 1375 and Summer 1382.

54. When such consolidation seemed uncertain, the names were left separate. When similarities or differences in names could not be identified by use of the halmote records, it was assumed that the men were distinct individuals, and thus the actual number of jurors in both villages could be lower. Analysis carried out using both high and low estimates revealed no significant differences, and so the higher number of jurors has been consistently preferred to avoid overestimating length of service. On the dangers of identification of individuals, see Razi, “Toronto School's Reconstitution,” 142–44, and Bennett, Judith, Women in the Medieval English Countryside: Gender and Household in Brigstock Before the Plague (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 200–202Google Scholar.

55. This assumes that the John del Tonne who died prior to 1366 (presumably in 1365) was the same John del Tonne who was sitting on the jury until then, upon whose decease John del Tonne II became a juror (DCM Halmote Rolls, Spring 1366). However, it is possible that the former was not the John del Tonne sitting on the jury, and therefore there should only be one John del Tonne, juror, and not two as has been assumed here. This would mean twenty-four jurors for Billingham.

56. If all known service outside of the timeframe of 1364 to 1400 for those jurors who sat between 1364 and 1400 is factored in, and assuming that two men with the same name are the same individual, the average number of sessions could be as high as twenty, with an average career span of up to eighteen years.

57. TNA:PRO DURH 3/15 54r.

58. On the mentality of medieval (and modern) jurors, see Masschaele, Jury, State, and Society, 135, 199–205.

59. If the standard practice of not permitting serfs to sit on a jury determining personal status was observed, then there were two John Sanndersons, one free and one not (DCM Halmote Rolls, Spring 1386, under the record for Billingham, and DCM 2.9 Specialia 12). There are two objections to such an assumption. One is the variation of Durham legal practices from what is considered standard. The second is that this was an inquest to list known unfree persons, not to decide someone's status, so the restriction may not have been relevant and John Sannderson the juror could have reported himself.

60. In 1370, in a special jury of old men impaneled to find on the personal status of a tenant through specific knowledge of the status of his father and grandfather, one of the jurors was recorded as being eighty years old (DCM Halmote Rolls, Autumn 1370, Harton). Olson found a juror whose regular career spanned fifty-one years and who served again for a special inquest eight years later, at age eighty-four (Chronicle of All That Happens, 151–52).

61. It was rare for family members to serve together in Durham, and this is similar to the practices observed by Olson (“Jurors of the Village Court,” 249).

62. Assuming that John del Tonne I and II were separate men, and that John del Tonne II replaced John del Tonne I immediately after the latter's death.

63. Judith Bennett argues that the assumption that a surname represents a family is reasonable and that “even contemporaries were inclined to assume that a common surname did, in fact, indicate a family tie” (Women in the Medieval English Countryside, 202–3).

64. A full village reconstruction would add even more surnames based on appearances in the court records.

65. E. DeWindt, Land and People, 213; Britton, Community of the Vill, 73–74; Olson, Chronicle of All that Happens, 150.

66. Larson, Conflict and Compromise, 146.

67. Olson and Britton in particular come to different conclusions about a village elite controlling a jury (Olson, Chronicle of All that Happens, 150; Britton, Community of the Vill, 44–49).

68. As some jurors held both customary and free land, and used both courts, there must have been a social or other distinction unknown to us determining halmote jury service.

69. Based on a sworn inquest to list neifs in Billinghamshire (DCM Halmote Rolls, Spring 1386, entered under the regular court record for Billingham, and DCM 2.9 Specialia 12).

70. Bishop Hatfield's Survey, 172–77; Durham Cathedral Priory Rentals, 96–104.

71. Durham Cathedral Priory Rentals, 96–104. The rental mentions one deceased juror, John Sannderson, when all or part of his holding was listed as held by Robert Luklyn (ibid., 97). An additional four jurors, who did not serve before 1400, also appear in this rental.

72. On the priory and bishopric estates in Durham, manerium did not mean “manor” as it was commonly understood elsewhere as a combination of lands and rights. Instead, the term referred to the buildings and small appurtenances such as the manor house itself, barns, orchards, dovecotes, and so on, but not the demesne lands. Such farms often drew labor from several townships, although some townships, like Billingham, were associated with more than one manerium; see R. Lomas, “Durham Cathedral Priory,” 16; Lomas, Timothy, “South-east Durham: Late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries” in The Peasant Land Market in Late Medieval England, ed. Harvey, P. D. A. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), 304Google Scholar; Dunsford and Harris, “Colonization of the Wasteland in County Durham,” 41–46; and Larson, Conflict and Compromise, 41.

73. DCM Halmote Rolls, Autumn 1379.

74. This is a conservative analysis; depending on record interpretation, the average could be as high as fifty acres.

75. A later, incomplete survey initiated by Bishop Thomas Langley omits Stockton Ward, which contained Norton (Britnell, “The Langley Survey”).

76. Bishop Hatfield's Survey, 172–77.

77. TNA:PRO DURH 3/14 578v.

78. The spring of 1399 saw Robert Hardgill and five new men as jurors; no lists survive for the next three tourns, but the jury in the summer of 1400 was the same as in the autumn of 1398 (DCM Halmote Rolls, Autumn 1398 to Autumn 1400, Billingham).

79. Britnell, “Feudal Reaction;” Larson, Conflict and Compromise, 77–153.

80. TNA:PRO DURH 3/15.

81. There is a similar trend in Olson's data for the decades with the most surviving court records, but she concludes this was due to a smaller juror pool (Chronicle of All that Happens, 118–20).

82. Britnell, “Feudal Reaction,” 34–38.

83. Ibid., 38–39, 41–44; Larson, Conflict and Compromise, 121–53.

84. Britnell, “Feudal Reaction,” 42.

85. Larson, Conflict and Compromise, 207–8. He was certainly not the only juror who repeatedly defied his lord regarding repairs. Tenures in disrepair were a problem on the bishopric estate as well; Gilbert Spurnhare of Norton was a frequent offender, but the nature of the bishopric halmote court prevented high fines and amercements.

86. The near-continuous series ends in 1400, with three tourns missing in 1399 to 1400, so his fate is unknown.

87. Masschaele discusses the adoption of presentment at various levels, and its particular importance as a form of negotiated partnership between lord and tenants in the manor courts (Jury, State, and Society, 52–59).

88. Britnell, “Feudal Reaction,” 30.

89. Dyer, Age of Transition, 74–75; Ault, Warren O., “Village By-Laws by Common Consent,” Speculum 29 (1954): 380CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schofield, Phillipp R., Peasant and Community in Medieval England, 1200–1500 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 42–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 70–72, 166–68.

90. See McIntosh, Marjorie K., Controlling Misbehavior in England, 1370–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 38–39Google Scholar; Dyer, Age of Transition, 74–75; and Larson, Conflict and Compromise, 234–35.

91. Larson, Conflict and Compromise, 186–89.

92. R. Lomas, “Durham Cathedral Priory,” 57; and Larson, Conflict and Compromise, 217–19. The study of village institutions, especially pledging, has illustrated the many interpersonal links that mitigated conflict within a village. There was a history on the Durham bishopric estate of communal effort and quashing of individual action (Britnell, “Feudal Reaction,” 38–39, 43).

93. Razi makes this point well in “Toronto School's Reconstitution,” 85.

94. Britnell, “Feudal Reaction,” esp. 30, 38–39, 43.

95. Homans, English Villagers, 312.