DRENGAGE.
(Vol. vii., p. 39.)
The tenure in drengage was common in, if it was not confined to, the territory which was comprised in the ancient kingdom of Northumbria. Drenghs are mentioned in Domesday on the lands between the Ribble and the Mersey, which then formed part of Northumbria. They occur in Yorkshire; and they are mentioned in the survey, called the Boldon Book, compiled in A.D. 1183, by order of Hugh Pudsey, the great Bishop of Durham, which may be termed the Domesday of the palatinate. Sir Henry Ellis, in his General Introd. to Domesday, says, "The drenchs or drenghs were of the description of allodial tenants ... and from the few entries in which they occur, it certainly appears that the allotments of territory they possessed were held as manors." (Domesd., tom. i. fo. 269.) But as menial services (to be rendered, nevertheless, by the villans of the tenant in drengage) were attached to the tenure, at all events in the county of Durham, it was inferior to military tenure; and the instance in the Pipe Rolls of Westmoreland, 25 Henry II., of the enfranchisement of drenghs, together with the particulars
given in records of the palatinate of Durham and the county of Northumberland, as to the services attached to drengage, show that it was far from being a free tenure. Yet Spelman (Gloss., ed. 1687, p. 184.) speaks of drenges as "tenantes per servitium militare;" and Coke calls them "free tenants of a manor."[[6]] From the Boldon Book we learn, however, that the services of the drengh were to plough, sow, and harrow a portion of the bishop's land, to keep a dog and horse for the bishop's use, and a cart to convey his wine; to attend the chase with dogs and ropes; and perform certain "precaria," or harvest works. To take an example from the roll of Bishop de Bury in 1336:—We find Nicholas de Oxenhale held of the bishop in capite the manor of Oxenhale, performing, amongst other services, "the fourth part of a drengage; to wit, he was to plough four acres, and sow the land with seed of the bishop's, and harrow it, and do four days' work in autumn." And in the Pipe Roll for Westmoreland, already mentioned, we find eighteen drenghs in the honour held by Hugh de Morvill, who had not been enfranchised by him, and who remained paying a fine to be exempt from foreign service. In Northumberland the tenants in drengage paid a fixed money-rent, and were subject to tallage, heriots, merchet, &c. So, in the palatinate, in 25th Bishop Hatfield (A. D. 1369), John Warde, of Hoton, died seised in his demesne of a messuage and sixty acres which were held of the bishop in capite, by homage and fealty in drengage, rendering six bushels of oats and three bushels of barley, at the manor of Middleham. But the agricultural and menial services were lighter than those of the villan, and, as already stated, were not performed by the tenant in person, or by those of his household. This tenure existed in Tynedale at the close of the thirteenth century, as appears from Rot. Orig. 20 Edw. I., vol. i. p. 70., where the "consuetudinem partium prædictarum" are mentioned. "A drengage," says Blount, in his Fragmenta Antiquitatis, "seems to have consisted of sixteen acres, to be ploughed, sown, and harrowed." The word drengage is derived, by the Rev. Wm. Greenwell, in the glossary to his recent valuable edition of Boldon Book, from the Anglo-Saxon dreogan, to do, work, bear; the root, according to Tooke, of our English word drudge. Drengage is, in Kelham's Norman-French Dictionary, explained to be "the tenure by which the drenges held their lands." In Lye's Saxon Dictionary I find "Dreng, miles, vir fortis."
Wm. Sidney Gibson.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Footnote 6:[(return)]
Spelman says they were "E genere vassallorum non ignobilium," and such as, being at the Conquest put out of their estate, were afterwards restored.