Halmote Court Estreats

These records consist of a series, from 1576 to 1722, of halmote court estreats, with a miscellaneous assembly of estreat rolls dating from 1601 to 1748 tagged on, taken from general sessions, the county court, assizes etc. Estreats are extracts of court record relating chiefly to fines, forfeitures and recognisances.

Two of the halmote estreats relate entirely to courts extraneous to county Durham namely Howden and Northallerton.

Halmote courts were in this case originally the bishops of Durham's countryside courts dealing with the farming regulation of his manors and village bye-laws, though there was also a Durham cathedral halmote dealing with transfers of lands. By the seventeenth century the halmote business was confined largely to surrenders of, or admissions to, copyhold land held under the bishop, petty debt cases, encroachments on the bishop's waste lands, and disputes between his tenants. Most halmote courts were held at places identical with the manor, such as Wolsingham and Lanchester; but the court for Bishop Midham was at Sedgfield, and those for Bondgate were held both at Darlington and Bishop Auckland.