A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



Herringswell, Hessett, and Tannington. There was also an important gild 

 of St. Ethelbert in connexion with the abbey church of St. Edmunds. 



St. Olave or St. Olaf, an eleventh-century martyred king of Norway, 

 who used to be commemorated in the now destroyed church of one of the 

 Creetings, which is still known as Creeting St. Olave, is one of the two 

 Scandinavian saint names (the other being St. Magnus) brought into these 

 islands by the Danes, while French influence is shown at Euston and Forn- 

 ham by the invocation of St. Genevieve, who built the famous church of 

 St. Denis at Paris, and at Stonham Aspall by the commemoration of 

 St. Lambert, who is thus honoured at only one other place in England, so far 

 as is known, namely at Burneston in Yorkshire. 



Herfast was the last bishop of Elmham and ' the first foreigner who had 

 ever presided over an East Anglian see.' 1 In 1078 Herfast transferred the 

 seat of his bishopric from Elmham to Thetford, as a convenient borderland 

 town between Norfolk and Suffolk. 8 



To Herfast, as a stranger to East Anglia, the claim of chartered exemption 

 from diocesan jurisdiction made by the abbey of St. Edmunds over their liberty, 

 which included a third of Suffolk, was amazing and evil. He at once set 

 himself to defeat, if possible, this opposition to his authority, and insisted on 

 visiting the abbey. But Baldwin, the abbot of St. Edmunds, was a man of 

 blameless life and high repute. His fame as a physician was so great that 

 he had been sent by Edward the Confessor to cure Abbot Lefstan, his prede- 

 cessor, of his sickness. Moreover Baldwin was well known on the Continent, 

 and had been ordained priest by that remarkable man Pope Alexander II. 

 Both parties appealed to the king, but William was at that moment (1073) 

 crossing the seas in connexion with the revolt of Maine, and commissioned 

 Archbishop Lanfranc to arbitrate. Meanwhile Herfast, in his impatience, 

 excommunicated certain of the abbot's contumacious priests, whilst Lanfranc 

 was on his journey to East Anglia. The archbishop had got as far as Frec- 

 kenham in Suffolk, where Siward bishop of Rochester had a manor-house, 

 when he was attacked with sickness, and Abbot Baldwin was summoned to his 

 bedside in the capacity of a physician. On his recovery, Lanfranc proceeded 

 to Bury, and gave a decision which was pleasing to neither side, though 

 apparently more favourable to the abbot than to the bishop. Thereupon the 

 case was transferred to Rome, and in November, 1074, Gregory VII, who 

 had just succeeded to the papacy, wrote strongly to Lanfranc in favour of the 

 abbot, stating that if Herfast was still dissatisfied both parties must appear 

 personally at Rome. Upon receipt of this letter Lanfranc gave his final 

 award entirely in favour of the abbot, a decision which Herfast resisted with 

 much wrath, using personal violence to the messenger who brought him the 

 archbishop's letter. 3 



William de Beaufeu, the successor to Herfast, was consecrated by Lan- 

 franc at Canterbury in 1086. It was in the first year of his episcopacy that 

 the Domesday Survey of East Anglia was compiled. This survey is fully 

 discussed elsewhere, but brief reference must also be made to it in this place, 

 as the information contained in it with reference to the church is excep- 

 tionally full. The church entries extend from No. xiii to xxiv inclusive. 



1 Dioc. Hist. Norwich, 36. ' Malmesbury, De Geitis Pontif. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), 150. 



5 Ibid. 156 ; Lanfranc, Epistolae, Nos. jacii-v. 



8 



