POLITICAL HISTORY 



THE South-folk who dwelt in one half of the original kingdom of 

 the East Angles found a natural boundary between themselves 

 and the East Saxons in the estuary and marshy course of the 

 Stour, while the march in the north was also clearly defined by 

 the course of the Waveney. On the west the boundary was not so clearly deter- 

 mined. There the fens extended almost to Bury, the county being prevented 

 from becoming absolutely insular in character by the low wooded hills to 

 the south-west. The actual boundary here was to be found in the ditch at 

 Newmarket (called later the Devil's Ditch), where the neck of land between 

 the fens led to Cambridge and formed the principal gateway into the 

 county. When the actual separation of the folks took place is impossible 

 to state. In Domesday Suffolk is geographically distinct from Norfolk, but 

 all through the middle ages down to Tudor times it continued, with a few 

 exceptions, to be administered fiscally with the sister county. 



The county was divided for administrative purposes into hundreds, 

 half-hundreds, and ferdings. The origin of this division has been ascribed to 

 Alfred, but this is no doubt simply a compliment paid to a national hero, for 

 the term centeni was used among the Teutonic tribes to describe a certain 

 district. By the time Tacitus wrote the word had ceased to have a literal 

 meaning and had become the designation of an administrative area, and such 

 it is in Suffolk in historic times. It is possible that Alfred or his son Edward 

 redistributed the hundreds in order to facilitate the collection of ship-money. 

 As evidence of this redistribution it is worth noting that the chief town from 

 which the hundred was obviously named often lies outside the boundary of the 

 hundred, and did so in Domesday. Wangford lies no longer in that hundred, 

 but in Blything ; Parham lay outside the shrunken remains of its hundred; 

 Lackford lies beyond the march of Lackford. In Domesday there are twenty- 

 eight hundreds. Of these Babergh is made up of two and Sampford of 

 one-and-a-half, pointing again to re-distribution, while Ipswich, Cosford, 

 Lothingland and Parham rank as half hundreds. By the end of the thirteenth 

 century the number had shrunk further. Blackbourn had absorbed Bradmere,. 

 but ranked fiscally as two hundreds. In the twelfth century 2 Sudbury had 

 been regarded as a quarter of the hundred of Thingoe, and in the Hundred 

 Rolls of Edward I it is held by the earl of Gloucester of Bury, but seems to 

 be identified with Babergh. The extra-hundredal part of Loes, containing 

 Woodbridge manor, is given in Domesday as part of Loes. Lothingland was 

 part of Luding, a hundred which was afterwards the half hundred of Mut- 

 ford. Both these half hundreds were manors in the king's hands and granted 

 out by him. In 1763 the two were re-united into one hundred. Exning 

 seems to be another instance of a manor becoming a half hundred. Below 

 the hundreds came the vills and townships. 



1 J. H. Round, Feud. Engl. 98. • Ibid. IOI. 



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