DOMESDAY SURVEY 



THE Domesday Survey of Suffolk follows the Surveys of Essex and 

 Norfolk in ' Little Domesday,' the volume which is supposed to 

 have been compiled from the original returns of the jurors of the 

 hundreds, at an earlier date and on a more elaborate scale than the 

 less detailed and graphic, but also less bulky and cumbrous, ' Great Domes- 

 day.'' At the end of the Suffolk Survey, which concludes the volume, 

 stands in red capital letters the famous colophon : — 



Anno millesimo octogesimo sexto ab Incarnatione Domini vigesimo uno regni Willelmi 

 facta est ista descriptio. Non solum per hos tres comitatus sed etiam per alios. 



As Mr. Round has pointed out,* descriptio here probably refers to the 

 Survey, or Inquest, not to Domesday Book, which did not take its final shape 

 till much later.* A valuable subsidiary source for the study of the Suffolk 

 Survey is the Inquisitio Eliensis, which gives the lands held by the Abbot of 

 Ely in six counties, including the three counties of Little Domesday. From 

 the close correspondence between this document and the Ely returns in 

 Domesday Book, Mr. Round has argued that the Inquisitio was copied, where 

 Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk are concerned, from the second volume of 

 Domesday Book, or Little Domesday.* As in Norfolk, so in Suffolk, a 

 minute comparison of the two records makes it appear more likely that both 

 were derived from the same original,^ and that in each case additions were 

 made and gaps filled up from special knowledge. 



Domesday Suffolk is divided into hundreds, leets, a territorial unit 

 peculiar to East Anglia, vills {villae)^ terrae, and manors {maneria) with bere- 

 wicks {berewitae) . Superficial areas are measured by carucates, half-carucates, 

 and acres ; a virga or rood' appears exceptionally, and perches {perticae) ^ and 

 arpents of vineyard * are also mentioned. Lineal measurements are given in 

 leagues and furlongs or quarentines [quarentenae, quarantenae^ carantenae). That 

 the normal carucate contained 120 acres might be assumed from the frequent 



' Round, Teud. Engl 140-6 ; Maitland, Dom. Bk. and Beyond, i, et seq. ; V.C.H. Nor/, ii, 2-4. 



' Feud. Engl. 1 39-40. 



' V.C.H. Norf. ii, 2. Breve in the sense of a return is only once used in the Suffolk Survey ; Dom. Bk. 

 fol. 379^, 'Plus terrae pertinet sed inbreviata in Norfolc' 



' Feud. Engl. 137-46. ' F.C.H. Norf. ii, 4. 



' Cf. Maitland, Dm. Bk. and Beyond, 384. It is, in the Suffolk instances, a rood or quarter acre, not a 

 virgate or quarter carucate, Dom. Bk. fol. 285 ; 2 acres of meadow, 'i virgam minus,* 342 ; four freemen with 1 2 

 acres and 'i virga prati,' 389 ; four freemen i carucate and 'i virg.' 423; 23 acres and ' i virga,' 433^ ; 4 acres 

 worth 1 6i/. ; 3 virgae worth 3./. Here the worth of the ' virga ' is just a quarter of the worth of the acre. 



' Dom. Bk. fol. 2853, 287. 



'Ibid. fol. 382^ (St. Aldreda), ' Berchingas, ii arpen vinae.' Ibid. 418 (A. de Vere), 



' Lavenham, i arpentum vineae.' Ellis, Introd. to Dom. i, 117. 



357 



