DOMESDAY SURVEY 



south, and the remaining ten were central. Their names, English rather 

 than Danish in form, date in all probability from the early days of the 

 Anglian occupation, and reflect the natural features of the country, the wide 

 shining expanses of the ' broads ' and ' meres,' the ' fords ' over those 

 riverways which have played so important a part in the history of tribal 

 settlement.'* 



But, like the small Leicestershire hundreds,^" they often derive their 

 names from one of their vills,-* or, as is the case with Lackford and Wang- 

 ford, from a vill in another hundred. ^^ Thingoe and Stow, too, recall the 

 primitive assembly and court of justice, the Scandinavian thing, the Saxon 

 moot-stow,'^ and the existence of double and half-hundreds, with the artificial 

 character of their grouping, suggests that the Suffolk hundreds were deliber- 

 ately formed for administrative purposes, to supply the three chief needs of 

 the infant state : military defence, justice and police, and taxation. The 

 double hundred of Babergh in the south is balanced in the north by the 

 closely connected and intermixed hundreds of Blackbourn and Bradmere, a 

 double hundred in all but name.-* The southern hundred and a half of 

 Samford is similarly matched by the intersected Plomesgate Hundred and 

 Parham Half-hundred on the east,^' flanked on either side bv the half- 

 hundreds of Cosford and Ipswich."* 



The area and population of the Suffolk hundreds at the time of the 

 Domesday Survey cannot be precisely ascertained, since exact measurements 

 are given for arable and meadow land alone, and even here the carucates are 

 probably ' geld-carucates,' and do not represent the ' real ' superficial area, 

 while not only is the record of the tenants in a vill constantly followed by 

 the phrases of uncertain interpretation, Alii ibi tenent : Plures tbi teiient^'^ but 

 it is often difficult to decide whether the returns represent the pre-Conquest 

 or the post-Conquest population. Still, a careful analysis gives results which 

 are useful for purposes of broad generalization, if they cannot be trusted for 

 minute accuracy of detail. The following table shows the number of vills 

 and the area of arable in each hundred, the relative proportions of free and 

 unfree householders, and the average population per carucate of 120 acres in 

 the three groups, northern, central, and southern, of the Suffolk hundreds. 

 In compiling these lists every individual freeman, sokeman, villein, bordar, 



" Round, The Commune of Lond. : 'The Settlement of the South Saxons and East Saxons.' 



"Like the Leicestershire hundreds, also, the Suffolk hundreds were 'strangely intermingled among 

 ihcmselves ' ; Round, feud. Engl. 80, 203. 



" Loes, Parham, Wilford, Claydon. 



" Lackford in Thingoe Hundred ; Wangford in Lackford Hundred. 



" Stubbs, Const. Hist, i, 115 ; Maitland, Township and Boro. 39. 



" Thus Blackbourn is assessed as a hundred and a half, Bradmere as a half hundred. In 1274 Black- 

 bourn was counted as a double hundred ; it had absorbed Bradmere altogether. Rot. Hund. (Rec. Com.), ii, 

 151^,' Blakeburn respondet pro duobus hundr.' 



" It is just these intersected divisions, Bradmere and Parham, which in modern times have lost their 

 independent existence as hundreds or half-hundreds. 



" The economic unity of the hundred is seen in the hundred of Colneis, where there was a pasture 

 common to all the men of the hundred ; Dom. Bk. 339^. Its jurisdictional unity is seen in the ' witness ' of 

 the hundred. Cf Vinogradoff, Growth of the Manor, 144-5, 249-50 ; Engl. Soc. in the Eleventh Century, 

 96-107. 



" They may mean either, 'There are others (living in the vill) holding here,' or ' Others (external to the 

 vill) hold here.' Cf Maitland, Z)o«. Bk. and Beyond, 20, n. i. ' The words, " Alii ibi tenent" . . . mean, we 

 believe, not that there are in this vill other unenumerated tillers of the soil, but that the vill is divided 

 between several tenants in chief.' Ellis, Introd. ii, 491. 



359 



