DOMESDAY SURVEY 



in Thedwastre Hundred and at Gislingham in Hartismere Hundred the Abbot 

 of St. Edmunds had made arrangements of the kind called on the Continent 

 free aria remuneratoria, a lease of Church lands, with the reversion of the land 

 granted and of additional estates from the property of the grantee. At 

 Pakenham a freeman had procured a lease from the Abbot of half a carucate 

 (impetravit ab abbdte praestari sibi dimidiam carucatam terrae), * by such 

 an agreement {conventio) that all his land, wherever it might be, should 

 remain to the Saint after his death.' St. Edmund's Abbey was in possession of 

 this land in 1 086, but at Gislingham a Norman tenant-in-chief of the Crown had 

 encroached on the rights of the Church. Here Leofstan, or Levestan, Abbot 

 of St. Edmunds in the lifetime of King Edward, had granted one of his 

 demesne manors to a freeman called Alsi and his wife on condition that when 

 they died the Abbot should have back his own manor and also Alsi's manor 

 of Euston. If, as we may assume, this was 'Evestuna,' in Blackbourn Hundred, 

 St. Edmund's Abbey held it at the date of the Survey, but the Gislingham 

 manor had fallen into the hands of Gilbert 'Balastarius.'"* In other instances 

 the agreement would seem to have been more one-sided. Edith, a free- 

 woman, held a manor from the Abbot of St. Edmunds for her life."* 

 Edmund the Priest gave the land which he took with his wife, with her 

 consent, to the church of St. Etheldreda, ' by such an agreement {conventio) 

 that he could not sell or give away from the church.'"^ From Topesfield, in 

 Cosford Half-hundred, comes the record of an arrangement made with the 

 Church before the Conquest, which was carried into effect in the time of 

 King William. Leveva, a freewoman, undertook to give half a carucate to 

 Holy Trinity, Canterbury, when she died, in return for another half-carucate 

 which she held from the Archbishop during her life. This agreement was 

 made under King Edward, but Leveva lived on into the reign of the Con- 

 queror, and continued to hold the land. It then apparently passed to John, 

 the nephew of Waleran, who claimed it in 1086, but it is entered in the 

 Survey among the estates which Archbishop Lanfranc had devoted to ' the 

 feeding of the monks {ad vie turn monachorum.y^^ At Badley, too, in Bosmere 

 Hundred, Richard Fitz Gilbert held certain freemen as belonging to his 

 manor who had been added in the time of his antecessor Phin by agreement 

 {accomodation with the sheriff, ' as the sheriff himself says.' "^ The com- 

 plexities of a system of divided commendation and the intricacies of tenurial 

 relations could also sometimes be simplified by mutual arrangement. At 

 Blaxhall, in Parham Half-hundred, a freeman who had been sub-commended, 

 half to the antecessor of Robert Malet and half to the Abbot of St. Edmunds, 

 came to an agreement with the Abbot concerning his claim,"* while at the 

 neighbouring villages of ' Brutge ' and Beversham Hervey of Bourges had 



'" VinogradofF, op. cit. 229-32; Dom. Bk. 3613, • Pachenham ; ' 444^, * Gislincham.' Cf. 367^, 

 ' Evestuna.' 



"* Ibid. 286. In this case the land was in the hands of the moneyer, ' monetarius,' when King Edward 

 died, and in 1086 King William was in possession of it. 



'"Ibid. 431*. 'Cloptuna. Brantestuna. Terrain quam cepit cum uxore ejus . . . misit in ecclesia 

 concedente muliere.' Here, too, a Norman tenant-in-chief, William ' de Arcis ' and his tenant are found in 

 possession in 1086, but the fact of the priest's gift is recorded in the Inqutiitio ERensis ; Inj. El. (Rec. Com.), 

 521. 



"« Dom. Bk. 372*. Cf. ibid. 406^, 'Nachetuna.' 



'"Ibid. 393. ' Et ipse Phin tenebat eos per accomodationem vicecomitis ut ipse vicecomes dicit'; 

 VinogradofF, op. cit. 393. 



'" Dom. Bk. 307. ' Ex hac medietate est conciliatus Abbati.' 



383 



