A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



also exceptional. When Danegeld was levied in the hundred, St. Edmunds- 

 bury paid 25 per cent., or 5J. in the pound, which was appropriated to the 

 use of the monks, while a corresponding sum was apparently laid upon 

 Sudbury, to make up the tax due to the king.'*' Although in 1086 the 

 later ' borough ' of St. Edmund still only ranked as a 'vill ' {villa) the descrip- 

 tion of it in the Domesday Survey is peculiarly interesting, as an illustration 

 of the way in which a town might spring up round a great monastic centre. 

 The ' mensal ' land immediately surrounding the abbey, which was charged 

 with the provision of the monks' food {ad victum monachorum),^*'' was occupied 

 in the days of King Edward by 118 tenants {homines) who could give and 

 sell their land, with fifty-two bordars under them, and by freemen and alms- 

 men {ekmosinarii), also with bordars dependent on them. At the date of the 

 Survey the abbey precincts had extended over land which had been arable 

 before the Conquest, and the terse entry in the Survey is yet full enough to 

 bring up before us a picture of the community, a little world in itself, where 

 the abbot and the brethren formed the nucleus round which gathered a 

 population of clerks, nuns, and poor bedesmen, servants and artisans, bailiffs 

 and soldiers {milites) }*^ The thirteen reeves or praepositi Vfho had houses in 

 the ' vill ' and were set over the land, may have administered the outlying 

 estates of the abbey as well as the demesne.'*' We hear of Orger, the abbot's 

 ' reeve,' who held two freemen at Wickham whom Aluric his predecessor 

 had appropriated,"" of the freeman ' Coding the reeve,' who held 90 acres at 

 Oakley and was commended to the Abbot of St. Edmunds, and of ' Bristric, 

 St. Edmund's reeve.''" At South wold, on the east coast, the abbey held a 

 manor which, like St. Edmundsbury, had to provide food for the monks, in 

 particular, apparently, for their fast-days, since it paid a rent of herrings, 

 which had risen from 20,000 under King Edward to 25,000 in 1086.'" In 

 connexion with this manor occurs the solitary mention in Domesday Book 

 of a heia maris or sea-weir. 



The only estates held by Archbishop Lanfranc in Suffolk were also 

 ' mensal ' or ' board ' lands for the Canterbury monks. Three out of his four 

 manors had been granted to Stigand or to ' Holy Trinity,' Canterbury, before 

 the Conquest, and the fourth had come to the archbishop through an agree- 

 ment {conventio) with the freewoman Leveva.'" 



Four bishops held in chief of the Crown in Suffolk, the king's half- 

 brother, Odo of Bayeux, William Bishop of Thetford, Gundulf of Rochester, 

 and Gilbert of Evreux. 



The Suffolk fief of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent,"* is 

 almost entirely composed of the lands of freemen who before the Conquest 

 had been bound to their over-lords by sac and soke and commendation or 

 by commendation alone. Part of these estates had been held by William 



*" Dom. Bk. 372 ; ' Quando in hundreto solvitur ad geltum i. libra tunc inde exeunt Ix. denarii ad 

 victum monachorum' ; Maitland, Dom. Bk. and Beyond, 55, 240 ; RoMndi, Feud. Engl. loi, n. 187 ; Sudbury 

 paid 5/. in the pound and was assessed as 3 leets, or a quarter of a hundred ; above, p. 365. 



'" Dom. Bk. 372 ; Ellis, Introd. to Dom. ii, 488, seems to have misunderstood this passage. 



'*" r.C.H. Suf.ii, II. 



"' Cf. Chaucer's monk, who was an ' out-rydere.' ffWii 0/ Geoffrey Chaucer (ed. Skeat), iv, 6 ; v, 19, 20. 



""Dom. Bk. 371. 



'" Ibid. 170b, 437^ ; cf. 275^ ; a steward {dap'tfer) of the abbot in Norfolk. "' Ibid. 371^. 



"' Ibid. 372^, 373 ; cf. above p. 383. 



'" Cf. V.C.H. Essex, i, 342 ; V.C.H. Norf. ii, 17 ; Dom. Bk. 373, et seq. 



392 



