DOMESDAY SURVEY 



twenty-four fishermen {piscatores) at Yarmouth.*" Suffolk was mainly an 

 agricultural county, and the peasants, free and unfree, were chiefly occupied 

 in the cultivation of the arable. The manorial estates were usually divided 

 into the lord's demesne and the land of the tenants, to which corresponded 

 the demesne ploughs and the men's ploughs, though this distinction is not 

 always apparent. The centre of the manor, the outward visible sign of the 

 lord's authority, was the hall or manor-house, the aula, halla, mansio, or, as it 

 is once called, the caput manerii. The Suffolk Survey has not very much to 

 tell us about the manorial halls, but its occasional references to them are not 

 without interest. We hear of horses ' in the hall 'or ' in the demesne of the 

 hall;' of berewicks 'belonging' {pertinens) to a hall in another hundred, and 

 of soke which extended only over the demesne of the hall, or over the hall 

 and the bordars ; of a freeman and his land held ' in the hall demesne ' ; *" of 

 a caput manerii worth looj.,"* and of two manors which are described as 

 mansiones^^^ 



In Suffolk, as in Norfolk and Essex, the stock on the manorial farms is 

 recorded : — the ploughs and plough-oxen [boves), the ' beasts ' {animalid) and 

 animalia otiosa, or cattle used for other purposes than ploughing, the rounceys 

 [runcini) and horses {equi), the sheep and goats, the pigs and the bees.*" 

 Cows (vaccae) are only occasionally mentioned, but they may sometimes have 

 been included in the animalia on a manor.*" 



Sheep-farming seems to have been more evenly distributed throughout 

 the county in Suffolk than in Norfolk.*" Flocks of loo sheep or more are 

 found in every hundred except Loes and the half-hundreds of Parham and 

 Ipswich. The largest flocks were in the northern hundreds of Lackford and 

 Bradmere and the half-hundred of Lothing. On the royal manor of Milden- 

 hall in Lackford Hundred there were i,ooo sheep, with 500 in the 

 dependent berewick of Icklingham, while at Downham, in the same hundred, 

 a manor which had passed from St. Edmund's Abbey to Frodo, the abbot's 

 brother, there were 900 sheep ; at Eriswell, Godwin, King Edward's thegn, 

 had kept a flock of 900 before the Conquest, which had been reduced 

 to 800 in 1086.*" Goats are also entered in considerable numbers, especially 

 in the hundreds of Blything and Bishop's, where as many as sixty are found 

 in one herd. Of horses we hear frequently, but they are not very numerous 

 and are more often rounceys or farm-horses than equi, which are generally 

 connected with the hall, and may have been riding horses or horses used for 

 breeding purposes, though the different terms were probably not applied with 

 any great precision.*'** ' Forest mares ' {equae silvaticae), or mares turned 



"' Dom. Bk. 283, 314^, • Edwinus faber'; 334*, ' Bunda faber ' ; 339^, 'Godricus faber'; 435^, 

 ' Faber ' ; cf. 314^, ' Aluricus filius fabri.' For the whole subject of the unfree peasantry cf. Vinogradoff, 

 op. cit. sec. iii, chap, ii ; Maitland, op. cit. 



♦" Dom. Bk. 286*, 304, 350^, 355, 355*5, 362, 362^, 374, 3813, 382, 382^, 401^, 402*, 403, 408^, 

 411, 416, 4163, 418, 449 ; cf. 343^ : St. Etheldreda had soke over all the land except Walton Hall and 

 villeins ; Vinogradoff, op. cit. 3S3 et seq. 



*" Dom. Bk. 2933. "« Ibid. 415, Cratfield. 



*" For the meaning of the entries relating to the plough-teams and ' boves,' cf. Vinogradoff, op. cit. 153 

 et seq. 



*" Dom. Bk. 3763, 3973, 398^, 400, Middleton ; cf Thorington {animalia otiosa) ; cf F.C.H. Notf.u, 23. 



"» F.C.H. Norf. ii, 23-4. "» Dom. Bk. 2883, 359, 4023. 



*" Where Domesday Book has ' equi ' the Inquisitio Eliemis usually has ' runcini.' For horses in 

 Domesday cf Maitland, Dom. Bk. and Beyond ; Index, 'Horses.' The horses which the Suffolk sokemen had 

 to supply to the Abbot of Ely, which were presumably riding-horses, are called ' equi.' 



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