DOMESDAY SURVEY 



manner, Robert Malet had succeeded Edric of Laxfield. Here, though the 

 manor is clearly seen, with its tenants and all its appurtenances, including 

 a fishery, a mill, and a park, the urban element appears distinctly in the market 

 with twenty-five burgesses living in or around it.*" Beccles was held by the 

 Abbot of St. Edmunds before and after 1066, but the king had a fourth part 

 of the market. It was a small place with twenty-six burgesses and a manor 

 of 2 carucates.*" Clare, Richard Fitz Gilbert's manor, was much larger, 

 with forty-three burgesses, five sokemen, and a considerable population 

 of unfree peasants. Here, too, there was a market, but the urban element is 

 somewhat obscured by the rural details entered in the Survey: — the woodland 

 and mill, the vineyard, the farm-stock, and ploughs.*" At Sudbury, where 

 King William had taken over the land of the mother of Earl Morcar, there 

 were sixty-three burgesses attached to the hall, fifty-five burgesses on the 

 demesne holding arable land and meadow, a market, and a mint {moneyers) .*^^ 

 Of Bury St. Edmunds we have already spoken. It had a great history before 

 it, but in 1086 it was still merely the vill {villa) ' where rests enshrined Saint 

 Edmund King and Martyr of glorious memory.' *" 



We close the volume of ' Little Domesday ' and leave the Suffolk Survey 

 with the consciousness that its secrets are still unrevealed, and that years of 

 labour must be spent if the text is to be fully analysed, and if the many 

 problems which arise from it are to be solved. But in all investigations we 

 shall be wise to treat Great and Little Domesday as one whole, and, in the 

 words of the colophon which closes the description of Essex, Norfolk, and 

 Suffolk, to extend our studies * non solum per hos tres comitatus sed etiam 

 per alios.' 



*" Dom. Bk. 3193, 320, 321 ; Thrandeston, 445^. *" Ibid. 369^, 370. 



•" Ibid. 389^, 390. •" Ibid. 286^. «• Ibid. 372. 



4" 



