SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



services which were specified and certain.' And in the Domesday record 

 itself we find many freemen added to manors, and some paying custom 

 to a lord's bailiff where none was paid before. At that time or in the century 

 that followed we find them losing the right to sell or give their land. In 

 spite of all this, the class of freemen remained a very large one in Suffolk. 

 In nearly every village in the county men of free status were living along 

 with men of villein status, with little in their manner of life or the amount 

 of land they held to distinguish them from each other, and this was a factor 

 of the greatest importance in the social development we are about to trace.^ 



In that development the towns naturally led the way. Suffolk had not, 

 and never acquired, any town of the first rank, but 738 burgesses and 178 

 poor men are enumerated in six centres of trade and industry exclusive of 

 Bury. At the time of the Conquest Dunwich with its 440 householders 

 was the most flourishing of these, in spite of the fact that the incursions of 

 the sea, which were to prove its destruction, had already begun. Its prosperity, 

 which was maintained for another century, was mainly due to the herring 

 fishery, which was carried on all along the coast from Dunwich to Gorleston 

 and Beccles. The Abbot of Bury had a ' sea-hedge ' at Southwold, and 

 derived a rent of 25,000 herrings from his manor there. The herring rents 

 of Beccles and Dunwich were each 60,000, and many villages several miles 

 inland had to provide a quota of one or two thousand yearly for their lord's 

 use. It was here that industrial influences were first brought to bear on the 

 social life of Suffolk. Ipswich at the time of the Confessor had had 538 

 burgesses, but it had suffered terribly during the Conquest, and in 1087 it 

 had only 210, of whom 100 were too poor to pay more than a penny of 

 taxation. Of the markets recorded in Domesday an exceptionally large 

 number were in Suffolk. They are mentioned at Eye, Hoxne, Sudbury 

 (where there was also a mint), Beccles, Clare, Haverhill, and Caramhall^ 

 besides a fair at Aspall.* 



Nowhere is the process of transition from serfdom to freedom more 

 clearly displayed than in the early history of Bury St. Edmunds as preserved 

 for us by the admirable Jocelyn de Brakelonde.' Originally the townsmen 

 of Bury held their houses and their land from the abbot on servile conditions. 

 They were obliged to plough a rood of their lord's land for every acre they 

 occupied themselves. At harvest time they must give their services in 

 reaping his crops, and assist along with their oxen in carrying them to the 

 barn. At night they must drive their sheep and cattle into the lord's fold in 

 order that his lands might be enriched with the manure. Once a year each 

 householder must make a journey of 14 miles to Lakenheath, and spend a 

 day catching eels for the cellarer. Before the end of the i 2th century most 

 of these services were redeemed by a bargain profitable to both parties for a 

 money payment. Instead of the eel-catching, which might easily prove 

 unprofitable if the sportsmen were as unwilling as the eels, each holder of 

 30 acres was to pay a penny (the price of a day's work) and remain at home. 



' VinogradofF, Villainage in England, 121. 



• Dom. Bk. ii, 331, 33 li^, 404^, \loa, b ; Maitland, Dom. Bk. and Beyond, 62. 



' W. J. Corbett and T. T. Methold, ' Rise and devolution of Manors in Repworth,' $uff. Arch. Inst. vol. x. 

 ' Dom. Bk. ii, 319^, 379, 2861J, 369^, 389, 428, 330^, 418. 



' Mem. of St. Edmund's Abbey (Rolls Ser.), i, 299-305 ; The Chron. of Jocelin of Brakehnd (ed. Sir E. 

 Clarke), (1903), 1 50-161. 



63s 



