A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



there still assembled at the Court of Ancient Demesne held annually at 

 Gorleston eighteen ' Chievers ' who represented the original tenants of the 

 1 2-acre holdings, and who were responsible for the collection of the same 

 sum of 4 1 J. for rent and in commutation of service which the king's bailiff 

 had demanded in the 13th century; and what is more remarkable still is that 

 in one case, and probably in most, the identity of the original holding, now a 

 mere legal figment, is preserved under the name of the last tenant who held 

 it undivided three centuries before." 



The accident of being ' ancient demesne ' secured to Gorleston a 

 freer play of economic forces which were nevertheless everywhere at work, 

 as will be seen if we take a case where the conditions were entirely different." 

 What the herring fisheries were to Gorleston, the woollen industry was to be 

 to Hadleigh. In another century it would be a flourishing town. In 1305 

 this development was only in its beginnings, but already the population was 

 rapidly growing, and there was a brisk demand for land. The economic ten- 

 dency towards the break-up of uniform holdings was the same as it had been 

 half a century earlier at Gorleston. Indeed one of the Hadleigh villeins 

 ventured to dispose of his holding in the same manner as John Bond and the 

 rest had done. He let out a fifth of his land to another, and even sold two 

 plots for messuages. The lord's bailiff" acquiesced in this, but when the lord 

 heard of it, he pointed out that the villein had gone beyond his rights and 

 that any disposal of the land required the lord's consent. 



At Hadleigh in 1305 the 27 villeins of Domesday were represented by 

 26J holdings, four of which had been converted into a special class of eight 

 half holdings called ' Monday lands,' which were held by those who acted as 

 the lord's overseers and answered for his outgoings. The Monday lands were 

 so called from the day on which labour was required, and they had a special 

 set of services. Of the 22! ordinary holdings 3 J had been at an early date 

 split into ' half lands,' and one into ' quarter lands ' ; so that apart from the 

 eight Monday lands there were 29 villein estates, if we may so call them, 

 in Hadleigh in 1305. With a few exceptions a uniform set of rents and 

 services was required from each full holding, and half of these from a half 

 land. Each of these ' estates ' — whether a whole land, a half land, a quarter 

 land, or a Monday land — bore a name generally derived from a family who had 

 occupied it for generations, and on the side of its obligations to the lord it 

 had a strict legal unity. This, as we have just seen, was insisted upon by the 

 lord for the excellent reason that he might, if this unity of responsibility 

 were broken up, lose the services to which he was entitled. But on the side 

 of possession and use this unity and uniformity had entirely disappeared. 

 Only one of the holdings, a ' half land,' was occupied by a single tenant. 

 Generally there were five or six, sometimes nine or ten, and in one case as 

 many as twenty tenants to a single holding. In many cases — it is almost the 

 rule — several of the co-tenants bear the same family name, and in about a 

 third of the holdings there are among the tenants some who bear the same 



»• Suckling, Hut. ofSuff. i, 362. 



° From the Subsidy return of 1327 it would appear that both Hadleigh and Gorleston were in the 

 second rank of Suffolk towns. The number of taxpayers (probably about one-tenth of the population), which 

 was 210 at Ipswich and 155 at Bury, 204 at Beccles and 169 at Sudbury, was 73 at Hadleigh and 76 at 

 Gorleston, 74 at Kessingland, and 69 at Orfbrd. It was only 48 at Stowmarket, and 43 at Woodbridge, and 

 33 at Aldeburgh. 'Sufiblk in 1327,' Suff. Green Bk. no. a, vol. ii. 



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