A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



uniform customary holdings is still clearly preserved, and the names of the 

 original holders still attach to their land, i.e. to their sets of half-acre strips 

 scattered about the large fields of the manor which were once, and to some 

 extent no doubt still continue to be, cultivated in common. But the place 

 of the original uniform holding as the formal unit of tenancy is taken by the 

 actual holding of each individual tenant. Thus Reginald Aylmer is said to 

 hold 4 a. 3r. 1 2 p. of the original 'Aylmer' holding, i a. 3r. of the Gorchold 

 holding, and similar fragments of eleven other holdings distinguished by 

 family names, making up a total of about 22 acres. And what is perhaps 

 even more significant of an entire change in the point of view taken by the 

 lord of the manor is that Reginald Aylmer (and each of the other tenants) 

 has a set of rents and services which has been calculated to fit his particular 

 case, though no doubt the original uniform set of rents and services has been 

 used as a basis of the calculation. Money rents are nominally still the lesser 

 part of the tenant's obligations, but the various payments in kind and services 

 demanded are generally valued in money, and seem to be open to com- 

 mutation.^' 



We are specially fortunate in being able to compare this rental with 

 another taken at Rickinghall in 1433 which marks a further stage in the 

 development we have been tracing. Services and payments in kind seem to 

 have largely disappeared. The bounds of each portion of land held by a 

 tenant are carefully defined, and it seems to be becoming the custom to assess 

 each separately at a money rent. Still more interesting is the evidence 

 afforded of the tendency of the strips held by each tenant to draw together 

 into large fields for the obvious purpose of realizing in some way a more 

 individualized cultivation. Hitherto we have been led to assume this process 

 to have been going on because it afforded the only rational explanation of the 

 facts. And here we have actual proof that the assumption was justified. In 

 some cases as many as half a dozen different portions of land held by one 

 tenant are bracketed together in the rental as ' one piece ' ; and in a great 

 many other cases where the bracketing has not been done by the surveyor we 

 can do it for ourselves with the help of the exact boundaries given in the 

 survey. Thus a certain John Chapman holds twenty-nine separately specified 

 pieces of customary land, many of which are less than half an acre in extent, 

 so that the whole is only 25 acres. But these pieces are not isolated each 

 from the others. Fifteen of them are found grouped together in twos and 

 threes, making up six fields of from 2 acres to 4 acres apiece, and these larger 

 plots represent more than two-thirds of the total holding. We may be quite 

 sure that this aggregation means in some way or other a partial withdrawal 

 from the old common course of cultivation to which the system of half or 

 quarter acre strips was adapted." 



In these examples, which may perhaps be taken as representing the 

 more rural districts, the process under observation is comparatively slow. 

 Where the industrial population gathered it was much more rapid. Milden- 

 hall was the most productive manor possessed by the abbey. It was on 

 Mildenhall Heath that the Prior of Bury was beheaded in 138 1. It so 

 happens that the extant bailiff's accounts for the manor begin in that very 

 year, and the one striking feature in them is the system' of leases which 



" B.M. Add. MSS. 14849. " Ibid. 14850. 



656 



