i] An Elizabethan Stu^oey and Domesday Book. 15 



These facts seem to indicate a connection in this locality between 

 the distribution of dwellings and the status of the population, and 

 seem to show that while the unfree were grouped in villages many of 

 the freemen 'dwelt apart and scattered \' 



It is also significant that the hamlet which contained by far the 

 largest proportion of servile messuages (Galgrym in Fornesseta) was 

 situated close to the manor house (Fornesseta)l 



4. The extent of land in Forncett vill held of Forncett maitor 

 by each kind of tenure. 



The Survey, supplemented here and there by the Court Rolls, 

 designates, as a rule, the 'terra libera,' 'terra nativa,' ' terra soliata,' and 

 the original demesne. Before 1565 all of the arable demesne had 

 come into the hands of the tenants of the manor, who held it at fee 

 farm rents. But the Surveyor usually states what land had been 

 demesne, and where he does not do so it may be identified from the 

 Court Rolls. In some cases the Surveyor was unable to determine by 

 what tenure a given piece of land was held. Such land is classed in 

 the following tables as ' doubtful,' i.e. of doubtful tenure. As the 

 tenures of land held of Forncett manor seem to have been ascertained 

 with more care than the tenures of land of other manors in Forncett 

 vill^ only that part of Forncett vill that was held of the manor of 

 Forncett will be considered. 



1 In his paper on ' Elizabethan Village Surveys,' based upon a study of the surveys of 

 eighteen Norfolk villages, Mr Corbett says, 'as a rule the messuages in these Norfolk villages 

 are not collected into streets, but lie scattered about along the various ' gates ' or lanes. ' 

 {Transactions, Royal Historical Society, N.S. XI. 78, 1897.) It is well-knovi'n that Domesday 

 Book ascribes an unusually large proportion of freemen and sokemen to Norfolk. There is 

 a temptation to conjecture that what was true of Forncett was true of other Norfolk villages 

 and that it was the freemen and sokemen — possibly descendants of the invading Norsemen — 

 who occupied the scattered homesteads. 



^ The place-name Fornesseta suggests that the hamlet of Galgrym may have been a village 

 of Englishmen which had become subject to the Norseman Fom. Mr W. H. Stevenson has 

 kindly supplied the following information regarding the meaning of the place-name : Fom is 

 an old Norse name, originally a nick-name meaning ' the old, ' not a native Old English name. 

 The meaning of the suffix is not clear. Perhaps it is old Norse setr, seat, residence. The 

 Rigneseta in Suffolk of Domesday Book appears to be identical with Ringshall, and here we 

 have again an old Norse name, Ringr. But whatever its origin sete was sometimes used in the 

 sense of village or hamlet. 



^ This appears from a comparison of the Moulton Court Rolls with the Survey; and the 

 Surveyor himself says, with regard to XI. i, strip 22, 'Thomas Denne dicit se tenere native 

 de Tharston et quia nulla intentione huic manerio (i.e. Forncett) pertinere potest per aliquas 

 evidencias adhuc ostentas minorem curam habeo ad titulum,' 



