ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



It is not a little significant, in the light of the contemporary controversy 

 between abbot and bishop, to find that the abbot of St. Edmunds comes 

 first. The next three are Lanfranc the archbishop, the bishop of Bayeux 

 and the abbot of Ramsey. The lands of William bishop of Thetford 

 come fifth in the ecclesiastical list. These are followed by the bishop of 

 Rochester, with the manor of Freckenham, and the abbot of Ely, with 

 his great possessions, whilst two alien proprietors, Gilbert, bishop of 

 Evreux, with two manors, and the single manor of the abbot of Bernay, 

 together with the small holding of the Cambridgeshire abbey of Chatteris* 

 complete the list. 



The abbey of St. Edmunds, who also held largely in Norfolk and Essex, 

 and to a smaller extent in Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, and 

 Northamptonshire, is the only one recorded in the whole of Domesday as 

 possessing about three hundred manors ; even the abbot of Ely, including 

 possessions outside the liberty of St. Etheldreda in Suffolk, in the counties 

 of Norfolk, Essex, Cambridge, Lincoln, Hertford, and Huntingdon, held 

 only just one hundred. 



That the survey nowhere professes to include all or indeed any churches 

 is now so well known that it scarcely needs even the briefest reassertion. 

 Even in the case of Suffolk, notwithstanding the extraordinary number of 

 churches that the East Anglian commissioners saw fit to include, the list is 

 not complete. One instance will suffice to establish this. There was a 

 church at Harpole, a hamlet of Wickham Market, which had twenty acres 

 of land j 1 but there is no mention of it in Domesday. The actual number of 

 Suffolk churches entered in the survey is constantly stated to be 364, as 

 most writers are generally content to quote from Sir Henry Ellis, without 

 testing his figures. 2 The fact is that, large as is this amount, the figures 

 require to be considerably increased. It is difficult to give the exact numbers, 

 for parts or fractions of a church are entered from time to time, implying 

 that a manor or hamlet shared with one or more of its neighbours in the 

 possession of a church, or that different tenants held shares of the same 

 church. Thus Offton, Undley, and Wantisden are entered as having half a 

 church ; Parham a fourth part ; Westley a third part ; Sapiston and Saxham 

 two parts ; and Wantisden two parts in one place, and a fourth in two other 

 places. The returns are by no means always so perfect as to enable us to 

 add up the fractions to complete the church, as in the case of Wantisden. 

 In some cases the entry is simply pars ecclesie. But if all the churches are 

 added up, and the fractional parts estimated to make whole churches so far 

 as is possible, the total reaches 398. 



Two chapels also receive special mention, so that the number of places 

 of Christian worship recorded reaches the round number of 400. Moreover 

 the two cases of chapels that obtained entry were placed on the record for 

 special financial reasons. It is therefore fair to assume that there were 

 various other chapels then extant which were non-parochial and escaped 

 mention. In one case we know that a chapel then standing escaped entry ; 

 for there is no record of the chapel of St. Botolph at Burgh nearWoodbridge, 



1 Inq. Efitnsii, fol. lib. 



' Ellis, Intnd. to Domesday, i, 287 ; this statement originally appeared in the introduction to the large 

 folio edition of the Survey issued in 1813, but is repeated in the two vol. 8vo. revised edition issued in 1833. 

 292 



