A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



where the relics of St. Edmund rested until their translation in 1095 to the 

 great abbey. 



The entry on the survey relative to one of these two chapels, that of 

 Thorney, occurs on the first folio of the king's lands, and is sufficiently 

 remarkable to be here translated : 



Hugh de Montford has twenty-three acres of this carucate, and claims it as pertaining 

 to a certain chapel, which four brothers, Hugh's freemen, erected on their own land near 

 the cemetery of the mother church. And they were inhabitants (manentes) of the parish of 

 the mother church (and built it), because it could not include the whole parish. The 

 mother church always had the moiety of the burial fees, and had by purchase the fourth part 

 of other alms which might be offered. And whether or not this chapel has been dedicated 

 the Hundred doth not know. 1 



The other chapel was at Wisset ; it was in connexion with the church 

 and served for twelve monks. 2 



The glebes which attached to almost the whole of these numerous 

 Suffolk churches differed very widely in extent. In one or two cases, as at 

 Dunwich, the church is recorded without any mention of land pertaining to 

 it. But such cases were clearly rare, for now and again the scribe entered as 

 something noteworthy, as in the instances of Cornard and Dagworth, that the 

 church was landless (sine terra}. The amount varied from half an acre at 

 Keworth, and one acre at Hinderclay, to fifty acres at Thorpe Morieux, sixty 

 at Framlingham, and eighty-four at Barking. The average amount of glebe 

 attached to the numerous churches of the Liberty of St. Edmund works out 

 at about sixteen acres each, and this seems to have been nearly the average 

 throughout the county. 



The astonishingly large number of churches that Suffolk possessed at the 

 beginning of the Norman occupation they were fully a hundred in excess of 

 those recorded in Norfolk, notwithstanding that county's greater area and 

 larger population bears striking witness to the reality and extent of the 

 Christian faith of the times in this much ravaged district. It is not a little 

 remarkable that there should be this vast number of places of worship when 

 they had been so frequently destroyed and sacked by the piratical Danes 

 within the memory of not a few. Doubtless the churches were almost 

 entirely of wood, and timber was abundant ; but their erection and furnishing, 

 apart from the sustenance of the priests, meant in every instance no small 

 outlay of time and means. Their number is the more astonishing, when 

 thought is taken as to the population of the period. 



The detailed estimate made by Sir Henry Ellis of the population of 

 Suffolk as recorded in the Domesday Survey reaches the total of 20,491." 

 Taking this total and the number of the churches in round figures, the result 

 is reached that Suffolk possessed a church for every fifty inhabitants before 

 the close of the Conqueror's reign. There can be little doubt that Suffolk 

 was then ahead of all other parts of England possibly even of Christendom 

 itself and it is equally certain that the result was in no small measure due to 

 the earnest labours of the monks of St. Edmund and St. Etheldreda, who in 

 their respective liberties and outlying manors had immediate influence over 

 more than two-thirds of the county's area. 



1 Dom. Bk. fol. 28 1. ' Ibid. 292*. 



* Ellis, Introd. to Domesday, ii, 488-93. 



10 



