ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



Before the consideration of the ecclesiastical side of Suffolk Domesday is 

 left, a few words must be said with regard to the special entries relative to 

 the two towns of Bury and Ipswich. 



The great importance of St. Edmund's Abbey is shown by the details 

 given of the household. It is the only case in the whole survey where the 

 number of retainers and servants of a monastery is recorded. There is 

 unfortunately no enumeration of the actual monks. The priests, deacons, and 

 clerks attached to the abbey numbered thirty, and the servants seventy-five. 

 The nonne et pauperes l who received regular rations from the abbey numbered 

 thirty-eight. There were also thirteen indwellers, who seem to have been 

 engaged in trades for those in the house, twenty-seven bordarii and thirty-four 

 milites, yielding a total of 207. The survey also supplies details with regard 

 to the retainers and servants in the time of the Confessor, but entered in such 

 a way that any exact comparison between the two periods is not possible. 

 At the earlier date there were 108 homagers living ad victum monachorum ; 

 the total entered under the monastery was then 310. The houses on the 

 abbey property amounted to 342. 2 



The ecclesiastical entries with regard to the ancient borough of Ipswich 

 are also exceptionally full and interesting. The town had 538 burgesses in 

 the Confessor's days. It was singularly well supplied with churches. Eight 

 are mentioned in Domesday namely, two dedicated to the honour of the 

 Blessed Virgin, the church of the Holy Trinity, and the churches of St. 

 Michael, St. Botolph, St. Lawrence, St. Peter, and St. Stephen. Three of 

 these churches belonged to priests, but the others were in lay patronage. 

 Culling, a burgess, held one of the St. Mary's ; Lefflet, a freewoman, had 

 St. Lawrence ; Roger de Ramis held the church of St. George, with four 

 burgesses and six wasted houses ; Alwin the son of Rolf, a burgess, held 

 the church of St. Julian ; and five burgesses belonged to the church of 

 St. Peter. So abundant was the church accommodation of Ipswich that only 

 one new parish church, that of St. Matthew, sprang up between the Conquest 

 and the Reformation. 8 



The chief religious event in the diocese during the five years of the 

 episcopate of William de Beaufeu was the founding of the great Cluniac 

 priory of Castle Acre, and there is little to record concerning Suffolk. On 

 William's death in 1091, the ambitious Herbert de Losinga, abbot of 

 Ramsey, became bishop. Bishop Herbert is generally spoken of as rising to 

 this position through unblushing simony ; but after all there is something to 

 be said for the gentle way in which the fact of purchase is set forth by 

 Dr. Stubbs. That great historian represents the abbot as coming forward as 

 a candidate for the vacant office who was willing and able to pay such fees 

 for entering upon the ecclesiastical fief as the king thought proper to demand.* 

 William Rufus was so absolutely unscrupulous in his dealings with the 

 highest church preferments that it was possibly better for East Anglia that 



1 These nuns may have been those of Lyng (Norf.) who were transferred to Thetford in 1 1 60. The 

 Thetford nuns, as is afterwards stated in detail, received their weekly supply of food and drink from the monks 

 of St. Edmunds. 



* Ellis, Introd. to Domesday (1833), ii, 488 ; De Grey Birch, Domesday Book, 211. 



3 Cutts, Parish Priests and their People, 506-7. All the parish churches of Ipswich became eventually 

 appropriated to one or other of the two Austin priories founded here at the end of the twelfth century. 



4 Stubbs, Const. Hist. \, 299. 



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