POLITICAL HISTORY 



bourn, while the like claim was made on behalf of St. Etheldreda of Ely in 

 Carleford, Colneys, Plumesgate, Loes, Wilford, and Threadling. In I344 1 

 the abbot of Bury was required by the sheriff and the king's justices 

 to plead at Ipswich. He replied that already, in the time of Edward I, 

 the question of his jurisdiction had been argued and settled. He cited 

 the evidence then given by twelve men from the hundred of Risbridge, 

 who swore before the justices in eyre at Ipswich that the abbot had royal 

 liberties as appeared in the pleas of the king of Quo Warranto. It was 

 further proved that all original pleas affecting any tenement within the 

 four crosses of St. Edmund should be delivered to him, and with all other 

 writs affecting the crown within the liberty of St. Edmund should be pleaded 

 in Bury by justices appointed by the abbot. The sheriff sometimes refused 

 to arrest men indicted at Bury. 



For fiscal purposes the county was divided into the two liberties and 

 the geldable 2 which had two centres, one at Ipswich for Bosmere and 

 Claydon, Sampford, Stowe, Hoxne and Hartismere, and the other at Beccles, 

 for Blything, Wangford, Mutford and Lothingland. The liberties paid one 

 half of the tax between them, while the geldable area was responsible for the 

 other. Bury paid two parts to Ely's one, and of the secular Beccles paid two 

 to Ipswich's three. Out of the county receipts were paid its defence, its 

 gaols, its castles and its sick, 3 and until after the Restoration the sheriff was 

 responsible for the amount of the firm. 



From Anglo-Saxon times there have been two sources from which the 

 king could draw an army. There was the county host the county in arms 

 for purposes chiefly of defence and there were the individuals who owed 

 military service and so to speak formed the army for attack. The county 

 host, led in pre-conquest times by the aldermen or the earl, and afterwards by 

 the sheriff, was an unwieldy instrument, badly armed, unmanageable and 

 disinclined to advance beyond the county border. 



At the Conquest William gave many of the forfeited lands on the 

 understanding that the service of a fixed number of knights would be 

 demanded, 4 but at an early period the crown accepted a money payment in 

 lieu of personal service. By the reign of Henry II the county was com- 

 pletely parcelled out into knights' fees, and the fees themselves had become 

 minutely sub-divided the earl of Clare 6 was assessed for 131^ knights' fees 

 in Suffolk besides , i, , , TO-, and z + -5$ of fees. Such sub-division meant 

 an arrangement among the various holders, probably one by which the original 

 divider of the fee remained responsible for the service, while the holders 

 of the aliquot parts paid him their obligation in kind or money. The 

 abbot of St. Edmunds acknowledged that he owed the king 40 knights' 

 fees : 6 as a matter of fact he had 52 J from which he took scutage, and 

 pocketed the difference, or rather the hereditary seneschal William de 

 Hastings took toll. Earl Hugh rendered account for 227 IQJ. for knights 

 and Serjeants in the Welsh war. 7 The honour of Eye was assessed for 

 90^ fees. The knights of St. Edmund were bound to do castle-ward at 



1 Cal. Pat. 1343-5, p. 363. ' Add. MS. 19171, fol. 36. 



3 Pipe R. Hen. II (Pipe Roll Soc.), passim. 



4 Pollock & Maitland, Hist. ofEngl. Law (1895), i, 237. 



6 Pipe R. 10 Hen. II (Pipe R. Soc.), p. 33. 6 Ibid. 1 1 Hen. II, p. 3. ' Ibid. p. 7. 



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