DOMESDAY SURVEY
south, and the remaining ten were central. Their names, English rather than Danish in form, date in all probability from the early days of the Anglian occupation, and reflect the natural features of the country, the wide shining expanses of the 'broads' and 'meres,' the 'fords' over those riverways which have played so important a part in the history of tribal settlement.'*
But, like the small Leicestershire hundreds,^" they often derive their names from one of their vills,-* or, as is the case with Lackford and Wang- ford, from a vill in another hundred. ^^ Thingoe and Stow, too, recall the primitive assembly and court of justice, the Scandinavian thing, the Saxon moot-stow,'^ and the existence of double and half-hundreds, with the artificial character of their grouping, suggests that the Suffolk hundreds were deliberately formed for administrative purposes, to supply the three chief needs of the infant state: military defence, justice and police, and taxation. The double hundred of Babergh in the south is balanced in the north by the closely connected and intermixed hundreds of Blackbourn and Bradmere, a double hundred in all but name.-* The southern hundred and a half of Samford is similarly matched by the intersected Plomesgate Hundred and Parham Half-hundred on the east,^' flanked on either side by the half-hundreds of Cosford and Ipswich."*
The area and population of the Suffolk hundreds at the time of the Domesday Survey cannot be precisely ascertained, since exact measurements are given for arable and meadow land alone, and even here the carucates are probably 'geld-carucates,' and do not represent the 'real' superficial area, while not only is the record of the tenants in a vill constantly followed by the phrases of uncertain interpretation, Alii ibi tenent: Plures ibi tenent^'^ but it is often difficult to decide whether the returns represent the pre-Conquest or the post-Conquest population. Still, a careful analysis gives results which are useful for purposes of broad generalization, if they cannot be trusted for minute accuracy of detail. The following table shows the number of vills and the area of arable in each hundred, the relative proportions of free and unfree householders, and the average population per carucate of 120 acres in the three groups, northern, central, and southern, of the Suffolk hundreds. In compiling these lists every individual freeman, sokeman, villein, bordar,
Round, The Commune of Lond.: 'The Settlement of the South Saxons and East Saxons.'
Like the Leicestershire hundreds, also, the Suffolk hundreds were 'strangely intermingled among themselves'; Round, Feud. Engl. 80, 203.
Loes, Parham, Wilford, Claydon.
Lackford in Thingoe Hundred; Wangford in Lackford Hundred.
Stubbs, Const. Hist. i, 115; Maitland, Township and Boro. 39.
Thus Blackbourn is assessed as a hundred and a half, Bradmere as a half hundred. In 1274 Blackbourn was counted as a double hundred; it had absorbed Bradmere altogether. Rot. Hund. (Rec. Com.), ii, 151b, 'Blakeburn respondet pro duobus hundr.'
It is just these intersected divisions, Bradmere and Parham, which in modern times have lost their independent existence as hundreds or half-hundreds.
The economic unity of the hundred is seen in the hundred of Colneis, where there was a pasture common to all the men of the hundred; Dom. Bk. 339b. Its jurisdictional unity is seen in the 'witness' of the hundred. Cf Vinogradoff, Growth of the Manor, 144-5, 249-50; Engl. Soc. in the Eleventh Century, 96-107.
They may mean either, 'There are others (living in the vill) holding here,' or 'Others (external to the vill) hold here.' Cf Maitland, Dom. Bk. and Beyond, 20, n. 1. 'The words, "Alii ibi tenent" … mean, we believe, not that there are in this vill other unenumerated tillers of the soil, but that the vill is divided between several tenants in chief.' Ellis, Introd. ii, 491.
359
