DOMESDAY SURVEY in Thedwastre Hundred and at Gislingham in Hartismere Hundred the Abbot of St. Edmunds had made arrangements of the kind called on the Continent free aria remuneratoria, a lease of Church lands, with the reversion of the land granted and of additional estates from the property of the grantee. At Pakenham a freeman had procured a lease from the Abbot of half a carucate (impetravit ab abbdte praestari sibi dimidiam carucatam terrae), * by such an agreement {conventio) that all his land, wherever it might be, should remain to the Saint after his death.' St. Edmund's Abbey was in possession of this land in 1 086, but at Gislingham a Norman tenant-in-chief of the Crown had encroached on the rights of the Church. Here Leofstan, or Levestan, Abbot of St. Edmunds in the lifetime of King Edward, had granted one of his demesne manors to a freeman called Alsi and his wife on condition that when they died the Abbot should have back his own manor and also Alsi's manor of Euston. If, as we may assume, this was 'Evestuna,' in Blackbourn Hundred, St. Edmund's Abbey held it at the date of the Survey, but the Gislingham manor had fallen into the hands of Gilbert 'Balastarius.'"* In other instances the agreement would seem to have been more one-sided. Edith, a free- woman, held a manor from the Abbot of St. Edmunds for her life."* Edmund the Priest gave the land which he took with his wife, with her consent, to the church of St. Etheldreda, ' by such an agreement {conventio) that he could not sell or give away from the church.'"^ From Topesfield, in Cosford Half-hundred, comes the record of an arrangement made with the Church before the Conquest, which was carried into effect in the time of King William. Leveva, a freewoman, undertook to give half a carucate to Holy Trinity, Canterbury, when she died, in return for another half-carucate which she held from the Archbishop during her life. This agreement was made under King Edward, but Leveva lived on into the reign of the Con- queror, and continued to hold the land. It then apparently passed to John, the nephew of Waleran, who claimed it in 1086, but it is entered in the Survey among the estates which Archbishop Lanfranc had devoted to ' the feeding of the monks {ad vie turn monachorum.y^^ At Badley, too, in Bosmere Hundred, Richard Fitz Gilbert held certain freemen as belonging to his manor who had been added in the time of his antecessor Phin by agreement {accomodation with the sheriff, ' as the sheriff himself says.' "^ The com- plexities of a system of divided commendation and the intricacies of tenurial relations could also sometimes be simplified by mutual arrangement. At Blaxhall, in Parham Half-hundred, a freeman who had been sub-commended, half to the antecessor of Robert Malet and half to the Abbot of St. Edmunds, came to an agreement with the Abbot concerning his claim,"* while at the neighbouring villages of ' Brutge ' and Beversham Hervey of Bourges had '" VinogradofF, op. cit. 229-32; Dom. Bk. 3613, • Pachenham ; ' 444^, * Gislincham.' Cf. 367^, ' Evestuna.' "* Ibid. 286. In this case the land was in the hands of the moneyer, ' monetarius,' when King Edward died, and in 1086 King William was in possession of it. '"Ibid. 431*. 'Cloptuna. Brantestuna. Terrain quam cepit cum uxore ejus . . . misit in ecclesia concedente muliere.' Here, too, a Norman tenant-in-chief, William ' de Arcis ' and his tenant are found in possession in 1086, but the fact of the priest's gift is recorded in the Inqutiitio ERensis ; Inj. El. (Rec. Com.), 521. "« Dom. Bk. 372*. Cf. ibid. 406^, 'Nachetuna.' '"Ibid. 393. ' Et ipse Phin tenebat eos per accomodationem vicecomitis ut ipse vicecomes dicit'; VinogradofF, op. cit. 393. '" Dom. Bk. 307. ' Ex hac medietate est conciliatus Abbati.' 383
