Page:VCH Suffolk 1.djvu/480

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK while we learn from the Essex Survey that Scalpi, Harold's thegn, was a ' house-carl,' '" The house-carls, Aschil and Ingulf, appear as the lords of commended freemen in Carlford Hundred,* but the thegn and the house-carl were giving way before the knight, the miles, and the new Latin term is found in Suffolk applied to the thirty-four milites, French and English, of St. Edmund at St. Edmundsbury,'^' who had twenty-two bordars under them, to the two fnilites who held freemen and their land at Ashfield,"" and to the miles with the Danish name of Ulfin who held Ingham as a manor under St. Edmund in the days of King Edward.'" The tniles, like the teinus, is sometimes described by other terms : Humphrey son of Roderic, who is called the man [homo) of William of Warenne in Domesday Book, is entered in the record of the Ely placitum as Humfridus miles de Will, de Warenna?^^ We hear also of Nigel, a serviens of the Count of Mortain,'*' of Berner the crossbowman of St. Etheldreda, and of Walter the crossbow- man, as well as of the king's crossbowmen, Gilbert and Ralph.'" Of the Suffolk clergy, with their churches and glebe land, we learn a good deal from Domesday, but the passages relating to them are somewhat vague and fragmentary. The area of the glebe is usually given, and sometimes the tenants and plough-teams are added, but though the worth of the church and its land is frequently stated, it is also often included in the general valuation of the manor.'" There can be little doubt that the churches enumerated in the Survey fall short of the total number in the county, but the occurrence of such uncertain entries as pars ecclesiae, quedam aecclesia, quaedam pars trium ecclesiarum^^^ with the subdivision of the ownership of churches, makes it impossible to reckon up precisely even those which are actually mentioned.'" A good example of the division of churches among several lords is seen at Debenham, in the hundred of Claydon, where Robert Malet had to ' defend ' or answer for two parts of the church of St. Mary with its land and a quarter of the church of St. Andrew, while the remaining portions, held before the Conquest by the freeman Godwi, and Saxo, the lord to whom he was com- mended, had passed in 1086 into the hands of the Bishop of Bayeux and Ralph Peverel.^^' At Ringsfield, in Wangford Hundred, the king had part of a church with 20 acres, and others shared it with him.'*' The phrase, ' Several persons have shares therein ' [plures ibi participantur ; plures habent partem) occurs fairly often,'^" and we read of a church which had 1 5 acres ' out of four demesnes ' dominationibus) F^ The church may, however, be identified with the vill or with the parish. In Thedwastre Hundred Barton and Pakenham and Fornham and Rougham and Bradfield all had their ' village "' Dom. Bk. 4193, 420 ; V.C.H. Essex, i, 352. »*' Dom. Bk. 441^, 442. «' Ibid. 372. '" Ibid. 439. Had these mifttes taken the place of Achi and Ketel, 'liberi homines teigni ' ' Achi* and ' Chetel,' ' liber homo,' had held manors in Ashfield T.R.E. "' Ibid. 364 ; VinogradofF, op. cit. 74 et seq.; Maitland, Dom. Bk.and Beyond, 161 et seq. "• Dom. Bk. 3813, 'Ratesdane' ; 398, ' Ratesdana ' ; In^. Co. Camb. (ed. Hamilton), 194, ' Ratlesdene. ^ Dom. Bk. 291*. ^ Ibid. 324, 382*, 444, 445.

  • " Ibid. ; 3743, 'Stanham' ; 375, ' Burgestala.' ' Codeham,' a church with 3 acres worth 6d.; a church

with I acre worth zd. ; 375^, ' Uledana.' 'Stanham,' cf. 339, 340, &c.; 328, 'Totum valet xvi sol.' ; cf. V.C.H. Norf.W, 21. '" Dom. Bk. 3953, 417, 4363. "' Ellis makes 364 churches in Suffolk ; Introd. to Dom. i, 286-7. Dr. Cox brings the total number up to 398 with two chapels ; V.C.H. Suff. ii, 9, 10. ^^ Dom. Bk. 3053, 3763, 4173. R. Peverel had a share in St. Mary's only. ^ Ibid. 2823. "» Ibid. 326, 3883, 4003. '" Ibid. 4173. 402