A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK In 1289 these two holdings were manors in the hands of Thomas Fitz Eustace and William Talmache, except that 80 acres of one of them were inherited by Philip Noel. But what in the meantime has become of the thirty free- men whose holdings on the average were about 17 acres apiece ? There is one freeman holding 20 acres, there are two holding 18, three 15, and nine others who hold from 3 to 9 acres. These fifteen hold about 1 50 acres among them. There are a dozen with only one or two acres, and another dozen who hold messuages without other land. The rest of the 500 acres is in the hands of four men : William de Cramaville, Richard de Saxham, Robert de Ros, and John le Beylham, and the way in which they are held reveals something of the process of their accumulation. John le Beylham holds 30 acres of arable besides wood and pasture from the abbot direct, and perhaps we may assume that this was his original holding. He has taken over the entire holdings of three freemen, amounting to 1 2 acres, 5 acres, and 2 acres of arable respectively ; and then, no doubt because he found them intermixed with his own acquisitions, he has rented 3 acres from the large manorial holding of William Talmache, Robert de Ros has increased the 40 acres he held from the manor of Thomas Fitz Eustace by 12 acres taken over from Edward de Welnetham and 5 acres from Robert de Beylham ; but he has let out 9 acres to William de Cramaville, as well as small plots to others. William de Cramaville holds i 1 5 acres from the abbot directly, and 7 acres from the inherited estates of Philip Noel, and, besides the 9 acres rented from Robert de Ros, he has acquired a freeman's entire holding of 16 acres. On the other hand he has let out 20 acres to the fourth of our group of accumulators, Robert de Saxham. Robert de Saxham holds 27 from the abbot directly and besides the additional 20 acres rented from William he has taken 15 of Edward de Welnetham's acres and 9 J of Robert de Beylham's as well as small lots belonging to six other freemen amounting to 21 acres, making a total of 93 acres. This method of building up an estate must not be thought peculiar to the larger holders. A free tenant of 1 5 acres holds land from five different sources ; others of 1 5 and of 9 acres hold land from four sources. In short the evidence points to a universal breaking up and reconstruction of the free holdings, and it cannot be doubted that the resulting distribution of land amongst the freemen exhibited much more inequality than had existed before. The freemen are considerably more numerous than those recorded in Domes- day, but four of them hold two-thirds of the land. Another change must be noted. The number of villein holdings has increased. Domesday records three villeins, twenty-one bordars, and two serfs. But in 1289 there were at least a dozen villein tenancies comprising 180 acres on one of the two manors and 32 acres on the other." The researches of Mr. Edgar Powell" and of Mr. Redstone," taken together with the Domesday Book of Ipswich, make it possible to form a '° Harl. MSS. 743, printed with some omissions in Cullum's Hist, of Hatested, 84-8. The account thus given of Hawstead is derived &oti an Itinerary, a sort of later and lesser Domesday made of the lands of the Abbey of Bury by Solomon de RofFand his colleagues, in the reign of Edward I. Even a brief examina- tion of this important document, which gives details only of free holdings, shows that in many respects Haw- stead is a representative case. The numbers of free tenants are ever^Tvhere increasing, but the size of most of the holdings is exceedingly small. The round numbers given by this sur -y are of doubtful accuracy. " The taxation of Ipswich for the Welsh War in 1282 in Proc Huff. Arch. Inst. vol. xii, pt. ii. " The ' Chaucer Malyn Family, Ipswich,' in Proc. Suff. Arch. l^t. xii. " Black Bk. of Admiralty (Rolls Ser.). 646
