town, about 963, was given by Osulph le Sire, and the lady Laverine, or Leofrine, his wife, to the abbey of St. Edmund's Bury, to which it belonged in the Confessor's time, except that part which Almar then held of that house, which was almost half the town. This part was a manor also, and held in the Conqueror's time by Roger Bygod Earl of Norfolk, who was afterwards infeoffed in the other part, by Abbot Baldwin, as Joceline's Chronicle, in the Cotton Library, informs us, to hold it of the abbey, at one fee, and to pay nothing to the ward of Norwich castle, because the abbot paid 7s. every twenty weeks for the whole town. The capital manor, at the survey, was in the abbot, who had then two carucates of land in demean, and twelve socmen who held sixty acres of land, but could not sell or give it any one without license. In the Confessor's survey, the manor was of 40s. value, but in the Conqueror's was risen to 60s. The town was then two miles long, and a mile and a half broad, and paid 12d. Danegeld; it extended at that time into Shimpling, Fersfield, Shelfhanger, and Roydon.
In William Rufus's time, the earl had the whole town, all which he infeoffed in
William de Verdun; and it appears from the Black Book of the Exchequer, that Roger Bygod, father of Hugh Bygod, had infeoffed this William in six knights fees of his old feoffment, among which, this old town was reckoned at two; and this is the reason that it was all along held of the Norfolk family, as capital lords, by the Verdons, and all other owners. This feoffment was made about 1100,
