ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY At this point it will be advisable to turn aside from the Lincoln MS. and to deal with some entries in the Domesday Survey. There we find that the original lordship of the bishops of Elmham had extended over a stretch of country some eight miles in extent from North to S.E. and about two miles wide ; its boundary on the east being the head waters of the river Wensum as far as Billingford. It was a very extensive domain, and so thickly wooded that it afforded pannage for 1, 1 00 swine. The whole lordship comprehended the caput manerii at Elmham, with a berwice or hamlet adjoining it on the south, and a second manor, the manor of Colkirk, on the north. The survey makes mention of the church at Elmham, and of another church scarcely more than a mile ofFat Betley. No mention is made of any church at Colkirk. But the survey tells us more than this, it notes that Herfast's immediate predecessor, Aylmer, Stigand's brother, who held the bishopric for fifteen years, had used Elmham as his episcopal resi- dence, and Mr. Carthew further quotes a highly interesting and significant will of another bishop of the see, ^Elfric,* in which an estate, presumably his private property, is left for the maintenance of .the priests at Elmham — unto Elmham the praestes to fodden — so that it is evident there was some- thing like a chapter of secular canons associated with the bishop here in the days of Bishop iElfric, and presumably down to the time of the Norman Conquest. To return now to the Lincoln document : Here we are told that Bishop Herfast after he had determined (or been compelled?) to transfer his residence from Elmham to Thetford — alienated the northern half of the fee of Elmham, including the manor of Colkirk, and enfeoffed his foster-brother of this manor, making him a sub-tenant of the bishopric of Elmham in perpetuity, by the service of a knight's fee. The name of this foster brother (nutricius) is given in the Lincoln MS. as Richard de Saint Denys. This personage has long been a puzzle to Norfolk antiquaries ; they have often tried, but hitherto without success, to find who he was and whence he came. As far as I know the Lincoln MS. is the only source of information regarding his intimate connexion with Bishop Herfast. APPENDIX NO. II NOTE ON THE DANISH OCCUPATION OF EAST ANGLIA From the massacre of St. Edmund and of Humbert bishop of Elmham in 870, to the conse- cration of Eadulph in 956, we have a period of eighty-six years — during that time we know nothing of what was going on in the church of East Anglia, and in the next half-century only the names of some of the bishops of the see have come down to us. The veil is lifted somewhat when jElfgar is appointed to the bishopric of Elmham, though of his two successors again we hear no more than their names. iElfric, the last of them, died in 1043 having survived Canute the king some seven years. The strong hand of the great Dane was needed, and the loss of that unique personality was felt through all his wide dominions. Not least was it felt in the church. Not till William the Norman won the realm of England by the sword did the reign of law begin again. But in that troublous time how had it been faring with the church in Norfolk? One thing seems pretty certain, viz. that for two centuries no part of England had been left, in religious matters, so entirely isolated. We are expressly told that there were no monasteries of any importance in East Anglia till Bishop ^Ifgar bestirred himself and raised up from its low estate St. Edmund's Abbey in Suffolk, while at the same time Canute set himself to do the like for Norfolk. In the Great Survey of 1086 no fewer than 317 churches large and small are mentioned as existing in the county of Norfolk alone. ^ It is an enormous aggregate, and as an illustration of this noteworthy crowding of churches in our county, I venture at this point to make what at first sight may appear as a digression, but which really is no digression at all.' The hundred of East and West Flegg at the extreme south-eastern corner of Norfolk may be described as an irregular quadrilateral, whose boundary on the east is the sea, along a coast-line of some nine miles. On the north, west, and south it is bounded by the rivers Bure and Thurne, rivers eminently navigable for sea-faring men a thousand years ago in their ships of war or their small trading vessels. The hundred is in fact an island. The Flegg district at no point from east to west is more than seven miles across as the crow flies. In this little area the ' C3.nh.tvr, Hist, of the Hundred of Launditer, 1,44. The chronicle gives 1038 as the date of yElfric's death. ' Munford, Jna/ysis of the Dom. Bk. ofNorf 88. ' Dom. Studies (Domesday Commemoration), ii, 410.
