Page:VCH Suffolk 1.djvu/436

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

A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK recurrence of units of 80, 60, 40, and 30 acres, and is proved by the entry of Starlinc's estate in Glemham as '180 acres' in Domesday, and as ' I ^ carucates ' in the Inquisitio Eliensis.^ There is direct evidence to show that 12 furlongs went to a league, for 16 qtiarentines in the Domesday Survey are referred to as i league and 4 quarentines in the corresponding passage of the Inquisitio Eliensis : — Ratesdane . . . iiabet xvi quarentenas in Rattesdene . . . habet i leugam et iiii quar- loneo et x in lato (Dom. Bk. ii, 381 A). cntenas in longo et x quarentenas in lato lnq. EL [Rec. Com.], 522*). Another land division which is mentioned twice is the ferding or fer ting. The Bishop of Thetford had soke and sac over the ferting of Elmham {super ferting de Ahneham)}^ This, as we learn from later records," was equivalent to a quarter of the hundred of Wangford, but when we read that ' St. Edmund held six freemen in Ferdinga de ealdham' {Aldham)^' in Cosford Half-hundred, we can only guess at the meaning of the term. In the modern county of Suffolk there are twenty-one hundreds. In the Domesday county there were twenty-four and a half hundreds, or twenty-four, if the small hundred of Luding [Lothing) and the neighbouring half-hundred of Ludingaland {Lothingland) be counted as one." The hundreds of the iith century correspond very closely to those of the present day, and, as a com- parison with the Hundred Roll of 1274 shows, the few differences can be traced back to the 13th century. Thus the Domesday hundred of Claydon or Claindune was partly replaced by Thredling Hundred and partly coupled with Bosmere, while the hundred of Bradmere and the half-hundred of Par- ham, irregular and disconnected even in Domesday,'* were altogether lost by the reign of Edward I. Mutford, which forms one hundred with Lothing- land, has taken the place of the older Lothing or Luding, and 'Bishop's' Hundred has changed into the hundred of Hoxne, called after the episcopal manor, Hoxa Episcopi^'" in which, in the time of Edward the Confessor, there was ' a church, the seat [sedes") of the bishopric of Suffolk.' '* The double hundred of Babergh was still double in 1274, and was represented by twenty-four instead of twelve jurors in the inquest of that year. Cosford still counted as a half-hundred, but the hundred and a half of Samford was reckoned as a single hundred." The half-hundred of Thredling and that of Exning, which appears as a half-hundred in the Hundred Roll,'* equalize the lists of 1086 and 1274. Of the twenty-four Domesday hundreds, seven, Lackford, Blackbourn, Bradmere, Hartismere, Bishop's, Wangford, and Lothing with Lothingland, lay along the northern or Norfolk border of the county. Seven — Risbridge, the double hundred of Babergh, the hundred and a half of Samford with the half-hundred of Cosford, Colneis, and Wilford — abutted on Essex' to the ' Dom. Bk. 430 ; Inq. El. 153. '" Dom. Bk. 379. "/?«/. HaW. (Rec. Com.), ii, 191. ' Episcopus Norwic. tenet m.inerium de Suthelnih.im et qu.irtam partem hundr. de Waynesford de done Re3um Anglorum antiquit.' Cf. Maitland, Dom. Bk. and Beyond, 93; VinogradofF, Engl. Soc. in Eleventh Century, 151, note i. " Dom. Bk. 369. " Roy. Hilt. Soc. Trans, (new ser.), xiv, 226. " Cf. Map. " Dom. Bk. 329, 438^. '• Ibid. 379. " Rot. Hutid. (Rec. Com.), ii, 142, 151^, 176, 177^. "Ibid. 197, 199.