Beccles
|
|
The entry for Beccles is doubly interesting. Not only does it show the enormous quantities of fish that the abbey at Bury consumed in a year, but illustrates that Beccles was a sea-going fishing port at this time.
SUF 14,120
Land of [the Abbey of] St Edmund's
WANGFORD Hundred
St Edmund's held BECCLES before 1066; 2 carucates of land as a
manor.
Always 2 villagers; 25 smallholders. Then 2 slaves.
Always 1 plough in lordship; [***] men's [ploughs].
Meadow, 10 acres; woodland for 8 pigs. 1 market, 26 burgesses;
the Abbot has 3 parts of the market and the King [has] the
fourth [part]. 2 cobs.
In the same [Beccles] 30 Freemen with every customary due; 1 1/2
carucates of land.
Under them, 20 smallholders.
Then 7 ploughs, now 8.
But they could sell their land before 1066.
1 church with 24 acres.
This manor then paid 30000 herrings; now 60000.
It has 1 league in length and 8 furlongs in width; 16d in tax.
Note on Beccles
It is interesting to note this comment, shown below, from the Domesday heading "Norfolk Lands of the King," about 32 burgesses fleeing from Norwich, 22 of whom set up in Beccles. Several reasons are given including "partly by Waleran". Waleran was a royal official, whose duties included the confiscation of land. Some streets in Norwich had been seized and demolished to make way for the new royal castle there. He may have been the same Waleran who elsewhere in Domesday is recorded as gaining lands by redeeming ransoms from men that he captured during the battle of Hastings in 1066.
NFK 1,63
Land of King William
Of the burgesses who dwelt in the Borough of NORWICH 22 left
and dwell in Beccles, the Abbot of St Edmund's town and 6
[dwell] in Humbleyard Hundred and they have quitted the
Borough;
also in THORPE [St Andrew], the King's [manor], 1, on
the land of Roger Bigot 1, under W[illiam] of Noyers 1, and Richard
of Saint-Clair [has] 1.
Those fleeing and the others remaining
have been utterly devastated partly because of Earl R[alph] [Wader]'s
forfeitures, partly because of fires, partly because of the King's
tax, partly by Waleran.
Southwold (Sudholda)
|
|
Landholder 14, entry 162 and 163. This entry illustrates that the abbey at Bury was also supplied with fish from well outside the boundaries of the Liberty of St Edmund. Southwold lay across two separate Hundreds.
Bishop's Hundred
SUF 14,162 Southwold has 9 furlongs in length and 5 in width. This tract of land extends from the sea to Yarmouth. Tax of 2½d.
Blything Hundred
SUF 14,163 St Edmund's holds Southwold for the supplies of the monks as a manor; 1 carucate of land.
5 villagers; 4 smallholders,
1 plough in lordship; 4 men's ploughs.
Meadow, 4 acres. 1 cob, 4 cattle, 3 pigs, 30 sheep. The half of 1 sea-weir and the fourth part of another half.
Then it paid 20,000 herrings; now 25,000.
St Edmund's has full jurisdiction.
|