Page:VCH Suffolk 1.djvu/453

 DOMESDAY SURVEY granting them out at will, moving freemen from one manorial jurisdiction to another, making new combinations or severing old connexions in wholesale fashion. ' Ralph the Staller,' Earl Ralph's father, joined Earl Gurth's estate in Bentley to the manor of Bergholt as a berewick. King William himself gave back three manors to Norman, their pre-Conquest lord, but granted away others ; Phin, who held his honour under both King Edward and King William, added eight freemen and a sokeman to one of his small manors after the Conquest ; Geoffrey de Mandeville received 2 carucates as a manor ' by the King's gift ' {ex dam Regis), which a freeman of the Abbot of Ely had held ' by mere commendation ' [commendatione tantum) in the time of King Edward. At Buxhall twenty-five freemen who held 3 J carucates in the soke of the king {in soca regis) were ' delivered ' [liberati) to Frodo, the brother of the Abbot, for a manor of 3J carucates of land. At Brandeston, in Loes Hundred, William ' de Arcis ' held one manor, where in King Edward's time there had been two, one of 60 acres, held by a married priest, the other of 80 acres, created by King Edward, and added to the smaller estate." It has seemed worth while to devote a considerable space to the manorial system in Suffolk, since the East Anglian manors are distinctive in character, and illustrate peculiarly well the social and economic changes which followed the Norman Conquest."' The remaining divisions of the land, the terrae, bereivicks, honours, and sokes, may be more summarily dismissed. The term terra is used more vaguely and generally than manerium for a tract of land, which may or may not correspond to a manor. At Halesworth, in Blything Hundred, two manors and an estate of 60 acres held by four freemen are spoken of as tres terras ; at Henstead, in the same district, a berewick of i caru- cate and 30 acres held by two freemen are called duas terras. In both these cases the freemen with their land had been ' added ' to one of the manors.'* At Stutton, in Samford Hundred, where the king's thegn Fribern held two terrae for a manor before the Conquest, we are left to guess the size of the estates which were joined together to form a manor. At ' Wica,' in Brad- mere Hundred, eight commended freemen with i carucate of land and eleven bordars were held de liberatione et pro terra. At Acton, in Babergh Hundred, Ralph Peverel received four freemen pro terra with 50 acres, and at Assington, also on the Peverel estates, a freeman was ' delivered ' pro terra who did not belong to the manor." Of berewicks we hear more, and the term is used more definitely for an estate, often of considerable size, which, from the administrative point of view, is an outlying member of a manor. The berewick may lie in one hundred and the manor to which it belongs in another, as at Woolpit and at Fornham St. Genevieve," where two berewicks of St. Edmund's Abbey in Thedwastre Hundred ' belonged to halls' in another hundred. The most striking instance of a berewick lying far from its manor is Harold's holding of 5 carucates at Harkstead, near the estuary of the River Stour, which was a berewick [bervita) of his lo-hide manor of Bright- lingsea {Bride see seid), on the estuary of the River Colne, in Essex. Bright- lingsea and Harkstead together rendered two nights' farm to the king, but »' Dom. Bk. 287, 338*, 330^, 331, 393^, 394, 411, 355/5, 431^. '' Cf. VinogradofF, op. cit. 305-7 ; Dom. Bk. 299, 399^ ; cf. 400. " Dom. Bk. 299, 399^. " Ibid. 41 b, 421, 416^ ; ' Asetona, i liber homo liberatus pro terra, sed non pertinet manerio.' •* Ibid. 362, 362^. 375