Page:VCH Suffolk 1.djvu/472

 A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK hundred of Wilford. Campsey, one of these manors, was claimed by the Abbot of Ely, and is entered in the Inquisitio Eliensis as demesne land.^ Next in importance to St. Edmund's Abbey, among the great ecclesiastical landholders in Suffolk, is St. Etheldreda's Abbey of Ely. The Domesday record of its estates can be compared both with the Inquisitio Eliensis and with the Ely placitum of 1072-5.°^^ Some of the alienated estates which were claimed in the suit before Geoffrey of Coutances had apparently been recovered,"" but, as the Inquisitio shows, the bulk of them remained in the hands of the ' aggressors,' among whom the Bishop of Bayeux, Roger Bigot, Robert Malet, and Roger of Poitou seem to have been the chief offenders."^ The abbot, however, successfully asserted his right of soke over five and a half hundreds, which had been encroached upon by Earl Ralph, Roger Bigot, Robert Malet, Ralph Peverel, and many smaller men."^ The abbey had lands in every hundred of the county except Blackbourn, Bradmere, Wang- ford, Lothing, and Lothingland in the north, with Samford in the south. The abbot's chief under-tenants in Suffolk were Roger Bigot, Robert Malet, and Hervey of Bourges. The Huntingdonshire Abbey of St. Benedict of Ramsey held a single manor in Suffolk, at Lawshall, in Babergh Hundred, and the account of the church fiefs is closed by the description of the small holdings of the Norman Abbey of Bernai and of the Cambridgeshire nunnery of Chatteris."* The names of four great lay feudatories immediately follow the descrip- tion of the king's land in Suffolk, Count Robert of Mortain, Count Alan of Brittany, Earl Hugh, and Count Eustace of Boulogne. Robert of Mortain, the Conqueror's half-brother, succeeded Count Brien of Brittany "* in his Suffolk fief, which had been largely built up from the lands of the freemen of the Abbot of Ely, Bishop Aylmer, King Edward, and Harold. The depression of the free English tenantry by their Norman lords is seen in the manor of Combs {Cambas), where the rent had nearly doubled, and the freemen ' could not endure it without ruin {confusio).^ We see, also, Count Brien assuming rights of private jurisdiction,*" and Nigel, a sergeant (serviens) of Count Robert, adding church lands to Stow Manor, and trans- ferring the Stow parishioners to the church of Combs. But Robert could give as well as take. The next two entries tell of land which he had granted to the Norman Abbey of St. Mary of Grestein."' Count Alan of Brittany or Penthievre, the chief landowner in Norfolk,'" had considerable estates in Suffolk also. Much of his land had been held by Earl Ralph, or by Ralph the Staller, or by freemen under Ralph's commenda- "^ Dom. Bk. 388^ ; Inf. El. (Rec. Com.), 519a. Round, Feud. Engl. 459 ; V.C.H. Norf. ii, 16. '" Dom. Bk. 383,'Dermodesduna,"Horswalda ;' 38315, ' Bercham,' ' Escarletuna,' 'Westrefelda ;'' 385, •Wineberga,' an undecided case, 'Staham ;' 385^, Tremlega, Waletuna, ' Kenebroc ;' 388, ' Hou ;' cf. Inj. Co. Camb. (ed. Hamilton), 193-5 ; above, p. 386. "' Inq. EL (Rec. Com.), 517-22. '" Inq. Co. Camb. (ed. Hamilton), 194 ; Inq. El. (Rec. Com.), 5l7et seq.; Dom. Bk. 385^ ; above, p. 387. "' Dom. Bk. 378^, 389. The Abbot of Bernai had, like the Abbot of Ely, profited by the forfeiture of Hardwin ; cf. Dom. Bk. 383, ' Berchingas ;' Round, Feud. Engl. 23. '" Freeman, Norm. Conq. iii, 230, 231, 315 ; iv, 243 ; Dom. Bk. 291. '" Ibid. 291, 291* ; above, p. 388. For 'Cambas,' cf. Vinogradoff, op. cit. 298, 434. •" Dom. Bk. 39li ; cf. ibid, i, 222* ; F.C.H. Northants, i, 286. '" l^.C.H. Norf. ii, 17 ; V.C.H. Essex, i, 350. 394
 * ^ Dom. Bk. 381^ et seq.; Inq. El. (Rec. Com.), 517, et seq. ; Inq. Co. Camb. (ed. Hamilton), 192-5 ;