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 A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK uniform customary holdings is still clearly preserved, and the names of the original holders still attach to their land, i.e. to their sets of half-acre strips scattered about the large fields of the manor which were once, and to some extent no doubt still continue to be, cultivated in common. But the place of the original uniform holding as the formal unit of tenancy is taken by the actual holding of each individual tenant. Thus Reginald Aylmer is said to hold 4 a. 3r. 1 2 p. of the original 'Aylmer' holding, i a. 3r. of the Gorchold holding, and similar fragments of eleven other holdings distinguished by family names, making up a total of about 22 acres. And what is perhaps even more significant of an entire change in the point of view taken by the lord of the manor is that Reginald Aylmer (and each of the other tenants) has a set of rents and services which has been calculated to fit his particular case, though no doubt the original uniform set of rents and services has been used as a basis of the calculation. Money rents are nominally still the lesser part of the tenant's obligations, but the various payments in kind and services demanded are generally valued in money, and seem to be open to com- mutation.^' We are specially fortunate in being able to compare this rental with another taken at Rickinghall in 1433 which marks a further stage in the development we have been tracing. Services and payments in kind seem to have largely disappeared. The bounds of each portion of land held by a tenant are carefully defined, and it seems to be becoming the custom to assess each separately at a money rent. Still more interesting is the evidence afforded of the tendency of the strips held by each tenant to draw together into large fields for the obvious purpose of realizing in some way a more individualized cultivation. Hitherto we have been led to assume this process to have been going on because it afforded the only rational explanation of the facts. And here we have actual proof that the assumption was justified. In some cases as many as half a dozen different portions of land held by one tenant are bracketed together in the rental as ' one piece ' ; and in a great many other cases where the bracketing has not been done by the surveyor we can do it for ourselves with the help of the exact boundaries given in the survey. Thus a certain John Chapman holds twenty-nine separately specified pieces of customary land, many of which are less than half an acre in extent, so that the whole is only 25 acres. But these pieces are not isolated each from the others. Fifteen of them are found grouped together in twos and threes, making up six fields of from 2 acres to 4 acres apiece, and these larger plots represent more than two-thirds of the total holding. We may be quite sure that this aggregation means in some way or other a partial withdrawal from the old common course of cultivation to which the system of half or quarter acre strips was adapted." In these examples, which may perhaps be taken as representing the more rural districts, the process under observation is comparatively slow. Where the industrial population gathered it was much more rapid. Milden- hall was the most productive manor possessed by the abbey. It was on Mildenhall Heath that the Prior of Bury was beheaded in 138 1. It so happens that the extant bailiff's accounts for the manor begin in that very year, and the one striking feature in them is the system' of leases which " B.M. Add. MSS. 14849. " Ibid. 14850. 656