Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Dedication
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- THE LANDSCAPE
- THE URBAN SCENE
- GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
- Hundreds and Leets: A survey with suggestions
- The Rebellion of 1075 and its Impact in East Anglia
- East Anglian Politics and Society in the Fifteenth Century: Reflections, 1956–2003
- RELIGION
- LITERARY CULTURE
- Index
Hundreds and Leets: A survey with suggestions
from GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Dedication
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- THE LANDSCAPE
- THE URBAN SCENE
- GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
- Hundreds and Leets: A survey with suggestions
- The Rebellion of 1075 and its Impact in East Anglia
- East Anglian Politics and Society in the Fifteenth Century: Reflections, 1956–2003
- RELIGION
- LITERARY CULTURE
- Index
Summary
‘In the Domesday county there were twenty four and a half or twenty four hundreds.’ ‘In the modern county of Suffolk there are twenty one.’ This use of the present tense, in 1911, is noteworthy. The hundredal divisions of Suffolk and Norfolk are first known to us in Domesday Book. As centuries passed there were alterations and rationalisations. Nevertheless most of the divisions were still recognised eight hundred years later. Hundreds had no legal significance after 1879; but their boundaries continued to serve for purposes of local government. The almost geological durability of such units is a tribute to the creative power, not to say rationality, of the Anglo-Saxon state.
The date of the introduction of the hundredal system in East Anglia is known not more than approximately. By consensus it probably dates to the earlier tenth century, but must be later than (or just possibly associated with) the campaigns of Edward the Elder (899–924). The earliest references to the East Anglian hundreds come in Libellus Æthelwoldi Episcopi. This early twelfth-century tract is based on contemporary materials and is probably to be relied upon in indicating that hundreds in south-east Suffolk were given to Ely before the death of Æthelwold in 984.
While the overall pattern of the East Anglian hundreds was orderly, there were complications and anomalies, most strikingly that of Diss, which gave its name to a Norfolk hundred but was in Domesday surveyed as part of Suffolk. Some hundreds in northern Norfolk and southern Suffolk did not comprise a single bloc of territory: the origins of this may be tenurial, agricultural or fiscal. Such complications help in understanding the circumstances with which the men who laid the hundreds had to cope. Among these was the existence of large composite estates with scattered lands. Thus it is possible very reasonably to guess that the Norfolk hundred of Forehoe was largely made up of three major estates; but even then did not include all their outlying elements. Dr Warner has made a most interesting suggestion relating the hundredal pattern to hypothetical regiones of an earlier period. Thus he sees the extensive hundred of Blything as deriving from one such regio.
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- Information
- Medieval East Anglia , pp. 153 - 167Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2005