Part I.—Introductory, Geological.—The Waveney.—The Silting up of the Estuary.—Burgh Castle.

Part II.—Domesday Book.—The Parishes of Lothingland.—Lowestoft in Domesday.—Neighbouring Parishes.—Herring Rents.—Live Stock on the Farms.—Condition of the People in Saxon Times.—Serfdom.—Craftsmen.—The Merchant.

Part i.—Introductory—Geological.

You will think that I am going unnecessarily far back in commencing my sketch with a reference to that very remote period

“When Britain first at Heaven’s command
Arose from out the azure main.”

But if a thousand years or so would take in the origin of both Lowestoft and Yarmouth, questions have arisen affecting the relations of these towns which involve a much more extended retrospect.

It has long been a tenet of Lowestoft people that Lowestoft is a more ancient town than Yarmouth. In some of the numerous petitions presented to Parliament in connection with the disputes between the two towns about the Herring Trade, her greater antiquity was put forward by Lowestoft as giving her a prior claim to the herrings which visit the seas off this coast.There is a story that the learned Potter, the translator of Æschylus, when vicar of the parish (about 1780) received a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury addressed to him at “Lowestoft near Yarmouth.” The vicar was indignant at what he regarded as a slight on his town, and when replying to the Archbishop, added this postscript “My Lord, when you direct to me again be pleased to write simply Lowestoft—Lowestoft does not want Yarmouth for a direction post, for Lowestoft was ere Yarmouth rose out of the azure main.”

Again, the question whether the Waveney ever flowed out at Lowestoft was a matter of warm discussion some 60 or 70 years ago, when the project of making a connection between that river and the sea, and providing Lowestoft with a harbour (an undertaking since so successfully carried out) was first mooted. The belief that the Waveney did once run out here, was supposed to give much sanction to a project which would only restore to the town an advantage which nature had originally given her.

These questions have been touched upon by writers on the antiquities of our neighbourhood, but not in a very satisfactory way. The tradition that the Waveney, or a branch of it, used to enter the sea at Lowestoft, has been reproduced by several writers as part of a picture which represents Norwich and Beccles, and other places on the borders of our marshlands, as ports and fishing towns on the shore of a large inland sea or estuary over which ships sailed freely, and to which herrings innumerable used to pay their autumnal visit which they now confine to the sea outside. That the sea at some time flowed over at least a great part of this area is probably quite true. No tradition would be required to satisfy the most ordinary observer that such a condition of things might have once existed, nor would anything more be needed to give rise to such a tradition. The question is when did this condition of the surface exist, and when did it cease to exist.We will take as our guide to the solution of this problem a very interesting pamphlet by the late Mr. Edwards, the engineer employed in cutting out the channel for our harbour in 1829, entitled “The River Waveney—did it ever reach the sea via Lowestoft?”

He thus commences his account of the physical history of the Waveney Valley—

“First and in order of date, what can be gleaned from Geological evidence? It is universally admitted that the last great change of the surface of the earth, by whatever cause brought about, left the surface of the uplands very much in the same form in which we now find them.” p. 6.

Mr. Edwards refrains from expressing any view as to the causes which brought about this last great change. He was probably not familiar with the explanation with which recent geological science has furnished us. If you refer to any of the more recent treatises on the geology of Great Britain, you will find somewhere in the later chapters an account of the subsidence and elevation of these islands during what is called the Glacial Period—movements due to what may be generally described as the settlement of the earth’s crust. [3]

In no part of England is there more striking evidence of this movement than in the coast district of Norfolk and Suffolk. The old land surface which went down and was re-elevated nearly to its former level, is well known in these parts as the Forest Bed, which now forms the bottom of the sea at a short distance from the shore from Cromer to Kessingland. It appears as the lowest stratum of the cliff at Kessingland, and at other places on our coast. It is also disclosed in inland pits from which some of its most marvellous relics have been extracted. That the surface of this bed was once above water and covered with terrestrial vegetation, like that on which we now have our being, is proved by the stumps of trees which have been found fixed upright in it, as they were when alive and growing. A specimen of these old tree stumps is to be seen in the Norwich Museum. It is on this old land surface and more or less embedded in it, that the relics of an older world are buried, which so frequently make their appearance in the trawl nets of our fishermen,—the teeth and bones of Elephants, the Rhinoceros, Hippopotamus, and other animals, which now belong to the fauna of countries far away to the south. This old land surface has been covered with some hundred or more feet of sand, clay, and gravel deposited upon it during the process of subsidence, and which after the re-elevation of the Island formed the surface soil of a great part of Suffolk and Norfolk.

The process of subsidence and re-elevation was probably extremely slow, producing an alteration of about two feet in a hundred years. An elevatory movement of this kind has been known to have taken place in recent times in the northern regions, and is said to be still going on in Finland.

How many thousands of years ago this movement took place is a matter for geologists to discuss, the important point that we have to bear in mind is that from the time this movement ceased all the alterations which have taken place are due to causes still in operation and acting in the same manner now as then.

What was done by the sea in carving out the surface into hill and valley during the process of elevation we know not, but Mr. Edwards is probably right in holding that when the upward movement ceased the contour of the surface, as regards highlands and lowlands, hills and valleys, was very much what it is now.

In considering the effect of the natural forces still in operation during the many thousands of years during which they have been at work, it is necessary to bear in mind that the level of the sea has all along remained the same, except so far as it is varied by the rise and fall of the tide, and by the exceptional exaggerations of tidal movement caused by the wind.

The operations of nature which have brought about the filling up of the hollows in the glacial land have been (1) the flow of water from wide drainage areas in Norfolk and Suffolk carrying silt into the lower parts and depositing it there,—(2) the incessant action of the sea in building up a shore boundary against itself, and blocking up the gaps in the glacial highlands through which its waters would flow inland. This action of the sea on our eastern coast is due to the inexhaustible supply of sand and shingle which is being constantly pushed along the shore southwards by the tidal wave. How persistent is the action of the sea in blocking up every outlet, whether river or harbour mouth, which man would wish kept open, has been a matter of costly experience to Yarmouth for some 800 years, as it has been to the Great Eastern Railway Company during the short time that they have undertaken the task of keeping open the mouth of Lowestoft Harbour.

The Waveney.

The ground formed by the deposit of alluvial soil from the interior, and the drifting inwards of sand and shingle from the sea is in some places not easily distinguishable from the old glacial ground on which it has been imposed. As regards land well above high water mark, no doubt can arise however similar the sand of which it is composed may be to the sand on our shores. Such deposits must have been formed before the land had risen to its present level. But as regards deposits which are beneath or nearly on a level with high water mark, on the edge of what is now water or marsh-land, the difference in their origin may be difficult to ascertain and easily overlooked. The sand in our cliffs and on the shore is indeed the same:—the sea using the material which it has robbed from some projecting cliff, to fill up some bay or make an addition to the land to the southward. That the supposed ancient outlet between Lake Lothing and the sea was blocked up by sand and shingle in the same way as other outlets along the coast, was a very reasonable supposition, until the cutting of the channel for the new harbour disclosed a ridge of old glacial soil between the head of the lake and the sea, extending across the dip between Lowestoft and Kirkley, which proved that no deep river had ever flowed out there. This ridge was excavated to a depth of 30 feet below high water mark. “It consisted” Mr. Edwards tells us “not of horizontal stratified sand and shingle, as was found on the beach, but of precisely such strata of sand, as that of the rising ground on either side of the valley, the like of which may now be seen on Pope’s Farm.”

Although this ridge was too high to admit of a deep river running into the sea from Lake Lothing, it was not so high as to prevent a shallow overflow from the lake on to the beach, producing a small channel, between the lake and the sea. Evidence of the existence of such a channel in remote times has been preserved by its having been adopted as a boundary between the parishes of Lowestoft and Kirkley. It appears from an old enclosure map, that the boundary at this part had varied, as the channel shifted from north to south, until it reached the rising ground of Kirkley Cliff, where it formed the line of the existing boundary.

Tradition assigns to this part the name of Kirkley “Haven;” and the fact that the Roads along the coast from Pakefield to Yarmouth had in very remote times acquired the name of “Kirklee Road” is proof that Kirkley must have been known to sailors more than the other villages on the cliffs. It is probable that the low coast, and its proximity to the Roads, to which ships resorted for anchorage in remote times as in recent years, led to it being used by sailors as a convenient place for communication with the shore; which would be quite sufficient to give it the name of “Kirkley Haven,” whether any use was or was not made of the little channel in question as a waterway for boats or other light craft.

After the fens had been reclaimed, and converted into pasture lands, it became necessary to protect them from the inundation of the extraordinary high tides which occurred occasionally in ancient times, as now, under the influence of a prolonged spell of north west wind. An embankment or “fortification” was erected along this ridge with the object of preventing any irruption of the sea though Lake Lothing into the interior. We have a full account of the measures taken in 1660 for the reparation of a former embankment in the same place. In Queen Elizabeth’s time Lake Lothing was purely a freshwater lake, and it was called “The Freshwater” by Lowestoft people. The ordinary outlet for the water was not towards the sea, but through Oulton “Fen” into the Waveney. Camden writing at this time describes Lake Lothing as—

“That long and spacious Lake Lothing, which beginning at the seaside empties itself into the river Yare.”

A similar ridge of glacial deposit extending between Oulton Broad and Lake Lothing, formed the foundation of the ancient and existing roadway which connects Lothingland with the mainland. This ridge placed another effectual bar to the outflow of the waters of the Waveney Valley in this direction, though here again there seems always to have been a small shallow dip, the old “Mud-ford,” through which the water on either side was connected. No such ridges blocked the wide mouth of the estuary at Yarmouth, which was open for the flow of water out and in until the sea had blocked it up with an accumulation of sand and shingle to the depth—Mr. Edwards says—of some hundred feet.

the silting up of the estuary.

The natural process by which the valley of the Waveney became gradually filled up with silt, and covered with aquatic vegetation is carefully explained by Mr. Edwards. How many thousands of years the process was going on before nature had converted the wide and apparently deep estuary into an expanse of fen and bog, with the Waveney, the Yare, and the Bure, flowing through it in well defined channels we know not; but Mr. Edwards mentions an interesting fact showing that nature’s process of substituting land for water is still in progress. We know that some hundreds of years ago man took advantage of the work already done by nature, and converted these fens and morasses into dry marshlands by raising banks along the river sides to keep out the flood and tidal waters. Between these banks and the river there are margins several yards in breadth called “rands” or “ronds.” These rands have been left open to the overflow of the river, and they are found to be raised from one to two feet above the level of the inclosed lands on the other side of the banks. Another process by which nature has been and is still slowly substituting land for water is the advance of the reedy margins of the broads and the gradual diminution of the water area.

Burgh Castle.

The first evidence we have of the stage which the silting up process had reached during the time of man’s occupation of these parts are the records and vestiges of the presence of the Romans on the banks of the Yare and the Waveney during the first four centuries of the present era.

In his account of Burgh Castle Mr. Suckling gives us a map shewing the different positions occupied by the Romans in these parts in connection with their system of coast defences against the Saxons, or other tribes on the opposite shores of the North Sea, whose piratical visitations were as much a cause of fear to the British inhabitants of our island as they were several hundred years later to its “Saxon” inhabitants themselves.

According to this map we have the strong fortress of Burgh Castle placed in the northern extremity of Lothingland, in such a position as to command a view of the entrance of the Yare and the Waveney from the estuary, the diminished area of which is still represented by Breydon water. A short way up the Yare we find another Roman Station at Reedham where the river approaches close to the glacial highlands, and where an invading force sailing up this river would find a convenient landing place at the river side, not separated from the river channel by a wide space of impassable morass, or shallows only navigable at high water. A few miles up the Waveney we have another Roman Station at Burgh St. Peter (or Wheatacre Burgh) at the extremity of a tongue of glacial highland, which is again closely approached by the present channel of the river. The extraordinary position of the church, at the lowest and extreme edge of a parish which contains a large area of high ground proves that this spot had some mysterious importance in remote times, and the existence of Roman bricks in its walls, which may have been used in several successive buildings since they were made, points to the existence of some Roman fortress nearby to which they originally belonged; while the remains of human skeletons which have been found near the bank of the river buried in a promiscuous manner, as if the result of a battle on the river’s edge, add support to the view that Burgh Staithe, being a convenient landing place for the invader, was a place of considerable importance in ancient times.

If the low marshland through which the Yare and the Waveney now wind their way to the sea was at the time when the Romans established their system of fortifications, a wilderness of bog and fen, impassable either by ship or on foot, we can understand the importance of these spots on the river-sides where the enemy could get from their boats on to the highlands of Norfolk and Suffolk. The conflict of opinion among antiquarians as to the true site of the Roman Garianonum has made the conditions of the area immediately beneath Burgh Castle in the Roman period, a familiar subject of discussion. Whether Burgh Castle or Caister was the Roman Garianonum, the disputants took it for granted that it was some place near the entrance of the river from which it took its name; but they appear to have overlooked the point that if there were any river channel near either Burgh or Caister which could be attributed to the Yare, the estuarine condition of the interior must have already passed away. When this inland area was an arm of the sea, as it has been so often described, the rivers which meet at Yarmouth must have lost their channels and their names several miles further west. The Yare would have terminated at Norwich or Reedham, the Waveney at Beccles, and the Bure somewhere about Wroxham. The Yare could have had no claim to give its name to any place near the present coast, either Burgh or Caister. The Orwell is still an arm of the sea and it is not called after either the Gipping or the Stour. The Romans probably named their fortress at Burgh from the Yare, rather than the Waveney because the river Yare was the common waterway from the Roman camp at Caister on the Taes to the sea.

The massive fortress of Burgh Castle could be safely held by a small force for a long time against any enemy who might succeed in effecting a landing on Lothingland itself, and if cavalry were kept there, as we are told they were, mounted messengers could be sent off as soon as a hostile fleet appeared, who would be able to carry the intelligence to head quarters at Caister, via Oulton and Beccles or Bungay, before the enemy could get very far up either river.

The peculiar arrangement of the walls of Burgh Castle, which while they presented an impregnable defence on the North, East and South sides, left the west side with an easy slope down to the level of the river, unprotected, can only be explained by supposing with Camden and Spelman that the area between the river and the cliff, which is now marsh, was then an impassable morass, which offered an insuperable obstacle to the approach of a hostile force either by ship or on foot. [10]

The existence of Burgh Castle at the northern extremity of Lothingland is also strong evidence that the detached portion of the mainland was no more an island then than it is now. Such a fortress would be absurdly out of place to protect the country from an invader, if there was another open water-way at Lowestoft through which he could enter.

From these and the other considerations to which I have called your attention we may feel certain that the estuarine condition of the interior had ceased to exist as long ago as the Roman period, and that our marshland area was already in a condition of fen and bog, through which the Yare, and the Waveney, and the Bure flowed in their present channels to their joint outfall between Burgh and Caister, some thousand years before any historic Norwich or Beccles existed. The hill on which Lowestoft was destined to rise in after ages, was probably often visited by the Roman soldiers as they passed to and fro between their fortress at Burgh and their camp in the interior, but no relics have as yet been discovered bearing testimony to either Roman or British occupation of the site of our town, though Roman coins have been found at Kirkley, and Carlton and other places in our neighbourhood.

Part II.—Domesday Book.

The most ancient record in which we find any mention of Lowestoft is Domesday Book. As this is the case with nearly every other town and parish in England, Lowestoft is not behind other places in evidence of antiquity.

But Lowestoft not only appears in Domesday as a parish and a village, but it appears as a Royal manor—or at least as one of the numerous estates or demesnes held by William the Conqueror, as his private property—as the successor of Edward the Confessor and Canute. On the strength of this archÆological distinction, the town in the time of Elizabeth and Charles I., claimed the privileges of lands in ‘ancient demesne.’ These privileges were that the town was excused from contributing to the expenses of the members of Parliament for the county, and its inhabitants were not to be called upon to go to Beccles or Bury as jurymen, but only to their own Manor Courts at Corton. The exercise of these privileges has, I understand, been abandoned for some time, and we have condescended to take part in the judicial and political system of the country like other places. What this ancient “demesne of the Crown” was we shall see presently. You have all, I doubt not, heard of Domesday Book, but you will be able to appreciate better the value and meaning of the information it gives us if I remind you shortly of its history.

In 1066 William won the Battle of Hastings, and on the strength of this victory claimed England as its conqueror, and not merely as the chosen successor of Edward. As conqueror of the country the whole of England was at his disposal, and he gave the lands of the Saxon (or according to Mr. Freeman and Mr. Green, ‘English’) proprietors to his French followers. They made full use of the King’s grant, and in a few years almost every Saxon landlord had disappeared, or if any remained, they remained as tenants of small portions of their estates to the ownership of which a Norman landlord had—as they called it—“succeeded.” We are told of one Norman Knight, who having fought for William at Hastings, refused to take any share in this wholesale robbery. He had done his duty as a vassal in fighting for William, and he preferred to return to Normandy and be contented with his own property there; not so though the rest.

You must understand that the great change brought about by the conquest was at first only a change of landlords, and involved no alteration in the laws and customs by which property was held. The parishes, the manors, the farms, the occupying tenants, and the labourers on the estates were not disturbed. Even the live and dead stock on the farms were all claimed by the new owners, and to a large extent actually got possession of by them.

After this process of ousting the Saxon landlords had been going on for some years—not, as you may suppose without a good deal of fighting and cruelty—the country was becoming settled, and the King thought it time to learn in whose possession its lands were, and what their estates were worth. So he appointed a commission of enquiry, to go through the whole country and report to him the names of all the possessors of estates, and what amount of land producing corn their estates contained, and what live and dead stock, including the tenants belonging to each estate, were on the land, and what each manor and estate was valued at. The results of this enquiry, which took some six years to complete, were put together by clerks, and written out in as concise a manner as possible on parchment—and so Domesday Book was formed.

As the commissioners had to ascertain so far as they could, what differences had taken place in the ownership and occupation of land, and in its condition and value, since the Conquest, Domesday Book, although made some 20 years after England was under the Normans, gives us a picture of the country as it was in later Saxon times, and it is from this book that most of our knowledge of the condition of England in the Saxon period is derived.

The Parishes of Lothingland.

The map [13] represents the Hundred of Mutford and Lothingland (then called the two half hundreds of Mutford and Lothingland) as it is now divided into parishes. Nearly all these parishes are mentioned in Domesday under their present names (though of course not spelt precisely in the same way). Many, if not all, of them had probably existed under the same name, and with much the same boundaries some 300 years before, under the Saxon and Danish kings of East Anglia. They appear in Domesday as the known areas in which the estates reported upon were situated, but the parishes themselves were not the subject of the survey, nor does the term “parish” appear either in English or Latin. The word “Villa” is frequently used to denote these areas, just as “Town” was commonly used as an equivalent for “parish” in much later times. The book is written in a sort of Latinised English, but the names of places retain the vernacular form. As they are spelt very differently in different entries, Domesday is no authority for the correct spelling of any of our parish names. But the form they bear in Domesday throws much light on their etymological origin. To what extent the estates mentioned in Domesday were contained in the parishes to which they are allocated is doubtful. In a few cases the several manors returned as being situated in a particular parish would appear to require a larger area than the parish now contains, but in nearly all cases the amount of land reported upon as being under tillage in a parish is very much less than the land now under cultivation.

In his history of the Norman Conquest Mr. Freeman says of Domesday:—“Domesday teaches better than any other witness of those times can teach us, that the England of the 11th century and the England of the 19th are one and the same thing.” We will now see what it teaches us about Lowestoft.

Lowestoft in Domesday Book.

In the return of the King’s estates in the Half-hundred of Lothingland (Ludingland as it was written) we have a rather long account of the King’s Manor of Gorleston, which appears to have been the headquarters from which the royal estates in Lothingland were administered for several hundred years. It states that “Gurth (Earl Gurth, the brother of Harold, killed at the battle of Hastings) held Gorleston in King Edward’s time, and after giving the details of his property in Gorleston,

“There are 24 fishermen belonging to this manor at Gernemutha (Yarmouth) and a beruita (or subordinate manor) in Lothu Wistoft (Lowestoft). [14] It contains four carucates. In King Edward’s time there were five villani (bond tenants of the upper class)—now only three. Both then and now there are ten cottage tenants. Then there were five servi (slaves), now only three. Then and now there are two ploughs employed on the demesne (the Kings own land). In Edward’s time the tenants employed five ploughs on their land, now only three. There is woodland for eight pigs, and five acres of pasture. In King Edward’s time there were thirteen geese, now only eight. There were then and now ten pigs, and 150 sheep.”

We have here the account of a small estate, comprising some 400 or 500 acres of cultivated land, of which part was in demesne, and cultivated for the King, and the rest was comprised in one or two large open fields, which were divided into allotments, and cultivated by the tenants for themselves, all of whom could have their little homesteads, and their shares in the plough-oxen, and other live stock kept on the land.

This estate had not passed from the hands of the Saxon Earl Gurth to those of William without disturbance. Three of the villani and two slaves had disappeared. They had, perhaps, been in Earl Gurth’s army, and had fallen with him at Hastings. Several acres of land had fallen out of cultivation, and though the pigs and sheep had remained at the same number, the geese were reduced from thirteen to eight.

Besides the King’s berwick there was a small manor in the parish called Aketorp, belonging to a freeman named Aylmar, a priest, probably the priest of the parish. His name tells us that he was an Englishman, and not one of the Conqueror’s Frenchmen. His little property consisted of 80 acres, on which there were three cottage tenants. One plough was used on the demesne. There were seven other tenants who had land requiring half a plough. (They must have had other means of supporting themselves.) There was wood for five pigs, and one acre of pasture.

Priest Aylmar had not been disturbed by the Conquest, and his little property was in the same condition in 1085 as it was in 1066. The rest of the land in the parish would be common or waste land, over which the cattle, sheep, and pigs of the lords and their tenants could roam and feed.

So far as Domesday furnishes us with express authority, the population of the parish in Edward’s time consisted of 31 different families. But I think that there may have been a few others—poor freemen—not belonging to these estates, and not coming within the scope of the survey, who gained a living partly by assisting the tenants in their agricultural work, and partly as fishermen, having their boats on the shore or at Kirkley Haven, which was quite alive at this time. These men would be the earliest representatives of the free population of the parish which was destined in after times, when trade had sprung up, to form the main population of the town of Lowestoft.

The church is not mentioned, but, as there was a resident priest, there can be no reason to doubt that there was a parish church—probably a small wooden building on the site of the present church. Churches were more numerous in Suffolk and Norfolk in Saxon times than in any other part of England. Several churches are mentioned in other parishes near, apparently because they had some substantial amount of glebe land belonging to them.

Neighbouring Parishes.

We shall understand somewhat better the picture which Domesday gives us of Lowestoft if we take a glance at the accounts which it gives of some other parishes in the immediate neighbourhood.

The parishes in Lothingland, in which the greatest number of estates are returned are Somerleyton, Lound, and Belton. I believe that these parishes contain the best agricultural land in the district. The church in Somerleyton is mentioned as having 20 acres of glebe belonging to it, but the parish priest—or parson as he was afterwards called—appears to have possessed a small manor of 40 acres in addition.

Gunton is not mentioned in Domesday. Corton appears as containing an estate belonging to the Crown, of which no details are given, except that it was valued at 20s.

The lost Newton is mentioned as a small estate of 30 acres, owned by a freeman, and valued at 3s. Newton existed for several hundred years as a small hamlet to the north of Corton, but has been long since carried away by the sea, except parts of one or two fields still left on the top of the cliff.

In the Half-Hundred of Mutford, the parishes of Kessingland, Carlton, and Mutford, appear as containing large villages, and several estates which had passed from Saxon Thanes to Norman Barons.

In Mutford there were two churches, with lands belonging to them in Rushmere, Kirkley, Pakefield, and Gisleham. In the account of Pakefield we hear that Earl Gurth possessed one mediety of the living, which was divided between two Rectors up to the 17th century. It is probable that the prototype of the present double church was in existence then.

Herring Rents.

Domesday contains evidence of much interest in connection with the history of our herring fishery, in the returns of herring rents from farms in this neighbourhood.

One of the largest Norman landowners in these parts was Hugo de Montfort. He appears to have been connected with the sea when in Normandy, for it is said that he supplied William with 60 ships to carry his men over to England. Whether Hugo was very fond of herrings, or because he wished to encourage the herring fishery we know not, but it appears that when he had turned out the English landowner Burchard, and taken possession of his farms, he not only raised the money rents, but he required many of the tenants to supply him with herrings in addition.

In Kessingland he became the landlord of a small estate held by four freeman, which had been valued at 10s., but from which Hugo demanded a rent of 22,000 herrings. [17]In Rushmere he had a farm which paid him as rent 700 herrings.

In Gisleham he had two small farms, from one of which he got 2s. 6d. and 200 herrings, and from the other 5s. and 300 herrings.

In Carlton he had one farm from which he got 3s. as rent and 400 herrings, and from another 5s. and 300 herrings.

In Kirkley he had a farm from which he got 3s. and 200 herrings.

He also got herring rents from farms in Worlingham, Weston, Wangford, and some other places which I cannot identify.

This Norman Baron doubtless desired to encourage the herring fishery, and so imposed these herring rents on his tenants who occupied farms near the coast, where herrings could easily be obtained. Had he possessed any land in Lowestoft I have no doubt that we should read in Domesday of herring rents being paid from this parish. The large number demanded from the four freemen in Kessingland is good evidence, I think, of the herring fishery being carried on there at this time to a considerable extent. Kessingland was a large village at this time, with a haven in the little river which now separates it from Benacre. Although Domesday makes no mention of any fishermen, or fishing trade, in the returns for these parishes, the herring rents are conclusive evidence that herrings were caught off this coast it large quantities at this time. Sea-fishing was probably carried on also by the inhabitants of Pakefield and Kirkley at this time.

Kirkley does not appear to have ever been more than a small village, although it gave its name to the Roads off this coast.

Carlton was a large and populous village at this time, and appears to have been so from early Saxon times. It is supposed that the name is taken from the large number of “Ceorls,” or “Karls,”—as we should now say “Working-class people”—who lived there. Lake Lothing would furnish them with an easy passage to and from the sea, and when landed at Carlton the fish would be on the old Roman road leading to Beccles, Norwich, and Bury. Doubtless the herrings which Hugh de Montfort got from his farms in this parish were caught by fishermen living there. Fishing in small boats, by what we should now call “longshore-men,” had probably been carried on from these sea-side villages for hundreds of years before Domesday.

But at this time the herring fishery had become established at Yarmouth, and the celebrated Free Fair was already held there during the autumn season. In the account of Gorleston we have noticed that 24 men belonging to that manor were said to be fishermen living away at Yarmouth. As there were as many as 70 burgesses in Yarmouth in the time of King Edward, and the town paid a large rent to the king, we may be quite safe in regarding Yarmouth as doing a large business in the herring trade even in late Saxon times.

Live Stock on the Farms.

Although the returns from the different estates in our neighbourhood are compiled on the same system in Domesday Book, they vary very much in respect of the details given, particularly in respect of the live stock on the manors and farms reported. This is no more than what we should expect.

The returns of the live stock which they possessed would give the Conqueror very useful information as to the amount of taxation his subjects could bear, and he could hardly expect to get many trust-worthy returns on this head. In the accounts of many of the manors they are omitted entirely. In the accounts of others the return of live stock is very small in proportion to the size of the estate. It is probable that the stock owned by the tenants is omitted altogether. Pigs must have been the animals on which the lower class of tenants principally relied for their meat, but the pigs in most of the returns are very few, only eight on the King’s estate in Lowestoft.

In the account of a large manor at Mutford—to which 40 tenants belonged—the return of live stock mentions 7 geese, 30 pigs, 30 goats, and two hives of bees.

Some of the estates appear to have been very well stocked. On the farm of 40 acres belonging to the parish priest of Somerleyton, there was 1 horse, 4 cows, 5 pigs, and 33 sheep—besides the plough cattle. On the King’s farm in Lound, which was not half the size of his Lowestoft estate, there were 50 pigs.

On a farm of 40 acres in Belton there was 1 horse, 2 geese, 7 pigs, 30 sheep, and 3 goats.

In addition to these animals the owners of these estates had draught oxen for ploughing.

It would appear that the produce of the arable land was nearly all required for feeding its human occupants, and that the geese and the pigs and other animals would be limited to such numbers as could find food for themselves in the woods and wild land which was common to the lords and tenants of each manor.

These returns of live stock, although they would have been very valuable to the Conqueror and ourselves, if they were complete and trustworthy, are so manifestly defective and irregularly made in most cases, that they furnish very unsatisfactory materials for forming an idea of the general condition of the peasantry. But as we know that all the tenants of a manor—even the lowest class of bondmen—occupied some land for the maintenance of themselves and their families, with rights of pasturage on the common lands, probably most had some cattle and pigs of their own, and were well provided with the necessaries of life.The country must have been in a stationary condition for hundreds of years in the Saxon period owing to the entire absence of trade, and the almost entire absence of money. The silver penny was the only coin in circulation, and indeed for some two centuries after.

With little or no opportunities for selling the produce of their estates, the landowners had little reason to improve them, nor could they increase their land under tillage without interfering with the rights of their tenants on the waste land. The system of serfdom, moreover, whilst it secured a living to a large number of people, bound them and their children to the estates on which they held their land, and must have tended to deprive a large part of the population of the country of any stimulus to enterprise or self improvement.

Serfdom.

It appears from Mr. Turner’s computation of the different classes forming the population of Suffolk, as shown in Domesday, that some 10,000 out of the 22,000 were in the condition of serfs, bound to some manor, either as small tenant farmers paying rent as well as services for their land, or as cottage tenants working on the demesne, or as mere slaves or thralls, the absolute property of the lords. [21] I will not take you further into this obscure and complicated question than to say that the bondage of the greater part of the Anglo-Saxon peasantry implied little more than that they were bound to remain on the estate to perform the services for which they held their land. These services were fixed as strictly as a money rent would be, and left them plenty of time for working on their own land, while the law provided various means by which they could obtain freedom for themselves and their children. The Church—at all events the parish clergy—always used their influence to obtain the freedom of the lowest and most servile class. We read of a case where an hereditary serf was holding the high position of bailiff of a large manor. Turner says:—

“It is mentioned in the laws as an incentive to proper actions that through God’s gift a servile thrall may become a thane, and a coeorl an Earl, just as a singer may become a priest and a writer a bishop.” In the time of Ethelstane it is expressly declared that “if a coeorl have a full proprietorship of five hides of land, a church, and a kitchen, a bell house and a burghate seat, and an appropriate office in the King’s hall, he shall thenceforth be a thane by right”

The opportunities, however, which the condition of society in Saxon times offered for a serf to rise from the lowest to the highest ranks must have been very few. In these days trade and the professions furnish such a ladder, but in Saxon times there was no profession but the church, whose members sometimes found remunerative employment as clerks, or by devoting themselves to religious duties rose to the highest offices. The only trades in Saxon times were those of the handicraftsmen, and, except in London and a few other towns, these would be confined to the blacksmith and a few such craftsmen as were indispensable to the smallest agricultural community.

Craftsmen.

Among the few literary productions of the Anglo Saxons which have been preserved, we find descriptions of the more common trades given in the form of dialogues. I take the following from Mr. Turner’s work. The shoemaker (sceowerhta) thus describes his trade:—

“My craft is very necessary to you. I buy hides and skins and prepare them by art, and make of them shoes of various kinds, and none of you can winter without my craft. I make ankle leathers, shoes, and leather hose; bridle thongs, trappings, neck pieces, and halters; bottles, flasks, boiling vessels, wallets and pouches.”

So the Saxon shoemaker was a much more accomplished man than the shoemaker of the present day, for he combined the arts of the tanner, the currier, and the harness maker with that of shoemaking. The smith says:—

“Whence the share of the ploughman or the goad? but from my art.

“Whence to the fisherman his angle? or to the shoe maker his awl? or to the sempstress her needle but from my art?”

In Hereford there are six smiths mentioned in Domesday.They paid a penny a year rent for their forges, and had to make up 120 pieces of iron for the king from the metal supplied them. He must have been a very skilful blacksmith who could turn out such different ironwork as ploughshares and needles and fishhooks. A very important tradesman was the miller. Mills were a much valued property, and are always mentioned in the Domesday returns.

The Merchant.

What foreign trade was in Saxon time appears from the account which the merchant gives of his business—

“I say that I am useful to the king, and to ealdermen, and to the rich, and to the people. I ascend my ship with my merchandise, and sail over the sealike places, and sell my things, and buy dear things which are not produced in this land, and I bring them to you here with the great danger of the sea, and sometimes I suffer shipwreck, with the loss of all my things, scarcely escaping myself. What do you bring to us?—Skins, silks, costly gums and gold, various garments, pigment, wine, oil, ivory, orichalcus, copper, tin, silver, glass, and such like. Will you sell your things here as you brought them there?—I will not, because what would my labour benefit me? I will sell them here dearer than I bought them there that I may have some profit to feed me and my wife and children.”

So you see the Saxon merchant was an enterprising skipper, who owned his ship, and having filled it with a cargo of English produce, took it over to some foreign port and exchanged it for a cargo of foreign goods, of all sorts and kinds, which he brought back and sold at a high price in England.

The Fisherman.

We have a sketch of a fisherman of the Saxon period, drawn by no less a personage than Alfric, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was living in the 11th century and was the wisest man of his time, according to the Saxon chronicle. He wrote some colloquies for his pupils to turn into Latin. One of them treats of the fisherman:—

“What gettest thou by thy art?—Big loaves, clothing, and money. How do you take fish?—I ascend my ship, and cast my net into the river; I also take a hook, a bait, and a rod. Suppose the fishes are unclean?—I throw the unclean out, and take the clean for food. Where do you sell your fish?—In the city. Who buys them?—The citizens; I cannot take so many as I can sell. What fishes do you take?—Eels, haddocks, minnows, eel-pouts, skate, and lampreys, and whatever swims in the river. (The Archbishop rather mixed his fresh-water and saltwater fish). Why do you not fish in the sea?—Sometimes I do, but rarely because a great ship is necessary there. What do you take in the sea?—Herrings, salmon, porpoises, sturgeons, oysters, crabs, muscles, winkles, cockles, flounder, plaices, lobsters, and such like. Can you take a whale?—No, it is dangerous to take a whale; it is safer for me to go to the river with my ship than to go with many ships to hunt whales. Why?—Because it is more pleasant to me to take fish which I can kill with one blow. Yet many take whales without danger, and then they get a great price, but I dare not for the fearfulness of my mind.”

These whale catchers were Norwegians and Danes, who, when they were not raiding in England, employed themselves in whale fishing off the Norwegian Coast.

Intellectual Condition of our Ancestors.

But these Anglo-Danes of East Anglia were our ancestors. They lived in the same villages, and tilled the same land as the peasantry of the present day, and many of our country parishes must have been in Saxon times very much what they are now, in which the squire and the parson fill the places of the thane and the parish priest and a few farmers holding land under the squire, and agricultural labourers, enough and no more, than are required to cultivate the land, with perhaps a village blacksmith and shoemaker, complete the roll of the resident population. The intellectual condition of our ancestors must have been very low. Mr. Turner describes it as the “twilight of mind,” and he says there is a great similarity in their poetry to that of the natives of New Zealand. Even the thanes and magnates of the land were, with a very few exceptions, entirely uneducated, and if they had learnt to read there would have been few books from which they could have got any knowledge. King Alfred was one of the few who could read in his time. With the upper classes in such a barbarous condition no wonder we are told that gross excess in eating and drinking was their characteristic failing. Even the great and good Alfred is said to have destroyed his constitution by having to take part in banqueting for several days and nights in celebration of his wedding. The prevalence of this low vice may be to a great extent attributed to the want of any means by which the produce of their farms could be made a better use of. It was not until trade sprung up that they could sell their surplus produce and spend the proceeds in the purchase of things which would lead to a higher and more civilised standard of living. But during the whole of the Saxon period the monotonous routine of their agricultural occupations was only varied by war, which was frequent enough; and as war in those days was always accompanied by devastation and slaughter, the slow progress of our Saxon fore-fathers in wealth and civilisation is easily accounted for, and we can well understand how it was that this fertile country was only partially cultivated when the Normans came over, and how it was that the Conqueror found his property in “Lothuwistoft” in such a backward state.

Such was Lowestoft in its infancy—a small agricultural village of less importance than Carlton or Mutford or Kessingland. We shall now lose sight of her for some 300 years. When she again appears in the records of the past she will appear as a town of some importance to the country, and as a rival of Yarmouth in the herring trade.

Etymology of “Lowestoft.”

In conclusion, I will say a few words about the name. In the facsimile copy of Domesday it is Lothu Wistoft. In the grant of the privileges of “Ancient Demesne” by Elizabeth, which recites a certificate from Chancery that the parish was in demesne of the Crown in the time of William the Conqueror the name is spelt “Lothn-wistoft.” Either spelling affords good evidence of the origin of the word, and leaves little room for doubting its etymology. Lothu-wistoft or Lothn-wistoft was the “toft” by Loth-wis or Lothen-wis, or Lothing-wis, “wis” being the same word as “ouse,” a word used in Saxon times as an equivalent for “lake,” as in Wisbech, stagnant or slow moving water, as distinguished from a quick running river. The place was probably at first only called “toft,” a very common word in Saxon times, denoting a small homestead, and not uncommonly found in existing names—as “Toft Monks,” “Stowlangtoft,” &c. “Loth-wis” or “Lothn-wis” was equivalent to “Lothing Lake,” the piece of water which played the important part of separating Lothing, or Lothingland, from the rest of the county of Suffolk. The abbreviation of this long word into a shorter form was inevitable, and as early as 1327 we find it appearing in the Subsidy Rolls as “Lowystofth.” The forms it took after this time are multitudinous, but the later abbreviations and corruptions, due to vulgar pronunciations and bad spelling, are no guide whatever to its original etymology Lothing or Lothingland, Lothingaland, Loddingland, Luddingland—was the “ing” or property of Loth, Lod, or Lud, probably a Danish captain, to whom this district was given by the Danish conquerors of East Anglia after it had been settled in townships by the Angles (compare Kessingland, &c.)