THE PROVINCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND. LXI.—SUFFOLK AND NORFOLK :—THE Towxs.
SUFFOLK contains two county and borough towns, Ipswich and Bury St. Edmund's, the parliamentary borough of Eye, the ex-parliamentary boroughs of Aldborough, Dunwich, Orford, and Sudbury, and sixteen market towns. In Norfolk, besides the city of Norwich, which is a county in itself, and the parliamentary boroughs of King's Lynn and Thetford, we have the borough of Great Yarmouth (which ceases to be a parliamentary borough at the close of the present Parliament), and about nine other market towns of a certain importance. We are, of course, as in the case of other Provinces, much limited in the extent of our notices of this urban element, and as we have hitherto done, we will first allude to those places whose burgesses are specially mentioned in Domesday Survey.
Gipewiz or Gyppeswik (the modern Ipswich), now a town with a population (in 1861) of 37,950 inhabitants, is situated on the side of a hill, with a southern aspect, near the junction of the rivers Orwell and Gipping, or Gippen. The town within the gates was not of great extent. It was surrounded with a ditch and ram- part, which was broken down by the Danes when they pillaged the town in the years 991 and 1000. There were four gates, called after the points of the compass, with four corresponding wards of the town; and a fifth, Lose Gate, on the banks of the Orwell, where formerly there was a ford. In King Edward the Confessor's reign there were 538 burgesses who paid customary rent to the King, but between that time and the formation of Domesday Survey the town seems to have much decayed, as we then find only 110 burgesses who paid the rent, and 100 poor,burgesses who paid a penny per head, the other mansions being wasted. The causes of this decay and desolation belong to the lost facts of this obscure period. Eight churches are enumerated at the time of the Survey. In Edward the Con- fessor's time Earl Guert (Gurth) had the third penny of Ipswich, the Queen, Edith, having the other- two-thirds. At the Survey, Roger de Ramis held a church in Ipswich, dedicated to St. George, with four burgesses and six wasted mansions. To Calling, a burgess, belonged another church ; and a church dedicated to St. Julian, belonging to Aluric, the son of Roll, a burgess, is mentioned among the lands of the Vavasores in Suffolk. A charter granted to the town in the 1st year of the reign of John exempted it from many oppressive exactions, gave it a merchants' guild and hanse of its own, and provided that the inhabitants should hold their lands " according to the custom of the borough of Ipswich," and that they might choose two bailiffs and four coroners out of the "more lawful men " of the town. Edward I. seized the liberties of the borough, and kept them in his own hands from the 13th to the 19th year of his reign. He then restored them in gratitude for the services of some Ipswich ships in his Scottish expedition. But he raised the annual rent of the town from 401., or sixty marks, to 601. About the eighteenth year of Edward III. the burgesses were again deprived of their charter, on the occasion, it is said, of a practical joke played by some sailors on one of the justices of assize of the name of Sharford, but it was restored before the end of the year. Au important charter was granted by Henry VI., in the twenty-fourth year of his reign, by which the town was incorporated, and the office of justice of the peace was granted to the two bailiffs and four other burgesses to be elected by them, with the assize of bread, wine, and ale. In the next year the borough returned two burgesses to Parliament, and has continued to do so ever since. Edward nr. by another charter granted again the same and additional liberties. A fresh charter was granted by Charles II. in the 17th (nominal) year of his reign, which was surrendered by the town towards the conclusion, of that reign, and a new (and restricted) one granted, but never enrolled, and the former charter came into force again on the conciliatory proclamation of James II. in October, 1688. The town was formerly famous for its manufacture of broad-cloth, and the best canvas for sail-cloth, called Ipswich Double. It had then several companies of traders incorporated by charter. But about the middle of the 17th century the woollen trade began to decline, and gradually dwindled away. Ipswich suffered so much from this loss that it was called for some time " a town without people." Its situation, however, to some extent retrieved its fortunes, and it became a seat for malting, and the exportation of malt, corn, cheese, butter, and agricultural implements and machinery, and the importation of coals, iron, and timber. Ship- building, paper-making, and stay-making are among the other principal employments of the inhabitants. The river Orwell has been deepened and improved, and a wet dock constructed, in which vessels drawing 15 feet of water can float. The town increased in population about 5,800 between 1851 and 1861.
Beccles, a market town on the right bank of the river Waveney, with a population in 1861 (slightly declining from 1851) of 4,266- -with an adjoining common of about 1,400 acres, belonged to the Abbey of St. Edmund's Bury. Besides the agricultural tenantry upon the manor, the Abbot had 26 burgesses and three parts of the market ; the King the fourth. Thirty soemen, with all customary payments, had 20 bordarii under them. On the dis- solution of the Monasteries, the manor, with the common, was given to William Rede, with a stipulation that the common was to be held for the use of the inhabitants, and the poor have still the right of pasturage on very easy terms. The town suffered great injury from a fire in 1586. It is now a well built town, with a considerable trade with the vicinity in coals, groceries, &c., the Waveney being navigable to Yarmouth Roads.
Sudberie (Sudbury), situated on the left bank of the river Stour, in the Confessor's time belonged to the mother of Earl Morcar, and at the time of the Survey belonged to the King. Sixty-three of its burgesses are there described as " halle-manentes," and fifty-five as in demesne. The town had a market and moneyere, and the customary rent to the King had risen from 181. to 28/. It is a borough by prescription ; and sent two Members to Par- liament from 1558 to 1844, when it was disfranchised for corrupt practices. It was one of the first towns in which Edward III. settled the Flemings, to instruct the inhabitants in the woollen manufacture. The Knights Hospitallers had the tolls of the bridge. The river navigation is not good, and the chief manu- facture is now that of silk. Its population in 1861 was 6,879, an increase of about 800 during the previous ten years. Dunwich is on the coast, about 28 miles north-east from Ipswich. When East Anglia was a separate kingdom, Dunwich was a place of importance, and the seat of the East Anglian Bishopric, after- wards transferred to Norwich. It was an improving place in the time of the Survey. Two bordarii and twenty-four foreigners upon forty acres paid rent to the manor. In the Confessor's time there had been 120 burgesses. At the Survey, when in Robert Malet's possession, there were 236, besides 178 " pauperes homines." The sea had then made an encroachment upon the town. The customary rent in the total was 501. and 60,000 herrings. Fifty burgesses of Dunwich were attached to the manor of Alneterne, belonging to the Abbey of Ely. King John granted the town a charter of incorporation, and in gratitude it adhered to him in the Civil War. It contributed several ships and many men to the French wars of Edward I. and Edward III. It adhered to the Yorkists most stoutly in the Wars of the Roses, and Henry VII., as a punishment, incorporated the rival town of Southwold, and it began to decay, chiefly, however, from the encroachments of the sea, which ruined the port, and washed away the greater part of the town. The borough was disfranchised by the Reform Act, and it is now a village with 227 inhabitants. Somewhat more fortunate is Clare, situated on the left bank of the Stour, 43 burgesses belonging to which are enumerated in the Survey. On the south side of the town are the vestiges of an old castle and the remains of a priory of the regular Canons of St. Augustine. But the town will chiefly be remarkable in history as having given their surname to one of the greatest of the Anglo- Norman families. Its population in 1861 was 1,657, a decline of about 100 in the previous ten years.
Eye is situated on a small feeder of the Waveney, about 20 miles north of Ipswich. The stream is believed to have been once navigable, and surrounding the town, to have given it its name, signifying " an island." Roman coins have been found in the neighbourhood, and 25 burgesses belonging to it are mentioned in Domesday Survey. King John incorporated it, and it sent two Members to Parliament from the reign of Elizabeth to the Reform Act of 1832, which reduced the representation to one. It is now a nomination borough of the Kerrison family. It had formerly a castle and a small Benedictine Priory. Its present occupations are brewing, coachmaking, and the making of agricultural implements. The population of the municipal borough in 1861 was 2,430, a decline of 150 from the year 1851.
We have had already to refer more than once to the history of the town of Bury St. Edmund's, the chief town of West Suffolk. Several Roman antiquities have been found in its neighbourhood, and some fatiquaries have identified its site with that of the VILLA FAUSTINA of the Itinerary of Antoninus. In later Saxon times, at any rate, the site was called Beodricsworthe or Beodrics- cortis, the mansion of Beodric. It received, as we have seen, its new name of St. Edmund's Burgh, or St. Edmund's Bury, from Edmund, the martyr King of the East Anglians. Soon after his death the monastery which subsequently became so celebrated had its first foundation. In 1020 Ailwin ejected all the secular clergy, and established 12 Benedictine monks in the abbey, exempted them from episcopal jurisdiction, and began a church which was conse- crated in 1032. But the first stone church was erected in 1065. It took 12 years in building, and was 505 feet in length, the transepts 212 feet, and the western part 240 feet in breadth, and it contained twelve chapels. There were four grand gates to the great enclo- sure within which the monastic buildings, churches, Abbot's palace, &c., stood, surrounded by lofty embattled walls. It contained 80 monks, 15 chaplains, and 111 servants. The Abbot had the power of life and death within the liberty of Bury, and Edward the Confessor gave him the privilege of coinage. Edward I. and Edward II. both had mints here. John's meeting here with his Barons has been already alluded to. Henry III. held a Parliament here in 1272, as did Edward I in 1296, when he confiscated all the property of the monastery on its refusal to pay him a subsidy, but restored it on their subsequent compliance. Another Parliament was held here in 1446. The burgesses of Bury are not mentioned in Domes- day Survey, but it is a borough by prescription, and James I. confirmed these prescriptive rights by a charter in the fourth of his reign. It first sent representatives to Parliament_ in the thirty-eighth of Edward I., but made no other return till the fourth of James I. " About a mile from Bury the river Larke becomes navigable to Lynn, from which coals and other com- modities used (till the railway) to be brought in small barges." A great fair, for which the town is celebrated, lasts almost three weeks. The town is greatly under the influence of the Hervey family (Marquises of Bristol), whose seat, Ickworth, is three miles distant. They have succeeded to the power of the old family of
Jermyn, notorious in the reign of Charles I. The population of the town was in 1861 13,318, a diminution of 600 from the year 1851.
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