The History of Long Melford

Introduction

. HE early history of Melford lies buried deep under the accumulated dust of ages, and grubbing therein for the first tangible knowledge of the far past is but a dry research. Conjecture, often vague, must be coupled with fragmentary records and inferences, in order to reunite the few scattered and severed threads of its old-world story before the Conquest. The Romans form a slight starting-point in our annals, for it appears plain, from the Eoman remains found here, that at least one particular spot in this parish was in their occupation ; viz., at the junction of the rivers, on or about the present Stoneylands ; and perhaps there was another on "Westgate Hill. How long they were here is uncertain, as also whether they were settlers but few in number, or as a small military force, possibly an outpost from the camps of Clare or Cockfield.

Perhaps, looking strategically at the position in the fork formed by the Melford river, at its junction with the larger stream of the Stour, a very favourite sort of post in those days, — this latter supposition might seem probable ; as they would thus maintain the chain of defence of the great camps of Wixoe and Clare, and thence along the Stour eastward ; and at the same time would keep open the communication with the northern camps through those of Lavenham and Cockfield. Among: the Roman remains found here, such as coins of various sorts and dates, urns, pottery, and portions of tesselated pavements, there was excavated from a gravel-pit on Stoneylands, about forty five years ago, a fine and perfect large glass urn of a rare and valuable h" h VI

INTRODUCTION.

. shape and quality, which, was presented to the British Museum by the late Sir William Pabker. From the time when the Romans evacuated Britain till the reign of Edward the Confessor, the history of Melford is a long blank. We may perhaps fancy that our remote forefathers sent their little quota hence to take part in the lost battles in Suffolk against Sweyn and his Danish marauders ; and half a century later, those of a succeeding generation were wistfully scanning the appearance of yet another race of foreign invaders, some of whose nobles may have looked with greedy, longing eyes at the goodly manor of Melford, which, happily for its inhabitants, was beyond the grasp of the Normans, being already an appanage of the Abbey of St. Edmund, which cast the protecting ægis of the Church over the villeins, serfs, and socmen of Melford.

Passing to times later on, its population stood at their doors on a November day in 1214, to see King John pass by on his way to Bury ; and though the Melford folk were indebted to him for the boon, important in those times, of the grant of a weekly market and of an annual fair, yet, as probably their feelings towards him were the same as those of the neighbouring people of Clare, of whom it is recorded that " he was so ill received that he quitted the town the same day," so Melford, though usually loyal, may have greeted the unpopular king on this occasion with but cold welcome, and scant applause.* And besides the known visits of King John, and in after-days of Queen Elizabeth, it is most probable that as Melford lies on the direct road between London and Bury, many other crowned heads may have passed through its long street; for no less than sixteen sovereigns personally offered at the famous shrine of St. Edmund before the dissolution of the Abbey.

Their names are thus handed down to us : — Canute, Edward the Confessor, William I., Henry I., Henry II., Richard I., John (twice), Henry III. (twice), Edward I. (twice, or more), Queen Eleanor, Edward II., Edward III., Richard II., Henry VI. (four times), Edward IV., Henry VII. * King John was at Melford 4th November, 1214. — (Archæologia.)

INTRODUCTION.

. Lord Arthur Hervey, Bishop of Bath and Wells, in his address to the members of the Archæological Society of Great Britain, on their visit to Bury in 1854, is reported to have said that Edward I. was at Bury thirteen times. Pentlow, the reputed home of " John Wraw," is so near this place that it is very probable that some few of the more discontented and reckless inhabitants of Melford may have been induced to join that ruffian's formidable mob in the insurrection of 1381, and have witnessed the atrocities committed in Bury and its vicinity ; and if so, it is to be hoped also shared their punishment at Barton Mills. In the rising for Lady Jane Grey, on the death of King Edward VI., the men of Suffolk showed themselves strong partisans in favour of the rival claim ; and Melford may, not improbably, have been represented by some supporters of Queen Mary, among the garrison of Framlingham Castle, or who may have joined the pursuing force of Lord Arundel for the capture at Cambridge, of the Earl of Northumberland, who was an object of special hatred to the people of the Eastern counties.

Much of this is of course conjecture ; but anyhow it is certain that for nearly five centuries the rich and powerful Abbey of St. Edmund held possession of the manor and church of Melford ; and its vassals and serfs, generation after generation, saw a succession of thirty-three mitred Abbots of Bury, who took their seats in the House of Peers, tenth in order among the twenty-four abbots who ranked as barons, princes almost in wealth and power, constantly coming with their retinues to and fro between Bury and their country seat at Melford Hall, for pleasure or relaxation from the cares and business of the great religious house. Whether they were good or bad, easy or tyrannical landlords to their Melford tenants, who can now say ; but as they exacted from all officers connected with their estates, methodical habits of business, they eventually left behind them many plain records of their dealings with this manor.

So far as their chartularies, terriers, and rentals may be taken as inferences, they were not hard masters ; and their vassals enjoyed the advantage, inestimable in days of lawless violence, of the full and unfailing protection of the Church against the b introduction. VIII strong arm of those powerful barons and their turbulent followers, whose creed was that might constituted right. Furthermore, whatever the eventual corruption and failure of the old religious system, all must admit that the great conventual houses, in their early days of purity, were grand examples of the sublime force of pious, self-denying devotion. In those days their inmates prayed, taught, and laboured unselfishly ; for though wealth and possessions flowed in upon them, the harvest they mainly reaped therefrom was an increase of toil in administering their property for the public ad vantage, in the maintenance of education, hospitality, and compre hensive charity ; and none can deny that in those times the Abbeys and other great religious houses were oases of learning, education, science, and art in the then universal desert of ignorance and barbarism.

And so it would seem that Melford and its people, loved and favoured by the successive monastic rulers of the Abbey of St. Edmund, down to the last Abbot, who, as a native of Melford, must have held it dear, may perhaps have received from these old pioneers of learning, a ray of enlightenment and civilization in advance of the age in which they lived. And they in turn seem to have striven, so far as they could, to repay to their foster-mother, the Church, some of the obligations and benefits they had received from her, while also caring for the interests of their own place and people ; and so one after another, while leaving bequests of lands, money, and goods for charitable purposes, generally apportioned some share thereof to the Church ; and when in the 15th century the time came that, either from decay, or from want of space to accommodate the growing population, it became necessary to rebuild the old parish church, the advowson and endowment of which Earl Alfric, the son of Widgar, had given to St. Edmund's Abbey in the 1 1th century, the people of Melford seem readily and willingly to have contributed their full quota towards rearing and embellishing the present beautiful edifice, on the stones of which are still recorded the names of some of those long bygone worthies, who then vied with each other in this great work of love and piety.

Peace to their manes ; but if they could have foreseen the fate that was to befall their work before it had stood a century, they would surely have gone in disquiet to their last narrow resting-places. Even introduction. IX the most Protestant among us must admit that the great Reformation was ushered in, particularly as regards the churches, with unnecessary spoliation, and ignorant, vulgar vandalism. In their bitter religious zeal, the now predominant Reformers could not tolerate or spare the most harmless symbols and decorations, however beautiful, if only they had been used or regarded by Romish worshippers ; and it was the " GODLY " who now " brake down the carved work of the temples with axes and hammers." The religious cry was war to the knife ; and it was " Væ victis." But could it have been necessary that this puritanical horror of all ornament and fine art should be shown by such gross and wanton destruction as recorded in the case of Melford Church .

Three times was it wrecked and plundered. First by the early Reformers ; again, when, after the Marian return to Popery, an attempt had been made to restore to it some little portion of its shorn splendour, — a short-lived effort, entailing yet more complete and sweeping reform of " cleansing from superstition " ; and lastly, by the snuffling, canting, roundhead scum of the Rebellion, who, though they could find but little left on which to vent their pseudo-religious spleen, yet added the last touch that was wanting to the work of destruction before it should be " Ichabod," and its glory (morally faulty though it may have been) have finally departed. They spared nothing, and were probably among the worst and bitterest of the spoliators, having come here expressly to plunder and persecute the Countess of Rivers, then residing at Melford Hall, who was of the most obnoxious class of malignants, being a stanch Royalist and a Roman Catholic.

What befell her will appear later in these pages ; but doubtless we owe to this ungodly company of " Praise God Barebones" the destruction of the old Market Cross on the Green, and with sundry other mischief of those evil days, the removing of many of the monumental brasses of the church, which had escaped the barbarous rage of the Reformed Commissioners, " the antichristian tomb-breakers," as old Weever calls them, or that had been saved by the proclamation of the second year of Queen Elizabeth, which forbade the destruction of the monuments and effigies of the dead. So, the purification being quite complete, and after the legitimate

INTRODUCTION.

. X Rector, Doctor Wareyn, in 1643, was ejected from his benefice, and for many years the living of Melford had been occupied by a succession of six Puritan ministers, when the Restoration at length came, and not only the king, but the sequestrated clergy enjoyed their own again, this church, in common with most others, had already assumed that deplorable aspect of whitewash, high pews, hat-pegs, bricked-up win dows, mouldiness, and general desecration, which continued increasing in degree, with the careless irreverence, not only of the clergy, but of society in general, through the last century down to our own times. With the educational change that has now come over social feeling, evinced by a growing appreciation of things beautiful, and an improved taste in art, there has arisen, as a natural consequence, a general desire for the restoration of churches, based on a double ground of admiration of the glories of architecture and of a higher sense of reverence and respect.

So, here, as in most places, those of the present generation have sought partially to restore, in a mode befitting the altered circum stances of the times, this grand old parish church, in which, with a friendly tolerance most exemplary, all denominations in Melford now take a common pride. A share in this feeling, and a fond home-love for the old place, has led to this poor attempt to compile some records of Melford, in the hope that thus the history of its bygone times may be in a measure preserved, and that the long chain of historical interest and association which firmly binds Melford past to Melford present, may connect both also with the future. LIST of SOME of the, BOOKS WJiich have been quoted from or referred to. Battely's Antiquitates Sancti Edmundi Burgi. Holinshed's Chronicles.

Mercurius Rusticus. Kirby's Suffolk Traveller. Chronica Jocelini de Brakelonda. Cox's Magna Britannia [Suffolk]. Haydn's Dictionary of Dates. Shipley's Ecclesiastical Glossary. Wright's Essex. Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archæology. Suffolk Churches. Camden's Britannia. East Anglian. Cullum's Hawstead. Gage's Thingoe Hundred. Almack's Account of Melford Church. — Suffolk Archæological Society. MSS Dr. Bisbie's Records from 1660 to 1685. Ruggle's History of the Poor. Burke's Extinct Peerages. Antiquarian Repertory. Collings's Gothic Architecture. Melford Parish Documents, and the Black Book. Abbot John de Norwold's Melford Chartulary. Badham's History of All Saints, Sudbury. Abbot John de Tymworth's Melford Chartulary. Neale's Views of Churches. Howell's Letters. Abbot William Curteys's Melford Chartulary. Weever's Ancient Monuments. Peck's Desiderata Curiosa. THE HISTORY OF LONG MELFORD.

Chapter I. That

Melford derived its name from the Mill ford there can be but little doubt. From a very remote date there existed a mill near the ford, where the main bridge now stands, being one of the water-mills mentioned in the survey of this parish in Domesday Book. Starting from the time of Edward the Confessor, it appears that Melford then formed part of the great possessions in Suffolk and Essex of Earl Alfric, the son of Withgar. His name is also called Wisgar in the Domesday Book of Suffolk, but in the Abbot's Chartulary it is throughout spelt Widgar. This great thane, who was styled " the famous Earl," had the custody for Queen Emma, the mother of the Confessor, of the franchise of the eight hundreds and a half, since known as the Liberty of St. Edmund. In the time of Leofstan, who was abbot of Bury from a.d. 1044 to 1065, Earl Alfric gave the manor of Melford to the Abbey of St. Edmund.

The Chartulary of Abbot John de Norwold, made in the year 1287, and which is written on parchment in the old monkish abbreviated Latin, recites the original grant of the time of Edward the Confessor, as follows : — Translation. " Earl Alfric, son of Widgar, presented Melford to St. Edmund, as stated in the Register [of the Abbey] S.P., folio 32, in these words : — ' In the time of St. Edward, King and Confessor, and of Leofstan the abbot, Alfric, the son of Widgar, the famous Earl, gave Melford to St. Edmund, and gave a manor to this church and to St. Edmund, and to Leofstan the abbot ; and he conveyed to them the induction to this church in perpetuity, and bound his son Withgar to the same, so that their charter then came into the hands of the monks.' B HISTORY OE LONG MELFORD. " It was of itself a leta* before the time of the said Alfric, in the reigns of Etheldred, Canute, Harold, Hardicanute, and St. Ed ward, kings of England, and it is part of the letes of the hundred of Babber,! as is before named in the Abbot's Register, in folio 2 and folio e e, in these words, viz. : — " ' Melford and Aketune [Acton] are seven ferdingas, and tenants de aula of Melford are equal : they pay to the sheriff every year three shillings, and the reckoning of the service to the lord remains unaltered.

Acton formerly gave the services which they now reckon upon Melford, and six shillings : and there are in it [Melford] various tenants holding in chief of the said king ; to wit, the land of Radul phus de Hodeboville, lands of Hanus and Hervey de Clerbec. A sectaj and two sectæ are due to the same hundred ; viz., one from the land of Gilbert, son of Paganus, and the two others from the land of Aelmus [? Anselm] Ernoldhug.' " Of Hidagium§ and Warpeny the records appeared formerly in the Abbot's Register, intituled Cu. folio 2, folio E 2, and E 3 ; but whether through unfair means they were erased, or whether, from the age of the material, they became obliterated, cannot now be known. They give aid to the sheriff, and pay to the sheriff three shillings a year. " [The Abbey of] St. Edmund had this also in the time of William the Conqueror, and had also here XII. carucates of land, and XVII. villeins, and XXX. bordarii, and II. socmen holding 80 acres of land."

A little later on in this century than the date of Alfric's grant the Normans had landed, and there had been subsequently compiled that minute and curious survey of England, called the Domesday Book, perhaps the most valuable ancient record of its kind possessed by any nation. According to the " Red Book " of the Exchequer, the Domes day Survey was commenced by order of William the Conqueror, with the advice of his Parliament, in the year 1080, and completed in 1086. Stowe says that the title, Domesday Book, is a corruption of Domus Dei Book, it having received that name because it was deposited in the King's Treasury in part of the Church of Westminster called Domus Dei. The two original volumes of the Domesday Book are now under a thick glass case in the Record Office. The following transcript of the text relates to Melford ; and a rough translation of the abbreviated Latin is appended. * A leta, or township, was the twelfth part of a hundred. t The present hundred of Babergh. } Suit or service at the court of the hundred, or at the court of a manor. § Warpeny was payable for military service to the Castle of Norwich.

Hidagium was the personal and carriage service of the soccage vassals. (Millar.) HISTORY OF LONG MELFORD. Domesday Book, a.d. 1086. " Sudfolc. Baberhga H. "Melaforda. t. r. e. ten. S. e. p. man. xn c. tre. Ex hac tra. ten. Gait, xl ac. de Abbate. Sep. xxxvn vill. et tc. xxv bord. et m. x tc. vm car. in dnio. m. vi tc. xx car. hou. m. xni. Sep. xvi ser. et L ac. pti. Silv. lx Pore, et ii Molin. m. in r. Sep. xxx an. m. ecc ovs. Sep. cxl pore. m. xii uasa et xl æq. sil. et m. et n soe. de lxxx ac. tre. I. de Galterus ten. i de xl ac. de abb. Sep. ii c. sup. hos. ht. Scs. comd. et sac. et soe. et om. esuet necuq. pot. dare a. vend. tras. suas absq. pleno. csensu. abbis. Ecla de n. car. tre. iiii vill. ix bord. sep. n car. eccliæ. semp. ii car. hou. tc. hoc. man. val. xx lib. m. xxx ht in long, xviii qr. et l leug. in lat. et in Gelt, xx d. et obol. qcq. ibi. ten."

Domesday Book, a.d. 1086. The following is a literal rough translation : — " Suffolk — Babergh Hundred. " In the time of King Edward [the Confessor] the [Abbey of] St. Edmund held Melford as a manor, there being 12 carucates of land.* Of this land Gualterus holds 40 acres from the Abbot. There have always been 40 villeins,! and at that time there were 35 bordarii;J there are now 10. There were then 8 ploughs in the demesne ; there are now 6. There were then 20 ploughs belonging to the homagers, of which there remain 13. There have always been 16 serfs, § and 50 acres of meadow land ; wood sufficient for depasturing 60 hogs, and 2 water-mills. There are now 3 hackneys. There have always been 30 plough oxen. There are now 300 sheep. There have always been 140 pigs. There are now 12 hives of bees, and now 40 husbandry horses ; and 2 soemen || holding 80 acres of land.

The said Gualterus holds here of the Abbot 40 acres of land. There were always 2 ploughs on this. The Saint [Abbey of St. Edmund] has over these protection, and sac and soe *[ and all accustomed rights. No one can give or sell their land without the full consent of the Abbot. The Church [of Melford] holds 2 carucates of land with 4 villeins and * The extent of a carucate is very uncertain. Perhaps the 12 carucates may be reckoned as 1,440 acres. + Villani were irremovable from a manor, and of the lowest servile condition. X Bordarii were cottagers holding a small parcel of land, and of a class superior to the servi and villani. They were to supply to the lord a certain quantity of poultry and eggs, but they, with their lands, were the property of the lord. § Servi, feudatory vassals, subject to the will of the lord. || Soemen, husbandry tenants holding of the manor, from whom military service was not required. % Sac and Soe right of courts, and other rights.

B HISTORY OF LONG MELFORD. 9 bordarii. There were always 2 ploughs belonging to the Church, and always 2 ploughs belonging to the homagers of the Church. At that time this manor was worth £20 ; it is now worth £30.* It is 18 furlongs in length, and one leuga f in breadth, and its gelt X is 20 pence and a halfpenny, whosoever may hold here." From this survey it appears that the size of the manor, and the quantity of land held by the two soemen, or principal husbandry tenants, remained unaltered from the time of the grant by Earl Alfric ; and allowing for the rude measurement of those days, the acreage nearly tallies with that of the survey of the 14th and 15th of Edward I. — a.d. 1287. Again the Domesday Book assigns roughly as the property of the Church of Melford two carucates, or about 240 acres of land.

The grant of Earl Alfric does not specify the amount of land with which he endowed this church, but the survey of 1287, though separating the descriptive lands into arable, meadow, pasture, and wood, makes the total amount 261-^ acres, which, it also adds, were derived " from Alfric son of Widgar, formerly the lord of the said barony." Authorities differ however so widely as to the contents of the carucate of land, that its conversion into acres of the present day must be but hypothetical. According to one form of computation, the Abbot's Manor would have been about 1,440 acres, and the Manor of the Church 240 acres. But if the size of the manor is tried by the vague measure of length and breadth given in Domesday, viz. 18 furlongs by a mile and a half broad, the result would be 2,160 acres.

From this uncertainty it is difficult to compare minutely the land measurements of that day ; but the 261^ acres recorded in the survey of a.d. 1287 (probably then but roughly measured) as the size of the Rectory Manor approaches very nearly the two carucates mentioned in Domesday, and comprised in the original gift to the Church of Melford. Thus, from the grant of Earl Alfric about the year 1050, confirmed as it is by the survey of the Domesday Book, we start with a record of Melford more than 800 years ago, and can now attach link after link to its long historical chain down to the present time. * The pound, in Domesday time, contained three times the weight of silver it now does, irrespective of value. t Leuga was nearly a mile and a half. X Gelt, the Crown land-tax.

Chapter II. St

SAVIOUR'S HOSPITAL, AND THE MANOR OF MONKS IN MELFORD. IT is somewhat difficult to separate completely any part of the account of Melford in early times from that of the Church, the details of both being often closely interwoven ; and inseparable from the history of this Church is not only much that relates to its foster parent and patron, the great Abbey, but also the record existing of the HosjDital of St. Saviour, Bury ; for this religious foundation, besides affecting and altering the original endowment of Melford Church, for ever de prived it of a large portion of its inheritance. It becomes, therefore, necessary to commence by explaining briefly . the history of St. Saviour's Hospital. And although the following Bull of Pope Euge nius III., granting to the Abbey of Bury a tithe from Melford, does not immediately relate to the endowment of St. Saviour's, yet it is in a manner connected with it, as well as with this place, with reference to the parent establishment.

Its date is probably of 1146 or 1147, as Pope Lucius II., therein alluded to, was killed by an accident at the close of 1144, when Eugenius III. succeeded him in the Papacy in 1145 ; and Anselm, to whom the Bull is addressed, and who in addition to his office of Abbot of Bury was for some time Apostolic Legate in England, died in 1148. There is no date to this Bull, but, as already stated, it is clear that it must have been given between the years 1145 and 1148. In the Abbey Chartulary of the Melford property and manor (a parchment book, of course written in Latin) the copy of this Bull is headed thus : " The Grant to Abbot Anselm, whereby there was a due payable to the Abbey from Melford of 20 shillings, and from the land of Galeus there 10 shillings, according to the Bull of Pope Eu genius III."

What the land of Galeus in Melford was at this date there is no evidence to show. Could it have been the separate Manor of Kentwell afterwards held by de Valence ? Or was Galeus one of the first descendants or successors of Frodo in the Manor of Kentwell ? There is no other mention of this Galeus, though he must have been a person of some consideration. The said Bull is quoted in the Register Pinchbeck, sol. 8, 6. This Bull of Pope Eugenius III., who was Pope from a.d. 1145 to 1153 (and who was canonized), to Abbot Anselm, who was Abbot of Bury from a.d. 1119 to 1148, translated from the Latin text, runs as follows : — " Eugenius the Bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his beloved son Anselm, Abbot of the Monastery of St. Edmund, these presents, for the security of the better provision for your successors for ever.

We are instructed by the Divine precepts and taught by the Apostolic example, that with steadfast affection we are to watch over the state of the Churches. We therefore desire in the first place to support and uphold men of religious orders for the care of the Churches and of the servants of God, that thus through us God should be honoured, and the liberties of the Church be fully maintained. Wherefore, beloved son in Christ, Anselm the Abbot, we, knowing thy fidelity to God and thy signal obedience to the Apostolic Roman Church, have favourably received thy petition, and in accordance with the example of our predecessor Pope Lucius, of happy memory, who gave liberty to the monastery of the blessed Edmund, the glorious Martyr and King, freely to enjoy all gifts it had acquired by royal grants ; we hereby decree that the said place shall within its liberty be exempt from payment of all secular dues for ever, as was set forth in the record of King William, and had been settled from his time.

And further by this our present writing, we confirm to the uses of the brethren of the Monastery those possessions which thou, beloved son in the Lord, Anselm the Abbot, hast by indenture assigned for this purpose ; viz. Harwich, paying 1 5 marcs in money ; Norwich, 2 marcs ; land in Beccles, 5 marcs and 8 shillings; the town of St. Edmund, 10 marcs ; [Srabensam ?], 10 marcs ; Tivetshall, 7 marcs and a half; a mill in Norfolk, 20 shillings ; a mill at Sicklesmere, 2 marcs ; Rushbrook, 3 marcs ; three mills in the town of St. Edmund, 8 marcs ; Woolpit, 10 marcs; Semer, 20 shillings; Hengrave, 10 shillings; Cambridge, 20 shillings; [Chellenorda ?], 10 shillings; Brook, 20 shillings; Rutham [? Rougham], 20 shillings ; Melford, 20 shillings ; and the land of Galeus {there) 10 shillings. " Also whatever possessions this Monastery may lawfully claim to possess, whether in churches, tithes, lands, rents, mills, or any other known rights or customs, we fully confirm to you and your successors, and sanction their retention for the use of the said Monastery.

We grant to your Church the consecration of chrism, the holy oil, consecration of altars, ordination of your monks, and clergy admitted to holy orders, and other ancient episcopal privileges per taining to your Church, from whatever Catholic Bishop they may in past times have been received. By the authority of our Apostolic throne, we decree that you shall be permitted freely to appeal to us m matters relating to your Church ; and that it shall be unlawful for any person to disturb or to threaten the said Monastery, or to take from it any of its possessions or belongings, or to withhold from it or diminish any of the offerings due to it, or to disquiet it by any vexation. All that now appertains thereto, or which may accrue to it by future grants or gifts, shall remain to it for its use, support, and supply ; always saving the authority of the Apostolic See.