Lowestoft Rental (1545)

Lowestoft Rental (1545) – Suffolk Archives, Ipswich 194/A10/71

(Formerly North Suffolk Record Office, Lowestoft) 

A Lowestoft rental renewed there on the first day of June, in the thirty-seventh year of the reign of our Lord King Henry VIII, by the grace of God King of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith in the said land(s) and Supreme Head of the Church of England and Ireland – relating to the annual rents of the town of Lowestoft, Shadingfield, Ellough and Willingham. [Translated from Latin]

The rest of the document is in English, with the original spelling and format retained, for authenticity and reader interest. Lower-case Roman numerals represent rents paid in shillings (s) and pence (d). Before decimalisation in 1971 there were 240 pennies (pence) to the pound (£), with 12 pennies to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound. With decimal currency having 100 pennies to the pound, conversion from “old money” to “new” requires a degree of recalculation.

• Square brackets are used in places to clarify and correct aspects of the Rental. The Latin word sic (meaning “thus”) set within them is used very occasionally to indicate a possible error or something not fully understood.
• An effort has been made to limit the number used to clarify people’s names, otherwise transcription of the document would have been inundated with them because of the spelling current at the time.
• Relative monetary values between the 16th and 20th centuries are very difficult (if not impossible) to calculate accurately, the best means of making comparisons is to give average wage-rates for the earlier period, though these themselves are sometimes approximations. By 1545, the much cited average “day-wage” of 1d-2d for the Late Medieval labouring man working the land (6d-12d for the six-day week) was still broadly in place, though with male live-in domestic servants – their keep provided – earning the £1 6s 0d per annum (£1.30) and labourers of different kinds making the £2 12s 0d or so (£2.60). Skilled artisans employed in a range of different crafts would probably have earned above the latter sum, though it is difficult to say by exactly how much because of differences from trade to trade. It is clear from the Lay Subsidy of 1524-5 that a number of the named men paying tax on an annual £1 wage (including foreign incomers) were servants of the town’s leading merchants. 
• “The lady” referred to twice, in text, was almost certainly Lady Mary Kingston (later named in her own right) – a member of the influential Scrope family of Castle Bolton in Yorkshire. Her first husband, Sir Edward Jernegan of Somerleyton (died, 1515) had been holder of the Lowestoft manorial title – but, by the time of this rental, it had devolved upon his son William. Sir William Jerningham (he changed the form of the surname) made Huntingfield his main place of residence, rather than Somerleyton. 
• Lady Mary Jernegan (née Scrope) married for a second time (at some point before 1531) to Sir William Kingston. She had obviously retained some kind of residual interest in the Jernegan family’s connection with the Lowestoft manor. 
• A red asterisk shows those holders of property (eighteen) who are referred to in the national Lay Subsidy of 1524-5 and a black one those (thirteen) who feature in that of 1568. Only three of them are to be found in both records (Thomas Annot, Wyllyam Wyld and Roberd Woodsyd).
• The word late, repeatedly used, refers to a previous occupant of the property. In most cases, this was probably the one immediately preceding – but it could also have referred to someone further removed in time. Manorial records often used the names of long-gone tenants when describing land-holdings. Many of the Lowestoft chief tenement names, for instance, were the surnames of occupants of the land mentioned in the Lothingland Hundred Roll of 1274.
• Use of the word ob in the rental values derives from the Latin obulus, meaningha’penny (half-penny). The single d is the first letter of denarius, meaning a penny.
• A pightle was a small piece of land, often of irregular shape.
• A messuage was a plot of land with dwelling-house (and other buildings) attached.
• The chieves and half-chieves referred to were the manor’s chief tenements – vestigial villein holdings of land scattered around the parish, whose occupants were responsible (on a rotational basis) for collecting the annual rents due to the lord of the manor. There were 35 of them altogether: 21 full chieves and 14 half-chieves. The number recorded here is 21 full, but only 6 half. It seems strange that 8 half-chieves went unrecorded, but they might well have been vacant at the time.
• By the 16th and 17th centuries, the chief tenements had become small in size (mainly ¹/₈ to ½ acre – the original villein units being 12 acres) and holding them seems to have become something of a status symbol among the more affluent members of local society. The main benefit of being a chief tenant of the manor (if such was the case) was being a juror at the annual leet court (first Saturday in Lent), which adjudicated upon breaches of manorial law and minor social disorder. Even so, there are examples of chief tenants themselves being fined for non-attendance – so, perhaps, it was not as socially advantageous as might be presumed. 
• The term stentlond (i.e. stintland) refers to areas of grassland (set out in strips) which had it stipulated, per strip, the number of animals allowed to graze. Exceeding this number incurred a manorial fine. Thirteen tenants held stintland pieces of varying size, from a ¼ acre (one rood) up to 22 acres – the total area of these adding up to 54½ acres in all. The Manor Roll of 1618 records fifteen tenants holding pieces ranging in size from ¼ acre to 6 acres, making a total area 29¼ acres – a considerable reduction in area from the time of the Rental.
• The reference to the bracken dole, abutting onto “the mouth against the south” refers to a piece of the former South Common (which was situated immediately to the north of Lake Lothing on land now occupied by the railway and Denmark Road), with the mouth being used to describe that part of the water nearest to the sea. Dead bracken was cut and harvested during the autumn for use as bedding for livestock.
• Whitebanks was the name once used for the cliff-face in the Sparrows Nest/Arnold’s Walk area – referring to the umbelliferswhich grew there. It was used for the rough grazing of livestock.
• The Good Cross Chapel stood at the south-eastern extremity of the parish, in the area where Suffolk Road meets Battery Green Road. It was a wayside shrine and a place of local pilgrimage, having a reputed piece of Christ’s cross as its object of veneration. It would have been closed down during the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536-40), then becoming part of the manorial demesnelands before passing on into other hands.
• The Waynflet(e) fish-house stood on Whapload Road below the much later property numbered 61-62 High Street, with the whole of the land once forming a single messuage. It acquired the name (which was still in use in the Manor Roll of 1618) from John Waynflete the Elder, a Southwold merchant who was tenant of the property during the mid-15th century.
• Basket Wells formed a communal watering-place on the northern extremity of the town common known as Church Green. They were located close to the boundary of allotments with a children’s play-area – opposite St. Margaret’s Community Primary School, on Church Road. The name derived from the shafts being lined with wicker panels.
• The Town House (townhows) in the High Street was also known as the Town Chamber. It stood on the site of the present-day Town Hall and was an arcaded building, with corn-trading carried out on the ground-area and a civic meeting-room located above. Immediately to the rear of it stood the Town Chapel – a building used for religious purposes, when more convenient than the parish church of St. Margaret.
• The first set of almshouses referred to – situated in Almshouse Lane (now Dove Street) – was probably endowed by John Manyngham, Vicar of Lowestoft from 1456-78. The other unit (in the southern sector of the High Street) seems to have been the gift of John Reynolds and was located more or less where No. 117 now stands. John Manyngham suffered from a disabled right arm and had Papal dispensation to exercise cure of souls in Lowestoft, in spite of his disability. He raised the matter with Rome himself, during his later years in the parish, fearing that it might prevent him from fully discharging his priestly duties, but Pius II authorised him to continue in post until he was no longer able to do so. 
• The annual value of the Rental, as given here, was £9 5s 1d (£9.25). That recorded in the Manor Roll of 1618 is £4 14s 10½d(£4.74) – though this applied solely to the copyhold messuages in town, 150 of which were houses (including inns and subdivided dwellings) and the rest – about 75 in number – work-premises of one kind or another and plots of land of various kinds and uses. The terminology used in the two documents differs as well, so it is not really possible to make direct comparisons between them. However, if the sum of £3 13s 3d (£3.66) – for income deriving from chief tenements and stintland, which is not included in the Manor Roll – is deducted from the Rental, a total of £5 11s 10d (£5.59) is left. And if a further deduction of 13s 6d (£0.67) is made for the parish’s charitable lands and windmill (also not included in the Manor Roll), this reduces the sum further to £4 18s 4d (£4.93). Remove the single Ellough payment of 2s 9½d (£0.14) – ignoring the three hens – and a total of £4 15s 6½d (£4.77) is arrived at, which is very close indeed to the annual value of 1618.
• Copyhold (or customary) tenure had developed from Late Medieval villein tenure, whereby the bond tenants of a manor held land from the lord – to work for themselves and their families – in return for their labour on the demesne and for other services as and when required. By Early Modern times, such servitude was long gone, but tenants had to abide by the custom of the manor (its rules) in order to remain in occupancy. In Lowestoft’s case, only two things resulted in eviction from a dwelling: allowing it to fall into serious disrepair and not going through the proper procedure when disposing of it.
• All transfers of copyhold property had to be entered in the minute books of the six-weekly manorial court baron. Freehold property was not required to go through such a recording process. During the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, 85% of Lowestoft property in the built-up area of the town was copyhold, with the remaining 15% being freehold. 
• The rents shown above were the annual ones due from tenants to the lord of the manor (and therefore known collectively as lord’s rent) on property which was neither freehold nor part of the lord’s own privately held demesne.
• The town lands were bequests of real estate left by people for charitable uses – the rents deriving from them being mainly used to relieve poverty.
• The parish windmill (for grinding corn into flour and meal) was situated in what is now the Hill Road/ Halcyon Crescent area, on the high ground present there.
• The vicarage house and small area of glebe land were located at the time abutting onto the south-western corner of the churchyard, which was much smaller in those days than is now the case. It was greatly increased in size, following the expansion of the town during the second half of the 19th century, with further enlargement made during the 1920s.
• Study of the surviving court baron records shows that if a copyhold plot in town had part of it sold off for building an adjacent dwelling, the annual rental of say, 6d, remained at that sum with each of the plots (as they were, then) paying 3d. Thus, manorial custom did not capitalise on the sale of building-land beyond the original rental price.
• It is possible to recognise that the Rental document starts with fish-houses at the northern end of town, below the cliff, and some identification of High Street dwellings (especially on the east side) is also possible in places – but that is about as far as it is possible to go. There isn’t the locational structure here, as is the case in the Manor Roll of 1618, which enables reconstruction of the earlier town’s street-plan.
• The reference to Shadingfield, Ellough & Willingham, in the document’s introduction (and to Ellough itself, in text) is an interesting one. Lowestoft is first found described as a manor in the year 1212, in Liber Feodorum – The Book of Fees – which means that it had been elevated, at some point, from its status as an outlier to the Lothingland Half-hundred hub (located in Gorleston), as recorded in Domesday Book (1086). The Lothingland Hundred Roll (1274) states that five bond tenants (or villeins) in Ellough were charged an annual sum of 3s 7¼d (£0.18) for 36 acres of land held by them, while eight gersom tenants (i.e. gersumary, meaning free) in Shadingfield paid 24s 2d (£1.21) for 81 acres. All of these people were said to “belong to the aforesaid lordship of Lowestoft”.
• It is not clear how this connection first came about and it had obviously almost ceased to exist by the time of the rental, apart from one residual payment from Ellough – and an archaic one, at that, being 2s 9½d [£0.14] and 3 hens! One factor which may be of significance is that Lothingland Half-hundred is recorded in Domesday as having a 60-acre outlier (arable land), located in Ellough and Willingham, in the neighbouring Hundred of Wangford. It is entirely possible that when the Lothingland and Lowestoft titles became inter-connected in 1302, by transfer from the Crown to John de Dreux, Earl of Richmond (a grant later confirmed in 1306), surviving ancient procedures might still have been in existence. A possible Domesday link with Shadingfield cannot be established, other than its proximity to both Ellough and Willingham. 

David Butcher – 18 February 2021.

Revised 23 July 2024.