Note 798 — Chapter VII · THE TOWNS.

The growth of a city round a monastery is well instanced in the case of Bury St. Edmund’s. The following passage is cited from Domesday (371, b) in the notes to Mr. Rokewode’s edition of Jocelyn de Brakelonde. “In the town where the glorious king and martyr St. Edmund lies buried, in the time of king Edward, Baldwin the abbot held for the sustenance of the monks one hundred and eighteen men; and they can sell and give their land; and under them fifty-two bordarii, from whom the abbot can have help; fifty-four freemen poor enough; forty-three living upon alms; each of them has one bordarius. There are now two mills and two store-ponds or fish-ponds. This town was then worth ten pounds, now twenty. It has in length one leuga and a half, and in breadth as much. And it pays to the geld, when payable in the hundred, one pound. And then the issues therefrom are sixty pence towards the sustenance of the monks; but this is to be understood of the town as it was in the time of king Edward, if it so remains; for now it contains a greater circuit of land, the which was then ploughed and sown; where, one with another, there are thirty priests, deacons and clerks, twenty-eight nuns and poor brethren who pray daily for the king and all Christian people; eighty less five bakers, brewers, seamsters, fullers, shoemakers, tailors, cooks, porters, serving-men; and these all daily minister to the saint, and abbot and brethren. Besides whom there are thirteen upon the land of the reeve, who have their dwellings in the same town, and under them five bordarii. Now there are thirty-four persons owing military service, taking French and English together, and under them twenty-two bordarii. Now in the whole there are three hundred and forty-two dwellings in the demesne of the land of St. Edmund, which was arable in the time of king Edward.” Chron. Joc. de Brakelonde, pp. 148, 149 (Camden Society). Similarly Durham and other towns grew up around cathedrals.