Hundred Roll information

The Lothingland Hundred Roll of 1274–5 was one small part of a countrywide survey ordered by Edward I to enquire into the extent of the transfer of royal demesne into private hands and to investigate the abuse of office by local administrators. The long reign of his father, Henry III, had seen considerable erosion of the Crown Estate and Edward wished to reassert royal authority wherever possible and increase revenues. He had been on campaign abroad, serving in the Seventh (and last) Crusade, when his father died in 1272, and it was a further two years before he reached England to take up his crown. The overriding compulsion to carry out this audit was the new king's intention to bring discipline and order to the royal finances and to ascertain the annual value of the rents due from his estates. In Lothingland's case, the evidence required was collected by an appointed jury of six local men (John of Ashby, Nicholas of Fritton, William of Yarmouth, William Assheman, John of Belton and William Manekyn), working under the direction of the county sheriff. They drew upon their own specialist knowledge of local tenancy, and that of people known to them, and the combination of personal memory and documented proof of title (wherever this existed) produced an impressive record of landholding and community affairs.

Nationally, the enquiry process itself began in mid-November 1274 and finished four months later, and the evidence for Lothingland available to us now was produced either from the original documentation or from the early nineteenth-century printed version. It was published posthumously, in 1902, by Lord John Hervey of Ickworth. The results create a most interesting study of the area, both topographically and socially, although Lowestoft's part is limited in extent by its having remained under what seems to have been tighter control for most of the time since Domesday. There had been less selling-off of this part of the royal estate in Lothingland than was evident in other places and there had, of course, been no part of its cultivated area in the hands of freemen (as was the case in much of the rest of the jurisdiction).