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CHAPTER 2
FEUDALISM AND THE GOVERNING OF THE LAND
What I want to write about in this chapter is the change in the way eastern
Suffolk was administered and the alteration in the tenurial system. This will mean
discussing the pre- and post-Conquest earldom of East Anglia and its end, at least
for 65 years, in 1075, as well as developments in the sheriffdom of Suffolk. It will
also mean dealing with the heated question of the introduction of feudalism into
England, with reference to eastern Suffolk.
In the late Anglo-Saxon period, earls were representatives of royal authority.
They led the military forces of their shire or shires; they were the chief secular
representatives of the king in the shire court. In return for this they received some
benefits, for example, a third of the profits of justice in the shire court and often in
borough courts. They also sometimes received lands attached to their office in
addition to their personal lands. Their great power in late Anglo-Saxon England
came from the great extent of their lands, personal or official, the number of their
commended men and sometimes their official position in a number of shires. 184
Before the Conquest the earl of East Anglia (Norfolk and Suffolk), and
perhaps a couple of other shires, had been Gyrth, the brother of King Harold. Gyrth
was killed at Hastings, but soon after the Conquest, William I filled the vacant office
of earl in East Anglia with Ralph the Staller. 185 Since Ralph the Staller was a pre-
Conquest lord in England, married to an English woman and succeeding to an
earldom of a pre-Conquest type, in reality the appointment of Ralph the Staller in
184 Lewis, “Early Earls”, pp. 209-10; Latimer, “Earls in Henry II’s Reign”, pp. 19-21.
185 Williams, English and the Norman Conquest, p. 10.
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