Transcribed from the 1897 (Lowestoft) edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org. Many thanks to Ivan Bunn for helping me with the transcription.
GILLINGWATER’S
HISTORY OF LOWESTOFT.
A reprint: with a chapter
of more recent events by
A. E. MURTON.
LOWESTOFT.
mdcccxcvii.
SECTION I.
OF THE ISLAND OF LOTHINGLAND.
This island (lately become a peninsula) is situated in the most eastern part of Great Britain and in the northern corner of the County of Suffolk. It is bounded by the German Ocean on the east, by the river Yare on the north, by the Waveney on the west, and by the beautiful and spacious water, the lake Lothing on the south; thus encircled by water on every side it is generally called the Island of Lothingland, and would strictly be so, did not a very narrow neck of land (near Lowestoft) intervene, and make it a peninsula. Its length, from north to south, is about ten miles; its breadth from east to west, about six miles; and contains sixteen parishes, viz.: Lowestoft, Corton, Gunton, Olton, Ashby, Lound, Fritton, Flixton, Hopton, Somerley, Blundeston, Gorleston, Belton, Burgh, Bradwell, and Herringfleet, of which Lowestoft is the principal, and is the only market town in the island. During the Saxon Heptarchy, this island was part of the kingdom of the East Angles. In respect to the civil government of the county, it is reckoned but a half hundred, the other half being the district of Mutford. They are generally called the half-hundreds of Mutford and Lothingland, but were incorporated as one hundred by an Act of Parliament in 1764, for the better relief of the poor, and for building an house of industry for their use.
In the ecclesiastical division of the county, this hundred was one of the rural deaneries under the archdeacon of Suffolk. Bishop Kennet, in his parochial antiquities, informs us that this office in the church was very ancient, for in one of the laws ascribed to Edward the Confessor, it is provided, that of eight pounds penalty for breach of the king’s peace, the king shall have an hundred shillings, the earl of the county fifty, and the dean of the bishop in whose deanery the peace was broken, the other ten; which words can be applied only to the office of rural deans, according to the respective districts which they had in parts of every diocese. At first their office was merely to inspect the manners and behaviour of the inferior clergy and people, but by degrees they became possessed of a power to judge and determine in smaller matters, and the rest they were to report to their ecclesiastical superiors. Some time before the Reformation, by the great power of the archdeacons and their officials, the jurisdiction of rural deans declined almost to nothing; and at that period no steps being taken for the restoration of this part of the government of the Church, their name and office unhappily ceased together, notwithstanding attempts have since been made to revive this ancient and useful institution, which in some places have been successful.
Rural Deans of the deanery of Lothingland, Anno 1325, Jeffrey de Boudon, priest, upon the resignation of William de Weston: 1326, John de Wynneferthyng; 1328, John de Thrillo; 1339, Edmund de Bokenham; 1376, Roger de Belton. [1]