“Proud trees bend, and on Trent’s waves descry
Their own bright image as it passes by,”
just where the boat-house and landing-place are situated. But we have no space wherein to describe the beauties of the neighbourhood, and must leave Melbourne to pass on to our next chapter.
The Trent and Donington Cliff.
SOMERLEYTON.
SOMERLEYTON, the Sumerledetun of Domesday survey, and occasionally in later times written Somerley, lies about six miles from Lowestoft, in the county of Suffolk, its nearest point on the coast being some four miles distant. At the time of the Conquest, Wihtred, a free man and a priest, held forty acres for a manor, and Ulf, a free man under the protection of Earl Gurth, held two carucates of land for a manor. The whole place was seized by the Conqueror, and given to Roger Bigod as steward. It was soon after held as one manor by Sir Peter Fitz-Osbert, whose son, Sir Roger Fitz-Osbert, was lord of the place, temp. Henry III., and was, 22nd Edward I. summoned to Parliament as Baron Osborne: he died in 1305-6. His sister, Isabel Fitz-Osbert, wife of Sir Walter Jernegan, or Jerningham, of Horham Jernegan, in Suffolk, and widow of Sir Henry de Walpole, became heiress to the Somerleyton estates on the death of her brother, and thus they passed into the Jernegan family.