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Leomær 19

Name

Summary

Leomær 19 and his stepmother are named in FBB among 61 minor tenants on the estate of Bury St Edmunds Abbey at Hessett, Suffolk, in 1086.

Profile

Leomær 19 and his stepmother are named in FBB (138v, as Lemmer citere cum nouerca) among 61 minor tenants on the estate of Bury St Edmunds Abbey at Hessett, just over 5¼ miles to the east-south-east of Bury, in 1086; the corresponding DB entry records 60 free men on the estate TRE and in 1086 but does not include their names. Leomær 19 and his stepmother were in the middle range of minor tenants at Hessett, holding 15 acres and rendering 16d. The implicit continuity of holdings between TRE and 1086 in DB does not prove that Leomær 19 already held his land before the Conquest, although the possibility cannot be ruled out. His byname is from Old English citere ‘cither’ (Tengvik 1938: 374), for which ‘harp’ is an appropriate modern rendition.

Bibliography

Tengvik 1938: G. Tengvik, Old English Bynames (Uppsala, 1938)

FBB: ‘The Feudal Book of Baldwin, abbot of Bury St. Edmunds, 1065–1098, contained in the Black Book of the abbey, MS. Mm. iv. 19, fols. 124–43b. (Cambridge University Library)’, in Feudal Documents from the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, ed. D. C. Douglas, British Academy Records of the Social and Economic History of England and Wales, 8 (London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1932), 1–44