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Colswein 15

Name

Summary

Colswein 15 was one of 57 minor tenants on the berewick of Bury St Edmunds Abbey at Woolpit.

Profile

Colswein 15 is named in FBB (p.33) among 57 minor tenants on the berewick of Bury St Edmunds Abbey at Woolpit, 7½ miles to the east of Bury, in 1086; the corresponding DB entry records a total of 40 free men, 17 villans and 3 bordars on the estate in 1086 but does not include their names.  Colswein is the forty-first name in the list although his holding of 3 acres (rendering 3d) is among the largest dozen or so there.  It is possible that he is the same person as Colswein 14, named as a minor tenant on another Bury estate at Littlechurch, although both holdings were tiny and therefore the distance of 12 miles between them precludes confidence in the identification.  The implicit continuity of holdings between TRE and 1086 in DB need not imply that Colswein 15 already held his land before the Conquest, although the possibility cannot be ruled out.

Bibliography

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