Top of page Name Summary Distribution Map Property List Profile Bibliography Bottom of page

Æthelflæd 32

Name

Summary

Æthelflæd 32 was among the tenants the manor of Bury St Edmunds Abbey at Rougham.

Profile

There are two entries for the name Æthelflæd in FBB (137, 137v) among 112 minor tenants on the manor of Bury St Edmunds Abbey at Rougham, 3¾ miles to the east-south-east of Bury, in 1086, and it is more likely than not that both refer to the same woman, Æthelflæd 32.  The corresponding DB entry records 90 free men and 11 bordars (and 1 slave) on the non-demesne part of the manor in 1086 but does not include their names.  One of the FBB entries records Æthelflæd as a widow who with her (unnamed) adopted daughter held 51 acres at Rougham (rendering 2s 8d) in 1086, which was the second-largest of the holdings listed.  In the other entry, Æthelflæd is recorded as sharing with Æthelwig the render of 4d (and service) to the abbey from their respective holdings of 1½ and 4½ acres; the shared render and shared first element of their names suggests that Æthelflæd and Æthelwig were related. 

The implicit continuity of holdings between TRE and 1086 in DB does not prove that Æthelflæd 32 already held her land before the Conquest, although the possibility cannot be ruled out.  It is also possible, therefore, that Æthelflæd 32 is the same woman as Alflæd, who TRE held 1 hide of the abbey’s estate at Stanningfield, less than 4 miles from Rougham.

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