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Fridebern 5

Name

Summary

Fridebern 5 was one of 22 minor tenants on the abbey of Bury St Edmunds’ estate at Timworth near Bury in 1086.

Profile

Fridebern 5 is named second in FBB (139v) among 22 minor tenants on the abbey of Bury St Edmunds’ estate at Timworth, less than 3½ miles to the north of Bury, in 1086; the corresponding DB entry records 29 free men on the estate TRE and in 1086 but does not include their names.  Fridebern 5 was one of the most substantial of these minor tenants, holding 60 acres and rendering 5s 4d.  Given this holding and the extreme rarity of his name, he was also probably the Fridebern named in FBB (138) among 61 minor tenants on the abbey’s estate at Hessett (the corresponding DB entry records 60 free men there TRE and in 1086), less than 7 miles south-east of Timworth and where he held 16 acres rendering 17d in 1086.  The implicit continuity of holdings at both places between TRE and 1086 in DB does not prove that Fridebern 5 already held his lands 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