Although much of the documentation used throughout this book up until now has given insights (sometimes substantial ones) into Lowestoft's developing status as the dominant town in its local area, the first real sense of an established urban community (albeit of middling proportions) is to be found in a national tax record. The 1524–5 Lay Subsidy lists residents liable for payment of a levy made nationally by Henry VIII and his government for the conduct of war with France. It gives a comprehensive view of the names of the contributors and the levels of wealth present in the Lowestoft society of the time. The particular source used to explore the data presented is a transcription of the original documentation carried out by the great Suffolk antiquarian and historian the Revd Sydenham Henry Augustus Hervey, vicar of Wedmore in Somerset but a member of the notable aristocratic family of Ickworth. Because of defects present in the 1524 collection list, he supplemented a shortfall detected there (in the amount of money collected) with additional material from the following year in order to create balance in the overall picture.

The structure of the levy made upon the population of England was created in such a way as to ensure that all its citizens made a contribution, regardless of how they earned their money. Land was assessed at 12d (1s) in the pound (£) value, regardless of how much was held; goods (i.e. trading stock and trade equipment) were assessed at 12d in the pound for those people having £20 worth or more and 6d in the pound for those having £1–£20 worth; and wages of £1 or more per annum were assessed at 4d and of £2 or more at 6d. Any alien (foreign) wage-earners paid double that amount. Thus, in broad and generalised terms, the landowning classes (aristocracy and gentry) were taxed on their main source of income, the merchants, master craftsmen, seafarers and farming community on theirs, and the artisans and labourers on theirs.

As long ago as the early 1960s the economic historian Julian Cornwall produced a social structure relating to English country towns, using the 1524 Subsidy as the means of establishing it.

Reasons for the move

It is perhaps unwise to single out any one particular event in the life of a community over a period of about 1,500 years as being the crucial or formative one (other than its founding), but there is a good case for doing so where Lowestoft is concerned. The town's change of location, from its original site to one slightly less than a mile to the east-north-east, was of key importance in its subsequent development, as this allowed it to take advantage of both the land-based and maritime opportunities that were available to it. The cliff-top position was bleaker and more exposed to the elements than its predecessor, but it gave the local people greater flexibility in more conveniently pursuing a range of economic activities based on the products of land and sea.

Both the Domesday Survey (1086) and the Hundred Roll enquiry (1274) give the sense of a place founded on, or grounded in, agriculture – and there is no doubt that the soil was instrumental in feeding the population and providing it with a range of materials with which to make many of the necessary utensils and tools required to maintain a basic standard of living. Yet the ocean was only a short distance away and it, too, was capable of both providing food and creating a highway on which all kinds of goods and commodities could be conveyed both inwards and outwards. Herrings shoaled close to shore in both the autumn and the spring, and would certainly have been netted by small boats working off the local beach – and other species too, both pelagic and demersal, would have been caught by either net or line at other times.

There is no direct reference to fish or fishing in the Domesday information relating to Lowestoft, though Gorleston is recorded as having twenty-four fishermen who worked in Great Yarmouth but belonged to the Lothingland manor. And there is ample evidence for the catching of herrings locally to be found in data relating to Mutford Half-hundred. A number of its manors (both coastal and inland) paid herring rents of varying value to the lord, Hugh de Montfort, who probably took quantities of salted fish to supply his household.

Hundred Roll information

The Lothingland Hundred Roll of 1274–5 was one small part of a countrywide survey ordered by Edward I to enquire into the extent of the transfer of royal demesne into private hands and to investigate the abuse of office by local administrators. The long reign of his father, Henry III, had seen considerable erosion of the Crown Estate and Edward wished to reassert royal authority wherever possible and increase revenues. He had been on campaign abroad, serving in the Seventh (and last) Crusade, when his father died in 1272, and it was a further two years before he reached England to take up his crown. The overriding compulsion to carry out this audit was the new king's intention to bring discipline and order to the royal finances and to ascertain the annual value of the rents due from his estates. In Lothingland's case, the evidence required was collected by an appointed jury of six local men (John of Ashby, Nicholas of Fritton, William of Yarmouth, William Assheman, John of Belton and William Manekyn), working under the direction of the county sheriff. They drew upon their own specialist knowledge of local tenancy, and that of people known to them, and the combination of personal memory and documented proof of title (wherever this existed) produced an impressive record of landholding and community affairs.

Nationally, the enquiry process itself began in mid-November 1274 and finished four months later, and the evidence for Lothingland available to us now was produced either from the original documentation or from the early nineteenth-century printed version. It was published posthumously, in 1902, by Lord John Hervey of Ickworth. The results create a most interesting study of the area, both topographically and socially, although Lowestoft's part is limited in extent by its having remained under what seems to have been tighter control for most of the time since Domesday. There had been less selling-off of this part of the royal estate in Lothingland than was evident in other places and there had, of course, been no part of its cultivated area in the hands of freemen (as was the case in much of the rest of the jurisdiction).

St Margaret's church was an integral part of Lowestoft in a manner which cannot be fully understood today. At the time that it was built, during the late medieval period, the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical structure throughout the whole of Western Europe was still largely intact and functional. A set of common beliefs was mainly adhered to by the various nations and their leaders, although dissatisfaction with papal authority manifested itself from time to time, as did matters of Biblical interpretation and sacramental practice. John Wyclif and the Lollard movement in late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century England, for instance, can be seen as foreshadowing the storm that was eventually to break in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of All Saints Church, Wittenberg. But, for the most part, Catholic Europe was united (in a religious sense) by a set of common beliefs and values, which were not always adhered to on a personal or national level but which would have at least elicited lip-service on the part of most people.

Just how much a local parish church mattered to its congregation is hard to assess, but its presence was often sufficiently important for those who could afford it to pay for its construction. Once built, it was as much a statement of civic pride and personal affluence as God's house. But it was there for everyone, in the sense that people were baptised in its font, married at its door (within a porch, or not) and eventually laid to rest in its burial ground. The first two of these services provided were sacraments in their own right and, along with committal to mother earth, were the most fundamental acts for the majority of people. Of the other five recognised sacraments, one (the ordination of priests) did not concern them at all and another (mass) usually involved them directly only once a year – mainly, at Easter. Commitment to the other three – confirmation, penance and extreme unction – was probably desultory in nature and dependent in part on an individual's social and economic standing.

Close to a thousand years of Lowestoft's past are contained within the preceding pages and, given that length of time, any statement regarding the community's origins and subsequent development has of necessity to be an incomplete one. At the same time, it is hoped that the reader has gained some notion of the human activity which laid the foundations of the town of today. The process would not have been sensed by the people responsible for it in the earliest phase of development; their only concern was to take the physical environment in which they found themselves and shape it to their own requirements. Day-to-day living was the priority, with the provision of food, shelter and clothing being the main considerations. Once the settlement had become established and viable, it would have been possible for its inhabitants to take a broader view of their situation and see themselves as part of a social fabric transcending their own immediate surroundings – one that was founded, no doubt, on the model left behind on the North European mainland.

There is no means of accurately assessing at what point Lowestoft gained a sense of what may termed civic identity, whereby its people saw themselves as being an integral part of a social unit based in a specific location and with its own distinguishing features. The Anglo-Saxon period probably did not generate this, for the township was an outlier to the hub-manor located in Gorleston, without any freemen of its own and with a workforce dedicated to supplying the lord and his household with agricultural produce – perhaps even before their own immediate needs had been met. By the time of Domesday, the manor of Lothingland was one of the many held by Gyrth Godwinson, younger brother of Harold, whose only interest would have been in receiving the rents due to him, so the thegn Wulfsi (acting as surrogate for Gyrth) would have been the dominant presence in the jurisdiction. Lowestoft probably played little part in the monthly hundred court (both criminal and civil cases being handled there), because it was freemen who formed the juries and made the decisions, and its people would have appeared there only if they had offended in some way.

Lothingland

As explained in Chapter 2, the original grant of a market in Lothingland Half-hundred was made by King John in the year 1211 – three years after Great Yarmouth had received its charter of incorporation (March 1208) with specifically stated trading rights. With only Crown income in mind, the monarch either had no idea of the contention and strife these opposing privileges would cause or was unconcerned about them. No positive first-hand identification of the person, or body, to whom the grant was made has been found by the writer, but in at least one printed secondary source it is said to have been to the ‘men of Lothingland’, in return for a gift to the king of one palfrey (a small riding horse generally for women). Specific reference to the source of this information cites the Patent Rolls of 13 King John (May 1211 to May 1212), but the published reproduction of these royal grants and authorisations has the years 1209–12 missing. If the manor itself (together with its revenues) was wholly in the hands of the king at the time of the granting of market privileges, it is conceivable that he might have conferred this right in exchange for the lesser gift of a horse – be it a one-off payment or an annual one.

The term ‘men of Lothingland’ (if this was the term used of the grantees) probably referred to leading landholders in the half-hundred. The manor of Lothingland was a royal one which, in typical fashion, was leased to private individuals as a means of generating revenue for the Crown. It is recorded that from Easter 1199 onwards the estate was held by the brothers Geoffrey and Reginald du Bois (al. de Bosco) for an annual rent of £61 4s 0d, but there is no indication of their length of tenancy. It had presumably terminated before 1211, with full title returning to the monarch, in order for the grant of a market to be made to residents of Lothingland. The following year it was leased once again – to William de Longspée, earl of Salisbury (half-brother of John), who seems to have remained in occupation until his death on 7 March 1226.

Drift-net fishing

One frustrating feature of both subsistence and commercial fishing during the medieval period is that comparatively little specific documentary information exists regarding the vessels and gear employed in coastal parishes. The sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have much more detailed sources of evidence in probate documents (especially inventories), manorial records and tithe accounts, which may (in the case of fishing gear particularly) allow an insight into previous practice. The basic techniques for catching fish have not essentially changed in centuries, and that includes many of the methods employed today, so it is probably permissible for aspects of capture of the early modern era to be applied to an earlier time period.

There is no doubt that the inhabitants of Lowestoft, from very early on, would have been aware of the sources of food available from the sea. Two pelagic species, herrings and sprats, shoaled relatively close inshore during the autumn and early winter, while the former were also available during the spring – again, at no great distance from land. The late spring–early summer months made mackerel available and demersal fish of different types would have been present all year round, with species taken varying seasonally: broadly speaking, whiting and cod during the autumn and winter, flatfish (e.g. flounders, dabs and soles) during the spring and summer. This is a generalised view of the situation, but it serves to give some idea of the opportunities available to local people of the time.

The Lowestoft fishing industry of the early modern period has been investigated extensively elsewhere and it would be of limited use to repeat the findings here, aside from occasional cross-references where useful. The main purpose of this chapter is to consider the role of maritime pursuits as influences in Lowestoft's medieval economy and to acknowledge the advantages of relocating the town to a cliff-top position. As was discussed in the opening pages of the previous chapter, sea-based enterprise was probably not the only consideration in making the move from the original township's site, but it is likely to have been an important one – perhaps, even, the most significant.