How many acres did the Templars farm at Gislingham?

… or rather, how many acres did the king’s custodians farm?

I’d hoped that the custodians’ accounts from 1308–13 would record how much land the Templars held at Gislingham in Suffolk.

Alas, the surviving accounts for the Templars’ lands in Norfolk and Suffolk don’t cover the whole period between the Templars’ arrests and the official handover to the Hospitallers. The only accounts surviving are those submitted by Thomas of St Omer, who was custodian in the first year and part of the second, and Simon of Heyford, which cover the period from 9 October in the fifth year of King Edward II’s reign up to 29 September in the sixth year (1311–12).  In common with many other accounts in the rolls of account for the Templars’ lands from 1308–13, now in the National Archives of the UK at Kew, there are two copies of each of the accounts that survive. This is very useful because where one account has been damaged the reader can check what the other account says. However, it isn’t so useful where the two accounts are different: and unfortunately in the case of Thomas of St Omer’s accounts they are.

Simon of Heyford’s accounts are fine. According to TNA: E 358/18 rot. 38  and TNA: E 358/20 rot. 44 dorse, Simon oversaw the sowing of 28 acres of wheat, 10 acres 1 rood of barley, 19 acres of peas and 18 acres 1 rood of oats, a total of 75 acres 2 roods (there are 4 roods to an acre.)

However, Thomas’s accounts don’t agree. According to TNA: E 358/18 rotulus 3 (8 Jan to end Sept 1308, Thomas oversaw the sowing of 6 acres of barley, 11.5 Acres of draget, 20 acres of peas and 23 acres of oats: total 60.5 acres.

But in the duplicate account in TNA: E 358/20 rot. 24d there were only 9.5 acres of draget, so the overall area sown was only 58.5 acres.

Somehow, xi (eleven) had become ix (nine) — or the other way around.

In the second, part of a year that Thomas was in charge of the estate, he oversaw the sowing of 15 acres of land with wheat, 8 acres of barley, 15 acres of Draget’, 22 acres of peas and 25 acres of oats, a total of 85 acres.

But the duplicate accounts gives 40 acres of wheat, bringing the total up to 110 acres!

In this case, xv became xl — or the other way around! The firm downstroke of the pen at the start of the ‘v’ in rotulus 3 is very like the downstroke of the l in rotulus 24d – but was the upstroke that followed merely a flourish or the upstroke of a v?

In addition to the land under the plough, there was also pasture for sheep — but that is another problem. In 1338 the Hospitallers recorded that there was a ruined building here and 100 acres of pasture — but no mention of arable land.* They valued Gislingham at 5 shillings a year, a far cry from 1308 when Thomas of St Omer made profit of over four pounds in the first nine months alone.

(all photos kindly supplied by Dr Phil Slavin of the University of Kent.)

*The Knights Hospitallers in England, being the report of Prior Philip de Thame to the Grand Master Elyan de Villanova for A.D. 1338, ed. Lambert B. Larking, intro. John Mitchell Kemble, Camden Society first series 65 (1857), p. 167.