Loddon Hundred: Ditchingham

DITCHINGHAM.

William de Noiers was steward of this lordship for the Conqueror, at the survey; it was a beruite to Stigand, the Archbishop's manor of Ersham, in the time of the Confessor, and he was deprived of it.

Stigand had 3 carucates of land, 9 villains, 5 borderers, 4 servi, 2 carucates in demean, 4 among the tenants, &c. with 64 acres of meadow, 2 mills, &c. 64 sheep, 55 goats: there were 22 socmen, with a carucate and half, and 8 carucates among them all, with 9 acres of meadow; a mill, valued in Ersham; it was one leuca long, and 4 furlongs, and 9 furlongs broad, and paid 8d. gelt. (fn. 1)

In the Crown it remained till King Stephen granted it (as it seems) to Hugh Bigot, on his being created Earl of Norfolk.

On the death of Roger Bigot, the last Earl of this family, in 1305, it came by his grant to the Crown, and so remained till King Ed. II. granted it to his half brother, Thomas de Brotherton Earl of Norfolk, who leaving two daughters and coheirs, Alice and Margaret, Alice brought it by marriage to Sir Edmund de Montacute, from whom it came to her sister, Margaret Countess, and after Dutchess of Norfolk; whose daughter and heiress, Elizabeth, marrried John Lord Mowbray, whose son Thomas, created Duke of Norfolk, possessed it.

By the female heiresses of the Mowbray's, Isabel, married to Sir James Berkley, and Margaret, to Sir Robert Howard, their inheritance came into those families, and this lordship went by the said Margaret to Sir John Howard, her son, who was created Duke of Norfolk, by King Richard III. and in this family it continues; Edward Howard Duke of Norfolk being the present lord.