Clare, Suffolk

William Camden in his Britain, or, a Chorographicall Description of the most flourishing Kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland (1610) wrote: 'On the South side wee saw the river Stour, which immediately from the verie spring head spreadeth a great Mere called Stourmmere, but soone after, drawing it selfe within the bankes, runneth first by Clare, a noble village which had a castle, but now , and gave name to the right noble familie of the Clares'. Daniel Defoe in A tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain (1748 4th edition) said that Clare was "a poor town and dirty, the streets being unpaved. But yet the civil and spiritual courts are held at it and it has a good church; it shows…

The Domesday Book records that the lands around Clare belonged to a Saxon thane, Aluric (or Aelfric), son of Wisgar (or Withgar) and that he gave them to St John, probably creating in Clare a collegiate church, under Edward the Confessor. William the Conqueror re-granted the land to one of his closest supporters in the Norman Conquest of 1066, Richard fitz Gilbert of Bienfaite, Count of Brionne, the son of one of his cousins, along with 170 other manors, 95 of them in Suffolk. Apart from being related to William, Richard's relationship with the king was further embedded as his father-in-law, Walter Giffard, Lord of Longueville was one of the 15 or so known companions of William at the…