General Notes

Spalding, Lincolnshire. In Spalding (Spaldinge) Ivo [Tailbois] had 4 ploughs in lordship; 40 villagers and 33 smallholders who have 13 ploughs. A market, 40s; 6 fisheries, 30s from salt-houses, 30s; a wood of alders, 8s. Value before 1066 £23.2s.8d.; now £30, Exactions £30.
Ivo Tallboys. Also called 'cut-bush.' Married Lucy. In charge of siege of Hereward the Wake at Ely, 1069. Steward to William II. Holdings in Lincs. and Norfolk.
Spalding today is a prosperous Georgian town near the Wash surrounded by fertile plains of reclaimed fenland. It is the capital of the district of South Holland, the 'centre of tulipland.' There was nothing in 1086 to presage the area's future prosperity. Spalding was the largest of a string of villages along a belt of silt running beside what was then the coastline of the Wash. On one side was the sea, on the other the empty expanse of the marshy fens, unsettled because the peaty soil was too soft to build on. Its limited economy is evident from its Domesday entry with its references to fishing and saltmaking, and the absence of watermills or of almost any woodland.
The entries also reflect a conflict of interests that was to preoccupy Spalding's population for many centuries. In its original form this was between Ivo Tailbois, the lord of Spalding, and the Abbey of St Guthlac's at Croyland (now Crowland), nine miles to the east. Ivo was King William's nephew and had been his standard bearer at the Battle of Hastings, but is known best for the unhappy role he is said to have played in the rebellion of 1070-71, where Hereward was making his last stand against the Normans on the Isle of Ely. Ivo allegedly blundered so badly in attempting to flush a raiding party out of the woods that Hereward made off with the Abbot of Peterborough, whom Ivo was supposed to be defending. Later, when the rebels were being besieged on the island, so the story goes, Ivo persuaded the king to build a movable wooden tower with a sorceress at its top, to cast spells on the English defenders while its own soldiers built a wooden bridge across the marshes to the island. Hereward succeeded in outflanking the entire operation and in burning down both tower and bridge.
Nevertheless, after the revolt had been crushed, William granted the manor of Spalding to Ivo. It was the most important of his 100 Lincolnshire holdings, making him the county's largest landholder. Why he almost immediately made an enemy of the monks of Crowland Abbey and Ingulph, their abbot, is not clear. Perhaps he associated them with his humiliation at Ely, where the local monks had supported the other side. In any case, within a year he had given the priory at Spalding to the abbey of his home town, Angers.
In the interim, according to what was known as Abbot Ingulph's "Croyland History," Ivo, besides tormenting and harassing his own men, 'raged with such tyrannical and frantic fury' against the monks 'the he would many a time lame their cattle, oxen, as well as horses, would daily impound their sheep and poultry, and frequently strike down, kill and destroy their swine and pigs; while at the same time, the servants of the prior were often assaulted in the highways with swords and staves, and sometimes killed.' Eventually the monks retired to Croyland, and Ivo brought six monks over from Angers to replace them.
When William died in 1087, Ivo seized all the lands in his area belonging to Croyland, including the two carucates in Spalding mentioned by Domesday. Ingulph produced a charter from Earl Algar, Ivo's Saxon predecessor, proving Croyland's rights to the lands, and succeeded in having them restored by the new king, William II. Four years later, however, a fire destroyed the monastery and Ivo, assuming that all the charters had been burnt, again challenged the monks' title. But some charters had survived, providing the monks with the necessary evidence in court. Ivo next tried to belittle the charters because they were in Saxon characters. That,