Divisions for Ecclesiastical and Legal Purposes.—Suffolk was for merly wholly included in the diocese of Norwich : the eastern part is still in that diocese, the western in the diocese of Ely. The county is divided into the archdeaconriea of Suffolk and Sudbury. It is included in the Norfolk circuit. The assizes are held in the summer at Bury St. Edmunds, and in Lent at Ipswich. Quarter sessions for the respective divisions are held at Bury, Ipswich, Beeelea, and Wood bridge. There are county jails and houses of correction at Bury and Ipswich ; county houses of correction at Woodbridge and Beccles; and borough prisons at Ipswich, Bury, Eye, Sudbury, Aldeburgh, South weld, and Orford. County courts are held at Beceles, Bury St. Ed munds, Eye, Framlingharo, Haleaworth, Harleston, Ipswich, Lowestoft, Mildeuhall, Stowmarket, Thetford, and Woodbridge. By the Poor Law Commissioners the county is divided into 37 unions, namely, tlything, Boomer° and Claydon, Bury St. Edmunds, Cosford, lIartis mere, Hoene, Ipswich, Ilildenhall, Mutford and Lothingland, Plomes gate, Riabridge, Samford, Stow, Sudbury, Thingoe, Waugford, and 1Voodbridge. These unions comprise 514 parishes and townships, with an area of 928,819 acres, and a population in 1851 of 335,655. Before the Reform Act was passed Suffolk returned 16 members to Parliament : two for the county, and two each for Ipswich, Bury, Sudbury, Eye, Orford, Aldeburgh, and Dunwich. By the Reform Act the county was formed into two divisions, the Eastern and Western, each returning two members; Dunwieh, Orford, and Aldeburgh were entirely disfranchised, and Eye was reduced to one member : Sudbury was disfranchised in 1844. Nine member' are therefore now returned from Suffolk, being seven lose than before the Reform Act.
History earl A nliquicies.—Suffolk appears to have been compre hended with Norfolk In the territories of the Simeni of rtolemteue, called by others the Ieeni. It was included in the Roman province of Flaela Casearien-la. There were several British or Roman towns in this county, as the Sitomagua, probably near Dunwich,Cambretonium, near Unindishurgh, and Ad Assam of Antoninue, at Stratford. A road from Londiulunt (London) and Camalodunum (Colchester) entered the county at Stratford, between Colchester and Ipswich, and, leaving Ipswich on the right, ran is a northward direction to the Ipswich and Norwich road near Needham.11arket; and then coin cided a ith the present line of that road till it quits the county to enter Norfolk at Scole Inn. Another line, the ' Peddar-Way,' or ladder Way,' entering the comity from Norfolk, across the Little Ouse near Rushford, runs southward to the neighbourhood of Ixworth, where Roman remains have been discovered. The Ikenieldotreet crossed the county in a south-west direction from the Little Ouse to the neighbour hood of Newmarket. in the eastorn part of Suffolk a road, known as Stone-street, entered the county across the restuary of the Wavenoy at Bungay, and run by lialesworth to Dunwieh. The south-western corner of the county was creased by a road which formed part of a line from Catnalodnamn (Colchester) to Camboritum (Cambridge).
There were other less important roads. Roman antiquities have been found at Blythburgh, on Bungay Common, at Bury, at Duuwieh, at Eye, at Haughloy, near Stowmarket, where a Norman castle was erected on the site of a Roman camp, at Ickworth, near Bury, at Inning, or Exuing, near Newmarket, at Stow Langtoft, where are the remains of a camp, at Folixstow, near the mouth of the Deben, at Wenham near Stratford, at Melford, and at other places.
In the Anglo-Saxon period Suffolk passed through similar changes to NORFOLK. It was probably settled by a body of Angles inde pendent of those who occupied Norfolk. The names of South Folk and North Folk describe the relative position of these two bodies. Suffolk was probably, from its proximity to the other Anglo-Saxon states, the more important division of the two. The battle in which Annas, or Anna, king of East Anglia, and his son Firminius, fell fighting against rends, king of Mercia (A.D. 654), is supposed to have occurred at Bull Camp, or Bulchamp, near Blythburgh. Annas is said to have been buried at Blythburgh. St. Edmund, king of East Anglia, contemporary of Ethelred I., brother and predecessor of Alfred the Great, was taken by the Dance (870), and murdered at Ilagilsdun, now Hoxne (on the bank of the Waveney, near Scole), and was first buried there; but his body was afterwards removed to Bury, which has obtained from him its distinctive title of Bury SL Edmunds. The Danes on several occasions plundered the town of Ipswich.
In the civil war of Stephen and Henry of Anjou, afterwards Henry II., Ipswich, which was held by Hugh Bigod for Henry, was taken by Stephen (1153). In 1173 a battle took place at Farnham St. Genevieve, between Bury and Mildenhall, when a body of Flemings, under the Earl of Leicester, in the iutereat of Prince Henry, against his father Henry IL, were defeated by the king'a army. In the civil war of John tho county was reduced to subjection (1216) by William Fitzpiers, for Prince Louis of France, whom the barons had invited over to oppose John. In the insurrection of the populace iu the time of Richard II. (13S2), the people of Suffolk took arms, and murdered, at Bury, Sir John Cavendish, chief justice of England, and some of the monks of the abbey. In the disturbances caused by the attempt of Henry VIIL and his minister Wolsey to raise money by a royal decree (1525), the people of Suffolk rose in rebellion, but the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk prevailed on them to disperse. A part of the inhabitants of Suffolk took part in Kett'a rebellion (1549). On the death of Edward VI. and the proclamation of Lady Jane Grey as his successor, the Princess Mary, Edward's sister, who was at Konninghall in Norfolk, removed to Framlingham Castle, where her partisans flocked to her. The Duke of Northumberland, Jane's father-in-law and general, advanced to Newmarket and from thence to Bury to oppose Mary, but retired next day to Cambridge; and the general feeling of the kingdom being in favour of Mary, she advanced from Framihagharn to London, dismissing her Suffolk forces by the way.