NORMANS UNDER EDWARD THE CONFESSOR

It is probable that in spite of all the efforts of that school which found in Mr Freeman its ablest and most ardent leader, the 'fatal habit', as he termed it at the outset of his magnum opus 'of beginning the study of English history with the Norman Conquest itself', will continue, in practice, to prevail among those who have a choice in the matter. It was characteristic of the late Professor to assign the tendency he deplored to 'a confused and unhappy nomenclature', for to him names, as I have elsewhere shown,[¹] were always of more importance than they are to the world at large. More to the point is the explanation given by Mr Grant Allen, who attributes to the unfamiliar look of Anglo-Saxon appellatives the lack of interest shown in those who bore them. And yet there must be, surely, a deeper cause than this, an instinctive feeling that in England our consecutive political history does, in a sense, begin with the Norman Conquest. On the one hand it gave us, suddenly, a strong, purposeful monarchy; on the other it brought us men ready to record history, and to give us—treason though it be to say so—something better than the arid entries in our jejune native chronicle. We thus exchange aimless struggles, told in an uninviting fashion, for a great issue and a definite policy, on which we have at our disposal materials deserving of study. From the moment of the Conqueror's landing we trace a continuous history, and one that we can really work at in the light of chronicles and records. I begin these studies, therefore, with the Conquest, or rather with the coming of the Normans. For, as Mr Freeman rightly insisted, it is with the reign of Edward the Confessor that 'the Norman Conquest really begins':[²] it was 'his accession' that marked, in its results, 'the first stage of the Conquest itself'.[³]

As he, elsewhere, justly observed of Edward:

Normandy was ever the land of his affection.... His heart was French. His delight was to surround himself with companions who came from the beloved land, and who spoke the beloved tongue, to enrich them with English estates, to invest them with the highest offices of the English kingdom.... His real affections were lavished on the Norman priests and gentlemen who flocked to his court as to the land of promise. These strangers were placed in important offices about the royal person, and before long they were set to rule as Earls and Bishops over the already half conquered soil of England.... These were again only the first instalment of the larger gang who were to win for themselves a more lasting settlement four and twenty years later. In all this the seeds of the Conquest were sowing, or rather ... it is now that the Conquest actually begins. The reign of Edward is a period of struggle between natives and foreigners for dominion in England.[⁴]

One has, it is true, always to remember that if Edward, on his mother's side, was a Norman, so was Harold, as his name reminds us, on his mother's side, a Dane. Nor is it without significance that, on the exile of his house (1051), he fled to the Scandinavian settlers on the Irish coast, and found, no doubt, among them those who shared his almost piratical return in 1052.[⁵] The late Professor's bias against all that was 'French', together with his love for the 'kindred' lands of Germany and Scandinavia, led him, perhaps, to obscure the fact that England was a prey which the Dane was as eager to grasp as the Norman. But this in no way impugns the truth of his view that 'the Norman tendencies of Edward' paved the way for the coming of William. Nor can we hesitate to begin the study of the Norman Conquest with the coming of those, its true forerunners—

'Ke Ewart i aveit menéz

Et granz chastels è fieux dunez,'

and with whom may be said to have begun the story of Feudal England.

Professor Burrows is entitled to the credit of setting forth the theory, in his little book upon the Cinque Ports,[⁶] that Edward the Confessor 'had evidently intended to make the little group of Sussex towns, the "New Burgh" [? afterwards Hastings], Winchelsea, and Rye, a strong link of communication between England and Normandy', by placing them under the control of Fécamp Abbey. He holds, indeed, that Godwine and Harold had contrived to thwart this intention in the case of the latter; but this, as I shall show in my paper on the Cinque Ports, arises from a misapprehension. This theory I propose to develop by adding the case of Steyning, Edward's grant of which to Fécamp is well known, and has been discussed by Mr Freeman. It might not, possibly, occur to any one that Steyning, like Arundel, was at that time a port. But in a very curious record of 1103, narrating the agreement made between the Abbot and De Braose, the Lord of Bramber, it is mentioned that ships, in the days of the Confessor, used to come up to the 'portus S. Cuthmanni' [the patron saint of Steyning], but had been lately impeded by a bridge that had been erected at Bramber. Here then was another Sussex port placed in Norman hands. Yet this does not exhaust the list. Mr Freeman seems to have strangely overlooked the fact that the great benefice of Bosham, valued under the Confessor at £300 a year, had been conferred by Edward on his Norman chaplain, Osbern, afterwards (1073) Bishop of Exeter, whose brother, in the words of the Regius Professor, was the 'Duke's earliest and dearest friend', and who, of course, was of kin both to William and to Edward. Now this Bosham, with Thorney Island, commanded a third Sussex harbour, Chichester haven.[⁷]

But at London itself also we find the Normans favoured. The very interesting charter of Henry II, granted by him, as Duke of the Normans, in 1150 or 1151, to the citizens of Rouen, confirms them in possession of their port at Dowgate, as they had held it from the days of Edward the Confessor.[⁸] Here then we have evidence—which seems to have eluded the research of our historians, both general and local—that, even before the Conquest, the citizens of Rouen had a haven of their own at the mouth of the Walbrook, for which they were probably indebted to the Norman proclivities of the Confessor.

The building of 'Richard's Castle' plays a most important part in Mr Freeman's narrative of the doings of the Normans under Edward the Confessor. We hear of its building, according to him, in September 1051:

Just at this moment another instance of the insolence and violence of the foreigners in another part of the kingdom served to stir up men's minds to the highest pitch. Among the Frenchmen who had flocked to the land of promise was one named Richard the son of Scrob, who had received a grant of lands in Herefordshire. He and his son Osbern had there built a castle on a spot which, by a singularly lasting tradition, preserves to this day the memory of himself and his building. The fortress itself has vanished, but its site is still to be marked, and the name of Richard's castle, still borne by the parish in which it stood, is an abiding witness of the deep impression which its erection made on the minds of the men of those times.... Here then was another wrong, a wrong perhaps hardly second to the wrong which had been done at Dover. Alike in Kent and Herefordshire, men had felt the sort of treatment which they were to expect if the King's foreign favourites were to be any longer tolerated.[⁹]

Accordingly, Godwine, Mr Freeman wrote, demanded (September 8, 1051) 'the surrender of Eustace and his men and of the Frenchmen of Richard's Castle'. In a footnote to this statement, he explained that '"the castle" [of the Chronicle] undoubtedly means Richard's Castle, as it must mean in the entry of the next year in the same Chronicle'.[¹⁰] Of the entry in question (1052) he wrote: '"The castle" is doubtless Richard's Castle.... Here again the expressions witness to the deep feeling awakened by the building of this castle.'[¹¹] So, too, in a special appendix we read:

A speaking witness to the impression which had been made on men's minds by the building of this particular Richard's Castle, probably the first of its class in England, is given by its being spoken of distinctively as 'the castle' even by the Worcester chronicler (1052; see p. 309), who had not spoken of its building in his earlier narrative.[¹²]

We have, thus far, a consistent narrative. There was in Herefordshire one castle, built by Richard and named after him. It had been the cause of oppression and ravage, and its surrender, as such, had been demanded by Godwine in 1051. A year later (September 1052) Godwine triumphs; 'it was needful to punish the authors of all the evils that had happened' (p. 333); and 'all the Frenchmen' who had caused them were at last outlawed. But now comes the difficulty, as Mr Freeman pointed out:

The sentence did not extend to all the men of Norman birth or of French speech who were settled in the country. It was meant to strike none but actual offenders. By an exception capable of indefinite and dangerous extension, those were excepted 'whom the King liked, and who were true to him and all his folk' (ii. 334).... We have a list of those who were thus excepted, which contains some names which we are surprised to find there. The exception was to apply to those only who had been true to the king and his people. Yet among the Normans who remained we find Richard, the son of Scrob, and among those who returned we find his son Osbern. These two men were among the chief authors of all evil (ii. 344).

That is to say, the Lord of Richard's castle, on whose surrender and punishment Godwine had specially insisted, was specially exempted, as guiltless, when Godwine returned to power.[¹³]

In me, at least, this discrepancy aroused grave suspicion, and I turned to see what foundation there was for identifying the offending garrison of 1051 with that of Richard's castle. I at once discovered there was none whatever.

We have here, in short, one of those cases, characteristic, as I think, of the late Professor's work, in which he first formed an idea, and then, under its spell, fitted the facts to it without question. The view, for instance, of the unique position of Richard's castle as 'the castle' at the time is at once rendered untenable by the fact that, on the return of Godwine, Normans fled 'some west to Pentecostes castle, some north to Robert's castle', in the words of the Chronicle.[¹⁴] Moreover, the former belonged to Osbern, 'whose surname was Pentecost' (cognomento Pentecost), who, as we learn from Florence, was forced to surrender it and leave the country, as was also the fate of another castellan, his comrade Hugh.[¹⁵]

It is important to observe the clear distinction between Richard, son of Scrob, of Richard's castle, and Osbern Pentecost, of Pentecost's castle, of whom the former was allowed to remain, while the latter was exiled. But it is another peculiarity of Mr Freeman's work that he was apt to confuse different individuals bearing the same name.[¹⁶] In this instance, he boldly assumed that 'Pentecost, as we gather from Florence [?] ... is the same as Osbern, the son of Richard of Richard's castle, of whom we have already heard so much' (ii. 329), although the latter, a well-known man, is always distinguished as a son of his father, and never as Pentecost. And he further assumes that 'Pentecost's castle' was identical with Richard's castle, 'the first cause of so much evil' (Ibid.). These identifications led him into further difficulty, because Osbern, the son of Richard, is found afterwards holding 'both lands and offices in Herefordshire' (ii. 345). To account for this, he further assumes as 'certain that Osbern afterwards returned' (Ibid.). This assumption led him on to suggest that others also returned from exile, and that 'their restoration was owing to special entreaties of the King after the death of Godwine' (ii. 346). The whole of this history is sheer assumption, based on confusion alone.

Now let us clear our minds of this confusion, and keep the two castellans and their respective castles apart. On the one hand, we have Richard, the son of Scrob, who was left undisturbed at his castle, and was succeeded there by his son Osbern;[¹⁷] on the other hand, we have Osbern, 'whose surname was Pentecost', and who had to surrender his castle, to which the guilty Normans had fled, and to go into exile. Can we identify that castle? I would venture to suggest that it was no other than that of Ewyas Harold in the south-west corner of Herefordshire, of which Domesday tells us that Earl William had re-fortified it ('hoc castellum refirmaverat'), implying that it had existed, and been dismantled before the Conquest. It heads, in the great survey, the possessions of Alfred of Marlborough, and although its holder T.R.E. is not mentioned, we read of the two Manors which follow it: 'Hæc duo maneria tenuit Osbernus avunculus Alveredi T.R.E. quando Goduinus et Heraldus erant exulati' (i. 186). Mr Freeman, of course, assumed that this Osbern was identical with Osbern, the son of Richard, the Domesday tenant-in-chief. This assumption is not only baseless, but also most improbable: for Alfred was old enough to be father-in-law to Thurstan (Mortimer), a Domesday tenant, and would scarcely therefore be young enough to be nephew to another Domesday tenant-in-chief. I would suggest that his uncle was that Osbern 'Pentecost' who had to surrender his castle and flee on the return of Godwine and Harold. This would exactly fit in with the Domesday statement, as also with the dismantling of Ewyas Castle.[¹⁸]

Ewyas Harold fits in also with the chronicle's mention of the Normans fleeing 'west' to Pentecost's castle.

We have now seen that Richard's castle did not stand alone, and that there is nothing to identify it with that Herefordshire castle ('ænne castel') of which the garrison had committed outrages in 1051, and which is far more likely, so far as our evidence goes, to have been 'Pentecost's Castle'. Mr Freeman rightly called attention to 'the firm root which the Normans had taken in Herefordshire before 1051, which looks very much as if they had been specially favoured in these parts' (ii. 562); and he argued from this that Earl Ralf had probably ruled the shire between 1046 and 1050. The Earl would naturally have introduced the foreign system of castles, as he did the foreign fashion of fighting on horseback. Indeed, speaking of the capture of Hereford in 1055, Mr Freeman wrote:

It is an obvious conjecture that the fortress destroyed by Gruffyd was a Norman castle raised by Ralph. A chief who was so anxious to make his people conform to Norman ways of fighting would hardly lag behind his neighbour at Richard's castle. He would be among the first at once to provide himself with a dwelling-place and his capital with a defence according to the latest continental patterns (ii. 391).

But if this is so, he would have built it while he ruled the shire (as Mr Freeman believed he probably did) from 1046 to 1050, and would, in any case, have done so on taking up its government in 1051.[¹⁹] Consequently he would have had a castle and garrison at Hereford in 1052. But Mr Freeman, describing Gruffyd's raid in that year into Herefordshire, and finding a castle mentioned, assumed that it could only be Richard's castle,[²⁰] although, a few lines before, he had admitted the existence of other castles in the shire.[²¹] Even in 1067 he would have liked to hold that Richard's castle was the only one in Herefordshire, but the words of the chronicle were too clear for him.[²²]

I have endeavoured to make clear my meaning, namely, that Mr Freeman's view that 'Richard's castle' stood alone as 'the castle', and that Richard and his garrison were the special offenders under Edward the Confessor, is not only destitute of all foundations, but at variance with the facts of the case. When we read of Herefordshire (1067) that

The Norman colony, planted in that region by Eadward and so strangely tolerated by Harold, was still doing its work. Osbern had been sheriff under Edward, even when Harold was Earl of the shire, and his father Richard, the old offender, still lived (iv. 64)—

we must remember that the conduct of Harold was only strange if Richard, as Mr Freeman maintained, was 'the old offender'. If, as Florence distinctly tells us, he was, on the contrary, void of offence, Harold's conduct was in no way strange.[²³]

Let us now turn from the Herefordshire colony, planted, I think, not so much by King Edward as by his Earl Ralph, just as Earl William (Fitz Osbern) planted a fresh one after the Conquest.

Among the Normans allowed to remain, on the triumph of Godwine's party in 1052, Florence mentions 'Ælfredum regis stratorem'. On him Mr Freeman thus comments:

Several Ælfreds occur in Domesday as great landowners, Ælfred of Marlborough (Osbern's nephew) and Ælfred of Spain, but it is not easy to identify their possessions with any holder of the name in Edward's time. The names Ælfred and Edward and the female name Eadgyth seem to have been the only English names adopted by the Normans. The two former would naturally be given to godsons or dependants of the two Athelings while in Normandy [i.e. after 1013].[²⁴]

An appendix, in the first volume, devoted to Ælfred the giant—who appears in Normandy, circ. 1030—claims that Ælfred is a name so purely English that the presumption in favour of the English birth of any one bearing it 'in this generation is extremely strong',[²⁵] and that it was only adopted by 'a later generation of Normans'. Mr Freeman seems to have been unaware that in Britanny the name of Alfred enjoyed peculiar favour. I find it there as early as the ninth century,[²⁶] while I have noted in a single cartulary seventeen examples between 1000 and 1150. Among these are 'Alfridus frater Jutheli' (ante 1008) and Juthel, son of Alfred (1037). Now, at the Conquest, 'Judhael, who from his chief seat took the name of Judhael of Totnes, became the owner', in Mr Freeman's words, 'of a vast estate in Devonshire, and extended his possessions into the proper Cornwall also'. But we know from charters that this Judhael was the son of an Alfred, and was succeeded by another Alfred, who joined Baldwin of Redvers at Exeter in 1136.[²⁷] In the same county, as Mr Freeman reminds us, we have another Breton tenant-in-chief, 'Alvredus Brito'. In all this I am working up to the suggestion that the well-known Alfred of Lincoln was not, as Mr Freeman holds, an Englishman,[²⁸] but a Breton. We have not only the overwhelming presumption against any considerable tenant-in-chief being of English origin, but the fact that his lands were new grants. When we add to this fact that his heir (whether son or brother) bore the distinctively Breton name of Alan,[²⁹] we may safely conclude that Alfred was not only a foreigner but a Breton. But the strange thing is that we do not stop there; we have a Jool (or Johol) of Lincoln, who died in 1051 [³⁰] after bestowing on Ramsey Abbey its Lincolnshire fief.[³¹] Thus we have an Alfred and a Juhel 'of Lincoln', as we have an Alfred and a Juhel 'of Totnes'; and in Juhel of Lincoln we must have a Breton settled in England under the Confessor.

The name of 'Lincoln' leads me to another interesting discovery. 'Both Alfred of Lincoln and the sheriff Thorold,' Mr Freeman wrote, 'were doubtless Englishmen.'[³²] And speaking of Abbot Turold's accession in 1070, he observed that Turold was 'a form of the Danish Thorold, a name still [1070] familiar in that part of England, one which had been borne by an English sheriff'.[³³]

Now this Thorold (Turoldus) has been the subject of much speculation by Mr Stapleton, Mr Freeman,[³⁴] etc., in connection with William Malet and the mysterious Countess Lucy, but the facts about him are of the scantiest, nor, I believe, has any one succeeded in finding him actually mentioned in the Conqueror's reign, though he is referred to in Domesday. This, however, I have now done, lighting upon him in a passage of considerable interest per se. In the 'De miraculis sancti Eadmundi' of Herman we read that when Herfast, Bishop of Thetford, visited Baldwin, Abbot of St Edmund's, to be cured of an injury to his eye, the Abbot induced him to renounce his claim to jurisdiction over the Abbey:

In sacri monasterii vestiario, præsentibus ejusdem loci majoris ætatis fratribus, sed etiam accitis illuc ab abbate quibusdam regis primoribus, qui dictante justitia in eadem villa regia tenebant placita. Quorum nomina, quamvis auditoribus tædio, tamen sunt veræ rationis testimonio; videlicet Hugo de Mundford, et Rogerius cognomento Bigot, Richardus Gisleberti comitis filius, ac cum eis Lincoliensis Turoldus et Hispaniensis Alveredus, cum aliis compluribus.[³⁵]

The date of this incident can be fixed with certainty as 1076-79; and it is of great interest for its mention both of the eyre itself and of those 'barons' who took part in it; there can be no question that 'Turoldus' was the mysterious Thorold, sheriff of Lincolnshire, taking his name from Lincoln.[³⁶] He was, therefore, not 'an English sheriff' of days before the Conquest, but a Norman—as were his fellows—who died before Domesday.[³⁷]

The name of William Malet, connected with that of Thorold, reminds me of a suggestion I once made,[³⁸] that he held Aulkborough in Lincolnshire, T.R.E., 'and was, to that extent, as M. le Prêvost held, "established in England previously to the Conquest"'.

Stapleton, whose name in such matters rightly carries great weight, maintained that because the Manor was held in 1086 by Ivo Tailbois, and is stated in Domesday 'to have previously belonged to William Malet', it must have been alienated by William by a gift in frank marriage with a daughter, who must, he held, have married Ivo. But I pointed out, firstly, that 'it is not the practice of Domesday to enter Manors held in maritagio thus', and gave an instance (i. 197) 'where we find Picot holding lands from Robert Gernon, which lands are entered in the Gernon fief with the note: "Has terras tenet Picot Vicecomes de Roberto Gernon in maritagio feminæ suæ."' I can now, by the kindness of Dr Liebermann, add the instance of the Mandeville fief in Surrey, where we read of 'Aultone': 'De his hidis tenet Wesman vi. hidas de Goisfrido filio comitis Eustachii; hanc terram dedit ei Goisfridus de Mannevil cum filia sua' (i. 36).[³⁹] In addition to this argument I urged that 'in default of any statement to the contrary, we must always infer that the two holders named in the survey are (A) the holder T.R.E., (B) the holder in 1086'. This would make William Malet the holder T.R.E.

Another 'Norman' on whom I would touch is 'Robert fitz Wimarc', so often mentioned by Mr Freeman. I claim him too as a Breton, on his mother's side at least, if Wimarc, as seems to be the case, was his mother, for that is a distinctively Breton name. Mr Freeman queried the Biographer's description of him as 'regis consanguineus', when at Edward's death-bed;[⁴⁰] but he is clearly the 'Robertus regis consanguineus' of the Waltham charter.[⁴¹] He was also of kin to William.[⁴²]

The last on my list is Regenbald 'the Norman chancellor of Edward', as Mr Freeman termed him throughout. He must have had, I presume, some authority for doing so: but I cannot discover that authority; and, in its absence, the name, from its form, does not suggest a Norman origin.[⁴³] Of Regenbald, however, I shall have to speak in another paper.

[¹] Quarterly Review, June 1892, pp. 9, 10.

[²] Norm. Conq., i. 525, 526.

[³] Ibid.

[⁴] Norm. Conq., ii, 29, 30.

[⁵] Mr Freeman admits that his crews 'probably consisted mainly of adventurers from the Danish Saxons of Ireland, ready for any enterprise which promised excitement and plunder' (N.C., ii. 313).

[⁶] Historic Towns: Cinque Ports, pp. 26-9.

[⁷] See for Osbern, Mr A. S. Ellis's Domesday Tenants in Gloucestershire, p. 18. May not Peter, William's chaplain, Bishop of Lichfield, 1075, have similarly been the Peter who was a chaplain of Edward?

[⁸] Chèruel's Histoire de Rouen pendant l'époque communale, i. 245.

[⁹] Norm. Conq., ii. 136-8.

[¹⁰] Ibid., p. 140.

[¹¹] Ibid., p. 309.

[¹²] Ibid., p. 607.

[¹³] 'Norman Richard still held his castle in Herefordshire' (Hunt's Norman Britain, p. 69).

[¹⁴] Mr Clark refers to this passage, adding: 'So that these places, probably like Richard's castle, were in Norman hands' (M.M.A., i. 37).

[¹⁵] 'Osbernus vero, cognomento Pentecost, et socius ejus Hugo sua reddiderunt castella.'

[¹⁶] I have noted several cases in point, that of Walter Giffard being the most striking. But we also read in William Rufus (ii. 551) that 'Henry, son of Swegen, who comes so often under Henry the Second, is the unlucky descendant of Robert, son of Wymarc', that is to say, Henry 'of Essex', who was a son of Robert, not of Swegen, and who belonged to a wholly different family and district.

[¹⁷] 'Worse than all, the original sinners of the Herefordshire border, Richard and his son Osbern, were still lords of English soil, and holders of English offices' (iv. 53).

[¹⁸] Named, as Mr Freeman pointed out, after Harold, son of Earl Ralph, not after Harold, son of Godwine.

[¹⁹] 'That Ralph succeeded Swegen on his final banishment in 1051, I have no doubt at all' (ii. 562).

[²⁰] '"The castle" is doubtless Richard's castle.... Here again the expressions witness to the deep feeling awakened by the building of this castle' (ii. 309).

[²¹] 'The Norman lords whom Eadward had settled in Herefordshire proved but poor defenders of their adopted country. The last continental improvements in the art of fortification proved vain to secure the land' (Ibid.).

[²²] Florence (1067) speaks of the 'Herefordenses castellani et Richardus filius Scrob' as the opponents of Eadric. I could almost have fancied that the words 'Herefordenses castellani' referred to 'the castle' in Herefordshire (see vol. ii. p. 139); but the words of the Worcester chronicler 'þa castelmenn on Hereforda' seem to fix the meaning to the city itself' (iv. 64).

[²³] I have no hesitation in offering these criticisms, because Mr Freeman's views have been embraced throughout by Mr Hunt, who has followed closely in his footsteps. For instance:

'A private fortress ... would seem even stranger to us now than it seemed to our forefathers when Richard the son of Scrob raised the first castle on English ground' (Norm. Conq., v. 640).

'It was the first fortress which was raised in England for the indulgence of private insolence and greed, and not for the protection of Englishmen; it was to be the first of many, and the evil deeds which Richard's men wrought were a foretaste of the evil times when fortresses such as his were common in the land' (Norman Britain, p. 64).

Mr Hunt, therefore, survives to defend the position.

[²⁴] Vol. ii., p. 345.

[²⁵] Vol. i., p. 747.

[²⁶] About 849; Alfret Machtiern, 868; Alfritus tyrannus, 871; Alfrit presbyter, 872; filius Alurit, 879.

[²⁷] Gesta Stephani.

[²⁸] iii. (2nd ed.) 780; iv. 214.

[²⁹] See the Lindsey Survey.

[³⁰] Ramsey Cartulary, iii. 167.

[³¹] Ramsey Cartulary, i. 208, ii. 74. Domesday, i. 346b.

[³²] iii. (2nd ed.) 780.

[³³] iv. (1st ed.) 457.

[³⁴] Ibid., 778-80. Mr Freeman spoke of him as 'a kind of centre' for the inquiry, and stated that in Domesday 346b we have 'Turoldus vicecomes' as a benefactor of Spalding priory. This is an error, for the words there are 'dedit S. Gutlaco' (i.e. Crowland). He also urged that 'we must not forget the Crowland tradition' about him 'preserved by the false Ingulf'. But the fact is that 'Ingulf' made him into two (1) 'Thuroldus Vicecomes Lincoln', whose benefaction to Crowland (D.B., i. 346b) was confirmed in 806 (!) and subsequently (pp. 6, 9, 15, 19), (2) 'quidam vicecomes Lincolniæ, dictus Thoroldus ... de genere et cognatione illius vicedomini Thoroldi qui quondam', etc. (p. 65). It is the one living in '1051', to whom the Spalding foundation was assigned.

[³⁵] Memorials of St Edmund's Abbey, i. 63-4. Herman wrote from personal knowledge.

[³⁶] There are plenty of instances of this practice, as at Exeter, Salisbury, Gloucester, Leicester, etc.

[³⁷] It may be well here to allude to a still more remarkable commission, some twenty years later, namely in 1096, when William Rufus sent 'in quadragesima optimates suos in Devenesiram et in Cornubiam et Exoniam, Walcalinum, videlicet, Wyntonensem episcopum, Randulphum regalem capellanum, Willelmum Capram, Hardinum Belnothi filium (i.e. Elnoth or Eadnoth; see Greenfield's De Meriet pedigree, p. 6) ad investiganda regalia placita. Quibus in placitis calumpniati sunt cuidam [sic] mansioni abbacie Taviensis,' etc. (Tavistock cartulary in Mon. Ang., ii. 497). This eyre cannot be generally known, for Mr T. A. Archer, in his elaborate biography of Ranulf Flambard, does not mention it. The association of Bishop Walkelin with Ranulf is specially interesting because they are stated to have been left by the king next year (1097) as joint regents of the realm. The name, I may add, of 'Willelmus filius Baldwini' among those to whom the consequent charter is addressed (Mon. Ang., ii. 497), is of considerable importance, because it is clearly that of the sheriff of Devon, and is proof therefore that Baldwin the sheriff (Baldwin, son of Count Gilbert) had left a son William, who had succeeded to his shrievalty by 1096, and who was in turn succeeded by his brother, Richard fitz Baldwin, sheriff under Henry I.

[³⁸] Genealogist, viii. 4.

[³⁹] Dr Liebermann asks whether Geoffrey's daughter was not thus 'the first wife, else unknown, of the future King of Jerusalem'.

[⁴⁰] Norm. Conq., iii. 576.

[⁴¹] Ibid., ii. 673.

[⁴²] Ibid., iii. 416.

[⁴³] Mr A. S. Ellis has suggested that 'Elward filius Reinbaldi' (D.B., i. 170b) King's thegn in Glo'stershire 'was evidently a son' of the chancellor. This suggestion is highly probable, and in any case, the thegn bearing this English name, it may fairly be presumed that his father Reinbald was not of Norman birth.