[422] Domesday, 319. It is “Tyckyll” in Florence, 1102. The history of the place may be studied in Mr. John Raine’s History of Blyth.
[423] Bæda, ii. 12. “In finibus gentis Merciorum, ad orientalem plagam amnis qui vocatur Idlæ.” There Eadwine smote Æthelfrith. Bæda’s description marks Nottinghamshire as Mercian.
[424] I have had to mention Blyth in my paper on the Arundel case in the Archæological Journal, xxxvii. 244 (1880). The monastic part at the east end is gone, and the effect of the parochial part strangely changed by later additions. No one would think from the first glance at the outside that the nave of a Norman minster lurked there.
There are two notices of Blyth in the Normanniæ Nova Chronica under 1088 and 1090. The first merely records a grant of the church to the Trinity monastery (also called Saint Katharine) at Rouen; “a viro venerabili Rogerio de Bully et ab Munold [sic] uxore sua.” The second records the gift a second time, and adds, “ibi constituit xiii. monachos.” He had had dealings with the house before. In the cartulary of the monastery, No. xliii. p. 444, he sells the tithe of Bully [Buslei], “quemadmodum sibi jure hæreditario competebat,” for threescore and twelve pounds and a horse (“pro libris denariorum lx. et xii. et i. equo”). The signatures, besides those of Duke William and Count Robert of Eu, are mainly local, as “Hernaldi cujus pars decimæ,” “Huelini de Brincourt,”—Neufchâtel that was to be. Mr. A. S. Ellis suggests that this sale was to supply the lord of Bully with the means of crossing in 1066. It is odd that there is no mention of Blyth in the cartulary.
[425] Compare Florence, 1102, with Orderic, 806 C. No one without local knowledge would guess that “Blida” and “Tyckyll” meant the same place.
[426] Ord. Vit. 768 C. “Blidam totamque terrain Rogerii de Buthleio cognati sui jure repetiit, et a rege grandi pondere argenti comparavit.” Mr. A. S. Ellis, in a paper reprinted from the Yorkshire Archæological Journal, headed “Biographical Notices on the Yorkshire Tenants named in Doomsday Book,” suggests that what Robert really bought was the wardship of Roger’s son. The history of the family will be found in Mr. Raine’s book and in Mr. Ellis’s paper.
[427] See N. C. vol. iv. p. 537.
[428] Ord. Vit. 768 C. “Sicut idem vir multis possessionibus in terris est locupletatus, sic majori fastu superbiæ sequax Belial inflatus, flagitiosos et crudeles ambiebat insatiabiliter actus.” There is no need to take “flagitiosus” in the special sense.
[429] The authorities for this chapter take in such French and Cenomannian records as we have. Suger’s Life of Lewis the Sixth, in the fourth volume of the French Duchèsne, gives us but few facts as to the French war, but he draws a vivid general picture. For Maine we have the Lives of Bishops Howel and Hildebert in the History of the Bishops of Le Mans in Mabillon’s Vetera Analecta. The accounts there given have to be compared throughout with the narrative of the French and Cenomannian wars in Orderic. The strictly English writers tell us nothing about France, next to nothing about Maine. Something may be gleaned from the writers in French rime, as Wace and Geoffrey Gaimar; but Wace has by no means the same value now which he had during the actual time of the Conquest.
[430] See N. C. vol. v. p. 99.