
Trowbridge im the days of Edward the Confessor. = -213 
the Confessor as an ambassador to the court of Baldwin, Count of 
Flanders. The latter had a daughter, Matilda by name, who, it is said, 
formed a deep and romantic affection for Brictric, and, what was a 
worse mistake on her part, betrayed herself. Unhappily for her, and 
as the event turned out, unluckily for Brictric too, our English thane 
did not reciprocate the tender feelings. Then as chroniclers tell us— 
though we must be a little careful in believing everything we read— 
“the hatred wherewith she hated him was greater than the love 
wherewith she had loved him.” And unfortunately she had before 
very long an opportunity of displaying it. . 
For in a few years afterwards she married William of Normandy, 
who in due time became King-of England, and so the self-same lady 
that Brictric politely declined as a wife he was obliged to accept as 
a Queen. And then (to use Thierry’s words) “ Matilda herself 
asked the new King, her husband, to place at her disposal, with all 
his possessions, the Englishman who had disdained her. She gratified 
her revenge and cupidity at once, by appropriating the possessions 
to herself, and causing Brictric to be shut up in a fortress.””_ So no 
doubt say some of the chroniclers, but /iterally true itis not. For 
example, the Domesday Record is brought down to the year 1087, 
and at that time Brictric was possessed of these manors; whereas 
the Queen Matilda died in 1083, four years before. No doubt 
some of Brictric’s estates were apportioned to her, and with them 
she endowed monasteries at Bec in Normandy, and elsewhere: 
Still there is a grim touch of irony in the entry that we meet 
with in one part of Domesday Book—“ Infra-scriptas terras tenuit 
Brictric et post Regina Matilda ’’—that looks as though there were 
some truth in the tale, and as if it was not by a simple accident 
that the said manors fell to Matilda’s share. It is certain, that though 
possibly Brictrie may have been permitted to enjoy these manors of 
which we are now speaking for life, the estates soon passed away 
from his family. Though he inherited them from his father, the King 
or Queen, as the case may have been; and that too probably with no 
unnecessary legal formalities, promptly cut off the entail. 
In A.D. 1100, just thirteen years after the completion of the Domes- 
day Record, Trowbridge (Trobrege) and Staverton are recorded as 
