THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



of earls of Northampton, followed their lords to Scotland. The most 

 striking case, perhaps, is that of the house of Oliphant, the ancestor of 

 which must have owed his connection with the Scottish realm to his 

 holding Lilford of the earls of Northampton/ The name can be carried 

 far back, for Roger ' Olifard,' like Walter Fitz Winemar, witnessed the 

 foundation charter of St. Andrew's Priory. As for Walter's own descend- 

 ants. Baker seems to have shown clearly that they were the Prestons of 

 Preston ' Deanery,' whose lands there had been held by Winemar, as an 

 under-tenant, in Domesday. Suddenly, under Henry VI., they revived 

 the name of their Domesday ancestor ; but a Winemar was the last, as he 

 was the first, who held the lands of Preston. Parting with these and his 

 other lands, he disappears from view. 



Next to Flanders lay Picardy, whence there came the founder of a 

 race of Northamptonshire barons. The Vidames de Picquigny were among 

 the magnates of medieval France ; hereditary officers of the bishops of 

 Amiens, their house in that city is still called le Vidame? Two members, 

 it is clear, of their house followed the Conqueror to England. These 

 were Ansculf de ' Pinchengi,' as the Bucks Domesday styles him (fo. 

 \\'ib)^ and Ghilo, his brother. The former, who received what was 

 afterwards the great barony of Dudley, had died before Domesday, leaving 

 a son and heir, William, who succeeded to his only Northamptonshire 

 manor, that of Barnack.* Ghilo obtained a barony of which the caput 

 was at Weedon, which heads, in the Domesday Survey, the list of his 

 manors in the shire, and which took from his descendants its name of 

 Weedon 'Pinkeney.'" This barony, which was held of the Crown by 

 the service of fifteen knights,' comprised lands also in Berks, Bucks, and 

 Oxon, some of which, as in Northamptonshire, had been previously held 

 by ' Siward.' At Weedon Ghilo founded a priory as a cell to St. Lucien 

 of Beauvais, his choice of that house being clearly due to the fact that 

 its monks had a small priory (' Notre Dame de Mont ') near Picquigny 

 (in the direction of Ailly).' This confirms my view that Pinkeney is 

 simply Picquigny, though the fact, owing to the change of form, has 

 eluded the historians of the shire. 



Picquigny, it is interesting to learn, was a test-word for the English, 

 who were never able to pronounce it. It was used as such for their 

 recognition when they were expelled from Ponthieu, and, in 1489, a 

 Frenchman, employed in London, could still use it as a test : — 



* Feudal England, pp. 223-4. 



* ' Les seigneurs barons de Picquigny itaient vidames de I'^veque d'Amiens et avou6s 

 de I'abbaye de Corbie' (Darsy's Picquigny et ses seigneurs [i860], p. 9). Fidame represented 

 Vicedominus (Ibid.). 



^ Baker, misreading this passage, declares that it 'establishes Ansculf's connection with, 

 or residence in, England prior to the Conquest' {History of Northamptonshire, II. 105). 

 But this is not so. 



* Compare p. 269 above. 



* As did Morton ' Pinkeney,' close by. 



* Feudal England, p. 255. 

 ' Darsy, p. loi. 



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