A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



of Moulton and seven virgates of land there.' His descendants can be 

 traced for several generations, and one of them was sheriff of the county in 

 11^5,* The relations of this family with the earls were close. Of Wine- 

 mar, another tenant of the countess, I have already spoken above(p. 290). 



At the close of the survey of the shire are a few small fiefs, of 

 which the most interesting by far are those of Richard and William 

 Engayne ('Inganie'). The surname of these tenants is not given in 

 the text or in the schedule of landholders, but we find it under North- 

 ampton itself, where Richard held four houses and William one as an 

 under-tenant. They are also found, as ' Richard ' and ' William,' 

 holding their lands in Spelho Hundred, even before Domesday, in the 

 Northamptonshire geld-roll.' The special interest of their fiefs is found 

 in Domesday's statement that they had belonged to JE\[v/ine ' the hunts- 

 man ; ' for one of the two manors held in chief by William was that 

 of Pytchley, the connection of which with hunting is thus carried back 

 even beyond the Conquest. Moreover the Engaynes are found hold- 

 ing it, in later days, by huntsman service, so that we may assume it to 

 have been among the tenures in serjeanty even in 1086,* William, in 

 addition to Pytchley and Laxton, held Moulton and some other lands 

 of Robert de Buci as an under-tenant (fo. 225*^), while in Hunts he 

 held one manor in chief of the Crown. It should be observed that 

 Richard's heir returned himself, in 11 66, as the king's forester in fee ; 

 for Richard is found in Domesday claiming some land in Hunts as 

 belonging to the forest (fo. 208), while in Oxon, where (as in Bucks) 

 he held a single manor, his name heads the list of ' the king's officers ' 

 (fo. 160 ^). Under William Rufus we find him at Brigstock, witness- 

 ing the charter by which the king granted to Peterborough Abbey a 

 tithe of his proceeds of the chace.^ Of the three small holders with which 

 the survey closes, Dodin was a foreigner who held also as an under- 

 tenant in the county ; he was doubtless the father of that Walter Dodin 

 whose widow is mentioned in 1 130.* Olaf and Oslac would be natives. 

 As the latter's holding was at East Farndon, we may safely infer that 

 he was also the dispossessed holder of lands at Marston Trussell and 

 Thorp Lubenham adjoining it (fo. 224^^), and therefore also at Lubenham 

 itself across the border (fo. 230 <J), and, perhaps, at Swinford and Walcote 

 (fo. 234). 



It is possible, I think, that Professor Freeman attached too much 

 importance to the absence or presence of ' king's thegns ' in any given 

 county.' They were not, it must be remembered, recognised as on an 



' MS. Vesp. E. xviii., fos. id, 43;/. He styles himself in the charter Grimbald 'de 

 Houghton.' 



* Ossulston (Owston) Abbey, Leicestershire, was founded by Robert Grimbald, his 

 descendant, on one of the manors he held of the countess in 1086. Baker's account of the 

 descent, under Moulton (I. 46), appears to me unsatisfactory. 



' See Feudal England, pp. 154—6. 



* Ibid. It should be observed that Domesday classes him with the thegns (taint). 

 ' Gunton's Peterborough, p. 143. ^ Pipe Roll, 3 1 Hen. I., p. 82. 



' History of the Norman Conquest, IV. (1871), 38-43. 



294 



