DOMESDAY SURVEY 



Pinel, has enabled Mr. Round to ' throw light on the devolution of an Essex 

 thegn's estates,' to ' identify a thegn as a landowner in Essex and Suffolk,' and 

 to ' obtain a good instance of an Englishman having not one but several aliens 

 as his successors.' '" Brictmar's estates were divided into three portions, of 

 which one, in Suffolk, fell to Ranulf Ilger's brother ; one, in Suffolk and 

 Essex, was granted to Ralph Pinel ; and the third, in Essex, was given by 

 the king to Ingelric, and was in the possession of Ingelric's successor. Count 

 Eustace, in 1086. In ' Lewin of Bagatona ' (Bacton), King Edward's thegn, 

 the predecessor of Walter the Deacon in Suffolk, Mr. Round sees not only 

 the 'Leofwine Cilt' whom Walter succeeded in Essex, but the Lewinus cilt liber 

 homo whose estates at Ulverston in Claydon Hundred were held by Roger 

 Bigot of the Bishop of Bayeux.^" In Essex and Suffolk alike Walter the 

 Deacon had succeeded his brother Thierri or Theoderic.'*^ Robert '■Jilius 

 Corbutionis^ zn6. Tehel de Herion the Breton were of more importance in 

 Essex than in Suffolk, and Ralph de Limesi, who held estates in ten counties, 

 had only six manors and two berewicks in Suffolk, with the land of a few 

 commended freemen.'*' The Norfolk tenants-in-chief, Dreux de Beuvrieres 

 and Robert de Verli, held a single manor each in Suffolk,'*' and Eudo son of 

 Spiruic succeeded Henfrid of St. Omer in both Norfolk and Suffolk."" Among 

 the remaining tenants-in-chief may be noticed Isaac,'" Juichell the Priest, 

 and the king's two crossbowmen, Gilbert and Ralph, all of whom were 

 Norfolk landholders,'" Norman the Sheriff, with his two burgesses in 

 Ipswich '" and the small estate which he held of Robert Malet at Ash in 

 Loes Hundred, the Breton Rainold, who held of the king ' in alms,' the 

 Englishmen Gondwin the Chamberlain and Stannard son of Alwi, who also 

 held land in Essex, and Ulmar, possibly the ' Ulmar praepositus ' of a later entry, 

 from whose father Roger the Sheriff had received a heriot.'" The list closes 

 with the land of the vavasours, of whom it may be noted that they all bear 

 English or Danish names, the land of ' the freemen of Suffolk who remain 

 in the king's hand,' the encroachments {invasiones) on the king' territorial 

 rights and a record of the claims in dispute between the Bishop of Bayeux 

 and the mother of Robert Malet.'" 



With the king's vavasours and freemen we pass from the tenants-in-chief 

 to the lesser men, the mesne tenants, thegns and milites, clergy, burgesses, 

 freemen, sokemen, and the unfree peasantry, villeins, bordars, and serfs. 

 Of the smaller military tenants we hear but little. Some thirty-four 

 thegns are mentioned by name in the Suffolk Domesday, They held before 

 the Conquest of King Edward, of Queen Edith, and of Harold, and their 

 lands had been absorbed by 1086 in the great Norman fiefs, but it is worth 

 noting that the same man may be called teinus in one passage and simply liber 

 homo in another, and we even find the combination of liberi homines teigni^^^ 



*" Dom. Bk. 4233 et seq., 437 ; V.C.H. Essex, i, 352, 353. 



'" Dom. Bk. 426^, 427, 376^, 377 ; V.C.H. Essex, i, 351, 352, 



"' Dom. Bk. 426* ; V.C.H. Essex, \, 354. 



"' Dom. Bk. 4253, 4273 et seq. ; V.C.H. Essex, \, 350. 



"' Dom. Bk. 432, 437 ; V.C.H. Norf. n, 20, 21. "" Dom. Bk. 158*5, 246, 433^ ; V.C.H. Nor/, ii, 21.. 



»" Dom. Bk. 179, 437^ ; V.C.H. Norf. ii, 2. 



"' Dom. Bk. 109, 438, 444, 445 ; V.C.H. Norf. ii, 19. 



•" Dom. Bk. 327, 438 ; cf. iiib,* Ubbeston' ; Round, Feud. Engl. 427, 428, 430. 



•" Dom. Bk. 436*, 445, 445^ ; 97^, 98/^ (Essex). 



•" Ibid. 446, 4463, 447, 447^, 450. "° Ibid. 42 i ; VinogradofF, op. cit. 80.. 



I 401 51 



