A HISTORY OF ESSEX 



on the Colne, a few miles distant. The fact that Fingringhoe had 

 already been given, towards the close of the tenth century, to ' St. Peter 

 of Mersea ' ' has been hitherto overlooked, but is very suggestive of an 

 early foundation of which Edward availed himself. St. Ouen held, 

 according to Domesday, two-thirds of the profits arising from the 

 Hundred court of Winstree, and the Hundred is subsequently spoken of 

 as the abbey's. Of the other religious houses two were the abbeys at 

 Caen. I have already dealt with the endowment of the Abbaye aux Dames. 

 The Abbaye aux Hommes (St. Stephen of Caen) received the manor of 

 Panfield as its share, not indeed, as Domesday might lead us to expect, 

 from William, but from a local baron, Waleram, whose son John had 

 succeeded him in 1086, and who also gave the tithe of his lands at 

 Aveley and at Bures. 2 The Abbey of St. Walery, 3 which received lands 

 in Essex alone, its chief estate being Takeley, was provided for mainly 

 from the forfeited possessions of Turchil, an Englishman, in the Hundreds 

 of Uttlesford and of Dengie. 



Although classed by Domesday among ecclesiastical holders, Odo 

 the warrior Bishop of Bayeux filled an anomalous position. It was in 

 his personal capacity that he shared in the spoils of the Conquest ; and 

 his fief, instead of passing to his see, was broken up after his fall. In 

 Essex, as in other counties, the Survey teems with proofs of this grasping 

 prelate's encroachments on the lands of others. His example in this 

 respect was followed by one of his great under-tenants, the extent of 

 whose holdings in Essex is somewhat obscured in Domesday. Ralf ' the 

 son of Turold ' held of him at Vange, Barstable, Ingrave, Wickford, 

 Hassingbroke (in Stanford-le-Hope), Chadwell, Samanton (near Mersea), 

 Thorrington, and in the Hanningfields, where was his largest estate. He 

 was the son of Turold ' of Rochester,' by whose lawless aggression much 

 of this land had been acquired. At Thorrington Turold had seized upon 

 the manor together with the land of a freeman at Alresford near by ; in 

 the Hanningfields he had ousted no fewer than twenty-two freemen, 

 wronging thereby the abbey of Ely ; at Mucking he had encroached on 

 the lands of Barking Abbey, and at Fobbing on those of Count Eustace. 

 In Kent also, where his estates were large, we find his name (as 

 ' Turoldus de Hrovecestria') among those tenants of Bishop Odo who 

 had encroached on lands of the church and were forced by Lanfranc to 

 restore them in 1072.* The part played in Essex by this great land- 

 grabber tempts one to present his portrait as given by the Bayeux Tap- 

 estry. Against it ' Turold ' is written. Turold's acts lived after him ; 

 for Essex manors held by him are subsequently found paying for castle- 

 guard at Rochester, the place from which he took his surname. 6 The 



1 Harl. Cart. 43 C. 4. 



2 Calendar of Documents Preserved in France, pp. 156, 162. 3 See p. 356 below. 



4 Angfta Sacra, i. 335-6. Mr. Freeman spoke of him as 'Turold of Rochester, whose dwarfish 

 form still lives in the Tapestry of Bayeux' (iv. 366, compare Archisohgia, xix. 191, 204), but it is not 

 likely that a man of Turold's importance would be represented as a mere retainer and as of dwarfish 

 proportions. The legend ' Turold ' must refer to the standing warrior. 



6 See Arch. Joum. lix. 152. 



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