A HISTORY OF ESSEX 



Boulogne the greatest lay baron in Hertfordshire as well as in Essex. 

 But Essex was the chief seat of his power, and at Witham in this 

 county was held the court of the ' Honour.' This fief, of which the 

 wide extent is shown on the Domesday map, was composed partly of the 

 lands of a number of English predecessors and partly of those which had 

 been acquired, both under Edward the Confessor and in the earlier days 

 of William, by Ingelric the priest, a favourite of both sovereigns and the 

 founder of St. Martin-le-Grand. 1 The existence of this element in the 

 fief accounts for the traces of another court held in connexion with the 

 fief at that religious house. In the Essex Domesday there are found two 

 mysterious allusions to the Count's ' 100 manors ' (mansiones) which have 

 as yet defied explanation. But for the history of the county the feature 

 of greatest interest on his fief is the relation it established between the 

 barons and religious houses of the Boulonnais and this East-Saxon land. 

 I may perhaps be allowed to quote what I have elsewhere said of 

 'Adelolf de Merc,' who is found holding of the Count in 1086 no 

 fewer than eleven estates in Essex. 



Deeper than the counts themselves or than any other of their vassals, have 

 Adelolf and his heirs stamped their name on the East-Saxon land. This younger 

 branch of the vicomtes of Marck, near Calais, which was at that time in the Boulonnais, 

 is commemorated in the parish of Marks Tey, as in the manor of Merks or Marks in 

 Dunmow, which was held by Adelolf himself in 1086, by his heir Enguerrand de 

 Merc in 1258, and by the same family in 1340. Mark Hall, in Latton, is another 

 of the manors which take their names from this family, and was held by Adelolf, its 

 founder, in 1086. His descendants increased and multiplied in the land : Fulc de 

 Merc and M. de Merc attended the count's feudal court in Essex before H2O; 

 Geoffrey and Enguerrand de Merc of Essex are found on the Pipe Roll of 1130 ; 

 Henry and Simon de Merc are recorded as holding lands on the Boulogne fief in the 

 days of John. 2 



The seigneurs of Austruy, constables of the Boulonnais, held under their 

 counts at Shopland and Chich (St. Osyth), and their tenants at Parndon 

 derived their name from Wissant, the port of the Comte. Of its 

 religious houses Rumilly-le-Comte obtained rent-charges on Fobbing 

 and Shenfield, together with the churches of High Ongar, Stanford 

 Rivers, Langenhoe, Little Laver, and apparently of Coggeshall ; and 

 St. Wulmer de Samer received a rent-charge on Fobbing and tithes at 

 Rivenhall. To anticipate a little further, the importance in Essex his- 

 tory of the great Boulogne fief was shown when, forty years after the 

 Domesday Survey, the heiress of the counts brought it in marriage to 

 Stephen, afterwards king. 



When a great fief escheated to the king, it retained its corporate 

 existence under the name of an ' Honour.' Essex affords other instances 

 besides that of the Honour of Boulogne, and two of these may be dealt 

 with together, because under Stephen they both came, by descent, to 

 Henry of Essex, and in the early years of the next reign escheated, on 

 his fall, to the Crown. These were known as the Honour of Rayleigh, 

 which was held in 1086 by Suain of Essex, Henry's paternal ancestor, 



1 See p. 341 above. * Studies in Peerage and Family History, pp. 156-7. 



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