A HISTORY OF ESSEX 



to the Crown, which proceeded to dispose of it anew. Eudes, it will 

 be seen, cannot have been more than middle-aged at the date of Domes- 

 day, and indeed he had been preceded in possession of some at least of 

 his manors by another Norman, Lisois de Moustiers. 



Eudes had married a daughter of Richard Fitz Gilbert de Clare, 

 the head of whose fief was on the Essex border, where the moated 

 mound of his castle is still to be seen at Clare. The ' Honour of Clare ' 

 continues to exist among the possessions of the Crown and includes 

 manors in Essex ; but it must be treated as a Suffolk fief, its caput lying 

 in that county. It should however be observed that in Essex as in 

 Suffolk the bulk of Richard's lands had belonged to Wisgar (son of 

 ./Elfric), whose vast estates he had obtained. His predecessor's father 

 ^Ifric was the son of an older Wisgar (alias Withgar), and occurs as 

 such not only among those ' thegns of Essex ' who attest a grant of 

 Wimbish to the church of Canterbury under Edward the Confessor, 1 

 but also as the lord of Clare itself, 2 which he gave in the same reign 

 to ' St. John,' placing in charge of the religious house there founded 

 ' a certain priest, Ledmar,' 2 who held estates at Bendish (Hall) and 

 Gestingthorpe in Essex. 3 The extent of Wisgar's estates will be evident 

 from the Domesday text, where it will be seen that in Essex his most 

 valuable possession was Thaxted. Wisgar's ' sphere of influence,' as it 

 may be termed, should be observed. It is naturally found in the Hundred 

 of Hinckford, where small properties are entered as held by sokemen 

 ' under Wisgar' in many places ; but in Tendring Hundred also he had 

 a few sokemen, and a man who held ' freely ' at Bromley was ' com- 

 mended ' to him. At Bendish, we read, Wisgar had annexed 30 acres 

 since the coming of King William, but his successor took far more 

 advantage of the temptation offered by the number of ' small holders ' 

 in the north of the county. At the end of a list of such holders in 

 the Hundred of Hinckford, whose lands Richard had annexed, we read 

 that Wisgar had only possessed their ' commendation.' * 



A certain interest attaches to another predecessor of Richard, Phin 

 styled ' the Dane.' In Essex he is entered as having held Langham and 

 Barrow (Hall) in Wakering, manors lying widely apart, which had both 

 passed to the lord of Clare. It is only when we turn to Suffolk that 

 we learn something about him. The solitary reference given by Ellis 

 conveys no idea of his importance in that county ; for Richard de Clare 

 held in Ipswich fourteen burgesses, who had been held by Phin (fo. 393), 

 and allusion is made to the ' land,' the 'fief and even the ' honour' of 

 Phin (fos. 3935^)- He had also men 'commended' to him. As he 

 is charged with adding some free men to a manor ' in the time of King 

 William,' he must, like Wisgar, have weathered the actual Conquest ; 

 and even in 1086 his widow was holding in Essex two manors, of which 

 one at least had previously been held by her husband (see p. 565). 

 There is fortunately preserved in the cartulary of St. John's Abbey, 



1 Madox's Formulare, p. 238, and Morant's Essex, ii. 558. 



* Domesday, ii. 389 b. a See pp. 471, 477 below. * See p. 572 below. 



348 



