A HISTORY OF ESSEX 



among the tenants-in-chief, are hardly represented at all in Essex. 

 Count Alan, the head of the Bretons in England, had large interests in 

 Suffolk, but a single page of Domesday suffices for his Essex manors. 

 His chief tenant in the county was Hervey ' de Ispania,' who held of him 

 at Willingale (' Spain '), Finchingfield, Bentley, Manhall (in Saffron 

 Walden), etc. The name of Hervey is distinctively Breton. It is 

 worthy of notice that at Canfield, and at one of the Rodings, Aubrey de 

 Vere was tenant of the count, for there seems to have been some con- 

 nexion between Aubrey and the Counts of Brittany ; l and when the 

 priory was founded at Hatfield Broad-Oak, half a century after Domes- 

 day, by his namesake and successor, it was given as a cell to St. Melaine 

 of Rennes, the count's capital. One is glad to be able to establish the 

 fact that ' Edeva,' whom the count had succeeded in several Essex 

 estates, was no other than Edith 'the beautiful' (pu/cbra), Edith 'the 

 fair' (faira), Edith 'the rich' (dives), whose vast estates in the adjoining 

 counties of Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk had been largely 

 bestowed on Count Alan. 2 The one Breton fief of which the head was 

 in Essex was that of ' Tihel the Breton.' He is so entered in Domesday 

 under Essex, except in a stray passage (fo. 24), where he occurs, as in 

 Suffolk, as Tihel ' de Herion.' This name is but a variant of the 

 ' Helion ' in Helion Bumpstead, and the house which bore it derived it 

 from what is now Hellean, a canton of Josselin near Ploermel (Morbihan). 

 Their barony, which was afterwards held by the service of ten knights, 

 lay in the three eastern counties and largely in the Haverhill neighbour- 

 hood. 3 As Tihel de ' Heriun ' or ' Heliun ' its Domesday lord was one 

 of the ' barons ' or commissioners (legati) appointed by the Conqueror 

 to determine the rights of Ely Abbey in io8o. 4 'Gilbert the son of 

 Salomon ' also must, from his name, have been a Breton. In Essex he 

 had but a tiny holding, and his only other estates were at Meppershall 

 and Felmersham. No distinctively Flemish name is found among the 

 Essex tenants-in-chief, but Walter de Douai (' doai '), a great baron in 

 the south-west of England, held three manors. 



Of the remaining fiefs that of Hamo the ' dapifer ' or the sheriff 

 (of Kent) is chiefly remarkable for his succession to Thurbern at Faulk- 

 bourne, Totham, etc., and especially at Colchester, and to a woman called 

 ' Gotild ' in several manors. The widespread succession of Henry de 

 Ferrers to the lands of Bondig the ' staller ' enables us to identify the 

 latter with the former holder of Steeple, Butsbury and Woodham 

 (Ferrers). Otto 'the goldsmith' (aurifaber, aurifex) deserves mention, 



1 See my Calendar of Documents Preserved in France, p. 423. 



2 See, for this mysterious person, Freeman's Norman Conquest (1875), iii. 792. It is clear from 

 the Suffolk entries of Earl Ralf's manors which Godric dapifer was ' farming' for the king (fos. 284^ et 

 seq.) that some of Edith's manors had been secured by Earl Ralf (of Norfolk), and had passed on his fall 

 to the king. Among these, we thus learn, was Great Sampford in Essex, which ' tenuit Edeva ; post 

 Radulfus comes ; modo Godricus dapifer in manu regis ' (see p. 436 below). The identity of the Essex 

 ' Edeva ' has never, I believe, been noted. 



3 See for all this my paper on ' Helion of Helion's Bumpstead ' in Essex Archeeologcal Transactions, 

 [n.s.] viii. 187-91. 



* See Inquisitio comitatus Cantabrigiensis, pp. xvii., xviii. 



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