THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



held in chief (fo. 437) one had been held by ' Bricthmar,' as had been 

 the whole of his Essex one (p. 563 below). When we turn to the Essex 

 lands of Count Eustace, the successor of Ingelric, we find them headed 

 by Fobbing (fo. 26), which had been held by ' Brictmar, a thegn of 

 King Edward,' and after him by Ingelric. At Laver also and Fifield 

 we find the Count succeeding to lands which had been held by 

 ' Brictmar ' ; and we can say therefore that in these estates we have 

 that portion of his lands which had fallen to Ingelric's share. We 

 thus identify a thegn as a landowner in Essex and Suffolk, and obtain 

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

 as his successors. A similar instance of the breaking up of an English 

 thegn's estates is afforded by the case of ./Elfric (Aluricus) Camp, 1 who 

 had held land in Essex, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, and had been of 

 sufficient importance to have sokemen and commended men of his own. 

 Restricting ourselves to those instances in which his identity is proved, 

 we find that in Essex his manors lay in the north-east of the county, 

 and that while Great Oakley was secured by Robert Gernon, Ramsey 

 passed to Ralf Bainard, and Bradfield and Dedham to Roger ' de 

 Ramis.' In Suffolk, ^Elfric is spoken of as the predecessor of ' Eudo 

 Dapifer,' who succeeded him, we find, at Layham, as he also did in 

 Cambridgeshire, at Babraham, Papworth and Sawston, though Robert 

 Gernon was in that county, his successor at Duxford and Foulmire. 1 



On the whole it would seem that in Essex both types of succession 

 are very well represented. If we have cases in which Norman lords 

 obtained virtually the whole possessions of great English landowners, 

 such as Ansgar the staller, Wulfwine, or Withgar of Clare, we have 

 also abundant instances of fiefs formed from numerous small estates, 

 and a certain number in which the lands of an English holder were 

 broken up and divided between two or more of those who shared in 

 the spoils of England. It is probable that these last would be much 

 more numerous if it were not for the great difficulty of identifying 

 with exactitude the bearers of English names which were more or less 

 common. 



No general conclusion can be stated as to the proportion or local 

 distribution of large and small estates in Essex before the Conquest. The 

 Domesday scribe, when recording only the Christian name of an English 

 predecessor, gave us, in doing so, no indication whether he was but a 

 small yeoman (to adopt, for convenience, a later term) or a magnate 

 holding wide estates in more than one county. In Essex again the 

 scribe was fond of entering land as having been held by ' one free 

 man ' or more. And this vague term, as I have already indicated, 

 might denote a considerable landowner as well as a very small one. 

 Again, although we have cases in which the assessment figures suggest 



1 This name it found as Camp, Campe, Campa, Capin, Capus and Ccmp, which further illustrates 

 the loose practice of the Domesday scribe in the matter of Anglo-Saion names. 



' The Inquisltio Comitaliu Cantairigiftisii enables us to trace more accurately his possessions in that 

 county by adding the distinctive surname, which was often omitted by the Domesday scribe. 

 I 353 45 



