A HISTORY OF ESSEX 



RalPs successors by the house of Filliol, and both paid ' castle ward ' to 

 Baynard's Castle, London. And, lastly, we find that Little Baddow was 

 held as three knights' fees, and Little Oakley as two and a half; and 

 we thus discover that they represent the five and a half knights' fees 

 which were held of Walter Fitz Robert by Richard de Baddow 

 (' Badwan ') in II66, 1 as ' Germund ' had held them of Ralf eighty 

 years before. 



Divided only by Great Oakley from the parish we have just dis- 

 cussed is that which now bears the French name of Beaumont. Morant 

 asserted that ' no mention occurs in Domesday Book of this parish, 

 which probably was then included under Mose or some other 

 adjoining parish ' (i. 485). But its ' lords paramount,' as he ob- 

 served, were the Veres, Earls of Oxford ; and we turn therefore to 

 the manors held by Aubrey de Vere in Domesday. 2 In Tendring 

 Hundred he held only Bentley, Dovercourt and ' Fulepet,' the last of 

 which has not been identified. It was a fairly valuable manor, and it 

 must have touched the coast, for it had two saltpans. Moze, which 

 adjoins Beaumont on the shore of Hamford Water, had three ; and 

 Oakley beyond had two. Saltpans in Essex were by no means common, 

 and their distribution was local. 3 Putting together the evidence we 

 may say without hesitation that ' Fulepet ' was no other than what 

 is now Beaumont. And I venture to go further, and suggest that the 

 name of ' Beaumont ' was intended to express the exact opposite of the 

 English 'Foul hollow' (Fulepet). The identification has a special 

 interest because an Essex locality named ' Fulanpettae ' occurs in an 

 Anglo-Saxon will 4 about the close of the tenth century, immediately 

 after Dovercourt, that is, in the very same position as ' Fulepet ' in 

 Domesday Book. 



If in certain cases it is possible thus to identify manors, in others 

 the evidence is conflicting. A question of extreme difficulty is raised 

 by the entry of the considerable manor of ' Walla.' Morant, who held 

 that Domesday placed it in the Half Hundred of ' Thunreslau,' confi- 

 dently identified it with the later manor of Wallbury in Great Halling- 

 bury, which, he suggested, ' probably extended northward to the parish 

 of Stortford, and southward [eastward ?] to the present Forest, taking in 

 Wall Wood, which still preserves its name ; there could not otherwise 

 have been at the Conquest wood for feeding 1,500 hogs' (ii. 515). 

 This is plausible enough till we trace the alleged descent. In 1086 it is 

 held of Peter de Valognes, and is worth 12 a vear more than a 

 century later, under John, it is held of the king by two Serjeants as two 

 estates in ' Hallingeburia ' or ' Hallingebiria de Walla,' each of them 

 worth 3 a year. 6 This accounts for only half the value even at the 

 time of Domesday ; and moreover Peter's fief had not escheated to the 

 Crown, which could not therefore make grants out of it to Serjeants. 



1 Red Book of the Exchequer, p. 348. 



2 See p. 535 below. 3 See p. 380 above. 



4 Harl. Cart. 43. C. 4. B Red Book of the Exchequer, pp. 457, 507. 



396 



