A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE 
thegn of King Edward,’ lay in the north-west of the county. They are 
chiefly remarkable as being held of him, with the exception of two hides 
at Sharnbrook by Ernulf of Ardres (‘Arde’), from whom they de- 
scended to the Counts of Guines.t Stevington was the chief manor.’ 
Walter Giffard belongs to the adjoining county of Buckingham, as does 
his great tenant Hugh de Bolbec, though he held of him Woburn and 
two other manors in Bedfordshire. William de Warenne held in Bedford- 
shire only dependencies of his lordship of Kimbolton across the Hunting- 
donshire border.’ In this county as in others William de Eu (‘Ow’) 
held his lands as successor to a great Wiltshire thegn, ‘ Alestan * of 
Boscombe, whose estates were scattered about the country. 
Short as is the entry of the lands held by Miles Crispin it raises some 
points of interest. I have already spoken of the complaint by the 
monks of Ramsey Abbey that his rich manor of Clapham had been held 
of them for life only by his English predecessor,’ but the men of the 
Hundred also asserted that two sokemen with small holdings in Milton 
(Ernest) had been wrongfully added to Clapham by Robert de ‘ Olgi.’ 
Now this statement distinctly implies that Robert had preceded Miles in 
his tenure of Clapham, a fact of much interest in view of the traditional 
belief that Miles married Robert’s daughter. That Robert and Miles 
were in some way connected is proved not only by their both succeeding 
to lands of Wigod of Wallingford—a fact which attracted Mr. Free- 
man’s notice and led him to suggest that they both married daughters of 
Wigod—but also by their both succeeding to lands of a certain Brihtric, 
a fact, it would seem, unnoticed. In Bedfordshire ‘ Brixtric, thegn of 
King Edward,’ was the only English predecessor of Miles, and in Buck- 
inghamshire Miles had similarly succeeded, in fourteen cases, to the lands 
of a ‘ Brictric’ variously described as ‘a thegn of King Edward’ and ‘a 
man of Queen Edith.’ In Buckinghamshire also Robert d’Ouilly was 
holding two valuable manors of which one had been held by Brihtric, 
‘thegn of King Edward,’ and the other by Brihtric of Queen Edith, 
while some land held by men of Brihtric at Wigginton across the 
Hertfordshire border had also passed to him. We can thus identify the 
Bedfordshire ‘ Brictric’ as a wealthy thegn who had ‘men’ of his own and 
lands in more than one county.” 
1 See Feudal England, pp. 462-4, where Mr. Freeman’s errors on the point are corrected. 
2 It should be observed that ‘Alwold (sic), a thegn of King Edward,’ was the count’s predecessor 
in all his Bedfordshire lands except at Stevington itself, which is entered as having been held by ‘ Ade- 
lold a thegn of King Edward.’ The two names would certainly be deemed distinct, and yet the entry, 
on the fief of the Bishop of Bayeux, of land at Turvey which had been held by ‘a man of Alwold of 
Stevington’ (‘homo Alwoldi de Stivetone’), proves that the names were identical and incidentally that 
Stevington was Alwold’s seat. I have elsewhere (p. 200) shown that Anschil of Ware is indifferently 
styled ‘Aschil? and ‘Achi’ in the survey of this county. These instances are important as evidence 
of the almost incredible variations in the forms of Englishmen’s names given by the Domesday scribes. 
3 See Testa de Nevill, p. 249 ; ‘ Honor de Kenebauton verumptamen est in comitatu Huntedon, 
sed villate pertinentes sunt in comitatu Bed{ford].’ (Compare p. 214 below.) 
4 The complaint was clearly ineffectual, for Clapham continued to form part of ‘the Honour of 
Wallingford’ (as Miles’ fief was termed). 
5 He is also found in Worcestershire as ‘a thegn of Queen Edith,’ and possibly in Gloucester- 
shire as ‘a thegn of King Edward.’ 
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