By Sir Charles Hohhouse, Bart. 



77 



Baldwin's daughter, and the following quaint ballad thus records 

 the disastrous result of the lady's wooing : — 



" A lui la pucele envela messager 

 Pur sa amur a lui procurer ; 

 Meis Brictrich Maude refusa, 

 Dunt elle mult se coruca ; 

 Hastivement mer passa 

 E a William Bastard se maria." 



So Matilda woo'd and was refused, and thereafter, when she 

 became Queen of England, smarting, no doubt, under the " spretse 

 injuria forms/' she is said to have appropriated Brictric's possessions, 

 and to have thrown him into prison. 1 



One of his possessions, still called after him, Brixton (or Bricticis- 

 ton)-Deverel, passed undoubtedly to Matilda, but inasmuch as she 

 died before Domesday was compiled, and inasmuch as we still find 

 him, according to Domesday, described as a king's thane, in pos- 

 session of the largest part at least of the Wiltshire manors which 

 he had held before the Conquest, it cannot be true that Matilda 

 absolutely despoiled him or that she deprived him permanently of 

 either his liberty or his position. 



What were the further fortunes of Brictric and his family I do 

 not know, but I imagine that he and they were eaten up, as the 

 Zulus say, by that great land-hungerer — Edward of Salisbury, 

 Certainly this individual, whether in his capacity of sheriff of the 

 county, or by private purchase, had in A.D. 1100 — or only fourteen 

 years after the record in Domesday — 'eaten up Brictric's manor of 

 Trowbridge and Staverton, 2 and as certainly, in the year 1125, our 

 manor had passed first into the hands of Humphrey Bohun the 

 second, and from him into those of Humphrey Bohun the third, 

 and had by them been conveyed to the Priory of St. Pancras, 

 Lewes, for the purpose of founding a daughter Cluniac priory in 

 our parish. 3 



1 Sussex Archaeological Coll., v. 28, p. 121. Jones's Annals of Trowbridge, 

 pp. 5, 6. 



2 Jones's Annals of Trowbridge, pp. 6, 7. 

 3 Monasticon. Jones's Annals of Trowbridge, p. 7. Jackson's History of tlio 

 Priory and Wiltshire Domesday, p. 64. 



