Trowbridge in the days of Edward the Confessor. 213 



the Confessor as an ambassador to the court of Baldwin, Count of 

 Flanders. The latter had a daughter, Matilda by name, who, it is said, 

 formed a deep and romantic affection for Brictric, and, what was a 

 worse mistake on her part, betrayed herself. Unhappily for her, and 

 as the event turned out, unluckily for Brictric too, our English thane 

 did not reciprocate the tender feelings. Then as chroniclers tell us — ■ 

 though we must be a little careful in believing everything we read — 

 "the hatred wherewith she hated him was greater than the love 

 wherewith she had loved him.-" And unfortunately she had before 

 very long an opportunity of displaying it. 



For in a few years afterwards she married William of Normandy, 

 who in due time became King of England, and so the self-same lady 

 that Brictric politely declined as a wife he was obliged to accept as 

 a Queen. And then (to use Thierry's words) " Matilda herself 

 asked the new King, her husband, to place at her disposal, with all 

 his possessions, the Englishman who had disdained her. She gratified 

 her revenge and cupidity at once, by appropriating the possessions 

 to herself, and causing Brictric to be shut up in a fortress.'''' So no 

 doubt say some of the chroniclers, but literally true it is not. For 

 example, the Domesday Record is brought down to the year 1087, 

 and at that time Brictric was possessed of these manors ; whereas 

 the Queen Matilda died in 1083, four years before. No doubt 

 some of Brictric's estates were apportioned to her, and with them 

 she endowed monasteries at Bee in Normandy, and elsewhere. 

 Still there is a grim touch of irony in the entry that we meet 

 with in one part of Domesday Book — " Infra- scrip tas terras tenuit 

 Brictric et post Regina Matilda " — that looks as though there were 

 some truth in the tale, and as if it was not by a simple accident 

 that the said manors fell to Matilda's share. It is certain, that though 

 possibly Brictric may have been permitted to enjoy these manors of 

 which we are now speaking for life, the estates soon passed away 

 from his family. Though he inherited them from his father, the King 

 or Queen, as the case may have been, and that too probably with no 

 unnecessary legal formalities, promptly cut off the entail. 



In A.D. 1100, just thirteen years after the completion of the Domes- 

 day Record, Trowbridge (Trobregc) and Staverton are recorded as 



