Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/495

 1920 THE EARLY SHERIFFS OF NORFOLK 487 St. John's Abbey, Colchester. This is definite evidence that the bishop was William Turbe and that John the sheriff who heads the witnesses was the John (d. 1146) of whom we have spoken above. The difficulty is that this bishop (who had been prior of Norwich) was not consecrated earlier than 1146, while John the sheriff is stated in St. William of Norwich ^ to have died just afterwards. The story there told (pp. 111-12) is that when William, the Prior of Norwich, was. . . consecrated Bishop, this John was so gravely vexed with his disease that he was quite unable to return to Norwich from London, where this business was being done ; but turned out of his way to Mileham, which he reached with difficulty, dying ' a few days ' later. As Dr. James puts it, he died ' shortly after the consecration of William Turbe, whose election he had done his best to prevent.' ^ If the narrative implies that John had been opposing the bishop's election in London {' ubi haec gerebantur '), and died on his way back to Norwich, it is very difficult to determine when and where Bishop William and the sheriff can have met for the purpose of the Stoke charter. The names of the three parish priests and of the two knights do not suggest either London or Norfolk. Again, if the sheriff was too ill to reach Norwich, why should he turn aside out of his way to Mileham (' ab itinere divertens Mileham, eoque vix perveniens ' ), which he was hardly able to reach (p. 112) ? Mileham is further north than Norwich.^ Dr. Jessopp, indeed, claimed that ' the mention of Mileham completes the identification of John the sheriff with John de Cheyney {de Caineto) ; the Cheyneys were lords of Mileham ' (p. 112). But Mileham was the head of a small barony which was given by Henry I to Alan fitz Flaald,* the Breton, who was the ancestor of the English Fitz Alans and the royal Stewarts, and whose successor William Fitz Alan held it under Henry 11.^ Dr. Jessopp, indeed, vouched Carthew's History of the Hundred ' See the chronological table (p. xc). '^ p. Ixxiv. ^ Dr. Jessopp must have known it well, for it is only four or five miles from Seaming,, where he was rector. tenuit in capite de domino Rege per servitium feodi unius militis ' : Testa, p. 294 f. I take this extract from the survey which I assign to 1212. See also the Bed Book entry (p. 271) : ' De feodo Willelmi filii Alani de Northfolcia ' (1166). The knights' names which follow should be carefully compared with the returns to the inquest of sheriffs (1170) on p. cclxxx of the Bed Book; and were identified by me. Cf. Eyton's Shropshire, vii. 217 f. I have dealt, in Genealogist, xviii. 11-12, with the mysterious Simon ' de Caisneto ' alias Simon ' de Norfolc ', who speaks of the day ' quo con- quisivi honorem de Meleham ', and have there suggested that Stephen forfeited the honour, as held by the Fitz Alans, and bestowed it on this Simon.
 * See my Calendar of Documents preserved in France, no. 1149.
 * ' Melham cum pertin' fuit dominicum domini Regis, quam WUlelmus filius Alani