Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/173

1922 who on occasion appear at the great curia, alternately and for at least one year jointly, held the office for approximately the whole of the decade following 1107. But the number of hereditary shrievalties held by great barons continued to decline despite the well-known succession in Worcestershire, first of the son, then of the son-in-law of Urse d'Abetot. Well before 1120 Kent had passed from the family of Haimo and was in the hands of William of Eynesford, distinctly a man of the new order. William Bigod, who succeeded his father as dapifer, was made sheriff of Suffolk and probably of Norfolk also in recognition of the services of the elder Bigod. Yet before William went down with the White Ship in 1120 both of these counties had been held by two other sheriffs of good family but of lesser rank. Nicholas of Stafford, although called by the title of sheriff in 1130, could not have held the ancestral office for seven years preceding that date. In all these, as in the two earlier cases, the son of a Domesday sheriff in his lifetime made way for a member of the new ruling circle. Moreover Aiulf the chamberlain was after a time superseded in Dorset and Somerset. By 1123, at the latest, only three sheriffs of the older type remained. Walter of Gloucester in Gloucestershire, Walter de Beauchamp in Worcestershire, and Richard fitz Baldwin in Devon each held the county ruled by two of his family before him. Richard, like his successor of 1128–30, appears also to have held Cornwall.