Page:VCH Essex 1.djvu/468

 A HISTORY OF ESSEX RalPs successors by the house of Filliol, and both paid ' castle ward ' to Baynard's Castle, London. And, lastly, we find that Little Baddow was held as three knights' fees, and Little Oakley as two and a half; and we thus discover that they represent the five and a half knights' fees which were held of Walter Fitz Robert by Richard de Baddow (' Badwan ') in II66, 1 as ' Germund ' had held them of Ralf eighty years before. Divided only by Great Oakley from the parish we have just dis- cussed is that which now bears the French name of Beaumont. Morant asserted that ' no mention occurs in Domesday Book of this parish, which probably was then included under Mose or some other adjoining parish ' (i. 485). But its ' lords paramount,' as he ob- served, were the Veres, Earls of Oxford ; and we turn therefore to the manors held by Aubrey de Vere in Domesday. 2 In Tendring Hundred he held only Bentley, Dovercourt and ' Fulepet,' the last of which has not been identified. It was a fairly valuable manor, and it must have touched the coast, for it had two saltpans. Moze, which adjoins Beaumont on the shore of Hamford Water, had three ; and Oakley beyond had two. Saltpans in Essex were by no means common, and their distribution was local. 3 Putting together the evidence we may say without hesitation that ' Fulepet ' was no other than what is now Beaumont. And I venture to go further, and suggest that the name of ' Beaumont ' was intended to express the exact opposite of the English 'Foul hollow' (Fulepet). The identification has a special interest because an Essex locality named ' Fulanpettae ' occurs in an Anglo-Saxon will 4 about the close of the tenth century, immediately after Dovercourt, that is, in the very same position as ' Fulepet ' in Domesday Book. If in certain cases it is possible thus to identify manors, in others the evidence is conflicting. A question of extreme difficulty is raised by the entry of the considerable manor of ' Walla.' Morant, who held that Domesday placed it in the Half Hundred of ' Thunreslau,' confi- dently identified it with the later manor of Wallbury in Great Halling- bury, which, he suggested, ' probably extended northward to the parish of Stortford, and southward [eastward ?] to the present Forest, taking in Wall Wood, which still preserves its name ; there could not otherwise have been at the Conquest wood for feeding 1,500 hogs' (ii. 515). This is plausible enough till we trace the alleged descent. In 1086 it is held of Peter de Valognes, and is worth 12 a vear more than a century later, under John, it is held of the king by two Serjeants as two estates in ' Hallingeburia ' or ' Hallingebiria de Walla,' each of them worth 3 a year. 6 This accounts for only half the value even at the time of Domesday ; and moreover Peter's fief had not escheated to the Crown, which could not therefore make grants out of it to Serjeants. 1 Red Book of the Exchequer, p. 348. 2 See p. 535 below. 3 See p. 380 above. 4 Harl. Cart. 43. C. 4. B Red Book of the Exchequer, pp. 457, 507. 396