Page:VCH Norfolk 2.djvu/49

 DOMESDAY SURVEY Walton and at Palgrave were both made out of his lands. If we are right in regarding Gimingham and Sidestrand as part of his estates, we can probably place Waleran's tenure of Norwich before 1070/ since the latter seems to have been acting as sheriff when the manors were united. As in the case of the Lewes exchange, so in that of Frederic we find a reckoning by manors, as though the Conqueror's barons had each received some definite number of them in each county.^ The lands of Roger Bigod, the founder of the house of the earls of Norfolk, occupy more of the space of Little Domesday than those of William de Warenne. They hardly look so important on our map, since so many of the holdings mentioned have not been marked, being of less than one carucate. The salient feature of the Bigod holding is the immense number of small freeholders which it comprised. A special section of the account (ff. 183-190) is devoted to these freeholders, and many others will be found in the descrip- tion of Roger's larger estates. As William de Warenne was the great land- holder of the north and west of Norfolk, so in the south and east Roger's was the predominant power. Like William, again, he owed a considerable portion of his Norfolk lands to a recent exchange. The king had enfeoffed Isaac, a Suffolk tenant-in-chief, with certain lands formerly belonging to Earl Ralf, and had given Roger Bigod other lands in Norfolk by way of compensation.' Roger seems to have been sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk at the date of the survey,* and probably had burgesses in Norwich ^ and Thetford ° in that capacity. He had previously held Earsham under Stigand.' He had a brother William who came from Apulia with Geoffrey Ridel, and thus forms a curious link with the Norman kingdom of Sicily.* The connexion of the two realms still subsisted under Henry II.' Roger's estate was a composite one. Besides the land which he had held of Stigand, some of which came to him on Stigand's fall, he held the lands of Alwi of Thetford which King William gave him,^" and he is mentioned as the successor of Godwin, Earl Ralf's uncle," and of Bishop Aylmer,^^ and he had obtained a share of the lands of Edric of Laxfield.^' Of the remaining lay tenants we may notice Godric Dapifer, whom we have met before as the farmer of Earl Ralfs lands. In his own capacity he seems to have succeeded to many of the earl's free tenants, as well as to the lands of Edwin, one of King Edward's own thegns.'* Hermer de Ferrieres, the holder of the later barony of Wormegay, afterwards held by the Bardolfs, was the successor of a Danish Turchetel,^^ and his fee is a good example of the simple substitution of a Norman tenant for a pre-Conquest holder. The holding seems to have remained almost unaltered as late as the fourteenth century, as will be seen by comparing Domesday with the returns of knights' fees in Feudal Aids. ' Dom. Bk. wjb and 170^. ' Ibid. f. 170^ ; cf. Maitland, Dom. Bk. and Beyond, pp. 127 sq. ' Dom. Bk. f. 179. ■* Ibid, and 1853. See Mr. Round's note below, p. 37, note ". ' Ibid. f. 1 18. ' Ibid. f. 173. ' Ibid. f. 139. ' Ibid. f. 180. ^ Dial, de Scaccario, I, vi, and note. '» Dom. Bk. fF. i8i3, 182. " Ibid. f. 143^. '' Ibid. f. 175^. " Ibid. ff. 1793, 180. "Ibid. ff. 1753, 203, 2033. Godric, however, seems to have got into trouble on one occasion, as a ' forisfactura ' which he suffered is mentioned on f. 278. " Ibid. ff. 2053, sqq. 19