Page:VCH Northamptonshire 1.djvu/364

 A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE Jamais Fran9ois bien ne saura Jurer higod ne brelare By my troit n'y pourfitera Ne maiitre milord, ne sere ; Anglois aussi tant soit cure, Ne formcra bicn Pinqueny. ' Another tenant-in-chief who had a large holding in the shire was Guy de ' Reinbuedcurt,' * whose whole barony was held, in the hands of his heirs the Foliots, by the service of fifteen knights. Although there is in France more than one place from which his name might be derived, Raimbeaucurt in the ' Nord,' near Douai, seems to me the most likely. In that case we must add him to the Flemings. It is a far cry from Flanders to Brittany, but their combination may help to remind us that the ' Norman ' Conquest was the work of more than William's subjects. In the list of Northamptonshire tenants-in- chief we note at once Oger ' the Breton ' and Maino ' the Breton,' of whom the former was lord of Bourne in Lincolnshire,' while the latter had his chief seat at Wolverton in Bucks. To these we must add Geoffrey ' de Wirce,' who, as Mr. Ellis has ably shown, derived his name from La Guerche, a town near Rennes on the borders of Brittany.* Of the other tenants calling for mention under this county Geoffrey ' Alselin ' had obtained, as Mr. Ellis has shown,* the great estates of an English thegn, Tochi son of Outi, in the counties of Lincoln, North- ampton, Notts, Leicester, Derby, and Yorks, together with his ' hall ' in Lincoln itself ' Eustace,' who held, as a tenant-in-chief at half a dozen places in the county is styled in the schedule of landholders Eustace ' de Huntedune,' as he also is in Cambridgeshire (fo. K^gb) and under Stamford (fo. 336*^). This is an interesting illustration of the practice by which a sheriff took his name from the chief town of his county. For he was no other than ' Eustace the sheriff,' as he is styled in Huntingdonshire (fos. 203, 206, 208), over which county he presided. Like some other Norman sheriffs, he was a shocking oppressor, robbing, as the pages of Domesday reveal, abbeys, churches, and private persons. He was the ' Eustace ' who held in Northamptonshire, as an under- tenant of Peterborough Abbey, at Polebrook, Winwick, Clapton, and Catworth.* Let us pass from the grasping Norman sheriff to the dis- possessed Englishman. The ' Suain ' who held Stoke Bruern, as a tenant-in-chief, in Domesday is luckily identified for us by the entry, under Northampton, that ' Suain son of Azur,' held there twenty-one houses ' belonging to Stoches.' Following this clue we find that Gunfrei de ' Cioches ' had succeeded an ' Azur ' in two of his estates and a 'Suain' in most of the others (fo. 227). Glancing outside the Rainbucurt, Rainbudcurt, Rainbuedcurt, Ramburtcurt, Rambutcurt, etc., etc. ^ Feudal England, p. 220. ' Ibid. • Feudal England, pp. 167, 222-3. 292
 * Robert Gaguin's La Royne de hon repos.
 * In auxiliary documents relating to Cambridgeshire his surname is found as Raimbecurt,
 * Mr. Ellis' ' Landholders of Yorkshire ' [Torkihire Jrchaologkal Journal).