Page:VCH Northamptonshire 1.djvu/365

 THE DOMESDAY SURVEY county we find him succeeding ' Azor ' in an estate at Stamford (fo. 336^) and a Lincolnshire manor (fo. 366), while ' Suen, a thegn of King Edward,' had preceded him in a Bucks manor (fo. 152^). Put- ting this evidence together we may safely infer that ^ Suain ' who, in 1086, held Stoke Bruern and the houses in Northampton, was the pre- decessor, together with his father Azor, of Gunfrei de ' Cioches ' in many manors.' This conclusion is of some importance, because, if it had not been for the entry under Northampton, we should have supposed Gunfrei's predecessors to be two contemporary and unconnected English- men. But we saw above (p. 287) that Burred and Eadwine his son were similarly spoken of as independent predecessors of Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances ; and, in the greatest instance of all, Harold and his father, earl Godwine, are both spoken of in Domesday as independent pre- decessors, though the latter, we know, died before Edward the Con- fessor. Here then we extend our knowledge of the system of the great survey. I have kept, as does Domesday, to the last, the fief of ' Countess Judith,' widow of earl Waltheof. Apart from its extent, this fief is of special historic interest as that which descended to the local earls of the houses of Senlis and of Scotland. As was justly observed by Professor Freeman, the Domesday estates of the countess ' had partly belonged to her husband, partly to other English owners,' which ' gives the im- pression that most of the lands were personal grants to herself;" for the king was her uncle. That these estates were held by her in 1086 is a fact which has a most important bearing on the acquisition of the earldom, with her daughter, by Simon de Senlis. The accepted date for the foundation of St. Andrew's Priory, Northampton, is 1084,' but Simon, in the foundation charter, deals with the estates of the earldom as then in his own possession. His charter, therefore, must at least be later than the Domesday survey. I believe that we can go further and assign this important foundation to the years 109 3-1 100. For I have found one of these terse documents characteristic of William Rufus, in which, without mentioning St. Andrew's, he confirms the gift of earl Simon to Ste. Marie de la Charite* and its monks. The names of the under-tenants on the countess Judith's fief de- serve careful study, for they and their descendants, as might be expected, occur in connection with the earls and with St. Andrew's Priory. Grim- bald, for instance, who held of the countess at two places in Leicester- shire (fo. 236/^) as well as in Northants and Rutland (fo. 228/^), witnessed the foundation charter of St. Andrew's and gave it the church ' Bridges took this to be a 'restoration,' because 'Ingulphus acquaints us' that, in 1076, he found at Crowland two monks who had bee- 'professed' at St. Andrew's. There is an allusion also to this statement in the Records of the Borough of Northampton (Vol. I.), but ' Ingulphus ' has now long been known to be a forgery. hitherto overlooked, is addressed to Bishop Robert (of Lincoln), appointed in 1093. 293
 * See, further, the note on ' Suain ' on p. ' 43 ' below.
 * History of the Norman Conquest (1871), IV. 603-4.
 * MS. Vesp. E. xviii., fo. i^d (pencil). This document, which seems to have been