Page:VCH Suffolk 1.djvu/479

 DOMESDAY SURVEY Pinel, has enabled Mr. Round to ' throw light on the devolution of an Essex thegn's estates,' to ' identify a thegn as a landowner in Essex and Suffolk,' and to ' obtain a good instance of an Englishman having not one but several aliens as his successors.' '" Brictmar's estates were divided into three portions, of which one, in Suffolk, fell to Ranulf Ilger's brother ; one, in Suffolk and Essex, was granted to Ralph Pinel ; and the third, in Essex, was given by the king to Ingelric, and was in the possession of Ingelric's successor. Count Eustace, in 1086. In ' Lewin of Bagatona ' (Bacton), King Edward's thegn, the predecessor of Walter the Deacon in Suffolk, Mr. Round sees not only the 'Leofwine Cilt' whom Walter succeeded in Essex, but the Lewinus cilt liber homo whose estates at Ulverston in Claydon Hundred were held by Roger Bigot of the Bishop of Bayeux.^" In Essex and Suffolk alike Walter the Deacon had succeeded his brother Thierri or Theoderic.'*^ Robert '■Jilius Corbutionis^ zn6. Tehel de Herion the Breton were of more importance in Essex than in Suffolk, and Ralph de Limesi, who held estates in ten counties, had only six manors and two berewicks in Suffolk, with the land of a few commended freemen.'*' The Norfolk tenants-in-chief, Dreux de Beuvrieres and Robert de Verli, held a single manor each in Suffolk,'*' and Eudo son of Spiruic succeeded Henfrid of St. Omer in both Norfolk and Suffolk."" Among the remaining tenants-in-chief may be noticed Isaac,'" Juichell the Priest, and the king's two crossbowmen, Gilbert and Ralph, all of whom were Norfolk landholders,'" Norman the Sheriff, with his two burgesses in Ipswich '" and the small estate which he held of Robert Malet at Ash in Loes Hundred, the Breton Rainold, who held of the king ' in alms,' the Englishmen Gondwin the Chamberlain and Stannard son of Alwi, who also held land in Essex, and Ulmar, possibly the ' Ulmar praepositus ' of a later entry, from whose father Roger the Sheriff had received a heriot.'" The list closes with the land of the vavasours, of whom it may be noted that they all bear English or Danish names, the land of ' the freemen of Suffolk who remain in the king's hand,' the encroachments {invasiones) on the king' territorial rights and a record of the claims in dispute between the Bishop of Bayeux and the mother of Robert Malet.'" With the king's vavasours and freemen we pass from the tenants-in-chief to the lesser men, the mesne tenants, thegns and milites, clergy, burgesses, freemen, sokemen, and the unfree peasantry, villeins, bordars, and serfs. Of the smaller military tenants we hear but little. Some thirty-four thegns are mentioned by name in the Suffolk Domesday, They held before the Conquest of King Edward, of Queen Edith, and of Harold, and their lands had been absorbed by 1086 in the great Norman fiefs, but it is worth noting that the same man may be called teinus in one passage and simply liber homo in another, and we even find the combination of liberi homines teigni^^^ '" Dom. Bk. 426^, 427, 376^, 377 ; V.C.H. Essex, i, 351, 352, "' Dom. Bk. 426* ; V.C.H. Essex,, 354. "' Dom. Bk. 4253, 4273 et seq. ; V.C.H. Essex,, 350. "' Dom. Bk. 432, 437 ; V.C.H. Norf. n, 20, 21. "" Dom. Bk. 158*5, 246, 433^ ; V.C.H. Nor/, ii, 21.. »" Dom. Bk. 179, 437^ ; V.C.H. Norf. ii, 2. "' Dom. Bk. 109, 438, 444, 445 ; V.C.H. Norf. ii, 19. •" Dom. Bk. 327, 438 ; cf. iiib,* Ubbeston' ; Round, Feud. Engl. 427, 428, 430. •" Dom. Bk. 436*, 445, 445^ ; 97^, 98/^ (Essex). •" Ibid. 446, 4463, 447, 447^, 450. "° Ibid. 42 i ; VinogradofF, op. cit. 80.. I 401 51
 * " Dom. Bk. 4233 et seq., 437 ; V.C.H. Essex, i, 352, 353.