Page:VCH Warwickshire 1.djvu/336

 A HISTORY OF WARWICKSHIRE have been his predecessor in all his manors. His, therefore, is a good example of a Norman stepping, as it were, into an Englishman's shoes. It is also doubtless the explanation of Ralf de Mortemer holding the solitary Warwickshire manor of Stretton Baskerville that his predecessor there, ' Edric,' was the famous ' Eadric the Wild," whose lands in Here- fordshire and Shropshire had passed into his hands. William Fitz Ansculf (de Picquigny) was a Worcestershire baron, whose seat was at Dudley Castle ; but William Fitz Corbucion, whose seat was at Studley, held hardly any manors outside Warwickshire. With Geoffrey de Mandeville, an Essex baron, and Geoffrey de la Guer- che, who was great in Leicestershire and Lincolnshire, we return to the principle of Normans being placed in the shoes of single Englishmen. For the latter obtained the whole of the lands of a local thegn, Leofwine possibly of Newnham, 1 while the former succeeded here as elsewhere to the scattered estates of his predecessor Ansgar the ' staller.' Stephen the steersman, though his name suggests that he was out of place in the heart of England, 3 appears also in the great Survey as the holder of two houses in Southampton, already an important port. Osbern Fitz Richard had inherited from his father, one of Edward the Confessor's favourites, Richard's castle in Herefordshire, and his Warwickshire lands descended with the fief of which it was the head. He is followed by another Herefordshire lord, Harold the son of Earl Ralf, from whom his castle of Ewyas Harold derives its name. The three barons who follow were connected with other counties. Hascoit Musard was a Breton who had lands in Gloucestershire and Derbyshire, and whose castle of ' La Musardere' in the former county gave its name to Miserden. Nicholas the crossbowman (balistarius), though he only held two manors in this county, had secured a goodly number far away in Devonshire. 4 Distant also was the head of Nigel de Albini's barony, which was at Cainhoe in Bedfordshire, although he had a small estate in Leicestershire as in Warwickshire ; in the latter county he was probably the ' Nigel ' who held a portion of Austrey as tenant to Henry de Ferrers, while holding the larger portion as a tenant- in-chief, an arrangement which, Domesday shows us, was then by no means uncommon. 8 1 See Freeman's Norman Conquest (1871), iv. 738. Warwickshire portion of) Mollington had been held T.R.E. by the mother of Leofwine ' deNiweham,' and that ' Niweham ' [Newnham] is in this county might seem decisive. But, on the other hand, Leof- wine ' de Neweham,' who took his name from Nuneham Courtney, Oxon, was a Bucks tenant-in-chief in 1086. ' But see p. 290 below. The case of Nicholas illustrates the inter-relation of counties even when far apart. We learn from the cartulary of St. Peter's, Gloucester (ed. Rolls Series i. 74), that in 1095 Odo Fttz Gamelin, a Devonshire baron in Domesday, gave Plumtree in that county to that abbey. Between that date and 1 100 Nicholas ' de la Pole' exchanged it with them for his Warwickshire manor of Aylestone (' Alno- destone'). As this manor was held in 1086 by Nicholas ' balistarius,' we can scarcely hesitate to pro- nounce the two men identical. For instance, even the Count of Meulan, who held two-fifths of Myton as a tenant-in-chief, condescended to hold another two-fifths as 'of Turchil's fee,' that is, as under-tenant to that English- man. 280
 * The identity of this Leofwine is doubtful, the name being a common one. The fact that (the