A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE thegn of King Edward,' lay in the north-west of the county. They are chiefly remarkable as being held of him, with the exception of two hides at Sharnbrook by Ernulf of Ardres ('Arde'), from whom they de- scended to the Counts of Guines. 1 Stevington was the chief manor. 8 Walter Giffard belongs to the adjoining county of Buckingham, as does his great tenant Hugh de Bolbec, though he held of him Woburn and two other manors in Bedfordshire. William de Warenne held in Bedford- shire only dependencies of his lordship of Kimbolton across the Hunting- donshire border. 3 In this county as in others William de Eu (' Ow ') held his lands as successor to a great Wiltshire thegn, ' Alestan ' of Boscombe, whose estates were scattered about the country. Short as is the entry of the lands held by Miles Crispin it raises some points of interest. I have already spoken of the complaint by the monks of Ramsey Abbey that his rich manor of Clapham had been held of them for life only by his English predecessor, 4 but the men of the Hundred also asserted that two sokemen with small holdings in Milton (Ernest) had been wrongfully added to Clapham by Robert de ' Olgi.' Now this statement distinctly implies that Robert had preceded Miles in his tenure of Clapham, a fact of much interest in view of the traditional belief that Miles married Robert's daughter. That Robert and Miles were in some way connected is proved not only by their both succeeding to lands of Wigod of Wallingford — a fact which attracted Mr. Free- man's notice and led him to suggest that they both married daughters of Wigod — but also by their both succeeding to lands of a certain Brihtric, a fact, it would seem, unnoticed. In Bedfordshire ' Brixtric, thegn of King Edward,' was the only English predecessor of Miles, and in Buck- inghamshire Miles had similarly succeeded, in fourteen cases, to the lands of a ' Brictric ' variously described as ' a thegn of King Edward ' and ' a man of Queen Edith.' In Buckinghamshire also Robert d'Ouilly was holding two valuable manors of which one had been held by Brihtric, ' thegn of King Edward,' and the other by Brihtric of Queen Edith, while some land held by men of Brihtric at Wigginton across the Hertfordshire border had also passed to him. We can thus identify the Bedfordshire 'Brictric' as a wealthy thegn who had 'men' of his own and lands in more than one county. 6 1 See Feudal England, pp. 462-4, where Mr. Freeman's errors on the point are corrected. 2 It should be observed that 'Alwold (sic), a thegn of King Edward,' was the count's predecessor in all his Bedfordshire lands except at Stevington itself, which is entered as having been held by ' Ade- lold a thegn of King Edward.' The two names would certainly be deemed distinct, and yet the entry, on the fief of the Bishop of Bayeux, of land at Turvey which had been held by ' a man of Alwold of Stevington ' (' homo Alwoldi de Stivetone '), proves that the names were identical and incidentally that Stevington was Alwold's seat. I have elsewhere (p. 200) shown that Anschil of Ware is indifferently styled ' Aschil ' and ' Achi ' in the survey of this county. These instances are important as evidence of the almost incredible variations in the forms of Englishmen's names given by the Domesday scribes. 3 See Testa de Nevill, p. 249 ; ' Honor de Kenebauton verumptamen est in comitatu Huntedon, sed villate pertinentes sunt in comitatu Bcd[ford].' (Compare p. 214 below.)
- The complaint was clearly ineffectual, for Clapham continued to form part of ' the Honour of
Wallingford' (as Miles' fief was termed). s He is also found in Worcestershire as ' a thegn of Queen Edith,' and possibly in Gloucester- shire as ' a thegn of King Edward.' 202
