most important of his under-tenants in this county was Hugh de Bolbec, whose heir and namesake held of the fief, eighty years later, twenty knight's fees. As the founder of the house of Giffard was Osbern de Bolbec, Hugh may well have been a relative of his lord ; he was him- self a tenant-in-chief, not only here but in Oxfordshire and Hunting- donshire, his lands being afterwards represented by a Buckinghamshire barony of ten knight's fees.[1] Swaffham Bulbeck, which he held in Cambridgeshire under Walter Giffard, preserves the name which he brought with him from the source of a Norman 'beck,'[2] and which his heirs, the Earls of Oxford, adopted long afterwards as a title for their eldest sons.
The next important baron on our list is William Peverel, the founder of the Peverels ' of Nottingham,' whose great fief was forfeited by Henry II. at his accession and became thenceforth known as the Honour of Peverel of Nottingham. Subsequent surveys of this Honour enable us to trace the - fate of William's Buckinghamshire manors.[3] Different was the fate of the wide estates of William son of Ansculf de Picquigny (' Pinchengi '), to which three columns are devoted. The son of a former sheriff of the county, and lord of that extensive fief which lay in twelve counties and had Dudley Castle for its head, William was succeeded by the Paynels, who left their mark upon the county in the name of Newport Pagnel, which one of his manors derived from them, and in the existence of Tickford Priory, which they founded as a cell of Marmoutier. Nor was the fief broken up until the death of John de Someri, the Paynels' heir, in the fourteenth century.
The occurrence among the Buckinghamshire tenants-in-chief of Robert de ' Todeni,' lord of Belvoir, is chiefly due to his succession, here as in other counties, to a great English thegn, Osulf son of Frane. Of greater importance is the fief which follows, that of Robert de ' Oilgi.' Although in the present department of the ' Calvados ' there are no fewer than four Ouillys from which he might have been named, the fact that Domesday records the important manor of Masworth[4] to have been held of him by Ralf Basset, while Thurleigh (Beds) was held of him by Richard Basset, would suggest that Ouilly-le-B asset, to the west of Falaise, was the spot from which he came. His fief has to be considered in conjunction with two others in this county, those, namely, of Roger d'lvry and of Miles Crispin. For a curious tradition of sworn brotherhood[5] between Robert and Roger'is so far supported by Domesday that it points to a connexion between them. In this county we find them entered as holding Stowe jointly under the Bishop of Bayeux, and they had both succeeded, in some of their manors, Azor the son of Toti. In Oxfordshire they held at Arncot jointly under the abbot of Abingdon, at Noke also, in my opinion, under William, Earl of Hereford, and were joint founders of St. George's chapel within Oxford Castle. But
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