THE DOMESDAY SURVEY seat therein, for his family priory was there founded. His fief, like that of Ranulf Peverel, escheated to the Crown under Henry I., but was promptly granted out anew, together with Castle Baynard, to the founder of the house of Fitz Walter, a cadet of the house of Clare. One of the points of difference in the distribution of land before and after the Con- quest is the wide extent of the estates held by women on the eve of that event as compared with those which they are entered as holding at the time of the Domesday Survey. This is a feature of the great record which has somewhat escaped attention. An instance in point is afforded, in the case of Essex, by the broad lands of Ailid', ' a certain free woman,' from which the fief of Ralf Bainard was largely formed. In this county she had been his predecessor at Wimbish and at Little Dunmow, as at Henham, at Ashdon, and probably at Pentlow, all of them valuable manors. In Norfolk, at Fincham, Barton, the Shouldhams, Tottenhill, Boughton, Bradenham, Merton and Wilby, Ailid' had been his prede- cessor. In Suffolk she had held ' under the glorious King Edward ' the great manors of Shimpling and Kedington. Her name is so uncommon in Domesday that I believe her also to have been the Ailid' who had been the possessor of Chipping Ongar, although in that manor her suc- cessor was Count Eustace. 1 Another fief of which the caput lay from the first in Essex was that of Robert Gernon ('Greno'), whose name is surrounded by errors. Morant wrote that a document printed in the Monasticon had ' led Sir William Dugdale into some mistakes ' (ii. 576) ; but he himself was wrong in stating that Robert was ' descended from the House of Bologne,' that ' his son and heir dropt the surname of Gernon, and took that of Montfichet,' and that he and his manor of Stansted took that name ' from an artificial Jixt, or firm, Mount of earth, erected by William Gernon, on which his castle was built.' Ellis, in his Introduction to Domesday (i. 423), repeated Morant's errors, but it is now known that the house of Montfiquet, from which Stansted derives its name, was quite distinct from that of Gernon, whose estates however it obtained in the days of Henry I., together with that forestership of Essex which one of Domes- day's incidental hints (under the forest manor of Writtle) leads us to believe was already held, in 1086, by Robert. A familiar name among the Domesday tenants-in-chief in Essex is that of ' Eudo dapifer,' a statue of whom was recently set up at Col- chester, where he founded the great abbey of St. John and appears to have occupied an important position at a somewhat later date. But the story of his life is so embellished in the chronicle of the house he founded that it is difficult to disentangle facts from fiction. It is certain however that Eudes (' Eudo ') was a son of Hubert de Ryes, that he enjoyed the favour alike of the Conqueror and of both his sons, and that he lived on till 1 1 20, when he died in Normandy at his castle of Preaux rich in worldly possessions, but, contrary to what has always been believed, childless. His fief, which had increased since the Survey, then reverted 1 Ralf Bainard however had half a hide there. 347
