THE DOMESDAY SURVEY held in chief (fo. 437) one had been held by ' Bricthmar,' as had been the whole of his Essex one (p. 563 below). When we turn to the Essex lands of Count Eustace, the successor of Ingelric, we find them headed by Fobbing (fo. 26), which had been held by ' Brictmar, a thegn of King Edward,' and after him by Ingelric. At Laver also and Fifield we find the Count succeeding to lands which had been held by ' Brictmar ' ; and we can say therefore that in these estates we have that portion of his lands which had fallen to Ingelric's share. We thus identify a thegn as a landowner in Essex and Suffolk, and obtain a good instance of an Englishman having not one but several aliens as his successors. A similar instance of the breaking up of an English thegn's estates is afforded by the case of ./Elfric (Aluricus) Camp, 1 who had held land in Essex, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, and had been of sufficient importance to have sokemen and commended men of his own. Restricting ourselves to those instances in which his identity is proved, we find that in Essex his manors lay in the north-east of the county, and that while Great Oakley was secured by Robert Gernon, Ramsey passed to Ralf Bainard, and Bradfield and Dedham to Roger ' de Ramis.' In Suffolk, ^Elfric is spoken of as the predecessor of ' Eudo Dapifer,' who succeeded him, we find, at Layham, as he also did in Cambridgeshire, at Babraham, Papworth and Sawston, though Robert Gernon was in that county, his successor at Duxford and Foulmire. 1 On the whole it would seem that in Essex both types of succession are very well represented. If we have cases in which Norman lords obtained virtually the whole possessions of great English landowners, such as Ansgar the staller, Wulfwine, or Withgar of Clare, we have also abundant instances of fiefs formed from numerous small estates, and a certain number in which the lands of an English holder were broken up and divided between two or more of those who shared in the spoils of England. It is probable that these last would be much more numerous if it were not for the great difficulty of identifying with exactitude the bearers of English names which were more or less common. No general conclusion can be stated as to the proportion or local distribution of large and small estates in Essex before the Conquest. The Domesday scribe, when recording only the Christian name of an English predecessor, gave us, in doing so, no indication whether he was but a small yeoman (to adopt, for convenience, a later term) or a magnate holding wide estates in more than one county. In Essex again the scribe was fond of entering land as having been held by ' one free man ' or more. And this vague term, as I have already indicated, might denote a considerable landowner as well as a very small one. Again, although we have cases in which the assessment figures suggest 1 This name it found as Camp, Campe, Campa, Capin, Capus and Ccmp, which further illustrates the loose practice of the Domesday scribe in the matter of Anglo-Saion names. ' The Inquisltio Comitaliu Cantairigiftisii enables us to trace more accurately his possessions in that county by adding the distinctive surname, which was often omitted by the Domesday scribe. I 353 45
