THE DOMESDAY SURVEY been one ; at some there was ' half a mill.' A single case will explain the matter. Under Rivenhall we read (fo. 27) that there was ' then one mill, (but) now a half ; and that ' Richard de Sachevilla has taken away a moiety of the mill.' What was Richard doing at Rivenhall ? We know him only, in Domesday, as holding Aspenden, Herts, under Eudo Dapifer. 1 If we follow the clue thus given us and look for a manor in this neighbourhood held by Eudo, we find that he held Great Braxted, divided only by the stream from Rivenhall, and that his tenant there was 'Richard' (fo. 49). We find, moreover, that on this manor there was ' now half a mill ' ; and a charter of donation to Eudo's abbey enables us to clinch the matter. For by this charter William 'de Sakevilla' gave a rent of five shillings in Braxted from ' Rivenhall mill.' * We thus learn that Eudo's tenant, in 1086, at Braxted, was Richard de Sachevilla, and that he had annexed a moiety of the mill which still stands on the stream between Rivenhall and Braxted. The whole of the mill had be- longed to Rivenhall ; but thenceforth each of the manors possessed ' half a mill.' A common but obscure Domesday phrase is thus at once explained. The above gift was confirmed by a charter of Richard de Anesti as nephew and heir to William ; and this enables us, for the first time, to trace the origin in England of the noble house of Sackville. It has long been known that Richard de ' Anesti,' whose seat was at Anstey, Herts, succeeded an uncle, William de Sackville, but the parentage of this William has remained in doubt. Mr. Chester Waters, who claimed to have ' corrected,' with the aid of the charters of St. John's, Colchester, the pedigree of the Essex Sackvilles, made him the son of another William, of whom he wrote : William de Sackville and his younger brother Robert were the sons of Herbrand, a noble Norman knight, and came to England in the reign of Henry I. in the train of Stephen de Blois, who rewarded their services by lands in Essex and Suffolk held of his honour of Eye.* But the evidence I have now given enables us to trace the settlement of the Sackvilles back to the time of Domesday. As Great Braxted descended by marriage from Sackville to Anesti and thence to Mont- chensy, there can be no question that these houses were the heirs of Richard de Sackville. It is of much interest to find that Richard held under Eudo, for Secqueville-en-Bessin, from which he must have come, was only some seven miles, as the crow flies, from Eudo's home at Ryes.* 1 This is one of the entries omitted in Ellis' Index (Introduction to Domesday, ii. 385).
- Cartulary of St. John's Abbey, Colchester (Roxburghe Club), pp. 163-5.
- Chesters of Chic he ley, p. 191. See also the 'corrected pedigree' of the Essex Sackvilles on
p. 200, in which Richard of Braxted finds no place.
- The settlement of the Sackvilles at Mount Bures (see p. 290 above) and West Bergholt (' Berg-
holt Sackville ') was no doubt somewhat later and was quite distinct. These manors were held by Roger of Poitou in Domesday, and the fact that Roger's fief, as well as the Honour of Eye, was eventu- ally granted to Count Stephen seems to have led to the two being confused (see preceding note). 379
