A HISTORY OF ESSEX in ' Legra.' This is, rightly, the equivalent of Layer, the common name of a group of villages in Winstree Hundred. But it is also em- ployed in Domesday, unlikely though it may appear, for Great Lees in the heart of the county, and for Leigh on the Thames as well. On the other hand, one of the Layer manors is actually entered as ' Lega.' Lastly, there is some reason to believe that, in one entry, ' Witham ' denotes, not Witham, but a manor of Whettenharn in Dengie Hundred, now represented by ' Whitmans ' farm. What is really required for the task of identification is, not a know- ledge of ' Aryan roots ' or of ' sound-laws ' with alarming names, but practical common sense. A working acquaintance with the great record will enable the student to discover the modern equivalents of ' Eltenai ' or ' Altenai ' and of ' Bacheneia ' in such existing names as Iltney and Beckney respectively, and yet to allow for the Domesday scribe's occa- sional eccentricity, and for the no less eccentric perversions to which local names have been subjected by generations of peasants, by ill-informed constructors of maps, or by too ingenious antiquaries. I have spoken above of the necessity for checking our identifications of Domesday manors by bearing in mind the descent of the ' Honours ' to which they belonged. In Essex the entirely distinct ' Honours ' of Peverel of Nottingham and Peverel of London, which at the time of Domesday were respectively held by William Peverel and Ranulf Peverel, were both represented. Fairsted and a manor in Stebbing were held of the latter, but Morant inexplicably confused the two distinct Honours, and accounted for the subsequent possession of these manors by the Ferrers family by the intermarriage of Ferrers with Peverel of Notting- ham, the founder of which latter family he made a son of Ranulf Peverel (ii. 119, 4-I3). 1 Where Ferrers did, it would seem, succeed the Peverels of Nottingham was at Thurrock, now Grays (Thurrock). For the charter by which Henry ' de Grai ' obtained a confirmation of this ' Turroc ' in 1195 expressly recites that it 'is of the fee of Earl De Ferrers.' 3 Grays therefore must have been the ' Turruc ' held by William Peverel in 1086, and not that, as Morant assumed, which was held by the Count of Eu. This latter can be absolutely proved to be identical with West Thurrock. 3 A curious example of the confused skein that has to be disentangled is afforded by Morant's history of the manor of Braham Hall in Ardleigh. He identified it as that portion of Ardleigh which is entered in Domes- day as held by Richard FitzGilbert (de Clare) ; but he traced its descent, as ' Braham,' through the heirs of Montfichet. To account for this he asserted that Richard's ' successors took the name of Montfichet ' (i. 439), although the Montfichets, as he well knew, were the successors of Robert Gernon, not of Richard FitzGilbert. 4 The whole difficulty thus created disappears at once when we discover that the ' Braham ' held by Mont- fichet's heirs was the manor of Brantham in Suffolk, which was Robert 1 See also p. 34.6 above. a Cart. Ant. DD. 13. 3 See my paper on ' Castle Guard ' in Arch. Joum. lix. 153. 4 See p. 347 above. - 388
