THE DOMESDAY SURVEY before the Conquest, by a certain ' Gitda,' whom Ellis did not attempt to identify. We obtain, I think, a clue to her identity under William Peverel's fief in the adjacent county of Bucks (fo. 148). For he there held one manor which is entered as having belonged to ' Gethe wife of earl Ralf,' and two which had been held by ' the countess Gueth.' Again, his one Berkshire manor had been held by 'earl Ralf himself (fo. 61). This was earl Ralf of Hereford, nephew of Edward the Con- fessor, who had married a namesake of ' Ghida,' ' Gida,' or ' Gueda ' (for such are her Domesday names), wife of earl Godwine. Not only did these two countesses bear the same uncommon name, but each of them was the mother of a son Harold. There has, I suspect, been more con- fusion between the two in Domesday than has ever been imagined. Dugdale, in his Baronage, asserted, on the strength of Glover the herald's ' collections,' that William Peverel was a natural son of the Conqueror himself This story has been steadily repeated by local and other antiquaries,' but was dismissed by Mr. Freeman as 'an utterly un- certified and almost impossible scandal." He was the founder of St. James', Northampton, and of the Cluniac house of Lenton, Nottingham- shire, endowing the latter from his Domesday holding at Courteenhall, Northants. The tragic fall of William's heir, in the opening days of Henry II. 's reign, placed his extensive fief at the disposition of the Crown. This catastrophe may be said to close that long series of forfeitures by which so much of the land granted out at the Conquest returned into the hands of the Norman kings, and enabled them to endow fresh favourites and reward useful ministers. In Northamptonshire this had begun even before Domesday, as is seen in the case of ' Earl Aubrey,' whose fief had already reverted to the king (fo. 224).' Of the vast estates of the bishops of Coutances and of Bayeux and of the count of Mortain I have already spoken ; and when we add to these the fief of William Peverel, and the smaller ones of Robert de Buci, Drogo de Bevrere, and Eudo, with those also, possibly, of Winemar and of Eustace (of Huntingdon), we see how much of the land was destined to pass away to fresh grantees. It is interesting to note that the Fleming element was well repre- sented in Northamptonshire among the tenants-in-chief In addition to Walter the Fleming, Gilbert of Ghent, and Dru (Drogo) de Bevrere — of whom the last derived his name from La Beuvriere (or possibly Beuvry) near Bethune, — Gunfrei and Sigar ' de Cioches,' came from Chocques, an ancient seigneurie also in the neighbourhood of Bethune. ' Winemar,' too, is styled in Bucks Winemar the Fleming (fo. 152). Of those specially ' As, for instance, by Ellis, in liis Introduction to Doimsday (I. 467). « The Norman Conqueit, III. (1875), pp. 80, 662 ; IV. (187 1), 200. Mr. Freeman added, with grim force, ' The uncorroborated assertions of a herald are not materials for history.' ' There can be little doubt that this was the Aubrey who had acted as earl of the Northumbrians a few years previously. Mr. A. S. Ellis has ingeniously urged his identity with ' Albericus de Coci,' who is found among the Yorkshire tenants-in-chief in 1086, and with the progenitor of the famous Sires de Coucy. 289
