custody of the forest (propter forestam custodiendam); that of the great royal manor of Woking in Surrey Walter held three-quarters of a hide, which King Edward had similarly given 'out of the manor to a certain forester,' and that in or near Kingston-on-Thames he had given land to a man to whom he had 'entrusted the keeping of the king's brood mares' (equas silvaticas). These hints prepare us for the evidence to which we are about to come that he held 'a wood called Bagshot' at the time of the Survey (though Domesday does not say so), and that he and his heirs had the keeping of the great forest of Windsor. He was also, we shall find, castellan of Windsor, while in his private capacity as a tenant-in-chief he held a barony reckoned at fifteen or twenty knights' fees and owing fifteen knights as castle guard to Windsor. Our next glimpse of him, after Domesday, is afforded by the Abingdon Cartulary, which records in a most interesting entry that Walter FitzOter, castellan of Windsor, restored to Abbot Faricius the woods of 'Virdele ' and Bagshot, which he had held by consent of the abbot's predecessors, Æthelelm and Rainald. It adds that he made this restoration in the first place at Windsor Castle, and that he afterwards sent his wife Beatrice with his son William to Abingdon that they might confirm what he himself had done 'at home.'[1]
From this entry we learn that Walter was living after 1100, for Abbot Faritius ruled the house 1100–16. We also learn that his wife's name, which has never, I believe, been rightly given,[2] was given as Beatrice, and that his 'home' was at Windsor Castle. Lastly, we may see, I think, an allusion to the loss, for the time, of these woods in the Domesday entry of the abbey's manor of Winkfield ('Wenesfelle'), which mentions that '4 hides are in the king's forest' (fo. 59). In other words, Walter, I suspect, had added them to Windsor Forest as its custodian; and if he did this, as alleged, in the time of Abbot Æthelelm (who died in 1084), they would be
- ↑ Walterus filius Oteri, castellanus de Wildesore, reddidit abbati Faritio duas silvas, vocatas Virdelæ et Bacsceat, apud Winckefeld, nostram villam, quæ pertinuerant ecclesiæ Abbendoniæ; sed eas per prædecessores hujus abbatis, videlicet Adeldelmum et Rainaldum hucusque tenuerat. Hanc redditionem primo apud castellum Wildesores abbati eidem reddidit; et deinde ad nativitatem Sancte Marie [8 Sept.] uxorem suam Beatricem, cum filio suo Willelmo, Abbendoniam transmisit, ut quod ipse domi fecerat ipsi Abbendoniæ confirmarent (ii. 132).
- ↑ In The Earls of Kildare (p. 2) and in Burke's Peerage it is given as 'Gladys, daughter of Rhiwallon ap Cynfyn, Prince of North Wales'.
