488 THE EARLY SHERIFFS OF NORFOLK October of Launditch for his statement that the family of ' Caisnei ' had ' their chief place of residence at Mileham*' in that hundred, where are still to be seen the remains of an important Roman camp, extensive earthworks, indicative of Saxon or Danish occupation, and the ruins of the castle, which Robert Fitz Walter occupied, and where his eldest son John de Caisnei died ; ^ but Robert's chief seat was at Horsford (near Norwich), adjacent to which was Horsham St. Faith's, where he founded a religious house. ^ Mr. Rye states, in his ojmsculum on Norfolk ' Castles and Manor Houses' (1916), that neither Carthew nor he * can trace the site of the castle ascribed in Blomefield ', though he speaks of ' the earthworks ' (p. 44). In his ' Roman Camps and Remains in Norfolk ' (p. 38) he states that ' Haverfield doubts if the earthworks are Roman ' . In any case there seems to be no basis for the assertion that Robert Fitz Walter had a castle there. On the death of John the sheriff in 1146 (?), ' his brother William ', Dr. Jessopp wrote, ' appears to have been appointed in his place and continued to hold the office till 1163, when it seems he was dismissed from it '.^ This is a very strange state- ment. For William was certainly not in office in the earliest years of Henry II. Mr. Howlett, in his preface to the Oesta Stephani,^ states that in the cartulary of St. Benet-at-Hulme,°
- charters in the years 1146-9 show us ... a sheriff, William de
Chesney, installed in the county ' . Better known, however, is the remarkable account * from Blomefield' s Norfolk,^ of ' a court of the county ' of Norfolk held in the bishop's garden at Norwich. William de Chesney is mentioned as present, but not as sheriff ; there is mention, however, of two sheriffs as assenting to the court's decision, namely Roger Gulafer and William Frechnei.^ Why is there mention of two sheriffs ? I would suggest, as the explana- tion, that they were the sheriffs of Norfolk and Suffolk.* For ' Op. cit. p. xxxiii. * Genealogist, xviii. 6. » Oj). cit. p. xxxiv. * p. 1. » Cotton MS. Galba, E. ii, £o. 67 b.
- Cited in the same preface, p. xxxv.
' Blomefield took it from a register of Bury St. Edmunds, which has not been identified.
- Howlett, ut supra, p. xxxvi ; Dr. Jessopp refers to this meeting (op. cit. p. xxxii), and
Mr. Rye 8X)eaks of it as ' the earliest instance in our records of the County Hundred Court or Shire Mote which is given in Blomefield iv, under the date of 1250 ' {Hundred Courts and Mote HiUa in Norfolk, 1916). The Norfolk curia comitattis seems to have been held within the castle precinct, where a ' shire house ' stood. Harrod's Castles and Convents (p. 132) cites a deed of 14 Edw. I as speaking of ' via que ducit ad curiam comitatus '.
- At the great Kentford gathering of the magnates of the adjacent counties! n
1080 {Inq. Com. Cant. p. xvii — not, as in Davis, Begesta, 32, ' p. 17 ') — there was present ' Walterus pro Rodgero et Roberto vicecom' ', whom Mr. Davis identifies (ibid.) as ' sherifis [of Norfolk and Suffolk] '. It would be too speculative, save in a foot-note, to suggest that this Walter, acting, Mr. Morris writes (p. 157) as ' a deputy ', was father of Robert Fitz Walter, sheriff under Henry I.
