THE DOMESDAY SURVEY wig, in King Edward's time, ' a Wigodo regis barone digno pretio earn comparavit.' It is this Wigot whom Domesday names as the holder T.R.E. An entry in the Survey relating to Lapworth may lead us to an in- teresting discovery. All that we learn from Domesday is that at eight places in Warwickshire, of which Lapworth was one, Hugh de Grent- mesnil had been preceded by one or more men bearing the name of Baldwin. But on turning to Heming's Cartulary (p. 267) we read that the half-hide of which Domesday speaks had belonged to the church of Worcester, but had been given, at a nominal quit-rent, by Bishop Briht- heah to a certain ' Hearlewinus,' who had been his companion when he took Cnut's daughter, Gunnild, to 'Saxony' for her marriage (1036). Now Baldwin and Herlwin are strange names, names that in pre-Con- questual England arrest attention. Can we connect them ? It is not, surely, a mere coincidence when in Gloucestershire Domesday shows us a * Baldwin son of Herlwin ' as the former holder of a substantial manor in Bradley Hundred (fo. 163), or when in Bucks it mentions ' Turstin a man of Baldwin son of Herlwin ' (fo. 144-b. 1 ) Clearly
- Baldwin son of Herlwin ' was a man of note before the Conquest, and
when we find that Hugh de Grentmesnil had succeeded to lands of 'Baldwin' in a whole group of counties, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, we can hardly any longer doubt that this was Baldwin the son of Herlwin, and that he had succeeded his father at Lapworth and in other places. But the most richly endowed religious house in the county was the local minster of Coventry. Of other English abbeys the posses- sions were insignificant, Abingdon, Burton, Malmesbury, and Winch- combe holding an estate apiece in chief. Under Turchil of Warwick a small estate was held by St. Mary's church, Warwick. The endow- ment of foreign monasteries had as yet only begun, but the abbey of St. Evroul already held of Hugh de Grentmesnil a manor at Pillerton (Priors), as did that of Preaux at Arlescote under the Count of Meulan, while Geoffrey de la Guerche bestowed on the monks of St. Nicholas of Angers lands at (Monks) Kirby. To this last endowment there attaches exceptional interest, because we have the text of the actual charter by which Geoffrey bestowed it. Granted at (Monks) Kirby itself i July 1077, it specially mentions Kirby church, which, as it was decayed, he had, we learn, rebuilt in honour of St. Mary and St. Denis, and dedicated that same day in presence of Peter the bishop, himself, as we have seen, a Warwickshire tenant-in-chief. 8 As the charter is granted with the consent of ./Elfgifu (Aheva) his wife, it is clear that we have in Geoffrey a follower of William who really did marry what is called ' a Saxon heiress,' and that ' This is one of the entries omitted from Ellis' Indexes.
- For knowledge of this charter in the register of Burton Lazars' Hospital, which is printed in
Nichols" Leicestershire, vol. ii. appendix, p. 125, I am entirely indebted to Mr. A. S. Ellis' paper on Geoffrey in his 'Landholders of Yorkshire, 1086' (TorkMre Arch. Journ.) To that paper also we owe the solution of Geoffrey's origin from the genealogical work of Pere du Paz. 275
