Vitalis 8

Vitalis of Cullompton (Devon), fl. 1066–1097
Male
DWP
4 of 5

Name

Vitalis
Vitalis 7
Vitalis 9

Summary

Vitalis 8 held four tiny estates in north-west Devon and Somerset TRE assessed at a total of 2 hides and with a probable value of 125s. Vitalis survived the Conquest and not only retained one of his original estates in 1086 but had also acquired two more in central Devon, giving his lands then a total assessment of 3 hides but still with a value of 125s. He was in confraternity with the community of Exeter cathedral, where his death in 1097 was recorded.

Distribution map of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

List of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

Holder 1066

Shire Phil. ref. Vill DB Spelling Holder 1066 Lord 1066 Tenant-in-Chief 1086 1086 Subtenant Fiscal Value 1066 Value 1086 Value Conf. Show on Map
Devon 36,13 Spreacombe Vitalis Vitalis of Cullompton - Theobald fitzBerner - 0.25 3.00 1.00 C Map
Devon 42,13 Hacche Vitalis Vitalis of Cullompton - Odo fitzGamelin Alwig 'of Worlington' 0.50 1.00 1.00 C Map
Devon 42,9 Shirwell Vitalis Vitalis of Cullompton - Odo fitzGamelin Gilbert 'the man of Odo fitzGamelin' 0.25 0.25 0.25 C Map
Somerset 38,1 Luccombe Vitalis Vitalis of Cullompton - Odo fitzGamelin Vitalis 1.00 2.00 2.00 C Map
Totals

Subtenant in 1086

Shire Phil. ref. Vill DB Spelling Holder 1066 Lord 1066 Tenant-in-Chief 1086 1086 Subtenant Fiscal Value 1066 Value 1086 Value Conf. Show on Map
Devon 42,24 Willand Vitalis Eadmær 'of Essebeare' - Odo fitzGamelin Vitalis 1.00 2.00 2.00 C Map
Somerset 38,1 Luccombe Vitalis Vitalis of Cullompton - Odo fitzGamelin Vitalis 1.00 2.00 2.00 C Map
Totals

Profile

Vitalis was the name of the TRE holder of four tiny estates in north-west Devon and west Somerset that by 1086 had passed to Odo fitzGamelin (Odo 12) or to his father-in-law Theobald fitzBerner (Theobald 3) (for the relationship, see Thorn and Thorn 1985: DB Ch.36 Notes; 42,4 Notes; Keats-Rohan 1999: 310). Each of these estates lay between 7 and 16 miles of its nearest neighbour: those at Spreacombe and Shirwell were in the hills above the Taw estuary in north-west Devon, that at Hacche lay on the southern edge of Exmoor and that at Luccombe was on its northern edge, just across the county boundary and into Somerset. The estate at Shirwell seems to correspond to that called Fytelecoth’ in later records, the first element presumably deriving from Vitalis and the second, Old English cot ‘cottage’, emphasizing the estate’s tiny extent of just 1 virgate (Thorn and Thorn 1985: DB 42,9 Notes). Despite their small individual sizes, however, these four estates had a combined assessment of 2 hides (and of 15 ploughlands), so that the distances between them are no bar to them having been parts of a single holding. Given that the name Vitalis was extremely rare before the Conquest, this clustering of estates of a similar size renders it probable that all had been held by the same man TRE, Vitalis 8. 

The connection with Odo as the main successor to Vitalis 8 is emphasized by the Somerset estate at Luccombe, which was Odo’s only estate in the county (his others were all in Devon) and thus may well have been acquired by him because it had been held by Vitalis TRE (when, at 1 hide, it had been the largest of his four estates). What is more, a man called Vitalis also held Luccombe as Odo’s subtenant in 1086 and it would be perverse other than to regard him as Vitalis 8, thereby providing evidence that he had survived the Conquest, albeit with an apparent diminution of his lands because his other three estates had passed to others among Odo’s subtenants.

Appearances can be deceptive, however, because another small estate comprising 1 hide at Willand, between the rivers Culm and Lynor in central Devon, was also held in 1086 by a subtenant of Odo’s called Vitalis. The coincidence is compelling and the name Vitalis was not common even after the Conquest, so again it is probable that this subtenant was Vitalis 8 (Thorn and Thorn 1985: DB 42,9 Notes). If so, then it is more likely than not that the only other estate in Devon held in 1086 by someone called Vitalis, comprising 1 hide at Brenford (now Upton Pyne; see Probert 2002: 119) near the confluences of the rivers Culm, Exe and Creedy and 11 miles to the south-west of Willand, can also be assigned to Vitalis 8 even though his tenant-in-chief there was Baldwin 8 de Meulles, the sheriff of Devon, rather than Odo fitzGamelin. It is also notable that the estates at Luccombe, Willand and Brenford had a combined value of 125s in 1086, which seems to match the value of Vitalis 8’s TRE estates and may well reflect some deliberate arrangement.

Exon (307b1) names the Vitalis who held Brenford as Vitalis de colintona, a toponymic byname that has usually been interpreted as referring to Colyton in east Devon, some 17 and 21 miles respectively from either Willand or Upton Pyne (e.g. Thorn and Thorn 1985: DB 16,129 Notes). However, in the records of Exeter cathedral are two contemporary references that clarify matters: one is the Viðel æt Culumtune who was the first witness to a manumission (Pelteret 1990: 105), probably in the 1080s, and the other is the Vitalis de Kolintonia ‘our brother’ whose death is noted as 26 February 1097 among the obits of clergy and confraternal members of local society added to the margins of a martyrology (Lepine and Orme 2003: 250-1). It is almost inconceivable that these three references do not refer to the same man, whose death in 1097 would not jar with someone already holding land in 1066. Furthermore, the three forms taken together are more likely to represent the local place-name Cullompton, the parish adjacent to Willand and only 9 miles from Upton Pyne, than Colyton (cf. Gover et al. 1931-2: II, 560, 621-2); this place-name is therefore adopted as Vitalis 8’s byname here.

The associations with both Exeter cathedral and Odo fitzGamelin are also significant in interpreting two occurrences of Vitalis as a byname in Exon (376a1, 376b1), which occur as the byname of one of Odo’s subtenants, Ralph , who held tiny estates at Stowford and Huish in west Devon in 1086. That the byname Vitalis here represents a patronymic and refers to Vitalis 8, as suspected by Lewis (1995: 137-8) and Keats-Rohan (1999: 344-5), is rendered more likely by the appearances of Radulfus Vitalis and Radulfo filio Vitalis as a witness to cathedral documents in the 1130s (Barlow 1996: 15, 22). There were also a Geoffrey Vitalis and both ‘Bernard and Vitalis the sons of Ralph’ occurring in the late 1120s or early 1130s (Exeter Book fo.5r; Barlow 1996: 17); but whether any of these, or the Sæwine who was the TRE antecessor on the estates that Ralph held from Odo in 1086, were connected with Vitalis 8 and his family remains a matter for speculation.

Drawing these threads together, Vitalis 8 must have been born in or probably before the mid-1040s; and, given his name and that of his son(s), he was almost certainly of continental and perhaps French rather than insular origin. Whether he arrived in association with Edward 15’s return to England when he became king in 1042 and how he acquired his lands in north-west Devon and Somerset are unknown; but he survived the Conquest and, albeit now as a subtenant, retained one of his original estates and acquired two more closer to Exeter, in which city he featured in the company of other local notables and ended his days as a member of the lay confraternity of its cathedral.

The only other man called Vitalis to hold land in southern England TRE was Vitalis 7, whose estates were nearly 50 miles from and very much larger than those of Vitalis 8 and passed to a different tenant-in-chief after the Conquest; furthermore, there is no clear evidence to suggest that Vitalis 7 was still alive in 1086. There is no reason to consider Vitalis 8 in connection with any other TRE or TRW man of that name.

Bibliography


Barlow 1996: English Episcopal Acta XI: Exeter 1046-1184, ed. F. Barlow (Oxford, 1996)

Exeter Book: Exeter, Cathedral Library, Dean and Chapter MS 3501

Gover et al. 1931-2: J. E. B. Gover, A. Mawer and F. M. Stenton, The Place-Names of Devon, 2 parts (Cambridge, 1931-2)

Keats-Rohan 1999: K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents 1066-1166. I: Domesday Book (Woodbridge, 1999)

Lepine and Orme 2003: Death and Memory in Medieval Exeter, ed. D. Lepine and N. Orme (Exeter, 2003)

Lewis 1995: C. P. Lewis, ‘The French in England before the Norman Conquest’, Anglo-Norman Studies 17 (1995)

Pelteret 1990: D. A. E. Pelteret, Catalogue of English Post-Conquest Vernacular Documents (Woodbridge, 1990)

Probert 2002: D. W. Probert, ‘Church and landscape: a study in social transition in south-western Britain, A.D. c.400-c.1200’, unpublished PhD thesis (Birmingham, 2002)

Thorn and Thorn 1985: Domesday Book 9: Devon, ed. C. Thorn and F. Thorn, 2 vols. (Chichester, 1985)