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Dufe 3

Name

Summary

Dufe 3 was a free woman with a manor and tiny holding in north-west Essex TRE assessed for a total of 2¹/₈ hides and with a probable value of £7 10s.

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
Shire Essex	Phil. ref. 22,5	Vill Great Easton	DB Spelling Duua	Holder 1066 Dufe 'of Easton'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 William de Warenne	1086 Subtenant -	Fiscal Value 2.00	1066 Value 5.00	1086 Value 5.00	Confidence B	Map
Shire Essex	Phil. ref. 90,57	Vill Toppesfield	DB Spelling Duua	Holder 1066 Dufe 'of Easton'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Richard fitzGilbert	1086 Subtenant Germund de Villers	Fiscal Value 0.13	1066 Value 2.50	1086 Value 3.00	Confidence C	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

Profile

The largest of Dufe 3’s two estates was her manor at ‘Easton’, identifiable as what became Blamster’s Hall in Great Easton (Round, in Doubleday and Page 1903: 474), in the valley of the River Chelmer in north-west Essex.  The DB entry describes her as a free woman but reveals nothing else about her, although as she was holding a manor in her own right it is likely that she was a widow.  The post-Conquest tenure of the manor recorded in DB is not helpful either in this regard, because the tenant-in-chief in 1086, William 5 de Warenne, did not have an obvious major antecessor in Essex but instead seems to have acquired the estates of several small landholders such as Dufe.

The DB entry does, however, reveal something about the way in which Dufe’s manor was organized TRE.  There was a mix of arable and pastoral agriculture, with six ploughs (two on her demesne and four for the peasant population) and a large area of meadow; this latter was presumably close to the small tributary stream of the River Chelmer that runs close to the site of Blamsters Hall.  Livestock comprised mainly sheep and pigs, with the pigs being afforded ample pannage in Dufe’s woodland, although there was also a horse and seven cattle and presumably (although DB does not mention them explicitly) the oxen required for the plough-teams.  The workforce for this small manor was provided by the peasant households of four villans and three bordars, augmented by three slaves.

In addition to her manor at ‘Easton’ it is probable that Dufe 3 was also the TRE landholder of that name who had a much smaller estate only 11 miles away at Toppesfield, because the name Dufe was extremely rare in pre-Conquest England and is not otherwise recorded in DB.  Her tiny estate was one of two at Toppesfield that DB entered among the invasiones, or ‘encroachments’, of Richard fitzGilbert (Richard 5), which implies some irregularity about the way in which Richard had acquired them after the Conquest although the entry does not provide further details. 

Bibliography

Doubleday and Page 1903: A History of the County of Essex: Volume 1, ed. H. A. Doubleday and W. Page (London, 1903)