Fech 2

Fech ‘of Broc’ (Worcs.), fl. 1066x1086
Male
CPL
4 of 5

Name

Fech
Fech 3

Summary

Fech 2 was a small thegn whose holdings either side of the Shropshire-Worcestershire boundary were assessed at a single hide and worth 15s. He survived in 1086, holding Baveney, ½ hide worth only 6s. Much more speculatively, he may have held other estates by tenures which were not recorded in 1086, and was perhaps the ancestor of the Ribbesford family of Ribbesford and Rock (Worcs.) and Baveney (Salop.).

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
Shropshire 4,11,13 Baveney Fech Fech 'of Broc' - Roger, earl Ralph de Mortimer 0.25 0.25 0.15 A Map
Shropshire 6,3 Mawley Fech Fech 'of Broc' - Ralph de Mortimer - 0.25 0.00 0.00 A Map
Worcestershire 16,3 Broc Feche Fech 'of Broc' - Ralph de Mortimer - 0.50 0.50 1.00 A Map
Totals

Sub-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
Shropshire 4,11,13 Baveney Fech Alsige 'of Baveney' - Roger, earl Ralph de Mortimer 0.25 0.25 0.15 A Map
Shropshire 4,11,13 Baveney Fech Fech 'of Broc' - Roger, earl Ralph de Mortimer 0.25 0.25 0.15 A Map
Totals

Profile

The identity of these three references to Fech can be stated with confidence, since the name was extremely rare, all three manors passed to Ralph de Mortimer, they were of roughly the same size, and they were not more than 5 or 6 miles apart. The location of the largest, Broc, has not been conclusively identified. It was later associated with Sodington (in Mamble parish, Worcs.) (Phill. Worcs. note 16,3) but must have lain on a river (as Mamble did not), since its resources in 1086 included ½ fishery. One possibility is that the name is preserved in Brook Farm (in Rock parish, Worcs.), where it has been mapped.

The connection between Broc and Sodington is probably older than previously recognized: in 1066 Broc was held by Fech 2 and Sodington by Alsige 56, while Baveney was held as two manors by the same Alsige and Fech. They were probably kinsmen.

One of the two virgates forming the ½ hide at which Baveney was assessed ‘used to lie in Cleobury Mortimer’ (Vna uirgata ex his duabus jacebat in Claiberie). Cleobury belonged TRE to Queen Eadgyth (Eadgyth 3). Although it is impossible to decide whether Alsige’s holding, or Fech’s, or part of both was attached to Cleobury, the implication is that there was some connection between one or both of them and the queen, perhaps a connection of service.

The DB entry for Mawley was mangled at some point before it was written down. What the full entry says is 

The same Ralph [de Mortimer] holds MAWLEY at 1 hide et LEL at 1 virgate & FECH at 1 virgate of land. These were 3 manors & they paid geld. 3 thegns held & they were free men. When Thurstan of Wigmore received them from Earl William [fitzOsbern] he added them to the above manor, Cleobury Mortimer, & then & now they are valued there, and there is 1 hide, Earls Ditton, which is itself valued there.

Isdem Radulfus tenet MELELA, de .I. hida, 7 LEL de .1. virgata 7 FECH de .1. uirgata terræ. Hæc .III. Maneria fuerunt 7 geld’. III. teini tenuerunt, 7 liberi homines fuerunt. Quando Turstinus de Wigemore receipt de comite Willelmo, iunxit superiori Manerio Cleberie, 7 tunc 7 modo inibi sunt appreciata, 7 est .I. hida, DODENTONE, quæ ipsa ibidem est appreciata.

The first line is a muddle. FECH is undoubtedly the name of Fech 2 rather than a place-name. LEL is unintelligible either as a personal name or as a string of letters forming part of a personal name. A better guess would be that it represents the middle syllable of the main place-name MELELA. All three of these small holdings can be assigned with some plausibility to Mawley, the first two belonging to anonymous thegns and the third to the thegn Fech 2. There is no reason to think that Fech’s virgate in this entry is the same as his holding at Baveney (as Phill. Salop. note 6,3).

This little group of manors is much too far from the Yorkshire Dales for identity with Fech 3 to be plausible.

Fech 2 survived in 1086 as Ralph de Mortimer’s tenant at Baveney, ½ hide reduced in value from 10s. to 6s. since 1066. He seems not to have farmed there himself, since there was no demesne plough, only 2 radmen and 2 bordars with a plough.

Baveney was later held from the Mortimers of Wigmore by the Ribbesford family, named from Ribbesford (Worcs.), which lay by the Severn some 6 miles to the east. Ribbesford, too, was held of the Mortimers, and the Ribbesford family was in possession there by the middle of the twelfth century, when Walter of Ribbesford was present at the inquisition concerning the bishop of Worcester’s liberty of Oswaldslow in the time of John Pagham, bishop 1151–7. The manor of Ribbesford was held in 1176 by Simon of Ribbesford, steward to Roger de Mortimer (VCH Worcs. IV, 306). 

Ribbesford appears twice in DB, as Ribbesford and ‘the other (alia) Ribbesford’, two of the sixteen berewicks of the sizeable royal manor of Kidderminster (Worcs. 1:2). The DB account of Kidderminster does not give any pre-Conquest subordinate tenures, but it is highly unlikely that none existed. Fech may therefore have had an interest in one or both Ribbesfords TRE. Kidderminster’s berewicks were not assigned separate hidages in DB, but the two Ribbesfords probably accounted for quite a large area. One of the was Ribbesford itself, perhaps also including the territory which later became the borough of Bewdley; the other probably corresponds with the later parish of Rock, west of Ribbesford, which was not recorded under the name of Rock until the 1210s and was a member of the manor of Ribbesford, also also held by the Ribbesfords of the Mortimers of Wigmore (VCH Worcs. IV, 320). The nineteenth-century boundaries of Ribbesford, Rock, and Bewdley interlocked in such a way as to suggest that they were divisions of the original territory of Ribbesford (Kain and Oliver 2001, nos. 40/73–5).

Ribbesford’s earlier history may also be relevant. The church of Worcester claimed that ‘first the Danes, then Thurstan the Fleming’ had taken Ribbesford from it by force, but that Thurstan ‘not long afterwards’ had lost his lands and been exiled (evidently for rebellion with Earl Roger of Hereford in 1075). In the interval of church control between the Danes’ and Thurstan’s depredations, Archbishop Wulfstan of York (also bishop of Worcester 1002–23) had leased Ribbesford and other places to Wulfric when he married his sister (Hearne 1723, I, 256; II, 598). After Thurstan the Fleming’s forfeiture the Ribbesfords were retained by King William and administered from Kidderminster. There is plenty of scope here for an undertenancy at one or both Ribbesfords, particularly by a man with a name of Danish origin.

In light of all this evidence, it is very tempting to speculate that Fech was the ancestor of the Ribbesfords of Ribbesford, held Ribbesford in addition to the manors documented in DB, and served Ralph de Mortimer and perhaps Queen Eadgyth in some steward-like capacity at their centre of Cleobury Mortimer.

Bibliography


Hearne 1723: Hemingi chartularium ecclesiæ Wigorniensis, ed. Thomas Hearne, 2 vols (Oxford, 1723)

Kain and Oliver 2001: Roger J. P. Kain and Richard R. Oliver, Historic Parishes of England & Wales: An Electronic Map of Boundaries before 1850 with a Gazetteer and Metadata (Colchester: History Data Service, 2001)

Phill. Salop.: Domesday Book, ed. John Morris, 25: Shropshire, ed. Frank and Caroline Thorn (Chichester: Phillimore, 1986)

Phill. Worcs.: Domesday Book, ed. John Morris, 16: Worcestershire, ed. Frank and Caroline Thorn (Chichester: Phillimore, 1982)

VCH Worcs.