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Besi 3

Name

Summary

Besi 3 was a free man who had two tiny holdings in north Suffolk TRE, the precise assessments and values of which are uncertain; he was in the commendation of two different lords, Alsige and Wulfwine, but was perhaps more closely associated with the latter.

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 Suffolk	Phil. ref. 35,7	Vill Wortham	DB Spelling Beso	Holder 1066 Besi 'of Gislingham'	Lord 1066 Wulfwine, antecessor of Aubrey de Vere	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Aubrey de Vere	1086 Subtenant Adelelm the man of Aubrey de Vere	Fiscal Value 0.04	1066 Value 0.13	1086 Value 0.13	Confidence B	Map
Shire Suffolk	Phil. ref. 6,216	Vill Gislingham	DB Spelling Beso	Holder 1066 Besi 'of Gislingham'	Lord 1066 Alsige nephew of Earl Ralph	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Robert Malet	1086 Subtenant -	Fiscal Value 0.13	1066 Value 0.33	1086 Value 0.33	Confidence B	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

Profile

Besi 3 was a free man who seems to have had two tiny holdings close together TRE, of which the largest was at Gislingham on a low ridge between various tributary streams of the River Dove in northern Suffolk and where Besi held 16 acres that in 1086 had a value of 6s 8d. 

The other holding was in Wortham, 3¾ miles to the north of Gislingham and just to the south of the River Waveney that separates Suffolk and Norfolk.  Here Besi was one of nine free men (although DB names only eight) who together with ten people named at other nearby lands shared 90 acres that, along with 14 acres held by a twentieth person, had a value of 60s TRE; if both land and value were divided proportionately between the holders then Besi’s share would have been about 4½ acres with a value of 2s 7¼d. 

To have two such small estates in very close proximity and held TRE by someone with the same extremely rare name is a strong case for regarding them as the same person.  There are potential problems regarding lordship to note, however.  At Gislingham, Besi was said to be commended to Alsige, the nephew of Ralph the Staller (Ralph 2), whereas at Wortham he was commended to and in the soke of ‘the antecessor of Aubrey de Vere’ (Aubrey 2); at the former the soke was or had been (DB is ambiguous here) held by the king and the earl.  However, the DB entry for Gislingham notes that 5 acres of Besi’s land were held by Aubrey’s antecessor, there identified as Wulfwine, and this association with Wulfwine at each holding renders it probable that both were held TRE by the same man, Besi 3.

These two holdings were two of only three estates recorded in DB as held TRE by someone called Besi and the third was too distant (at around 75 miles away) to have been held by the same person.  Although someone with an ostensibly similar name, Bosi 2, occurs as the patronymic of a landholder nearby in south Norfolk TRE, there is no obvious reason to associate him with Besi 3 and the proximity of the two rare names may be simple coincidence.  There is no reason to consider Besi 3 in connection with any other estate or person.