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Algeard 3

Name

Summary

Algeard 3 was dead by 1066, when his unnamed sons were lessees from Abingdon abbey of a Berkshire manor of 7 hides worth £4.

Profile

Abingdon abbey owned Lyford in the Vale of White Horse, 8 miles upstream from the abbey, the greater part of it being leased in 1066 not to Algeard (who was presumably dead) but to his unnamed sons. After 1066 the sons commended themselves to the Norman magnate Walter Giffard, tenant-in-chief of the neighbouring manor of West Hanney (Berks. 20:1–2), without the abbot’s permission. The abbot made a return of Lyford in his own fief in 1086, noting that Walter Giffard held it from him, whereas Walter Giffard did not list it among his own possessions. Its tenure was nonetheless sufficiently unclear for the next abbot to make a point of establishing that he was indeed the overlord of the Giffards at Lyford (VCH Berks. IV, 285–94).

This part of Lyford was a sizeable estate, and it is possible that Algeard’s sons, and their father before them, held other manors which also passed to Walter Giffard when they became his men, but there is no way of identifying their other property. Giffard had numerous other predecessors, both named and unnamed, in the region covered by Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and Buckinghamshire.

Bibliography

VCH Berks.