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Edgar 31

Name

Summary

Edgar 31 is not recorded by Domesday as a landholder either TRE or in 1086 but two entries in the Suffolk folios imply that he had held land there at some point during the intervening twenty years.

Profile

The first entry Ralph de Limésy fief records that a manor of 1 carucate at Fenstead (in south-west Suffolk) that had been held by Uhtræd 25 TRE was now held by Ralph as a berewick of his nearby manor at Houghton (6 miles away and also held TRE by Uhtræd) ‘through Edgar his anteccesor’ (modo tenet Radulfus ... ab etgaro antececessore suo). There is no further reference to Edgar in the remaining eight main entries relating to Ralph’s fief but he does occur again in the chapter detailing invasiones super regis, or ‘encroachments against the king’, in an entry relating to a small estate at Cavendish (2½ miles from Houghton). The entry notes that this estate had been delivered to ‘Bainard’ (probably Ralph Baynard) at some point after the Conquest, that Edgar had added it to Cavendish (presumably the main manor there) after Bainard lost it, and that Ralph de Limèsy now held it in demesne. This implies that Edgar had power over both of these Cavendish estates prior to Ralph de Limèsy and, as with the entry relating to Fenstead and Houghton, that he was Ralph’s immediate antecessor at all of these estates.

Furthermore, neither of the TRE holders of the two parts of Cavendish were associated with Uhtræd 25, which suggests that Edgar had acquired his lands as a composite grant rather than from a single TRE antecessor; it may even be that he was the anteccesor for all of Ralph de Limèsy’s fief in Suffolk. Nothing more is certainly known about this mysterious Edgar 31, an Englishman who had acquired and then lost estates in Suffolk at some point after the Conquest and before 1086, but it is conceivable that he and Edgar 32 could be the same person and that both are to be associated with Edgar Ætheling (Edgar 14).