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Frederic 6

Name

Summary

Frederic 6 was a Flemish nobleman, brother of Gerbod a military command at Chester, and of Gundrada the wife of William de Warenne (William 5).

Profile

Frederic 6 was from a noble Flemish family, hereditary advocates of the monastery of Saint-Bertin at Saint-Omer in the ‘French’ part of the county of Flanders, and holders of allodial land at Oosterzele and Scheldewindeke east of the river Schelde in Imperial Flanders. William I gave Frederic’s (probably older) brother Gerbod a military command at Chester, and their sister Gundrada was married to the Norman magnate William de Warenne. Soon after the Conquest Frederic himself acquired the lands of a wealthy king’s thegn, Toki (Toki 11), in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire, but was killed during the rebellion of Hereweard ‘the Wake’ (Hereweard 1) in the Fens, probably in 1070. His estates were assigned to his sister and brother-in-law the Warennes, but retained an identity down to 1086 as ‘Frederic’s fief’ (feudum Frederici and variant spellings). Their value was at least £100 a year (Lewis 2004).

The names Frederic and Gundrada occur as TRE landowners not very far apart in Sussex, and it is tempting to think that they were the same Flemish brother and sister. The identities are certainly conceivable, but it is also possible that the appearance of the names TRE was only a coincidence and we are dealing in pre-Conquest Sussex with other immigrants or with families influenced by Continental naming habits.

Bibliography

Lewis 2004: C. P. Lewis, ‘Warenne, Gundrada de (d. 1085)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2007)