Eudo Dapifer Archives - The History JarThe History Jar

So here we are at 1066 – Colchester suddenly became much more important once more when they decided to build a massive castle there. It’s likely that work began in 1075 and very sensibly the Normans decided to use the remains of the Temple of Claudius as their foundation. It’s always good to have building materials at hand! The use of the footprint means that by ground area, the keep at Colchester is the largest Norman keep in Europe. A handy bank and ditch left by the Romans were also incorporated into the build. When it was new it would have looked extremely intimidating. The Saxons knew who was in charge and any passing Scandinavians would have had second thoughts about raiding.

The other thing that the Conqueror gave Colchester was a new tax code. The Domesday book shows that the tax burden rose five fold from the reign of Edward the Confessor to William I. The records of 1086 show that there were 193 households, making in one of the largest towns of the time. Among the principle landowners were the Bishop of London, the Abbey of St Mary in Barking, the Abbey of St Ouen at Rouen, Count Eustace of Bologne who was at Hastings in 1066 (and who had a colourful past), the king who took over the Crown lands that Edward the Confessor held. It also recorded a number of mills on the River Colne. It was also clear that St Peter’s Church was already well established.

The man in charge of building the castle and all that tax gathering was Eudo Dapifer (meaning steward) who I have written about before. https://thehistoryjar.com/2023/06/10/eudo-dapifer-and-his-elder-brother-ralph/. At the time of the Domesday Book, he owned five houses and 40 acres of land which had once belonged to the town burgesses. He also founded St John’s Abbey, where he was later buried, and St Mary Magdalen Hospital (initially for lepers). Dapifer served three Norman kings and was married into the powerful de Clare family. It was Dapifer and Colchester’s strategic importance in the region which turned the town into a prosperous borough with a population reflecting the waves of settlers that had passed through East Anglia by that time.

Philips, Andrew, Colchester a History

Open Domesday Book online

My starting point for this post is Ralph FitzHubert who was one of Wiliam the Conqueror’s tenants in Derbyshire. He made his home at Crich even though the majority of his Derbyshire manors were closer to Chesterfield and he held other estates in Nottinghamshire – Crich was perhaps convenient to access his manors. Crich, with its woodland pasture, was home to the king’s deer – which all belonged to the Crown. So far so good. Ralph is sometimes called Hubert of Ryes because he was the eldest son of the lord of Ryes near Bayeux and in Derbyshire he had six under tenants and was required to put a total of 30 knights in the field in return for all his land holdings.

Rather unexpectedly I found his younger brother was someone I’ve written about before. Ralph’s brother Eudo, who along with his three other brothers and father, arrived in England after 1066. Eudo held extensive lands in ten counties and by 1072 he was the steward or dapifer to the royal household. He was with William the Conqueror in Rouen when he died and he accompanied William II or William Rufus as he’s better known back to England. He continued as dapifer. Basically, he was a very powerful man and he married into a powerful family – his wife was Rohese de Clare.

He is also part of the group of men suspected of having William Rufus assassinated in August 1100. As conspiracy theories go the idea that the de Clares and their extended kinship network gave William’s little brother Henry a helping hand to the throne is not a new one and like all good theories there’s not a lot of evidence kicking around. Nor should it be added that he was ‘heaped with rewards’ if he did play a part in William’s demise (Frank Barlow, p.172).

Dapifer held extensive estates in East Anglia and played an intrinsic part in the building of Colchester Castle. His only child, a daughter called Margaret, was married to William de Mandeville. Eudo was the grandfather of Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex. After Eudo’s death his estates largely reverted to the Crown – which led to a disagreement between the king and Geoffrey in the matter of who owned Saffron Walden, Sawbridgeworth and Great Waltham. The case was only resolved during the Anarchy when King Stephen granted Geoffrey the estates that he claimed the Crown had taken unlawfully.

All in all, I’m a long way from brother Ralph in Crich. His descendants took on the name FitzRalph and his son Odo FitzRalph of Bunny in Nottinghamshire inherited the lot. However, the estates were broken up by female inheritance. And as a final aside, the place name has nothing to do with bunny rabbits – I was always taught that the Normans introduced rabbits to Britain but it turns out from archaeological finds at Fishbourne Roman palace that it was the Romans and even more amazing it wasn’t lunch – it seems to have been someone’s pet lepus.

Barlow, Frank, William Rufus, (2008)

Warren Hollister, C, ‘The Strange Death of William Rufus’, Speculum, Vol 48. no.4 (Oct 1973), pp.637-653

https://archaeology.co.uk/articles/news/roman-rabbit-discovered-at-fishbourne.htm