Alfwen Peche, Suffolk, 11th or 12th century

Question

There are two versions of Alfwen (Unknown or de Normandy) Peche, of Clopton, Suffolk.

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/UNKNOWN-45260  Alfwen UNKNOWN died 1088 wife of http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/P%C3%AAche-34 and mother of his son William http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Pecche-19

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/De_Normandy-118 Alfwen (de Normandy) de Peche (1100 - abt. 1188) wife of William http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Peche%2C_Lord_Of_Cloptunna_and_Dalham-1, son of http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/P%C3%AAche-34

Both version claim to be “created through the import of Dickinson Family Tree.ged on 31 March 2011.” With no other sources.

The sources I can find all suggest that she was the wife of the father, Guillaume, rather than the son, William, with a death date of 1088.

The son, William, appears to have married Anne Grey, of Buckingham Castle, County Norfolk

http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~clopton/norman.htm genealogy with sources has her as wife of Guillaume, and mother of William

http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/ENGLISHNOBILITYMEDIEVAL3P-S.htm#_Toc389068627 sources has her as wife of Guillaume, with no mention of son William

https://books.google.com/books?id=Bd1XAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA435&lpg=PA435&dq=alfwen+peche&source=bl&ots=GEHWqm_Pf-&sig=SqKm7q72vMKeYJXkeP4-HXXZdiY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZxuXYs6jPAhWFRCYKHR60DVEQ6AEISTAJ#v=onepage&q=alfwen%20peche&f=false

pg  228 and 233 (in Latin) refer to  “WIllelmus Peccatun et Elfwenna uxor”  in reign of Henry I (c. 1068 – 1135), and  “Willelmo Peche…uxor…Alfwen” in 1088.

The son, William, also needs to be merged,but Alfwen needs to be sorted out first.

Answer 1

The Complete Peerage, 2nd ed., Volume 10, p. 331-332 has William Pecche, and his first wife Alfwen, who is alive in 1088 when they receive a grant of Over, Cambridgeshire.  No family is assigned to Alfwen, and given her name seems to be Saxon rather than Norman, I would go with Unknown rather than de Normandy as the name to use in Wikitree.

Feudal Cambridgeshire, p. 93 by William Farrer, also quotes the same grant in 1088 but calls it Ofra rather than Over

The Complete Peerage adds that William Pecche married secondly Isilia, probably daughter and heir of Hervey de Bourges,and their son Hamon de Pecche was the eventual heir of his father's lands.  There were two other possible sons Simon and Ralph that were older and perhaps sons of Alfwen but both seemed to have died without heirs.

There is no mention of a son of William and Alfwen (or William and Isilia) named William, in The Complete Peerage, or in Feudal Cambridgeshire or in the Medieval Lands database.

The Clopton family (rootsweb.ancestry link above) seems to use the Visitation of Suffolk 1561 as its source for the early Clopton family, but that seems to make no link between the first William Clopton and William Pecche.  They have obviously made the assumption that the Clopton name came from the manor of Clopton in Suffolk, held by William Pecche but this may not be correct.  I think the 'son' William should be disconnected or at least marked as Uncertain.

I do have some hesitation over what appears to be a long generation between William de Pecche and his son Hamon, given that William is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 and Hamon was still living in 1178, but died before 1185.  However I guess William could still have been relatively young in 1086 (maybe 30) and Hamon as a younger son by a second wife, not born until 1095-1100?

Comments

Thanks,

I have proposed a merge of the two Alfwens.

I have marked the parentage of both Williams as "uncertain".  I am reluctant to do more without responses from the respective profile managers.

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Thank you for your commitment to finding the truth behind this mystery..... Not sure what to make of it. What I couldn't understand is why his name would have changed to Clopton if he was the son of Peche. I'm very new to this, but I find it all very fascinating. The question remains however, what is the origin of the Clopton name? This was the best link I could connect to, but couldn't understand the change in the name. This clears some of that up....

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Surnames were still a novelty - people didn't always have them - and the custom of taking your father's surname wasn't yet firmly established..

Typically a man might call himself Richard de Easton because he owned the place.  It was name and address at the same time.

His eldest son Henry, who inherited the estate, might appear as "Henry fitz Richard de Easton" while his father lived, and then just Henry de Easton.

But his 2nd son Richard would move out of Easton, and if he acquired property at Weston, he'd probably just call himself Richard de Weston.

A century later, surnames had come to be linked with pride in ancestry, and then a younger son might call himself John de Easton of Weston, keeping the Easton name although he had no ongoing connection with the place.

Well actually, he or his descendants could inherit Easton if enough people died first.  But he'd need people to remember the connection, having no other proof of it.  That would be another reason for surnames to become hereditary.