Aluredus (Lincoln) de Wareham (abt. 1065 - abt. 1135)

Ancestors

Descendants

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Biography

NOTES:

• The birth and death years are only intended as rough indications.
• The exact connection with Hawise is speculative. For example she might have been his mother-in-law.
• Wikitree is following a proposal of Keats-Rohan which equates Alfred of Wareham of Lincoln, known from Dorset, with Alfred nepos Turoldi, known from Domesday Book in Lincolnshire.

This "Alfred of Lincoln", despite his name, is mainly known from records relating to Dorset, where he is also called Alfred of Wareham. He seems to have worked there in some sort of official function, although it is never named. Presumably he had a connection to Lincolnshire.

Keats-Rohan, thinks he is the same as "Aluredus Nepos Turoldi" who appears in Lincolnshire in the 1086 Domesday Book.^[1] She proposes that this byname means he was a close relative of Turold of Bucknall, although somewhat unusually she thinks "nepos" in this case is not referring to a blood relationship, but one via marriage.

Karn and Sharpe are also open to the idea that Alfred of Wareham is the same as Alfred nepos Turoldi:

Alfred, ‘nepos Turoldi’, to whom King William I had given three tofts in the city of Lincoln (DB, i.336va; § C23), is our Alfred. He would have been cousin to Lucy, and this explains his witness to her husband Ivo’s act, in which he was named as Alfred of Wareham, while in Dorset he was always Alfred of Lincoln. Wareham was a royal borough, and the move may be an early reflection of Alfred’s serving the king as early as c. 1090

The PASE project suggests that Alfred nepos Wareham was a tenant of the king not only in the city of Lincoln, but also in his borough of Stamford.^[2]

Karn and Sharpe write:

In Dorset, he is named alongside Bishop Roger of Salisbury in a writ of Henry I for Abbotsbury (000, Regesta 754, datable 1102 × ?1107), in which the two are ordered ‘sicut iusticiarii mei’ to keep and maintain the monks of Abbotsbury, and he attested the act with Croc the huntsman. In all three contexts Alfred acts in a senior capacity. He does not appear anywhere as sheriff, and Nicholas Karn sets out the case that from a certain point he was the king’s justice in Dorset, a county in which Roger of Salisbury was the presiding bishop. It is, however, impossible to find any key dates for Alfred’s career. He was still alive at Michaelmas 1130, when his danegeld exemption in Dorset was £6, a sum exceeded only by the bishop of Salisbury and the earl of Gloucester, and he owed £3 proffered for a life interest in the manor of Pulham in Dorset (PR 31 Henry I, 15–16). The evidence for his career is reviewed by N. Karn, ‘Secular power and its rewards in Dorset in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries’, Historical Research 82 (2009), 2–16

Karn rejected the idea that there is any evidence that the younger Alfred of Lincoln (this profile) was related to the older one in Lincolnshire:

It has been suggested that Alfred was related to another Alfred of Lincoln, lord of Thoresway in Lincolnshire, but this introduces a needless complexity; a family connection there is not necessary in order to explain his later career, especially as there is no positive evidence for it. It seems most likely that the toponymic denotes no more than residence, perhaps during a period as a lower-ranking royal official.

Family

Karn writes, concerning Dorset lands:

He and his descendants came to possess those holdings that had in 1086 been in the possession of Hawise de Bacqueville. The transfer could be explained conjecturally by positing a marriage between Hawise and Alfred.

...and...

The reference to Alfred of Lincoln’s danegeld exemption of £6 in 1129–30 shows that he had by then acquired some substantial landed holdings in Dorset, but does not necessarily prove that he possessed the totality of her lands by that point, although it would seem likely enough that the whole honour had been transferred as one block. Nor do we know how the lands were transferred to Alfred. Either Alfred could have been married to Hawise, and thus received her lands, or the lands were transferred to him on her death or retirement. The most important indication that they did not go to Robert directly, but via Alfred, is the use of the toponymic ‘of Wareham’ to describe him, for this had also been used of Hugh fitz Grip.

Hawise de Bacqueville, according to Karn and many others, was the widow of Hugh fitz Grip. Keats-Rohan expresses doubts in her entry for her called "Uxor Hugonis Filii Grip" (Wife of Hugh the son of Grip":^[3]

Widow of Hugh fitz Grip, sheriff of Dorset, who was dead by 1086. Around 1070 the wife of Hugh fitz Grip occurs in a Montivilliers charter where she is identified as Hawise daughter of Nicholas de Bacqueville: "Ego Hadvidis filia Nicolai de Baschelvilla, uxor Hugonis de Varhan ... annuente magno rege Guillielmo, coram baronibus suis, videlicit. ... et Gaufrido Martello, fratre supradicti Hugonis ..." (J-M. Bouvris, "La renaissance de l'abbate de Montivilliers", App. no.29 (1066-76), 82-3). this is possibly the same woman. If so she is unlikely to be the woman who took Hugh's lands to Alfred of Lincoln soon after 1086, because he was much younger than Hawise would have been and he had issue by his wife, who was perhaps Hawise's daughter. Another possibility, less likely, is that Hugh's widow was a woman other than Hawise.

Sources

1. ↑ Keats-Rohan, Domesday People p.143.
2. ↑ Lincolnshire Domesday:
   • Lincoln: Aluredus nepos Turoldi holding 3 tofts which Sybi's, given by the king: pp.6-7
   • Stamford: Aluredus holding 9 messuages which were Lewin's pp.10-11
   • PASE proposed listing for lands of Alfred nephew of Turold: https://domesday.pase.ac.uk/Domesday?op=5&personkey=49813
3. ↑ Keats-Rohan, Domesday People, p.441

• Foster and Longley (1910) "Lincolnshire Domesday and the Lindsey Survey" The Publications - Lincoln Record Society 19 link
• Karn and Sharpe, (2014) "ALFRED OF LINCOLN Justice in Dorset; archive of Montacute priory", version H1-Alfred of Lincoln-2014-1, Charters of William II and Henry I Project pdf
• Karn, N "Secular power and its rewards in Dorset in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries", Historical Research 82 (2009), 2–16.
• Keats-Rohan, Domesday People pp.143-4
• K.S.B.Keats-Rohan (1996 pre-publication proof) of Nottingham Medieval Studies 41 (1997) 13-56 "Domesday Book and the Malets: patrimony and the private histories of public lives" on her website