Notes |
- Tenant of the bishop of Coutances in Normandy, 1086. Sheriff of Berkshire after 1106.
"Aubrey de Vere I was almost certainly a Norman who derived his name from Ver in the Cotentin and probably had connexions with the adjoining duchy of Brittany. He was born probably before 1040. The Conqueror granted him, with other lands, the great estates of an English thegn named Wulfwine in Essex, Suffolk, and Cambridge. In 1084 he attested a royal charter for Lessay as Aubrey the Chamberlain. In 1086 he held in chief 14 estates in Essex, with 2 houses and 3 acres in Colchester, 9 estates Suffolk, 7 in Cambs, and 2 in Hunts. He also held Kensington in Middlesex and two properties in Northants of the Bishop of Coutances, land in Hunts of the Abbey of Ramseyand land in two places in Essex of Count Alan of Brittany. The head of his barony was at (Castle) Hedingham in Essex, where he had planted a vineyard. It is usually assumed that he is identical with, and not the father of, the Aubrey de Vere who attested a writ at Westminster (September 1102 to Easter 1103 and a charter for Abingdon (1101-06). Not later than 1106 he was acting as sheriff of Berkshire, being styled simply Aubrey. Within the next few years he was acting as a justice in Northants, being styled Aubrey the Chamberlain, and as sheriff of Berkshire, being styled Aubrey de Berkshire. At the dying request of his eldest son, not later than 1106, he gave Abingdon Abbey his church of Kensington with its appurtenances and 2 hides and 1 yardland; but as he resided mostly in Essex, he founded a priory at Earls Colne as a cell of Abingdon. He seems to have held 1 1/2 knights' fees of the Abbey of St. Edmund. He married Beatrice, whose parentage is unknown. He died before 1113 (almost certainly in 1112), at Colne Priory, and was buried with his wife in the church there." [Complete Peerage X:194-5]
"The first Aubrey de Vere was a Domesday tenant of the powerful Breton tenant-in-chief Count Alan Rufus, and was among a handful of Alan's Bretons who were also tenant-in-chief of their own fees. Aubrey's family probably came from Vair in Ancenis, in the Nantais; he occurs among a group of men from the Nantais in a charter given by Conan II c. 1050. He is usually assumed to have originated at Ver because he held land in 1086 of the Bishop of Coutances. [...] There is a real possibility that other de Ver families in England could have originated in the Cotentin, but the mass of evidence indicating Aubrey's Breton origins is overwhelming." [K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People]
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