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of the second Earl of Buckingham. I should, before leaving Crendon, remark upon it as an old-world village, its cottages of wattle-and-daub still preserving the characteristics of a peasant's dwelling in the Middle Ages. Domesday and the records which succeed the Survey trace the names of the possessors of the lands within the parish, but the sites of Giffard's castle, and of the outposts, which must have made Crendon a position of strategic importance, can only be left to conjecture. Still there remain the fine cruciform church, and buildings here and there along the straggling roads and byeways, some converted into the barns and granaries of modern times, indicating the antiquity of the place, and furnishing objects of interest to the student of history, leaving, of course, very much to the imagination to suggest.

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Whilst we have a precise account of the death of the second Walter Giffard, the last days of the first Walter are left in obscurity. Freeman assumes that the first Walter was one of the Commissioners for the Domesday Survey in 1085-6. He mentions the names of the four commissioners who took the Survey of Worcestershire "Remigius Bishop of Lincoln, Walter Giffard the aged Earl of Buckingham, Henry of Ferrers, Lord of Tutbury and of Fifhide, and Adam, one of the sons of Hubert of Rye and brother of the Dapifer Eudo of Colchester." It appears to me, however, very doubtful whether it was not Walter the son who was the Justiciar, or Commissioner, for the Survey; this would be so on the authority of Doyle in his "Official Baronage of England." In the record from the Worcester Chartulary, we find Walter Giffard there distinguished as an Earl, a title which the first Walter never appears to have assumed.* Doyle speaks of the second

"Hoc testimonium totius vice-comitatus Wireceastre dato sacramento juris jurandi firmavit exhortante et ad id laborante piissimo et prudentissimo patre domino Wulfstano Episcopo, tempore Regis Willelmi senioris. Coram principalibus ejusdem Regis, Remigio scilicet Lincolniensi Episcopo et comite Walterio Giffardo et Henrico de Ferris et Adam fratre Eudonis Dapiferi Regis, qui ad inscribendas et describendas possessiones et consuetudines tam regis quam principum suorum in hâc provinciâ et in pluribus aliis ab ipso Rege destinati sunt eo tempore quo totam Angliam idem Rex describi fecit."-Heming's Worcester Chartulary, in Ellis I., 20.

Walter as succeeding his father "before 1084;" and in Forester's notes to Ordericus it is mentioned that Walter the first died before 1084. I regret I cannot refer to any original authority for the statement. I have, however, little doubt that the aged warrior must have passed away within twenty years of the battle of Senlac. Whatever hesitation there may be as to the first Walter bearing the title of an English Earl, he was unquestionably Count of Longueville, a stronghold on a hill, the village lying below, between Dieppe and St. Valery-en-Caux, a Norman fortress, as Freeman says, worthy to rank with Arques and Gisors. Giffard's interests, we may conclude, were centered in the Longueville of his early days, and as Ordericus tells us, his son's remains were taken from England to be buried in the church of that Norman village. We may believe that the bones of the veteran of so many struggles were borne from English soil and laid in the same church but a few years before those of his son, the incidents of whose life we propose hereafter to consider. Walter Giffard, the second, as we shall see, founded, A.D. 1084, a priory of Clugniac monks in the town of Longueville. He is, moreover, considered to have been the second Count of Longueville, and there, according to other authorities, were buried with him his wife Agnes and his son, Gautier Giffard, third of the name; but we are anticipating what may be said of the descendants of the friend of the Conqueror and the hero of Senlac.†

JOHN PARKER.

*Some Account of the Alien Priories in England and Wales, Vol. I., p. 37, referring to "Neustria Pia," p. 666, Desc. de Norm., II., 123.

† It may be added to the remarks on Willis's assumption that there were only two Walter Giffards (p. 496), that Camden also refers to only two Walter Giffards, both Earls of Buckingham, the younger dying in 1164 (Camden's "Britannia," 3rd edition, by Gibson, Vol. I., p. 334). In Cox's work (published in 1730), p. 209, a similar reference to the two Giffards occurs.

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