The Flemish Origins

Domesday gives a hint towards the identity of Lambert’s sons. In that book they are allotted just their Christian names, Walter and Seier, and it is obvious from the wording that Seier is absent. Wlater, “brother of Seier”, was still holding lands in 1086, but Seier’s possessions had been passed to his own elder son, another Walter, described in the documents as “Walter Flandrensis” – Walter the Fleming. He and his brother Hugh are given as tenants-in-chief of the vast string of Midlands manors already mentioned. It is also certain, though not established in any surviving portion of the Domesday, that they held substantial estates in the north. Seier, as we may glean from other sources, had gone to Scotland (perhaps on release from his capture at Dover) and been granted lands on the Firth of Forth by the Scottish king, Malcolm Canmore.

To begin with, cross-Channel contacts of the Anglo-Boulonnais between their new homelands and their old were sustained as vigorously as were those of their ally between his English kingdom and his Norman dukedom. For a long time after 1066, Flemish charters show men known to have extensive holdings of English lands witnessing documents promulgated at the court of Flanders. Wkater and Hugh “de Lens” as they are called in these Flemish charters must have crossed and recrossed the Channel many times in support of their estates on each side of it. Numerous charters of the count of Flanders are signed by the both of them; sometimestheir place is filled by their cousin, Winemar le Fleming or Winemar de Lens, son of old Wlater. By 1126, signed by “Dominus Hugo de Lens, ingennus homo” gives to the Chapter at Soignies, where there was a memorial to their grandfather, Count Lambert, a half-share of the dime of Lens, for the soul of my brother Walter”. In future, charters requiring the witness of Lambert’s descendants in Flanders will be signed by Baldwin de Lens, Eustace de Lens, Godfrey de Lens, those heirs of Hugh who took the Boulonnais legacy instead of the English one.

All of Count Lambert’s children put their mark on Britain, but it was Judith who made the biggest impression. For reasons inherent in his own subtle policies, William the Conqueror had arranged a marriage between this beloved niece of his and the last English nobleman, the brave and handsome Waltheof, only surviving son and heir of the mighty Siward, Earl of Northumbria. Waltheof’s execution, procured by his wife in 1076, left the Countess Judith the richest woman in Britain, as page after page of Domesday can testify. That document also demonstrates how the manor house at Yardley, Northamptonshire (later Yardley Hastings) where she lived in widowhood and brought up her orphaned daughters, was guarded by an almost impenetrable wall of fortified manors, moated castles and defended stretches of East Midlands rivers by her kinsmen from Boulogne – sons of Count Lambert of Lens, his nephews and grandsons.

Judith’s wickedness in persuading her uncle to execute her husband was recognized by everyone – William as well as the rest – and she was never allowed to remarry. Instead, it was her gentle little elder daughter, Maud, who was made heiress of Waltheof’s immense Midlands possessions, including his two earldoms there of Northampton and Huntingdon. These were passed to Maud’s husband, Simon de Senlis, a cadet of the great house of Vermandois, the marriage undoubtedly being arranged by William the Conqueror, though it may not have taken place until after his death.

Another occupant of the Great Ouse valley, over the country border into Buckinghamshire but still on the draining foothills, was Winemar the Fleming, better known in records of Boulogne as Winemar de Lens. He, too, was a grandson of Count Lambert, being the son of old Walter, and so first cousin of Walter, Hugh and the daughters of Judith. From the Conqueror Winemar had received Hanslop, a rich manor of ten hides worth 24 pounds, which had previously belonged to a Saxon housecarl named Aldene.