Note 25 — PART II HISTORICAL STUDIES

An appendix, in the first volume, devoted to Ælfred the giant—who appears in Normandy, circ. 1030—claims that Ælfred is a name so purely English that the presumption in favour of the English birth of any one bearing it 'in this generation is extremely strong',25 and that it was only adopted by 'a later generation of Normans'. Mr Freeman seems to have been unaware that in Britanny the name of Alfred enjoyed peculiar favour. I find it there as early as the ninth century,26 while I have noted in a single cartulary seventeen examples between 1000 and 1150. Among these are 'Alfridus frater Jutheli' (ante 1008) and Juthel, son of Alfred (1037). Now, at the Conquest, 'Judhael, who from his chief seat took the name of Judhael of Totnes, became the owner', in Mr Freeman's words, 'of a vast estate in Devonshire, and extended his possessions into the proper Cornwall also'. But we know from charters that this Judhael was the son of an Alfred, and was succeeded by another Alfred, who joined Baldwin of Redvers at Exeter in 1136.27 In the same county, as Mr Freeman reminds us, we have another Breton tenant-in-chief, 'Alvredus Brito'. In all this I am working up to the suggestion that the well-known Alfred of Lincoln was not, as Mr Freeman holds, an Englishman,28 but a Breton. We have not only the overwhelming presumption against any considerable tenant-in-chief being of English origin, but the fact that his lands were new grants. When we add to this fact that his heir (whether son or brother) bore the distinctively Breton name of Alan,29 we may safely conclude that Alfred was not only a foreigner but a Breton. But the strange thing is that we do not stop there; we have a Jool (or Johol) of Lincoln, who died in 105130 after bestowing on Ramsey Abbey its Lincolnshire fief.31 Thus we have an Alfred and a Juhel 'of Lincoln', as we have an Alfred and a Juhel 'of Totnes'; and in Juhel of Lincoln we must have a Breton settled in England under the Confessor.