Note 195 — Chapter V · (continued 2)
Reading edition
He has an entry to himself in Essex (Domesday, ii. 54 b). He appears again in 100 b, and in the town of Colchester (106) he holds “i. domum, et i. curiam, et i. hidam terræ, et xv. burgenses.” A building with some trace of Romanesque work used to be shown as “Hamo’s Saxon hall or curia.” Why more “Saxon” than everything else in that Saxon land it was not easy to guess. In Ellis he is made to be the same as “Haimo vicecomes” who appears in Kent and Surrey (Domesday, 14, 36). This last witnesses a letter of Anselm’s (Epp. iii. 71) to the monks of Canterbury, along with another Haimo, “filius Vitalis,” “Wimundus homo vicecomitis,” and a mysterious “Robertus filius Watsonis”—what name is meant? In Epp. iv. 57 a letter is addressed to him by Anselm, complaining of damage done by his men to the Archbishop’s property at Canterbury and Sandwich. Or is this “vicecomes” in Kent the same as Haimer or Haimo—he is written both ways—the “vicecomes” (in another sense) of Thouars, who plays an important part before and after the great battle? See N. C. vol. iii. pp. 315, 457, 551.