Elisabeth Austin PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

descendants. It remains the fullest source for Thomas' family
history. The inquest into the temporalities of Bayeux commissioned
by Henry I after the death of Richard fitz-Samson in 1133
supplements the chapter's records, and like the Livre Noirdocuments
the ineffectual administration of Thomas' nephew. 33 Outside of
Bayeux, the archives hold little information concerning Thomas, with
one striking exception: a charter of jumieges testifies to Thomas'
early patronage by William 1. Norman cartularies can tell us little
about Thomas' very occasional presence on the continent in the
company of his king.
Written sources tell us a great deal about Thomas' character
and actions, but a more enduring monument to his work exists. The
outline of York's Anglo-Norman Minster survives in the undercroft of
the present church, and the footings Thomas commissioned continue
to support the late-medieval tower. Thirty years of excavations, now
complete, reveal the scale of Thomas' building campaign and suggest
the aspirations which dictated it.
In the end, then, a biographer of Thomas of Bayeux may find
ample materials to work with. If much of the ground had been
trodden for purposes to which Thomas was incidental, a few sources
remain to be exploited with a new intent. Thomas here will be
33Gleason, pp. 68-9, summarizes the transmission of the 1133 returns: the
originals, a copy in a register of 1297, and a seventeenth-century transcript
are all lost. A nineteenth-century transcript of a second seventeenth-century
transcript of the 1297 copy survives, but the version of the inquest in the Red
Book of the Exchequer ( RS 1896, ii, pp. 645-7) is regarded as more reliable. See
J.H. Round, Family Origins and Other Studies, ed. W. Page (London, 1930), pp.
201-16, and Haskins, Norman Institutions, pp. 15-20. H. Navel compares the
versions of the inquest and reproduces the text, corrected from Delisle, in
"L'enquete de 1133 sur les fiefs de l'eveche de Bayeux", BSAN 42 (1935), pp. 5-
80. The index alone of this painstaking critical edition runs to nine pages.
32