Domesday Book records that the Saxon Agemund held lands here, and in the adjoining Claxby Pluckacre; and that Walter, a vassal of the wealthy Norman Gozelin, also held land and a mill of the yearly value of 4_s._, while the still more powerful Norman, Hugh de Abrincis (Avranches, in France), Earl of Chester, also received a grant of land in this parish from his uncle, William the Conqueror. Of this “Baron bold,” we may observe, in passing, that he acquired the surname of Lupus, or “the wolf,” from his many daring deeds. In addition to almost the whole of the county of Chester, which gave him his title, he held about 20 manors in Lincolnshire, 22 in Leicestershire, 12 in Norfolk, 32 in Suffolk, besides several more in other counties. Indeed, so large were his possessions, and so great his power, that the terms of the royal grant to him stated that he held his properties, not “de capite,” or “in chief,” of the Sovereign, as was almost universally the case, but “tam libere ad gladium, sicut Rex ipse tenebat Angliam ad coronam,” _i.e._, as freely by his sword, as the King did by his crown. It is recorded of him, that he founded and endowed several monasteries, in England, and elsewhere, “for the good and salvation of his soul”; and it is näively added, that “if a tithe of that be true which is related of him by the Chronicler, Ordericus Vitalis (p. 787), he had needs enough to make some such amends for his doings.” He, however, seems, in his latter days, to have attained to a proper sense of his actions, since he closed his career, after a long illness, by adopting the tonsure, as a monk of the Abbey of St. Werberg, of Chester, in his own Barony. Few of these baronial possessions, however, remained long in the families of those favourites to whom they were granted by the Conqueror, solely by the right of conquest. It had been asked long before, even by a Jezebel, “Had Zimri peace, who slew his master?” And there were Norman Omris and Zimris. It was a matter of natural, as well as of retributive justice, that, when the grip, by which the strong held his own, lost its vigour, even the strongest should make way for “a stronger than he.” And although the proud Lupus lorded it over demesnes in Hag, Salmonby, Tetford, Brinkhill, Langton, Greetham, and in many another parish, beside Winceby, yet at a later period we find another powerful family, the Gaunts, in the ascendant, and the Duke of Lancaster, John de Gandivo, was “Dominus Manerii de Winceby” (Harl. MS., Brit. Mus., vol. iii., p. 770); and Walter de Gaunt granted to the Abbey of Bardney, which had been re-founded by his father, Gilbert de Gaunt, after being in ruins some 200 years, the tithes of his Fee in Winceby. (Dugdale’s “Monasticon” ed. 1682, p. 143). But not yet even was “fixity of tenure” a feature of the times. Every dog has (only) his day; other owners followed not now known, and Winceby is now also owned by a name unknown to fame in the