General Notes

Name Suffix:<NSFX> [Lord De Bienfai

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Richard Fitz Gilbert; also known as "de Bienfaite" (from the quantity of his fiefs), "de Clare" or "de Tonbridge" (from actual fiefs); went with his cousin William I the Conqueror to England and was granted 176 Lordships, 95 of them associated with the Honour (feudal unit of administration) of Clare, Suffolk, and others with Tonbridge, Kent. [Burke's Peerage]

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Richard FitzGilbert, having accompanied the Conqueror into England, participated in the spoils of conquest and obtained extensive possessions in the new and old dominions of his royal leader and kinsman. In 1073 we find him joined under the designation of Ricardus de Benefacta, with William de Warren, in the great office of Justiciary of England, with whom, in three years afterwards, he was in arms against the rebellious lords Robert de Britolio, Earl of Hereford, and Ralph Waher, or Guarder, Earl of Norfolk and Suffolk, and behaved with great gallantry. But afterwards, at the time of the General Survey, which was towards the close of William's reign, he is called Ricardus de Tonebruge, from his seat at Tonebruge (now Tunbridge) in Kent, which town and castle he obtained from the archbishop of Canterbury in lieu of the castle of Brion, at which time he enjoyed thirty-eight lordships in Surrey, thirty-five in Essex, three in Cambridgeshire, with some others in Wilts and Devon, and ninety-five in Suffolk, amongst those was Clare, whence he was occasionally styled Richard de Clare, and that place in a few years afterwards becoming the chief seat of the family, his descendants are said to have assumed thereupon the title of Earls of Clare. This great feudal lord m. Rohese, dau. of Walter Giffard, Earl of Buckingham, and had issue, Gilbert, his successor, Roger, Walter, Richard, Robert, a dau. m. to Ralph de Telgers, and a dau. mo. to Eudo Dapifer. Richard de Tonebruge, or de Clare, whose is said to have fallen in a skirmish with the Welsh, was s. by his eldest son, Gilbert de Tonebruge. [Sir Bernard Burke, Dormant and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, London, 1883, p. 118, Clare, Lords of Clare, Earls of Hertford, Earls of Gloucester]