General Notes

Alias:<ALIA> /Other/
First castellan of the Tower of London according to Stowe
Hlaf-weard = Anglo-Saxon for Lord
Stowe's A Survey of London, Volume I., p.45:
"Othowerus, Acolinillus, Otto, Geffrey Magnauille, Earle of Essex, wer fou
re the first Constalbes of this tower (of London), by succession."
Was this Other? Is this Othowerus Latin for Other/Othoere?
Tom Magness contributed the following discussion...
FICTION
C. P. Meehan, The Rise, Increase and Exit of the Geraldines, Earls of Desm
ond, and the persecution after their fall, translated from the Latin of Do
minic O'Daly, O.P., with memoir and notes, 3rd edition, (Dublin, James Duf
fy, 1878).
. . . which begins as follows:
The FitzGeralds, or Geraldines, are descended from 'Dominus Otho,' or 'Oth
er,' who, in 16 Edward the Confessor (1056/57), was an honorary baron of E
ngland.  He is said to have been one of the family of Gherardini of Floren
ce, and to have passed into Normandy, and thence into England.  He w
as so powerful at that period that it is probable that he was one of the f
oreigners who came to England with King Edward, and whom he favoured so mu
ch as to excite the jealousy of the native nobles.  It is also remarkab
le that Otho's son, Walter, was treated as a fellow countryman by the Norm
ans after the Conquest.  The Latin form of the name of his descendants, 'G
eraldini,' being the same as that of Gherardini, also indicates that he w
as of that family.
NON-FICTION
J. Horace Round, the noted historian, disparages this story in his articl
es on the FitzGeralds in The Ancestor and in his Peerage Studies:
I cannot undertake to say at what period or how the story of Other comi
ng to England under Edward the Confessor arose; nor can I explain how 'Oth
o' replaced the well authenticated 'Other,' probably to give the name a mo
re Italian appearance.  But as to the Latin form 'Geraldini,' I can sta
te that the name given by Giraldus Cambrensis to his own family was, on t
he contrary, 'Giraldidae.'
"In The Earls of Kildare we read that 'In 1078 Walter fitz Otho is mention
ed in Domesday Book as being in possession of his father's estates.' To th
is statement, which is obstinately repeated in the pages of Burke's Peerag
e, I reply, as in Peerage Studies (p. 69), that the date of Domesday Bo
ok was 1086, not 1078; that Walter was the son of Other, not Otho; and, th
at Domesday does not state that his lands had been held by his father, bu
t, on the contrary, proves them to have belonged to forfeited Englishmen
." (Round, FitzGeralds, ii., p.121-22) "Thus, the 'Otho' story is sho
wn to be absolute fiction." (Round, Peerage Studies, p. 69)
****
Tom Magness writes:
If Round said it, you can almost certainly take it to the bank.  As an his
torian and genealogist, his work is virtually beyond reproach.
And, here's what Collins had to say about Other . . .
"Othoere is mentioned, in the appendix (vide p. 205) to The Life of King A
lfred, to be living in his reign, a rich and powerful Lord, and to deri
ve his descent from ancestors in the kingdom of Norway. It also appears, t
hat Other, as wrote in the Doomsday Book (Ex lib. vocat. Doomsday), was li
ving in England in the reign of King Edward the Confessor; and in the pedi
grees is made to be the son of Othoere." (Collins, Peerage, vol. 4, Windso
r, Earl of Plymouth, pp. 37-38.)
Add to Collins this piece of information . . .
Othoere of Haolgalander, frequent guest of Alfred, King of Wessex (871-99
), who was "among the foremost men in his land; even so he had not more th
an twenty head of cattle and twenty sheep and twenty pigs, and the litt
le that he ploughed he ploughed with horses. His principal wealth was deri
ved partly from fishing for walrus and whale but was chiefly derived fr
om tribute in skins and furs levied from the Lapps who lived further nort
h, and it was in order to dispose of these goods that he traveled to Engla
nd." (Fisher, Anglo-Saxon Age)