Wadard
anglo-Norman nobleman
Wadard was an 11th-century Norman nobleman who is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, and is depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry.
Wadard was a noble who travelled to England in 1066 with Duke William of Normandy. He is depicted and named in the Bayeux Tapestry on a foraging expedition, and may have been in the logistics section of William's army. His portrait suggests that he held a senior rank.
In the Domesday Book, Wadard is recorded as a tenant of Odo, bishop of Bayeux, holding estates amounting to about 1,260 acres in Kent and elsewhere, and providing him with an income of around £127. His holdings included Farningham, Combe, and six houses in Dover, in Kent; Cassington, Thrupp, Cogges, and Little Tew in Oxfordshire, Thames Ditton in Surrey; and Glentham in Lincolnshire.
The 14th-century chronicler William Thorne states that Scolland, Abbot of St Augustine's Abbey granted Wadard certain land in Northbourne, Kent for life, on condition that "he pay every year on the feast of Pentecost the sum of 30 shillings, together with a tenth part of everything he derived from the land".
He is recorded as a witness to a land grant to the Abbey of Saint-Pierre de Préaux in Normandy, and he was also a tenant of St Augustine's Abbey.
Family
His son Rainald held two estates from Odo at Somerton and Fritwell, adjoining his father's estate at Fringford.
Two other sons, named Martin and Simon, are mentioned in the cartulary of the Abbey of Préaux.
“Wadard” enters the record as anglo-Norman nobleman. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Wadard, anglo-Norman and nobleman can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2962995. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1086 and 1066.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wadard” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.