William II du Hommet succeeded his grandfather William I as constable of Normandy shortly after the fall of Normandy in 1204, and died in c.1240. Through his mother Gila he inherited the lordship of La Haye-du-Puits in the Cotentin. Although he never recovered the English lands of the senior Hommet branch, his claims to them were long remembered in England.

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William du Hommet was one of the chief Normans to lose his English lands in 1204. William Poignard was the ducal vicomte of Caen at this time. The witnesses include William fitzRalph, seneschal of Normandy, and Abbot Robert of St Stephen's, Caen, a leading figure in the adminstration of Normandy.

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William du Hommet was one of the chief Normans to lose his English lands in 1204. Much of the Hommet inheritance came from Say family through William du Hommet's mother Agnes, who is mentioned in this act.

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Richard II du Hommet died in his father's lifetime but his son William II du Hommet succeeded the constableship soon after 1204. Through Richard's first wife, Gila, the important barony of La Haye-du-Puits came to the Hommets.

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Enguerrand, a younger son of William I du Hommet, received the honour of Remilly as his inheritance. It had come to the Hommets from the Say family, together with Auppegard in the Pays de Caux, which King Henry II had given to his grandfather Richard I du Hommet.

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William I de Semilly inherited many of the Hommet and Say lands in England and Normandy from his father Enguerrand I du Hommet, a younger son of Richard I du Hommet and Agnes de Say; he also received the Semilly inheritance from his mother Cecilia, daughter of William de Semilly, taking the surname of Semilly in their honour. Although he lost his English lands in 1204, he later recovered them, and his son William II de Semilly fought for King John during the Magna Carta civil war and held English lands off and on until his death in c.1242.

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The first Robert fitzErneis, a younger brother of Ralph I Taisson, was killed at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The sixth Robert fitzErneis, issuer of this charter, was the son of Robert V fitzErneis (apparently by a sister of Ralph IV Taisson, his distant cousin). Robert VI lost his English lands in 1204, including Wells, Warham and Great Massingham (Norfolk), Hatfield Peverel and Debden (Essex), and Hemingby, Bucknall and Horsington (Lincs.). He had no children by his wife Ala, sister of Count Robert of Alençon, and at his death in 1219 or 1220 his lands in Normandy passed to his nephews John and William de Tournebu, the sons of his sister Philippa.

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Most surviving English and Norman charters from the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries were produced for ecclesiastical institutions. However, lay contracts such as the one shown here survive in significant numbers.

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The family of Tournebu had property in central and southeast Normandy and in Dorset and Hampshire; its English lands were confiscated by King John in 1204. John de Tournebu and his younger brother William inherited the estates of their maternal uncle Robert VI fitzErneis in 1219 or 1220.

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Jordan acquired Sheringham (Norfolk) and lands in the Bessin from his father Richard I du Hommet, and estates in the Pays d'Auge, including Cléville, through his marriage to Hawise de Crèvecœur. He became constable of the city of Sées under the Angevin kings and died on the Third Crusade in 1192. John , eldest son of Jordan and Hawise, appears in both England and Normandy after 1204, but ultimately all the Norman lands of this branch of the Hommets were confiscated by the French crown. John's daughter Lucy, wife of Richard de Grey of Codnor (Derbs.), made an unsuccessful attempt to recover her ancestors' Norman inheritance in 1260.

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Richard de Harcourt had been granted Elbeuf (SM, ar. Rouen) by Count Robert of Meulan, and retained it when the count lost all his lands in 1204. The Harcourtsm a prominent family in central Normandy, had already divided into an 'English' and a 'Norman' branch by 1204, but Richard de Harcourt, head of the 'Norman' branch, managed to recover his lands in England and held them for much of the period until his death in 1236. Through his marriage to Matilda, one of the coheiresses of Ralph IV Taisson, he acquired the lordship of St-Sauveur-le-Vicomte in the Cotentin, which Ralph Taisson had inherited from his mother Leticia de St-Sauveur.

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In the late 12th century Hawise held lands in Devon and near Bayeux and Argentan, but her authority over them was exercised in succession by her four husbands, William d'Angerville, Robert de Juvigny, William Gernon and Ralph de Merlay. This act was probably issued after she had been widowed for the last time. In 1204 her sons mostly remained in Normandy and forfeited their English lands. The

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Count Robert was the heir of one of the most powerful baronial dynasties in Normandy and Maine, the Talvas, who had dominated the southern borders of Normandy since the 10th century. In 1203 his betrayal of Alençon to the French was a major factor in the collapse of John's control of Normandy, Maine and Anjou. Caen, AD Calvados, H 6512, no. 4 (reproduced by permission of the Archives du Calvados).

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The family (or families) called Bacon enjoyed prominence in the Bessin (the region of Bayeux) and in several English counties. The seizures of the lands of Robert and William Bacon in 1204 were recorded on the Rotulus de Valore Terrarum Normannorum. William Bacon, lord of Le Molay, was head of the Norman family; Simeon or Simon, whose charter appears here, was certainly his kinsman. Simeon's wife Matilda was the senior coheir of the Vassys, a prominent baronial family in the region south of Caen.

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The family of St-Rémy-en-Rivière (Calvados, cant. Thury-Harcourt) were prominent amongst the Normans who lost property in 1204. Juliana's mother Cecilia may have been the daughter of Thomas Bardolf who married a certain Robert de St-Rémy and brought him a share of Bradwell-on-Sea (Essex). Another of Thomas's daughters married a man called William Bacon; it is interesting that Juliana's act shows her in possession of property at Formigny, where a junior branch of the Bacon family had its chief estate. Either Formigny had belonged to Thomas Bardolf and had been divided amongst his daughters along with Bradwell-on-Sea, or else the families of St-Rémy and Bacon were related to each other by two or more marriages.