Keats-Rohan states, [1]
Alberic De Ver
The first Aubrey de Vere was a Domesday tenant of the powerful Breton tenant-in-chief Count Alan Rufus, and was among a handful of Alan's Bretons who were also tenant-in-chief of their own fees. Aubrey's family probably came from Vair in Ancenis, in the Nantais; he occurs amongst a group of men from the Nantais in a charter given by Conan II c. 1050 (discussed by H. Guillotel, 'La place de Châeaubriant dans l'essor des châtellenies bretonnes (xi-xii siècles)', MSHAB, 66 (1989), 21) and K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, 'Le problème de la suzeraineté et la lutte pour le pouvoir: la rivalité bretonne et l'état anglo-normand 1066-1154', MSHAB, 68 (1991), 63-69). He is usually assumed to have originated at Ver, (Manche, arr. Courtances, cant. Gavray) because he held land in 1086 of the Bishop of Coutances (Domesday i, fol. 220c), Loyd, Origins, 110. Loyd acknowledged that other de Ver families in England could have originated in the Cotentin (cf. William de Ver, Domesday i, fol 127c), but the mass of evidence indicating Aubrey's Breton origins is overwhelming. Much of it was rehearsed by W. R. Powell, 'The Essex Fees of the Honour of Richmond', TEAS, 3rd Ser. I, pt 3 (1964), though he ultimately rejected it. One of the most striking features of the evidence is that Aubrey II founded the priory of Hatfield Broadoak, as a cell of Saint-Melaine de Rennes, one of the most important Breton abbeys (J. L. Fisher, Cartuarium Prioratus de Colne, Essex Archaeological Society Occasional Publications I, 1946, F. Jouön des Longrais, 'Les moines de l'abbaye Saint-Melaine de Rennes en Angleterre. Les chartes du Prieuré d'Hatfield Regis', Recueil de travaux offert à M. Clovis Brunel, t. ii, Paris, 1955) Research has shown that though a cult of Saint Melaine existed outside Brittany, it never reached the Cotentin peninsula, though it is found elsewhere in Normandy (J. Fournée, Le coulte populaire des saints bretons en Normandie', Questions d'histroire de Bretagne, Actes du 107 Congrès national des sociétés savantes, section de philologie et d'historie jusqu'à 1610 (2 t., Brest 1982), ii, 311. Note the escheat to the king in the early thirteenth century of land forerly held by one Walter de Ver, a Breton (Britonis), in Suffolk, where Aubrey's family held land (Fees, op. cit. mote 61, 390.) Of little note in England before 1100, he was possibly more often in Brittany; it was doubtless he who attested a charter of Count Alan's brother Count Geoffrey Boterel as Alberic Aper (Anciens Evéchés iv, 304, cited in Comp. Peer. x, 193ff). Active in Berkshire in the early years of Henry I's reign, he was either or possibly both a justiciar or sheriff (RRAN ii, 576, 695; Chron. Abing. ii, 57-62, 90-1). He died c. 1112 and was buried in Colne priory, a cell of Abingdon, which he and his wife Beatrice founded after the death of their son Geoffrey. Father of Alberic II, Geoffrey, William, Robert and Roger; possibly also of a daughter who was mother of Richard de Camville (Comp. Peerl x, app. J, pp. 112-13 note j). K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, 'Le Rôle des Bretons dans la politique de la colonisation normande', MSHAB lxxiv, 1996, 186.
[1] K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People, A Prosopography of persons occurring in English documents, 1066-1166 (Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 1999), 131, [GoogleBooks].