D'Aincourt's mark on history is recorded principally in the
Domesday Book which records him as tenant-in-chief of thirteen manors in
Derbyshire, one manor in
Northamptonshire, four in
Yorkshire, nineteen in
Lincolnshire and thirty-seven in
Nottinghamshire. His surname is said to have had its origin in the village of
Aincourt in
Normandy on the
River Seine between
Mantes and
Magny. In 1088, after the
Rebellion of 1088, Walter bore a royal writ of
William II of England ordering the men of
William de St-Calais, Bishop of Durham, to return the cattle that they had stolen from rebels during the conflict. Walter's first son, William, died young, while in fosterage at the court of King William II "Rufus", and was buried in
Lincoln Cathedral, but his other son Ralph lived to become the second
Baron Deincourt; his third son was named Walter. Walter (senior) was known to, and described as a blood relative of,
Remigius de Fécamp,
Bishop of Lincoln who contributed substantially to William I's conquest of England. It has been speculated that D'Aincourt's rewards were due not to his contribution to the conquest but to his kinship of Remigius. However, J.R. Planché believed, on the basis of Walter's son William D'Aincourt being so described on a plaque found in his tomb, that Walter's wife Matilda was of royal descent. by the historian
Richard Sharpe to be a daughter of Count
Alan Rufus and of
Gunhild of Wessex, and thus a granddaughter of
Harold Godwinson, a view that
Katharine Keats-Rohan finds convincing (Sharpe's article also cites a suggestion by Trevor Foulds that Matilda d'Aincourt might have been the Princess Matilda who was a daughter of King
William the Conqueror and his wife Queen
Matilda.) ==Descendants==