Baldwin FitzGilbert

Baldwin FitzGilbert (died 1090) (alias Baldwin the Sheriff, Baldwin of Exeter, Baldwin de Meulles/Moels and Baldwin du Sap) was an Anglo-Norman magnate and one of the 52 Devon Domesday Book tenants-in-chief of King William the Conqueror.

He was originally from Meulles or nearby Le Sap, in Calvados, Normandy. He was a younger son of Gilbert, Count of Brionne and Count of Eu, in Normandy.

Together with his eldest brother Richard FitzGilbert, in 1066 Baldwin accompanied William Duke of Normandy in the Norman Conquest of England.

Following William the Conqueror's successful siege of the Saxon city of Exeter, that king appointed Baldwin castellan of the newly built Rougemont Castle in Exeter, a royal castle, and appointed him hereditary Sheriff of Devon, which position he held until his death. Exeter Castle was thenceforth the official seat of the Sheriff of Devon. King William I also granted him the very large feudal barony of Okehampton in Devon, at the caput of which he built Okehampton Castle.

Baldwin's fiefdom in Devon was the largest in that county, listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 as comprising 176 holdings, mostly manors or estates, except the first two listed holdings which consisted of groups of houses in Exeter and Barnstaple. He is listed in the Domesday Book as "Baldvinus Vicecomes", literally translated as "Baldwin the Viscount", a Norman title signifying deputy to the Count of Devon, another Norman title called in the Anglo-Saxon language "Earl of Devon", which office was almost synonymous with the Sheriff of Devon, an Anglo-Saxon office, for which reason Baldwin is commonly known as "Baldwin the Sheriff". These landholdings comprised the feudal barony of Okehampton, later held by the Courtenay family, later also feudal barons of Plympton and Earls of Devon.

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