Bideford, United Kingdom

After the death of Matilda in 1083, Brictric's lands were granted by her eldest son King William Rufus (1087–1100) to Robert FitzHamon (died 1107), the conqueror of Glamorgan, whose daughter and sole heiress Maud (or Mabel) FitzHamon brought them to her husband Robert de Caen, 1st Earl of Gloucester (pre-1100 – 1147), an illegitimate son of Matilda's younger son King Henry I (reigned 1100–1135). Thus Brictric's fiefdom became the feudal barony of Gloucester. The Grenville family held Bideford for many centuries under the overlordship of the feudal barons of Gloucester, which barony was soon absorbed into the Crown, when they became tenants in chief.

Sir Richard I de Grenville (d. after 1142) (alias de Grainvilla, de Greinvill, etc.) was one of the Twelve Knights of Glamorgan who served in the Norman Conquest of Glamorgan under his elder brother Robert FitzHamon (died 1107), the first Norman feudal baron of Gloucester and Lord of Glamorgan from 1075. He obtained from FitzHamon the lordship of Neath, Glamorgan, where he built Neath Castle and in 1129 founded Neath Abbey. Richard de Grenville was one of three (or four) known sons of Hamo Dapifer (died around 1100) Sheriff of Kent, an Anglo-Norman royal official under both King William the Conqueror (1066–1087) and his son King William Rufus (1087–1100). He is by tradition the founder and ancestor of the prominent Westcountry Grenville family of Stowe in the parish of Kilkhampton in Cornwall and of Bideford in Devon.

By tradition Richard de Grenville is said by Prince (died 1723), (apparently following Fuller's Worthies) to have founded Neath Abbey and bestowed upon it all his military acquisitions for its maintenance, and to have

"returned to his patrimony at Bideford where he lived in great honour and reputation the rest of his days".

However, according to Round (died 1928) "no proof exists that Richard I de Grenville ever held the manor of Bideford, which was later one of the principal seats of the West Country Grenville family. It was however certainly one of the constituent manors of the Honour of Gloucester granted by King William Rufus to Robert FitzHamon." Richard de Grenville is known to have held seven knight's fees from the Honour of Gloucester, granted to him either by his brother FitzHamon or by the latter's son-in-law and heir Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester (1100–1147). Round supposes instead that the Grenvilles of Bideford and Stowe were descended from a certain "Robert de Grenville" (alias de Grainville, de Grainavilla, etc.) who was a junior witness to Richard's foundation charter of Neath Abbey, and who in the 1166 Cartae Baronum return was listed as holding one knight's fee from the Earl of Gloucester, feudal baron of Gloucester. Robert's familial relationship, if any, to Richard is unknown.

A charter was granted in 1272 to Richard V de Grenville by King Henry III, which created the town's first council. In ancient records Bideford was recorded as a borough; but it only returned members to Parliament during the reigns of Edward I (1272–1307) and Edward II (1307–1327).