In the early twelfth century, Adam, an Englishman, together with his widowed mother Sagiva (Old English Sægifu) gave to the nunnery of Barking part of his tithe at Lindsey (Suffolk) for his sister Edith, possibly on the occasion of her entrance there as a nun. The location of the land enables us to identify Adam as Adam of Cockfield, mentioned elsewhere as the tenant of the monastery of Bury St Edmunds, who was confirmed in the holding of land at Cockfield and Lindsey as his father Leofmær held it, and at Lindsey, as his grandfather Wulfric of Groton had it. The abbot also let it be known that Adam's heir in due course would inherit these lands. Together the evidence from Barking and Bury St Edmunds suggests that this native family, whose ancestry stretches back to pre-Conquest times, had been able to hold on to their land despite the arrival of the Normans and would be allowed to pass it on to the next generation. The grant to Barking, however, reveals a more complicated picture, for it is witnessed by Adam's half-brothers Fulco and Roger, sons of one Robert, who had married Sagiva after the death of her first husband, and Robert's brother Roger. Robert's absence from the documents suggests that he had already died. Given that their names are Norman, we have here an English widow with land who had remarried a Norman newcomer.