[1][2] Mandeville was a Norman, from one of several places that were known as Magna Villa in the Duchy of Normandy.
[3] Some records indicate that Geoffrey de Mandeville was from Thil-Manneville, in Seine-Maritime, Haute-Normandy (upper Normandy).
[1][4][5] An important Domesday tenant-in-chief, de Mandeville was one of the ten richest magnates of the reign of William the Conqueror.
William granted him large estates, primarily in Essex, but in ten other shires as well.
[8] About 1085 he and Lescelina, his second wife, founded Hurley Priory by the River Thames in Berkshire, as a cell of Westminster Abbey.