EREFORDSHIRE : sheeld

H and speere,' sings an old

rhyming topographer; but these are certainly not the terms in which we should now depict the smiling cider county. The spears have been long ago turned into pruning-hooks, and the swords into plough-shares; and as for the shields, we can only find them now defuncta bello, and fraught with heraldic blazonry on tombs, or in the windows of church and ancient manor house. Grassgrown camps and a host of ruined castles alone attest the struggles of which this border land for many centuries was the scene. The pea santry are singularly meek and amenable to law, possessing few Celtic characteristics, and no warlike traditions or ballads whatever. Indeed, were it not for the 'torti crines et colorati vultus' which attracted the notice of Tacitus, as they still do that of the tourist, we could hardly believe that they are the descendants of the fierce Silures whom neither arms nor arts could tame, and who compelled the Romans to accept the Severn as the western boundary of their empire.

As might be expected in a hilly country like Herefordshire, the camps, both Roman and British, are very numerous. Not one of the many points of vantage but seems to have been occupied for military purposes, and we may add that these ancient sites deserve to be visited as much by the tourist in search of the picturesque as by the antiquary. Nowhere else within the county can such magnificent prospects be obtained as from the summit of the Herefordshire Beacon, a British camp of unusual magnitude

Another camp, near Verulamium (St. Words and Places, second edition, p. 314.

on the Worcestershire border, and from Oldbury Hill, near Woolhope, where the Romans had an important station. It is worth noticing that the name of their most eminent leader, Ostorius, has been preserved in Oyster hill,1 near Hereford: while in Caradoc, an entrenchment in the parish of Sellack, there is a memorial of his opponent Caractacus.

But semi-civilised Britain seems to have been an easier prey to the Saxon invader than barbarous Britain had been to the Roman. For the Saxon conquest of England was not the result of a single overwhelming raid planned and carried out by a warlike and united nation, but rather of a series of unconcerted descents made by independent tribes at intervals extending over several centuries.2 By degrees the interior was annexed, each chieftain seizing on the territory which bordered upon his own. The land thus occupied became an extensive Saxon state, and was known as Myrena land-the land of the borderers '-Latinised into Mercia, and still preserved in our language by the term Marches. In this gradual manner the Saxons pushed their way inland from the sea-coast, and, before the sixth century had closed, they had crossed the Severn and established some sort of military station at Hereford (the ford of the army), and perhaps made a royal residence at Kingsland on the northern side of the Wye. tribe which occupied Herefordshire were the Hecanas; and to their chieftain or ealderman, Merewald, fourth son of the Pagan king Penda, they owed their conversion to Christianity at the close of the seventh

The

Alban's), bears the same name. Taylor's

century. In token of his zeal for the new faith he founded the church of Llanlieni, i.e. the Church of the Nuns, which, either in compliment to Leofric, a subsequent earl of Mercia, or by simple corruption and translation, has become Leominster.

But the most celebrated of the Saxon kings before Alfred was Offa, whose palace, on the site of a Roman camp, was at Sutton, four miles north of Hereford. No vestiges of it remain, though in Leland's time there were still some ruins, and not long ago a curious silver ring was found in digging in the spot called Offa's Cellar. How Offa strove to increase his kingdom by annexing that of his neighbour Ethelberthow he failed to do so by force of arms, and then sought to effect it, more Austriaco, by marriage-how on the night before the nuptials the royal bridegroom was treacherously slain, are matters on which the monastic chroniclers loved to dilate, partly, perhaps, because their Houses had profited by the remorse which followed the bloody deed. It is to Offa's penance we owe the foundation of the Abbey of St. Alban's and the enrichment of the Church at Hereford with a sumptuous tomb erected over the remains of his royal victim. The blood of Ethelbert was indeed the seed not only of the Church but also of the city of Hereford. Troops of pilgrims laden with offerings flocked to the shrine of the murdered king. The hostelries were filled, for marvellous were the tales of miracles and cures performed at the Martyr's tomb; and thirty years after his murder a stately stone fabric took the place of the earlier wooden edifice, and was dedicated to the memory of St. Ethelbert.

The name of Offa has, however, been better preserved than that of his victim. The church built in honour of the latter perished through the violence of the Danes a few

years after its erection; but the extensive earthwork which Offa raised on the Welsh border-rather as a standing menace than as a defensible barrier-has survived the lapse of ten centuries. Offa's Dyke consisted of a trench and mound, the latter about ten feet high, and formed the western boundary of the Mercian kingdom, which then included nearly the whole of the county. Traces of the dyke, which ran from the Dee to the Severn, may be seen in the neighbourhood of Kington, and especially at Lyonshall, Mansel Gamage, and Bridge Solers on the left bank of the Wye.

The Danes never gained more than a very insecure footing in the west country, though they had the nominal sovereignty of Mercia for about twenty years. Among the existing names of villages in Herefordshire we do not find one solitary instance of the occurrence of the suffixes by, toft, thorpe or thwaite, which would indicate permanent residence. Wigmore, besieged by them in 921, may mean, as Mr. Wright suggests, the moor of the vikings; but we must decline to regard Dinmore (Dun mawr, stronghold) as equivalent to Denamere, the moor of the Danes. An inspection of the place as well as of the word forbids such a derivation. Thinghill recalls the Scandinavian Thingvellir; Humber, a little village near Leominster, 'keeps a Scythian name,' in sound at least; and in Huntsholm, Brobury Sear, and perhaps in Holmer, we may detect traces of a Norse origin.

The whole history of this period is very difficult to follow, and abounds in treacherous quicksands to entrap the unwary student; indeed, we hardly find any sure ground until we reach the period of the Domesday Survey. From that invaluable record we are able to form a pretty accurate notion of Herefordshire at the time of the

Norman Conquest, including within the county the debatable district of Archenfield,' where the Celtic population still remained powerful. The Bishop and the Cathedral Church possessed rather more than one-tenth of the whole acreage, viz. 300 hides; and to the ecclesiastical property within the county must be added the lands belonging to two alien priories in Normandy, Cormeilles and Lyra (the latter had a cell among the forests on the eastern side of the county, and its name still survives in Lyre Ocle), and the extensive possessions of the abbeys of Gloucester and Worcester, and the Priory of St. Guthlac at Hereford.

Of the lay tenants in capite the most powerful were the Lacies, whose widespread domains are indicated by the lands called after their name in different parts of the county. Stoke Lacy, Mansel Lacy, Hom Lacy, and the mountain district of Ewyas Lacy, ‘ubi breve regis non currit,' formed part of the possessions of this house, which is now represented by the Devereuxes and Scudamores.

Among other names of note in the Domesday list are those of Muchgros, whose eventual heiress married a Mortimer; Gernon, the founder of a family which gave its name to Garnons, now the seat of Sir Henry Cotterell; D'Abetot, whose descendants of gentle degree still lingered at Bromyard till the eighteenth century; Turstin, the undoubted ancestor of the Lingens of Lingen; and lastly, Mortimer, Lord of Wigmore, the history of whose house for three eventful centuries is in fact almost the history of Herefordshire.

A large proportion of the county was at this period wood and waste, the latter term being applied not

merely to lands which had never undergone cultivation, but also to such as from depopulation and the miseries of war had been permitted to relapse into a wild condition. Agriculture was confined to the immediate neighbourhood of towns like Hereford and Leominster; here and there the hillsides were used as runs for flocks-the sloping pastures of Shobdon even taking their name from their use (Scæope-dun, i.e. Sheep-hill); but both baron and peasant chiefly depended upon the herds of swine which found their food in the extensive woods, and furnished bacon for what was appropriately termed the larder.

We can scarcely estimate the amount of forest land by what has survived the lapse of time, the demands of war, and the progress of agriculture; but if we analyse the local names which Domesday Book supplies, we find that a large majority are compounds of wood, coed, den, and hope (all suggestive of forest), or of fen, moor and mere, which equally indicate that the land was left in its natural state unreclaimed and unenclosed.

Nor are there wanting other evidences. The traditions connected with Wormesley (the dragon's field) and Wormelow (the dragon's grave) have indeed died out; but till lately there might be seen on the eastern end of Mordiford church the picture of a scaly monster with gaping mouth and outstretched wings, who, it was averred, once slew with his poisonous breath all that ventured nigh his lair. Modern sceptics prefer to think that it was no mighty saurian which in defiance of the laws of Darwinism had escaped the extinction of his species, but the embodiment of the fatal miasma which rose from the swamp formed

by the junction of the Penteloe, the Lugg, and the Wye, and disappeared when the stagnant waters had been drained by the practical piety of the monks. But if dragons became rare, the forests still teemed with wild animals, as such names as Wolphy and Wolferlow, Foxley, Broxwood, Brockhampton and Stagbach abundantly testify. The Domesday Survey thinks it worth mentioning that, in the wild woodlands round Wigmore, Osborn Fitz-Richard 'venationem exercet et inde habet quod capere potest;' and even as late as 1280 John Giffard had licence to hunt wolves there.

But field sports and feats of arms did not engage the whole attention of the Norman Barons. They were, in contradistinction to their Saxon predecessors, a castle-building race. To them, indeed, we owe nearly all the fortresses which, built to repress the incursions of the Welsh, extend from Monmouth to Kington in an irregular chain. Nothing can be more interesting than to follow this line of defence, which leads. through a wild and lovely country, untrodden by tourists, and in some parts accessible only to the pedes

trian.

But we must forego the excursion even on paper, and refer the reader to the volume which Mr. Robinson has lately published, and which will be found an interesting and trustworthy guide. The county was almost as rich in monastic establishments as in castles, the most important religious houses being Wigmore Abbey and Leominster Priory.

The former owed its origin to the Mortimers, who settled the brethren first in close proximity to their castle, but afterwards permitted them to remove a little farther northwards, because the site was

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too narrow and rough, the ascent to the church disagreeable, and the language of their neighbours very vulgar and coarse.' In later times it would seem that their efforts after purity were either relaxed or unsuccessful. The charges against the last abbot include the crimes of simony, peculation, and notorious evil-living, besides the more venial offence of favouring a certain Canon Arbley, whome he supported to karrye crossebowes and to goo whither he lusteth at any tyme to fyshyng and huntyng in the kynge's forestes, parkes, and chases.' The possessions of the Abbey were very great, and among the relics were a diamond valued at a hundred marks, and a piece of the true Cross. In riches of this kind, however, Leominster Priory, a Benedictine house connected with the greater monastery of Reading, was pre-eminent. pre-eminent. The reliquary comprised a portion of the linen that was wrapped around the body of Our Lord, of the sponge used at His crucifixion, of the rod of Moses; one of the stones with which Stephen was stoned, and some of the frankincense and myrrh offered by the Magi.' The odour of sanctity ought indeed to have attached to the borough of Leominster; for besides the Abbey, it could also boast of its 'Holy Maid, which, as the fame was, lived only by angels' food, and was enclosed within a grate of iron, unto whom, when the Prior said mass, the third part of the Host went, by miracles as it seemed, from the altar into the maid's mouth.' Some influential sceptics, however, caused the door of her room to be suddenly opened, when 'straightways the dogs fought for bones that were under the bed,' and the maid (who was no maid) confessed that with the connivance of the Prior she drew to herself

the Host by means of a long hair from her own head, and attached to the sacred element.

The Augustine canons had a cell at Wormesley, amid some of the most lovely woodland scenery in the county; and the situation of Abbey Dore, in the so-called Golden Valley,' was no less happily chosen by the Cistercians. Aconbury, Flanesford, Crasswell, and Kilpeck were less important establishments, but not without associations of special interest.

Throughout the transition period from Romanism to Anglicanism, Herefordshire, in spite of its quondam Lollard leanings, seems to have maintained that neutral tint in religious opinions which was common to the greater part of England. Harley, Bishop of Hereford, who had given in his adhesion to the State Church of Henry VIII., was, it is true, deposed by Mary, but chiefly on the ground that he was a married man—a prejudice in which her Protestant sister Elizabeth equally shared. Bishops Fox and Skipp were essentially moderate men, opposed alike to Romanism and Puritanism; and thus in the great struggle between King and Parliament, which was as much religious as political, the feeling of the county was, as it might be expected, decidedly royalist. Harley and Westphaling were almost the only names of note upon the side of the Parliament, while Scudamore, Coningsby, Croft, Lingen, and Pye all lent their active and powerful support to the cause of Charles.

Two incidents in the war-one on either side-must not be passed over unnoticed. The gallant de

fence of Brampton Brian Castle by Brilliana, the wife of Sir Robert Harley, ranks beside the heroic deeds of the Countess of Derby and Lady Bankes, and is just the sort of story which Scott would have told with the skill that is born of vivid appreciation. But Lady Harley's own letters,2 often affecting in their homely pathos, have painted the daily life of the beleaguered household in a few graphic touches. In them we have before our eyes the Puritan mistress, weak in body but strongly assured of the justice of her cause; and pious Mr. Pierson, ever ready with an apposite text or exhortation; and the family doctor, cool, practical, and always cheerful; and, last but not least, old Hackluyt, with his sense of the responsibility of his position tempered by the consciousness that he had seen what real war was in the German campaigns. It is a relief to know that the tender heroine was felix opportunitate mortis. She lived to see her enemies retire baffled and dispirited, and died before they returned a few months later to sack and burn the castle and take her children prisoners. It was a barbarous deed and one that every scholar must deplore, for within the walls was a noble library-a former Harleian collection-which thus was lost for ever to the historian and archæologist.

A different scene was enacted on the other side of the county. Goodrich Castle, the picturesque ruins of which are familiar to the tourist of the Wye, was defended at this time by a deep moat on the landward side and by a resolute garrison under the command of Sir H. Lingen. Colonel Kyrle, a