foe largely composed of Welsh levies, and not unreasonably reverted to by the Earl of March for the protection of his Wigmore lands, there is a noticeable ascent of road from Mortimer's Cross to the site marked by the pedestal, giving the Yorkists an advantage of ground. They faced westward, while the Lancastrians fronted east. The battle, the last great one of the county, lasted from sunrise to sunset. The issue was, we know, complete defeat to the Lancastrians. The Earls of Pembroke and Wiltshire fled from the field, the former to live years of exile, and nurse the promise of a Tudor throne for his young nephew, the future Henry VII. Sir Owen Tudor, his sire, was taken prisoner, beheaded, and buried at Hereford in the chapel of Grey Friars Church, with Sir John Scudamore and other gentlemen of consideration; whilst Edward, the victor, pushed on to a junction with Warwick at Chipping Norton, and by the 3rd of March had established himself in London and on the throne. Bridle-bits, spear-heads, buckles, and sword-blades have at times been turned up at and near Kingsland; but not, so far as we know, any of those customary weapons of the Marches and border district- the brown bills' with which, according to Drayton, the Yorkists 'mauled the Welshmen.'

In reference to Edward's omen of the Three Suns, this may be a fitting place to cap it with another, from which a quarter of a century later Harry of Richmond found a telling answer to a question of topography and local prophecy. After traversing the vales of Pembridge and Eardisland, en route for Leominster and Bosworth, he had crossed the Herefordshire Arrow at its confluence with the Lug. Being told the river's name, and that an old prophecy promised victory, in a national strife, to him who should shoot the Arrow first,' Harry Tudor's rede was, that he had shot the Arrow when he crossed the

stream.

But to return to the survey of extant souvenirs of the companions of the Conqueror in Herefordshire-a survey which might be helped abundantly by a search such as Mr. Planché recommends into the families of the wives of these Norman nobles-there are traces of Norman possession both in the immediate neighbourhood of Wigmore and in other parts of the county. At the south entrance to the quaintly picturesque but dead-alive old town of Weobley is the moated mound whereon stood as late as Leland's day (1540) the ruins of a castle built by Roger de Lacy, son of Walter, a companion of William, and a comrade of FitzOsborne in the repression of the

* Arrow' is derived from Aarwy; Brit. 'overflowing.'

Welsh

Welsh in 1069. His sons, Roger and Hugh, the founder of Llanthony Abbey, obtained rich lordships in Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, and it appears that Weobley Castle was held by the De Lacys and their connections during the reigns of Stephen and John, and passed by marriage through the Verdons to the Merburys and Devereuxes, and eventually in later days to the Thynnes. In the Domesday Survey, Lyonshall or Lenehalle, a village with the ruins of a Norman castle two miles south-east of Kington, was part of the possessions of Roger de Lacy, and passed by marriage (or otherwise) to a branch of the Norman house of Devereux or D'Ebroicis, the founder of which was another of the Conqueror's followers. So it was with other Herefordshire castles, as Huntington, Goodrich, Eccleswall, &c.; which seem to have been first granted as rewards to faithful Norman followers, and by them to have passed for service done, or in marriage portion, to the De Bohuns, Talbots, and suchlike noble and historic families. Three neighbouring North Herefordshire families, however, in the same district and with estates more or less bounded by the same river, may serve as typical examples of the ascendency of the original Norman families, and of those perhaps earlier owners of the soil, who intermarried with them.

Originally perhaps a Silurian and afterwards a Saxon stronghold, and right opposite Coxwall Knoll, across Buckton Bridge, Brampton Bryan Castle, with much of the surrounding lands and manors, was granted by the Conqueror to Ralph de Mortimer, and is so set down in Domesday; but it passed into the family of Brampton as early as Henry I.'s reign, when Bernard Unspec of Kinlet took the designation of 'de Brampton.' His grandson Brian, in 1179, joined Sir Hugh de Mortimer in establishing Wigmore Abbey, the endowment of which his son augmented with the advowson of Kinlet. After four generations, castle and manor passed by the marriage of a co-heiress into the Harley family, in the person of Robert de Harley, it being then described a tower with curtilage, garden, and vivary.' Brian, Sir Robert's second son, a gallant soldier, destined by the Black Prince for the Knighthood of the Garter, became entitled to his mother's Herefordshire property, and in all likelihood built the castle, as his son and heir, Brian, an equally distinguished soldier, is named as of it; and the Decorated style of the most ancient part of the ruins, with the ball-flower of the Edwardian period above archway and windows, confirms this impression. Its site bespeaks the early design, like other neighbouring castles, of protection of the border against the Welsh; and from the building of Brian's castle till its fall, in 1644, Brampton was the chief seat

as

of

of the Harleys, who in the Wars of the Roses clove through ties of blood and friendship to the Yorkist banner. The mention of its fall recals the heroism of a mother of the house in a more advanced period, when it had exchanged tenets and principles, which justified harbouring Jesuits, for the straitest sect of the Puritans.*

In the war between Charles I. and his Parliament, Sir Robert Harley's espousal of the side of the Roundheads drew upon the castle the hostile forces of the Cavaliers, and its first siege in 1643 tested the gallantry and endurance of Brilliana, Lady Harley, in electing to stand it out, by God's help,' though her lord was absent on his parliamentary duties. Despite isolation and intimidations plied against her for a full year before the blow fell, the task of fortifying a castle which had assumed the form of a mansion in the piping times of peace, and the tedium of drilling and disciplining a small but spirited garrison by the help of a veteran sergeant and the family physician, she did not faint or fail when the siege commenced in July 1643, with, first, Sir W. Vavassor, and then Colonel Lingen, a zealous Herefordshire Royalist, to conduct the assault. Though they burnt church and town, the castle sustained no serious hurt, and its garrison few casualties, in a siege of two months, at the end of which the Royal disaster at Gloucester drew off the assailants of this animi matrona virilis.' In broken health, but unfaltering spirit, she wrote in October to her son of rumours as to a fresh assault, and her hope of repelling it like the last. But she died on the day following, and the castle had rest till the next spring, when to Sir Michael Woodhouse, fresh from the capture of Hopton Castle, the now dispirited little garrison surrendered at discretion after three weeks' siege. There were taken 67 men, 100 arms, 2 barrels of powder, and a year's provisions.' Three of the younger children of Sir Robert were among the number. Their heroic mother was the second daughter of Sir Edward, afterwards Baron Conway, of Ragley and Conway, born when her sire was LieutenantGovernor of the Brill: and her Holland breeding may account for her puritanic tone and universal familiarity with the Scriptures. Her name amongst Herefordshire heroines may explain why to Camden's 'three w's'-'water, wool, and wheat' -an Anglo-Latin elegiac chronicler adds woman as well as wood. Her son, to whom chiefly are addressed the letters

John Harley, grandsire of Sir Robert, was a zealous Romanist, and is said to have harboured Parsons and Champion in Brampton Bryan Castle. See 'Introd. to Lady B. Harley's Letters,' p. xvi. Camden Society Publications.

† Unda, et silva frequens, fœmina, lana, seges.'

published

published by the Camden Society, became a convert to limited monarchy, and a consistent but tolerant Churchman.

The mention of Brilliana Harley has obliged us to digress; but it will be the more easily forgiven, as the mention of a neighbouring Norman family, the Lingens, involves an earlier and more romantic instance of womanly heroism. In the midst of Deerfold Forest, where, according to Blount's MSS., the Priory of Lymebrook owed its foundation to the Lingens rather than the Mortimers, about a mile to the north of the ruins of that priory, lies the village of Lingen, with what remains of its old castle, a deep moat, and a steep mound south of it. Of little pretensions ever to the rank of a stronghold, and now only a 'sleepy hollow,' Lingen, in the reign of Richard I., gave its name to a gallant house. In the fortieth year of Henry III., Sir John de Lingen had a grant of free warren in Lingen for himself and his heirs; in the thirty-fourth of Edward I. he or his son was knighted, at a great solemnity, before an expedition against the Scots. It was this Sir John's daughter Constantia, whose marriage in 1253 to Grimbald, son and heir of Sir Richard Pauncefort, suggests an example of wifely devotion quotable beside that of Brilliana Harley. In Blount's MS. collections the agreement is quoted, by which Constantia receives to her dower 630 marks, 12 beeves, 100 sheep, and the manor of Great Cowarne, the whole amounting to a portion beseeming powerful and wealthy families. The Paunceforts had acquired Cowarne from the Wigmore family, with which the Lingens were already connected by marriage. Tradition cherishes the belief that Grimbald, having been captured by the Moors, could only obtain his freedom by the production, as ransom, of a joint of his wife, the fame of whose beauty was doubtless as widespread as that of her lord's valour. The lady made no demur to these exorbitant terms, but cutting off her left arm above the wrist, conveyed it to her husband, and thus effected his release. History is apt to be exigeant as to the evidence for such sensational annals; but it should be some confirmation that in the parish church of Much Cowarne, in the east end of the south aisle, there was, in Silas Taylor's day, an altar-tomb with the effigies of Grimbald and Constantia. Grimbald was cross-legged and habited after Norman fashion, while the lady, whose name Constantia was legible, exhibited her left arm coupéd above the wrist, in memory of her heroic conduct. Silas Taylor notes precisely that the woman's arm is somewhat elevated, as if to attract notice, and the hand and wrist, cut Vol. 148.-No. 295.

M

off,

off, are carved close to his left side, with his right hand on his armour.'

The third of these neighbouring Norman houses is Croft, the seat for seven centuries of a family very prominent in Herefordshire history, and one that claims indeed an earlier and Saxon origin, which the name seems to justify. In Domesday 'one Bernard held Croft under William de Scotries,' and with this Bernard the family claim relationship. A Croft is mentioned in the Harley pedigree, as attending Godfrey de Bouillon in the Crusades (1098): a Croft, so tradition runs, was chosen by the Marchers in 1265 to aid in the deliverance of Prince Edward from his durance at Hereford. What remains of the original castle at Croft is a quadrangular Edwardian structure, with circular towers at the corners of a courtyard, situate under and to the south of the Ambrey Camp above mentioned, and to the east of the river Lug. It was however later than the Norman period that the Crofts waxed, and became most distinguished in court and tented field; and therefore we may pass to two or three ecclesiastical reminders of that period, still to be found in Herefordshire churches and kindred buildings. As might have been expected from the favour bestowed on Leominster (so named probably from the sumptuous patron of churches and abbeys at Wenlock, Coventry, and Leominster, Edward the Confessor's Earl of Herefordshire, Leofric)-by William Rufus, who fortified the town, when, having become his own Marcher, he resided at Wigmore;-by King John, who visited Leominster, and compensated its partial burning by De Braose, his turbulent Marcher, by confirming a charter of the monks (under which the inhabitants throve in trade and commerce, and developed the Merino-emulating Ryelands wool, the 'Leominster ore' of Camden); and by Edward I. and his envoy to the Marchers, Archbishop Peckham ;-we find, amidst diverse additions and alterations, much that bespeaks Norman builders, in the church now in process of restoration. To what was originally a cell of the Abbey of Reading was annexed a grand Norman church, with north and south aisles, and, later on, with a larger aisle on the south for the burghers, augmented still later by a second south aisle. At the north-west end stands the

The gist of the pretty tradition of the Knight's Ransom is the basis of a romantic story, by Mrs. Valentine, in 'Warne's Family Novels.' London: F. Warne and Co. 1870. It is commemorated also in blank verse, with other data of the church and parish, by the scholarly incumbent of Much Cowarne, the Rev. J. J. G. Graham, M.A. See A Memoir of Much Cowarne Church;' published by E. K. Jakeman, Hereford.

tower,