Now, the neighbouring land, on the west side of the Wye, was equally remarkable in its geographical position. For as long as Tidenham had been the extreme south-west corner of England, so long had the neighbouring land between the Wye and the Usk been the extreme south-east corner of unconquered Wales.
Gwent.
Remained Welsh till conquered by Harold.
It was part of the district of Gwent, and it seems to have remained in the hands of the Welsh till Harold conquered it from the Welsh king Gruffydd, a few years only before the Norman Conquest.
Harold seems to have annexed whatever he conquered between the Wye and the Usk—i.e. in Gwent—to his earldom of Hereford; and after the Norman Conquest it fell into the hands of William FitzOsborn, created by William the Conqueror Earl of Hereford and Lord of Gwent.[203]
It was he[204] who built at Chepstow the Castle of Estrighoiel, the ruins of which still stand on the west bank of the Wye, opposite Tidenham. His son, Roger FitzOsbern, succeeded to the earldom of Hereford and the lordship of Gwent; and, upon his rebellion [p183] and imprisonment, this region of Wales became terra regis, and as such is described in the Domesday Survey, mostly as a sort of annexe to Gloucestershire,[205] but partly as belonging to the county of Hereford.[206]
So also the district of Archenfield.
Nor is Gwent the only district very near to Tidenham whose Welsh history can be traced down to the time of the Domesday Survey. There was another part of ancient Wales, the district of Ergyng, or Archenfield,—which included the 'Golden Valley' of the Dour. It lay, like Gwent—but further north—between the unmistakable boundaries of the Wye and the Usk, and it remained Welsh till conquered by Harold; and this is confirmed by the fact that the district of 'Arcenefelde' is brought within the limits of the Domesday Survey[207] as an irregular addition to Herefordshire, just as Gwent was an annexe to Gloucestershire.
Both districts described in the Domesday Survey.
Here, then, we have two districts, one to the west and the other to the north of Tidenham, both of which clearly remained Welsh till conquered by Harold a few years before the Norman Conquest, and both of them are described in the Domesday Survey. Further, it so happens that because they had been but recently conquered, and had not yet been added to any English county, and because also their customs differed from those of the neighbouring English manors, the services of their tenants, quite out of ordinary course, are described.