The Fitz-Warines seem always to have kept alive their claim from their ancestor Guarin, though Wrenoc, son of Meyric, succeeded, and paid eighty marcs to John for the villages and castles of Whittington and Overton, but Fulk Fitz-Warine seems to have obtained the castle from the Prince of Wales, which John at first resented, but finally, in 1204, confirmed to Fulk, as his “right and heritage,” when he paid 200 marcs and two “destriers,” and gained a judicial decision in his favour. 5 Henry III. he had licence to fortify the castle. The Fitz-Warines continued to hold the castle and manor until the failure of their elder male line, by the death of Fulk, the eleventh lord, in 1420. The Hospitallers held a manor in Whittington by the service of finding a chaplain for the chapel of the castle.
A little before 7 Henry III., Prince Llewelyn laid siege to the castle, and it sustained a severe attack from the Welsh on the Friday preceding Midsummer, 6 Henry IV. It appeared, from an inquiry dated 1 Henry V., that Richard II. had granted the castle, pending the minority of Fulk Fitz-Warine, to Yvion Fitz-Warine, who sold the wardship to Elizabeth, Lady Botreaux, a daughter of Sir Ralph d’Aubigny, and she held it when attacked. Probably she expected the attack to be repeated, for, on the Sunday after Midsummer, Thomas, Earl of Arundel, with soldiers from Oswaldestre, took charge. Elizabeth resigned her wardship to William de Clinton and Anne, his wife, and her daughter.
It is much to be desired that some person resident in this most interesting district would take up the subject of its earthworks, of which there are many of all ages, and some not set down in the Ordnance map. Many of the earthworks are so placed, with regard to Offa’s and Watt’s Dykes, as to show whether they are of earlier date or subsequent to those lines.
Among the most curious of these earthworks is one within the domain of Porkington, and which bears its ancient name of Brogyntyn. It is a regular circle, 50 yards or so across, contained within a bank of earth, about 4 feet to 6 feet high, outside of which is a ditch. The central area has been levelled for a bowling-green, but was, no doubt, always flat, and although a drift has been driven across and below the circle, and the ditch is planted and contains a modern walk, there is no reason to suppose that the character of the work has been materially altered. In Ireland it would be called a rath; but in Ireland it would not crown a rather steep eminence, but be placed in the midst of land that might readily be cultivated, which this could not. It is pretty clear that its figure is intentionally and not incidentally a circle, by no means often the case with Welsh camps.
WIGMORE, HEREFORDSHIRE.
THE Castle of Wigmore, the head of the Hundred and Honour of that name, the chief seat of the great House of Mortimer, and the centre of that territorial power which made its lords so formidable to their sovereigns, and at last brought about their fall, stands in the north-west corner of the border shire of Hereford, and about eight miles on the English side of Offa’s Dyke. It is one of a chain of strongholds of which Clun, Hopton, and Brampton Bryan, lay to its immediate north, and Lingen and Lyons Hall to its south; while in its rear were posted Croft and Richard’s Castle, assuring to its garrison a speedy communication with the great central fortresses of Ludlow and Shrewsbury.
Most of these castles are of ancient date, and their earthworks testify to the intensity and permanence of the struggle maintained by the Welsh against the encroachments of the colony planted by the English in the latter part of the eighth century, and protected by the mighty work which still bears the name of Offa. These traces of the footsteps of the invader from beyond the Severn may still be observed along the frontier marches of the Principality from Cardiff to Hawarden, posted wherever the valleys laid open the interior of the country; nor along the whole line is there a grander or stronger military work than that for which Wigmore was celebrated long before the Normans crossed the Channel.
But the military virtues, if not triumphs, of the Welsh, identified with this district, ascend to a period before even the common ancestors of Englishmen and Normans appeared in Britain, and were exercised, though equally in vain, against even a greater foe. The great British hill camps of Coxwall-Knoll, Caer Caradoc, Brandon, and Croft-Ambrey, are thought to be evidences of the fierce struggles of the Britons against the Roman legions, though with how little ultimate success against either Roman or Englishman, the parallel lines of Watling-street and the Dyke still give silent but overpowering testimony.
Wigmore, an English creation, bears an English name. It is first mentioned in A.D. 921, when the Saxon Chronicle relates that King Eadweard, in the Rogation days, that is about the 7th of May, “commanded the burh at Wisingamere to be built.” That this command was very rapidly as well as very completely obeyed, is clear from the fact, stated by the same authority, that, in the same year, probably at the commencement of autumn, the Danes with a great army laid siege to the new burh, “beset it round about, and fought against it far in the day, and took the cattle about it; and, nevertheless, the men defended the burh who were therein, and then they (the Danes) abandoned the burh and went away.” A strong place which was constructed in five months could not have been a work in masonry, and scarcely in dry walling; but with a proper force of men the earthworks of the mound and inner area might have been executed in that time. But earthworks alone would not have held an army of active Danes at bay. The slopes must have been strengthened with palisades, so as to protect the garrison and enable them to keep the enemy at a moderate distance. Fire was scarcely practicable, as the wood employed must have been green. Moreover, however hard Edward’s soldiers may have worked, it is scarcely probable that they could have done more than throw up the burh proper, or mound, and the banks containing the smaller area attached to it, or have prepared palisades for a larger front, even if formed. We are told that when Queen Æthelflæd’s warriors, in A.D. 916, took Brecenanmere, or Brecknock, by storm, they captured there the king’s wife, with thirty-four persons. The Burh of Brecknock, therefore, held probably but a small garrison: and its mound and inner circle, the parts, no doubt, then defended, are not, in point of size, greater than those of Wigmore, for which certainly one hundred and fifty to two hundred men would form, for a short time, a sufficient garrison. It was, then, to the passive strength of this position, and to its narrow front, that they owed their safety. The cattle taken probably pastured at the foot of the mound and upper area, within what is now the lower ward of the Castle, then, no doubt, but slightly protected.