THE borderers of England, whether on the north or on the west, were bold, hardy, and aggressive races of men, having for their patrimony the moor and the morass, the wild bleak upland which occurs on the Scottish frontier, or the steep crags and rugged defiles which gave strength and, in ordinary cases, impunity to the Welsh. The Scots, indeed, came of the same stock with the English, and had recently formed a part of the same kingdom, under the same lords; nor was the land immediately south of the Tyne or the Tweed materially richer than that to its immediate north. But the Welsh had other more potent and better causes for their continual and ferocious transgressions. They were the earlier possessors of the whole country, a possession still attested by the names of hills and rivers, and, indeed, of many of the chief cities of England. They were of an entirely different blood and language from either Saxon or Norman: by the one they had been gradually driven into the western and less fertile tracts of the island, and the other held them cooped up and at bay within their mountain fastnesses, and responded to their continual partisan warfare by occasional invasions on a large, and, for the time, irresistible scale.
Full in view of the Welsh mountains were spread out some of the most fertile lands in Britain—cultivated, inhabited, and fortified by the invaders, who, not content with the slopes of the Cotteswold and the velvet meads on the left bank of the Severn, had pushed their conquests far beyond the right bank, holding the stately ridge of Malvern and the rich pastures of the Teme, the Lug, the Frome, the Worm, and the Wye, even up to the Dyke of Offa. That dyke, still to be traced along much of its length, between the estuaries of the Severn and the Dee, was felt to be a perpetual mark of inferiority, an abiding affront to the patriotic feelings of every Welshman. No marvel, then, that the Welsh were ever insurgent, ever breaking forth with fire and sword into the English territory, and especially into the most rich and, by nature, least-protected tract of it, the fair county of Hereford.
Herefordshire was first subjugated by the Romans. Three miles north of the city are the remains of a camp, probably British, covering about thirty acres of ground, and now known as Sutton Walls, a little south of which runs the line of the road which led to the Roman town of Magna Castra, four miles to the west, and was continued onward in the same direction.
At what precise period Herefordshire passed under the Saxon yoke, and became annexed to Mercia, is unknown—probably under Creoda, early in the seventh century. The see was founded in 680, when a synod was held here under Putta, the first bishop. Sutton, or Southton, so called from its position close south of the Roman camp to which it has given its name, was at a very early period a residence of the Mercian kings. Here, in the middle of the eighth century, resided the celebrated Offa, probably during the construction of his dyke, which passes about six miles to the west; and here in 794 was committed the murder of Ethelbert, his intended son-in-law, a deed which led to the aggrandisement of the cathedral church, to which Offa’s penitential donations were largely paid. A charter of King Cœnulf, A.D. 799, mentions Hereford, as do others by Deneberht, in 802 and 803, the last recording certain “monasteria quæ olim in antiquis dictis ad Herefordensem ecclesiam præstita fuerunt.” Sutton continued a Mercian palace until the union of the seven kingdoms, under Egbert of Wessex, in 827.
Edward the Elder, a great constructor of strong places, who repaired the citadel and walls of Chester in 909, is said by Grafton also to have fortified Hereford, erecting a strong castle there. His sister Ethelfleda, a still greater castle-builder than he, and to whom are due the mounds of Tutbury, Tamworth, Leicester, and some others, was the widow of Ethelred, Duke of Mercia, in 915, when the Danes had advanced by the Wye, and taken captive the Bishop of Archenfield. She attacked and defeated them before Hereford, no doubt making use of the new defences. She died shortly afterwards.
Early in the eleventh century, the Saxon sway had been so far extended as to have left the Dyke behind, and Wales was regarded as a part of England, and an attempt made to force it to contribute to the common tax for the defence of the island against the Danes. For this purpose Edwin, the Ealderman of the Mercians, led an army as far as St. David’s, punishing the people for their refusal. At that period, and during the reign of the Confessor, the Welsh were led by Griffith-ap-Llewelyn, the ablest of their princes, and, indeed, the only one who ever held the Welsh together, or gave the English cause for anything like serious apprehension. Aided sometimes by the Danes from Ireland, sometimes by traitorous Saxon chiefs, and sometimes even by the discontented Normans, he is found during the first half of the eleventh century waging on the whole a successful war against Herefordshire. It is certain, from the number, magnitude, and character of the existing earthworks, that Irchen or Archenfield, called from its beech-trees “Trefawrth” by the Welsh, and sometimes by the English “Fernley,” had from a very early period been inhabited by the English; but either distrusting these, or because he wished to quarter afar off the visitors whom he attracted, but of whom he was afraid, the Confessor made large grants of land along this district to his Norman courtiers, with whom, therefore, Griffith had not unfrequently to deal.
The earliest of these grants seems to have been made to Richard Fitz-Scrob, whose fortress, built after a fashion till then unknown in England, gave great and general offence. His original castle has been replaced by later structures, now also in ruin, but the earthworks are probably original; and the name of Richard’s Castle shows how deeply the fear of its builders was impressed upon the people; and it is, moreover, a very rare example of a parish bearing a purely Norman name.
These grants were opposed by Earl Godwin and his sons, and it was to enforce his remonstrances against them that the English Thane led a force from Beverstone, and challenged the Confessor to give up his stranger favourites—a struggle which finally ended in the temporary banishment of that truly English noble.
In 1052, during Godwin’s exile, Griffith invaded Herefordshire, and advanced as far as Leominster before Fitz-Scrob and his Normans were in the field to meet him. They were beaten in a pitched battle, and upon open ground.
In 1055, the earldom of Hereford was in the hands of Ralph, surnamed “the Timid.” Griffith, uniting with Ælfgar, the Saxon lord of the East Angles, who was accompanied by an Irish force, burst into Archenfield, and again laid waste the border. Two miles from Hereford, Griffith and Ælfgar were met by Earl Ralph, who seems, with the Norman contempt for infantry, to have placed undue weight upon his cavalry, the result of which was a complete defeat. Griffith entered Hereford, which was undefended, sacked and burnt the city, treated the cathedral and the clergy with excessive severity, and destroyed what the “Brut” calls the gaer, that is, the castrum or fort. The account seems to imply that the city was not then fortified. Mr. Freeman thinks the gaer was a work of masonry. However that may be, there is little doubt but that it was a work on the site of the later castle, for by the riverside, for defence, it would certainly be placed; and as the position of the cathedral has doubtless always been the same, there would scarcely be room for a fortress between its precincts and the western marsh. The position of the bridge, too, is probably ancient, and this would lead into the city, not into the gaer. The appearances of the earthworks, as they existed before the removal of the mound and the filling up of its proper ditch, much resembled those of Tamworth, and other works attributed to Edward and Ethelfleda, and the gaer may well have been of that date, so far as the earthworks were concerned. This inroad of the Welsh in 1055 was the most severe and the most lasting in its effects of any on record. All Archenfield suffered, and traces of the spoiler are recorded long afterwards in Domesday.