But if this is so, he would have built it while he ruled the shire (as Mr Freeman believed he probably did) from 1046 to 1050, and would, in any case, have done so on taking up its government in 1051.[19] Consequently he would have had a castle and garrison at Hereford in 1052. But Mr Freeman, describing Gruffyd's raid in that year into Herefordshire, and finding a castle mentioned, assumed that it could only be Richard's castle,[20] although, a few lines before, he had admitted the existence of other castles in the shire.[21] Even in 1067 he would have liked to hold that Richard's castle was the only one in Herefordshire, but the words of the chronicle were too clear for him.[22]
I have endeavoured to make clear my meaning, namely, that Mr Freeman's view that 'Richard's castle' stood alone as 'the castle', and that Richard and his garrison were the special offenders under Edward the Confessor, is not only destitute of all foundations, but at variance with the facts of the case. When we read of Herefordshire (1067) that
The Norman colony, planted in that region by Eadward and so strangely tolerated by Harold, was still doing its work. Osbern had been sheriff under Edward, even when Harold was Earl of the shire, and his father Richard, the old offender, still lived (iv. 64)—
we must remember that the conduct of Harold was only strange if Richard, as Mr Freeman maintained, was 'the old offender'. If, as Florence distinctly tells us, he was, on the contrary, void of offence, Harold's conduct was in no way strange.[23]
Let us now turn from the Herefordshire colony, planted, I think, not so much by King Edward as by his Earl Ralph, just as Earl William (Fitz Osbern) planted a fresh one after the Conquest.
Among the Normans allowed to remain, on the triumph of Godwine's party in 1052, Florence mentions 'Ælfredum regis stratorem'. On him Mr Freeman thus comments:
Several Ælfreds occur in Domesday as great landowners, Ælfred of Marlborough (Osbern's nephew) and Ælfred of Spain, but it is not easy to identify their possessions with any holder of the name in Edward's time. The names Ælfred and Edward and the female name Eadgyth seem to have been the only English names adopted by the Normans. The two former would naturally be given to godsons or dependants of the two Athelings while in Normandy [i.e. after 1013].[24]
An appendix, in the first volume, devoted to Ælfred the giant—who appears in Normandy, circ. 1030—claims that Ælfred is a name so purely English that the presumption in favour of the English birth of any one bearing it 'in this generation is extremely strong',[25] and that it was only adopted by 'a later generation of Normans'. Mr Freeman seems to have been unaware that in Britanny the name of Alfred enjoyed peculiar favour. I find it there as early as the ninth century,[26] while I have noted in a single cartulary seventeen examples between 1000 and 1150. Among these are 'Alfridus frater Jutheli' (ante 1008) and Juthel, son of Alfred (1037). Now, at the Conquest, 'Judhael, who from his chief seat took the name of Judhael of Totnes, became the owner', in Mr Freeman's words, 'of a vast estate in Devonshire, and extended his possessions into the proper Cornwall also'. But we know from charters that this Judhael was the son of an Alfred, and was succeeded by another Alfred, who joined Baldwin of Redvers at Exeter in 1136.[27] In the same county, as Mr Freeman reminds us, we have another Breton tenant-in-chief, 'Alvredus Brito'. In all this I am working up to the suggestion that the well-known Alfred of Lincoln was not, as Mr Freeman holds, an Englishman,[28] but a Breton. We have not only the overwhelming presumption against any considerable tenant-in-chief being of English origin, but the fact that his lands were new grants. When we add to this fact that his heir (whether son or brother) bore the distinctively Breton name of Alan,[29] we may safely conclude that Alfred was not only a foreigner but a Breton. But the strange thing is that we do not stop there; we have a Jool (or Johol) of Lincoln, who died in 1051[30] after bestowing on Ramsey Abbey its Lincolnshire fief.[31] Thus we have an Alfred and a Juhel 'of Lincoln', as we have an Alfred and a Juhel 'of Totnes'; and in Juhel of Lincoln we must have a Breton settled in England under the Confessor.
The name of 'Lincoln' leads me to another interesting discovery. 'Both Alfred of Lincoln and the sheriff Thorold,' Mr Freeman wrote, 'were doubtless Englishmen.'[32] And speaking of Abbot Turold's accession in 1070, he observed that Turold was 'a form of the Danish Thorold, a name still [1070] familiar in that part of England, one which had been borne by an English sheriff'.[33]