[73d] He is called Sir Owen Tudor by Hall, Holinshed, Speed, and Grafton, in their respective accounts of the battle, and he is also so called by Sandford in his Genealogical History, p. 297, and Sir Owen ap Merydeth ap Tudor, ibid. p. 242, which are certainly high authorities for believing that he was a knight; but Sandford elsewhere calls him “Owen Tudor” only, ibid. p. 283, 284. Yet Baker, in the part of his Chronicles in which the marriage of Owen Tudor with Katherine, widow of King Henry V., is mentioned, calls him “Owen Tudor an Esquire of Wales.” He is also called “a Squyer of Wales” in Leland’s Collectanea, vol. ii. fo. 492 [708]. Ralph Brooke, in his Catalogue of the Nobility, &c., says that Katherine married “a noble Gentleman named Owen Theoder of Wales.” Fabyan, fo. 627, calls him a knyght of Wales.
[73e] “Owen Meredith, alias Tudor, buried in the Grey Freyers in navi Ecclesiæ, in sacello sine ulla sepulchri memoria.—Leland’s Itinerary, vol. iv. fo. 175 a [83].
“Owen Meridik, corruptly cawlled Owen Thider, Father to Edmund Erle of Richemount, and Graund Fathar to Kynge Henry the Seventhe, buried in the Grey Freres, in the Northe Syde of the Body of the Churche in a Chapell.”—Leland’s Itinerary, vol. viii. fo. 76 b [35].
[74a] The authorities for the historical parts of the paper, are Holinshed, Hall, Grafton, Baker, Leland, Ralph Brooke, Dugdale, and Sandford. It is remarkable, that Fabyan does not give an account of the battle of Mortimer’s Cross.
[74b] This spot is sometimes called West Field.
[75a] It seems to be very clear that the taking of that route was to enable them to ravage the Earl of March’s possessions there.
[76a] Politely communicated by the Rev. R. D. Evans, rector of Kingsland, who stated that the discovery of them took place when he was a boy. I visited in 1855 a large mount in front of the rectory-house, in which, as he informed me, he had found (but not of late years) pieces of iron. Leland states, “There was a Castle at Kingesland a 2 miles West North West from Leominster, the ditches whereof and part of the Keepe be yet seene by the West part of Kingsland Church. Constant Fame sayth that King Merewald sometimes laye at this place since of later tymes it longid to the E. of Marche, now to the King.”—Leland’s Itinerary, vol. iv. part 2, fo. 178 a [90]. Kingsland Church well merits inspection, as it contains several objects of interest to an antiquary. It is said to have been erected by one of the Mortimers in the reign of Edward I.—See an account of it in the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1826, vol. xcvi. part 2, pp. 393, 583.
[76b] There is in the Museum at Hereford, an ancient spur, found in the neighbourhood of Mortimer’s Cross, but not upon the field of battle, of the description called the prick spur, of steel, plated with silver, presented to the Museum in 1839, and which I saw in the Museum in May 1855.
[77] Leland’s Itinerary, vol. viii. fo. 32.
[78a] Blackstone’s Commentaries, 3rd edition (by Stephen), vol. ii. p. 584.