Hereford in Norman Times

The Death of Harold from the Bayeux Tapestry
 
 Harold Godwin, Earl of Hereford, was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey in January 1066 AD.
 
William, Duke of Normandy, defeated and killed him near Hastings on October 14th 1066 AD.
 
So ended the era of Anglo-Saxon kings.
lthough Hereford had been partially destroyed by the Welsh in 1055, Harold Godwin, the second Earl of Hereford, had refortified the defences and made good much of the damage to the city. In 1066, Harold was crowned King of England but his title was challenged by William, Duke of Normandy, who began a military campaign to oust him from the throne. In October of that year, William's supporters engaged with the Saxon army at the Battle of Hastings, the most infamous event in British history. Struck in the eye by an arrow, Harold died, and England fell under the yoke of Norman tyranny.
 
The conquest changed everything. William appropriated the lands belonging to Harold's earls and gave the best of them to his trusted lieutenants. The Earldom of Hereford was granted to William FitzOsborn of Breteuil whose first task was to secure the realm against the marauding Welsh. He built a chain of strategically placed castles along the border and rebuilt the existing fortifications at Hereford.
 
In the City of Hereford before 1066 there were 103 men dwelling inside and outside the wall. So begins the entry for Hereford in the great Domesday Book of 1086 AD, William the Conqueror's inventory of his new realm. The book goes on to describe a substantial city which paid the Crown £60 of "blanched pence at face value", every year.
 
At this time, Hereford consisted of the Civitas and the Port. The civitas consisted of the king's and the earl's territories, inhabited in part by the burgesses who held their properties in lieu of military service to the crown. Around the cathedral was the bishop's port where his tenants lived and where the market was held. This area is roughly defined today by the parish of St John's. The new Norman town planners began by changing the location of the market to where High Town is today. Lands at Eaton Bishop and Lydney were exchanged with the Bishop and the city expanded to the north. For some time, access to these parts was through the wall and ditch of the Saxon Town. The route from the cathedral to High Town along Church Street marks one of these ancient paths.
 
The Domesday Book records that Hereford was expected to pay tax to the King of £60 a year which was collected by the Sheriff. To encourage his countrymen to settle in Hereford, the Earl William permitted preferrential rents to French burgesses, the same rights and obligations they enjoyed in Breteuil and less onerous obligations than their English counterparts. The death of Earl William was followed in due course by the rebellion of his son and hs eventual loss of the city to King William.
 
The ongoing redevelopment of the new city centre was marked by the addition of a fine new church dedicated to Saint Peter. It was built by Walter de Lacy, who was unfortunately killed while inspecting the work. Nothing remains of this early building but it was used for some time by the monks of Saint Guthlac's Priory, which stood within the walls of the new castle. The present building contains some of the stalls from the Priory which were acquired following the dissolution of the monastries, during the reign of Henry VIII. Saint Peter's later became the civic church and it was from there that the curfew bell was sounded.
 
Map showing Saxon and Norman ramparts. In 1100 a stone bridge replaced the former wooden structure and as the market in High Town developed, valuable frontages were built on to it and permanent shops replaced stalls. The great open area corresponding to today's pedestrianised High Town became crowded with buildings. By 1200, another church was being built on it. This was to be All Saints Church, which was granted to the Bretheren of Saint Anthony of Vienne.
 
Meanwhile, the outer defences of the city had been extended to the north along a line marked by today's ring road. By 1190, six stone gatehouses guarded the roads through the walls. Here, tolls were levied on goods brought to market. Tanning, milling and weaving became important industries and a thriving cloth market arose. The map shows the outline of the Norman city by the 13th century, with the Saxon layout shown in red. A larger scale version of the map is available for download.
 
A rich Jewish community with stone houses and a synagogue had been established by the end of the 12th century. Although they were expelled during the reign of Edward I, in c.1287, the area was known for many centuries after as, "Jewry." It lay to the north of Bye Street, where Maylord Orchards stands today.
 
In 1189, the bugesses obtained a charter from Richard I which gave them certain freedoms in return for a payment of £40 and an obligation to maintain the fortifications. This important step towards civic independence was repeated in many towns and cities accross the realm as Richard sought finance for the Third Crusade. Although King Richard was an infrequent visitor to Hereford, his brother John, who succeeded him, enjoyed visiting his castle overlooking the River Wye. John loved the chase and the rich game of the Royal forest of Haywood, to the south of the city, afforded him great sport.

The Cathedral and the Bishop's Fee

At the time of the Norman Conquest, the Bishop of Hereford was already a Frenchman, Walter of Lorraine. His successor and fellow countyman, Robert de Losinga (Lorraine) built on his land a remarkable new chapel in the Romanesque style before 1095. Its upper and lower churches on two floors were dedicated to Saint Catherine and Mary Magdalene. Only the north wall remains standing in the Palace garden where it can be seen from the Chapter House garden.. It is the earliest extant Norman structure in the vicinity of the cathedral.
 
The Cathedral dedicated to Saint Mary and Saint Ethelbert was rebuilt on a site slightly further north than the earlier Saxon minster. Begun in around 1079 by Bishop Reinhelm, subsequent bishops continued the work until it was rededicated in 1140. The early apsidal east end was removed when the Lady Chapel was constructed but its simple beauty remains to be seen in the south transept and the crossing. The nave is substantially Norman also and contains a fine tub font in the Romanesque style. The plan is, significantly, that of a Lorraine Cross.
 
During the reign of King Stephen, 1135-1154, rebellion broke out in support of the Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I. In 1138, Stephen attended the cathedral on the Feast of Pentecost wearing his crown and signed three charters giving privileges to the Bishop. The episcopal chair that he is said to have used remains in the chancel. Stephen held court at the castle for some months. However, the following year the royal garrison was besieged and much of the consecrated land was desecrated by warfare and the cathedral was used to stable horses. But by 1140, Bishop Robert had restored his church to normality and soon after it was rededicated. It was around this time that the monks of Saint Guthlac's abandoned their house and cemetery within the castle walls, which had also been despoiled.
 
The bishops, with their power as marcher lords and with their own tenants and independent courts, used their palace at Hereford as their main residence.. A new palace was constructed by William de Vere c.1180. This was a great wooden aisled hall measuring 95 by 55 feet. The present palace conceals its timbers within it and evidence of its former glory may be seen inside the hinged pillasters of the great hall and in the timbers of the Tudor gateway. In 1188 a great assembly met there, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Baldwin, who led a recruiting campaign into Wales for the Third Crusade. He was accompanied by the chronicler Geraldus Cambriensis, who was a canon of Hereford and Archdeacon of Brecon. His book, "A Journey Through Wales," is a vivid account of contemporary life and beliefs.
 

The Marcher Lords

The Anglo-Saxons had made few inroads into Wales, relying on Offa's Dyke to move troops quickly to points where Welsh incursions were imminent or had been reported. As most assaults were raiding parties, the Dyke presented a formidable obstacle not only to entering England but also to carrying off of the loot and must have thwarted many minor raids. However, any failure to check a serious incursion immediately exposed Hereford and the heartlands of England to attack. Indeed, in 1055 AD, the Welsh sacked the city and burned down Offa's cathedral, slaughtering the vicars and canons on its steps.
 
The Normans were determined to defend their newly-won realm more agressively and so instituted a legal system known as the marcher lordships. Among William's companions in arms at the Conquest were some whose tempers made them suited only for the life of the camp, being soldiers and natural leaders of men. Rather than allow them to become troublesome at court, those knights William feared most he bade conquer any Welsh lands they could, to keep for themselves, and gave them prerogatives of almost absolute authority there.
 
A knight who was thus chartered to gain a marcher lordship for himself would choose a promising strategic point and there erect a motte and bailey, initally a wooden tower on a mound, with a palisade fence and ditch around it. Adjoining it, also surrounded by ramparts he would construct a hall and other domestic offices. From here, he and his supporters would subdue the surrounding countryside. Once secure, a town plan would be marked out on neighbouring land and both English and Norman settlers were invited to take up residence. In time, stone structures replaced the wooden defenses and these, together with the pattern of land tenure at the heart of the feudal system, formed the distinctive topography of the English manor and village.
 
Thus the borderland from the Dee to the Severn soon became a network of fortified manors and towns with their characteristic grid patterns of streets. It is in this period that the distinctive "double-barelled" names of many English villages emerged as the the new Norman family name was added to the former Saxon one. Hopton Lacy, Stoke Lacy, Stoke Edith, Stoke Prior, Mansel Lacy, Mansel Gamage, Brampton Bryan, and many others, reveal their heritage in this way.
 
In the short term, England obtained a degree of security through the self-interest of these Marcher Lords but, as time went by, many of these peers became over-mighty and on many occasions conspired against the Crown. As a result, even before William's death, some of the greater lordships were returned to the Crown by being made palatinate earldoms - Chester, under Hugh d'Avranche, Shrewsbury, under Roger Montgomery and Hereford, under William FitzOsborn.
 
One such family, the Mortimers of Wigmore, formed a dynasty which spanned several generations. As Earls of March, their ambitions led them sometimes to be allied with the King and sometimes with his enemies, the Welsh, the Scots and even the French. After coming within a whisker of gaining the crown, the last of the male line of the Mortimers, the Fifth Earl of March, died in 1442. Generatation after generation, these rivalries played themselves out until their bloody climax on Bosworth Field drained the last drops of blood from the old feudal world.
 
The Seventh Earl of March and future King Edward IV (a Mortimer through the matrilineal line), defeated the Welsh Lancastrian, Owen Tudor in a famous battle at Mortimer's Cross, in 1461. The following year, Owen Tudor was captured and beheaded in Hereford's High Town. A generation later, Owen's grandson, Henry, became Richard III's nemesis, on Bosworth Field, in 1485. The treachery at the end of the reign of Edward IV and the death of Richard on the Field of Bosworth, effectively terminated the Yorkist line and concluded the Wars of the Roses in favour of the Lancastrian claim. So it came to pass that Henry Tudor, a Welshman, gained the English crown and founded the dynasty which was to dominate the whole of the succeeding century.
 
A family such as the Cliffords, can be traced through thirty generations to the present Lord Clifford of Chudleigh. Descended from Richard Fitz-Ponz, one of William's band of supporters, the family held Clifford Castle for many generations. Here was born Jane Clifford, that mistress of Henry II who was immortalised as the "Fair Rosamund"in Tennyson's "Dream of Fair Women." She is said to have been poisoned by Henry's jealous wife, the formidable Eleanor of Aquitaine. Other companions of the Conqueror founded houses like those of Scudamore, Baskerville, Deveraux and others, all of which played active parts in the politics of the entire Anglo-Norman era.
 
However, not always were lordships founded by force of arms. Some were awarded to Welshmen prepared to "bend the knee," while others were inherited through marriages between Norman and Welsh families. Later we find Llewelyn ap Iorwerth wedded to a natural daughter of King John, a Mortimer married to Llewellyn's daughter and all of Owen Glyndwr's daughters married to English knights.
 
In turn, these unions led to many legal disputes over inheritance because the Norman law of primogeniture conflicted directly with the Welsh custom of dividing an estate equitably. Often these arguments boiled over into open rebellion, like Glyndwr's revolt which, in 1400, assumed a nationalistic fervour out of all proportion to the original dispute over property. War between England and Wales remained a perennial problem until the Tudors abolished Welsh law in the 16th century and replaced it with a unified legal system for both England and Wales.