After the battle of Hastings William advanced on Hertfordshire and ravaged as far as Berkhampstead, where the Conquest received its formal ratification. In the sweeping confiscation of estates which followed, the church was generously endowed, the abbey of St Albans alone holding 172 hides, while Count Eustace of Boulogne, the chief lay tenant, held a vast fief in the north-east of the county. Large estates were held by Geoffrey de Mandeville, and the barony of Peter de Valognes, sheriff of the county in 1086, though extending over six counties in the east of England, was returned in 1166 as a Hertfordshire barony. Berkhampstead was the head of an honour carved from the fief of Robert of Mortain. The Hertfordshire estates, however, for the most part changed hands very frequently and the county is noticeably lacking in historic families. Edmund Langley, fifth son of Edward III., was born at King's Langley in this county. During the war between John and his barons, William, earl of Salisbury and Falkes de Breaute had the king's orders to ravage Hertfordshire, and in 1216 Hertford Castle was captured and Berkhampstead Castle besieged by Louis of France, who had come over by invitation of the barons. At the time of the rising of 1381 the abbot's tenants broke into the abbey of St Albans and forced the abbot to grant them a charter. During the Wars of the Roses, Henry VI. was defeated at St Albans in 1455; at the second battle of St Albans the earl of Warwick was defeated by Queen Margaret; and in 1471 Edward IV. again defeated the earl at Barnet. On the outbreak of the Civil War of the 17th century, Hertfordshire joined with Bedfordshire and Essex in petitioning for peace, and St Albans again played an important part in the struggle, being at different times the headquarters of Essex and Fairfax. As a shire Hertfordshire is of purely military origin, being the district assigned to the fortress which Edward the Elder erected at Hertford. It is first mentioned in the Saxon Chronicle in 1011. At the time of the Domesday Survey the boundaries were approximately those of the present day, but part of Meppershall in Bedfordshire formed a detached portion of the shire and is still assessed for land and income tax in Hertfordshire. Of the nine Domesday hundreds, those of Danais and Tring were consolidated about 1200 under the name of Dacorum; the modern hundred of Cashio, from being held by the abbots of St Albans, was known as Albaneston, while the remaining six hundreds correspond approximately both in name and extent with those of the present day.