Feudal England: Historical Studies on the Eleventh and Twelfth CenturiesRound, John Horace
History
Feudal England: Historical Studies on the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries
Round, John Horace
Domesday book; Feudalism -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- History -- Norman period, 1066-1154; Normans -- Great Britain
Just at this moment another instance of the insolence and
violence of the foreigners in another part of the kingdom
served to stir up men's minds to the highest pitch. Among the
Frenchmen who had flocked to the land of promise was one named
Richard the son of Scrob, who had received a grant of lands in
Herefordshire. He and his son Osbern had there built a castle
on a spot which, by a singularly lasting tradition, preserves
to this day the memory of himself and his building. The
fortress itself has vanished, but its site is still to be
marked, and the name of Richard's castle, still borne by the
parish in which it stood, is an abiding witness of the deep
impression which its erection made on the minds of the men of
those times.... Here then was another wrong, a wrong perhaps
hardly second to the wrong which had been done at Dover. Alike
in Kent and Herefordshire, men had felt the sort of treatment
which they were to expect if the King's foreign favourites
were to be any longer tolerated.[9]
Accordingly, Godwine, Mr Freeman wrote, demanded (September 8,
1051) 'the surrender of Eustace and his men and of the Frenchmen of
Richard's Castle'. In a footnote to this statement, he explained that
'"the castle" [of the Chronicle] undoubtedly means Richard's
Castle, as it must mean in the entry of the next year in the same
Chronicle'.[10] Of the entry in question (1052) he wrote: '"The
castle" is doubtless Richard's Castle.... Here again the expressions
witness to the deep feeling awakened by the building of this
castle.'[11] So, too, in a special appendix we read:
A speaking witness to the impression which had been made
on men's minds by the building of this particular Richard's
Castle, probably the first of its class in England, is given
by its being spoken of distinctively as 'the castle' even
by the Worcester chronicler (1052; see p. 309), who had not
spoken of its building in his earlier narrative.[12]
We have, thus far, a consistent narrative. There was in Herefordshire
one castle, built by Richard and named after him. It had been the
cause of oppression and ravage, and its surrender, as such, had been
demanded by Godwine in 1051. A year later (September 1052) Godwine
triumphs; 'it was needful to punish the authors of all the evils that
had happened' (p. 333); and 'all the Frenchmen' who had caused them
were at last outlawed. But now comes the difficulty, as Mr Freeman
pointed out:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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