Ewyas Harold fits in also with the chronicle's mention of the Normans fleeing 'west' to Pentecost's castle. We have now seen that Richard's castle did not stand alone, and that there is nothing to identify it with that Herefordshire castle ('ænne castel') of which the garrison had committed outrages in 1051, and which is far more likely, so far as our evidence goes, to have been 'Pentecost's Castle'. Mr Freeman rightly called attention to 'the firm root which the Normans had taken in Herefordshire before 1051, which looks very much as if they had been specially favoured in these parts' (ii. 562); and he argued from this that Earl Ralf had probably ruled the shire between 1046 and 1050. The Earl would naturally have introduced the foreign system of castles, as he did the foreign fashion of fighting on horseback. Indeed, speaking of the capture of Hereford in 1055, Mr Freeman wrote: It is an obvious conjecture that the fortress destroyed by Gruffyd was a Norman castle raised by Ralph. A chief who was so anxious to make his people conform to Norman ways of fighting would hardly lag behind his neighbour at Richard's castle. He would be among the first at once to provide himself with a dwelling-place and his capital with a defence according to the latest continental patterns (ii. 391). 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]