Alfred the Great. That prince had been elected in preference to his brother's children; and as they were likewise passed over by the Wittena at his death, whose choice was fixed on Edward, one of them, named Ethelwold, attempted to seize the crown for himself. He not only raised an army, but allied himself with the Anglo-Danes, and defied his cousin's power. In 905, he ravaged Mercia, which comprehended that part of Herefordshire in which Wigmore is situate: but he ultimately fell in a contest in Kent. In 910, Edward, with the Mercians and West Saxons, marched into Northumbria, destroying and plundering the Anglo-Danish possessions. The following year, the northerns repaid this devastation by an irruption into Mercia: nor was the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon king, over his dangerous neighbours, fully established till the battle of Wodensfield. He now pursued the plans of protection which his father had devised, and determined to defend the frontiers of his dominions by a line of fortresses. In Mercia and Wessex, he built castles which he filled with soldiers, who were ordered, without waiting for the king or earls of the counties, to join the provincials in repelling invaders. Upon the western limits he appointed their erection at Wigmore in Herefordshire, Bridgnorth and Cherbury in Shropshire, Edesbury in Cheshire, and Stafford and Wedesborough in Staffordshire, which seem to have been chosen with great judgment. Thus the foundation of Wigmore castle is fixed to the year 912, or soon after.*

The military policy of Edward was proved by its issue. Two Danish earls led a hostile fleet round Cornwall into the Severn, debarked, and plundered in Herefordshire, taking the bishop of Archenfield prisoner. The men of Hereford, Gloucester, and the nearest burghs, as the fortified places were called, defeated them, with the loss of one of their chiefs, and the brother of the other.

The next occurrence may probably be assigned to the year 1068. William the Conqueror had returned to Normandy, three months after his coronation, leaving the care of England to his favourite William Fitz Osborne, who, according to Malmsbury, first incited him to invade this country, and to Odo, his half-brother, bishop of Bayeux. The exactions of the Normans augmented the desperation of the Anglo-Saxons, until the latter broke out into revolt. He returned; but his mistrust of his new subjects calling forth his

* In this year, says the Saxon Chronicle, died Æthelred, alderman (i. e. the ruling person) of Mercia; Ethelfleda, his widow, in 920, when Edward incorporated that kingdom with Wessex.

.

ill-humour, they formed alliances with the Welsh, the Scotch, and the Danes. It was, probably, on this occasion, that " Ralph, or Ranulph de Mortimer, who came over with the Conqueror, was sent into the marches of Wales, to encounter with Edrich, Earl of Shrewsbury, who was also Lord of Wigmore and Melenithe,* in regard he would not submit to the Norman yoke, whom after great toil and a long siege in Wigmore castle, he at length subdued and delivered captive to the king "+ This Edrich was the son of Alfricke, Earl of Mercia, who, having induced Bleddyn and Rhywallon, princes of Wales, to assist him with their forces, had ravaged the country as far as the bridge of Hereford.

England being completely subdued, in about three years from this time, William proceeded to distribute the spoils among his adherents. To William Fitz Osborne, he gave the county of Hereford, with instructions to watch and repress the Welsh ;‡ and Dugdale says, "he built the castle of Estbrighoyel,|| in Gloucestershire, and the castles of Clifford, Wigmore, and Ewias in Herefordshire; but in regard he died before the general survey, there is no memorial at all left of him."§ The Rev. Mr. Duncumb, though it does not appear on what authority, asserts that those in Herefordshire he only repaired.

This heroic warrior was slain by Robert de Frison, whilst fighting in support of the claims of Ernulph, Earl of Hainhalt, to the earldom of Flanders. He had, during his lifetime, been a steadfast adherent to the Conqueror, to whom, indeed, he was nearly related, and, possessing great merit, amply justified his appointments of regius vicarius, Normanniæ dapifer et magister militum bellicosus.** He was of the king's council, governor of the Isle of Wight and Winchester Castle, and chief administrator of justice throughout the North of England.++ He married Adeline, daughter of Roger de Toney, a powerful baron, and had by her three sons and three daughters. To William, the eldest, he left his ample possessions in Normandy; Ralph, the second, entered the Abbey of Cormeiles, and was shorn a monk; and Roger, the youngest, named De Bre

* Maelenyth was on the western side of Wigmore, being part of Radnor

shire.

+Dugdale's Baronage, vol. i., p. 139.

Orderic Vit., 521.

Now called Strigul castle, not in Gloucestershire, but Monmouthshire. Coxe, however, declares it to be Chepstɔw.

§ Baron., vol. i. p. 67.

** Ord. Vit., 536. ++ Harl. MS., 4046.

teuil, succeeded him in the earldom of Hereford.* This young man, forgetful of his father's attachment to the king, had the im. prudence, as well as ingratitude, to join Ralph de Gwader, Earl of Norfolk, in 1078, because he did not consent to the marriage of his sister with that nobleman. They raised a large army, in order to depose him, but, being defeated, Roger's property was confiscated, and his person confined. While in this situation, William, nobly contemning his many contumelious expressions, made offers towards a reconciliation, but his proud spirit rejected them with disdain. This conduct so exasperated the king, that he was detained in confinement until his death, and the title withheld from his sons.

On this occasion, Wigmore Castle and its lordship was bestowed on its former conqueror, Ralph de Mortimer. "It is held," says Blount, "to be one of the ancientest honours in England, and has twenty-one townships, or manors, that owe suit to the honor court; and all the land wherein these manors lie is called Wigmore land, which has two high constables, and gives name to the whole hundred." Dugdale, in his Monasticon, says "that Ralph built the Castle of Wigmore;" and yet, not only at page 67 of the first volume of his Baronage asserts, as before observed, that it was erected by William Fitz-Osborne, but again, at page 139, restates this in a more particular manner. He tells us, that that nobleman constructed it " upon a piece of waste ground, called Merestune" (Marshtown), and quotes Domesday to shew that Ralph de Mortimer was seized of it at his death.

When we reflect upon the charge given to Fitz-Osborne, to repel the Welsh, and his "very large possessions by the conqueror's gift," it seems most likely that he removed the ruins of the Saxon fortress, and erected the present castle on a new site; for the character of its remains prove it.to be of the close of the eleventh century. The waste land called Meriston, is a high hill, lying between the town of Wigmore and the Welsh, on the summit of which stands this noble piece of masonry. This was the keep. A little below it are other castellated apartments of later date; and the exterior wall, which goes round the bottom of the hill, and is strengthened by a wet ditch,† is of the time of Henry III. The

*Having the power of making laws for his own district, William FitzOsborne ordained that, within the county of Hereford, no knight or soldier should, for any offence, be fined above seven shillings, the general average being twenty or twenty-five; thus encouraging a military spirit, which was essential to the maintenance of a border territory.

p. 32.

This is what Leland calls "a brocket sometime almost dry." Vol. vii.,

entrance tower, which is in this wall, is of a square form, the other two, seen at the same time, are one square and the other round.*

Ralph left two sons, Hugh, married to Matilda, daughter of William Longespee, who became second baron of Wigmore, and William, by the gift of his brother, Lord of Netherley.

On the accession of Henry II., it appeared politic to destroy various castles throughout his dominions, as the contest between his mother and king Stephen had shewn how much they might aid the cause of disaffection. This measure was strongly opposed by Hugh Mortimer, and Milo, son of Roger, Earl of Gloucester; but, on the approach of Henry, with an army, they were obliged to submit. Consequently, in the year 1158, Hugh delivered up to the king the castles of Wigmore and Brugge, but the position of the former on the Welsh frontier, prevented its destruction.

Dugdale, in his Monasticon, relates the following particulars:— Hugh Mortimer, a noble and great man in the reign of king Stephen, made Oliver de Merlimond his seneschal, or steward, and gave him the town of Scobbedon, and to his son Eudo, the parsonage of the church of Aylmondestree. There was then no church at Scobbedon, but only a chapel of St. Juliana, but Oliver built one there, and dedicated it to St. John Evangelist. Afterwards, the said Oliver went on a pilgrimage to St. James the Apostle, at Compostela, in Spain; and having been most charitably entertained, on his return, by the canons of St. Victor, at Paris, when he had caused his church at Scobbedon to be consecrated by Robert Betun, Bishop of Hereford,+ and obtained of him the church of Rugeley, he sent to the abbot of St. Victor and obtained of him two of his canons, to whom he gave the said two churches and his lands of Ledecote, providing them a decent house, with barns and store of

corn,

"Some time after, Hugh Mortimer and Oliver Merlimond disagreeing, the latter went away in the service of Milo, Earl of Hereford, and Hugh re-assumed all he had before given him and what Oliver had granted to the canons, who were thereby reduced to such straits,

“It is impossible,” says Mr. Gough, in his additions to Camden, "to contemplate the massive ruins of Wigmore Castle, situate on a hill in an amphitheatre of mountains, whence its owner could survey his vast estates from his square palace, with four corner towers on a keep at the south-east corner of his double-trenched outworks, without reflecting on the instability of the grandeur of a family, whose ambition and intrigues made more than one English monarch uneasy on his throne."

+ He was bishop from the year 1131 to 1148.

that they designed to have left the place; but, the quarrel being made up, Hugh restored to Oliver all his lands, and theirs to the canons, adding, moreover, of his own, to the latter, the church of Wigmore, advancing the prior to the title of an abbot. Notwithstanding all which, he again took from the canons the town of Scobbedon, but sometime after restored it.

"There being want of water in Scobbedon, the canons moved their habitation to a place called Eye, near the river Lugg, where they had not been long before they again removed to Wigmore, and from thence to Beodune, where they built a monastery, and had a church dedicated to St. James by Robert Foliott, Bishop of Hereford, Hugh Mortimer bestowing on the canons several possessions and much plate for the altar. The church of Wigmore given by Hugh Mortimer was the present parish church* which, though mostly of the time of Edward I., exhibits parts much anterior, especially the north wall of the nave, as it is built in what is termed herring-bone fashion. That erected at a place called Beodune was the abbey church, which, together with the monastery, was, according to the same authority, founded by Hugh Lord Mortimer in 1179. It must have been completed and consecrated within six years, as he was buried within it in 1185; and in the following year Bishop Foliott died.” Leland says, "the abbey of Wigmore is a mile beyond Wigmore town; a great abbey of white chanons, within a mile of Wigmore town and castle, in the marche ground towards Shrewsberyshire."+

In the church of the abbey were buried the greater part of the Mortimer family, the founder and two of his descendants of the same name, Ralph, Geoffry, and John, three Rogers, and two Edmonds; all whose monuments were destroyed at the dissolution, with the church that contained them, except its walls. In what is now termed the abbey grange, remained, in Mr. Blount's time, some ancient rooms, as the abbott's council chamber, and one which had a canopy of wainscot, under which the abbot sat; and a stack of chimneys with the arms of Mortimer thereon. A contiguous alehouse was asserted to have been the abbey prison. This abbey

* This seems to have been ornamented by the munificence of Edward IV. as the reading desk of a line of stalls still remains, carved at that period; and, in Mr. Blount's time, were, in the windows, the arms of Mortimer, Bohun, Montacute, and Badlesmere, in painted glass.

+ Vol. v., p. 10, and iv., p. 176. Gough's Additions to Camden.