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 A HISTORY OF HEREFORDSHIRE tant point where it entered the county from Wales. High upon its red sandstone steep, Clifford Castle had a natural strength that rendered needless the moated mound associated, especially in this county, with the strongholds of Norman lords. But another of their features it possessed : about it lay a ' castlery ' {castellaria), of which the extent should be observed. The lord's demesne was of three plough-lands ; the holdings of his knightly tenants con- tained no fewer than twenty-three among them. And these holdings forcibly illustrate my theory of the class of men who held around a baron's castle. For a ' Roger,' the first holder, was no other than Roger de Laci, the greatest man in the shire ; '^ ' Drogo,' the third, was Dru Fitz Ponz, founder of the famous house of Clifford and a Herefordshire tenant-in-chief. He held of Ralf at Ford and Sarnesfield in this county ; also a Gloucestershire manor in Nether Swell, and a curious outlying one in Berkshire, of which Domesday tells us that it had belonged to ' the fief of Earl Roger,' and there- fore to William Fitz Osbern. Herbert, the fourth holder, was probably a tenant of Ralf in Worcestershire so named, who also held of him at Eaton in this county, while ' Gilbert,' the second, was clearly Gilbert the sheriff, of whom we read that he held the castle and the borough {burgus) and the plough-lands at ferm when the Survey was made. Ralf de Tosny [Rodent'), lord of the fief, was no ordinary baron. Born of a princely Norman house, he was brother-in-law to William Fitz Osbern, who had installed him at Clifford. His great fief was strangely divided, one portion of it lying in Norfolk, and the other in Herefordshire, Worcester- shire, and Gloucestershire. He fixed his seat, however, in neither portion, but selected Flamstead in Hertfordshire, a county in which he only held two manors. It has not, perhaps, been observed that his fief, though so extensive, was, apparently, not charged with any military service, a peculiarity which prevents us from learning to which county it was reckoned to belong. Grandson of a count of Barcelona, stepson of a count of Evreux, son-in-law of Simon de Montfort, brother-in-law of the earl of Hereford, and father-in- law of a king of Jerusalem, Ralf was, as I have said, no ordinary baron. His father Roger had founded, on his lordship of Conches, the abbey of St. Peter de Castellion. On this foundation Ralf bestowed one of his Here- fordshire manors, which thence derives its distinctive name of Monkland, together with tithes from others ; *' and within the walls of the abbey he found burial. He also, as Ralf ' de Conches,' bestowed lands in England on St. Evroul in reparation for injury to that house, among the witnesses to his charter of donation being two Herefordshire tenants-in-chief, Gilbert Fitz Turold and Roger de Muchegros.'* The outlying ' castlery' of Caerleon, where William de Scohies had begun to reintroduce cultivation, is treated in Domesday as the head of a Hereford- shire fief to which must be added the Leominster lands held by its lord. The whole was afterwards known as the Honour of Dilwyn from one of its con- stituent manors,'^ and its most interesting under-tenant in 1086 is Bernard, who held Croft with Wharton,'' and Newton," and who is claimed as founder °' See the entry under his own fief, where it is stated that these four plough-lands had been given to his father Walter. ^ See my Cal. of Doc. France, 138-9. '* Ibid. 219. " This is proved by the Testa de Nevill and by Feudal Aids. °* In Leominster. " In Hope under Dinsmore. 278