Page:VCH Herefordshire 1.djvu/438

 A HISTORY OF HEREFORDSHIRE mercy of the crown. But the bulk of his lands in Herefordshire, including the barony of Wigmore, was restored to his son Edmund in October, 1331."" Edmund died in January, 133 1—2, but his son Roger took a conspicuous part in a tournament held at Hereford in 1344,^^* and in 1354 he was restored to the earldom and to complete possession of his family estates. ^'^ At this time he was possessed, besides Wigmore, of the manors of Marden and Winforton in Herefordshire,"* while Wolferlow formed part of his mother's dowry,'" as well as Pembridge, Kingstone, and Orleton, and half the town and territory of Ewyas. At the time of his death, in 1360, Marcle was also in his possession. His son Edmund, third earl of March, greatly increased his power by his marriage, in 1368, with Philippa, the daughter and heiress of the duke of Clarence, on whose death in the same year he inherited his great possessions. The earl of March joined in the attack on John of Gaunt in 1376, and Sir Peter de la Mare, knight of the shire for Herefordshire, and Speaker of the House of Commons, was his steward, and was probably returned to Parliament by his influence. In the meantime the great family of Bohun had come to an end. The fifth and sixth earls obtained considerable renown in Edward Ill's wars in Scotland and France. The earldom became extinct in 1373 with the death of Humphrey, the seventh earl. Humphrey left two daughters, Eleanor, who was married to Edward Ill's sixth son, Thomas of Woodstock, and Mary, married at the age of ten to Henry, earl of Derby, afterwards Henry IV, in the winter of 1380. Through Thomas's daughter, and eventually his sole heiress, Anne, who married Edmund, fifth earl of Stafford, one moiety of the Bohun inheritance descended to the dukes of Buckingham, the other being acquired by the crown on the accession of Henry IV. The fifth earl of Stafford at the time of his death at the battle of Shrewsbury in 1403 held the castle of Huntington, near Kington, in Herefordshire. The other possessions of the Bohuns in the county devolved upon the house of Lancaster, but the lands of the house of De Braose in Brecknock came to the Staffords, and in 1444 Humphrey Stafford was styled earl of Buckingham, Hereford, Stafford, Northampton, and Perche.'^^ The disintegration of England which had steadily increased during the reign of Edward III, and which Richard II had vainly tried to combat by arbitrary methods, reached its climax in the early years of Henry IV. The decay of the power of the crown peculiarly affected the Welsh borders. In 1400 the city of Hereford itself was disturbed by the lawlessness of Thomas Byton and other marauders."' The growing turbulence of the Welsh caused the enactment in 1401 that no Welshman should purchase or hold land in the border towns, among which were included Hereford and Leominster.^'" But by the following year Wales was in full revolt under Owen Glendower. In the early summer Sir Edmund Mortimer, uncle of the fifth earl of March, mustered the men of Herefordshire and his own tenants to attack Owen, but he was defeated and captured near Knighton '" in Radnorshire in the middle '" Ca/. Close R. 1330-3, p. 345-6 ; Ca/. Pat. R. 1330-4, p. 193. ^'* Adam de Murimuth, Com. Chronic. (Rolls Ser.), 159. ^" Rot. Pari, ii, 255. ^'« Dugdale, Baronage, i, 147. *" Ibid, i, 148. "« Ibid, i, 165. "^ Cal. Pat. R. 1 399-1401, pp. 347-8, 413. 220 ^^^_ p^j.1 -^ 472-3. Nicolas), i, 185 ; Capgrave" s Chron. (Rolls Ser.), 279 ; Trokelowe, Annals (Rolls Ser.), 341. 368
 * " Walsingham, Hist. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 250 ; Ann. Hen. IV (Rolls Ser.), 341 ; Proc. of the P.C. (ed.