Page:VCH Worcestershire 1.djvu/340

 A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE pass entire to the Marmions, but was divided, especially in Worcester- shire, between them and the Beauchamps, the heirs of his brother Urse. As for Urse himself, his rule in Worcestershire must have lasted nearly forty years ; for it began, as we saw above, soon after the Conquest, and he is still found acting as sheriff under Henry I. In the fate of Roger, his son and heir, who incurred that monarch's vengeance, his contempo- raries saw the fulfilment of Ealdred's curse, but his daughter brought to Walter de Beauchamp the vast estates of which the history has yet to be largely written from the great cartulary of the Beauchamp family now in the British Museum.' Of the smaller Worcestershire tenants-in-chief, who held from four to six manors (or estates) apiece, Ralf de Mortimer and Roger de Laci were great lords on the Welsh border, and Drogo Fitz Ponz, the collateral ancestor of the Cliffords of Clifford Castle, will, like them, be dealt with, more appropriately, in Herefordshire. Gilbert Fitz Turold, however, though also a tenant on the March, may fairly claim, under Worcestershire, some mention. For in this county we have proof of what had, indeed, been suspected, namely, that Gilbert was one of the followers of the great William Fitz Osbern, earl of Hereford. We read, of Hadsor, in Heming's Cartulary, that ' after the Normans conquered this country, earl William took it from the monastery (of Worcester) and gave it to a certain officer of his, Gilbert by name.' ^ And Domesday shows us Hadsor in possession of Gilbert Fitz Turold. Again, Domesday tells us of Lench (fo. 176) that ' of this land Gilbert Fitz Turold gave two hides to Evesham Abbey for the soul of earl William, by consent of king William.' Gilbert's holding in capite within the shire was only some 10 hides, but, as an under-tenant of the churches of Westminster and Worcester, he was a larger holder than this at Comberton, Powick, and Longdon. His seat, which had been given him by earl William, was in Herefordshire on the Welsh border, and there he had a fortified house and ' a great wood for hunting.' We have now seen something of the Normans, into whose hands there passed the estates of dispossessed Englishmen. The one manor which Domesday shows us retained in English hands is that of Chad- desley, which ' Eddeve ' (Eadgifu) still held as she had done before the Conquest. Of the Normans who had come in under Edward the Confessor, Osbern Fitz Richard had retained a manor he then held, and had succeeded to four others which had been his father's ; Alvred of Marlborough also had retained, and indeed increased his lands at Severn- stoke. Otherwise the change was great. Worcestershire, however, had not been a land of great thegns ; the extent of church lands made this impossible. Eadwine, the local earl, had been succeeded by the King, but his local estates were limited, apparently, to the great manor of Bromsgrove and those of Suckley and Dudley. It should be observed that he had established on some 12 hides appurtenant to Bromsgrove six 266
 * Add. MS. 28,024. * Heming's Cartulary, I. 263.