A HISTORY OF HEREFORDSHIRE no less. In the future county of Monmouth, the survey of Herefordshire then includes Caerleon on the Usk and Monmouth on the Wye. But these are proved to be recent acquisitions by the all- important test w^hich Domesday enables us to apply to the Welsh March. The test of w^hich I speak was the ' hide.' Do we find a district assessed in hides or do we not .? In the former case I claim it as an ancient English possession ; in the latter case, the case in which the land is reckoned by ' carucates,' ^ I look on it as having been acquired in a more recent epoch. At Caerleon, for instance, there are no ' hides,' but ' viii carucatas terrae,' and so also at Monmouth. When, however, we turn to that portion of the shire of Radnor which Domesday surveys as in Herefordshire, we not only find it assessed in hides but even recognize the ancient five-hide unit. Jutting out between Hereford- shire and Shropshire, the Welsh county is surveyed at this point partly under the former and partly under the latter. For when the Domesday Survey was made it was England that here thrust a broad wedge into Wales, a wedge which reached a point at Cascob,^ 5 miles west of the present border. And the evidence of Domesday is in striking accordance with that of ecclesiastical geography, for the diocese of Hereford still drives this wedge into that of St. David's. Now in this district we meet with the five-hide unit at (Old) Radnor itself (15), Knighton (5), and Norton (5), and are led thereby to suspect it had been English soil perhaps even from Ofl^a's day. For the bulk, at least, of this district was on the English side of Offa's Dyke. This is a point of historical importance, for Mr. Freeman held that his adored Harold first made it an English possession ; ' and in this he has been followed by Sir James Ramsay.* On the other hand, the Herefordshire of Domesday was smaller on the north-western border, where several manors now in the Hundred of Wigmore are surveyed by Domesday under Shropshire, and assigned to the Hundred of Leintwardine in that county. It has been alleged by Professor Tait that ' Richard's Castle, Ashford Bowdler, and Ludlow, which if Eyton's identifica- tion of the last-named with "Lude" be accepted, were all entered under Herefordshire in Domesday,' are now included in Shropshire.^ But the church and castle of Richard's Castle are still within the Herefordshire border ; Ashford Bowdler was then, as now, included in Shropshire ; and Eyton's identification of ' Lude ' was, it will be shown, erroneous. Domesday bears emphatic witness to the widespread devastation due to the passage of warring hosts ; the fertile valleys between the Malvern Hills ' For instance, we read of the lands in Gwent, which William Fitz Osbern had made a fief dependent on his castle of Chepstow, ' in eodem feudo dedit Willelmus comes Radulfo de Limesi L carucatas terrae sicut fit in Normannia' {Dom. Bk. i, 152).
- Cascob itself is entered under both Herefordshire and Shropshire.
' Norman Conquest (ed. 2), ii, 473, 684. * Foundations of Engl. (1898), i, 488. ' V.C.H. Shrops. i, 287. The whole parish of Richard's Castle still lies ecclesiastically in Herefordshire, but that portion of it which lies beyond the Shropshire border has been transferred to that county as a separate civil parish. The village church and castle, however, remain, as before, on the Herefordshire side. With regard to Ashford Bowdler, Prof. Tait must have followed Eyton, who held that not only that place, but other members of Richard's Castle, i.e. Woofferton, Overton, Batchcott, Moor, &c., were all included in the 5 J hides 'in castellaria de Auretone' held by Robert Gernon {Hist, of Shrops. v, 224). This appears to me a very hazardous conclusion, based on conjecture only. Woofferton and Overton, though in Shropshire, are in Richard's Castle parish, but Ashford Bowdler is not. And as it adjoins Ashford Carbonel (from which only the stream divides it), and was part, like it, of the Richard's Castle barony, it would seem equally possible that the ' Esseford ' surveyed under Shropshire comprised both, and that their different suffixes were derived from their respective tenants. 264
