DOMESDAY SURVEY we find associated with the county before the coming of Earl William, namely, Osbern ' Pentecost,' was not, as Mr. Freeman assumed, Osbern of Richard's Castle, but was identical with Osbern, uncle of Alvred of Marl- borough. From this, I have urged, it would follow that ' Pentecost Castle,' of which the English chronicle speaks, was really that of Ewyas (Harold), which Earl William ' re-fortified ' for Alvred, when he installed him there on the Welsh border. Of those who were wholly unconnected before the Conquest with the county, Walter de Laci, the greatest of the lay tenants in Gloucestershire, was also the chief recipient of Herefordshire lands, those of his son and successor Roger filling more than five columns of Domesday Book. Walter," whom Earl WiUiam placed at what was afterwards Ewyas Lacy,*' as if to strengthen the hands of Alvred of Marlborough,"' is found with his lord fighting the Welsh, but when Earl William's son Roger rose in revolt, Walter espoused the king's side, and thus made himself secure. He was a benefactor both to St. Peter's Gloucester and to St. Peter's Hereford, and was accidentally killed shortly before the Survey, while inspecting the work done for him at the latter religious house. Of his English predecessors one, at least, deserves special notice. This was Edwi cilt, a Herefordshire magnate, whom he had succeeded, apparently, in seventeen manors, including Weobley, where Walter had a park, and which became the chief seat of his descendants. ^Elfwine ('Elwin,' 'Alwin'), the son of the English noble, was allowed to retain two of the manors, but only as Walter's tenant. In addi- tion to the lands entered as his fief, the lord of Weobley had also secured some of the Leominster manors, and did not disdain, here and there, to hold as an under-tenant, especially at Holme Lacy, where the bishop of Hereford was his lord.^" Ralf de Mortimer, the founder of a great Marcher house, the ancestor of a line of earls " famous in English history, was lord of a considerable terri- tory in northern Herefordshire^ and southern Shropshire, of which Wigmore Castle was the caput. As to Wigmore, Domesday appears to be contradictory in its statements : under Leominster it tells us with precision that Wigmore, ' in which Wigmore castle stands,' was a half-hide in which Ralf had suc- ceeded ^Elfward ; but under Ralf 's fief we read that earl William constructed the castle in the ' waste land called Merestun, which Gunuert ^' had held.' As there were 2 hides at this ' Merestun ' one is tempted to see in it that ' Merestone,' of 2 hides, which had been a member, we read, of the royal manor of ' Lene,' but which Ralf was holding in 1086. This, however, leaves the discrepancy unexplained. Among his predecessors before and even after the Conquest the most notable were Queen Edith ^* and the famous Edric the
- ' Like Ilbert de Laci he came from Lassy in what is now the Calvados.
^ Now Longtown. " He was also installed in the ' castlery of Clifford,' further north on the border as if to strengthen Ralf de Tosni. ™ In II 66 the bishop complained that Hugh owed him the service of two knights, but had withdrawn a quarter of it, Lib. Rub. 279. " The name of Mortimer was revived as the second style of an earldom in 1 7 1 1 for Robert Harley of Brampton in this county, whose ancestor had purchased Wigmore in 1601, and who was created at the same time Lord Harley of Wigmore. " Partly surveyed under Shropshire in Domesday. This must be identical with his predecessor at Brampton and part of Lingen. " Who was apparently the ' Eddit ' and ' Eddiet ' who had preceded him. 275
