A HISTORY OF HEREFORDSHIRE Wild whose revolt in the early days of the Conquest this Ralf is alleged to have assisted in crushing. But he had also secured at Leintwardine one of King Edward's manors. Oidelard, his tenant at Downton and Buckton," held of him manors also in Hampshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, and Oxfordshire, a curious illustration of the widespread interests even of an under-tenant. East of Wigmore, on the Shropshire border, the mighty mound of Richard's Castle " was the head of his son's extensive fief, of which the local portion lay, like Ralf's, in northern Herefordshire and southern Shropshire ; " but comprised a number of manors in the adjacent portion of Worcestershire and extended to the west into what is now Radnorshire." Hitherto we have dealt with fiefs which descended to the heirs of their lords, as the Honours of Weobley, Wigmore, and Richard's Castle. When we come to that of Hugh ' the Ass,' which had similarly its caput in this county, we have to recognize it, later on, in the hands of the Chandos family by the name of the Honour of Snodhill. Snodhill, the site of a castle, is not mentioned in Domesday, but stood doubtless in one of those manors held by Hugh in the Golden Valley, of which it guards the northern entrance. Just beyond the present Welsh border, Hugh, as we read under Shropshire, held Knighton and Norton, where afterwards at least there were castles, though Domesday knows them only as manors wasted by war. Like so many of his Herefordshire manors, they had been held by ' Leflet,' an English lady, whom he had succeeded also in her tenure of the Leominster manor of Hatfield. But some of her lands had been secured by Nigel the physician, which led to a dispute as to title between him and Hugh at Sutton, the latter apparently alleging that he had held in the days of William Fitz Osbern. Hugh's other predecessor was Turchil the White, whose lands had been given him by Earl William, as we learn from his claim that the gift included Radnor itself. As follower of the earl, Hugh was a witness to the charter by which he granted to his monks of Lyre their lands in England and to one which he granted to the monks of St. Evroul. Hugh himself granted to Lyre his Herefordshire manor of Ocle, which is hence known as Lyres Ocle to this day, and his gift was confirmed by Henry I, the first two witnesses being Herefordshire Domesday barons, Osbern Fitz Richard and Richard Fitz Ponz." Nor was this his only gift to the abbey that his lord had founded.'" A fief of somewhat peculiar character is that of which the caput was the castled mound of Kilpeck. For William Fitz Norman, its holder, was the local forester in fee. Neither this fact nor his tenure of Kilpeck is mentioned under his fief; but an entry under Terra Regis informs us that he was holding the Herefordshire forests at an annual render of ^15 to the crown. Under Archenfield we find his tenure of Kilpeck, Baysham, Caple, and under Leominster that of ' Bradeford ' " and Lye."* Beyond the southern border of the county he held lands in Gloucestershire charged with the keeping of the " On the Shropshire border. " The writer appears to have been the first to point out that the ' Auretone ' from which Richard's Castle derived its Domesday name was Orleton. " Where Burfbrd was his chief manor. "There were outlying portions of the fief in Warwickshire, Oxfordshire and Bedfordshire (see list of them in Red Bk. ofExch. (Rolls Ser.), 603-5, """^ ^^^ writer's paper on them, at a later stage (i 309), in Ancestor, i, Z46-51). "See my CalofDoc. France, no. 402. ^ Robert de Chandos confirmed the gifts by his antecessor of Ocle and Sutton, with the churches of (Fown) Hope and Sapperton (Glos.) and tithes from Credenhill (Dugdale, Mon. vi, 1093). " See 295 below. "* In Aymestrey. 276
