Earl of Hereford

“ To stop these ravages the Earl of Hereford, who was nephew to Edward, advanced with an army, not of English alone, but of mercenary Normans and French, whom he had entertained in his service, against Gryffyth and Algar. He met them near Hereford, and offered them battle, which the Welsh monarch, who had won five pitched battles before, and never had fought without conquering, joyfully accepted. The earl had commanded his English forces to fight on horseback, in imitation of the Normans, against their usual custom ”

“ When the barons formed the confederation for redress of grievances in 1268, the Earl of Hereford was of their number, and had a share in the settlement of the government under the Provisions of Oxford, being one of the original commissioners, and subsequently one of the council of fifteen. ”

“ I marvel they should have lingered so long with thee."
A frown gathered on Hereford's broad and noble brow, but remembering the forbearance due to his host, he checked an angry reply. "The king has changed," he said, "darkly and painfully changed; ambition has warped the noblest, knightliest heart which ever beat for chivalry."
"Hush, ere thou speakest treason, Sir Earl; give me not the pain of draining another flagon of this sparkling hypocras to gain strength for thine arrest, good friend," exclaimed Lancaster, laying the flat of his sword on the earl's shoulder. ”

“ These two, Henry of Bolingbroke, earl of Derby, and Mowbray, earl of Nottingham, now dukes of Hereford and Norfolk, the most powerful of the remaining nobility, were, by a singular conjuncture, thrown, as it were, at the king's feet. Of the political mysteries which this reign affords, none is more inexplicable than the quarrel of these peers. In the parliament at Shrewsbury, in 1398, Hereford was called upon by the king to relate what had passed between the duke of Norfolk and himself in slander of his majesty. ”

“ Constance’s brother was similarly led up by his father and his cousin, the newly-created Duke, and he resumed his princely seat, Duke of Aumerle, or Albemarle.
“Sir Thomas de Holand, Earl of Kent, Baron Wake!”
Hereford and Aumerle were the two to lead up the candidate. He was the son of the King’s half-brother, and was reputed the handsomest of the nobles: a tall, finely-developed man, with the shining golden hair of his Plantagenet ancestors. He was created Duke of Surrey.
Hereford sat down, and Surrey and Aumerle conducted John Earl of Huntingdon to the throne. ”

“ One fool, however, makes many, and one rebellious earl was soon joined by a number of other seditious nobles.
The plan of Hereford was that of the political quack who pretends to have a specific for every disease by which the constitution is affected. He published a puffing manifesto declaring that he had no other object but the redress of grievances, and that the crown was the very last thing to which his thoughts were directed. ”

“ Miracles were worked at Arundel's tomb, until Richard ordered it to be paved over. Men believed that he was haunted by the earl's injured shade, and dare not go to sleep without a guard of three hundred Cheshire men. Norfolk now took alarm, and informed Hereford that he had reason to believe that Richard, despite his oaths, would never rest content until he had undone them for their share in Radcotbridge. Hereford betrayed him to the king, and secured himself, as he thought, by a full pardon for the past. ”

“ Here they began with a victory about two miles from Hereford over the Earl of that shire who was a Frenchman, and tried to make his men fight on horseback in the French fashion, which they did not understand,—the English way being for the great men to ride to the field of battle, but there to dismount and fight with their heavy axes on foot. ”

“ Hereford. It will be marvellous, indeed, if the king, after having said so before the people, should cause it to be annulled.
Norfolk. It is a marvellous and false world that we live in; for I know well that, had it not been for some persons, my lord your father of Lancaster and yourself would have [476] been taken or killed, when you went to Windsor after the Parliament. The Dukes of Albemarle and Exeter, and the Earl of Worcester and I, have pledged ourselves never to assent to the undoing of any lord without just and reasonable cause. ”

“ The Scots, whose losses were slight, showed a prudent tendency to capture rather than slay the knights and barons, in order that they might hold them up to ransom, and though many desisted from the pursuit to plunder the baggage train, those who followed the English fugitives reaped an abundant harvest of captives. Hereford was chased into Bothwell castle, which was still held for the English. But next day the Scottish official who commanded there for Edward opened the gates to Bruce, and the earl became a prisoner. ”

“ Norfolk. So he has often sworn to me by God's body, but I do not trust him the more for that. He is attempting to draw the Earl of March into the scheme of the four lords to destroy the others, Hereford. If that be the case, we can never trust them.
Norfolk. Certainly not. Though they may not accomplish their purpose now, they will contrive to destroy us in our houses ten years hence.
Hereford must have taken the earliest opportunity to communicate this confidential conversation to the king. It showed him that the king was carefully watching those who had formerly appeared as his enemies. ”

“ At the same time the inner circle of the king's confidants the Earl of Kent, now Duke of Surrey, Sir William le Scrope, now Earl of Wiltshire, and the Earl of Salisbury were (Norfolk had reason to suspect) urging the king to rid himself of all who had ever been his enemies. Norfolk is said to have confided his fears to Hereford as they rode from Brentford to London in December 1397 (ib. p. 382) . Richard was informed of Norfolk's language ”

“ The bishop of Hereford witnessed the grant made to this prince of the earldom of Richmond in 1241, and was, early in 1242, despatched with him on a mission to France. They were commissioned to announce to the Poitevins faithful to the English cause the speedy arrival of Henry III to raise troops for the projected war in Poitou, and to negotiate for a marriage between Richard, earl of Cornwall, Henry III's brother, and Sanchia, the younger sister of Queen Eleanor. The bishop showed great activity, sometimes alone, sometimes in conjunction with Peter of Savoy. ”

“ The disastrous intelligence which he received from Bristol, however, made him doubtful whether he should hold inviolate the truce which he had granted to the besieged. He did not doubt but that the Earl of Kent and his troops, flushed with conquest, would hasten to his destruction, and to the relief of Hereford, and that unless he could possess himself of the city and castle, and by shutting himself up in the latter be enabled to bid defiance to his enemies, the fate of his father must inevitably be his own. ”

“ Hereford’s estates passed on to the eldest of his large family, the King’s own nephews. Lancaster left no children, but his brother, Henry Wryneck, Earl of Derby, did not receive his estates till they had been mulcted largely on behalf of the Despensers. The father was created Earl of Winchester, and the son received such bounty from the King, that all the old hatred against Piers Gaveston was revived, though it does not appear that Hugh provoked dislike by any such follies or extravagances. ”

“ No county was more loyal to the royal cause than that of Hereford. In 1638, Mrs. Jeffries pays ship-money and another impost called "the king's provision," and finds a soldier for her property in Hereford and elsewhere. In 1641 she purchases pamphlets and news-books and takes an interest in passing political events. In September, 1642, when the Earl of Essex entered Worcester, and sent [Pg 139] the Earl of Stamford to occupy Hereford, she quitted her town house and went to Garnons, the residence of Mr. ”

“ Hereford was the king's demesne; and the honor of being his immediate tenants appears to have been qualified by considerable exactions. When he went to war, and when he went to hunt, men were to be ready for his service. If the wife of a burgher brewed his ale, he paid tenpence. The smith who kept a forge had to make nails from the king's iron. In Hereford, as in other cities, there were moneyers, or coiners. There were seven at Hereford, who were bound to coin as much of the king's silver into pence as he demanded. At Cambridge the burgesses were compelled to lend the sheriff their ploughs. ”

“ By the time he reached London he had got sixty thousand men of all sorts and sizes about him, for the people in those days were fond of changing their leaders, and Hereford was popular as the latest novelty. The Duke of York—the king's uncle—moved to the West End, as Henry and his forces entered at the East; but Henry of Bolingbroke—alias Hereford, who was also the nephew of York—invited the latter to a conference. ”

“ The list of grievances which their party then presented was only partially inquired into when Edward sailed for Flanders; but the confirmation of the charters was agreed to by Prince Edward acting as regent, and was allowed by the king himself in Flanders. On Edward's return to England in 1298, he was required by the two earls, as the price of their attendance in the invasion of Scotland, to promise a re-confirmation of the charters. After the battle of Falkirk, 22 July, Hereford had leave to return to England; and soon after he died at Fleshy, in Essex, and was buried at Walden. ”

“ Despite its present atmosphere of peace and quietude, Hereford saw strenuous times in the fierce warfare which raged between the English and Welsh, though few relics of those days remain. The streets are unusually wide and with few exceptions the buildings are modern. Surrounding the town is a stretch of green, level meadow, upon which graze herds of the red and white cattle whose fame is wider than that of their native shire. No doubt there are many familiar with the sleek Herefords who have no idea from whence they take their name. ”

“ I well remember one occasion while we were at Hereford, a very pompous and extremely proper town, as all cathedral cities are; my lord and I were robed for the reception of the High Sheriff (as he is called) and his chaplain, who were presently coming with the great carriage to take us to be churched before we charged the grand jury.
Hereford is a very stately place, and enjoys a very high opinion of its own importance in the world. It is almost too respectable to admit of the least frivolity in any circumstances. ”

“ Offa, of course, then seized Ethelbert’s crown. Having secured this, and being safely installed in the place of his murdered guest, he found time to repent; and that his repentance might seem the more real, he endowed with great riches the church in which lay the body of his victim, and soon the wooden building gave place to a stone edifice. No doubt the king’s offerings greatly assisted in founding Hereford on a solid ecclesiastical basis, but the effect of his gifts was evanescent, compared with the value of his victim’s bones, as an attraction to the devout. ”

“ His past history necessarily made him a royalist partisan during the barons' wars, and his border diocese, where the marchers and Llywelyn of Wales took opposite sides, was exposed to the fiercest outbursts of the strife. Late in 1262 Llywelyn threatened Hereford, and Peter, on the pretext of a fit of the gout, kept himself away from danger at Gloucester, while providing the castle of Hereford with garrison and provisions. In June 1263 Henry visited Hereford and wrote angrily to the bishop, complaining that he found in that city neither bishop, dean, official, nor prebendaries ”

“ And they should keep who can,"
the city of Hereford was distinguished by the zeal and patriotism of its citizens, and by the unshrinking firmness with which they adhered to the cause of queen Isabella, and the young prince her son, afterwards the renowned king Edward the Third, in opposition to the weak and ill-fated monarch who then wore the crown, and his detested favourites the Spensers, father and son. ”

“ Edward the Elder, a great constructor of strong places, who repaired the citadel and walls of Chester in 909, is said by Grafton also to have fortified Hereford, erecting a strong castle there. His sister Ethelfleda, a still greater castle-builder than he, and to whom are due the mounds of Tutbury, Tamworth, Leicester, and some others, was the widow of Ethelred, Duke of Mercia, in 915, when the Danes had advanced by the Wye, and taken captive the Bishop of Archenfield. She attacked and defeated them before Hereford, no doubt making use of the new defences. ”

“ The duke had been murdered, and Nottingham was probably responsible, although the evidence against him is not conclusive. As a reward he received most of Arundel’s lands in Surrey and Sussex, and was created duke of Norfolk. He now began to fear for his own safety, and took the duke of Hereford, afterwards King Henry IV., into his confidence. Hereford carried his words to the king, who summoned him to his presence, and at Oswestry Norfolk accused Hereford of speaking falsely. ”

“ Ziz. p. 274) . He had graduated as doctor of divinity by the following spring, and in the letter of the Oxford friars to John, duke of Lancaster, on 18 Feb. 1382, is mentioned as their chief enemy (ib. pp. 294, 296) . Throughout Lent of this year Hereford was constantly preaching in support of Wiclif, and against the friars at St. Mary's Church, having for his chief opponent Peter Stokes, the Carmelite. The chancellor, Robert Rigge, refused to take action against Hereford, and finally appointed him to preach the sermon at St. ”