DOMESDAY BOOK HEREFORD - AND A BIG MISTAKE

After this blogpost on the Siege of Hereford in 1055AD, a glance at Hereford some thirty years later, on the publication of the Domesday Book in 1086AD - see HERE - when both manorial lord and manorial tenant was the Bishop of Hereford.

Hereford was clearly going through tough times. Property values had roughly halved in the twenty years from 1066 to 1086, down from four pounds fourteen shillings to two pounds ten shillings. As this table demonstrates, Hereford was far from being the busiest place even within the County - having only 19 households as opposed to 48 for Shobdon, 59 for Bromyard, and an astonishing 101 for Hanley Castle (now only in a small village in The Malverns, and officially part of Worcestershire).

Hereford's inferiority to Hanley in the 11th Century may have been due to Hereford being ruled by the Bishop, but Hanley being royal land, in the ownership of William the Conqueror (who had clearly nicked it after 1066 from the defeated Saxon lord, Brictric, son of Algar, who had large landholdings across the Midlands (including the Earldom of Gloucester). The Domesday Book records Brictric having 86 landholdings in 1066, and in 1086, er............nil). Such 'land redistribution' may well have derived as much from personal revenge as public policy, for William Dydes' 18th Century "History and Antiquities of Tewkesbury" notes (p.23) of Brictric:

"This Brictric (being ambassador at the court of Baldwin, Earl [or Count] of Flanders) Maud [known to history as Matilda], the Earl's daughter, fell violently in love with him, but being slighted, she afterwards married William the Conqueror, and after the Norman Conquest, revenge still rankling in her breast for such a slight, and the Conqueror being tempted with his large estate, she worked Brictric's ruin, who was seized in his manor of Hanley and sent [as] prisoner to Winchester, where he died without issue, and was there buried....[and his lands taken]...."

Definitely not one for rejection - a 28mm Queen Matilda.
 A limited edition figure from the 2016 Crisis Show,
very nicely painted by Scrivs. See his blog HERE. 

Equally, of course, Hereford's 1086 position may simply have reflected it's experience in the 1055 Siege. The volumes upon the subsequent VBCW Siege of Hereford, some eight hundred and fifty years later, have yet to emerge from the publishers....

A (probably Edwardian) representation of Matilda. Married to William at 19,
crowned as Queen of England at 37. When she was crowned in Winchester
Cathedral, it is likely (but presumably not at all co-incidental) that Brictric was
 already languishing in the dungeons of Winchester Castle. More on Matilda
and Brictric (including the illustration upon which her 28mm figure
was clearly based) HERE