Bloody British History: Hereford E-Book

David Phelps

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Serie: Bloody British History
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 161

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Hereford has a darker side to its history, filled with strange – and sometimes unlikely – true tales. Was King Arthur a Hereford man? Why was its patron saint murdered by his would-be father-in-law? Why did another of its saints become the only saint to die excommunicated? Was a Bishop of Hereford involved in the murder of a king by the most frightful method imaginable? Did bones from the Cathedral graveyard really cure every disease known to man? Was a ghost really responsible for the destruction of the cathedral's west front? Was the Hay Poisoner really guilty? Was a Hereford clerk the rightful King of England? These, and many other strange stories, will be revealed in this book…

Leseprobe

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

MY SPECIAL THANKS to David Whitehead for acting as my historical adviser; any inaccuracies are down to my own pig-headedness. Thanks also to Rob Soldat for his knowledge of the border, Jacqueline Jonson and Gwilym Rees of the Woolhope Club and the staff of the local section of Hereford Library, Hereford Cathedral Library and Rhys Griffith, Richard Wade and Marcus Buffrey of Hereford Record Office. My gratitude also to the members of Much Dewchurch and Newent story circles for listening to these stories as they were developing and to Cate Ludlow and her colleagues at The History Press for suggesting the project.

Unless otherwise credited, illustrations are sourced via the publisher.

INTRODUCTION

‘He who cannot draw on three thousand years of history is living from hand to mouth.’

Goethe

THE COUNTY OF Hereford is undergoing a transformation. From earning its living mostly through agriculture, as it has done for many centuries, it will become a centre of investment to rival the South East – or at least, that is the vision of those currently in charge of its destiny. No one would argue with prosperity but, as the following pages show, one man’s prosperity can be ten people’s desperation: all the more important, then, to know the county’s heritage, so that it can be protected during the transformation.

Herefordshire has a complex history and it would be impossible to reflect all the complexity in this short book but I hope it will whet your appetite and provide a sketch map to encourage further exploration.

CONTENTS

Title

Acknowledgements

Introduction

 2,000 BC

The Rotherwas Ribbon

AD 43  

Caradoc

AD 460  

Arthur

AD 780  

Offa’s Dyke

AD 794  

St Aethelbert

AD 911  

Aethelflaed

AD 1055  

The Battle of Hereford

AD 1139  

The Siege of Hereford Castle

AD 1163  

Fair Rosamund

AD 1240  

Peter D’Aquablanca

AD 1265  

Prince Edward’s Flight

AD 1282  

St Thomas Cantilupe

AD 1317  

The Hideous Death of Hugh Despenser

AD 1349  

The Black Death

AD 1417  

Sir John Oldcastle

AD 1461  

The Battle of Mortimer’s Cross

AD 1609  

Old Meg Goodwin

AD 1643  

The Siege of Brampton Bryan

AD 1668  

Nell Gwyn

AD 1679  

St John Kemble

AD 1741  

The Goodere Murder

AD 1786  

The Collapse of the Cathedral

AD 1821  

Tom Spring

AD 1861  

Demolition of the Old Town Hall

AD 1800s  

Rural Strife!

AD 1893  

The Longtown Harriers

AD 1914-1918  

The Herefordshire Regiment in the First World War

AD 1916  

Tragedy at the Theatre

AD 1922  

The Hay Poisoner

AD 1931  

All Hail King Anthony!

AD 1941  

The Special Air Service

AD 1942  

The Rotherwas Raid

Bibliography

  AND INCLUDING:

AD 1645  

The Siege of Hereford

Copyright

2,000 BC

THE ROTHERWAS RIBBON

DURING THE BUILDING of the Rotherwas Access Road a curving line of stones was found between the River Wye and Dinedor Hill. Later carbon-dating methods suggest that this was placed here in the Neolithic period.

The stones had been brought from a ridge about half a kilometre away, fire cracked (heated and then dropped into cold water to shatter, the earliest known example of this practice) and laid in a sinuous series of curves. The stones were interspersed with quartz pebbles so that, in sunlight, the ribbon would have glinted like a large white snake on the hillside and, in the moonlight, it would have glowed as if the nearby river was climbing up the hill.

The stones were only one layer thick, so this was not a trackway. However, what it was the archaeologists were unwilling to surmise, putting it down to ritual or ceremony (i.e. we have no idea). They did say that the find was unique and as significant as Stonehenge. Perhaps Herefordshire was as ritually important as the Wiltshire Plain?

However, the council was determined that the new road must go ahead. Eight members of the public, including an octogenarian war hero, were arrested in the council chamber for criminal trespass because they wanted the matter discussed openly. The case was only dropped when a leading firm of civil rights solicitors became involved.

The Ribbon was eventually covered over and the £12 million new road built over it. This stretch of tarmac is now recognised as one of the quietest stretches of road in the county.

The Rotherwas Access Road, now covering the Rotherwas Ribbon. (David Phelps)

AD 43

CARADOC

CARADOC – OR Caratacus, as the Romans, who could not stand people to have non-Latin names, called him – was a leader of the Catuvellauni tribe, who lived in what is now Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and north Cambridgeshire. British tribal boundaries were always quite fluid and Caradoc was intent on expanding his, at the expense of his neighbours.

He had considerable success against the Atrebates of Hampshire and Surrey. So much so that their leaders saw no option but to ask the Romans for help, in the same way that the Kuwaitis called for help from the Americans when they were invaded by Iraq in 1990 – and we all know where that led.

Emperor Claudius must have smiled when he received the request. Though a magnificent PR campaign by Julius Caesar had persuaded the Roman people that his attempted invasion a century before had been a success, Claudius knew better. With the Germans being a continual trial on his eastern border, this was a chance to expand the northern one.

Caradoc might have been a skilled commander against other tribes, but he was no match for the Legions of Rome. He was soundly defeated at the Battle of Medway and fled, while a new tribal leadership sued for peace. There were many Britons who thought the Romans were a good thing anyway. There had been trade with them for many centuries and the elites especially valued the luxury goods this provided. What did it matter if they had to make their farmers pay more taxes?

Caradoc headed west, to Herefordshire, where there were more hillforts than any other district. We now know that the term ‘hillfort’ is a bit of a misnomer: they seem to have served many different purposes, from the place where people would go to perform seasonal ceremonies to the home of the chieftain. Many of them would have been completely impractical as defensive positions. But Caradoc was heading for British Camp, on the Malverns, which was a highly defensible fort. The local Dobunni tribe were generally in favour of the Romans, but there were enough young hot heads who wanted to make a name for themselves by resisting the invaders. Caradoc strengthened the walls, planning to use the camp as an impregnable base from which he could carry out guerrilla warfare.

Nineteenth-century interpretation of Caradoc meeting Claudius.

British Camp, one of the last stands of Caradoc. (David Phelps)

Certainly it must have looked impregnable to the Roman commander, Publius Ostorius Scapula, when he saw it, but his men, from the battle-hardened IX and XX Legions, convinced him that they could take it. In testudo or tortoise formation – shields above their heads, to neutralise the arrows and stones rained down on them from above – the soldiers penetrated the defences and the battle became hand-to-hand. The Britons, with their free-form fighting style, were no match for the tight discipline of the Legions and there was a bloody slaughter, the Romans never too keen on taking prisoners.

Caradoc, like all good leaders, had a Plan B. Once more he fled the battle and headed for Croft Ambrey in north-west Herefordshire, close to the territory of the Silures, who had no love for the Romans. But history repeated itself and Caradoc was forced to run again, this time to Caer Caradoc in Shropshire, where he was joined not only by the local Cornovii but also Ordovices from North Wales, who were always ready for a fight.

But the Romans were not going to alter a winning formula. Another slaughter followed. Leaving his wife and children to potential slavery, Caradoc fled north, to the land of the Brigantes. But their queen, Cartimandua (ancient Briton was an equal-opportunities society) was not going to risk the anger of the Romans for this serial loser. She had him chained and sent to the Romans.

Testudo formation. (With kind permission of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto)

Caradoc and his family were sent to Rome, where he should have been strangled as part of Claudius’s triumph for conquering southern Britain. However, according to the historian Tacitus he made an impassioned speech in his own defence:

I had horses, men, arms, and wealth: what wonder if I was unwilling to lose them? If you wish to command everyone, does it really follow that everyone should accept your slavery? If I were now being handed over as one who had surrendered immediately, neither my fortune nor your glory would have achieved brilliance. It is also true that in my case any reprisal will be followed by oblivion. On the other hand, if you preserve me safe and sound, I shall be an eternal example of your clemency.

Claudius was so impressed that he pardoned Caradoc and allowed him to live a life of luxury in Rome for the rest of his days.

One tradition says that Caradoc converted to Christianity and returned to Britain to convert his people from their pagan ways, though this is probably a later, monkish, invention. Today Caradoc, the mighty war leader, is probably best remembered in the song The Court of King Caratacus, made popular by Rolf Harris in the 1960s.

THE ROMANS IN HEREFORDSHIRE

It has been generally thought that, at the time of the Roman invasion, Herefordshire was primeval forest. However, recent tree-pollen analysis suggests that this had been largely cleared by as early as 4,500 BC and that, at this time, there was already a much greater level of human settlement than had previously been surmised. The pre-Roman British culture was of a higher order of civilization than has often been credited.

Even after the defeat of Caradoc, this was still the Wild West to the Romans, as the Silures were still resisting their rule. As today having oil can be a curse rather than a blessing, the lead, gold, silver and copper known to be in Wales meant that the Romans were determined to suppress resistance at whatever cost. A war grave found at Sutton Walls near Marden, where skeletons show the marks of sharp-edged weapons, show how brutal this suppression could be.

After some thirty years of guerrilla warfare the Romans had achieved some form of peace, but were still wary of trouble. An important road, Watling Street, linked the large military bases of Caerleon and Chester, passing through Herefordshire. Along this road towns sprang up. Leintwardine (Bravonium) in the north seems to have principally been a military supply depot, whereas Kenchester (Magnis), the largest Roman settlement in the county, had a more civilian bias. Built near the large hillfort at Credenhill, perhaps it also served to encourage some of the local elite to come down from their draughty hillside to the warm baths of Roman life. (Though modern reconstructions have shown that Celtic round houses could be very cosy places.)

Reconstruction of British round hut, Clearwell, Gloucestershire. (David Phelps)

Weston-under-Penyard (Ariconium) was an industrial centre, especially for iron smelting, linked to the nearby Forest of Dean. As was usual with the Romans, they rewarded the chiefs who had accepted Roman rule and used them to administer the area. There are luxury villas at Wellington, Putley, Bishopstone, Walterstone and Whitchurch where these chiefs lived in a style to which they rapidly became accustomed.

For over 300 years a relative peace settled over the area. But, as empires must, the Roman empire fell into decadence and decay. Instead of looking for new conquests, the elite started fighting within themselves and control of the provinces was weakened. When governors of Britain started getting involved, taking the Legions away to Rome to try and make themselves Emperors, the Romano-British realised that it was time to take the law back into their own hands.

AD 460

ARTHUR

KING ARTHUR’S MOTHER was born in Herefordshire. Admittedly many historians doubt the existence of a real King Arthur but, if he did exist, Herefordshire, as the home of one branch of Welsh royal blood, has more claims than most as a potential site of his birth.

The first literary reference to Arthur is in the late sixth-century poem Y Gododdin, which refers to a valiant warrior ‘though he is no Arthur’. Other Welsh sources point to one particular war leader called Arthur who held back Saxon influence through his military victories.

At the end of Roman rule Britain split up into various warring kingdoms. Herefordshire was divided in two, with the ‘Welsh’ Kingdom of Ergyng to the west and the Magonsaete tribal area to the east, with the boundary roughly following the line of the River Wye. According to the legend, Peibio, King of Ergyng, attempted to execute his daughter because she was going to have an illegitimate child, but mother and baby miraculously survived both drowning and burning. Clearly the child was destined for great things. This child, Dyfrig (water baby) later renounced his kingship and devoted himself to the Church, where he was known as St Dubricius. Tradition has it that he was the uncle of Arthur and immensely wise. He was supposed to have crowned his nephew and has been linked to Merlin, the legendary counsellor who was responsible for Arthur’s rise to kingship.

Peibio also had a son called Cyfan, whose own son was called Gwrgant Mawr. One of Gwrgant’s daughters was called Ygerne (after whom the Eign Brook in Hereford is named, although this has now gone as part of Herefordshire Council’s flood alleviation scheme to protect their new shopping mall). She married Meuric ap Tewdric, whom the Tudors claimed as an ancestor. Meuric was given the honorific title Uther Pendragon, meaning fierce war leader. He, of course, was the father of Arthur.

Arthur grew into a mighty warrior who protected his people against the encroachments of the Saxons. Croft Ambrey in the north of the county has been claimed as one of his fortresses, although no post-Roman archaeology has been found there. The Doward, in the south of the county, is claimed to be the site of one of his great battles, where he defeated and killed King Vortigern. Certainly there is a place at the bottom of the hill still called the Slaughter.

There are other places that have been closely linked to Arthur’s story. It was a long-held belief in this area that Caradoc Court, near Ross, was the home of Caradoc-of-the-Strong Arm, one of Arthur’s knights. Old Welsh records suggest that Caradoc was the son of Gwrgant, Arthur’s uncle.

Visions of Arthur: the knights of the Round Table about to start the hunt for the Holy Grail. (LC-USZ62-133641)

A nineteenth-century portrayal of the fight between Arthur and Mordred.

Wormelow Tump, south of the city of Hereford, was the site, according to the seventh-century chronicler Nennius, of one of the ‘Marvels of Britain’. It was the mound to mark the burial site of Anir, Arthur’s son, killed by his own father for treason. If measured, the mound would never be the same length twice. It was lost as part of Herefordshire Council’s road-widening scheme in 1896.

West of Hereford is the village of Mordiford. Bruce Copplestone-Crow, in Herefordshire Place Names, describes its name as ‘unexplained’. Locals have no such problem, believing it means Mordred’s Ford, and that the green dragon that was emblazoned on the side of the church until 1811 was his banner. More mundane historians suggest that it was a wyvern, part of the coat of arms of St Guthlac’s Priory, the owners of the parish in the Middle Ages. However, Guthlac, a relatively obscure saint, was described as of Welsh royal blood. The original priory was based on the site of the present Castle Green in Hereford, and old Welsh manuscripts describe it as one of the earliest of Christian sites, set up in the fifth century, long before Guthlac’s time, when the land belonged to Geraint, Arthur’s cousin.

Naturally, as we are dealing with the Dark Ages, much of the above is supposition, based on later chronicles. However, it is intriguing to think that the legendary figure of King Arthur had close links to Herefordshire.

ANGLO-SAXON INVASION?

Since the Venomous Bede wrote his Ecclesiastical History of the English People back in the eighth century it has been accepted that, after the Romans left, hordes of Germanic tribes invaded from Denmark, Saxony and Jutland, massacred the native population or drove them to the west. As archaeological investigations have failed to find mass burials that would prove this point, this view has been tempered into one where the invading Anglo-Saxons conquered but lived alongside the Celts in an apartheid system.

However, latterly, historians have argued that such a view is much too simplistic. Francis Pryor, well known from his appearances on Time Team, has been particularly outspoken, believing that the ‘invasion’ was in fact a slow and largely peaceful process, an infusion of culture rather than wholesale genocide.

Yet we speak English and not Welsh, the latter language assumed to be close to that spoken by the native population at that time. This seems to have happened only in the ninth century when Wessex bureaucrats wanted standardisation, as bureaucrats always do. Therefore perhaps the Anglo-Saxon invasion was very similar to the Norman Conquest, with a small elite replacing the local aristocracy, while leaving the peasants, who would have to do all the work, largely untouched.

New DNA techniques do seem to show that there were substantially fewer Anglo-Saxon migrants than was originally expected. Stephen Oppenheimer, in his book Origins of the British, argues that, from DNA analysis, at least two thirds of English people have direct ancestors that have been on these islands since just after the last Ice Age. He argues that, as the ice retreated and the climate improved, the Celts left their refuge near the Pyrenees, some of them travelling along the shoreline until they reached western Britain. Another Germanic group, from their refuge near the Caucasus, travelled via Russia and Scandinavia across the then dry North Sea, until they arrived in eastern Britain. If so, the two groups might have met somewhere along the River Wye, so that the old fault line in the county, between English and Welsh, goes back not 1,500 years but 10,000.

AD 780

OFFA’S DYKE

THOUGH WE CALL