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invaders, was shot in the eye by an arrow, from the bow of Magnus himself, according to the Saga, and fell dead from his horse into the sea. The Norse poet tells us that the brave Hugh was so entirely enveloped in armour,1 that nothing could be seen of his person but one eye. "King Magnus let fly an arrow at him, as also did an Heligoland man who stood beside the king. They both shot at once. The one shaft struck the nose guard of the helmet,2 and bent it on one side, and the other arrow hit the earl in the eye and passed through his head, and this arrow was found to be the king's." Giraldus Cambrensis gives a similar account, with the addition of a few particulars. "Pirates from the Orkneys," he says, "had come into the island's sound in long ships, and the earl, hearing that they were near the shore, ventured too rashly into the sea on a strong horse to encounter them. Then the commander of the fleet, whose name was Magnus, and who was standing on the prow of his ship, shot an arrow at him, and although the earl was in armour of iron which entirely protected his person from head to foot except his eyes, the arrow pierced his right eye, and penetrating the brain, he fell dead into the sea. The victor seeing him fall, is said to have shouted from his lofty station in the Danish language, 'Leit loupe!' which in English means 'let him depart.'" Thus Giraldus; but it is believed that the words used, “Leit loupe," in modern Danish-Norwegian, "Lade liebe," signified "let him leap," and were used derisively on seeing the earl spring up and fall suddenly from his horse. It may, perhaps, be a slight relief to the dryness of my narrative, to describe the sort of armour which Earl Hugh wore on this fatal occasion, and explain to you how he was protected by it all but the eyes. The Bayeux tapestry and other contemporaneous works of pictorial art present us with hosts of examples of the defensive armour of the Anglo-Normans, which consisted of a hauberk or coat of mail, formed of flat rings sown upon leather or cloth, with a cowl or hood to it, over which was worn a conical helmet, with a nasal or nose-guard, to which in some instances we see that part of the hood or of the collar of the hauberk which covered the chin hooked up, so that the face is entirely concealed with the exception of the eyes, and of course in profile but one eye would be visible. There is an engraving in the History of Shrewsbury of an impression of the seal of this earl, and although it is much dilapidated, the form of the figure on horseback is sufficiently defined to enable us to compare it with examples of the same period. The extravagantly long tunic worn in the reigns of Rufus and Henry I under the hauberk is distinctly visible. The conical helmet with its nasal is unfortunately obliterated, but the long Norman shield has upon it the ordinary ornamental clamp or strengthening, in the shape of what is now called by heralds an escarboucle, showing that as late as 1098 no heraldic lion was borne by the earls of Shrewsbury.

1

"The Normans and English," says Ordericus, "searched a long time for the body of Allbrynjathur is the word used by the writer. "Nefbiorg hialmsins."

Hugh, and did not recover it until the ebbing of the tide left the strand dry. Seventeen days after his death, they brought it to Shrewsbury, and buried it in the abbey there with deep mourning. He was the only one of Mabel's sons who was courteous and amiable and having conducted himself with great moderation during the four years he held the family honours and domains, to which he succeeded on the death of his father Roger, he fell about the close of the month of July."

Earl Hugh appears to have died unmarried, or at any rate without issue, for on his decease, his elder brother, Robert de Belesme, who had previously succeeded to the Norman fiefs of his father, presented himself to King William II, and offered him £3000 for his brother Hugh's earldoms of Arundel and Shrewsbury. He also laid claim to the lands of Blythe in right of his cousin, Roger de Busli or Butlei, and obtained a grant of them from the king for a large sum of money. Possessed of enormous wealth, he still thirsted for more, and running a short career of cruelty and rapacity, forfeited all his honours and estates in England by rebellion against Henry I, who, after taking his castles of Arundel, Bythe, and Bridgenorth, laid siege to him in Shrewsbury, advancing on the town by Wenlock Edge, called by Ordericus the Evil Edge, or the Bad Street; not improperly so, if we may trust his description of it, for he tells us that for a thousand paces it was full of holes, the surface rough with large stones, and so narrow, that two men on horseback could scarcely pass each other. It was overshadowed on each side by a thick wood, in which bowmen were placed in ambush to harass the troops on their march, but the king, having more than sixty thousand infantry in the expedition, gave orders that they should clear a broad track with their axes, so that a road might be formed for his own passage, and a public highway for ever after. Earl Robert, in despair at the pass to which his evil ways in every sense of the word had brought him, after consulting with his friends, came out to meet the king, and confessing his treason, laid the keys of Shrewsbury at his feet. Henry permitted him to retire unmolested with his horses and arms, and Robert crossed over to Normandy boiling with rage, which he vented on that unfortunate province, in which he had no less than thirty-four strong castles. On the 4th of November, 1112-13, he was arrested at Bonnaville-sur-Tocque, on new charges of treason and contumacy, and taken first to Cherbourg, and then to Wareham, co. Norfolk, where he ended his days in prison, according to some authorities, starving himself to death. "Christian history," says Ordericus, "does not exhibit his equal in wickedness."

Robert de Belesme, last Earl of Arundel and Shrewsbury of the family of Montgomery, married Agnes, only daughter and heiress of Guy, Count of Ponthieu, by whom he had, according to some authorities, William the second, called Talvas, Count of Ponthieu and Alençon; but Milles asserts that he died without issue, though he gives him for a second wife a daughter of Robert Fitzhamon, who must have been his own niece if she

were the child of Sybil de Montgomery, wife of Robert Fitzhamon. I have no belief in this second marriage, which is unsupported by any other authority.

Of Robert's brothers, Arnulph de Montgomery and Roger of Poitou, who took part with him in his rebellion, the lives were romantic, their ends rather obscure. Arnulph married Lafracoth, daughter of Morrough, or Munchardus, King of Leinster,1 in whose right he raised pretensions to the kingdom of Leinster in 1103. She was subsequently carried off from him by her father, and married to one of her cousins.

Nearly twenty years afterwards, in his old age, we are told that, "being reconciled, at least outwardly, with King Henry First, Arnulph married a second time, and on the morrow of his nuptials, fell asleep after a banquet, and, shortly expiring, left the guests to listen to funeral dirges instead of an epithalamium."2

Roger of Poitou, or the Poitevin, disgusted with the conduct of his brother Robert, withdrew from his support, and retired to the castle of Charroux, which he possessed in right of his wife, the Countess Almodis, where he lived to an advanced age, engaged in constant hostilities with Hugh, second Comte de Lusignan, surnamed "the Devil," who disputed with him the county of La Marche. "He left," says Ordericus, "brave sons who were his heirs." To the eldest, Albert III, he bequeathed the war, who in turn left it to his son Albert IV.

With Robert de Belesme, ended the short line of Norman Counts Palatine of Salopshire, for such was undoubtedly their dignity; and I have only to add a few words respecting the effigies and arms which have been attributed to them. Milles, in his Catalogue of Honour, says that "Roger, first Earl of Shrewsbury, was buried in a chapel dedicated to our Lady, upon whose sepulchre (as I have heard) lay an image of stone, cross-legged, and on his shield his armes of azure with a lyon rampant of gold with a border," and that "Hugh, his son, was buried in the monastery which his father founded, and the like monument laid over him, with cross leggs, as was made for his father." In 1623, during an heraldic visitation of this county, an effigy, supposed to be that of Earl Roger, from the place of its discovery, was dug up, and is still preserved in the abbey church. It was engraved for Messrs. Owen and Blakeway's History of Shrewsbury (vol. i, p. 45), and it is therein properly suggested, that, if it had indeed been sculptured to represent that personage, it must have been executed many years after his death, as the armour is of the time of King John, the close of the twelfth, instead of the eleventh century. In addition I must observe that Milles tells us that the effigies of Roger, Earl of Shrewsbury, and of his son Hugh, were both cross-legged. Now, although the figure at the abbey is much mutilated and the feet gone altogether, it is still perfectly clear from the position of the legs that they were not crossed, and therefore if Milles' informant was "Ord. Vit. Book xi, c. viii,

1 1 Dr. Powell.

to be relied on, the effigy discovered in 1623 is not that which commemorated Roger de Montgomery. Also if the effigies were cross-legged, that fact would be fatal to their being contemporary memorials, and if we add to that, the existence of a shield painted azure, a lyon rampant or, within a bordure," there can be no doubt that the period of their workmanship must have been as late as the thirteenth century, and therefore the one now in the abbey would be earlier in date though not sufficiently early to be coeval. For the arms attributed to the Montgomeries there is no authority whatever. Robert de Belesme, the last Earl of Shrewsbury of that race, died before the introduction of hereditary coat armour. The seal of his brother, Hugh Earl of Shrewsbury, exhibits, as I have already mentioned, the common device or ornament of an escarboucle. If the effigies mentioned by Milles displayed on their shields “azure, a lyon or, within a border," that bearing was most probably invented for them at the period of their fabrication, which could not have been earlier than the reign of Henry III, when we find William Longespee the husband of Ela, Countess of Salisbury, who was a lineal descendant from Robert Earl of Shrewsbury, bearing in right of his wife, "azure, six lions rampant or. How much have we lost by the destruction, mutilation, transposition, and removal of these sepulchral memorials of the mighty dead. How few that have been preserved have escaped being tampered with. The identification of any one of the nameless knights and ladies to be found in almost every parish church in England is a real benefaction to the historian and genealogist, although the poet may only regard them as

"Remnants of things that have passed away,

Fragments of stone reared by creatures of clay."

THE PRINCES OF

UPPER

POWYS.

BY THE

HON. AND REV. GEORGE THOMAS ORLANDO BRIDGEMAN, M.A.

THE

HE history of the Welsh Princes, though they have never wanted bards or chroniclers to recount their martial deeds, is too often but a tissue of family feuds and acts of mutual recrimination and plunder. The fatal law of gafel, under which each of the sons claimed a share of his father's inheritance, by dividing their interests, so reduced their strength as to render them at length a prey to their common enemy, the Normans. But their history is by no means wanting in deeds of valour or individual gallantry; and the protracted resistance which they offered to the repeated aggressions of their powerful neighbours, is a sufficient proof of their courage and martial spirit. They fell at length a prey rather to their own internal dissensions than to the force of the English arms.

In the time of Roderic the Great, anno 850, the whole of Wales was united under one rule; but at his death, anno 877, it was divided between his sons into three principalities, best known as North Wales, South Wales, and Powys, over each of which the Princes of Gwyneth, or North Wales, claimed a sort of supremacy.

The principality of Powys, or the country above the Wye, which fell to Mervyn, the third son, comprehended Montgomeryshire, parts of Shropshire, and Merionethshire, and parts of the present counties of Brecknock, Denbigh, and Radnor.

This principality was held, in 1064, by Blethin ap Convyn ap Gwerystan, known as the founder of the third royal tribe of Wales, who also assumed the sovereignty of North and South Wales, to the exclusion of their lawful princes, and thus again united the dominions of his maternal ancestor, Roderic.

His title to Powys was derived in female succession from his great grandmother Augharad, who was the granddaughter and representative of Mervyn ap Rodri Mawr.

At Blethin's death, anno 1073, the kingdoms of North and South Wales respectively reverted, after a short interval, to the rightful heirs; and Powys was divided, according to the gavelling system so fatal to the independence of Wales, between the sons of Blethin; but the greater portion of it was eventually reunited in Meredith, his eldest son. Meredith ap Blethin, Prince of Powys, died in 1129,1 and his dominions were, for

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