Courtesy Prof. M.Bower
With thanks to Bruce Coplestone-Crow, freelance historian and castles expert.
Clifford Castle was built by William fitzOsbern, earl in Herefordshire, on waste ground one Bruning, a former sheriff of Herefordshire, had held TRE (DB, f.183). This must have been soon after William was given the earldom by the Conqueror early in 1067 and certainly before he was killed in battle in Flanders in February 1071. William undoubtedly intended it to control traffic to and from Wales in this part of the valley of the river Wye. After the forfeiture of Earl Roger, his son, for fermenting rebellion, it was acquired by Ralph de Tosny, brother-in-law of fitzOsbern. The servicium debitum of the barony given to him by the Conqueror at this point was probably fifty knight’s fees (see below).
At Domesday it was said that the castle was within the kingdom of England but not subject to any hundred or customary due, that Ralph de Tosny had land for three ploughs but had only one working plough, that there was a borough with 16 burgesses (probably in the outer ward of the castle) and that Gilbert fitzThorold the sheriff farmed these from Ralph for £3 annually. Also, there were four subtenants with arable land sufficient for 23 ploughs to plough. These subtenants were Gilbert fitzThorold the Sheriff (12 ploughlands), Drogo fitzPons (5 ploughlands), Herbert d’Aigneaux (aka Herbert of Ashperton; 2 ploughlands) and Roger de Lacy (4 ploughlands, probably at Cusop). However, they only had nine ploughs between them and the whole of what they had was worth £8/5/- (DB,f.183)
Eventually a small castlery was established on the lands plus the lands Middlewood (Newton), Hardwick, Harewood and The Bage that Gilbert fitzThorold had nearby. This probably occurred after Gilbert lost his lands for rebellion in 1096. In the 12th century an attempt was made to bring Dorstone within the castlery although this was never accepted by the crown. A castlery was a well-defined district within which the whole arrangement of tenancies were primarily designed for maintenance of the castle. Gerald of Wales (Thorpe ed.,225) mentions the castle in his Description of Wales written in 1193/4.
Either Drogo fitzPons or Richard, one of his five sons, became the steward of the Tosnys at Clifford. This was probably after Gilbert fitzThorold, sheriff and farmer of Clifford, lost his lands for rebellion in 1096. Pons, the progenitor of the family on this side of the Channel, came to England at the Conquest, probably in the military household of William fitzOsbern, seneschal of Normandy and the Conqueror’s closest friend and adviser. In 1212, Walter II of Clifford, his descendant, claimed to hold Clifford and his barony in England a conquestu Anglie (Fees,99). Pons was a man of Le Mans and so a Frenchman rather than a Norman. Richard, his son and eventual successor, is generally known as Richard fitzPons, but in a gift to Brecon Priory in 1102-7 he is called Richard Cenommanensis or Richard ‘of Le Mans’ (Brecon Cartulary,70). His brother Walter was also known as Walter Cenommanensis. Pons himself makes one retrospective appearance in DB. This was in connection with the manor of Eaton Hastings, Berkshire, that another son Walter held in 1086. Here it is said that he gave a manor of three hides to Westminster Abbey, though this land never appears in Westminster’s hands after this date (DB,f.60; VCHBerkshire,iv,528-9; Mason, Westminster Abbey).
At the time of Domesday Drogo fitzPons held from the king a modest barony with lands in Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Wiltshire. His Herefs lands were worth a mere £9/13/4d annually, Gloucs £15, Worcs 16/- and Wiltshire £9, the total of £34/9/4d (plus whatever value his lands at Clifford had) placing him near the bottom of Corbett’s lowest class of estimated Domesday incomes (class E) consisting of incomes in the range £10-£100 (Camb. Med. Hist.,v,510-511). He also held lands from Ralph I de Tosny, the bishops of Hereford and Worcester, and Westminster Abbey. He was living in 1095 (Round, ‘The Worcester Relief’,309) but dead by 1100.
Either Drogo or his brother and successor Richard (most likely the latter) assisted in Bernard de Neufmarché’s conquest of Brecknock (Brycheiniog) in 1093. He received in return lands at Bronllys on which he built the motte-and-bailey castle underlying the present stone castle. As lord of Bronllys he endowed the priory at Brecon founded by Bernard with lands in his new estate, as noted above. Llandovery Castle in Cantref Bychan belonged to Richard in 1116 (Brut y Tywysogion, 40), and it is likely that King Henry gave the castle to him when he divided up the lands of Hywel ap Goronwy in 1106.
Bernard’s heir was his son-in-law Miles of Gloucester, who married his heiress in 1121. He was made earl of Hereford 1141and died in a hunting accident two years later. Richard married a sister of Miles’s, who gave him the lordship of Cantref Selyf in Brecknock in extension of his holding at Bronllys. Miles was a prominent supporter of the Empress Maud, daughter of King Henry I, in the civil war of King Stephen’s reign (1135-54; ‘the Anarchy’) and as his brother-in-law so was Richard. Miles was followed by his son Earl Roger and then by each of Roger’s three brothers (none of whom were earls of Hereford) until Mahel, the last of them, was killed when a stone from Bronllys Castle fell on his head in an accidental burning of the castle in 1165 (Gerald, Itinerary,91).
Richard was followed by his son Simon, founder of Clifford Priory, who died 1137/9 and Simon by his brother Walter (Walter I) of Clifford. Walter is described as seneschal of Ralph II de Tosny at Clifford in 1144 (Hart, Historia et Cartularium Monasterii…de Gloucestriae, no.276). In that year the abbey of Gloucester gave Walter the manor of Glasbury that Bernard de Neufmarché had given it in exchange for his manor of Eastleach Martin in Gloucs (Hart, Historia…,nos.246-7). This was a strategic move in the civil war, prompted by Earl Roger of Hereford, to whom Walter was both seneschal and a close ally. He married a sister of Roger I de Tosny, overlord of Clifford, and received with her (possibly) the chief lordship of the Tosny manors at Charlton in Berks and Lower Swell in Gloucs. By 1172-4 he was feeling prosperous enough to want to found a daughter-house of Dore Abbey on his lands in Cantref Selyf (Episcopal Acts,no.D179). The abbey began building a priory at Trawscoed, but it was suppressed in the reign of King John (Gerald of Wales: Opera,iv,206).
When Henry II demanded a list of knights in their barons from all his tenants in chief in 1166 (a scutage demand five years before had not produced enough money for him), no list was returned by Walter because Clifford was reckoned to be in the March of Wales and so beyond the reach of the king’s writ. He acquired Tenbury Wells in Worcs (valued at £3 annually in 1086) from the lord of Richard’s Castle by 1176 and which he held from that lord for the service of two knight’s fees (Haughmond Cartulary, App C,i; VCHWorcs,iv,362-71; RBE,605). King Henry II gave him Corfham in Shrops (valued at £6 annually in 1086) in about Michaelmas 1177 for the service of one knight’s fee and a payment of £30 annually (Eyton,v,146; RBE,277; Sanders, Feudal Military Service,10-11). It was given to Walter by King Henry in acknowledgment of the latter’s use of his daughter Joan (‘Fair Rosamund’) as a mistress for several years before her death c1175: he gave it ‘for love of Rosamund, his daughter’ (Rotuli Hundredorum,ii,83-4; Fees,146). A measure of its value to Walter can be gained from the fact that after he died his younger son Richard proffered 300 marks (£200) for its inheritance (PR 2 Richard I,126)
Walter lost the castle and lordship of Llandovery to the Welsh in or after 1137, but was regained by him and King Henry in 1158. Henry then spent over £305 on the castle over the next four years, before it was lost to the Welsh again. Only £60 of this was for building work (the rest was on garrisoning and maintenance) however and Paul Davis has suggested that this for building a stone shell-keep on its motte (A Company of Forts,97-8). [Note: the stone building at Bronllys that burned down in 1165 was presumably Walter’s work]
Walter died in 1190. Sometime in the last four years of his life William III de Broase, lord of Brecknock in succession to Miles of Gloucester and his sons, gave and confirmed to Walter the ‘old’ tenement (at Bronllys) and the ‘new’ tenement (in Cantref Selyf) and gave him in addition the castle at Glasbury, for the whole of which confirmation and grant Walter gave Braose forty silver marks. Walter was to hold Bronllys and Cantref for the service of five knights at Brecon Castle and Glasbury for rendering annually a soar-hawk (Rowlands, ‘Braose and the Lordship of Brecon’,133).
Walter II, his son, married Agnes daughter and heir of Roger de Condé, Roger’s mother having been a sister of the mighty Earl Ranulf II of Chester (died 1153) a leading participant in the fourteen-year civil war of King Stephen’s reign. With her he acquired twenty-seven manors in seventeen locations in the counties of Lincoln,
Nottingham, Rutland, Oxford and Kent and centred on Thorngate Castle, in Lincoln. They had a Domesday value at just under £100 per annum. In 1166 Roger her father had held these manors from the bishop of Lincoln for being seneschal to the bishop and for the service of eight knight’s fees (RBE,375). When Roger died these manors and their revenues came into Walter’s hands. Roger is last heard of in 1193 and was dead in the following year when Walter is found in possession of his Kent lands (Foster,’Condet’,291; Rotuli Curiae Regis,i,79,94-5,179).
Walter II was sheriff of Herefs in 1198/9 (Pipe Roll 1 John,214) and then again in 1205/8 (PRs 8 John,65 & 10 John, 190). In 1208 William III de Braose, his overlord at Bronllys and Glasbury, was ruined by King John and Walter seems to have been implicated in William’s subsequent violent depredations in Herefordshire and the Welsh border. For this reason, probably, his position as sheriff in that year was overseen by two of John’s men, Gerard d’Atheis and Richard the Burgess. Nevertheless, he must have profited greatly from these terms as sheriff, as at Michaelmas 1208 he proffered the massive sum of 1,000 marks for having the king’s good will (needed because of his implication in Braose’s deeds?) and for not having his ‘creative accounting’ investigated (Pipe Roll 10 John, 191). A measure of just how hugely profitable his office had been can be judged by the fact that he managed to pay off 900 marks only a year later. The remainder of the sum was remitted to him by the king and another £18/10/0d was allowed against an overpayment he had made elsewhere. In 1212 Walter said he held his castle and barony of Clifford ‘from the conquest of England’ for the service of 1½ knight’s fees (Book of Fees, 99). He died in 1221.
[Note: Walter II would have been in a good financial position from 1194 onwards to either finish what his father had begun, or start building, at Clifford (Hugh Clifford, House of Clifford,27 says it was ‘at least partially rebuilt in stone’ by him). Is the known date of the gatehouse doors at Chepstow relevant? His father had steadily increased the family’s financial and political standing during the fifty years or so of his tenure of the barony. The composite manor of Corfham was a particularly valuable acquisition (Eyton, Antiquities of Shropshire,v,148-65), whatever he felt about the king’s use of his daughter as a concubine (something he was wont to do with several aristocratic daughters). However, the Tosny claim to overlordship of their whole barony must have been a continuing source of irritation.]
Walter III of Clifford had the keeping of the Chandos barony of Snodhill and Nether Stowy in 1230 (PR 14 Henry III, 222). When Robert III de Chandos of Snodhill died in 1220, Roger II his heir was a minor, and remained so until 1231, so it is possible that Walter had had its keeping for a number of years. He would have gained financially from this. He took a half-hearted part in the revolt of Earl Richard of Pembroke against King Henry III and his Poitevin favourites in 1233-4. His men held Clifford castle against the king briefly in August and September 1233. Walter returned to the king’s peace on 16 September and his lands and castles were returned to him, except for the castle and manor of Clifford, which the sheriff retained in his hands. Shortly afterwards they were given to Henry de Turbeville (one of King Henry’s very able captains) and on 10 November Henry was ordered not to take timber from the prior of Clifford’s wood next to Hay nor from Walter of Clifford’s wood there for any works or operations at the castle and manor without their permission. Seven days later Henry was commanded to let Walter of Clifford have all townships pertaining to the manor of Clifford and their demesnes and his woods and his knights (that is, the lordship of Clifford and its knight service), but to keep the manor of Clifford, with its castle and demesnes, in the king’s hands until Walter proved his faithfulness (Close Rolls 1231-4, 267,336,345). Finally, on 17 March 1234 the king granted restitution to Walter of the castle of Clifford that he had delivered to the king for the time being (Patent Rolls 1232-47,4).
By June 1233 Walter was in debt to Ursell, the Jew of Hereford, in the sum of 1,000 marks (£666). This could be because he had building works going on at either Clifford, Bronllys or Llandovery, or all three, although it could equally be the result of the rampant monetary inflation that took place in England in the years around 1200 (note: knights had been paid 8d daily in the reign of Henry II but this had risen threefold to 2/- in the time of his son John: Painter, History of the English Feudal Barony, 172) and because the military services his father had performed for the crown in John’s reign and those that Walter himself performed for Henry III. The loan had been taken out before the death of Hamo, Ursell’s father, in 1231. In December Walter persuaded the king to postpone until the following Easter a debt of 60 marks owed to two Jews of Canterbury, and had the whole amount cancelled three days later for good services. He had his 1,000-mark debt to Ursell cancelled by the king in May1234. In the following year Walter arranged for the dean of St Martin’s Church in London to pay off a debt of £155-13s-4d in return for a lease on his manor of Great Milton, Oxon, for thirteen years (Hillaby, ‘Hereford Gold’, pt 1,412-3 & pt 2, 248-250). In 1237 he received from the king ten oaks in a royal forest in Northamptonshire (ChR1234-7,503), probably for building work at one of the manors his father had acquired with his Condé wife.
Sometime in the first half of the 13th century (possibly before 1236) one Adam or Alan the Irishman (Yberniensi) was constable of the castle (Catalogue of Ancient Deeds,ii,no.C2024 & vi,no.C5583). One of the signatories to the latter deed was Alan the Crossbowman.
In 1249-50 came the celebrated incident involving Walter and a royal messenger that Matthew of Paris relates with a great deal of relish. Its slightly ludicrous overtones detract nothing from the seriousness of the point at issue.
…Walter of Clifford, who was one not of the least importance among the barons of the Welsh borders, either in power, wealth or liberties, was accused before the king of having, in contempt of the king, violently and improperly treating his messenger, who bore his royal letters, and of having forced him to eat the same, with the seal. Walter, being proved guilty of this before the king, did not dare to stand trial, but threw himself on the king’s mercy, whereby he, although with difficulty, escaped death or disinheritance, but lost his liberty and all the money he possessed or could procure, amounting to about a thousand marks, and was then allowed to return home without being imprisoned, on bail of some especial securities (English History,ii,324-5).
The incident probably relates to a dispute between Walter and William de Sollers, his military subtenant at Dorstone, regarding pasturage at Broadmeadow in Clifford. Apparently, William’s men had imprisoned some of Walter’s and Walter demanded that Sollers attend his court at Clifford to answer for his actions. Unlike Clifford, which Domesday Book says was not in England and not therefore subject to the king’s writ, Dorstone was, so Walter’s summoning of William to Clifford to answer for what was, in effect, a ‘plea of the crown’ was strictly against the royal interests. The crown would have wanted the plea transferred to its county court of Hereford and it may well have been the messenger carrying the king’s writ to this effect that Walter abused. His actions were undoubtedly governed by the fact that he (and his predecessors) regarded Dorstone as being within their lordship of Clifford and so none of the king’s business. In fact, Walter could well have had in mind at the time the view expressed by William III de Braose, his father’s and grandfather’s overlord at Cantref Selyf, in 1199, that ‘neither king, nor sheriff, nor justice had any right to enter into his liberty [of Bredwardine]’ (Rotuli Curiae Regis,i,426). This was the crux of the matter, not being subject to the royal writ had considerable financial advantages and he did not want to lose these, but having thrown himself on the king’s mercy Walter had little choice but to take the punishment. This included a recognition that both Clifford and Dorstone were subject to the English king’s writ (i.e. the loss of his ‘liberty’) and a ruinous demand for 1,000 marks for the Henry’s benevolence towards him.
[Note: having used up all his ready money, plus any more he could beg of borrow, Walter is unlikely to have been in a position to build at any of his properties for a good few years. The round tower on the motte at Bronllys is usually attributed to him.]
Walter III died in 1263, leaving his daughter Maud as his heir. She married, firstly, William III Longespee, earl of Salisbury, who died in 1257, and, secondly, John Giffard of Elston in Wilts. John held Clifford and its barony by right of his wife until she died in 1282-5 and then by ‘courtesy of England’ until his own death in 1299. At his death John held of the king in chief by knight-service the castle, borough, lands and rents of Clifford, including a ferry across the Wye and the hamlets of Middlewood and Broadward (Inq post mortem,iii,no.544). The heir for Clifford was Margaret, countess of Lincoln, daughter of Maud by her first husband.
Feudal services in the barony of Clifford
Evidence from several sources suggests that at the close of the 12th century there were just under eight knight’s fees on lands held by Drogo fitzPons at Domesday. Of these about 4½ were owed on lands in Herefs, 1 in Gloucs, ½ in Worcs and 1¾ in Wilts. In 1230 Walter III was quit of scutage in Herefs on nine knight’s fees for his barony (PR 14 Henry III,222). Additionally, there were about 5¼ fees on Tosny lands in Herefs, Worcs and Berks that also owed their service at Clifford.
The kind of service demanded for each fee seems to have varied. In 1157-62 Arnold of Powys, subtenant of Tosny at Westhide, gave his son the manor of Westhide, Herefs, which he held ‘for the service of one knight when it is owed at Clifford’ (Stenton, First Century, 281-2). In AD1200 it was agreed that the junior branch of the Clifford family of Frampton, Gloucs, would do ‘the service of one knight’s fee every year as the ward of the castle of Clifford for forty days’ (Fletcher, ‘Shropshire Feet of Fines’,318). In 1248 however Walter III quitclaimed ‘the guard at his castle of Clifford which his ancestors claimed for the manor of Frampton’ (Salter, Feet of Fines for Oxon, no.232). In 1242/3 four of the Tosny Worcs manors were held for doing guard at Clifford Castle, ‘although it was not known if they also owed scutage’; the manor of Alderton in Wiltshire did service of ward at the castle of Clifford for forty days; and it was said of Hampton Mapnors that it was held from Walter of Clifford for the service of half a knight’s fee at Clifford ‘but it is not known whether Walter holds this honour in chief’ (Fees,740,798,961). In the mid-13th century the Tosny manor of Chadnor in Herefs was held by serjeanty tenure of ‘doing service with a man for 15 days with bow and arrow at the bridge of Clifford’ (Inquisitions Post Mortem,v,no.615 or ii,no.1071). In 1256 it was said that a carucate of land each at Bridge Sollers and Longworth in Herefs ‘answer for half a knight’s fee when scutage runs’ (Inquisitions Post Mortem,i,no.356). In 1399 these two carucates of land were ‘held of the castle of Clifford for the service of ½ knight’s fee (Ipm,xvii,no.1213)..
The lord of Clifford himself owed the crown the service of one knight’s fee for Corfham, the bishop of Hereford the service of two knight’s fees for Ullingswick and Bridge Sollers, Westminster Abbey one-fifth fee at Longdon in Worcs, the bishop of Worcester one knight’s fee at Aston Blank, and the bishop of Lincoln eight knight’s fees of the Condé inheritance.
The arrival of a proper figure of knight’s fees in the Clifford barony is made almost impossible by the claim on it made by the descendants of Ralph I de Tosny of Flamstead, who insisted that the barony was held from them and not directly from the crown. In 1265 the inquisition post mortem on Roger III of Tosny it was reported that ‘whereas 52 knight’s fees are held of the honour of Colwyn Castle [in Elfael] pertaining to the said castle, the jury says they do not know who holds them’ (Ipm,i,no.588). Elfael had been taken from the Welsh by Ralph I de Tosny before his death in 1102 and both this castle and Painscastle (‘Castle Matilda’) appear as the caput of the Tosny barony, rather than Clifford or Flamstead, in the 13th century. Tracing these fees has been a perplexing task, either because authorities differ in saying in what service was owed or because the evidence no longer exists. However, available records account for about 30 knight’s fees (including those owing service at Clifford) lying across fourteen counties in the south of England from Cornwall in the west to Norfolk in the east. The balance may have been made up by household and mercenary knights. In his of honour of Conches in Normandy Ralph III de Tosny had the service of fifty knights in 1172 (RBE,642) and it may be that the Conqueror laid this servicium debitum on the Flamstead/Clifford barony when he gave it to Ralph I. Fifty knight’s fees is also the service demanded by the Conqueror for the Lacy barony of Weobley, and as Ralph I de Tosny was at least as important to King William as Walter I de Lacy (died 1085), this could have been the case. Whether Ralph I de Tosny made his supposed 50-fee servicium debitum dependant on Flamstead or Clifford is unknown, but I think it is likely that it was Clifford in the first place and when it became clear to the Tosnys during the course of the 12th century that the Clifford family were never going to acknowledge their supremacy or allow them peaceful possession of Clifford castle, they made one or other of the Elfael castles their headquarters in the March when they were not in Welsh hands. After the French king conquered Normandy in 1204, the Tosnys were excluded from their honour of Conches and were obliged to fall back on their English and Welsh lands.
The baron’s knights within his barony were an important resource. A baron sweeping into London when called upon to attend the royal court with fifty knights in his train was clearly someone to me reckoned with. Each of these knights owed him service in his field-army and in guarding his castle (by the 13th centre these two duties became alternatives) and also, as just hinted at, accompanying him on a journey to give him honour wherever he went. A baron such as Ralph I de Tosny with fifty knights in his barony (as we have supposed) was one of the greatest and most powerful in the realm according to the calculations of J.H.Round (Feudal England,253-6). His rear-tenants by knight service were also a source of money. When scutage was charged by the crown the cost of this would be levied by the baron on the knights within his barony, these men being expected to maintain themselves as knights with all the costs that involved a task that got more and more expensive as time went on. They would be expected to ransom him if he was captured in war and also to loan him money when necessary. Just as with the king and his tenants in chief, an ‘aid’ or tax would be demanded from them on the marriage of the baron’s male heir and also on the marriage of his eldest daughter. The knight was also expected to attend the baron’s honourial court at regular intervals.
At Clifford, what records there are suggest that the service of one knight’s fee was for 40 days every year at the knight’s own cost and if he was required any longer he would be paid daily by his lord at the going rate. A knight holding lands on which ½ a knight’s fee due would do half that number of days at his own cost before he was paid, and so on down to the smallest fraction of a fee (one-fortieth fee would serve only one day, etc.) but eventually such services were commuted to the payment of scutage with which the baron could buy a substitute. At first, the knight would perform his military service whenever demanded, but over time this came to be only once a year or, in the March of Wales, whenever there was war between the Welsh and the king of England. In the course of time it was realised that the fully-equipped knight with his expensive-to-maintain horse was more of a liability than an asset when it came to manning a castle under siege. For this reason, it became common for the owner to allow his military subtenants to send him two non-feudal mounted serjeants that were equipped at a lower level than the knight (and would not be expected to stand on his honour when ordered about) for every full fee they owed, or one serjeant if they owed the service of ½ fee, and so on. However, even these men eventually became substituted at many castles by the even more appropriate foot soldier with a lance or bowman.
The kind of relationship a baron could be expected to have with each of his knights is uniquely exemplified in a charter Robert, baron of Ewyas Harold, gave to Godfrey de Scudamore. In this charter Robert gave the manor of Upton Scudamore, Wilts, to Godfrey and his heirs –
‘for his homage and service and for a white war-horse at the vill of Upton Scudamore and is pertinences, to have and to hold freely quietly, well and in peace, and fully, all woods, plains, meadows pastures, ways, paths, waters, mills, with the keeping of hunting dogs for hares, foxes, wild cats, badgers and wolves throughout the county of Wiltshire so that he will see his hunting more pleasing, with all the liberties and free customs with which I, Robert, am vested and well seised, doing thereafter by service of one knight’s fee at the castle of Ewyas [Harold], to keep guard at the castle beginning at the Purification of the Blessed Mary [i.e. Candlemas, 2nd February] lasting until the Invention of the Holy Cross in May [3rd May, a total of 91 days] at his own cost except that the lord will properly provide sufficient firewood, straw and water during the said term with his hunting in the whole of our demesne during the aforesaid guard, and if he does not do guard then he will owe half a mark [6/8d] by the year and do the royal service that pertains’ (Skidmore, Scudamores of Upton Scudamore,88 no.2).
Robert founded Dore Abbey in 1147 and this deed probably passed soon afterwards. It was witnessed by Patrick, earl of Wiltshire c1143-68. It is possible that this was favourable treatment for an important member of the castle’s garrison, possibly the constable. This is a very, very important document in the history of castle-guard in England and deserves to be much more widely known.
Like Clifford, Ewyas Harold Castle was situated on the frontier with Wales and events in that country must have affected them both. When not threatening the security of a border castle, persistent in-fighting between the Welsh kings and princes throughout the 12th century led to a general perception by border barons (even if reality did not merit it) that their border with Wales was insecure. When going through a list of requirements for any man wishing to conquer Wales, Gerald of Wales (c1146-1223) said that one of these was the provision of castles all along the border with Wales, castles that were kept safely with their garrison alert to the slightest change in the politics of the lands to their west (Desc & Itin., 267-70). I’m sure the Clifford family were well-aware of this requirement, especially so at Clifford where their castle controlled communication to and from Wales via this part of the Wye