Goadby’s History Of Loughborough Chapter 2, Part 1

Edwin Goadby's detailed series on the history of Loughborough continues with Chapter 2 and the Normans.

THE HISTORY OF LOUGHBOROUGH, FROM THE TIME OF THE BRITONS TO THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

‘Loughborough Monitor’ 09 June 1864, pg 5

CHAPTER II.

LOUGHBOROUGH IN THE TIME OF THE NORMANS

Part I – Gradual Degeneration of Saxon up to the Conquest – The resistance of Eric, the Forester, an Ancestor of the Herricks of Beaumanor – His “house in Leicestershire” – Traditionary harangue at Copy Oak – His rebellion, reconciliation, and promotion – The Conqueror’s siege of Leicester – The Town and Manor of Loughborough are given by him to his nephew, Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester – Historical facts concerning this First Lord of the Manor.

FEW races that have settled amongst the people they have subjugated have long retained the virtues which gained them their victory. The very weaknesses which they despised in them as enemies they have imitated as soon as they have become friends. The Anglo-Saxons were not an exception to this pretty general fact. In five hundred years their character and institutions had grown, flourished, and declined. The almost perfect communism of the markmen which seems so beautiful at the distance of some thirteen centuries had passed by gradual stages of which we have but little notice, into anything but the faintest realization of the dreams of St. Simon or Fourier. The peasantry had sunk or been gradually forced into slavery, and their condition had become hampered by vexatious laws, customs, and irregularities. Individual prowess and position, aided by kingly favour and gifts, did their share of work in effecting the supremacy of the military over the civil class, but the degeneracy of the peasantry, from whatever cause brought about, must have been marked to have produce[d] so complete a prostration as we found at the time of the Norman Conquest.

How far this general decadence effected [sic] the rising little town of Lucteburh we do not know, but that it does appear to have affected it will be presently seen. There are, however, two facts which are interesting as bearing upon the subject – firstly, the resistance of Eric, and, secondly, the gallant heroism of the chief county town, Leicester.

Eric, the son of Alfrike, Earl of Mercia, surnamed Silvaticus, or the Forester – an epithet also applied by old chronicles to Robin Hood – collected an army to oppose the invading march of William the Norman. [William the Conqueror] We are not informed whence or how this army was raised, but are left to conjecture that the greater part must have been gathered from his lands in the north of Herefordshire, and the remainder gathered from different parts, Leicestershire amongst them, and composed of patriots of all grades and occupations.  One of his residences would appear to have been somewhere in Leicestershire, at present uncertain, although we think it probable that it may have been in the neighbourhood of Beaumanor. This we believe to be contrary to generally received historical testimony, as far as actual producible documents go, since the earliest historical evidence for the location of the Herricks in the country, of which Silvaticus was the ancestor, is given by Throsby [explain] as found in a grant of lands near Leicester, made to the family in the time of King John, but the family had unquestionably a residence here, whether regular or occasional matters little, some hundred years earlier, for we find it recorded of the very Eric in question, in the anecdotes of the Swift family, [1] “that when old age had incapacitated him from performing the duties of his office near the King’s person, he retired to his house in Leicestershire.” “Probably the residence of so brave a personage in the neighbourhood, if our conjecture be true, would not be without its effect on the inhabitants of Lucteburh, and we may safely conclude that some of them, with the hardier rangers of the Forest, would crowd to his standard and play their humble part in the noble but ineffectual struggle for their Fatherland.

A sight more interesting than the gathering of this little band at Copy Oak, the old trysting tree of the freemen, and the harangue of their chieftain, does not often fall to the lot of the local historian to describe, but unfortunately we are left in ignorance of all details, and a little glimmer of tradition is all that remains to mark the event. We do not even know where his forces encountered those of the invader, although he is said to have been vanquished by him. He was not, however, thoroughly subdued, and during William’s absence in Normandy he again appeared in arms, and aided by two Welsh princes, Blethyn and Rywalhon, he revenged an affront he had received from Earl Fitzcrope and the garrison of Hereford by ravaging the country to the very gates of that city, and securing an immense amount of spoil. He also laid siege to the town of Shrewsbury. On his reconciliation, which soon after took place, he received many marks of the royal favour, and continued in service near his person until old age drew him from the artificial restraints of court to the more congenial retirement of his beautiful home.

The bravery and resistance of the Saxons did not expire even after the defeat of Hastings. England, in spite of its decay, was yet by no means a conquered country, and the numerous rebellions that continued to break out were only subdued by the most rigorous measures. In his third inland campaign, William the Norman stormed the fortifications of Leicester, and then divided the houses and bodies of its inhabitants among his insatiable followers. One house mentioned in Domesday Book as belonging to Loughborough, and undoubtedly some freehold possession of a native of the town, together with ten that may be similarly designated, belonging to Barrow, and six to Kegworth, were given to his nephew, Hugh Lupus of Avranches, to whom he also gave the town and manor of Loughborough, and several other possessions in Leicestershire.

This Hugh Lupus was in many respects one of the most important personages that figured in the reigns of the two Williams, and was remarkable alike for his riches, his ferocity, and his obesity. He was the son of Richard, Earl of Orange, and the Countess Emma, a half-sister of the Conqueror’s. As a reward for his numerous military services he was presented, in 1070, with the earldom of Chester, which he was to hold of the King as freely by his sword as he himself held England by his crown (ita libere ad gladium, sicut ipse totam tenebat Anglium ad coronam.)  He had numerous lands and towns besides in no less that twenty different counties. For the better management of his affairs, and by virtue of his power and position, he created under him four Barons, to whom he gave separate possessions and numerous privileges. His cousin Nigel he made Baron of Halton, Sir Piers Malbank, Baron of Malbank, Sir Eustace Mawpace, Baron of Mawpace, and Sir Warren Vernon, Baron of Shipbrooke. The numerous lands he held and the various persons recognising him as their lord, made him the ruler of quite an imperium in imperio.

Although the Earl of Chester was engaged in several wars on behalf of his uncle and Rufus, in none was the savage brutality of his character so manifest as in his various attempts to subdue the brave people of Wales. With rude weapons and undisciplined forces, but with the most indomitable courage, they swept back and scattered the armies sent to overpower them. Forts and outposts were vainly erected upon their boundaries. Secure in their mountain citadels, they looked with scorn upon these puny devices, and whenever the alarm of war resounded, they threw a glance at their white-robed monarch with his brow in the clouds, and rushed upon the foe with all the impetuosity of the Tyrolese and the obstinacy of the defenders of La Vendee. After the repeated failures of the Royal armies, their subjugation was left in the hands of the Earl of Chester and Salop, and the incursions upon Welsh territory were as much a part of their yearly divertisement as partridge shooting and fox-hunting are with their modern representatives. Whether by violence or treachery we know not, but at length possession was obtained of the island of Anglesey, the refuge of the Cymri whenever hard beset, and they committed the greatest atrocities, cutting off their limbs and mutilating their bodies in a manner too horrible to relate. Even the clergy did not escape their fury. Brompton [2] records the case of an aged presbyter named Renredan, who was dragged from his church, one of his eyes gouged out, his tongue torn from its roots, and his body most inhumanely maimed. In spite of all these cruelties, and notwithstanding that their last King Rees was slain, the Welsh were only temporarily subdued, and continued to rebel until the time of the Plantagenets.

In these expeditions of the Earl of Chester fully justified the propriety of his agnomen, Lupus or the Wolf, whilst the corpularity of his person caused him to be taunted by the Welsh as Hugh Vras, or the Fat.  He built the Abbey of Chester, and sent for the venerable Anselm from Normandy to arrange its affairs and comfort him in his last sickness; “adding,” says Holinshed, [3] “that if he hasted not the sooner he would be too late, whereof he would after repent him.” He died in 1102, and was buried in the church of St Werburgh, converted by him into an Abbey. The following curious epitaph, taken from an old M.S., [manuscript] and probably placed over him about the time of the dissolution of monasteries, we quote entire, because it gives the day and the date of his death, about which opinions are divided:

“Although my Corps it lies in grave,

And that my flesh consumed be,

My Picture here now that you have,

An Earle some time of the Cittye,

Hugh Lupe by name,

Sonne to the Duke of Brittayne,

Of Chivalrye them being Flower,

And Sister’s Son to William Conqueror.

To the Honour of God I did edifye

The Foundations of the Monastery;

The ninth year of this my Foundation

God changed my life to His Heavenly Mansion,

In the year of Our Lord them being so

A thousand one hundred and two,

I changed this life verily

The XVIII daie of July.”

Such was the first Lord of the Manor of Loughborough.

END OF CHAPTER 2 PT 1

____________________________________

NOTES

[1] I believe this is a reference to the family of Jonathan Swift, the author of ‘Gulliver’s Travels’

[2] I have been unable to identify Brompton.

[3] Ralph Holinshed (1525-1582) was responsible for writing what is commonly known as ‘Holinshed’s Chronicles’, the full title of which is ‘The Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande’.

____________________________________

Transcribed and presented here with the kind permission of the British Newspaper Archive. https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

____________________________________

Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

_______________________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Dyer, Lynne (2024). Goadby’s History Of Loughborough, Chapter 2, Part 1. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2024/06/goadbys-history-of-loughborough-chapter.html [Accessed 2 June 2024]

Take down policy:

I post no pictures that are not my own, unless I have express permission so to do. All text is my own, and not copied from any other information sources, printed or electronic, unless identified and credited as such. If you find I have posted something in contravention of these statements, or if there are photographs of you which you would prefer not to be here, please contact me at the address listed on the About Me page, and I will remove these.

External Links:

By including links to external sources I am not endorsing the websites, the authors, nor the information contained therein, and will not check back to update out-of-date links. Using these links to access external information is entirely the responsibility of the reader of the blog.

Blog archive and tags:

If you are viewing this blog in mobile format, you will not be able to easily access the blog archive, or the clickable links to various topics. These can be accessed if you scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'View Web Version'. Alternatively, there is also a complete list of posts, which when clicked will take you to the page you are interested in.

Searching the blog:

You can search the blog using the dedicated search box that appears near the top of the blog when viewed in the web version. Alternatively, you can search using your usual search engine (e.g. Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo etc.) by following this example:

site: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/ “Radmoor House”

NOTE – the words you’re actually looking for must be in “” and the first of these must be preceded by a space

Thank you for reading this blog.

Lynne