History of Herefordshire
The shire name first recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle may derive from "Here-ford", Old English for "army crossing", the location for the city of Hereford.
The shire as an administrative unit was developed from Burghal Hidage (c. 915–917),[citation needed] of Alfred the Great's son Edward the Elder (r. 899–924) and from the Shire-reeve courts of the Hundred.
The western and southern borders remained debatable ground ("Archenfield") until, with the incorporation of the Welsh Marches in 1535, considerable territory was annexed to Herefordshire.
Of the twelve modern[clarification needed] hundreds, only Greytree, Radlow, Stretford, Wolphy and Wormelow retained their original Domesday names.
were not set until 1750, by which period several Bishops' Peculiars[clarification needed] were reassessed for land valuation and redistribution.
[citation needed] A fiercely independent folk and a position on the border with Wales gave the county a reputation for a frontier mentality.
Many were hanged for hayrick burning, owing to the relatively low agricultural wage, during the Swing Riots and later[citation needed].
[citation needed] Herefordshire continued to be backward in industrial development: the canals and railways arrived later than elsewhere in England.
The photograph shown is of a plaque in Welsh on display in St Margaret's Church, near Newton, which was dismantled from the roof of the nave during restoration in 1902.
By 877 the Vikings were in the position of being able to establish one of their own leaders, Ceolwulf, as king.In 2015, two individuals (operating without landowner permission), using metal detectors, found a large hoard near Leominster consisting primarily of Saxon jewellery and silver ingots but also coins; the latter date to around 879 CE.
According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (915 CE, Worcester Manuscript, p. 99), the jarls leading the raids, Ohtor and Hroald, captured Cyfeiliog, also referred to as Cameleac or Cimeliauc, the Bishop of Llandaff.
In the period preceding the Conquest much disturbance was caused by the outrages of the Norman colony planted in this county by Edward the Confessor.
Before the outbreak of the civil war of the 17th century, complaints of illegal taxation were rife in Herefordshire, but a strong anti-Puritan feeling induced the county to favour the royalist cause.
Edward VI created Walter Devereux, a descendant of the de Bohun family, Viscount Hereford, in 1550, and his grandson, the famous earl of Essex, was born in this county.
[1] The Bishop held a number of Peculiarities in another jurisdiction: Dymock in Gloucestershire was named after a Queen's Champion from Lincolnshire who fought in the Welsh Wars for Edward I but the manor long had connections with the Talbots, manorial landowners and familial relations from the county, proven by recent archaeology.
[11] The manor was also occupied by the Roundheads and Scots during the Civil Wars, was on the railway line, and on the earlier canal from Hereford city.
Herefordshire was governed by a sheriff as early as the reign of Edward the Confessor, the shire court meeting at Hereford where later the assizes and quarter sessions were also held.
was passed declaring Hereford free from the jurisdiction of the Council of Wales, but the county was not finally relieved from the interference of the Marcher Lords until the reign of William III and Mary II.
At the time of Henry VIII the towns had become much impoverished, and Elizabeth, to encourage local industries, insisted on her subjects wearing English-made caps from the factory of Hereford.
