1066 & all that
de Pomerai & the Norman Conquest
Supposition is not proof- and all we have is supposition.
Ralph de Pomeroy, arrived in the war party of William, Duke of Normandy in 1066. Duke William was crowned King at the new Norman style cathedral at Westminster which Edward the Confessor had finished constructing in 1052. Then William the went home to Normandy.
However population of England, the Anglo Saxons, were not happy at being conquered & refused to pay homage to this foreign king. They refused to pay his taxes & their resistance to the Normans showed itself not in armed defiance, but in stubbornness.
Ralph de Pomeroy, having received his rewards for his service in the form of numerous manors, also seems to have returned home to Normandy, possibly as as part of William’s private army or bodyguard.
In the West Country the citizens of England were implacably hostile to the Normans. Some of the merchants wanted to negotiate a compromise deal & to turn Exeter into a city-state republic.
King William’s response to their demands was 'It is not my custom to take subjects on such conditions.' and returned to England in 1068 to lay siege to the city of Exeter.
William the Conqueror directed his Norman engineers or sappers, to dug tunnels under the walls of Exeters East Gate but still the city stubbornly resisted for almost 3 weeks. The tunnels actually contributed to the failure of the siege but even so Exeter did surrender despite the leader of the rebellion, being mother of the dead king Harold, the Lady Gytha, who escaped.
There were numerous skirmishes and rebellions all over the country and a further revolt in the west country. This one seems to be aimed at individual Normans, of which Ralph de la Pomerai was one. However the rebellion died when confronted with forces drawn from London & south east England but also because of dissent amongst the insurgents.
The “Anglo Saxon Chronicles” tell us that at midsummer in 1069 sixty four ships filled with Irish warriors led by Godwine & Edmund, the sons of the dead King Harold, arrived at the mouth of the Taw a place where the wife of William the Conqueror, Queen Matilida, owned settlements which must have made them key targets for this Irish army.
Eorl Brian- Count Brian of Brittany, came upon them unexpectedly, and with his considerable army , fought with them killing all the best men in the fleet; the rest fled to the ships and Harold's sons went back to Ireland .
The dead King Harold's young sons survived and are thought to have ended up in Denmark. Although Count Brian had won that battle he seems to have fallen out with King William because he lost his lands and left England soon after the battle. However it seems there is no confirmation of the legend so far.
Northam near Appledore & the sands of the Taw estuary seems to have been a favour target for attempted invasions resulting in many battles MORE HERE
BERRY POMEROY was chosen by Ranulph to be the Caput manor of his feudal barony
Close to Totnes in Devon it was one of eight feudal baronies in Devonshire .
Some 20 miles south the county capital of Exeter and 2 miles east of the wool town of Totnes and 14 miles by land from the important port of Dartmouth .
A Crown survey of 1292 recorded simply that Berry Pomeroy had a manorial hall with chambers and a grange or home farm. The site of the known manorial hall has been lost through the centuries but a licence to enclose the deer part was granted around that time -
1066 and all that ......
Ralph de la Pomeroy (d. pre-1100), also called Ranulph or Roger was lord of the manor of la Pommeraye, in Calvados in Normandy .
After the Norman invasion of England his support for William Duke of Normandy was reward with 58 manors and other holdings in Devon with 2 manors in Somerset, holding them as tenant -in-chief directly from the king ,who now owned everything that the Church did not own. William of Normandy, the Conqueror became king William I on Christmas Day 1066
The Pomeroy estate was substantial and wealthy. The Exon Domesday shows it had considerable livestock in the northern part of the county. Ralph de la Pomerai was one of the two commissioners appointed in Devon to convey the taxes collected by the Domesday survey and take them to the royal treasury at Winchester, which at that time was the centre for government.
Hastings Battle Roll
English Heritage.... What Happened after the Battle of Hastings
The Domesday Book of 1068 was complied to record every manor, lands, houses, people and livestock throughout the land for TAX purposes.
Slowly inevitably the English and Normans came together through the necessity of living side by side and also through marriage. By 1073, King William was beginning to think he had at last conquered England. It has taken many years to finally subdue the turbulent kingdom and it only happened through King William's ruthless determination. He and his representatives went from one end of the country to the other fighting any resistance, stamping on the natural resentment of the displaced Saxons. Once an area had been secured, the ordered a castle to be built and garrisoned thus keeping to the locals intimidated and submissive.
It puzzled me that Ralph did not build a castle at Berry Pomeroy when he first had the lands.
HOWEVER. There is a castle at Totnes 2 miles away, standing guard over that rich little town in Devon as well as controlling the way inland so that maybe the reason.
He did not need to.
English Heritage have listed part of the enclosure Deer Park Wall at Berry Pomeroy Castle -
- II* Field boundary walls, formerly deer park boundary walls. Pre 1292. Coursed limestone rubble dry masonry wall capped in part with limestone slabs. Surrounds an area of about 340 acres. About three quarters of its length still exists but where it passes through woodland it has been damaged by the roots. It rises to just over two metres in its more complete sections and up to about one metre thick.
References: Ordnance Survey Antiquity No SX 86 SW - 30. Transactions of the Devonshire Association (H M Whitley) 47, 1915, pp 285-293.
E P Shirley, English Deer Parks, 1867, page 92
