Page:VCH Herefordshire 1.djvu/446

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A HISTORY OF HEREFORDSHIRE Dorset, and Wilts, with the right of issuing commissions of array in the same counties. His grant included the castles of Ewyas Lacy, Clifford, and Wigmore in Herefordshire, and the office of seneschal and receiver of the manors of Winforton, Newton, Pembridge, Orleton, Netherwood, and Wolferlow, in the same county."^ As has already been stated, Buckingham had inherited a moiety of the Bohun estates through his great-grandmother, Anne, daughter and heiress of Thomas, duke of Gloucester. The other half had come to Henry IV by his marriage with Mary Bohun, but since the death of Henry VI the duke of Buckingham considered himself entitled to the whole inheritance. On the accession of Richard III he was rewarded for his support by a promise under the king's sign-manual to restore to him in the next Parliament the rest of the Bohun estates,^" which however only included one Herefordshire manor, ' YokehuU,' the rest of the estates in that county having already been made over to him by previous grants. On I 5 July he was acknowledged lord high constable of England, the hereditary ofHce of the Bohuns, and patents were also sealed confirming his appoint- ments as Justiciar and Chamberlain of North and South Wales, and as constable of all royal castles in Shropshire and Herefordshire, but with the right to issue commissions of array within Wales only.^'° Buckingham, however, perhaps resented the delay in granting him actual ownership of the full Bohun inheritance. He may also have considered that his descent from the Beauforts through his mother entitled him to the throne itself.*"" Suspicions as to the fate of Edward IV's son also may independently have instigated his revolt. In any case Buckingham, who had retired to Brecon early in August, was proclaimed traitor at Lincoln by Richard III on 15 October."'^ On the i8th he took up arms and, in spite of local opposition from Sir Thomas Vaughan of Tretower, advanced at the head of a Welsh force ^^' to Weobley in Herefordshire, the home of Walter Devereux, first Lord Ferrers of Chartley, who afterwards fell at Bosworth. But while Vaughan was in arms in his rear his own kinsman, Humphrey Stafford, broke down the bridges in front of him, and a flood in the Severn hindered him from crossing that great river. He marched southwards through the Forest of Dean towards Gloucester, but his army melted away as he went. Finding himself deserted he was compelled to fly into Shropshire, where he was betrayed to Richard by his former servant, Ralph Banaster. He was executed at Salisbury on All Souls' Day. His son and heir, Edward, whom he had left at Weobley with Sir Richard Delabeare, was conveyed to Hereford by Dame Elizabeth Delabeare and there concealed until danger was over.^** The accession of Henry VII, who passed through Leominster in his march from Milford Haven to Bosworth, was peaceably accepted in Here- fordshire, the only mark of disturbance being that on 28 December, 1485, the sheriff and three other gentlemen. Sir Richard Croft, Sir Richard "' Grants during the reign of Edw. V (Camd. Soc. 1854), 5-1 1, 34.

  • " Printed at length in Dugdale's Baronage, i, 168—9 '■> '^^- Harl. MS. 433, fol. 107.
  • '° Rot. Pat. I Ric. Ill, pt. i, Nos. 29, 30, 43, cited in Gairdner's Life ofRic. Ill (1898), 105.

'*' See the reasons for Buckingham's revolt discussed in Gairdner's Ric. Ill, 105—8. = Davies, York Rec. 179-80. "'^ Rot. Pari, vi, 245 ; Rerum Anglicanum Scriptores (ed. Fulman, 1684), i, 568 ; Hall's Chron. (1809), 393-5- ^^ C. J. Robinson, Castles of Herefordshire, App. iv ; Blakeway, Hist, of Shrewsbury, , 241 ; Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. iv, pt. i, 328. 376