well the boundaries of the manors, lands, and tithings handed over to their care, and doubtless “the rose by any other name would smell as sweet ;” and to carry this thought a little further, we may perhaps feel surprised when we meet with such minute grants as a tithe of bread and grist-toll; at the same time we may be comfortably assured, the monks knew how to make the collection easy and correct. Bernard gave also his church of Talgarth, and Langois, together with a chapel he had there. In England he gave four churches, with all their lands and tithes : Patingham, in Staffordshire; Bodenham, Burchell, and the tithe of Bruneshope, in Herefordshire; and the church of Hardington in Somerset. Agnes, his wife, gave the single manor of Berington. His followers were equally liberal, as follows: Picardus gave three carucates of land, and a tenth of his crops and animals in Wales. Ricardus Cenomannicus, a carcucate of land. Walter de Cropus, his tithe of Lansefred, (Llansaintfraed,) and in England the church of Clibery, (Cleobury ?) and whatsoever belongs to it. Ülgerius, all the tithe due to him in Wales. Walter de Linehall, Roger de Baskeville, William son of Giroldus, Robert de Eurois, a burgess each. Richard son of Ralph, the lands belonging to Firmin and Ralph Cornutus. The priory, with this rich endowment, was charged with the annual payment of twenty shillings to the original foundation at Battle, whence also came Walter, a particular friend and brother monk of Roger, by whom the original building was in all probability erected, and the endowment deeds drawn, and who was created the first prior. Bernard de Novo Mercatu and Agnes his wife had a daughter, Sybil; she became heiress of Brecknock in a singular way. Her brother, their son, Mael, discovered that his mother intrigued with a certain baron, and being himself, as the old chronicle in the Cottonian MS. says, a noble knight, he assaulted the lover, as he left his mother, fought, and grievously wounded him; at which his mother was vehemently enraged. After the death of her lord she went to the court of Henry the First, and in the presence of the king and all his nobles, openly swore, that that Mael was not the son of Bernard de Newmarch, but of another knight whom she had loved before she married him. Whereupon King Henry, nothing loath to strengthen his interest with a powerful Norman family, disinherited Mael, and bestowed the lordship of Brecknock, together with the hand of Sybil, upon Milo, son of Walter, the constable of Gloucester and Hereford, whom King Henry created Earl of Hereford. They had five sons, Roger, Henry, Walter, Mael, and William, successively Earls of Hereford, who died all without issue. Of these, Roger and Mael were munificent patrons of the priory, the former heaping lands and wealth upon it in five deeds, with a most bountiful hand, which spared neither his larder nor his buttery, as we shall presently see; in fact, all the brothers and their followers, as appears from Mael's charter, were liberal in their benefactions, but we have only Roger's five and Mael's single charter remaining to us. Besides these five sons, Milo and Sybil had three daughters, Margery, Berta and Lucy, among whom, after the death of their brothers, the possessions of their father were divided. Margery married the third Lord Humphry de Bohun, grandson of the first Humphry, with the long beard; their son Humphry de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, in right of his wife, and Constable of England, gave a charter to St. John's, Brecon. Berta, the second daughter, married William Breos, who with her received as dowry the lordship of Brecknock; he also endowed St. John's with a charter, which is extant. Lucy, the third daughter, married the Lord Herbert, to whom she conveyed as her portion the Forest of Dean, and other lands in England. Her son Reginald, and her grandson Peter, were both benefactors of the priory, as will appear from their charters. The descendants, therefore, of Bernard Newmarch, married into the great families of the Earls of Hereford, the Bohuns, and the Herberts, and enlarged the original foundations of the priory. Roger Earl of Hereford, in his first charter, gives permission to the prior and convent to hold a court throughout their lordships, with full jurisdiction, and all the privileges which they ought to possess, in consideration of the dignity of their mother church; he gave also the whole land of St. Paul's at Mara (Llangorse); the right of fishing in Llangorse three days a week, and every day in Advent and in Lent. This privilege of fishing in the mere was also shared by Llanthony Priory. He gave also tithes of his pullets, calves, lambs, cheese, wool, flax, and of everything titheable in all his forests throughout the honour of Brecon, and the whole tithe of all his town of Brecon, and the tenth of everything expended in his demesnes, whether he were himself present or absent, and , the tenth of his larder at the Hay. We imagine these tithes were either compounded for, or rented to individuals upon the spot; otherwise the consumption of so many good things, especially the tithe of the produce of the larders, must have taxed the honest monks' power of digestion, assisted, though they might have been, by a host of hungry, ejected, and lack-land Welshmen. He gave also tithe of all kine given him by the Welsh; a tenth of his booty in war; and commonage through all Brecon. The “vast city” called Caer, by the side of the great road which leads to Brecon, the same as Caerbannau, mentioned in Bernard's charter, is also conceded, with a definition of the boundaries of its lordship. The second charter, by the same Roger Earl of Hereford, seems to have been drawn to make more explicit the grants in the first, to remove doubts, and to provide against negligence and fraud. For instance, instead of the general terms “ everything expended,” we have “ bread and drink” specified as to be tithed, in the consumption of the castles of Brecon and Hay, and other demesnes. The difficulty too seems to have occurred, а. which we had anticipated in the collection of the tithe upon things edible; for, to remedy the peculation and carelessness of the servants, in the place of such difficult tithes, he gives the priory the tithes of all his corn (in sheaf), to be taken at the doors of his grange at the castles of Brecknock, Talgarth, and the Hay; he also decimates vegetables the second time, after the first tithing shall have been discharged, which was due to certain other churches; and as though his ingenuity were taxed to provide a sufficient substitute for the tithe upon the dinners and suppers, eaten by himself and his retainers, throughout the whole lordship, he loads all manors and lands, which may hereafter come into his possession, with , the same burden, wherever they may be; and he added moreover the tithes of toll paid upon goods conveyed from his English to his Welsh lordships; the tithes also of all his pleas, tolls, gifts, gains, revenues, accruing from Brecon, and of all goods and chattels he might acquire in Wales. The third charter by the same Roger makes mention of “the vast city" Carneys, with the boundaries of its lordship; but this deed was specially made to put the mill of the parish of Brecon in the hands of the monks, with an exclusive right of grinding, the miller's toll, and all privileges belonging to it. He gives also the land of Osmund de Travelia, and the bordering land, which belonged to Richard Gulafre, and reached as far as Weunitersin; also, all the land called Toni, and that which belonged to Walkeline Vis de Lu, from Pentenavel to Castle Weinard; the churches also of Talgarth, Llangors, Hay, Saint-Egion, Llangelen and Kethedi, in Wales. The charter is summed up with a recital of other concessions before made. The worthy monks never lost sight of their advantages, but took care to impress upon the records any remarkable grant which might have been thrown into their lot, upon every opportunity, in order that the frequent iteration might guard the right. In the fourth charter the lands in the third are particularly defined; but it seems to have been framed for the purARCH. CAMB., NEW SERIES, VOL. V. E pose of embracing forty acres which Stephen de Bruin had given; free pasture for their animals in all Roger's forests, with the tithes of pigs of his pannage ; at the close the monks take care that the court, granted them before, should be again mentioned, with its ample jurisdiction; they doubtless cherished that power as the apple of their eye, and made all the world cognizant of its existence. The fifth charter confirms in perpetual alms, and defines the land which Osmund de Traueleia and his wife gave, that is to say, the whole land of Traueleia beyond the fountain, a burgage in Brecknock, and an acre of land outside the barrier. Mahel, Earl of Hereford, confirms all that his grandfather and his retainers, all that his father and his brothers, Roger the earl, and Walter the constable, and Henry, and their retainers, had granted; he mentions that upon the dedication of the Castle Chapel, his father Milo had given two shillings for a light in the chapel, and subsistence for the chaplain and his assistant, and the school of Brecon, which properly belongs to the mother church. And moreover three shillings from the ferry, to be paid annually on the Feast of St. John the Baptist, to buy a light for the church; five shillings altogether, and this for the sake of Godfrey the Red (Coco), whom his brother Henry had made a monk, after having honourably served his ancestors up to that time. William de Breos professes, his singular love to the Church of St. John, the Apostle and Evangelist, at Brecon, a church dear to him, he writes in the charter, beyond all others, and a saint in whom he has greater confidence than in any other being, God and St. Mary alone excepted. Wherever he may die, either in England or in Wales, he gives his body to the Church of St. John, and confirms all precedent charters in the largest sense possible; at the same time he bestows the important privilege upon all persons connected with the Church of St. John, as well burgesses as others, of exemption from all county and hundred ďues, from all pleas and actions (ut sint quieti et liberi de shiris et hundredis et placidis |