Ralph the Timid

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ralph the Timid or Raoul de Mantes (* around 1025/30; † December 21, 1057 ) was Earl of Hereford from 1052 as the successor to the exiled Sweyn Godwinson . He was the youngest son of Count Drogo of Amiens , Mantes , Pontoise and Vexin and the Goda, daughter of King Æthelred . Thus he was the nephew of King Edward the Confessor , who entrusted him with the county of Herefordshire .

Raoul surrounded himself with Norman followers , who immediately began to build castles, something that had previously not been seen in the English countryside. When Godwin of Wessex returned from exile in 1052, a war between the Normans and Anglo-Saxons could still be prevented, but many of Raoul's followers had to leave the country. King Edward intervened on Raoul's behalf, and Godwin made peace and died a short time later.

In 1055, Gruffydd ap Llywelyn , King of Gwynedd , and the exiled Earl Ælfgar attacked Raoul's county, and they managed to decisively defeat Raoul and his men in a sortie out of Hereford Castle on October 24, 1055. Gruffydd captured Hereford and destroyed the recently built castle. Raoul fell from grace and died two years later. Herefordshire was added to Harold Godwinson's Earldom of Wessex .

He received the nickname the Timid , the timid, not because of cowardice, but because he relied on heavily armed cavalry in his fights instead of trusting the traditional Anglo-Saxon fighting style.

With his wife named Gytha († after 1066) he had a son, Harold de Ewyas († after 1120), lord of Ewyas Harold Castle in Herefordshire.

literature

  • Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
  • Thomas Hynde (Ed.): The Domesday Book: England's History Then and Now .., 1995
  • Kelly DeVries, The Norwegian Invasion of England in 1066. Boydell Press, Management, pp. 108-114, ISBN 1-84383-027-2 .

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions him in 1052 as an Earl; the appointment will have been in 1051, after Sweyn's exile, or early in 1052.
  2. ^ DeVries, The Norwegian Invasion of England in 1066 , p. 140.
personal data
SURNAME Ralph the Timid
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Raoul de Mantes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Earl of Hereford (from 1052)
DATE OF BIRTH at 1025 or at 1030
DATE OF DEATH December 21, 1057