Abbey Dore, Herefordshire : its building and restoration / by Edwin Sledmere ; with 27 ill., of which 20 are drawings from photographs, by Cuthbert Ernest Sledmere.

  • Sledmere, Edwin.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Abbey Dore, Herefordshire : its building and restoration / by Edwin Sledmere ; with 27 ill., of which 20 are drawings from photographs, by Cuthbert Ernest Sledmere. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    43/130 (page 19)
    Whatever value may be placed on these two records in favour of an older abbey, the consensus of evidence in the three following references to its founder certainly point to the later date as being in all probability the correct one :—(i) The abbey of Dour [was] founded in Kynge Stephen's Daies, by one Robertus Ewias, so cauUid bycause that he was Lord of parte of Ewis. The Fame goethe that King Harald had a Bastard namyd Harald, and of this Harold part of Ewis was named Ewis-Harold. This Bastard has issue Robert founder of Dour abbey.* (2) . . “ The former Lords, hence called Barons of Sudley, were of an ancient English race, deducing their original from Goda, the Daughter of King Ethelred, whose son Ralph (de Maigne) Earl of Hereford, was the father of Harold, Lord of Sudley. f (3) “ In Edward the Confessor’s Days was Ralfe Earl of Hereford, whose son Harold in the Time of William the Conqueror had two Sons; John Lord of Sudley, and Robert; which Robert residing at the Castle of Ewias in Herefordshire, took his Surname from that place : near to which he founded the Abbey of Dore.J Earl Ralph, grandfather of Robert the founder, was therefore nephew of Edward the Confessor, and grandson to Ethelred the Unready. He had earned his nickname of “ Ralph the Timid in the fight with Gruffydd, Prince of North Wales, when Hereford Cathedral was burned, and seven of the Canons slain. It seems pretty clear that Leland is in error in the pedigree given above. Camden and Dugdale agree in tracing the descent of Robert the founder of the abbey from Harold of Ewias, Lord of Sudeley, son of Ralph, Earl of Hereford, the son of Goda (or Godgifu), daughter of King Ethelred and sister of the Confessor, and Canon Bannister gives it thus in a Genealogical Table of the House of Ewias in The History of Ewyas Harold. The names of Robert Earl of Ferrers and Walter de Clifford are sometimes given as founders, the confusion no doubt arising from the custom of giving the title of Second, Third, Fourth, &c., founders, as a compliment to “ the greater sort of Benefactors. To the generosity of Robert Fitz-Harold, eldest son of Harold, Lord of Ewias, then, we owe the foundation of the Cistercian abbey of Dore, in which he was buried,