3 
In Norman times one John, Baron of Monmouth, appears to have been 
Lord of Birtsmorton, and those who have studied the architecture of the base- 
ment believe they can trace relics of the foundation of a Norman keep. There 
was a Brute, or de Brute, here in the days of Edward I. In his reign, too, the 
Birts or Brutes intermarried with the family of Ruyhalles, who took their name 
from Rhyalle, the hamlet in the parish of Upton-on-Severn. 
In the days of Henry IV. we are confronted with the two great historic 
names of Owen Glendower and Sir John Oldcastle. Tradition says that one of 
the great Welsh chieftain’s daughters married John Scudamore, of Kentchurch, 
in the County of Hereford. When on a visit to the late Colonel Scudamore, some 
years ago, I directed his attention to the fact that the armorial bearings of his 
ancient family ornamented one of the panels in the old room at Birtsmorton 
Court, when he showed me a very old painting on panel, which he told me tradi- 
tion had assigned as the portrait of Owen Glendower. Colonel Scudamore was 
acquainted with the tradition that Glendower was in the habit of disguising him- 
self in a shepherd’s dress, and going backwards and forwards to his daughter's 
and other friend’s houses, among which were Birtsmorton Court and the Old 
Grange, at Dymock. Another tradition is that he was buried at Monnington, in 
Herefordshire. The Transactions of the Woolhope Club for 1869 contain a 
notice of ‘‘The ancient Forest of Deerfold” and ‘‘The Lollards in Herefordshire,” 
by Dr. Bull, who shows how this great forest afforded a refuge to some of the ear- 
liest and most noted followers of Wycliffe, and among these we find the name of 
Walter Brut, a ‘‘layman and learned,” and who was probably one of the family 
from Birtsmorton. For ages tradition has fixed upon Birtsmorton Court as one 
of the hiding places of Sir John Oldcastle, and I have mentioned elsewhere (‘‘Old 
Stones,” new ed.) how the venerable Mrs. Webb, of Ledbury, now in her 103rd 
year, well remembers that she was frightened as a child when she was shown the 
hiding place of Sir John Oldcastle, the secret chamber in the panelled room. 
The Brutes seem to have intermarried with the family of the Oldcastles, as in 1420 
we find a Richard Oldcastle concerned in the presentation of the living with John 
de Brute. About this time we find that the Brutes of Morton held the manor of 
John of Gaunt, ‘‘ time-honoured Lancaster,” on the presentation of a rose. The 
Tudor rose, too, the heraldic emblem of the Dukes of Lancaster, appears on the 
old seats in the church. 
It is not easy to make out when the ancient Cornish family of Nanfan came 
to reside at Birtsmorton. There was a great Cornish esquire, John Nanfan, whose 
last will is dated in 1446, and whose effigy, as a man in armour, appears upon the 
south side of the old medieval altar tomb in Birtsmorton Church; but he was 
buried in Tewkesbury Abbey, and gave 40 marks for masses for the good of his 
soul. He was esquire ‘“‘ for the body with King Henry VI.” The brass tablet of 
this tomb is gone, and it is not possible now to say to whom it was erected ; but, 
as we find there the effigy of Richard Nanfan, who became Captain of Calais, pre- 
sented to the living in 1501, and was ‘‘ squire to Henry VII,” it is probable that 
the tomb was built to the memory of Sire John Nanfan, to whom Cardinal Wolsey 
was chaplain when he was but a “ boy bachelor,” and whose ancestors figure as 
