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inasmuch as it was given to the See of Hereford by a Saxon Edwn, who was 

 cured of the palsy by Ethelbert. In Norman times King Stephen granted the 

 charter of a market, and in the days of the Plantagenets St. Catherine and her 

 maid Mabel rode that weird ride from Wenlock, and heard the Ledbury bells ring 

 out a merry welcome to their future abode. Here, too, Bishop FfoUiott founded the 

 Hospital to St. Catherine, where aged men and women still frequent, although 

 the present race of horses do not gallop with their tracks reversed, or the Ledbury 

 bells still ring of their own accord. Much Marcle once belonged, through the 

 grant of Edward I., to the Mortimers, that family of Wigmore, the other side of 

 the county of Hereford, destined to become in one age the destroyers of their King, 

 and later on the founders of a Royal dynasty too. Strange, also, that it is related 

 that Edward II. passed through Ledbury in his hidings from his wife and 

 Mortimer, and that Edward IV. marched through Ledbury on his road to Malvern 

 and Worcester, with his victorious troops, after the Battle of JMortimer's Cross, 

 which led to the Crown of England. There are still some mouldering tombs in 

 the church of Great Marcle which tradition assigns to the graves of some of the 

 Mortimers, wliile their principal abode, Wigmore, is an utter ruin, a refuge only 

 for the owl and the bat. Dymock is famous as the birthplace of John Kyrle, 

 " the Man of Ross," and Mr. Wynniatt, of the Grange, possesses some very 

 remarkable deeds of the date of Henry IV, and Richard II. Henry IV granted 

 land in Newent to Fotheringay, in Northampton. This little town, which lies 

 below May hill, was the " New Inn," of Leland's time, that remarkable traveller 

 of the days of Henry VIII. It was a house opened for travellers and was 

 formerly surrounded by dense woods and forests, but there appears to have 

 been a priory founded there soon after the Norman Invasion. Only 100 years 

 ago the roads about Newent were impassable for wheeled vehicles as is recorded 

 in a letter of the Earl of Belloment, who, writing to a friend in London, 

 described the ride of his son, Lord Coote, and his bride from Newent to Moreton 

 Court on a horse and pillion, because the road through the woods and mud was 

 impracticable for wheels. A journey from Bitemorton to London in those days 

 was a feat to be written about and described as in these times would be a ride to 

 Khiva. 



