27 
and with great rapidity marched up to, and in a bloody battle 
defeated the army of the west Saxons, which was then besieging 
Montacute in the County of Somerset. In 1079 he appears a 
very active member of the great National Council held in Saint 
Paul’s Church, London. In 1087 he attended the funeral of 
William his most munificent patron. Soon after he and Bishop 
Odo, (ah! precious pair !) contrived to conjure up a rebellion in 
Normandy against William Rufus ; but by extreme activity 
William defeated the laudable designs of these peaceable prelates, 
and Geoffrey, with his friend Robert de Mowbray, fled over to 
England, and fortified the Castle of Bristol for the most honour- 
able purpose, as the Saxon Chronicle thus records; “ Bishop 
Godfrey and Robert, a disturber of the peace, went to Brigstowe, 
and committed spoils, and brought their booty into the Castle.” 
Radulphus de Diceto calls the Castle the Bishop’s Castle, “In 
suo castello Bristow”—but he was in this mistaken, Godfrey was 
warden only. However his looting and spoiling in the neigh- 
bourhood rendered even the Castle of Bristowe an unsafe place 
for his sacred person, so he fled thence privately back to Nor- 
mandy, where he ended his pastoral cares and temporal concerns 
in the year 1093.” 
“Tn consideration of this last, and indeed in remembrance of 
sundry other political freaks and military frolics, King William 
seized honest Geoffrey's Manor of Budicombe (Thrubwell?) and 
bestowed it in the year 1094, on Walter de Budicombe, whose son 
Robert sold it, A.D. 1111, to De Mohun Lord of Dunster in 
Somersetshire. In this family it remained till the year 1200, 
when it passed in portion with the daughter of William de Mohun 
to Sir Richard Percival, of Weston in Gordano, Somerset. Sir 
Richard though a gallant warrior, was, it seems, in his latter days 
a little monkish ; for we find he granted to the Cisterian Abbey of 
Thame in Oxfordshire “a plough land in the Manor of Budi- 
combe in pure and perpetual alms for the rebuilding a certain 
house there belonging to the Abbot and Convent.” Sir Richard 
‘ 
