VOL. XX. (l) 
MISERDEN AND ITS OWNERS 
-15 
MISERDEN AND ITS OWNERS. 
BY 
ST. CLAIR BADDELEY, Pre SIDENT. 
With all its various beauty of forest-land, Sevem-land and 
up-land, it may be doubted whether even highly-endowed 
Gloucestershire can discover within her borders a wilder, bolder 
or more lovely demesne than this of beautiful Miserden, with its 
deep and magnificent combes of rolling beech-land, and its 
once castled mound, overlooked as they are by the much- 
altered houses of later period, and by the more ancient village 
church, 1 2 in which the ladies of the local Breton lords, known 
as the Musards, were wont to take their husbands at the altar, 
as is shown by, at least, one inquisition that survives. 3 Even 
the acquirement (as well as the evolution) of its present name 
is entirely out of ordinary rule, the place and Manor in the 
Red King’s day was simply known as Green-Hampstead, and 
it had then (1086) recently formed part of the vast estate of a 
Saxon Thane (probably known as (A.-S.) Earnsige, although 
written down by the Norman scribe as Ernesi), and most of 
whose estate had recently been passed over to Walter de Laci, 
a great Norman noble, one who had held high command in the 
Conqueror’s forces of invasion. 
This particular Manor (of 2,168 acres), however, became the 
reward not of De Laci, but of Hascoit ( i.e . Hascoed) Le 
Musarder, 3 i.e. the Muser, or dreamer (a soubriquet) ; and here, 
1 Thomas de Cobham, Bishop of Worcester, re-consecrated the Church in October, 1315, 
which should mean that it had been desecrated by some violence or other. 
2 I.P.M. John Musard, 1271. 
3 For this peculiar Norman trick of nick-naming cf. Oil de Larrun=Thief’s-eye : Vis-de-chat : 
Cat’s face. Hascoed, in Breton, signifies the wood-cutter. 
