A Head for Poisoning

by Simon Beaufort

  Goodrich Castle stands on a rocky spur overlooking the River Wye in the county of Hereford and Worcester. Historical documents of around 1100 mention a castle on the site—called Godric’s castle—that was apparently built by a man called Godric Mappestone. Godric was mentioned in Domesday Book as the holder of a manor called Hulle (Howl) in Walecford (now Walford). It seems that this Godric Mappestone built a fortress to guard the ancient ford across the River Wye. By 1144, however, the Mappestones had lost Goodrich, and it passed into the hands of the Lord of Monmouth, and then the Crown.

  Goodrich Castle can still be visited today, and is in the care of English Heritage. It is a spectacular sight, with great buttressed towers standing over a rock-cut moat. No traces of Godric’s buildings remain, although it is likely that the outline of the later fortress followed the lines and boundaries established by him. Most buildings date from the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, although the most impressive is the mighty Norman keep, three storeys high and pierced with small round-headed windows.

  Meanwhile, one of the most powerful lords along the Welsh borders in the early twelfth century was Robert de Bellême. He was lord of several large stretches of countryside in Normandy, where he ruled tyrannically until he inherited lands from his brother in England in 1098. These included the earldom of Shrewsbury, the lordship of Montgomery, and a number of smaller estates. In 1101, the Duke of Normandy staged an invasion to grab the throne from King Henry, and the Earl of Shrewsbury was one of his most powerful supporters.

  The invasion was unsuccessful, but King Henry was not a man to allow such matters to go unavenged. By 1102, Henry’s spies had amassed so much evidence proving Shrewsbury’s treachery, that he was summoned to the king’s court to answer for his crimes. Knowing that he would be found guilty, Shrewsbury prepared for battle. The King himself took to the field, and Shrewsbury was finally captured and banished, losing all his English estates. Shrewsbury returned to Normandy, where he vented his spleen on his hapless subjects, committing atrocities that appalled even hardened medieval barons.

  Henry was still not satisfied, and set out to wrest Normandy from his brother. After a series of battles, Duke Robert was captured and condemned to spend the rest of his life in an English prison. He died twenty-eight years later in Cardiff Castle at the age of eighty. The slippery Shrewsbury escaped, but fell into Henry’s hands in 1112. He, too, was imprisoned, but no one knows when he died. Records show that he was still incarcerated at Wareham in 1130.

  Even by medieval standards, Shrewsbury was a monstrous figure. Perhaps the best description of him is given by the Oxford historian A. L. Poole: “The most powerful and the most dangerous of the Norman baronage, he was also the most repellent in character. In a society of ruffianly, bloodthirsty men, Robert de Bellême stands out as particularly atrocious; an evil, treacherous man with an insatiable ambition and a love of cruelty for cruelty’s sake; a medieval sadist, whose ingenious barbarities were proverbial among the people of that time.”