Bernard De Neufmarché

Bernard de Neufmarché (), also Bernard of Newmarket or Bernard of Newmarch was the first of the Norman conquerors of Wales. He was a minor Norman lord who rose to power in the Welsh Marches before successfully undertaking the invasion and conquest of the Kingdom of Brycheiniog between 1088 and 1095. Out of the ruins of the Welsh kingdom he created the Anglo-Norman lordship of Brecon.

His toponymic byname comes from Neuf-Marché in Normandy. It was Latinised as ''de Novo Mercato'' (literally: "from the new market"), and has sometimes been Anglicised as "Newmarket" or "Newmarch".

Coming to England

Because Bernard's family had attachments to the monastery of Saint-Evroul-sur-Ouche, the monkish chronicler Orderic Vitalis of that foundation had special knowledge of him and his family, though this still does not reduce the general obscurity of his origins or his life when compared to the richer Marcher Lords, like the great Roger of Montgomery. Bernard was the son of the minor Norman baron Geoffrey de Neufmarché and Ada de Hugleville, and he was born at the castle of Le-Neuf-Marché-en-Lions on the frontier between Normandy and Beauvais.Nelson, 84. His ancestors on his mother's side had founded the town of Auffay on the Scie, while his paternal grandfather, Turquetil, had served the young William II of Normandy as a guardian and was killed in that capacity. On his mother's side he also descended from the dukes of Normandy.

The question of Bernard's participation in the Battle of Hastings and therefore in the Norman Invasion is subject to debate. While Bernard had close family connections to the port of Saint-Valery-sur-Somme from which William's invading fleet launched, Bernard himself was not the ruler of that city and need not have been in the fleet. He had later connections with Battle Abbey: he established a cell of that abbey in Brecon, but that may have been an analogous foundation intended to mark his conquest of Brycheiniog.Nelson, 85. Bernard's peculiar absence from the Domesday Book more or less damns the case for his presence at Hastings, for it is impossible that a noble participant in the victorious battle should not have received land to be recorded in Domesday if he was still living in 1087.

Rise to power

Bernard was finally rewarded by the king, then William II of Normandy, in 1086 or 1087. He received lands in Herefordshire and lands which had devolved to the crown with the deaths of Gilbert fitz Thorold and Alfred of Marlborough. Gilbert's lands were concentrated in Herefordshire and included the manors of Bach, Middlewood and Harewood in the Golden Valley and the castles of Dorstone, Snodhill and Urishay connecting Clifford Castle to Ewyas Harold, which belonged to Alfred's lordship. Among Bernard's acquisitions from Gilbert was the ''domus defensabilis'' of Eardisley. From Alfred he received Pembridge, Burghill and Brinsop. Of these Snodhill was not founded until the twelfth century and then became the caput