Ralph the Timid

Ralph the Timid or Raoul de Mantes († 1057 ) was from 1052 the Earl of Hereford as the successor of the banished Sweyn Godwinson. He was the youngest son of Drogo, Count of Amiens, Mantes, and Pontoise Vexin and Goda, daughter of King Æthelred. Thus he was the nephew of King Edward the Confessor, who entrusted him the county of Herefordshire. Raoul / Ralph himself was married Gytha, about whom nothing further is known.

Raoul surrounded himself with Norman followers, who thus immediately began to build castles, which did not exist yet in the English countryside. As Godwin of Wessex in 1052 returned from exile, a war between the Normans and Anglo-Saxons was still prevented, but had many of Raoul's followers left the country. Edward grabbed Raoul's favor, and Godwin made ​​peace and died a short time later.

In 1055 Gruffydd ap Llywelyn attacked, King of Gwynedd, and banished Earl Ælfgar Raoul's County, and they managed to beat Raoul and his men decisively in case of failure of Hereford Castle on October 24, 1055. Gruffydd conquered Hereford and destroyed a newly built castle. Raoul fell into disgrace and died two years later. Herefordshire was Harold Godwinsons Earldom of Wessex slammed.

The nickname the Timid, the Scary, he did not get because of cowardice, but because he sat for his fights on heavily armed cavalry, instead of trusting the traditional Anglo-Saxon way of fighting.