Talbot

The Talbots were a gentry family established on the Welsh march in Herefordshire and Gloucestershire since the twelfth century, when Henry II granted them lands there. They claimed kinship with the Welsh princes through Gwenllian, daughter of Rhys Mechyll of the House of Dinefwr, whose arms the family assumed.

Gilbert Talbot became the first Baron Talbot by writ in 1331. His son Richard, the second baron, married Elizabeth Comyn, heiress to estates including Goodrich Castle; as one of the disinherited lords he joined Edward Balliol's invasions of Scotland during the Second War of Scottish Independence.

The Talbots reached their greatest eminence in the fifteenth century, when John Talbot, a commander in the Hundred Years' War, was created Earl of Shrewsbury in 1442. The earls of Shrewsbury became the senior line of the family.