HISTORY.
Ludlow is apparently a purely Norman fortress. Its earthworks, such as they are, or were, have nothing in common, either in position or character, with the hill forts of British origin, so common in that district; neither do they at all resemble the later and English works attributed to Æthelflæd and her countrymen in the ninth or tenth centuries, and of which Wigmore, Richard’s castle, and Shrewsbury are adjacent types. In plan, indeed, Ludlow is not unlike those works by which headlands and promontories on the seashore were frequently defended, it is supposed, by the Scandinavian sea kings, and of which the entrenchment at Flamborough Head is the finest example on record; but these are seldom, if ever, found far inland, nor is there anything in the two concentric segments of ditches which constitute, or did formerly constitute, the earthworks of Ludlow, inconsistent with the notion that they are Norman works.
There is no mention of Ludlow in Domesday; but that record gives three places in the district bearing the name of Lude, of which one, belonging then to Osberne Fitz Richard, is demonstrated by Mr. Eyton to be the later Ludlow. The termination necessary for its distinction was derived from a large “low” or tumulus, probably sepulchral, and which stood until 1190 on what afterwards became the burial-ground of the parish church. “Lude” or “lud” is thought by the same author to mean a ford, as, by a common pleonasm, in the adjacent “Ludford.” The two other Ludes were distinguished by the names of their lords, and known as Lude-Muchgros and Lude-Sancy.
Mr. Eyton has further shown, almost to demonstration, that Fitz Richard’s tenant in Lude was the much more considerable Roger de Lacy, and that when he decided here to build a castle, he obtained the lordship from Fitz Richard, and founded the castle within ten years after the survey, or about 1086–1096. Roger was a good type of a Marcher lord. In 1088 he was in rebellion against William Rufus, on behalf of Courthose, and again in 1095, when he took part in the Mowbray rising, was exiled, and so died.
Rufus allowed his estates to pass to his next brother, Hugh, who, however, died childless between 1108–1121, when the estates fell to the Crown by escheat. Henry I. granted Ludlow to Pagan Fitz John, who also held Ewias Lacy, and who was slain by the Welsh in 1136, leaving no male issue. Stephen seems to have seized his lands, and to have placed as castellan in Ludlow a certain Sir Joyce or Gotso de Dinan, evidently a Breton knight. Shortly afterwards, Joyce was in rebellion, for in April 1139, Stephen, accompanied by Prince Henry of Scotland, laid siege to the castle, and constructed against it two “counter-forts.” It was at this siege that Stephen rescued Prince Henry, by his personal strength, from the grasp of a grappling-iron, thrown over him as they walked rather too near to the walls. It would seem that the castle was not taken.
Joyce’s most dangerous foe was his neighbour, Hugh de Mortimer of Wigmore, of whom he obtained possession by means of an ambush, and detained him prisoner in the castle; a tower of which has been supposed by its name to commemorate this event. Joyce died, also without male issue, about 1166, after which event Henry II. gave or restored Ludlow to Hugh de Lacy, a descendant, though not in the male line, from the former family; Emma, the sister of Roger and Hugh de Lacy, having been the mother of a certain Gilbert, who took his mother’s name, and died 1135, leaving Hugh de Lacy, the new grantee of Ludlow. This Hugh, who was a very powerful lord in Ireland, held both Ludlow and Ewias, and was custos of Dublin. Henry II. feared his power, and in 1181 seized upon Ludlow. Hugh was assassinated in Ireland in 1185, and left Walter, his son and heir, to whom Henry, in 1189, restored his father’s lands; but seems to have retained the castle and tower of Ludlow, which thence came to King John, to whom, in 1206, Walter de Lacy paid 400 marks, to be reinstated at Ludlow.
John, however, again seized the castle in 1207, and gave it in charge to William de Braose, and for a time to Philip de Albini, and then to Thomas de Erdington. Nor did the king restore it till 1214, when Ingelram de Cygoigne was directed to render it up, which he did, though unwillingly. Walter, like his father, was chiefly occupied in Ireland. In 1224 he gave up Ludlow to William de Gammages; no doubt to hold as a pledge for his own good conduct. He died in 1241, leaving Walter, his grandson, as his heir, who died under age. Walter left two sisters, of whom Matilda married, first, Peter de Geneva, one of the Provençal favourites of Henry III., and who had the custody of Ludlow. Peter died childless, but in 1234 he made over to William de Lacy the constableship of the castle in fee. Lacy was to keep it in repair, and to maintain there a chaplain, porter, and two sentinels, and the expenses were to be allowed. In time of war, the lord was to garrison the place, and live in the inner, the tenant living in the outer, ward. Peter de Geneva died in 1249. His widow then married Geoffrey de Genville, a Poitevin, who was living in 1283, and who held the castle and half the manor, the other half belonging to Margery de Lacy, sister and co-heiress with Matilda, and who had married John de Verdon. During that period, and immediately after the battle of Lewes, when Simon de Montfort visited Wales in 1264, he took Ludlow Castle, which, however, he could have held but for a short time.
Although Peter de Genville, son of Geoffrey and Matilda, died before both his father and mother, yet he had the castle at his death in 1292. His daughter and heiress, Johanna de Genville, married Roger de Mortimer, Earl of March, who, in 1316, was joint lord of Ludlow with Theobald de Verdon, grandson of John de Verdon and Margaret de Lacy.
The Mortimers held what they probably made the lion’s share of Ludlow for five generations, through some of the most turbulent times in English history; but under their rule Ludlow gave place to Wigmore, their chief seat, and the centre of their oldest estates and main power. Roger, the paramour of the she-wolf of France, received the young Edward III. at Ludlow soon after his father’s death with great magnificence, and not long before his own fall, attainder, and execution. Edmund, his son, recovered this and his other castles in 1354, six years before his death. His grandson Roger, the fourth Earl of March, obtained the long separated moiety of the Lacy property by exchange with William de Ferrars, who had inherited it from the Verdons, and thus transmitted the whole of Ludlow to his son Edmund, the fifth earl, in whose time Sir Thomas Beaufort, afterwards Duke of Exeter, held the castle against the insurgent Welsh. The fifth earl died childless in 1424, when Ludlow Castle and the earldom of March descended to his nephew, Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, who held it through the wars of the Roses, and transmitted it to his son, King Edward IV. The borough of Ludlow profited by the assumption of the castle by the Crown. The townsfolk were steady Yorkists, and if they occasionally suffered, and that severely, from the fortunes of war, on the whole they were gainers. Their ancient franchises, dating at the least from the commencement of the thirteenth century, were confirmed in the reign of Henry VI. by Richard, Duke of York, and in 1461 and 1478 Edward IV. gave them an extended charter, under which they were removed from dependence upon the castle. In 1472 the king sent his two sons to remain in the castle, where the Council of Wales established by him, sat in the name of the elder, the Prince of Wales, then but an infant in arms. They remained at Ludlow until 1483, when they were removed to a prison and a grave in the Tower. Henry VII. also sent Prince Arthur, his infant son, born in 1486, to Ludlow, and was himself a frequent visitor here till the prince’s untimely death in 1502. After that event the Council of Wales was established on a more regular footing, and placed under a lord president, who at first was a bishop. Money was granted for the repairs and maintenance of the castle, which, it appears from Bishop Lee’s report, in 1535 was in a ruinous state.
In 1559 Queen Elizabeth appointed Sir Henry Sidney as lord president. He held the office twenty-seven years, keeping considerable state at the castle, where, on his return from Ireland, he passed the latter years of his life. He built the gatehouse within the middle ward, which the inscriptions inserted on the gate show to have been completed in 1581. He built also a bridge leading into the castle, probably one to the outer gate, for the description does not accord with that now standing, and which leads to the middle gate. Also he repaired the chapel, and brought water into the castle, and did much in the way of general repairs, and of buildings and enclosures, to facilitate the business of the council and the custody of its prisoners. The keep, called then the porter’s lodge, was their prison, and the inner ward their court for exercise. Sir Henry died in May 1586. Whatever the Council may have been in his time, it became, in the reign of James, a source of great expense and scandal, and Richard Baxter has left on record the condition, moral and social, to which the purlieus of this provincial court were reduced during his youth. It fell, and it was time, with the surrender of the castle to the parliamentary army in 1646. The place was dismantled, and in 1651 the furniture and fittings were inventoried and put up for sale. At the restoration an attempt was made to revive the Council, but the actual revival was nominal only, and even this was abolished on the coming in of King William. The Crown appointed a governor of the castle, and it would seem, by an inventory of goods there in 1708, that part of it at any rate was in very tolerable repair, especially the rooms of state. The final ruin was commenced under an order by George I., when the lead was removed from the roofs. Buck, whose account was published in 1774, speaks of many of the apartments as still entire, and probably it was not absolutely roofless until the end of the century. In 1811 a lease held by the Powis family was converted by purchase from the Crown into a freehold.