LINCOLN CASTLE.

WHEN “the devil looked over Lincoln” he is said to have smiled at man’s costly devotion. But if the smile of the arch-enemy of mankind was, as must be supposed, in derision of man’s attempts at progress, the occasion of it was singularly ill-chosen, for in the whole of Britain it would be difficult to find a tract for the well-being of which man has exerted himself so much and so successfully. Two thousand years ago, that broad but not unbroken plain which extends from the Wash to the Humber, from the Trent and the uplands of Nottingham and Derby to the German Ocean was composed of arid heath and moorish fen, contributing little to the material support of man, and probably nothing to his moral culture. Beasts of chase, fish, and water-fowl shared the territory with savage hordes, but little removed from the animals upon which they preyed. By slow degrees, by many generations of men, labouring through many centuries, great things have been achieved. The fen has been banked and drained, and the heath brought under culture, so that the whole expanse is now covered by green pastures and rich root crops, and year after year the autumnal sun is reflected from broad fields waving with golden grain.

Nor has the moral been behind the material progress. From the castled hill of Belvoir, to the rocks of Newark and Nottingham, and the crowned promontory of Lincoln, the land bristles with the works of man. The constructive taste and skill of many generations, and their deep religious feeling, are represented by a rich variety of ecclesiastical architecture, from the rude and primitive tower of Barton to the lordly spires of Louth and Newark, and the glorious lanthorn of Boston; churches and schools, mansion-houses and granges, “tower and village, dome and farm,” are unmistakable evidences of peace, prosperity, and civilisation. There, too, are to be seen, not sparingly scattered, the sunken arch and ruined aisle, the ivy-covered remains and richly-carved fragments of many religious houses, making pleasant the study of hoar antiquity, and reminding us that there was a time when each was a centre of gospel truth, and of an early and beneficial civilisation, the abode of men who did good work in their day, and founded by those who—

“Loved the Church so well, and gave so largely to it,

They thought it should have canopied their bones

Till Domesday.”

Something of all this is visible to mere mortal ken, and far more to him who adds to the material prospect a knowledge of the past and the distant. It is true that the vision thus beheld from the guarded mount of Lincoln is not equal to that far wider and more noble outlook from a more exalted pinnacle, upon the description of which Milton has poured forth in one glittering roll the full stream of his learning, illuminated by the fire of his genius, but it is nevertheless one in which the student of the past may well take delight.

Lincoln itself is thickly strewed with the footsteps of the past. The Briton, the Roman, the Saxon, the Dane, the Englishman, and the Norman, have successively been lords of the soil, and each has left his mark, either in material traces or in a nomenclature still less liable to decay. A great historian, our chief authority also in matters of topography, has pronounced the earthworks to the north of the city to be of British origin. If this be so, they must be the work of those Romanised Britons who attempted, though in vain, to hold their country against the Picts and Scots, and the Scandinavian hordes from beyond the German Ocean, and who, while so striving, showed some considerable acquaintance with the Roman rules of castrametation, though unequal, it would seem, to the works in masonry for which that people were so celebrated. The conclusion that these earthworks are, if not Roman, early post-Roman British, rests upon the fact that their outline is rectangular, and that the enclosure is bisected, nearly equally, by the Roman way.

Of the earlier Britons, those dispossessed by the Romans, the traces are slight indeed, and probably confined to a few nearly effaced intrenchments, and to the roots of such proper names as “Durnomagus,” “Segelocum,” “Banovallum,” on the Bane river, and “Lindum,” names which probably, like “Eboracum” and “Londinum,” represent an earlier appellation. The mound at Riseholme, if sepulchral, may, of course, be of any age; but the district, possessing but few of those grand features which are usually the earliest to receive their names and the latest to lose them, has retained no very obvious traces of its primal inhabitants.

Of their successors, the remains are of a very different character. The imperial mistress of the world left everywhere traces of her sway not easily to be obliterated. Her measures of war were also calculated—“pacis imponere morem.” From the station at Lindum great roads radiated in several directions, and preserved that facility of communication which civilised conquerors usually seek to establish.

In the modern city of Lincoln, the Roman Lindum is well represented. The Roman walls, 10 feet to 12 feet thick, and 20 feet to 25 feet high, included a nearly rectangular area, within which was the high ground of the upper city. Of this enclosure, the northern or upper end was cut off by a cross wall, and formed the military quarter, 385 yards north and south, by an average of 517 yards east and west. Of the four gates of the station, that to the north, upon the Ermine Street, still bears a name which must have descended from the time when it was first erected, and when it probably superseded an earlier structure, and is called the New-port. Of the opposite, or south gate, only one jamb remains. Of the east gate, the place is known, and a few of its very peculiar stones are built into the adjacent enclosures. The west gate was laid open a few years ago, but, as the arch gave way under the process, it was removed. Of the walls which connected these gates, some fragments remain. One lies west and another east of the north gate, and there is a considerable mass south of the north-east angle, capping which, the foundations of a round tower, of 9 feet interior diameter, have been discovered. There is also a fragment of wall in the slope of what is called the observatory mound, a little west of the remains of the south gate. The exterior ditch, also more or less Roman, is in parts very perfect, broad and deep along the north front, and, though narrower, deep and well preserved about the north-east angle. There is also, within the area, the side wall and part of the front of a considerable building, known, probably from its mediæval use, as the Mint. The exterior Roman walls are laid upon the natural ground, although the earth is heaped up against their inner face as a ramp or terrace.

The southern half of the Roman station is divided between the cathedral and the castle, the church, though the later occupant, taking the larger half. Some centuries, however, must have passed between the departure of the Romans and the throwing up of the earthworks of the castle, during which time the Roman walls were broken down, and their contained buildings laid waste, as is shown by the dilapidated condition of those remaining parts which have been found buried beneath the castle works.

The English fortress is placed within the south-west quarter of the Roman station, and its outline, roughly four-sided, was no doubt governed by the lines of the two adjacent Roman walls. It stands on the crest of the steep slope, covered, as in Roman days, by the city, and descending about 200 feet to the river. It is contained within a massive earth-bank, from 50 yards to 80 yards broad, and from 20 feet to 30 feet in height, internally of easy slope, externally steep, and which, though in substance within the Roman area, extends its skirts beyond the line of the wall, so that the Roman west gate was found buried within its substance, and a fragment of the south wall is still seen to rise through its slope. This bank measures, upon its north face, 180 yards, upon its south face 170 yards, its east 134 yards, and its west 163 yards. Here, as at York, it is evident not only that these earthworks are of post-Roman date, but that the Roman walls were completely ruined before the earthworks were thrown up. The enclosure may contain from 6 acres to 7 acres. At the south-east angle the bank swells into, and ends in, a large conical mound, about 40 feet high, and 50 feet diameter at the top. Besides this, there is a second and larger mound, about 40 feet high, and 100 feet diameter at the top, which was the citadel or keep of the place, and the site of the hall of its English lord. This mound, though near the centre of the south front, was not a continuous part of the regular earth-bank, which it here replaced. It had its own proper circular ditch, communicating on the outside with, and forming a part of, the regular ditch of the place, as is yet evident, notwithstanding much filling up.

It will thus be seen that Lincoln Castle, as regards its earthworks, belongs to that type of English fortress in which the mound has its proper ditch, and is placed on one side of an appended area, also with its bank and ditch. The general area, which at Windsor, Arundel, and Berkhampstead is oblong, to suit the contour of the ground, is here, as at Tonbridge, Tickhill, and Clare, where the ground is not strongly marked, nearer to a more solid figure, of which, in this case, two sides and the contained angle are governed by the line of the old Roman wall. In general, these fortresses are much alike, and all belong to that class of burhs known to have been thrown up by the English in the ninth and tenth centuries, and at about the same time by the Scandinavian settlers in Normandy. Two mounds, though not unknown, are uncommon. At Lewes there are two, one at each end of an oblong enclosure. At Hereford, besides the keep mound, now removed, there is a mass of earth at the north-east corner of the outer area, a part of the bank, and at Cardiff also, besides the keep mound, are two masses of earth upon the north-east and south-east corners of the enclosure, forming, which there the keep mound does not, a part of the bank. Such subordinate mounds are not uncommon in earthworks of all ages, and are totally distinct from the grand isolated moated mound which gives character to the earthworks of the ninth and tenth centuries, both in England and Normandy.

PLAN OF LINCOLN CASTLE.

Wyman & Sons, Gᵗ. Queen Sᵗ. London.

When, in 1068, the Conqueror marched from York to Cambridge, he paused at Lincoln, even then a very important place, fenced in and populous, not indeed as yet boasting a minster, but numbering 1,150 inhabited houses, a leading member of the famous Danish civic confederation, and governed by twelve lawmen, who wielded powers elsewhere exercised by the territorial lords. As he traversed the intrenchment that covered the northern front, and entered the city through the strong Roman gateway, still in use, he could not but appreciate the strength and importance of the place, of which he seems to have been allowed to take peaceable possession. Here, as at York and Cambridge, he at once ordered the English stronghold to be converted into a Norman castle. What was the precise condition of the existing work, or what was immediately executed in obedience to William’s order, we do not know; there were, of course, defences, probably of timber, along the crest of the banks, and upon the summit of the mound, but whether William merely directed these to be strengthened, or had them replaced by walls such as were coming into use in Normandy, does not appear; probably the former: as time pressed, and there was much work of the same kind to execute all over England, it was important to secure an immediate shelter for the Norman garrison. That the 166 houses which, we learn from Domesday, were destroyed to make way for Lincoln Castle were not removed to allow of the extension of its area is certain, for the Norman walls stand upon the English banks. It is probable that, during the long and prosperous reign of the Confessor, houses had been allowed to be built upon the slopes and glacis of the ditch, and, perhaps, actually within the fortress. This, of course, could not be tolerated, and is probably the removal recorded. But, if timber was employed, it was, of course, only until works in masonry could be erected, and, whatever the Conqueror’s officers may have actually executed, there can be little doubt but that they or their immediate successors designed the gates, walls, and keep of the castles, as these now stand.

The castle is placed in the south-west quarter of the Roman station, high above the city and the valley of the Witham, which lie to its south and east, and somewhat elevated, artificially, above the table land to its north and west. Its walled enceinte lies just within the Roman area, to the adjacent limits of which its southern and western fronts are roughly parallel. The curtain wall, a very remarkable, and, on the whole, a very perfect work, is built upon the ridge or central line of the earth-bank, and therefore contains the same space, and is in circuit about 650 yards; it is from 8 feet to 10 feet thick, and 30 feet to 35 feet or even 40 feet high, exhibiting much herring-bone work, and certainly of Norman, and possibly early Norman, date. Opposite to the great mound, where the earth-banks cease, the wall is continued across the ditch and up the slope of the mound, as at Tamworth and Tonbridge. To enable it to reach the level of the battlements of the keep, it is raised by steps to the point of junction, and there contains chambers which will be more conveniently described with the keep.

In the wall are two principal gates, one to the east, opening into the upper city, opposite to the Exchequer Gate of the Close, and the other to the west, opening direct into the field. Besides these there is a small door opening towards the south upon the lower city, and a door in the keep in the same direction.

The main entrance is placed in the east wall at about 40 yards from its south-east angle. The west gate stands in the west wall, about 30 yards from the north-west angle, which length is thrown back at a very obtuse angle, probably to avoid the remains of the Roman west gate, which stood about four yards in front of it. Both east and west gates are of Norman date, and were originally much alike, each being a plain arch, placed in a rectangular bay or recess in the wall, 18 feet wide by 10 feet deep, instead of, as was more usual, in a regular square gatehouse, as at Tickhill, Porchester, and Sherborne. The bay may have been closed in the rear by a cross-wall with a second archway, of which there is an indication at the west gate. There was an upper chamber with a timber floor. At the east gate the arch is full centred, of 14 feet opening, without chamfer or rebate, or ornament of any kind. Probably there is a portcullis groove, but if so it is blocked up and completely concealed by the woodwork of the modern doors. It is certain that the main entrance of a Norman castle could never have been so constructed that there should be no rebate against which the door should be pressed when closed, and probably the fitting was composed of a ring of stones inserted, as in the doorway in the cross-wall of Rochester keep, without bond, into the exterior arch. Over the door is a pointed window, probably an early English or early Decorated insertion. Later in the Decorated period, this gateway has been masked by a front containing a bold equilateral arch, springing from two angular corbels, behind which the Norman doorway is seen. Above, the two outer angles are capped by two round turrets, corbelled out of the angle and rising about 6 feet, and between them the curtain projects at a low angle, the salient being over the entrance. The arrangement is unusual, but the effect is good. It is said that the turrets contained staircases, ascending from the upper floor to the battlements, but they are not now accessible. There were lateral walls projecting forward from each side of the entrance. Across the ditch, and between them, was the drawbridge, traces of the recesses for working which still remain. The entrance was flanked by two stone lions, of one of which a fragment is preserved in the castle; the interior additions to this gate are entirely modern.

The west gate, of the same age and pattern, has fortunately been long walled up, and so has escaped alteration. Here the portcullis groove is exposed to view, and there is a rebate for the door, though concealed by the cross-wall. Here also is what looks like the springing of an arch across the inner face of the bay, though Norman mural towers were sometimes, as at Ludlow, left open, to be closed only with brattice-work. The upper floor has two small Norman windows in front, and a small door, flat headed, but with a round-headed arch of relief; this opened upon the battlements of the barbican. Of this barbican, which was composed of two flanking walls and an outer gate, the north wall remains and part of the south. The wall rises to the level of the upper floor of the gatehouse, projects about 30 feet, and is 7 feet thick. The masonry is evidently of the date of the gateway, and contains some herring-bone work. The approach must have been very steep, the sill of the gate being some feet above the level of the counterscarp.

Another work of Norman date is a rectangular tower, about 25 feet by 40 feet, placed upon the summit of the south-eastern mound; it is of two floors, vaulted, and chiefly built in ashlar; it contains a good straight mural staircase. To the Norman work has been added, in the Decorated period, a front, upon the east face, also of two floors, flanked by two square turrets, bringing up the whole tower to a square of 40 feet. The peculiarity of this tower is that, instead of flanking the curtain, it is set back a little from its line. A modern gazebo has been added above, and the whole is dignified by the name of the Observatory.

In the curtain, at the foot of the observatory mount, and between it and the keep, is a pointed arch of relief, and below it, beneath a rude flat lintel, composed of two large stones, is a small door, either never opened, or closed at a very early period. This arch is certainly late Norman, and seems of the same date with that part of the curtain in which it is imbedded.

The Keep, also Norman, is an unusually perfect example of a shell keep. It is in plan a somewhat irregular polygon, 64 feet north and south by 74 feet east and west within the walls, which are about 8 feet thick. Within, it has twelve sides, of irregular lengths. Without are fifteen, and each angle is capped with a broad flat pilaster, all rising from a common plinth. At about two-thirds of the height there is a set-off, common to wall and pilaster; the latter has also a bold roll moulding. The wall is 20 feet high to the rampart walk. The parapet is gone. The keep stands upon the line of the curtain, which abuts upon it at opposite sides; so dividing it that there are eight facets outside the wall, and seven inside. The main entrance is by a full-centred arch of 7 feet opening, set in a broad, projecting buttress or pilaster towards the north-east. The arch of the actual doorway and of its inner recess is segmental. There was no portcullis, and the door had a stout wooden bar. Above the outer arch is a hood-moulding, with a light Norman ornament, said to be a restoration from the original. At present a straight steep flight of steps leads up to the door, and these, though modern, probably represent the original mode of approach. There is another and smaller door, diagonally opposite to the main door, to the south-west; this is quite plain, the arches segmental, the outer boldly splayed. The opening is 5 feet 6 inches wide. There are traces of something like a third door in the eastern face outside the curtain, opening from a bay in the wall. Opposite to this, in the west wall, is another bay, also 12 feet wide, but no trace of an opening. There are no loops in the wall of the keep, no trace of any buildings within its area, nor have any foundations been discovered there. It is pretty clear that any accommodation provided there was by means of timber structures placed against the wall, leaving an open court in the centre. There are indications, on the masonry, of an upper floor. Where the two curtains join the keep, each contains, at its rampart level, a mural chamber, about 6 feet wide by 12 feet long, the floor of which is about 10 feet or 12 feet from the ground. These chambers are choked with brambles and not accessible, but they have no door towards the ramparts of the curtain, and seem to have been entered from the upper part of the keep; that to the west is a garderobe, and has a loop and shoot upon the north or inner face; the other has a loop only, and that outwards: one of them is said to have been groined and vaulted, the vaults springing from columns in the angles. This is probably that towards the east, and it may have been an oratory, as at Arundel.

The above works, curtain, gateways, observatory tower, and keep contain the only Norman masonry now extant. The curtain, for its great length, is singularly deficient in flanking towers. At the south-west angle the wall has been laid open by a wide breach, and built up, and there may have been a tower, but it is more probable that here was the junction with the city wall.

Generally, the lower two-thirds of the curtain look much older than the upper part, and the line of junction is very uneven, as though the wall had long been left in a ruinous condition. This may have been so; but, as there is no diminution in the excessive thickness, it seems more probable that the new work is confined to the facing. No doubt when the castle was taken by the county much was done to the walls; but they could scarcely, at that time, have been much lower than they are now, for to rebuild them at their present thickness would have been a great and quite unnecessary expense.

The herring-bone work is of a superficial character, confined to the facing; not, as in the Roman work, carried through the substance of the wall. Mr. Wilson, in his paper on this castle, states that, when the foundations of the curtain were laid open during some repairs, they were found to be worked in with a sort of framework of timber, tieing the whole together. Such a precaution was often taken by the Norman builders, even to the extent of enclosing ties in the superstructure, especially where the work was laid upon made ground. The cavities left by the decay of such ties are seen at Rochester and elsewhere.

There is a flanking tower capping the north-east angle of the place, an insertion, though whether replacing a Norman structure is not known. It is called “Cobbe Hall,” and is in plan very slightly horseshoe, with prolonged sides and a square rear. It is in breadth 25 feet, and in length 40 feet. It has a basement and first floor, both covered in with acutely-pointed vaulting, with deeply-splayed loops towards the field. The basement is reached by a trap-door and ladder, and the upper floor and battlements by a stone stair. It seems, from the rings let into the wall, to have been a prison. It has been called a chapel, probably because its round or apsidal end looks towards the north-east.

There is a deep well in the north side of the great enclosure, still in use, and the bottom of which has recently been enlarged into a cistern. The castle stands upon the oolite rock, and is mainly built of that material, laid as roughly-coursed rubble, but the keep, the observatory tower, and the Decorated work are mostly of ashlar.

It is difficult to form a decided opinion as to the age of the several works in masonry remaining in this castle. The two gateways and much of the curtain, especially its north and west sides, are probably early Norman. The keep and observatory tower are later in the same style. To judge from the little postern, the curtain between the observatory mount and the keep, and probably the part beyond it, are also late Norman; that is to say, the English defences of the keep were the last to be replaced, and it was a century before the isolation of its mound was broken by the carrying the curtain across its ditches, and the completion of its general enceinte. Altogether it seems probable that the lower stage of the two gateways, and the older part of the curtain, were constructed during the reign of the Conqueror, or, at any rate, before the close of the eleventh century. The keep and observatory tower were probably built, the upper floor of the gateways added, and the curtain raised and completed, in the reign of Stephen, who granted, with the castle and city of Lincoln, to Gernons, Earl of Chester, licence to fortify a tower in the castle, and to hold it until he recovered his own castle of Tickhill,—and even then, when he surrendered Lincoln, he was to retain his own tower, which his mother, Countess Lucia, had fortified, in the castle, of which also he was to retain the hereditary constableship. As the keep was the only part of the castle which could be held independently of the rest, it must be to it that the charter relates. It is curious that Tickhill should also have a mound and polygonal keep.

As to the later works, Cobbe Hall, and the additions to the observatory tower and the eastern gateway, are probably the work of Thomas of Lancaster, Earl of Lincoln, who held the castle from 1312 to 1322. The Pipe Roll of 2 John, A.D. 1200, records a charge of £20 by the constable of Lincoln Castle for the repairs of the new tower, probably the keep.

The additions directed by the Conqueror to the defences of the hill, already strong by nature and by art, rendered Lincoln, under the Norman dynasty, even a more important city than it had been under the earlier governments. Its castle was the almost impregnable fortress, held by or for the sovereign, of a very important division of England; but it was a division strong in its rivers and marshy ground, in its English and thoroughly disaffected feeling, and open to the visits of the Danes, no longer as enemies, but as allies to the cause of the people. Its position, dominating the whole shire, challenged comparison with Belvoir, which received a similar accession of strength, and Nottingham, on the brow of which a rectangular keep of the first class was then in progress; but what confirmed its central authority, and placed it far above any castled eminence of the counties of the Midland, was the recognition of the hill as the centre of an important bishopric, and the foundation by Remigius of the stately pile to which many succeeding centuries have added beauty and grandeur.

The castle long remained a part of the demesne of the Crown but was administered by constables, whose office was, at times, regarded as hereditary, and, on one very important occasion, was held by a lady. Always a strong position, it became especially valuable upon the death of Henry I., when the long civil war broke out between his daughter and his nephew, and, by one party or the other, all existing castles were strengthened and an immense number of new ones built. In such a state of anarchy a castle became a necessary of life, and the bishops vied with, and even surpassed, the lay barons in their examples of military architecture. Sherborne, Malmesbury, and the strong and magnificent Devizes were the work of Bishop Roger of Salisbury, as were Newark and Sleaford of his nephew, Alexander of Lincoln; and the castle of Ely, of Giles, another nephew, and prelate of that see. Durham, also, was held by its bishop, and the Close of Lichfield strongly intrenched.

Of the lay adherents of Matilda, Robert Earl of Gloucester, her wise and faithful brother, built the castles of Cardiff, Bristol, and Gloucester; Fitz-Alan held Shrewsbury; D’Albini, Arundel; Talbot, Hereford; Paganel, Ludlow; Brian Fitz-Count, Wallingford; D’Oyley, Oxford; Robert of Lincoln, Wareham; Mohun, Dunster; Lovel, Castle Cary; Mandeville, Walden and Plessis; and Fitz-John, Melton. Dover, much strengthened by Maminot, was surrendered to the queen. It is curious that, of all these castles, six only, Sherborne, Bristol, Ludlow, Walden, and Dover, with Hedingham, held by De Vere for Stephen, are certainly known to have had square keeps; of the others, seven are doubtful, but thirteen had shell keeps upon mounds.

Among those who at first adhered to the cause of Stephen were the two half-brothers, William de Roumare and Ranulph, Earl of Chester, who had hereditary claims upon a large Lincolnshire property, and, of some sort, upon the castle of Lincoln. These, as regarded the castle, were exercised mainly by the Earl of Chester, the younger, but, in England at least, the most powerful of the two.

Their claims dated from a period before the Conquest, and were no doubt connected with the ownership of the English fortress. Ælfgar, Earl of Mercia, son of Earl Leofric, and lord of many Lincolnshire lordships, was father of the well-known Earls Eadwine and Morkere, and of Ealdgyth, widow of Gryffydd of Wales, and afterwards of Harold, and of Lucia, or Lucy, the eventual heiress of the family, and as such claiming not only the Lincolnshire lands, but, as it seems, the hereditary constableship of the castle. Mr. Nichols, in a very valuable paper upon the earls of Lincoln, has shown that Lucy married Ivo Taillebois, one of the Conqueror’s barons, a hero both of history and romance, and, in right of his wife, a great landowner in Lincolnshire. Her name occurs in his charter in 1085 concerning the church of Spalding. Ivo died in 1114, and their daughter, another Lucy, an heiress or co-heiress, and who claimed the constableship of Lincoln Castle, and fortified one of its towers, married, first, Roger de Roumare, and second, Ranulph de Briquesard, called Le Meschines, Earl of Chester, who died 1129. By each she had a son. (1) William de Roumare, afterwards Earl of Lincoln; and (2) Ranulph, called Gernons, Earl of Chester. These two half-brothers, unstable and greedy politicians and soldiers, played considerable parts in the war of the succession, and had much to say to Lincoln Castle.

Early in the struggle in 1140, Stephen acknowledged the claim of De Roumare, and created him one of his earls, called in derision “pseudo-comites,” because they had not the usual third penny from a county. Notwithstanding this favour, however, the brothers, a few days or weeks afterwards took the castle of Lincoln by surprise, turned out the royal soldiers, and held it for Matilda. Stephen, highly incensed, marched at once to Lincoln, and, supported by the citizens, laid siege to the castle from the west front, that next the city, but on which the ground was less steep than within the city itself. Earl Ranulph, on this, escaped from the place, leaving it, with his wife and children, in charge of De Roumare, while he went to persuade his brother-in-law, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, to come to their rescue. Robert accordingly led a force of 10,000 men in that direction, and the two earls, fording or swimming the Trent and the marsh lands on its margin, were met by the king in person. The result was the Battle or “Joust of Lincoln,” fought on the 2nd of February, 1141, in which Stephen was taken, to be exchanged a short time afterwards for Earl Robert. Mr. Nichols has pointed out that a certain Gilbert de Gant, a young Lincolnshire noble, being taken in the battle, was married by the Earl of Chester to his niece Rohesia, and was also created Earl of Lincoln, which title he retained till his death, in 1156. Mr. Nichols suggests that Rohesia was probably a sister’s daughter, and a co-heiress of Lucy Taillebois the first, and therefore a co-heir of Earl Ælfgar.

William de Roumare left a son, who died before him, and the grandson, though holding a large Lincolnshire estate, and in rank an earl, never assumed the title of Lincoln. He died childless, 1198, and the title of Lincoln seems to have been dropped for a time, Alice, Earl Gilbert’s daughter and heiress, being styled only “Countess Alice, daughter of Earl Gilbert.”

In 1144 also, at Christmas, Earl Ranulph was a second time besieged in Lincoln Castle by King Stephen, and also without success; but two years later, he, being at the king’s court, was made prisoner, and had to give up the castle as his ransom. Once fairly in possession of it, Stephen caused himself to be crowned at Lincoln.

In 1147 their positions were reversed, and the city was attacked by the earl, but without success; and in 1151 he became a second time Stephen’s prisoner, and so continued a few months, until, at the pacification of Wallingford, in 1151, he was set free, included in the general amnesty, and received from Stephen the grant of the city and castle already noticed, to be held until Tickhill should be restored to him.

During the reign of Henry II. the Crown recovered much of its power, and Lincoln Castle seems to have been dissociated from the earldom, although the Earl of Chester preserved a hold upon it. Richard de Hay held the constableship in fee, and it descended to his daughter and heiress, Nicholaa, who married Gerald de Camville, who received from Richard I. the custody of the castle and the farm of the revenues of the county. Gerald, however, was a partisan of Prince John, and stood a siege in the castle from Longchamp, chancellor to the absent Richard. The castle was relieved by John; but Gerard lost his office and farm in 1194, until John became king. His widow, Nicholaa, held the castle for the king against the insurgent lords. After the war, King John visited Lincoln, and Nicholaa, then of great age, received him at the east gate of the castle, and offered him the keys, desiring to be relieved on account of her age. John gracefully requested her to retain the keys, and she continued in command through the reign of John, and into that of Henry his son. Nicholaa was sheriff of the county, and a very remarkable person. In her latter days she had an assistant assigned to her, and a manor to support the charges of her office. She finally retired, and died in 1231.

In 1216, towards the close of John’s reign, Gilbert de Gant, nephew to the former Earl of Lincoln of the same name, condescended to accept the titular rank at the hands of the invading French Prince Louis, and took the city, but not the castle. He fought and was taken at the “Fair of Lincoln,” in May, 1217, by Ranulph de Blondville, Earl of Chester, a man of small stature but a great soldier, who added the title of Lincoln to that of Chester four days after the battle, and held it until he resigned it to his sister, Hawise de Quincy, in 1232. The actual relief introduced into the castle before the battle was led by the notorious Fulk de Breauté.

The descent of the constableship of the castle is at this point rather obscure. It seems, probably during the minority of De Camville’s daughter and heiress, Idonea, to have been administered successively by Philip de Lascelles, Walter Evermue, and, in 1224, by William de Longespée, Earl of Salisbury, probably as having married Idonea, daughter and heiress of Gerard de Camville. Whether their son William, who died 1257, held it is uncertain, but whatever rights he had were united to those of the Earls of Lincoln by the marriage of his daughter and heiress, Margaret Longespée, to Henry de Lacy. Henry was descended from Hawise de Quincy, whose daughter Margaret carried the earldom to her husband John de Lacy, who died 1240. Their son, Edmond, did not live to inherit; but his son, Henry de Lacy, was Earl of Lincoln, and by his marriage with Margaret Longespée, earl also of Salisbury. In the Escheat Roll, 4 Edward II., he is entered as constable of the castle of Lincoln.

Alice, the daughter and heiress of Henry de Lacy, married Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, and, in her right, of Lincoln, grandson of Henry III., and thus both the constableship and the fee of the castle became absorbed in the Duchy of Lancaster, and so in the Crown. During the wars of Charles and the Parliament, the castle was held as a military post for the king. In 1644 it fell, with the city, into the hands of the Parliament, and finally, in 1832, was sold to the county.

The Pipe and Close Rolls contain many entries in the reigns of Henry II., Richard I., John, and Henry III., relating to the castle, sometimes for repairs, sometimes for manacles for prisoners, sometimes for sustentation of soldiers. There are orders for storing corn, for “balistæ ad strumum” and “ad turnum,” the former worked by hand, the latter by a winch. In 1225, we read of repairs to the gate of the castle, to the “Tour de Luce,” and to the barbican. Even in Domesday, we have Waldin, ingeniator; Heppo, balistarius; and Ody, arbalistarius.