MONTGOMERY CASTLE.

IT is by a singular chance that a rude and artificial mound of earth, in an obscure part of a foreign province, should have given its name to a British county and to the town that forms its capital. The proper names of places in Britain are usually either British or English. Once given in the latter tongue, they have but seldom been changed. New creations, as Battle and Jervaulx, and some other ecclesiastical houses, bear, indeed, new names; but these do not appear to have displaced any already existing. Pontefract is a name probably derived from an accidental circumstance; but Richmond and Montgomery are solitary instances of a shire or a capital town deriving its name from the inheritance of a Norman lord.

The castle of Montgomery is registered by that name in the Domesday survey, and placed in the hundred of Wintentrue, in the county of Salop. “Ad castellum de Montgomeri habet comes iiii carucas et vi libras denariorum. habet de uno fine de Walis pertinente ad ipsam castellariam. Rogerius [Corbet] habet ibi ij carucas, et de Walis, cum fratre suo habet xl. solidos.” And further on, “Ipse comes construxit castrum, Muntgumeri vocatum. Ad quod adjacent lii. hidæ et dimidia quas tenuere Seuuar, Oslac, Azor, de rege Edwardo, quietas ab omni geldo; ad venandum eas habuere.” Here, then, we have the name of the castle, its inclusion in an English county, its castelry, its chief lord, Earl Roger, and the fact that in the time of the Confessor, three Englishmen held 52½ hides about it as a hunting-ground. The Englishmen are entered, a few lines on, as Thanes. Seuuar was, no doubt, like Siward, a very great, as was Azor a considerable, landowner in the same county. “De fine de Walis” shows that Earl Roger’s territory included Welshmen with his English tenants, just as the names of places, and especially of parishes, in the district, show a great and early establishment of English there. The castelry included twenty-two members, at no great distance from the castle rock, and the castle was one of about fourteen strong places mentioned in Domesday as then existing in Hereford, Monmouth, and Salop. It only differed from most others, and especially from such as Clun, Ludlow, Caus, Oswestry, or Whittington, in being held by the earl himself, and not by one of his secondary barons.

Earl Roger, the “comes” of the above entry, upon the fall of Morkere, added Shropshire to his Sussex earldom, and to him, with powers equal in many respects to those of royalty, was committed the safety of the middle march, with its extensive but imperilled English settlement there. On the site of the British Pengwern and of the Saxon Shrobsbury, folded securely within a remarkable convolution of the Severn, he established his chief seat upon, and at the base of, the English mound, which still looks down upon the deep and wide river; and with its connected fragment of the ancient city wall forms a striking contrast to the bustle and action carried out upon the railway and within its ephemeral buildings at the foot of the slope. There is a tradition, founded, however, upon error, that the earl’s lieutenant in the more advanced frontier of his dangerous territory, was a certain Baldwin, whose name is preserved in the Welsh appellation of Tre-Faldwin for the town and castle, and of Frydd-Faldwin for a remarkable encampment on the summit of an adjacent hill. But Baldwin, though not an uncommon name with the Normans, does not occur in Shropshire among either the tenants-in-chief or the under-tenants, in Domesday. There was indeed a William Fitz-Baldwin, Lord of Rhydcors, in the reign of Rufus, but he was a South Wales man, and unconnected with Earl Roger. But whether as Tre-Faldwin or Montgomery, whether named from the hand or the head, it is clear that the castle stood in a position most offensive to the pride and patriotic feelings of the Welsh. The vale of the Severn from Welsh Pool to a little short of Llanidloes, had for centuries been a field of bitter contest. The Roman, the Dane, and the Englishman had done violence to the “virgin daughter of Locrine,” and stained her molten crystal with blood. Its broad band of flat and fertile meadow made Powys-land a prize of great value, and the steep and lofty hills between which it was contained, were highly favourable to both the sudden attack and safe retreat of the Welsh. The plain and its lower eminences, traversed by the dyke of Offa, are thickly studded with moated mounds and earthworks, thrown up in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, and which show how far-reaching was, even in that remote period, the Mercian and English power. The mound thrown up by Æthelflaed in 916, at Chirbury, is destroyed; but those of Moat Lane, of Newtown, of Hên-domen, of Kerry, and Nant-cribba, remain, and are as large and as well-defined as that of Shrewsbury itself, and of the very type of those more famous royal residences in Elmete and at Laughton-en-le-Morthen, or of the works near Livarot, whence Earl Roger derived his name, and which have survived all subsequent additions in stone and lime.

That Earl Roger, between his acquisition of the earldom and the year of the Domesday survey had built a castle, is on record, but what sort of a castle may be a question. Norman towers were plain, solid, of durable design, and excellent workmanship, too stout and too useful to be intentionally pulled down, and usually, as at Wattlesborough, outlasting all later additions; but assuredly there is now no trace of any work of Earl Roger on the castle rock, nor anywhere near it; for it has been supposed, without shadow of probability, that his castle was placed, not upon the rock, but somewhere in its neighbourhood. It seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that Earl Roger’s castle was of a less durable character than is usually supposed, and that this will account for its quick destruction in 1095, two years after his death, by the Welsh, accompanied by the slaughter of his successor’s (Earl Hugh) garrison. This was the event that brought Rufus into the district, to the earl’s aid, in 1096, when, though he did but little, he seems to have recovered the site of the castle, and to have given the earl an opportunity of rebuilding or restoring it. Earl Hugh is said to have done so, but however this may have been, Montgomery is not mentioned among the castles held by his elder brother, but successor, Robert de Belesme, the wicked earl, on his ruin and banishment in 1102. Here, again, the probability is that any castle then standing was of a light and not very durable character, not worthy of being mentioned with Shrewsbury or Bridgenorth.

With the fall of the house of Montgomery, the earldom escheated to the Crown, and with it its castle and castelry. Henry I. upon this remodelled the hundreds of Salop, and raised Montgomery into an Honour or barony, throwing into it the greater part of the adjacent seignory of Chirbury, and several other manors. The valuable, and, on the whole, compact territory thus constituted was at once granted by Henry to a certain Baldwin de Bollers, who was the husband “Sibillæ nepotis regis,” whatever relationship, legitimate or illegitimate, that word may indicate. This lady is also designated, possibly from her mother, as “Sibil de Faleise.” All that is known of Baldwin is that he already held five knight’s-fees of the honour of Warden. He held the new Honour, in capite, of the king, per baroniam; his under-tenants holding of him, most of them, as set forth in the Hundred Rolls, by castle guard. Baldwin began his reign by the very necessary act of building a castle, though what he actually constructed is uncertain, for there is no existing masonry that can be attributed to him or his immediate successors. Still, he is reported to have built a castle, and that he did so is probably just as certain that it is his name, and not that of any lieutenant of Earl Roger, that is identified with the rock by the Welsh. It is also reported that while Baldwin was preparing this castle, he occupied the British camp above, known, in consequence, as Ffrydd-Faldwin. This is most improbable. The camp, a very large and very fine specimen of a British work, would hold five or six thousand men, and could not well be defended by less than a third of that number, for its front is extensive, and its slopes, though steep, are by no means so steep as to stop, or materially to check the onset of a tribe of light-armed mountaineers. Baldwin’s force was more likely to be 500 than 5,000 men, and no doubt depended for its power far more upon its arms and discipline than upon its numerical strength. The castle rock would have held such a force with great security while the operations of a castle were in progress, and probably did so.

The descendants of De Bollers, incorrectly given by Dugdale, have been disentangled by Mr. Eyton, the real historian of Montgomery, with his usual patience and skill, and seem to be as follows:—

Baldwin de Bollers, Lord of Montgomery, 1121, married, (1) Sibil de Faleise, and had also a second wife. By Sibil he had Stephen de Bollers, 1160, Lord of Montgomery, who married Maria, and had Robert, who died young. Matilda, Sibil’s daughter, married Richard Fitz-Urse, 1130–58, and had Reginald Fitz-Urse, one of Becket’s murderers, and Margery.

On Stephen’s death the Honour seems to have passed to Almeric de Bollers, probably a son or descendant of Baldwin, by his second wife, and who had it in 1162. He was succeeded by Robert de Bollers, 1176–1203, who died childless, but left a widow, Hilaria Trusbut, who had dower till 1241. The heir was Robert’s brother, Baldwin, 1203–7, who also died childless, and whose widow, Wenllian Tet, had dower till 1243. This ended the male line.

The next heirs were the Fitz-Urses. Reginald, Becket’s murderer, had a daughter and heiress, who married Robert, and had William de Courtenay, Lord of Montgomery, who died 1214, childless, leaving Ada a widow with dower, who died 1217. The next heir was the descendant of Margery, sister of Reginald Fitz-Urse, who married Richard Engaine, 1177–85, and had Richard, 1185, father of Vitalis Engaine, 1217, who claimed the Honour on the death of William de Courtenay, but only obtained a portion of it. Thomas de Erdington was a rival and more successful claimant. He held the castle, 1215–18, but much of the Honour was granted, in 1216, to William de Cantilupe, with certain reservations. In 1225 the king, who had all along treated the castle as a royal fortress, claimed the Honour as an escheat, and the whole was taken by the Crown, the dowers being allowed. Erdington, who had been the custos of the king’s castles of Shrewsbury, Whitchurch, Shawardine, Morton, Clun, Montgomery, Moreton, and other Shropshire strongholds, was repaid the outlay he had made upon them. Some sort of castle undoubtedly occupied the rock of Montgomery between 1102 and 1225, and it is said to have been twice taken and destroyed by Llewelyn, who, on the death of John, gained some advantages in Wales, and was allowed the custody of all the land that had belonged to Gwenonwhyn in “Wales and Mungumer,” of which he had been disseized during the war between John and the Barons. This he was to hold till Gwenonwhyn came of age. Probably the result was that when Henry entered he found the rock laid bare, for, from that time the Sheriff’s accounts show annual and very considerable payments for military works there for many years, and we read of the king’s new castle of Montgomery. As early as 1225, when the Welsh war made the place of great importance, nearly £1,000 is paid out; £1,100 in 1224; and above £500 in 1225. Master carpenters are sent to construct defences of timber, brétasches, to strengthen the castle, and miners or quarrymen from the Forest of Dean, no doubt to prepare stone, and to hew out the cross ditches. A fit chaplain is to be appointed to serve in the castle chapel, under the parson of Montgomery, and the king is to decide about the emoluments or “obventions” of the chantry. These were afterwards allotted to the mother Church, that is to the parish church of Montgomery, which was the mother church of the chapel; of the whole district Chirbury was the mother church. To the parson was also given the corn tythe of the land newly cultivated, of which he already had the small tythe. Sums of money are also allowed for assisting in clearing the lands of underwood and harbours for robbers; and on one occasion the king alludes to the time “when we took in hand our castle of Montgomery.” Henry himself was there in 1224, and all the masonry now standing is pretty evidently his work, and of this period.

1223 was the year of Llewelyn’s submission, and Godescal de Maghelines was castellan, and received drafts of miners and carpenters, and quarrels from St. Briavel’s forges. Henry, the king’s brother, and other knights, formed the garrison; and the chapel was in use.

In 1224 the king granted an annual fair in “our manor of Montgomery,” and Hubert de Huse was coupled with Godescal as custodes of the castle, honour, and vale of Montgomery, and soon after Baldwin de Hodnet was seneschal, and William de Cantelupe had seizin of the fees of the knights and free tenants annexed to the Honour. A fair was also proclaimed to be held under the castle, and protections were granted to those attending.

In 1227 Henry changed his policy, and granted the castle to Hubert de Burgh, with 200 marcs yearly for its custody for life, and an augmentation in war time, which speedily occurred; for in 1230, Llewelyn, having hanged William de Braose, marched towards Montgomery, the garrison of which suffered from an ambuscade near Kerry, whither they had gone to cut down a large wood. The Welsh followed them to the castle, and besieged it. Henry came to their relief. In 1233 de Burgh lost Henry’s favour, and with it Montgomery, and a constable was appointed by the king. A windmill was erected near the castle, to grind for its use. In 1235, a tower beyond the castle wall had been repaired, as had the town walls, for which nine wooden turrets were provided. Wine and various stores were sent to the castle, which, in 1245, was attacked by the Welsh under David, and, notwithstanding all the money so recently spent upon it, was found not to be in good repair, as appears from an inquisition held upon it in 1249, which specifies particularly the donjon or keep; the chamber and chapel; the wooden turret or brétasche, and the bridge near the chapel; the balister’s house; the wooden turret next the town; the stable; the wooden turret beyond the outer gate; the grange and wall round it; the pentiscie, pent-houses, or lean-to’s, carrying the woodwork belonging to five wooden turrets; the small tower or garrit, outside the gate; the “barrier” (jurullum) near the chapel; and the porter’s lodge. For the repairs of these is wanted £59. 3s. 8d. At this time there is also a water-mill connected with the castle, “Stanlawes Mill,” which only worked in winter.

In 1254 Henry granted Montgomery to Prince Edward, who, with the consent of the king and council, appointed a custos. In 1264, after Lewes, Henry, then in durance, ordered Adam Fitz-Philip to surrender the castle. Adam, however, refused, unless the order was backed by Prince Edward. In 1267, 29th September, Henry was here, and received Llewelyn’s homage, and recognised his principality, for which he was to pay 30,000 marcs.

Edward I. let the castle in farm to Bogo de Knovill, for £40 per annum, which rent was mostly expended upon the town defences, the town being a royal borough, under a charter from Henry III., in 1227, strengthened by one from Hubert de Burgh, by which leave was given to enclose it within a wall and ditch, of which the four gates remained in Leland’s days. In 1274 Prince Llewelyn was summoned to meet Edward’s Commissioners at the ford of Montgomery, a favourite trysting-place in that reign: but the Welsh prince did not attend.

MONTGOMERY CASTLE.

The reduction of the principality by Edward I. necessarily destroyed the value of the castles along the march, as bulwarks against the Welsh, and the strong domestic government of that sovereign put an end to the continued rebellions of the Marcher Barons. Under these circumstances the border castles were either allowed to fall into decay, or were employed only as county prisons. In any case they had little or no military value; nor, with the exception of a few passages in the reign of Edward II., and for a while, during the Glendower rebellion, were they regarded as defensible or so employed. Long afterwards, indeed, during the wars of Charles and his Parliament, such of these castles as remained tolerably perfect were garrisoned, defended, usually taken and retaken, and finally slighted or blown up by the prevailing party. Montgomery seems to have had its share of these misfortunes, and no doubt its walls and towers suffered; but in all probability, here, as elsewhere, far more damage has been done by the use of the ruins as a quarry in modern times of peace and prosperity than by the violence attendant upon war. Here, as in most other border castles, the military history of the building closes with the reign of Edward I., up to which point, or nearly so, all that can be said of the castelry, honour, and descent of the castle, has been collected from the original records, combined, digested, and recorded by Mr. Eyton, in his admirable “History of Salop.” For the later history of the castle, may be read with advantage a paper by the Rev. George Sanford, recently printed in the Montgomery Transactions.

The position of Montgomery Castle is formed by nature, and needed only to be seen to be recognised as very suitable for a border fortress. A narrow and lofty ridge of rock, lying nearly north and south, rises abruptly between two valleys; that to the east very suitable for the town which has sprung up within it; that to the west, narrower and equally steep, but rising on its further side to far loftier elevations, one of which is crowned by the encampment of Frydd-Faldwin, and the other, rather lower and more to the south, is occupied by a much smaller work of very different, and, probably, English type. The ridge is in length about 500 yards, and that part of its summit occupied by the castle and its works about 330 yards. Its greatest breadth is about 60 yards, of which the castle may occupy about 40 yards. The ridge is reached from the south-east, or town quarter, by a steep road, but towards the north it terminates in a sharp point, whence a very steep slope falls to the top of a cliff of rock, the whole height being perhaps 250 feet. The contiguous sides are also very steep, so much so that a stone set rolling from the top does not stop till it reaches the gardens and orchards 150 feet or more below. The parish church stands within the town upon an eminence opposite to, but lower than the castle. The view from the ridge extends over the plain of the Severn to the Welsh mountains in one direction, and to the Shropshire hills in the other. Below, in the direction of Chirbury, Offa’s Dyke may be discerned about a mile distant, the castle being upon its outer or Welsh side. The ridge is traversed by three ditches quarried in the rock, and dividing it into four platforms, which formed the four wards of the castle, each of which appears to have been enclosed by walls or palisades, and connected with the others by bridges of timber. The northern and strongest ward is also by some feet the highest ward, and formed the donjon, or citadel; keep there was certainly none. This ward was about 52 yards north and south, by 32 yards east and west. It is nearly rectangular, and its four faces are scarped and revetted, that portion of the wall being about 15 feet high. Upon this stood the curtain and the outer walls of the contained buildings. A considerable building stood on the west face, along the southern half of which a wall remains about 9 thick, which supported a basement and two upper floors, of which holes for the joists are seen. In the first floor is a recess with a window and two garderobes, with shafts in the wall. The window was pointed, and that is all that can be ascertained. In the upper floor is also a garderobe. Connected with this fragment of wall is half a horseshoe tower, 30 feet in diameter, projected 25 feet from the wall. This also had a basement, and two upper floors, but little of it now remains. In the outer side of its wall, to the north, are the remains of another garderobe shaft, and, high up, part of a straight mural staircase. From hence, northwards, is a mere curtain. On the three other faces only the revetment, or traces of it, remain. A heap of rubbish at the south end may be the foundation of the gatehouse. There is no trace of a well, hall, or chapel. The only ashlar remaining is a sort of quoin in the substance of the great wall, and in a window jamb in the horseshoe tower. The masonry is rude but coursed rubble.

Between this and the third ward was a ditch about 20 yards broad, dammed up at its lower or west end to form a pond, probably for the benefit of the castle cattle. There is no trace of a bridge of masonry here. The third ward is a regular oblong, carefully scarped, and probably revetted all round. Only the eastern face is visible, and there the wall is about 20 feet high, with the remains of three half-round solid buttresses, 6 feet in diameter, and something like traces of two more. There is no masonry above the surface of the platform, which is about 40 yards north and south by 35 yards east and west. A ditch of about 8 yards broad divided it from the second ward.

The second ward is roughly oval, about 50 yards long by 30 yards broad, and its southern end is occupied by a rocky mound. There is no trace of masonry connected with this ward, which may have been defended with timber. The ditch dividing this from the first ward is not above 4 yards or 5 yards broad, and very irregular, the depression being apparently in part natural.

The first ward is smaller than the rest, irregular and rocky. It bears traces of dry walling, and upon its platform are the foundations of a rectangular building, and at the south end of a sort of tower, indicated only by a heap of earth. It may have been about 25 yards by 15 yards. It may be that the first and second wards were merely natural platforms palisaded with timber brétasches, as they are called in the close roll, but the third and fourth wards were certainly walled and must have been strong. To the north, 20 feet to 30 feet beyond, below the north ward, is a level triangular platform of turf about 60 yards in the side, and protected by a light bank on which may have been a fence. This platform, by nature so strong, was probably intended for a pasture for cattle. At the other or south end is also a platform, 20 feet or 10 feet below the level of the first ward, and now occupied by a cottage. Here was the entrance, which probably was covered by some sort of tower, protected in advance by a palisade.

Scanty as are the remains of this castle, it may safely be concluded that they present no masonry of Norman date, whether early or late. The plan of the works is, of course, dictated by the natural outline of the rock, and it therein resembles Bere, though that is a little earlier than Henry III., and Dolforwyn, probably a work of that king’s reign. Henry III.’s border castles had no keep. They were mostly mere enclosures, the curtains being set rather thick with towers.

Altogether this castle, as it now stands, seems to be the new castle referred to by Henry III., and built early in his reign, nor is there any trace of any earlier work, although there is every reason to believe that such there was, and that it or they stood on this site. Moreover, as to these earlier works, tempting as is the position, there is nothing in the way of earthwork upon it which can be safely attributed either to the Welsh or the English. That Earl Roger constructed a castle of some kind at or near the present site is certain, and it is very improbable indeed that with a position so convenient, and made so strong by nature, he should have selected any other, nor is there in the immediate neighbourhood any trace of any other work likely to have been constructed later than the Conquest.

It has been mentioned that the borough of Montgomery had licence, in the reign of Henry III., to enclose the town within a wall and ditch, and although gates and ditches do not necessarily imply the more costly addition of a wall of masonry, it is certain that the town was fortified, and Mr. Sandford’s view of 1610 shows a wall including an area somewhat wider than the present town, and, what is very unusual, this wall includes the castle, instead of the castle forming a part of the circuit. No traces of any wall of masonry are known to exist, but outside it, to the west, and at the foot of the slopes of the castle, is a bank with a ditch, looking very much like a local dyke of the age of that of Offa, but which is reputed to be what remains of the town wall. The curious thing is that this dyke, which, while opposite to the castle is commanded and therefore strengthened by the castle rock, passes southwards along the steep slope of an opposite hill, and is there commanded from the outside, and would be utterly untenable. This is often the case with Offa’s dyke, which, though laid out with a bank and outer ditch, was really rather a boundary than intended at every point for defence. Its defence was obviously the general fear of the Mercian power, rather than the apprehension of an armed force at every point along its line. It may be that the town wall was placed upon this bank, but the bank itself seems older and part of an earlier boundary.

For the plan and section of the castle and castle rock which accompany this paper, and add materially to any little value that it may possess, the author and his readers are indebted to the skill and kindness of Mr. Mikleburgh, of Montgomery.