Castle End is one of those scattered portions of the town that surprise the stranger. He thinks, time and again, that he has seen all Kenilworth, but there is always some more of it. You bear to the left and descend to a broad watersplash that crosses the road beneath densely overarching trees. The people of Kenilworth cling tightly to the preservation of their watersplash, and for several reasons: it is highly picturesque and keeps them in touch with the last elfin echoes of that Romance I have spoken of; the building of a bridge would cost them considerably; and finally they would lose the amusement and speculative interest which has latterly been added to it in these automobile times, when a motor-car may or may not succeed in getting through. For the watersplash is rather a sudden apparition to the motorist strange to the place, and it is a very variable thing. Sometimes it will be a shallow trickle across the road, and at others, when rain has fallen, it will be broad and deep. This is when the people of Kenilworth love to gather on the narrow footbridge at the side and smoke a quiet cigarette, waiting for the coming of the motorist who will presently be in difficulties. It is something of a problem how to pass at such times. If you rush it, as most are tempted to do, you get through at the cost of being swamped with the tremendous spray thrown up; and if you go gently you are probably brought to an inglorious standstill in mid-stream, with the ignominious necessity of wading out and procuring assistance. In any event, an engrossing spectacle is provided.
Once through this ford, you come up to the Castle entrance, on the left. It is a pleasant old part that looks on to the scene of so much feudal state and bygone warlike doings. A group of old red brick and timber cottages, their red brick of the loveliest geranium redness, looks upon a kind of village green. They lean at all kinds of angles, their roofs have skylines like the waves of a troubled sea, in front of each one is a little forecourt garden, and they all supply teas and sell picture-postcards. I do not know what the inhabitants of them do in the winter. Perhaps they come up to London and spend their gains in mad revelry.
It is a hungry and a thirsty business, “doing” Kenilworth Castle conscientiously, and the people of Castle Green and elsewhere in this village-town find their account therein. Even those visitors who do not conscientiously “do” it—and they are by far the larger number, both because most have not the intellectual equipment necessary, and because in the rest the weakness of the flesh prevails over the willingness of the spirit—find copious refreshment necessary. There is in fact, a great deal to be seen, and the interest is sustained throughout. Viewed in a commercial way, it is a very good sixpennyworth. Personally, I consider Ludlow Castle to be somewhat the superior of Kenilworth, and to hold the premier position for a ruined castle; but Kenilworth is first in the estimation of many. It does not make the effective picture that Ludlow forms, crowning its rocky bluff above the river Teme; for Kenilworth stands in perhaps the weakest situation that ever was selected for an ancient fortress, its ruined walls rising from low-lying meadows, and at a distance having the appearance rather of some huge dismantled mansion than a castle.
It is quite easy to deduce the existence of some Saxon lord, Chenil or Kenelm, whose weorth this was, but he is not an historical personage. The first important historic fact that remains to us is the gift of the manor by Henry the First to Geoffrey de Clinton in 1122, but what he found here in the nature of a castle, or what he may have built is alike unknown. From the grandson of this Geoffrey, King John appears to have taken a lease and to have added many outworks to the then existing castle keep, which still remains. That evil figure in English history, travelling almost incessantly about his kingdom, watchful and tyrannical, seems to have been much at Kenilworth, enlarging the bounds of the Castle beyond the original Saxon mound on which the keep and the inner ward are placed, inventing strong dungeons for his victims, and constructing those outer walls which still look out, beyond the original moat. Thus the Castle grew to four times the area it had at first occupied, and as it could not be strengthened by steep approaches, it was safeguarded by artificially constructed water defences. The fortification of Kenilworth Castle was indeed a wonderful triumph of mediæval military engineering over the disabilities of an unsatisfactory site, and it enabled the disaffected nobles and others in the next reign to sustain a six months’ siege ending only in their surrender through a plague which had broken out among the garrison.
We can still see the nature of these defences, for although the water has been drained away, the circuit of the outer walls, from the Swan Tower on Clinton Green, round to Mortimer’s Tower, the Water Tower, and Lunn’s Tower remains perfect, and marks where the defences on two sides of the Castle enclosure skirted a great lake formed by damming back two small confluent brooks in the hollow meadows in which the Castle stands. The outer walls, now looking upon pastures where cattle graze, then descended sheer into the water; a flight of steps leading down from a postern gate still remaining to show where a boat could then have been launched. This lake was half a mile long, from 90 to 100 yards broad, and from 10 to 12 feet deep.
The siege of 1266 tried the strength of this strong place. The great Simon de Montfort, who fell at the Battle of Evesham in 1265, had been granted the Castle in 1254. He died in the popular cause, fighting against Henry the Third, and his defeated army hurried to Kenilworth. They found no immediate opposition, and garrisoned the place at leisure, being joined there by many powerful adherents and heaping up enormous stores for a lengthy resistance. Both sides knew it would be a stubborn and difficult affair. The King tried at first to come to terms with the garrison, but he does not appear to have gone about it in the most tactful way. It is true that he was prepared to allow the rebels to compound for pardon with a fine, supposing they did so within forty days, but to “pardon” those who think they are in the right and who are still in arms to assert their rights and redress their grievances, seems an unlikely way to end a dispute. The Church was opposed to the popular side, as may always confidently be expected, and helped the King’s cause by damning the insurgents and preparing the tremendous document known to history as the “Dictum de Kenilworth,” otherwise “the Ban.” This was read and published in the church of St. Mary, Warwick. It proclaimed the supreme will of the King, and, inter alia, forbade the people to regard the dead hero and popular idol, de Montfort, as the saint and martyr they were already declaring him to be. The garrison received this with contempt, and the long siege began. Robert of Gloucester, who records it in eloquent but rugged lines, is too quaint and amusing not to be quoted—
“The king anon at midsummer, with strength and with gin
To Kenilworth y-went, the castle to win;
He swore he would not thence until he were within.
So long they sped badly that they might as well bliue [272a]
None of their gates those within ever close would.
Open they stood, night and day, come in whoso would.
Out they smite well oft, when men too nigh came,
And slew fast on either half and prisoners name; [272b]
And then bought they them back with ransom. Such life long did last:
With mangonels and engines each upon the other cast.
The Legate and the Archbishop with them also nome; [272c]
Two other bishops, and to Kenilworth come,
To make accord between the King and the disinherited also,
And them of the Castle, if it might be y-do [272d]
But the disinherited would not do all after the King [272e]
Nor they of the Castle any the more, nor stand to their liking, [272f]
The Legate with his red cope amansed tho [272g]
Them that in the castle were, and full many mo [272i]
All that helped them, or were of their rede, [272j]
Or to them consented, in will or in deed.
They of the Castle held it in great despite.
Copes and other cloathes they let make them of white
And Master Philip Porpoise, that was a quaint man,
Clerk, and hardy in his deeds, and their chirurgian,
They made a mock Legate, in this cope of white,
Against the others’ rede, to do the Legate a despite,
And he stood as Legate upon the Castle wall,
And amansed King and Legate and their men all
Such game lasted long among them in such strife,
But much good was it not, to soul or to life.”
There was never another siege of Kenilworth. It passed through many hands, and among others to John o’ Gaunt, whose manors are found numerously, all over the country. In his time the great Banqueting Hall, the most beautiful feature of the Castle, was added, and it became not only a fortress, but a stately palace as well. But the most stately and gorgeous times were yet to be. Robert Dudley, Queen Elizabeth’s favourite, who aspired to become King-Consort, received a grant of it in 1563, and was created Earl of Leicester the following year. The monopolies and rich offices of State showered upon him by the Queen had already made him an enormously wealthy man, and he determined to entertain his Sovereign here with unparalleled splendour. To this end he established an army of workmen here, who treated the place very much in the way adopted by any suddenly enriched millionaire of modern times towards the out-of-date mansion he has purchased. The narrow openings in the massive walls of the Norman keep were enlarged and great mullioned windows inserted; the vast Gatehouse still standing and now used as a private residence was built; and the lofty block of buildings added that still bears his name. Many other works, but of less spectacular nature, were undertaken at this time.
Dudley had known many changes of fortune, and had been a prisoner in the Tower only ten years earlier, with his father and four brothers, on a charge of high treason; narrowly escaping execution. Now an astonishing freak of chance had made him perhaps the most powerful, as well as the wealthiest, man in the country. Sir Walter Scott’s novel, Kenilworth, details Leicester’s magnificence and the unparalleled grandeur of the entertainments given here to Queen Elizabeth in 1575, and introduces his wife Amy Robsart, Lady Robert Dudley, as Countess of Leicester into the scenes of his story. But in 1560, four years before he had received his earldom, his wife had perished mysteriously at Cumnor Place in Berkshire, murdered, it has been supposed, at his instigation, to clear the way for that projected marriage with Queen Elizabeth which never took place. Leicester, when he entertained the Queen here so royally, had no “encumbrances,” to limit his ambitions.
How the Queen was received here and entertained for seventeen days is fully, and on the whole tediously, narrated by a remembrancer then present, but a short extract will tell us something of the quality of these revels. On her Majesty’s approach she was met by a girl in character as “one of the ten sibills, cumly clad in a pall of white sylk,” who recited a “proper poezie in English rime and meeter, the which her Majestie benignly accepted and passed foorth unto the next gate of the Brayz, which for the length, largenes, and use, they call now the Tylt-Yard; whear a porter, tall of person, and wrapt also in sylke, with a club and keiz of quantitee according, had a rough speech full of passions, in meeter aptly made to the purpose.” Presently when the Queen came to the inner gate “a person representing the Lady of the Lake, famous in King Arthurz Book, with two Nymphes waiting uppon her, arrayed all in sylks, attended her highness comming,” the Lady of the Lake then coming ashore from the moat, and reciting a “well-penned meeter.” After this, coming to the Castle gate, a Latin poem was read to her by a poet clad in a “long ceruleous Garment, with a Bay Garland on his head, and a skrol in his hand. So, passing into the inner court, her Majesty, (that never rides but alone) thear set doun from her palfrey, was conveied up to her chamber, when after did follo a great peal of Gunz and lightning by Fyr work.”