Like some cruel ogre of folk-lore the Castle of Corfe has drunk deep of blood. Its strength kept prisoners safely guarded, as well as foes at arm’s length, and many a despairing wretch has been hurried through the now ruined gatehouse, to the muttered “God help him!” of some compassionate warder. Through the great open Outer Ward and steeply uphill between the two gloomy circular drum-towers across the second ward, and thence to the Dungeon Tower at the further left-hand corner of the stronghold, they were taken and thrust into some vile place of little ease, to be imprisoned for a lifetime, to be starved to death, or more mercifully ended by the assassin’s dagger. Twenty-four knights captured in Brittany, in arms against King John, in aid of his nephew, Arthur, were imprisoned here, in 1202, and twenty-two of them met death by starvation in some foul underground hold. Prince Arthur, as every one knows, was blinded by orders of the ruthless king, and Arthur’s sister, Eleanor, was thrown into captivity, first here and then at Bristol, where, after forty years, she died. Thus did monarchs dispose of rivals, and those who aided them, in the “good old days,” and other monarchs, not so ferocious, or not so well able to take care of themselves, stood in danger of tasting the same fare, as in the case of Edward II. imprisoned here and murdered in the dungeons of Berkeley Castle. Sympathies go out to the unhappy captives and victims, but a knowledge of these things tells us that they would have done the same, had opportunity offered and the positions been reversed.
This stronghold held many a humbler prisoner, among them those who had offended in one or other of the easy ways of offence in this, the King’s deer-forest of Purbeck; and many others immured for mere caprice. The place must have reeked with blood and been strewn with bones like a hyæna’s lair.
So much for the domestic history of Corfe Castle. Its last great appearance in the history of the nation was during the civil wars of King and Parliament, when it justified the design of its builders, and proved the excellence of its defences by successfully withstanding two sieges; falling in the second solely by treachery. It had by that time passed through many hands, and had come at last to the Bankes family, by whom it is still owned. It was only eight years before the first siege in this war that the property had been acquired by the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Sir John Bankes, who purchased it from the widow of that celebrated lawyer, Sir Edward Coke, the Coke of “Coke upon Littleton.”
When the civil war broke out, Sir John Bankes, called to the King’s side at York, left his wife and children at their home of Kingston Lacy, near Wimborne Minster, whence, for security from the covert sneers and petty annoyances offered them by the once humbly subservient townsfolk, not slow to note the trend of affairs, they removed in the autumn of 1642 to Corfe Castle, where they spent the winter unmolested.
Although they thus sought shelter here, they probably had no idea of the heights to which the tide of rebellion would rise, and could scarce have anticipated being besieged; but the Parliamentary leaders in the district had their eyes upon a fortress which, already obsolete and the subject of antiquarian curiosity, could yet be made a place of strength, as the sequel was presently to show.
The first attempt to gain possession of the castle was by a subterfuge, ingenious and plausible enough. The Mayor of Corfe had from time immemorial held a stag hunt annually, on May Day, and it was thought that, if on this occasion some additional parties of horse were to attend, and to seize the stronghold under colour of paying a visit, the thing would be done with ease. So probably it would, but for the keen feminine intuition of Lady Bankes, who closed the gates and mounted a guard upon the entrance-towers, so that when those huntsmen came and demanded surrender, scarcely in the manner of visitors, they were at once denied admission, and effectually unmasked. The revolutionary committee sitting at Poole then considered it advisable to despatch a body of sailors, who appeared before the castle, early one morning, to demand the surrender of four small dismounted pieces of cannon with which it was armed. “But,” says the Mercurius Rusticus, a contemporary news-sheet, “instead of delivering them, though at the time there were but five men in the Castle, yet these five, assisted by the maid-servants, at their ladies’ Command, mount these peeces on their carriages againe, and lading one of them they gave fire, which small Thunder so affrighted the Sea-men that they all quitted the place and ran away.”
Operations thus opened, Lady Bankes proved herself a ready and resourceful general. By beat of drum she summoned tenants and friends, who, responding to the number of fifty, garrisoned the fortress for about a week, when a scarcity of provisions, together with threatening letters, and the entreaties of their wives, to whom home and children were more than King or Parliament, or the Bankes family either, made them shamble home again. We should perhaps not be too ready to censure them. Lady Bankes, however, did not despair. A born strategist, she perceived how vitally necessary it was, above all else, to lay in a stock of provisions; and to secure them, and time for her preparations she offered in the meekest way to give up those cannon which, after all, although they made the maximum of noise effected a minimum of harm.
The enemy, pacified by this offer, removed the guns and left the castle alone for a while; thinking its defences weak enough. But it was soon thoroughly provisioned, supplied with ammunition, and garrisoned under the command of one Captain Lawrence, and when the Roundheads of Poole next turned their attention to Corfe, behold! it was bristling like a porcupine with pikes and musquetoons and all those ancient seventeenth-century engines of war, with which men were quaintly done to death—when by some exceptional chance the marksmen earned their name and hit anybody.