Southsea Castle, which owes its origin, as do so many other similar fortresses along the south coast, to King Henry VIII, was already in existence when Leland paid the place his visit. It was built about 1540, and in that time was probably accurately described by him as a “ryghte goodlye and warlyke castill.” Here Leland’s spelling varies from that of his own when describing other castles. But spelling in those days was often not an author’s strong point. The castle, to which Henry paid several visits, seems to have served its purpose for about a century after its erection, as it was immune from attack; but in 1626 it fell a partial victim to fire and had to be rebuilt.
The most stirring period of its history is that of the Civil War, when Colonel Goring was supposed to be holding the town for King Charles. Its armament for those days was fairly strong, consisting as it did of a dozen 12-pounders and other smaller pieces, besides a good supply of “hand guns, pikes, swords and other weapons of offense.” The Governor was a Captain Chaloner, who, on the night when the Parliamentarians came to attack it, had spent the evening in the town carousing with Colonel Goring and returned to his post the worse for drink, and had to be awakened out of sleep on the approach of Parliamentarians to the attack. He promptly made the best terms for himself that he could, and even went the length of drinking confusion to the King. Gallant Colonel Goring made an attempt to retake the place, but meantime it had been strongly garrisoned and so successfully resisted the Royalist attack. The capture of the castle sealed the fate of the town, which had been besieged for a month.
For a second time in its history, rather more than a century later, the danger was to come from within. In the year 1759 some soldiers were filling cartridges by the aid, it is supposed, of a “naked light,” when the open powder barrels exploded, with the result that the castle was almost destroyed. It was, however, once more rebuilt and afterwards was used as a prison. At the time of the dreaded Napoleonic invasion the Government of the day, realizing the importance of the place from a strategical point of view, made several additions, and strengthened it materially, amongst other things fortifying the ramparts. Nowadays it is not possible to speak very authoritatively of its strength; but its usefulness has since the beginning of the nineteenth century been from time to time assured by additional armament and works.
The records of Portsmouth and its Harbour have not always been creditable. There have been mutinies, treasonable firing of the dockyard, and even assassinations in its streets, stirring the inhabitants to the core, and leading at the time to much excitement and gossip.
The most tragic event in the town’s history was the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham whilst he was at Portsmouth engaged in gathering together a second force for the relief of La Rochelle, then besieged by Cardinal Richelieu.
The house in High Street in which the Duke was fatally stabbed by the fanatic, John Felton, on August 23, 1628, although much altered, is still standing. One thing should be noted. The house was never (as has been frequently stated) an inn named “Ye Spotted Dog,” but a private residence, at that time owned by a Captain Mason, then Governor of Southsea Castle, who afterwards became famous as the founder of the town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, U.S.A. The assassin, who struck down the King’s favourite after the Duke had become unpopular on account of his arrogance and two unsuccessful wars undertaken at his instigation, was a lieutenant in a foot regiment. It is supposed that, being overlooked for promotion and arrears of pay due to him, somewhat preyed upon and may even have unhinged his mind. Be it as it may, on a fine August morning he gained entrance to the Duke’s temporary residence, and, finding him standing in the hall, as he was about to start to visit the King at Southwick, he stabbed him. So swift and silent was the blow that for some moments no one recognized the murderer. “Then amid great confusion, and the piercing shrieks of the Duchess and her maid, Felton stepped forward and acknowledged the crime.”
It was with difficulty that he was saved from immediate execution, but the reprieve was not for long. He was, however, for the time protected and taken to London for trial. He was executed at Tyburn on November 26 in the same year, and his dead body was exhibited as a warning on Southsea Beach. The site of the gibbet where Felton hung rotting in chains is near Clarence Pier.
He must have been a man of resource and some considerable daring, for when he was promised the rack by the Earl of Dorset if he did not disclose the names of his supposed accomplices, he successfully put an end to the possibility of his being racked by declaring that if put to the torture the first name he would mention would be that of the Earl of Dorset himself!
Viewed in the light of the present day, another crime, though a judicial one, committed at Portsmouth was the execution of Admiral Byng “for not having done his utmost to take, seize and destroy the ships of the enemy” during an engagement with the French off Minorca on May 20, 1756. Latter day historians appear agreed that at most his was an error of judgement; but in those times the nation generally was subject to what modern writers term “nerves,” and just then popular feeling would scarcely brook the news, let alone the fact, of a defeat or a drawn battle. Be that as it may, the Admiral was brought to trial, condemned, and on a bleak March morning in 1757, “when the sea and sky were grey as though in dudgeon at the crime,” he knelt blindfolded upon the deck of the Monarque at Spithead, and, after letting fall his handkerchief, fell pierced by five bullets. He was less a criminal than one of those periodic scapegoats sacrificed to veil the errors of greater and more powerful men. Voltaire gives a cynical account of the episode in his Candide, remarking, amongst other things, that if Byng did not approach near enough the French, neither did they draw near him, adding that in England it was thought advisable to shoot an Admiral now and then to encourage the rest!
Less than twenty years later the dockyard had a narrow escape from destruction by fire. In the year 1776 James Aitken, known as “Jack the Painter,” set alight to one of the sheds, happily with little result as regards damage done. Arson in those days, in fact until the middle of the last century, was a capital crime, and Aitken was condemned and duly hanged by being strung up to the masthead of the Arethusa sixty feet in the air, and afterwards was hung in chains near the mouth of the harbour. A lurid sidelight upon the doings and morals of those times is afforded by the circumstance that the skeleton was ultimately stolen by some sailors and pledged in satisfaction on a drink bill at one of the Gosport inns. “Truly,” says a somewhat censorious writer of the period, “these sailormen being neither better nor worse than the soldier men neither fear God nor man.”