The restoration of the castle must have proceeded rapidly, for we find two years later Henry III. made it his headquarters whilst he was gathering his forces together with which to besiege Kenilworth, at that time held for the Barons. In the following reign the fortifications of the castle were repaired and strengthened by the famous Guy de Beauchamp, “the black dog of Arden,” and in the reign of Edward II., in 1312, Piers Gaveston, the Gascon pretender, was brought a prisoner to Warwick, and tried by torchlight in the great hall of the castle, and notwithstanding frenzied entreaties was condemned to death in the presence of the “black dog of Arden” and the Earls of Gloucester, Lancaster, Hereford, and Arundel. Short shrift was the custom in those days, and on the following morning Gaveston was taken to Blacklow Hill, just outside the town, and there executed. An old account of the event states that his head rolled off down the hill into a thicket, where it was picked up by a missionary friar, who, tradition asserts, carried the horrid burden away in his hood. The body of Gaveston was first buried by the friars in their church at Oxford, and it was afterwards exhumed and buried by the King in the then new church at Langley with some pomp.
By a strange change of fortune the fortress that had for a short time confined Edward’s favourite, Piers Gaveston, two years later, on the death of Guy de Beauchamp, was handed over into the custody of the King’s new favourite, Hugh le Despenser, who afterwards in 1326 entertained Edward II. at Warwick.
It was not until the following reign that the outer walls, with some of the towers, including the magnificent piece of military architectural construction known as Cæsar’s Tower, were erected by Thomas de Beauchamp, whose son, also Thomas, built the tower, which was called Guy’s Tower after the traditional warrior of Warwick.
PEEPING TOM, COVENTRY.
The castle has seen the coming and going of many royal guests, and in 1417 its then owner, Richard de Beauchamp, the founder of the beautiful Beauchamp Chapel in St. Mary’s Church, welcomed Henry V. with a state which was magnificent even for the Middle Ages. On the death of Richard de Beauchamp the title and estates passed into the possession of Richard Neville, who, by his marriage with Ann, daughter of Robert de Beauchamp, was by descent also Earl of Salisbury. This man was destined to go down in history under the title of the King Maker. He it was who captured Edward IV. at Wolvey, some ten miles to the north–east of Coventry, and brought him in 1469 as a prisoner to Warwick; afterwards removing him to Middleham in Yorkshire, another of his possessions.
Richard III. stayed at Warwick in 1583, soon after his murder of Edward V. in the Tower of London. The castle afterwards came into possession of the Crown, and it was not until the reign of Edward VI. that it was granted to the Dudley family.
Queen Elizabeth was entertained on two occasions at the castle, in 1572 and in 1575, by Ambrose, known as the “Good” Earl of Dudley, whose tomb is in the Beauchamp Chapel of St. Mary’s Church. There is also a tradition that Amy Robsart was once for a time a guest at Warwick.