[381] “Advocatio ecclesie de Gillingeham data fuit abbati [sic] de S. Edwardo in escambium pro terra ubi castellum de Corf positum est.” Testa de Nevill, 164b.
[382] It is by no means certain that Corfe was the scene of Edward’s murder, as we learn from a charter of Cnut (Mon. Ang., iii., 55) that there was a Corfe Geat not far from Portisham, probably the place now called Coryates.
[383] Called by Asser a castellum; but it has already been pointed out that castellum in early writers means a walled town and not a castle. (See [p. 25].) Wareham is a town fortified by an earthen vallum and ditch, and is one of the boroughs of the Burghal Hidage. (See Ch. II, [p. 28].) A Norman castle was built there after the Conquest, and its motte still remains. D. B. says seventy-three houses were utterly destroyed from the time of Hugh the Sheriff. I., 75.
[384] Edred granted “to the religious woman, Elfthryth,” supposed to be the Abbess of Shaftesbury, “pars telluris Purbeckinga,” which would include Corfe. Mon. Ang., ii., 478.
[385] Both these kings spent large sums on Corfe Castle. See the citations from the Pipe Rolls in Hutchins’ Dorset, vol. i., and in Mr Bond’s History of Corfe Castle.
[386] See Professor Baldwin Brown’s paper in the Journal of the Institute of British Architects, Third Series, ii., 488, and Mr Micklethwaite’s in Arch. Journ., liii., 338; also Professor Baldwin Brown’s remarks on Corfe Castle in The Arts in Early England, ii., 71.
[387] There are other instances in which the chapel is the oldest piece of mason-work about the castle, as, for example, at Pontefract.
[388] Cited in Hutchins’ Dorset, i., 488, from the Close Rolls.
[389] Close Rolls, i., 178b.
[390] Hutchins’ Dorset, i., 488.