Translation.
It chanced that in a town called Merchem, Bishop John had a guest-house. There was also close to the court of the church a strong place, which might be regarded as a castle or a municipium, very lofty, built after the fashion of the country by the lord of the town many years ago. For it was customary for the rich men and nobles of those parts, because their chief occupation is the carrying on of feuds and slaughters, in order that they may in this way be safe from enemies, and may have the greater power for either conquering their equals or keeping down their inferiors, to heap up a mound of earth as high as they were able, and to dig round it a broad, open, and deep ditch, and to girdle the whole upper edge of the mound, instead of a wall, with a barrier of wooden planks, stoutly fixed together with numerous turrets set round. Within was constructed a house or rather citadel, commanding the whole, so that the gate of entry could only be approached by a bridge, which first springing from the counterscarp of the ditch, was gradually raised as it advanced, supported by sets of piers, two, or even three, trussed on each side over convenient spans, crossing the ditch with a managed ascent so as to reach the upper level of the mound, landing at its edge on a level at the threshold of the gate.
In this retreat the bishop with his numerous and reverend retinue, after having confirmed a vast crowd of people both in the church and its court, by laying on of hands and the unction of the sacred chrism, returned to his lodging that he might change his vestments, because he had resolved to consecrate a cemetery for the burial of the bodies of believers. When, in again descending from his lodging, in order to effect the proposed work, he halted for some reason about the middle of the bridge, which had there a height of thirty-five feet or more, the people pressing behind and before, and on each side, straightway, the malice of the old enemy so contriving, the bridge yielded to the weight and fell shattered; and the crowd with the bishop fell to the bottom with a great crash of joists, beams, and planks, with great force and noise, while a thick dust at once enveloped the ruin so that scarce any one could see what had happened.
The following is also curious:—
(Ludovicus Grossus, a.d. 1109.) “Puteolum regreditur antiquam antecessorum suorum destitutam Motam castro jactu lapidis propinquam, occupat. Castrum fundibalariorum, balistariorum, saggitariorum, emissa pericula sustinentes; etc.”
CHAPTER III.
OF THE CASTLES OF ENGLAND AT THE CONQUEST AND UNDER THE CONQUEROR.
IT has usually been assumed that the rapidity of William’s conquest was due to the absence of strong places in England. There is, however, ground for believing that England, in this respect, was exceedingly well provided,—quite as well provided as Normandy; and that, with the possible exception of a very few recently-constructed strongholds, the works in the two countries were very similar in character. The older sites of the castles of the barons in Normandy are nearly all ascertained, and are for the most part distinguished by a moated mound with an appended court or courts also moated. This simple and very effective form of defence has been shown to have been in use among the Northern nations, invaders both of England and the Continent, and in the ninth and tenth centuries was as common on the banks of the Thames, the Humber, and the Severn, as on those of the Seine and the Orne. It was in the eleventh century, and chiefly during the troubles attendant upon the accession and minority of Duke William, that the Normans seem to have adopted a new and more permanent description of fortress, and the old-fashioned structure of timber began to be replaced by walls and towers in masonry, and especially by keeps of that material. Of these the best-known, because the most durable, form was the rectangular, of which not above half a dozen examples can be shown with certainty to have been constructed in Normandy before the latter part of the eleventh century, and but very few, if any, before the English conquest; nor is there known to be in Normandy any specimen of the polygonal or circular form of keep as early as that event. De Caumont, indeed, attributes the rectangular keep of Langeais, in which brick is largely used, to the year 992; but there is great reason to doubt this conclusion, and Du Pin and St. Laurent are probably among the oldest of this form, and do not seem to be earlier than the reign of Duke William; and this is true also of Arques and Nogent-le-Rotrou. In Normandy, as in England, the polygonal or shell keep, though on the older site, seems usually to be in masonry, which is the later construction; that of Gisors was built by Robert de Belesme in 1097, and that of Carentan at about the same time. Many even of the most considerable mounds, as Briquessart and Vieux-Conches, show no trace of masonry. The shell keep of Plessis-Grimoult was held by De Caumont to have been constructed before 1047; but if this be so, it is certainly a singular exception. Castle-building in Normandy seems to have preceded the English conquest, if at all, by but a very few years.
The Romans left behind them in Britain many walled towns; but it is not known to what extent these defences were preserved by the Northmen, or in what condition they found them. At the conquest, Chester, Lincoln, Exeter, Hereford, Leicester, Oxford, Stafford, and Colchester, seem to have been already walled, and the walls of Exeter had been repaired or rebuilt by Æthelstan. Canterbury, Nottingham, and York were defended by a ditch. There were also probably some others, and possibly a few military towers in masonry of English workmanship; but there is no evidence of there having been anything like a rectangular keep, notwithstanding the special mention in 1052 of Richard’s Castle, the work of Richard, the son of Scrob. There is no reason to suppose that it possessed a tower of that character, which would have been quite out of keeping with the moated mound which even now marks the spot, and upon which the remains of the shell keep are still to be seen. Still less had the English any shell keeps constructed in masonry. What there really was in the way of military masonry and what was its character are not so clear. It was said of Dover, by William of Poictiers, that it was by Harold “studio atque sumptu suo communitum,” and that there were “item per diversa loca illius terræ alia castra ubi voluntas Ducis ea firmari jubet”; also in the account of the advance of William from Canterbury it is added, “Veniens ... ad fractam turrim castra metatus est,” pointing to a work in masonry, though no doubt it might, as at York, be Roman. Arundel, named in “Domesday” as having been a castle in the reign of the Confessor, was probably, from the size of its mound and the depth of its ditches, as strong as any castle of its type in Normandy; but no masonry has been observed there, either upon or about the mound, of a date earlier than the Conquest, if as early.
That there existed in England, at the Conquest, no castles in masonry of English work it may be too much to assert; but it may safely be said that, save a fragment of wall at Corfe, no military masonry decidedly older than that event has as yet been discovered. In 1052, when the Confessor and Earl Godwin came to terms, and the attack on London was set aside, it is stated that Archbishop Robert and his Frenchmen fled, some westward to Pentecost Castle and some northwards to Robert’s Castle; so that these places probably, like Richard’s Castle, were in Norman hands, though it does not follow that they were constructed of the material or in the fashion then coming into use in Normandy.
“Domesday” mentions directly forty-nine castles as existing at the date of the survey, and of these at least thirty-three were on sites far older than the Conquest; and of them at least twenty-eight possessed artificial mounds similar to Arundel and the castles in Normandy. “Domesday,” however, is notoriously capricious both in its entries and omissions on such matters as were not included in its proper view, and its list of castles is nearly as incomplete as its list of churches. Neither were required to be noted. “Of the forty-nine castles recorded,” says Sir H. Ellis, “eight are known, either on the authority of ‘Domesday’ or of our old historians, to have been built by the Conqueror himself; ten are entered as erected by greater barons, and one by an under-tenant of Earl Roger; eleven more, of whose builders we have no particular account, are noticed in the ‘Survey,’ either expressly or by inference, as new.” The fact is, however, that although the number of castles actually mentioned may be only forty-nine, of castles and castelries (which imply a castle) there are named in “Domesday” fifty-two. The castles reputed to have been built by the Conqueror himself are Lincoln, Rockingham, Wareham, two castles at York, Dover, Durham, London, and Nottingham, of which the last four are not mentioned in “Domesday.” Exeter, also omitted, is generally reputed to be one of William’s castles, as was Stafford; which, however, was constructed and destroyed before the date of the survey. “Terra de Stadford in qua rex percepit fieri castellum, quod modo est destructum,” a very short period for the construction and destruction of a work in masonry. Mr. Pearson, who has given great attention to the subject of Norman castles in England, tabulates the result of his researches in the atlas attached to his “History.” He there enumerates, as standing in the reign of the Conqueror, forty-nine castles belonging to the King and fifty to his subjects. Of these, at least thirty-eight have mounds. He gives also a list of fifty-three belonging to private persons in the reign of William Rufus, of which at least five have mounds. Probably there were of each class many more than these. Colchester, for example, is not included, nor Farnham, nor Berkhampstede.
Of the ninety-nine castles enumerated by Mr. Pearson as belonging to the reign of the Conqueror, at least fifty are on old sites. These are Arundel, Berkeley, Bramber, Cambridge, Carisbrook, Chester, Clare, Clifford, Caerleon, Coningsburgh, Dover, Durham, Dunster, Dudley, Eye, Ewias, Guildford, Hastings, Huntingdon, Launceston, Leicester, Lincoln, Lewes, L’wre, Marlborough, Montacute, Norwich, Oxford, Pevensey, Pontefract, Quatford, Raleigh, Richard’s Castle, Rochester, Rockingham, Shrewsbury, Striguil, Stafford, Stamford, Tickhill, Tonbridge, Trematon, Tutbury, Wigmore, Windsor, Wallingford, Wareham, Warwick, Worcester, and York. Almost as many are doubtful, and probably not more than two or three, such as Richmond, London, and possibly Malling, were altogether new. The fact is, that all these lists, however valuable they may be as showing what castles were taken possession of or re-edified or strengthened by the Normans, give no adequate idea of the fortresses already existing in England, and omit scores of earthworks as large and as strong as those occupied by the Normans in England or left behind them in Normandy, of a date long before the reign of William,—probably before the end of the tenth century. If, as said by William of Newbury, the castles were the bones of the kingdom, it must be admitted that the English skeleton was a very perfect one. Every part of England, much of Scotland, and the accessible parts of the Welsh border, were covered with strong places, which were, no doubt, defended, and well defended, with palisades, as more suitable to made ground than work in masonry such as was more or less in use for ecclesiastical purposes. If, at the Conquest, no English stronghold held out, it was not that such places were less capable of defence than those in Normandy, but that England was broken up into parties. Harold’s seat was too insecure and the few months of his reign far too brief to allow his great administrative talents to come into play; and his early death left the English without a leader. The power of the other earls was local. There was no organised opposition. Notwithstanding the assertion of Orderic that the English were mere tillers of the soil, a convivial and drinking race, they by no means submitted quietly to the Norman rule; but their efforts for freedom, boldly devised and gallantly executed, were ill-timed and ill-combined, and were in consequence put down in detail. Under such circumstances, the strongholds of the country availed little. Dover, Lewes, Arundel, Bramber, Tonbridge, Rochester, Guildford, Farnham, Wallingford, and Berkhampstede, had their strong earthworks been held in force, would have rendered William’s advance too imprudent to have been attempted; and that these and other not far distant positions were well chosen is shown by the fact that they were all adopted by the Conqueror. The conquest of England was made possible, not by the absence of strong places, but by the want of organisation for their defence.