When, in 1139, Stephen’s change of policy lost him the support of the clergy, led by his ambitious brother the Bishop of Winchester, his first blow was struck at the episcopal castles. Of these, the Devizes, Sherborne, and Malmesbury belonged to Bishop Roger of Sarum. Malmesbury, an episcopal encroachment upon the adjacent Abbey, was wholly the Bishop’s work, and is now utterly destroyed. Sherborne, a very ancient episcopal seat, still retains its early earthworks, and a keep and gatehouse, the work of Bishop Roger; and although of the Devizes there remain but a few fragments of its circular keep, the earthworks (the grandest in England) show that it may well have deserved its great reputation. These Stephen seized upon, and he also took Newark-upon-Trent, still admired for its lofty and extended front, and for its magnificent Norman entrance. With Newark fell Sleaford, both built by Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, nephew of Bishop Roger, and also a great builder of castles. Sleaford is utterly demolished, and being entirely post-conquestal, had scarcely any earthworks to preserve its memory.
Among the events of this important year were the taking of Nottingham and Marlborough Castles by Stephen; his attack on Ludlow; the appearance on the scene of his rival, the Empress Matilda; and his siege of Arundel, in which castle she took refuge with D’Albini and Queen Adeliza his wife. Nottingham is gone. Of Marlborough only a fine mound remains, upon which stood its circular keep. Much of Ludlow, especially its rectangular keep, played a part in Stephen’s siege, as did a part of the existing exterior wall, whence the grappling-hook was thrown by which the King was hooked, and was being dragged up to its battlements, when he was rescued by the Scottish Prince Henry. Arundel preserves its earthworks pretty much as they must have appeared in the reign of the Confessor; and with its shell-keep on its mound, and the original gatehouse at its foot, gives to the modern visitor a fair notion of the appearance of the defences before which Stephen pitched his camp. It was also in 1139 that De Redvers, returning to England, landed under the Conqueror’s castle of Wareham, on the margin of the Poole water. From Wareham he proceeded to Corfe, a seat of the Kings of Mercia, where he was besieged by Stephen.
It was during this period of the war between Stephen, Matilda, and the Church party, that were constructed the multitude of unlicensed castles (“castra adulterina”) employed not merely for the security of the builders, but to enable them to prey upon their neighbours with impunity. Nothing could well be worse than the circumstances under which these castles were built, and the purposes for which they were employed. “Stephen,” says John of Tynemouth, quoted by Dugdale, “concessit ut quilibet procerum suorum munitionem, seu castrum, in proprio fundo facere posset.” William of Jumieges and Malmesbury compare the times to those of Normandy during the minority of Duke William; and other writers declare the state of England to have resembled that of Jerusalem during the Roman siege. There was no rule and no responsibility. The unhappy peasants were forced to labour in the construction of the strongholds of tyranny. It would seem that these castles were built with great rapidity, and with but little expenditure of labour upon earthworks, for in the next reign they were destroyed without difficulty, and scarcely any of their sites are now to be recognised. They were the work of the lesser barons, probably with the connivance of their chief lords, or even of Stephen and Matilda, who were little scrupulous as to the terms on which they accepted assistance. This multiplication of castles without the licence of the sovereign was no novelty, and was forbidden on the Continent by the celebrated “Edictum Pistense” of Charles the Bald in 864, already cited.
Another irregularity was the admission to the title of earl of several persons unfitted to receive so great an honour, and whose only claim to distinction was that they were leaders of mercenaries. Stephen was not in a condition to endow all of them with the third penny of the revenues of a county, the usual appanage of an earl. Many of the earls created by Stephen stood, however, in a very different position. Such were Geoffrey de Mandeville, Lord of Plessy and Walden, who accepted the Earldom of Essex from both parties; Alberic de Vere, who built the noble keep of Hedingham, and was the first of the long line of the Earls of Oxford; Hugh Bigot, who held the Earldom of Norfolk; Richard de Clare, who held that of Hertford; D’Aumâle, of Yorkshire; Gilbert de Clare, of Pembroke; Robert de Ferrers, of Derby; and probably William de Ypres, the Earldom of Kent. Stephen seems to have created, in all, eight; and the Empress six,—Cambridge, Cornwall, Essex, Hereford, Salisbury, and Somerset.
From Arundel, Matilda, it is said by Stephen’s courtesy, moved to Bristol, where her brother, Robert Earl of Gloucester, held his castle on the marshy confluence of the Frome with the Avon. Robert also at that time held the royal castle of Gloucester, long since destroyed, and a prison built on its site; and he was probably builder also of the shell-keep still standing upon the mound of Cardiff. At that time Matilda’s friends held Dover, with the square keep of Canterbury, placed just within the enceinte of the yet older city ditch, and almost within bowshot of the still more venerable mound of Dane John. Mention is also made of the castles of Trowbridge and Cerne as recently erected. The latter was taken by Stephen by storm, before the attack on Malmesbury. Trowbridge held out with success.
The great event of 1141 was the siege, or rather the battle, of Lincoln. The castle had been surprised, and was held by Ranulph Earl of Chester and his half-brother William de Roumare. As Stephen approached, Earl Ranulph left the place secretly to procure assistance from the Earl of Gloucester. This was afforded, and the two earls, with 10,000 men, some of them Earl Robert’s Welsh followers, crossed the Trent, and found Stephen drawn up to receive them. The result of the battle was the capture of Stephen, and the confirmation of Earl Ranulph in Lincoln Castle. On this Matilda went to her royal castle at Winchester, a part of the defences of the old Venta Belgarum, and characterised by a large mound, now removed. Here Bishop Henry, safe in his rectangular keep of Wolvesey, still standing near the Cathedral, in the opposite angle of the city, treated with her almost as equal with equal, but acknowledged her as Lady of England. Their accord, however, was neither cordial nor of long duration. Upon the Queen’s return, in some discredit, from London, an open quarrel broke out. She attacked Wolvesey, and the Bishop retaliated upon the royal castle with better success.
Under the escort of Brian Fitz-Count and Milo, to whom Matilda had given the Earldom of Hereford and the “Castle and Mote” of that ancient city, she fled from Winchester, Earl Robert guarding her rear. They were pursued. Matilda reached Ludgershall Castle in safety, and then went to the Devizes; but Earl Robert was taken on the way by William of Ypres, and imprisoned in Rochester Castle. Stephen was then a prisoner in Bristol Castle; and in November, 1141, the Earl and King were exchanged. A month later, at the Synod of Westminster, the pains of excommunication were denounced against all who built new castles, or offered violence to the poor,—a significant conjunction.
Stephen’s illness and Earl Robert’s absence in Normandy checked for a short time active hostilities, and meantime Stephen held the Tower of London, and Matilda the castle of Oxford. Late in 1142, Stephen attacked and took Oxford, and blockaded the castle until the winter set in, and the stock of provisions fell short. The Thames was frozen, and the ground covered with snow, by the aid of which Matilda, robed in white, escaped across the river, and fled to Fitz-Count at Wallingford. The castle was then surrendered. Its grand mound is yet untouched; and below it, upon the river, is a large square tower of the eleventh century. Part of the city wall also remains.
Before Reading, Stephen had taken several strong but less important fortresses, such as Bow and Arrow Castle on the Cliff of Portland, which still remains, and Carisbroke, the strength of the Isle of Wight. He took also Lulworth, in Purbeck, represented by a far later residence. Cirencester, which he burned, seems never to have been restored; and Farringdon, built in haste by the Earl of Gloucester, was also swept away. Stephen’s strength, however, lay in London and the east; and that of Matilda about Gloucester and Bristol, and in the west. Stephen also held Pevensey. The great midland barons stood aloof, biding their time. Thus Roger de Bellomont and his brother Waleran, of Meulan, held Leicester with its Roman walls and English earthworks, protected by the meads of the Soar; along the edge of which, and at the foot of the mound, is still seen the Norman Hall, and hard by the stately church of St. Mary de Castro, also in large part Norman. They also held Mount Sorrell, at that time a strong castle built upon a rock of syenite, but now quarried away, both rock and castle, to macadamise the highways of the metropolis. Saher de Quincy was strong about Hinckley, where the early mound, stripped of its masonry (if, indeed, it ever received any), still guards the eastern entrance to the town. The Earl of Chester held Lincoln as his own; and the hill of Belvoir, the cynosure of the Midland, was guarded by the grand shell-keep of Trusbut and De Ros, burned down and rebuilt after a tasteless fashion in our own days.
In 1146, death deprived Matilda of the Earls of Gloucester and Hereford. She retired to Normandy; but her place was taken by the younger Plantagenet, her son. In this year also Stephen availed himself of the presence of the Earls of Chester and Essex at his court to seize their persons, and to force them to render up, the one the castles of Lincoln and Northampton, the other that of Plessy, of which the moated mound and contained church are still seen, and Stansted Montfitchet, now almost merged in a railway station, and which then vied with the old castle of the Bishop of London at Stortford. Walden, also thus gained, is still famous for its earthworks, and for the fragment of its Norman keep, composed, like Bramber and Arques, of flint rubble deprived of its ashlar casing.