Looking to the character of the country, so charged with traces of early military earthworks, and to the strong and well-defined natural position of Alnwick, it seems probable that it was occupied as a camp by some of the tribes who, from a very remote period, made this Border their battlefield, and whose defences are still visible in eleven distinct earthworks within a very short distance of the town. If so, they would necessarily have placed their defences to the north and east upon the lines of the present castle. The interior eminence would certainly have been their citadel, and the trench, completing their security, would most conveniently have been carried along the general direction of the western front, so as to connect the head of the Bow Burn with the Alne, and thus complete the seclusion of the peninsula. Such a site, so defended, was not uncommonly adopted or constructed by the Northmen and Saxons when they became settled, and they would have placed the timber and palisaded mansion of their thane upon the central entrenched knoll.
Probably the Norman Gilbert Tison, of cloudy memory, who is the reputed pioneer of the Conquest in these wild regions, found and contented himself with some early kind of timber fortress, for the earliest traces of masonry that remain in situ or have been extracted from the walls, though Norman, are of late character, and attributable to Eustace Fitzjohn, who married Beatrix, daughter and heir of Ivo de Vesci, who is thought to have married Tison’s daughter. Eustace, called De Vesci, flourished under Henry I. and Stephen, and died in 1157. He was a likely man to have constructed a great castle, being a baron of considerable power, sheriff of Northumberland, and founder of the abbeys of Alnwick and, in Yorkshire, of Malton. Also he must have felt the want of a strong place, for in his days, in 1135, Alnwick Castle was taken by David I., of Scotland, in the interest of the Empress Maud.
Eustace no doubt built in the first half of the twelfth century a polygonal clustered keep upon the knoll, gave it the gateway we still see, and placed his residence within. Traces of his walls are said by Mr. Tate to have been discovered when the last rebuilding was being executed. No doubt also he cleared out the moat round the keep. To him also must be attributed the general wall of the enceinte, and possibly the ditch outside it; and this would have been strengthened by mural towers, many of which must have stood where their successors are now placed. De Vesci’s work is indicated by the stones being mostly square blocks of moderate size, laid in courses, but in beds more or less wavy, as though the mason used neither line nor level. The joints are open. Beyond question De Vesci constructed a castle in keeping with his wealth, and worthy of the chief baron of the Border.
In July, 1174, William the Lion, on his way back from an invasion of Cumberland, found himself, to his surprise, before Alnwick. William, son of Eustace de Vesci, attacked him. He was unhorsed, captured, and sent into England, and beyond sea, to prison. Eustace, son of William, succeeded in 1190, and was visited by King John, 12th February, 1201, and 24th April, 1209, when the king received at the castle the homage of Alexander, king of Scotland. Four years later, May 14th, John ordered Philip de Ulecote to demolish the castle of Alnwick—a mandate which could scarcely have been obeyed, seeing the king himself was there 28th January, 1213, and 11th January, 1216, no doubt unwelcome visits, for Eustace was a Magna Charta baron. He met his death from an arrow before Barnard Castle in the last year of King John. Henry III. visited Alnwick 23rd September, 1256, and Edward I. was the guest of John de Vesci there 30th April and 1st May, and 16th and 17th August, 1291, and 16th August and 13th and 18th December, 1292; and again 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 25th, 26th, and 27th September, 1296; and 26th and 29th June, 1298.
The Barons de Vesci became extinct in 1297, by the death of William, seventh Baron, when the castle and barony were acquired, it is said, to the fraudulent exclusion of the natural son, by Antony Bec, the warlike Bishop of Durham, by whom, in 1309, 3 Edward II., they were sold to Henry de Percy, the representative of a warlike family, whose advent forms an important era in the history of the Border. Percy, as the leader of the Northern barons, made Alnwick his residence, and although in possession only for five years, seems to have rebuilt much of the fabric, the rest being completed by his son of the same name.
The Percy Castle, laid out nearly upon the Norman lines, presented very nearly the appearance of the present structure. The authorship of the Edwardian part of the inner gatehouse is established by the escutcheon of Clifford on its walls, the second Henry de Percy having married a lady of that house. To the first half of this fourteenth century may be attributed, as has already been pointed out in detail, nearly all the leading features of the castle, as it stood at the incoming of the first Duke of the present family. The Percies, though they maintained the reputation of Alnwick as the great Border fortress during nearly four centuries, do not appear to have materially altered the fabric of the two earliest lords. They received here Edward II. in 1311 and 1322, and Edward III. in 1335; but the later earls were much at Petworth and in Yorkshire; and upon the death of the eighth earl, in 1537, and the attainder of his brother, the family ceased to reside at Alnwick, and the castle was neglected. The Percy line ended in Elizabeth, daughter of Jocelyn, the eleventh earl, who, 30th May, 1682, married Charles, Duke of Somerset. Of their children, two had issue, Algernon and Catherine, who married Sir Wm. Wyndham, and eventually conveyed to that family the Percy estates at Petworth, Egremont, and Leconfield.
Algernon Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and by creation Earl of Northumberland, left one child, Elizabeth Seymour, who inherited Alnwick, and married Sir Hugh Smithson, created Duke of Northumberland, and ancestor of the present family.
A survey of Alnwick in 1567 shows the decay then to have been very considerable, and as the Seymour lords preferred their paternal residence, Alnwick became almost a ruin. From this it was redeemed by the first duke, who, under the advice of Adam, restored, and in part rebuilt, the keep; and although he fitted up the interior with plaster and frippery, made the exterior sound and good, and, on the whole, in keeping with the character of the place, and with what remained of the ancient buildings.
Matters so remained until the accession of Duke Algernon, better known as Lord Prudhoe, a naval officer and a good man of business, who had travelled much and possessed a cultivated taste, and was of a truly noble and magnificent disposition. While foremost in works of public usefulness connected with his estates, county, and profession, and careful to drain his lands, rebuild the cottages of his labourers, restore the local churches, and provide lifeboats for his dangerous coast, he, under the sound advice of Mr. Salvin, almost rebuilt the castle, preserving with scrupulous care all that admitted of preservation, and adapting his new work to the period of the first and second Percy, the founders of the later castle. Having thus restored the great fortress of the Border with strict regard to the rules of military architecture, he proceeded, under the advice of Canina, to fit up the interior in the style of an Italian palace. The contrast afforded is certainly extreme, and the attempt on so costly a scale was hardy; but the adaptation of the fittings to the irregular plan of the rooms is so well conceived, the materials employed are so rich, and the execution of the details is so skilful, that it is difficult to regard even so great an incongruity as other than a distinguished success.
Much attention has of late years been paid, and by very competent persons, to the history of this castle. Grose gives some particulars, now very valuable; but this and the castles of Warkworth and Prudhoe have been illustrated by the late Mr. Hartshorne, and are treated of also by him with great success in the Northumberland volume of the Archæological Institute. More recently, Mr. Tate has handled the subject of Alnwick Castle with both skill and accuracy in his admirable history of the barony of Alnwick. And finally, in the “Life of William Rufus,” Mr. Freeman has touched lightly but very effectively upon the connexion of Alnwick and its lords with Northumbrian history. In the above sketch free use has, to some extent, been made of the above materials; but the object of the writer has been to treat solely of the fabric of the castle, and that from a military point of view.