The works were stormed by four vigorous assaults. First the barbican was taken, with a loss of four or five of the assailants. Then entrance was effected into the outer ward. This was the work of the men of Dunstable, and was attended with severe loss. In this ward were stored most of the munitions of the place,—arms, horses and harness, cattle, bacon and live hogs. Much forage was here burned, with the houses and sheds in the ward.
The miners next underworked the wall next the old tower, which wall fell. The resistance here appears to have been obstinate, many lives were lost upon the breach, and ten of the most forward assailants were taken and carried into the interior of the place.
Finally, on the vigil of the Assumption, 14th August, about the hour of vespers, the miners having undermined the foundations of the old tower, fired the props. The walls split, the smoke rose, and, the place being no longer tenable, the garrison hoisted the royal banner, and surrendered, sending out De Braibroc with the wife of Falk, and the other women. Next morning the king took possession. William de Breauté and the garrison were put upon their trial, and he and about eighty of his men were hanged out of hand. Three were allowed to join the Templars in Palestine, and the castle chaplain was delivered over to the archbishop as the spiritual power. It appears from the records that the remainder of the garrison escaped with fines and confiscations. The spoil was considerable, in treasure, provisions, and munitions of war. Henry left for Kemeston (Kempston) on the 18th, but was again at Bedford on the 19th, and at Dunstable on the 26th of August. Even when flushed by success he seems not to have been severe upon those not actually implicated. Alice, widow of the executed William de Breauté, was allowed her dower-lands in Bedford and Cumberland. On the 19th and on the 22nd, Margaret, wife of Falk, was allowed for her subsistence the manors of Heyford and Sabridgeworth. Gilbert de Breauté also was allowed a manor; and Falk, the author of all the mischief, had twenty marks allowed for his personal expenses on his way to exile.
Immediately upon the surrender, Henry broke up the siege establishment. Nine hundred quarrels, the residue of the 4,000, were returned to Northampton, and the sheriff of Beds is debited with the remaining iron, charcoal, &c., collected for the siege operations. The mangonels and heavy artillery were to be taken to pieces and returned to Northampton Castle. Various payments were also made and rewards given, chiefly out of the confiscated De Breauté lands. John de Standon, the king’s miner from the Forest of Dean, had land granted him under St. Briavels.
The castle itself was far too strong and too dangerous to be spared, and the orders for its destruction are very sweeping and specific. By an order of the 20th of August, five days after the surrender, the sheriff is ordered to level the banks, fill up the ditches, and make plane the surface of the outer ward. He is to reduce the mote or mound, and the walls of the inner ward by one-half their height, and to level three-fourths of the old tower towards St. Paul’s, that is on the north-west. The stones are to be divided between William de Beauchamp for his proposed house, the church of St. Paul, Bedford, and the priories of Caldwell and Newenham; but the last is to have the larger share, because it supplied stones for shot for the siege.
Five days later came out another order enforcing the former, and directing Henry de Braibroc and William de Pateshull to see to its prompt and accurate execution. It was also specified that William de Beauchamp might, if he pleased, build a dwelling-house on the site, and use the reduced wall of the inner ward, but he was not to raise the mound or the wall above a certain height, or to embattle it. He might only erect it. Braibroc is to see the stone from both walls and mound distributed as directed. September 16th, the sheriffs of Herts, Cambridge, and Hunts were ordered to send men to aid Braibroc and Pateshull in the work of destruction, and they are to take tools with them, and stay until the mound is lowered and the ditches filled up as ordered. Beauchamp was further allowed half the timber from the barn and the old tower.
Thus passed away the strength and glory of the castle of Bedford, the great fortress of the Ouse. Whether William de Beauchamp built upon its site does not appear. He died 44 Hen. III., and within a very few years his name was extinct and his barony divided.
The castle, or its site, probably as the seat of a manor court, is named from time to time in the Inquisitiones post Mortem. Thus, 5 Ed. II., Roger L’Estrange, by Margaret his wife, was seized of “the Castle” and the “site of the Castle” of Bedford; 1 Ed. III., John de Mowbray was seized of the site of Bedford Castle and the fishery of the Ouse; and 40 Ed. III., another John had suit of court in the castle of Bedford; and 50 Ed. III., Elizabeth, wife of John Mowbray, holds of the same castle. Also, 6 Rich. II., another John Mowbray is seized of Bedford Castle and Bedford Barony; and, finally, 8 Hen. IV., Thomas Mowbray, Earl Marshall, holds Bedford Castle in chief, by the service of almoner to the king at his coronation; so that the tenures and privileges attached to the castle remained in force long after the fortress itself had been razed. In Leland’s time, the castle mill,—that great evidence of feudal customs,—remained; and he also mentions the “great round hill” as a burrow for foxes. There were not then any buildings.
It is evident from present appearance that the mandate of Henry III. was strictly obeyed. No trace of a ditch is to be seen between the mound and the river, and the mound itself is so much lower than is usual with works of that diameter as to make it probable that at least one half has been removed and employed in filling up the ditches.
It is not easy to gather from the account of the siege a clear idea of the disposition of the parts of the castle. There were two wards, and the outer, judging from its contents, must have been of considerable area. It probably included the inner ward and the mound, and abutted upon the river. The barbican would scarcely be placed upon the river or outside the town, and probably was to the north-west, or near the church of St. Paul.