It is difficult to form a decided opinion as to the age of the several works in masonry remaining in this castle. The two gateways and much of the curtain, especially its north and west sides, are probably early Norman. The keep and observatory tower are later in the same style. To judge from the little postern, the curtain between the observatory mount and the keep, and probably the part beyond it, are also late Norman; that is to say, the English defences of the keep were the last to be replaced, and it was a century before the isolation of its mound was broken by the carrying the curtain across its ditches, and the completion of its general enceinte. Altogether it seems probable that the lower stage of the two gateways, and the older part of the curtain, were constructed during the reign of the Conqueror, or, at any rate, before the close of the eleventh century. The keep and observatory tower were probably built, the upper floor of the gateways added, and the curtain raised and completed, in the reign of Stephen, who granted, with the castle and city of Lincoln, to Gernons, Earl of Chester, licence to fortify a tower in the castle, and to hold it until he recovered his own castle of Tickhill,—and even then, when he surrendered Lincoln, he was to retain his own tower, which his mother, Countess Lucia, had fortified, in the castle, of which also he was to retain the hereditary constableship. As the keep was the only part of the castle which could be held independently of the rest, it must be to it that the charter relates. It is curious that Tickhill should also have a mound and polygonal keep.
As to the later works, Cobbe Hall, and the additions to the observatory tower and the eastern gateway, are probably the work of Thomas of Lancaster, Earl of Lincoln, who held the castle from 1312 to 1322. The Pipe Roll of 2 John, A.D. 1200, records a charge of £20 by the constable of Lincoln Castle for the repairs of the new tower, probably the keep.
The additions directed by the Conqueror to the defences of the hill, already strong by nature and by art, rendered Lincoln, under the Norman dynasty, even a more important city than it had been under the earlier governments. Its castle was the almost impregnable fortress, held by or for the sovereign, of a very important division of England; but it was a division strong in its rivers and marshy ground, in its English and thoroughly disaffected feeling, and open to the visits of the Danes, no longer as enemies, but as allies to the cause of the people. Its position, dominating the whole shire, challenged comparison with Belvoir, which received a similar accession of strength, and Nottingham, on the brow of which a rectangular keep of the first class was then in progress; but what confirmed its central authority, and placed it far above any castled eminence of the counties of the Midland, was the recognition of the hill as the centre of an important bishopric, and the foundation by Remigius of the stately pile to which many succeeding centuries have added beauty and grandeur.
The castle long remained a part of the demesne of the Crown but was administered by constables, whose office was, at times, regarded as hereditary, and, on one very important occasion, was held by a lady. Always a strong position, it became especially valuable upon the death of Henry I., when the long civil war broke out between his daughter and his nephew, and, by one party or the other, all existing castles were strengthened and an immense number of new ones built. In such a state of anarchy a castle became a necessary of life, and the bishops vied with, and even surpassed, the lay barons in their examples of military architecture. Sherborne, Malmesbury, and the strong and magnificent Devizes were the work of Bishop Roger of Salisbury, as were Newark and Sleaford of his nephew, Alexander of Lincoln; and the castle of Ely, of Giles, another nephew, and prelate of that see. Durham, also, was held by its bishop, and the Close of Lichfield strongly intrenched.
Of the lay adherents of Matilda, Robert Earl of Gloucester, her wise and faithful brother, built the castles of Cardiff, Bristol, and Gloucester; Fitz-Alan held Shrewsbury; D’Albini, Arundel; Talbot, Hereford; Paganel, Ludlow; Brian Fitz-Count, Wallingford; D’Oyley, Oxford; Robert of Lincoln, Wareham; Mohun, Dunster; Lovel, Castle Cary; Mandeville, Walden and Plessis; and Fitz-John, Melton. Dover, much strengthened by Maminot, was surrendered to the queen. It is curious that, of all these castles, six only, Sherborne, Bristol, Ludlow, Walden, and Dover, with Hedingham, held by De Vere for Stephen, are certainly known to have had square keeps; of the others, seven are doubtful, but thirteen had shell keeps upon mounds.
Among those who at first adhered to the cause of Stephen were the two half-brothers, William de Roumare and Ranulph, Earl of Chester, who had hereditary claims upon a large Lincolnshire property, and, of some sort, upon the castle of Lincoln. These, as regarded the castle, were exercised mainly by the Earl of Chester, the younger, but, in England at least, the most powerful of the two.
Their claims dated from a period before the Conquest, and were no doubt connected with the ownership of the English fortress. Ælfgar, Earl of Mercia, son of Earl Leofric, and lord of many Lincolnshire lordships, was father of the well-known Earls Eadwine and Morkere, and of Ealdgyth, widow of Gryffydd of Wales, and afterwards of Harold, and of Lucia, or Lucy, the eventual heiress of the family, and as such claiming not only the Lincolnshire lands, but, as it seems, the hereditary constableship of the castle. Mr. Nichols, in a very valuable paper upon the earls of Lincoln, has shown that Lucy married Ivo Taillebois, one of the Conqueror’s barons, a hero both of history and romance, and, in right of his wife, a great landowner in Lincolnshire. Her name occurs in his charter in 1085 concerning the church of Spalding. Ivo died in 1114, and their daughter, another Lucy, an heiress or co-heiress, and who claimed the constableship of Lincoln Castle, and fortified one of its towers, married, first, Roger de Roumare, and second, Ranulph de Briquesard, called Le Meschines, Earl of Chester, who died 1129. By each she had a son. (1) William de Roumare, afterwards Earl of Lincoln; and (2) Ranulph, called Gernons, Earl of Chester. These two half-brothers, unstable and greedy politicians and soldiers, played considerable parts in the war of the succession, and had much to say to Lincoln Castle.
Early in the struggle in 1140, Stephen acknowledged the claim of De Roumare, and created him one of his earls, called in derision “pseudo-comites,” because they had not the usual third penny from a county. Notwithstanding this favour, however, the brothers, a few days or weeks afterwards took the castle of Lincoln by surprise, turned out the royal soldiers, and held it for Matilda. Stephen, highly incensed, marched at once to Lincoln, and, supported by the citizens, laid siege to the castle from the west front, that next the city, but on which the ground was less steep than within the city itself. Earl Ranulph, on this, escaped from the place, leaving it, with his wife and children, in charge of De Roumare, while he went to persuade his brother-in-law, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, to come to their rescue. Robert accordingly led a force of 10,000 men in that direction, and the two earls, fording or swimming the Trent and the marsh lands on its margin, were met by the king in person. The result was the Battle or “Joust of Lincoln,” fought on the 2nd of February, 1141, in which Stephen was taken, to be exchanged a short time afterwards for Earl Robert. Mr. Nichols has pointed out that a certain Gilbert de Gant, a young Lincolnshire noble, being taken in the battle, was married by the Earl of Chester to his niece Rohesia, and was also created Earl of Lincoln, which title he retained till his death, in 1156. Mr. Nichols suggests that Rohesia was probably a sister’s daughter, and a co-heiress of Lucy Taillebois the first, and therefore a co-heir of Earl Ælfgar.
William de Roumare left a son, who died before him, and the grandson, though holding a large Lincolnshire estate, and in rank an earl, never assumed the title of Lincoln. He died childless, 1198, and the title of Lincoln seems to have been dropped for a time, Alice, Earl Gilbert’s daughter and heiress, being styled only “Countess Alice, daughter of Earl Gilbert.”
In 1144 also, at Christmas, Earl Ranulph was a second time besieged in Lincoln Castle by King Stephen, and also without success; but two years later, he, being at the king’s court, was made prisoner, and had to give up the castle as his ransom. Once fairly in possession of it, Stephen caused himself to be crowned at Lincoln.