In 1147 their positions were reversed, and the city was attacked by the earl, but without success; and in 1151 he became a second time Stephen’s prisoner, and so continued a few months, until, at the pacification of Wallingford, in 1151, he was set free, included in the general amnesty, and received from Stephen the grant of the city and castle already noticed, to be held until Tickhill should be restored to him.
During the reign of Henry II. the Crown recovered much of its power, and Lincoln Castle seems to have been dissociated from the earldom, although the Earl of Chester preserved a hold upon it. Richard de Hay held the constableship in fee, and it descended to his daughter and heiress, Nicholaa, who married Gerald de Camville, who received from Richard I. the custody of the castle and the farm of the revenues of the county. Gerald, however, was a partisan of Prince John, and stood a siege in the castle from Longchamp, chancellor to the absent Richard. The castle was relieved by John; but Gerard lost his office and farm in 1194, until John became king. His widow, Nicholaa, held the castle for the king against the insurgent lords. After the war, King John visited Lincoln, and Nicholaa, then of great age, received him at the east gate of the castle, and offered him the keys, desiring to be relieved on account of her age. John gracefully requested her to retain the keys, and she continued in command through the reign of John, and into that of Henry his son. Nicholaa was sheriff of the county, and a very remarkable person. In her latter days she had an assistant assigned to her, and a manor to support the charges of her office. She finally retired, and died in 1231.
In 1216, towards the close of John’s reign, Gilbert de Gant, nephew to the former Earl of Lincoln of the same name, condescended to accept the titular rank at the hands of the invading French Prince Louis, and took the city, but not the castle. He fought and was taken at the “Fair of Lincoln,” in May, 1217, by Ranulph de Blondville, Earl of Chester, a man of small stature but a great soldier, who added the title of Lincoln to that of Chester four days after the battle, and held it until he resigned it to his sister, Hawise de Quincy, in 1232. The actual relief introduced into the castle before the battle was led by the notorious Fulk de Breauté.
The descent of the constableship of the castle is at this point rather obscure. It seems, probably during the minority of De Camville’s daughter and heiress, Idonea, to have been administered successively by Philip de Lascelles, Walter Evermue, and, in 1224, by William de Longespée, Earl of Salisbury, probably as having married Idonea, daughter and heiress of Gerard de Camville. Whether their son William, who died 1257, held it is uncertain, but whatever rights he had were united to those of the Earls of Lincoln by the marriage of his daughter and heiress, Margaret Longespée, to Henry de Lacy. Henry was descended from Hawise de Quincy, whose daughter Margaret carried the earldom to her husband John de Lacy, who died 1240. Their son, Edmond, did not live to inherit; but his son, Henry de Lacy, was Earl of Lincoln, and by his marriage with Margaret Longespée, earl also of Salisbury. In the Escheat Roll, 4 Edward II., he is entered as constable of the castle of Lincoln.
Alice, the daughter and heiress of Henry de Lacy, married Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, and, in her right, of Lincoln, grandson of Henry III., and thus both the constableship and the fee of the castle became absorbed in the Duchy of Lancaster, and so in the Crown. During the wars of Charles and the Parliament, the castle was held as a military post for the king. In 1644 it fell, with the city, into the hands of the Parliament, and finally, in 1832, was sold to the county.
The Pipe and Close Rolls contain many entries in the reigns of Henry II., Richard I., John, and Henry III., relating to the castle, sometimes for repairs, sometimes for manacles for prisoners, sometimes for sustentation of soldiers. There are orders for storing corn, for “balistæ ad strumum” and “ad turnum,” the former worked by hand, the latter by a winch. In 1225, we read of repairs to the gate of the castle, to the “Tour de Luce,” and to the barbican. Even in Domesday, we have Waldin, ingeniator; Heppo, balistarius; and Ody, arbalistarius.
THE TOWER OF LLANQUIAN, GLAMORGAN.
ABOUT two miles east of Cowbridge, and half a mile or so north of the old Roman way from that town to Cardiff, a brooklet from St. Hilary Down crosses the road, and descends a deep and narrow ravine, to fall into the broad Aberthin valley, about two miles above its junction with the Cowbridge Taw, near the village of Aberthin. The ground on either bank of the ravine is very strong, and has been occupied for the purposes of defence from an early period. On the right bank is a large and irregular, and, therefore, probably British, enclosure or encampment; the defences of which, on the upper or eastern side, are two banks, each with an exterior ditch; and on the lower, or northern and western sides, a single bank, the ground below being sufficiently steep to render a ditch impracticable and unnecessary. This camp is locally known as Erw Gron, or the round acre (unless otherwise described, the acre would probably be a rectangular slip).
On the left or western bank, nearly opposite to the camp, is a rocky knoll, a little raised above the ground immediately adjacent to the west and south, but which towards the east and north slopes rapidly towards the brook and the Aberthin valley, perhaps a hundred feet below. Beyond the depression on the west and south, the ground expands into a platform of moderately level but broken ground, beyond which again is a considerable rise. Thus the knoll is both secluded from observation, and naturally strong, at least on the northern and eastern sides, and very defensible on the others. The approach was from the south-west, from the Cowbridge road, in which direction are buildings and remains of buildings, part modern, but part evidently having belonged to the outworks and outbuildings of the Tower.