The Mortimers held what they probably made the lion’s share of Ludlow for five generations, through some of the most turbulent times in English history; but under their rule Ludlow gave place to Wigmore, their chief seat, and the centre of their oldest estates and main power. Roger, the paramour of the she-wolf of France, received the young Edward III. at Ludlow soon after his father’s death with great magnificence, and not long before his own fall, attainder, and execution. Edmund, his son, recovered this and his other castles in 1354, six years before his death. His grandson Roger, the fourth Earl of March, obtained the long separated moiety of the Lacy property by exchange with William de Ferrars, who had inherited it from the Verdons, and thus transmitted the whole of Ludlow to his son Edmund, the fifth earl, in whose time Sir Thomas Beaufort, afterwards Duke of Exeter, held the castle against the insurgent Welsh. The fifth earl died childless in 1424, when Ludlow Castle and the earldom of March descended to his nephew, Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, who held it through the wars of the Roses, and transmitted it to his son, King Edward IV. The borough of Ludlow profited by the assumption of the castle by the Crown. The townsfolk were steady Yorkists, and if they occasionally suffered, and that severely, from the fortunes of war, on the whole they were gainers. Their ancient franchises, dating at the least from the commencement of the thirteenth century, were confirmed in the reign of Henry VI. by Richard, Duke of York, and in 1461 and 1478 Edward IV. gave them an extended charter, under which they were removed from dependence upon the castle. In 1472 the king sent his two sons to remain in the castle, where the Council of Wales established by him, sat in the name of the elder, the Prince of Wales, then but an infant in arms. They remained at Ludlow until 1483, when they were removed to a prison and a grave in the Tower. Henry VII. also sent Prince Arthur, his infant son, born in 1486, to Ludlow, and was himself a frequent visitor here till the prince’s untimely death in 1502. After that event the Council of Wales was established on a more regular footing, and placed under a lord president, who at first was a bishop. Money was granted for the repairs and maintenance of the castle, which, it appears from Bishop Lee’s report, in 1535 was in a ruinous state.
In 1559 Queen Elizabeth appointed Sir Henry Sidney as lord president. He held the office twenty-seven years, keeping considerable state at the castle, where, on his return from Ireland, he passed the latter years of his life. He built the gatehouse within the middle ward, which the inscriptions inserted on the gate show to have been completed in 1581. He built also a bridge leading into the castle, probably one to the outer gate, for the description does not accord with that now standing, and which leads to the middle gate. Also he repaired the chapel, and brought water into the castle, and did much in the way of general repairs, and of buildings and enclosures, to facilitate the business of the council and the custody of its prisoners. The keep, called then the porter’s lodge, was their prison, and the inner ward their court for exercise. Sir Henry died in May 1586. Whatever the Council may have been in his time, it became, in the reign of James, a source of great expense and scandal, and Richard Baxter has left on record the condition, moral and social, to which the purlieus of this provincial court were reduced during his youth. It fell, and it was time, with the surrender of the castle to the parliamentary army in 1646. The place was dismantled, and in 1651 the furniture and fittings were inventoried and put up for sale. At the restoration an attempt was made to revive the Council, but the actual revival was nominal only, and even this was abolished on the coming in of King William. The Crown appointed a governor of the castle, and it would seem, by an inventory of goods there in 1708, that part of it at any rate was in very tolerable repair, especially the rooms of state. The final ruin was commenced under an order by George I., when the lead was removed from the roofs. Buck, whose account was published in 1774, speaks of many of the apartments as still entire, and probably it was not absolutely roofless until the end of the century. In 1811 a lease held by the Powis family was converted by purchase from the Crown into a freehold.
ST. LEONARD’S TOWER, WEST MALLING.
THIS tower, apparently the earliest built and the last part remaining of the residence of Bishop Gundulf, is probably one of the first Norman keeps, perhaps one of the earliest military towers in masons’ work, after the departure of the Romans, constructed in England. With these pretensions, it deserves more attention than it has hitherto met with.
It stands about a quarter of a mile south-west of the parish church of Town, or West Malling, in Kent, the plain heavy tower of which is also attributed to the bishop; and a little further from the remains of the religious house founded by the same skilful and magnificent prelate, and a remaining part of which seems also to have been his actual work.
The tower stands upon a ledge of horizontally-bedded sandstone rock, of a friable character, which juts out from and forms the east side of a short narrow combe, the defence of the castle on its western front, and which opens upon a stream tributary to the Medway, which stream receives a further addition from a spring which rises from beneath the rock about 100 yards south of the tower, and has been employed to strengthen the defences of the place on that side.
The tower is a very plain rectangular structure of the early Norman type, about 32 feet square at its base, and about 60 feet high on its northern and eastern, and about 70 feet on the two other faces; the difference being produced by the greater depth of the rocky shelf. The walls rise from a plain plinth, the top of which is at the ground level on the east face and north-east angle, and 10 feet above the level on the south and west, so that the plinth is on these sides 10 feet high. The tower is flanked at the end of each face by a pilaster strip, which rises from the plinth, and each adjacent pair meet and cover the contained angle. At three of the angles these strips have 6-inch projection, and are 3 feet 6 inches wide, reduced by two sets-off to 2 feet 6 inches at the base of the parapet, into which they probably died. The pilasters covering the fourth, or north-east angle, are 7 feet broad, and of 18 inch projection. These also have two sets-off. This increased breadth and projection is to accommodate a turnpike-stair, which rises from the base to the roof, and was evidently crowned by a square turret, but whether there were turrets at the other angles is doubtful, though, if present, they must have been of rather smaller dimensions. In the centre of the west face is another pilaster, 3 feet broad, and of 6 inch projection. This also rises from the plinth, but stops at the level of the uppermost floor, at the base of the window, of which it forms the cill. Of the sets-off, that at the level of the first floor is carried round the tower; the upper one is confined to the pilasters. The parapet is gone, and the wall at the head of the staircase, being weakened by it, is somewhat broken down. The tower wall is described as battering, or inclining inwards; if so, the degree must be very slight, for its appearance is vertical, the set-off reducing it by about 6 inches or 8 inches, so that at the summit the dimensions cannot be less than 30 feet square, and the wall appears, from below, to be about 6 feet thick.
The basement is without windows, but in the south face, near the east end, was a round-headed doorway, quite plain, without a portcullis or any moulding, and of about 3 feet 6 inches opening. This is now, and evidently has long been, walled up, so that any rebate it may contain for the door is concealed. It opened on the top of the rock, and probably was approached by a wooden exterior stair, which must have been 10 feet high. The present entrance is opposite to it at the same level, which, there, is that of the ground. This seems to have been a later opening, broken through where the wall was reduced in thickness by a sort of lobby at the foot of the staircase. This is a very common treatment with Norman keeps, the ordinary doorway becoming inconvenient, and the times ceasing to demand extraordinary precaution.
The first floor has a plain round-headed flat-sided opening, that is, without splay, or what in the North is called flanning, placed in the centre of the north, south, and east faces. On the south face this window is in the centre of a plain arcade, having on each side of it two similar arches, about 3 feet broad and 2 feet deep. The singular thing is that these niches are in the outer face of the wall, not, as would seem natural, and as occurs at Chepstow, in the inner face. In the west wall are four similar niches, but the central space is solid, occupied by the pilaster. There are two narrow round-headed loops on the north face, lighting the staircase at two levels.