William (I.) is now said to have conferred the guardianship of the coast, as an hereditary fief on a certain John de Fiennes, whose name, however, does not appear in any contemporary record. John was to do service for his lands as Constable of the Castle and Warden of the Ports.... The office of Constable and Warden ceased to be hereditary in the reign of Richard I.[567]
Mr. Hall has now revived the old legend in full:
In the valuable register formerly belonging to the Priory of Merton ... a similar but shorter list is found, with an interesting description of these services, which will be presently referred to (p. ccxxxvii.).
The constitutional significance of the tenure itself has not been perfectly realised. The Merton Register mentioned above informs us, under the heading “De Wardis Castri Dovorræ,” that the Conqueror granted the constableship of the castle there to the Lord of Fienes, with the service of fifty-six knights, who kept guard each month in turn, some four or five at once. Besides these, other knights were assigned to that constableship, for so many weeks in the year, by the neighbouring Lords of Chilham and Folkestone, and other barons mentioned in the later returns. Thus the Castle-ward was performed down to the reign of John, when it was thought advisable that such an important fortress should be committed to the keeping of a royal constable and a permanent garrison....
Hubert de Burgh was appointed constable during pleasure, and the office has continued to the present day in the patronage of the Crown (p. ccxxxviii.).
[Note.] William de Fesnes, the last baronial Constable, appears to have received the honour of Wendover by way of compensation (‘Testa,’ ii. 158).
Now, how much truth is there in this story? Fifty-six knights, we see, are assigned to John de Fiennes, as first Constable, and fifty-six knights’ fees (plus or minus 1/10 fee) are assigned in the ‘Liber Rubeus’ to the “Warda Constabularii.” But the history of these fees, the “Honor Constabularii,” can be traced with absolute certainty. They are those which had last been held by Henry de Essex, “the Constable,” whose tragic fate is familiar, which had been previously held by Robert de Ver “the Constable,” in right of his wife, a Montfort, and the possession of which can be traced back by Domesday to no other than Hugh de Montfort.[568] We learn then that “the Honour of the Constable” (which we should not otherwise have known) was connected with the custody of Dover Castle, the “clavis et repagulum Angliæ”; and we learn more. For when we turn to the story of the attack on Dover Castle in 1067, we find Hugh de Montfort “the immediate commander of the castle”;[569] and are thus able to trace the “Warda Constabularii” back to the Conquest itself.
Thus the legend of John de Fiennes and his heirs, constables of the castle, together with its “constitutional significance,” is blown, as it were, into space, and should never, henceforth, be heard.
The “Honour of the Constable” passed to the Crown on the forfeiture of Henry of Essex (1163); and as for the alleged action of “James Fienes” as constable in 1191, it is well known that the constable at the time was a brother-in-law of Longchamp, the king’s representative. I have suggested in a paper on “Faramus of Boulogne”[570] a possible origin for the Fiennes story in the castle being held by Faramus at the close of Stephen’s reign, a fact which may account for the late tradition about “quodam comite Boloniæ qui erat ejusdem Castri Constabularius.”[571] For the Fienes family were his heirs, through his daughter; and it was through him, and not on the ground suggested by Mr. Hall, that they obtained Wendover. To Faramus himself, however, it may have been given in compensation.