Cele porte e aparceue,
Por le chastel plus enforcier
La fist abatre e trebuchier,
E que l’ost veist e seust
Que seure entree i eust.”
(Hist. G. le Mar., ll. 16500–16518.)
The only two points where the walls of Lincoln city were ever “joined,” in any way whatever, “with those of the castle,” are the two which I have mentioned [in p. 35], viz., the north-western and the south-western angles of the castle enclosure. At the former of these two points stood, we know, the West Gate of the medieval city; and this Professor Oman (Art of War in the Middle Ages, p. 410) considers to have been the blocked gate of the poet’s story. I have said in my text that the blocked gate “seems” to have been the West Gate, because it is quite possible that there may have been a gate opening from the city at the other junction-point of the two walls, immediately to the south of the castle ditch. Unfortunately there is no evidence whether a gate at this point ever existed or not. Two considerations arising out of the poet’s story may seem at first glance to raise a slight presumption in favour of the hypothesis that a gate did exist there, and was the one which he had in mind. I think however that in both cases the presumption is more apparent than real.
1. The poet represents Peter as setting out on his reconnaissance in the city from the keep of the castle. He must, as M. Meyer says (Hist. G. le Mar., vol. iii. p. clix), have issued from the small door opening at the south-western angle of the keep. He would therefore, on reaching the further side of the ditch, find himself close to the southern junction-point of the castle wall and the city wall. If there was a gate at this point, and if it was the blocked one, his discovery of it and his return to the castle might have been effected in a few minutes, without difficulty or danger. If, on the other hand, the blocked gate was the West Gate proper, he could not have seen it from the city without going all round the southern, eastern, and northern sides of the castle, by a route answering roughly to the present Drury Lane, Bailgate, and Westgate, right through the heart of the city, and he must have returned by the same lengthy and frequented way to the door in the keep whence he had set out; an adventure which it seems hardly possible he could have achieved in safety, except under one condition. That condition, however, we may surely take for granted; it seems matter of course that before he ventured outside the castle walls he would disguise himself so as to look like an ordinary citizen going about his ordinary business in the city. In that case the longer expedition might be quite practicable, and really attended with very little risk. Moreover, if the blocked gate was the West Gate, Peter must have known of its existence before he entered the castle at all, for in going from the host to the sally-port he would pass before the outer side of the West Gate; and this would go far to account for his eagerness to explore the city—in other words, to ascertain what was on the inner side of a blocked-up gate whose outer side had already attracted his notice.
2. If there was a gate at the southern junction of the walls, it would very probably be “of great antiquity”—as old as the second Roman occupation of Lindum; for the wall itself thereabouts was certainly Roman, as some fragments still remaining testify to this day. The West Gate, on the other hand, in 1217 could not well be more than a hundred and fifty years old. But the poet’s description of the blocked gate as “une vielle porte qui ert de grant antequite” is a detail which—like his use of the word ancienement in l. 16509—need not be taken literally. Such phrases, when used by even a prose writer in an uncritical age, may mean almost anything; moreover, epithets and descriptive phrases of all kinds when used by a medieval writer of verse may occasionally mean nothing. The poet had probably never seen the gate which he was describing; those who told him about it were soldiers, not archæologists; neither he nor they could have a very definite idea as to when it had been built, or how long it had been obstructed. Possibly, however, his use of the expressions above quoted may be accounted for in another way. Lincoln “above hill” unquestionably possessed one gate which even in 1217 could hardly fail to strike the most ignorant observer as being already “of great antiquity.” Some of the poet’s informants may have mentioned this to him, without specifying that it was the North Gate or giving it a name. Others may have told him that the North Gate was called New Port. If he was not further told that the “New Port” and the ancient gate were identical, the fact of their identity could not possibly enter his head; and as the North Gate and the blocked gate were evidently the only two gates (of the city) which played any part in the day’s fighting until it reached the Bar-Gate far away to the south beyond the river, he would naturally conclude that since the first was the “new” gate, the second must be the ancient one.
The real difficulty of the passage is in ll. 16515–16: “Por le chastel plus enforcier La fist abatre e trebuchier.” How could the clearing out and opening of a city gate—whether it were the West Gate or a hypothetical gate further south—tend to reinforce, or strengthen, the castle? Professor Tout, who rejects the whole story of Peter’s reconnaissance, suggests (though without citing these lines) that if any blocked-up gate was re-opened, it may have been the great west gate (or sally-port) of the castle. He thinks that this gate may have been “walled-up” as a measure of precaution, the postern serving in its stead for ordinary communications, and that the difficulty of passing a large number of men through an entrance so small and inaccessible as the postern may have led to the reopening of the great gate, “so that the relieving force could send a strong detachment into the enclosure” (Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. xviii, p. 250, note). But this—whether it was the fact or not—was certainly not the idea of the poet; for (1) the castle sally-port does not “join the walls of the city with those of the castle”; and (2) it is not (as the poet clearly represents his blocked gate to have been) visible from inside the city.