Ludlow Castle. It is recorded in old chronicles that “Roger de Montgomery erected the greatest part of the castle, and fortified the town with walls,” from which it may be inferred, that in the times and place alluded to a town and fortress must have been co-incident with each other. This Roger came over with the conqueror, to whom he was related, and led the centre division of his army in the memorable battle which secured the conquest of England, and was afterwards advanced to the Earldoms of Arundel and Shrewsbury. He was the liberal founder of several rich monasteries and churches, particularly the monastery of Wenlock, and the abbey of Shrewsbury. Having completed his favourite structure, “Ludlow Castle,” he enjoyed it until his death in 1094. It was forfeited to the crown by the attainder of his son Robert, who being banished the realm, King Henry I. gave Dinan or Ludlow, with the territory of Corvedale, to a Norman Knight, known by the name of Fulke Fitzwarine, surnamed de Dinan; between whom and Walter de Lacy, Lord of Ewias by right of conquest, there arose several contests, whether out of emulation, or about fixing the boundaries of their royalties, is not known. In one of these skirmishes the said Sir Walter de Lacy, and his trusty knight, Sir Ernauld de Lis, were taken prisoners of war and carried to Dinan, where being in custody, by intriguing with a fair damsel they found a way to make their escape. Gervas Pagnel, governor of the castle, having betrayed his trust in joining the Empress Matilda, King Stephen besieged it, and in conducting the operations of the siege the king gave a signal proof of his courage and humanity. The young Prince Henry, son of King David, who was actively engaged in this enterprise, having approached too near the walls of the castle, was caught from his horse by means of an iron hook fastened to the end of a rope. Stephen, observing the perilous situation of the young prince, boldly advanced and rescued him at the risk of his own life. What right or title the several governors had in the reign of Henry II. is uncertain; though it is most probable that they were only governors, without any fixed interest, till the 16th of King John, when Walter de Lacy had a grant of Ludlow, from whom the title of the place is clearly derived to the house of York, whereby it became vested in the crown. Between the governors of this castle and Hugh de Mortimer terrible dissensions arose. At length it happened that Mortimer was surprised and seized. He was conveyed to Ludlow Castle, and confined in one of the towers, which to this day bears his name.
In the 47th of Henry III., Roger Mortimer, James de Alditheley, and Hamo L’Estrange had a general rendezvous with the barons of the Marches at Ludlow, to concert proper measures for suppressing the insolence of Simon de Montford, Earl of Leicester, and the other barons who had taken up arms against the king. The Earl of Leicester, to oppose the powers of the Marches, made a league with Leoline Prince of Wales, who with united forces attacked the castles of Hay and Ludlow, which were both burnt and demolished. Roger Mortimer, governor of the castle in the time of Edward II., was committed to the tower for a riot that he promoted on account of his dissatisfaction with the ministry of the Spencers: being jealous of a design against his life, he made an entertainment for Sir Stephen de Segrave, the constable of the tower, and in the midst of their cups and jollity, he privately gave him a soporiferous medicine, which, with the contrivance of his keeper, gave him an opportunity of sliding down a rope, and so flying into France. Upon his return, out of a grateful acknowledgment of divine providence for his deliverance out of the tower, he built a chapel in Ludlow castle, dedicated it to St. Peter, and appointed a priest to celebrate divine service for ever. In the second of Edward III. he was made chief justice of Wales, and created Earl of March; and the same year he celebrated with great magnificence the feast of the round table at Bedford. Soon after, the king making a progress into Wales, he was entertained at Ludlow. The promotion of this lord to exalted stations made him excessively proud, and he eventually fell into disgrace at court. He was apprehended at Nottingham, and carried under arrest to London; all his land being seized, and his chattles secured at the same time to the king’s use. The two main articles against him were, his having a hand in conspiring the murder of King Edward II., and his lewd familiarity with the queen, for which he was executed near Smithfield, where his corpse hung two days, and was exposed to greater indignities than usual. The castle, on his insurrection, having come into the possession of Richard Duke of York, was subjected to a siege by the forces of Henry VI. As he advanced towards Ludlow, the army of the Yorkists was drawn out into an intrenched camp in the fields of Ludford. Sir Andrew Trollop, who had been made marshal of the Yorkist army, deserted to the royalists, carrying with him the veteran troops under his particular command, and betrayed all their councils to the king. Dismayed by this defection, the Yorkists broke up their camp and fled, and the Lancasterians entered Ludlow, and wreaked their vengeance on the town and castle, which are said by old historians to have been plundered to “the bare walls.” The Duchess of York, with her two sons, were taken and placed in safe ward, and many of the rich partisans of the duke were executed, and their estates confiscated.
Edward Earl of March was on the Welch border when he received the first intelligence of the disastrous battle of Wakefield, and of the death of his father. He had collected an army in the north and was already marching against the Queen when he was called to oppose a large force of Welsh and Irish, which, under the Earl of Pembroke were advancing in the hope of making themselves master of his person. The two armies met at Mortimer’s Cross, near Ludlow, and it is said that before the battle commenced three suns appeared in the sky over the field, which approached each other till they joined in one, and that Edward taking this as a favourable omen subsequently adopted a sun as his badge in remembrance of this circumstance. The Yorkists obtained a decisive victory and nearly four thousand of the enemy were slain. All the persons of rank were beheaded at Hereford in retaliation for the Queen’s cruelties at the battle of Wakefield. Edward immediately proceeded to London and was proclaimed king under the title of Edward IV. Among the towns which had supported the house of York, none had been more staunch than that of Ludlow. On the 7th of December, in the first year of his reign, he rewarded the townsmen with a charter which extended the privileges of the inhabitants. He created his eldest son Edward, then a mere infant, Prince of Wales, and sent him and his younger brother to the Castle of Ludlow. Hall, in his Chronicles, tells us that he was sent to Ludlow “for justice to be doen in the Marches of Wales, to the end that by the authoritie of hys presence the wild Welshemenne, and evill-disposed personnes should repair from their accustomed murthers and outrages.” On the King’s death, in 1483, the two princes were immediately recalled to London, and perished there within a few weeks, amid the mysterious events which attended the accession of Richard III. to the throne. In 1631, Sir John Egerton was appointed Lord President of Wales and the Marches. At this period Charles I. visited Ludlow, and was welcomed with much ceremony and rejoicing, at which time the exquisite effusion, the “Mask of Comas,” was performed before his Majesty. It is said to have been founded on an incident which occurred in the Lord President’s own family, and which is thus related by Nightingale:—“When the Earl had entered on his official residence he was visited by a large assembly of the neighbouring nobility and gentry. His sons, the Lord Brackley and Sir Thomas Egerton, and his daughter, the Lady Alice, being on their journey, were benighted in Haywood Forest, in Herefordshire, and the lady, for a short time, was lost. Their adventure being related to their father on their arrival at the Castle, Milton, at the request of his friend Henry Lawes, wrote the Mask. Lawes set it to music, and it was acted on Michaelmas night, the two brothers, the young lady, and Lawes himself, each bearing a part in the representation.” The poem, familiar to every English reader, has been allowed by the most competent judges to be one of the finest compositions in the English language, and will ever be held in peculiar estimation, as exhibiting the fair dawn of that genius which burst forth in full splendour in the poem of Paradise Lost.
In the civil wars between Charles I. and the Parliament, Ludlow was occupied by the royal party. In the summer of 1645, a force of nearly two thousand horse and foot, drawn together out of the garrisons of Ludlow, Hereford, and Worcester, were, by a less number of the Parliamentary forces, defeated at Stokesay, near Ludlow. It was not, however, till the following year that Ludlow Castle fell into the hands of General Sir Wm. Brereton, to whom it was given up by Sir Michael Woodhouse. The Earl of Bridgwater, governor of the castle, died in 1648, and was succeeded by Richard Lord Vaughen, Earl Carbery. Samuel Butler, the satirical author of “Hudibras,” was appointed his secretary and steward. A tower is still shown as the place where Butler wrote a part of his incomparable work, the first part of which was published in 1663. This poem was universally admired; the King quoted, the courtiers studied, and the royalists applauded it, but the author was the dupe of promises which were never fulfilled. In the midst of disappointment and neglect he published the third part in an unfinished state, and in 1080 he died in indigence.
The ruins of this ancient baronial fortress are strikingly fine; the sullen stillness that now reigns throughout these forlorn and deserted towers, once the scene of royal splendour and feudal revelry, present a spectacle of the fallen magnificence of past ages, rarely to be equalled. The structure stands at the extremity of a bold headland, and its foundations are laid upon a bare grey rock. The part towards the north consists of square towers, with high connecting walls which are embattled; the old foss and part of the rock have been formed into walks and planted with beech, elm, and lime trees. These trees having now arrived at maturity, form an agreeable shade, and add much to the picturesque ruins of the castle. The principal entrance is by a gateway under a low pointed arch, on the height of which are the ruins of the barracks, which were in constant use when the castle was the residence of the lords presidents of the Marches of Wales. A portion of the barracks has lately been converted into a dwelling house. Further on is a square tower, the embattled rampart pierced with loops here and there, remain in picturesque masses. On the left is a range of stone buildings supposed to have been the stables; contiguous are the ruins of the court house, and beyond it rises a lofty tower called Mortimer’s Tower. The lowest apartment of this tower appears to have been a prison, the original entrance being through a circular aperture in the ponderous keystone of its vaulted roof. On the north and west sides a deep foss cut in the solid rock guarded the body of the castle. The place of the ancient draw-bridge is supplied by a stone bridge of two arches. The portal was built during the presidency of Sir Henry Sidney; over it are the arms of England and France, and the following inscription:—
“Anno Domini Millessimo Quinquitesimo Octagesimo completo, Anno regni illustrissimæ ac serenissimæ regina Elizabethæ vicesima iertio currente, 1581.”
The court is an irregular square, and not very spacious, but the lofty embattled walls by which it is enclosed, though in ruins, still preserve their original outlines, and the frowning towers and bold masses, luxuriously mantled with ivy, present a rare specimen of the fallen magnificence of the feudal ages. The keep is a large square embattled tower, divided into four stories, and rises to the height of 110 feet. It is probably the only part of the castle which dates from the time of Roger de Montgomery. Most of the windows and doorways are distinguished by their round Norman arches. The ground floor is the dungeon half under ground. The arched roof is twenty feet in height. In the arch are three square apertures, which communicating with the chamber above, served for the purpose of admitting and inspecting the prisoners, and were probably intended also for raising supplies of ammunition and provisions, during a time of siege. On the second floor is a room measuring 30 feet by 18, with a fire place. The room communicates on the left with a square arched chamber, and on the right with a narrow oblong room. This tower measures 46 feet by 34, and the walls are from 9 to 12 feet thick. Facing the gate is the hall, measuring 60 feet by 30, and was originally approached by a flight of steps. There remains now neither roof nor floor to this once elegant apartment where the splendid scene of Comus was first exhibited, and where hospitality and magnificence blazed for ages in succession without diminution or decay. Two pointed arches lead to a spacious tower attached to the west end of the hall, in which are several apartments, one of which is still called Prince Arthur’s room. On the opposite end of the hall is another square tower, one of the rooms of which is pointed out as the banqueting hall. A spacious chamber above has been adorned with an unusual degree of rude magnificence.
The chapel was built in the reign of Henry I. by Joce de Dinan; all that now remains of it is the nave—a circular building, one of the earliest of this description in England. The approach is by a remarkably elegant Norman doorway, richly adorned with ornaments peculiar to the style of the period in which it was built. In the interior rising from the floor are fourteen recesses in the wall formed by small pillars, with indented capitals supporting round arches, which have alternately plain and zigzag mouldings. A filleted ornament runs round the exterior of the wall. A covered way led from the state apartments to the chapel. In the time of Queen Elizabeth the interior was covered with panels exhibiting the armorial bearings which church-yard describes as “armes in colours sitch as few can shewe.”
From an inventory of goods found in Ludlow Castle bearing date 1708, the eleventh year of the reign of Queen Anne, we learn that about forty rooms were found entire at that period. Among these were the hall, council chamber, lord president’s and my lady’s, with drawing rooms, the steward’s room, great dining room, chief justice’s room, second judge’s room, Prince Arthur’s room, captains’ apartments, kitchen, &c.; and as in this inventory a table and altar are stated to have been found in the chapel, we may presume the choir was at that time remaining. In the account prefixed to Buck’s antiquity published in 1774, it is observed that many of the apartments were then entire, and that the sword of state and the velvet hangings were preserved. Dr. Todd in his learned edition of Comus says, “A gentleman who visited the castle in 1768 has acquainted me that the floor of the great council chamber was then pretty entire, as was the staircase. The covered steps leading to the chapel were remaining, but the covering of the chapel was fallen, yet the arms of the lord presidents were visible. In the great council chamber was inscribed on a wall a sentence from I. Samuel, chapter 12, verse 3; all which are now wholly gone. On the accession of George I. an order is said to have come down for unroofing the buildings, and stripping them of their lead. The decay of this magnificent structure soon ensued. Many of the panels bearing the arms of the lord presidents were converted into wainscotting for a public house in the town, a former owner of which enriched himself by materials clandestinely taken away. The Earl of Powis, who previously held the castle by virtue of a long lease, acquired the reversion in fee by purchase from the crown in the year 1811.”
The Church, which stands in the highest part of the town, is a very beautiful cruciform edifice in the decorated gothic style of the latter part of the fifteenth century, forming undoubtedly the finest ecclesiastical fabric in the county, and perhaps the most stately parochial church in England. The structure is dedicated to St. Lawrence, and has a lofty and noble appearance; it consists of nave, chancel, choir, side aisles, transepts, and two chantry chapels, with a handsome tower rising from the centre, having at each angle an octangular turret, surmounted by a pinnacle. The tower contains eight musical bells, and a set of chimes was put up at the expense of the parish in the year 1795. The principal entrance is by a large hexagonal porch. The nave is divided from the aisles by six lofty pointed arches on each side, springing from light clustered pillars. Above them is a clerestory with a range of heavy windows. The four great arches under the tower are remarkably bold, beneath the eastern arch is the choral rood loft, embellished with open carved work, but upon it is erected a modern gallery, above which stands a powerful and fine toned organ, the gift of Henry Arthur Earl of Powis, in the year 1764; it cost £1,000. The choir is lighted by five lofty pointed windows on each side, and one of much larger dimensions at the west end. This window is richly adorned with stained glass, chiefly representing the legend of St. Lawrence, the patron saint of the church. The other windows in this venerable edifice bear evidence of having once been enriched with a profusion of stained glass of the most exquisite workmanship. The large eastern window containing the legendary history of St. Lawrence having been so defaced and wantonly broken that the various subjects could with difficulty be traced. It remained in this state till the year 1828, when the corporation of Ludlow directed Mr. David Evans, of Shrewsbury, to restore the window according to its original design. It was completed in a masterly manner in 1832, and the skill displayed by the artist in overcoming the difficulties he had to encounter has excited the admiration of every one who has seen it. The window is justly considered the most magnificent specimen of the art of glass staining in the county, and for general effect is surpassed by few in England. The window is divided into sixty-five compartments, and contains five hundred and forty feet of glass. The whole of the subjects depicted in the window are under elegant canopies of delicate tabernacle work, differing in design; and the costume of the figures throughout the various scenes are particularly curious, and well deserve attention, as the richness of colour and general effect is not inferior to some of the finest specimens of the ancient stained glass. The window is supposed originally to have been setup during the episcopacy of Thomas Spoford, who was promoted to the see of Hereford in 1421. The three large windows on the south side of the chancel display full length figures of bishops, apostles, and Romish saints, the apex of each containing twelve small curious figures. The glass in the windows on the north side has been greatly mutilated, but sufficient remains to show the splendour and magnificence of the colouring.