MEDIÆVAL MILITARY
ARCHITECTURE
IN
ENGLAND.

By GEO. T. CLARK.

VOL. I.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.

. . . . . Time

Has moulder’d into beauty many a tower,

Which, when it frown’d with all its battlements,

Was only terrible. . . . . —Mason.

LONDON:
WYMAN & SONS, 74–76, GREAT QUEEN STREET,
LINCOLN’S-INN FIELDS, W.C.

1884.

TO
E. A. FREEMAN, Esq.
THE HISTORIAN OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST,
THESE PAPERS,
COLLECTED AND PUBLISHED AT HIS SUGGESTION,
IN THEIR PRESENT FORM,
ARE APPROPRIATELY INSCRIBED.

PREFACE.

THE articles comprehended in the present volumes were written at very long intervals of time, some half a century ago, and printed in the Transactions of various Societies in different and distant counties. Many also appeared in the Builder newspaper. Each paper was intended to be complete in itself, and was written with no expectation that they would ever be collected and reprinted as one work. This I mention to account for, and I hope in some degree to excuse, the occasioned iteration of certain views concerning the connexion between the banks and earthworks, the moated mounds of the ninth century, and the buildings in masonry afterwards placed upon them,—which the Author was the first to set forth, and which are explained at length in the Introduction.

The latter and greater part of the work is occupied by minute, and, it is hoped, generally accurate accounts of most of the principal castles of England, and of one or two of a typical character in France and Scotland. The account of Caerphilly was drawn up in 1834. It was, I believe, the first attempt to treat, in a scientific and accurate manner, the plans and details of a great mediæval fortress.

My cordial thanks are due to the editors of the various Archæological Journals in which the original papers appeared, and especially to the late editor of the Builder, Mr. Godwin. I have also especially to thank an old friend and school-fellow, Mr. Murray, of Albemarle Street, for leave to reprint the paper on the Tower of London, and for the use of the woodcuts with which he so liberally embellished the original in his “Old London.”

To Mr. Freeman my obligations are of a different and less personal character. Other historians have visited the scenes of events which they were about to describe, but no one has shown himself so familiar with the ancient divisions, civil, ecclesiastical, and military, of English ground, and with the buildings connected with them. His accomplishments as a topographer and as a master of mediæval architecture are peculiar to himself among historians, and materials which in their original form are dry and uninstructive give, in his hands, weight and substance to some of his most brilliant sketches. As a collector of some of these materials, I have often felt surprise and delight at the use to which they have been applied; and, although my work has been rather that of a quarryman or brickmaker, I am sometimes led almost to regard myself as sharing in the glory of the architect.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

CHAPTER.
I. [Introduction]
II. [Earthworks of the Post-Roman and English Periods]
III. [Of the Castles of England at the Conquest and under the Conqueror]
IV. [Of the Political Value of Castles under the Successors of the Conqueror]
V. [The Political Influence of Castles in the Reign of Henry II.]
VI. [The Castles of England and Wales at the latter part of the Twelfth Century]
VII. [The same subject continued]
VIII. [The same subject concluded]
IX. [The Rectangular Keep of a Norman Castle]
X. [Of the Shell Keep]
XI. [Castles of the early English Period]
XII. [Of the Edwardian or Concentric Castles]

ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. I.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

THE art of construction in Europe from the fall of the Roman empire to the dawn of the Reformation, though of late years much and successfully investigated, has been approached almost exclusively from its ecclesiastical side. This was, for many reasons, to be expected. The service of the altar justified, perhaps required, the highest degree of taste in the design of the temple, and the utmost richness in its ornamentation. Moreover, the greater number of our ecclesiastical buildings are still in use, and even the remains of those that are in decay, being chiefly monastic, are interesting from the intimate connexion of their foundations and endowments with early piety and learning, and from the evidence supplied by their records of the descent of landed property and of the ancestry of the older historic families of the country.

The coëval military structures exhibit, generally, no such splendours of design or excellence of execution, nor do they awaken such sympathies in our breasts. The parish church is the common concern of all who worship within its walls, or whose dead are laid within its sacred precinct; but the castle, always a dangerous and unpopular neighbour, and often associated with local tyranny or the disasters of war, was in most instances ruined or swept away with the general use of gunpowder, and even where preserved, its narrow dimensions and inconvenient arrangements, particulars more or less essential to its value as a place of defence, rendered it, except in a few instances, unfit for a modern residence, and have thus tended to sever it still more completely from the current sympathies and interests of humanity. Nevertheless, there is in these structures, obsolete as they are, or because they are obsolete, much to attract those who care to know of the life and customs of former generations. Many of these buildings were the work and residence of persons who have left their mark upon the history of our country. Some, as York, Lincoln, Norwich, Dover, Rochester, Chester, Colchester, Wallingford, have been the seats of Saxon thanes or Danish jarls, succeeding a Roman or perhaps British occupant; others, as Bamborough, Taunton, Sarum, Tutbury, and Hereford, are associated with the earliest, most celebrated, or most patriotic of our purely English kings; others, as the Tower, Windsor, Winchester, Berkeley, Pontefract, Newark, Carisbrook, were the scene of the splendours of our greatest or the miseries of our most unfortunate monarchs; some, as Oxford, Northampton, Lewes, Kenilworth, are connected with great constitutional struggles between prince and subject; some, as Exeter, Bedford, Rochester, Pembroke, Chepstow, and Raglan, remind us of bloody combats and sieges from the times of the Conqueror to those of Charles the First. Some castles, as Sherborne, the Devizes, Malmesbury, Wolvesley, Newark, Farnham, Norham, and Durham, were constructed by lordly ecclesiastics who brought the arm of the soldier to support the brain of the priest and statesman; some again, as Hedingham, Bungay, Axholm, Alnwick, Raby, Tonbridge, Warwick, Wigmore, Powderham, Goderich, and Helmsley, are intimately bound up with the great baronial names of De Vere, Bigot, Mowbray, Percy, Neville, Clare, Beauchamp, Mortimer, Courtenay, Talbot, and De Ros, those “ancient stocks that so long withstood the waves and weathers of time.” Ludlow is identified with the fairest creation of Milton’s genius; Caerleon and Tintadgel glitter bright in mediæval romance; while Shrewsbury, Chester, the Welsh castles, Carlisle, Newcastle, Prudhoe, Ford, Hermitage, Jedburgh, Berwick, and a host of subordinate towers and peels, are celebrated in Marchman’s warfare or Border Minstrelsy, and played a part in the politic but unjust aggressions of our earlier Henrys and Edwards.

The histories and remains of these fortresses are full of interest to the antiquary, whether his branch of study be legal, social, architectural, or military. Almost all the most important of our English castles date, in some form or other, from remote antiquity, and their associations were of slow growth, and deeply rooted in many centuries of the national history. Most were the centres of estates which had become great in the course of many generations, and for the protection of which they were established; and the tenure and services of the tenantry had grown up gradually, so that the castle, or rather the fortified hall, was closely connected with the institutions, laws, and customs of the estate, or it might be the shire, wapentake, rape, or hundred, of which it was the defence. Such castles as Belvoir, Clitheroe, Gloucester, Totnes, Dunster, Hastings, Bramber, and Tickhill, were the “capita” or chief seats of ancient sokes, honours, and baronies, having peculiar privileges within their garths and demesnes, with manorial dependencies scattered through many counties, and accumulated in some considerable degree even before the Norman era. Many of the lands were held, even in Saxon times, by the ancient tenure of military service, which, reduced into a system under the Norman kings, often took the form of guarding and keeping in repair some specified part of the lord’s castle, a tower, gate-house, hall, or wall, to be paid either in person as castle-guard, or by the commutation known as ward-silver. Something like castle-guard appears indeed in the history of Norwich castle as early as the seventh century, and it was common in the tenth. Like the castle of Chester, that of Durham was the seat of an Earl-Palatine, the subject of the grim humour of Cœur-de-Lion, who of an aged Bishop made a young Earl, whose successors, more fortunate than those of their lay brother, preserved their Earldom and its more than Vice-regal appendages almost unshorn till the Reformation, and with a splendid remnant of judicial and social power to our own day; and indeed, even now, though his mitre no longer springs out of a coronet, nor is his crozier as formerly combined with a sword, and though the baronial hall has been liberally surrendered for the purposes of education, the lord of Durham is not altogether wanting in pride of place, nor reduced, as yet, even to episcopal poverty.

The “Registrum Honoris de Richmond,” a very curious Custumary, specifies the precise part in that castle that each tenant was to defend. At Belvoir, Staunton tower, at Berkeley, Thorpe’s tower, are so called because families of those names were responsible for them, and at Dover, Magminot and a score of other towers still bear the names of the chief tenants of that important lordship, and thus preserve the memory of a tenure the substance of which has long been abolished. The connexion between the military tenant and his lord was intimate, and much imbued with the ancient Teutonic equality and independence. The lord held his “aula” for his own safety and that of his tenants; their mutual support gave power to the one and security to the others; no man was degraded by such a tenure. The most powerful barons were almost always also tenants holding fiefs under other lords, often far their inferiors in rank and power.

It is this ancient history, this connexion with the earliest works of defence, that gives so great an interest to the older castles. When, in later days, and under extraordinary circumstances, it suited the king or some great baron to erect a castle in a new place, the fabric had no root, no associations. The grand characteristic of an old castle, the mighty earthwork, was wanting, and its place was ill supplied by masses of masonry and a ditch of moderate dimensions. No tenants clustered round the place, to it no manors were attached, no dependents held lands by the tenure of its defence. Thus Bere, Beaumaris, Caernarvon, Diganwy, Conway, Harlech, and Caerphilly, grand structures as were most of them, were mere intrusions upon the soil, and when the need that produced them ceased, as they represented no private estate, and were the residence of no great baron, they were left to fall into decay. Not the less are they of great architectural interest. They are mostly of one date, laid out and constructed upon one plan. Though intended for military purposes, within the palace shares with the fortress. The accommodation afforded is ample, the main apartments are spacious, the ornamentation rich. The inner court, gatehouses, and hall of Caerphilly are grander than anything of the sort in Britain.

The castles of a still later period, when built on new sites, were scarcely Castles in the military sense of the term. They were not posted for the defence of a March or a threatened district, but for the residence, more or less secure, of the lord, usually of a newly-acquired estate, very often purchased with the ransoms of prisoners taken in the French wars. Even where the castle most predominated, as at Bodiham, built, as Arundel was largely repaired, with the spoils of war, or at Tattershal, they were rather palace-castles than castle-palaces, and this was especially the case with Bolton, Wressil, and Sheriff-Hutton, works of the latter part of the fourteenth century. In such works the salient towers, loops, embattled parapets, and bold machicolations, are introduced partly for their appearance, partly from custom, but scarcely for any military purpose.

To the student of military architecture, or of the art of the defence of strong places before the introduction of gunpowder, the ground-plans of defensive works and the details of castellated architecture of every period are interesting; sometimes they are to be admired for the grandeur of their earthworks or the enormous strength of their walls; sometimes for their happily-selected site and the skilful disposition of their arrangements for a flanking defence; or, as at Arques, Dover, Sarum, and Windsor, for their subterranean outlets and countermines. Some, as Clitheroe and Peak, were structures purely military, intended to contain only a captain and a small garrison, and provided with scanty accommodation, and quite destitute of ornament; in others, as Ludlow, Caerphilly, and Beaumaris, the interior arrangements were on a scale and of a character to accommodate a Royal Court. Even where the walls are destroyed, there often remain, in the earthworks, traces of a much earlier people than the Normans, a people who, as at Old Sarum, Castle-acre, Marlborough, Clare, Tonbridge, and the Devizes, occupied the ground with bank, ditch, and palisade, long before native skill had attained to the construction of wall or tower. Finally, although the stern necessities of war did not admit of the banded shafts, lofty vault, or woven window-tracery of Tintern, or Fountains, or many a less distinguished church, the ornamentation of the richer castles, as Dover, Rochester, Hedingham, Newcastle, Knaresborough, Castle Rising, and Coningsborough, is marked by a chastened fitness peculiar to such works; and of the ruder and less ornate castles, the ruins of very many present a savage grandeur which few who have visited Caerphilly, Harlech, or Scarborough, can fail to appreciate; any more than that union of strength with beauty so conspicuous in Chepstow, Raglan, and Ludlow, which, enhanced by an illustrious history, attains its highest perfection in Warwick.

The history of such castles as are connected with public events is seldom difficult to trace. They are mentioned by the ancient chroniclers, and their repairs and various particulars concerning them are often entered on the Pipe rolls, and in other of the records of the realm. About a score, such as Arundel, Bamborough, Taunton, Wigmore, and Hereford, are named in the Saxon annals, and in charters of the eighth and following centuries; and others, though unnamed in these authorities, may from their general similarity safely be attributed to the same people and period. The castles on the Welsh Marches, as Ludlow, Montgomery, Chester, Rhuddlan, Cardiff, Chepstow, and Pembroke, had their special jurisdictions; their courts of law and of record; their chancellor, chancery, and official seal; the lord’s “Vicecomes” exercised powers of pit and gallows, and his court passed fines and recoveries, and other early instruments for the conveyance of land. In the northern Marches such castles as Norham, Prudhoe, Cockermouth, Alnwick, Naworth, Caerlaverock, and Home, constructed for the defence of an exposed frontier or a debatable district, the home of those who lived by “snaffle, spur, and spear,” are commemorated in the records of either country. Others were originally royal castles, as Dover, Canterbury, Winchester, London, Nottingham, and York; or, as Kenilworth, Bridgenorth, and Rochester, fell by escheat or forfeiture into the hands of the crown, and so were maintained at the public expense, and the cost of their repairs charged in the sheriffs’ accounts of each county.

However complete, and it is usually much the reverse, may be the history of a castle, any knowledge we may desire as to its particulars greatly depends upon what may remain of the structure, either in masonry or earthworks, and to understand these the first thing necessary is a plan, and this is just what is wanting in most guides or handbooks of castles. With a good plan not only the age and much of the details of any castle can be ascertained, but sometimes the work recorded in the Pipe or Fabric rolls may be recognised. Original plans indeed there are none; no doubt the military architects, like their ecclesiastical brethren, drew and worked from designs and plans, but these have not been preserved. No such thing is known to exist as an original design or a working drawing of a Norman or even an Edwardian castle. In ecclesiastical researches, from the known uniformity of the arrangements, this want is scarcely felt, but the plan and details of a castle vary with the disposition of the ground or the caprice of the builder, and although a hall, a kitchen, a chapel, a well, and a barrack are indispensable features in a castle, these parts have nothing of the regularity of position of a nave or choir, a cloister, a chapter-house, or a refectory. Nevertheless, great as is the variety in both the plans and details of castles even of the same age, their architects and engineers worked by certain rules, so that if these be studied a clue will be obtained to the age of the work executed. The dimensions, plan, and profile of the earthworks, the presence, absence, or figure of the keep, the thickness of the walls, the plan, figure, proportion and position of the mural towers, the character of the entrance, the material employed, and the particulars of the masonry, all, if carefully observed, afford a clue to the date of the building or of some of its parts, so that as a general proposition, a Norman castle may be known from one of the early English period, or from those of the first or second Edward, and still more readily from those built in the reign of Richard the Second. What these rules are, in what these differences consist, will appear further on.

Mediæval architecture has only been scientifically studied during the last forty or fifty years, and military architecture for a still shorter period. Rickman, who first taught us to read the date of a building in its details, was induced to turn his attention to architecture by the advice of Mr. Blore, who died but the other day.

But Rickman, a member of the Society of Friends, scarcely notices castles, and they have by no means shared in the flood of light directed by Willis upon our cathedrals. Rickman’s rules, however, apply as much to one class of buildings as to the other. What has been done, and what has to be done, towards a history of the architecture of castles, though aided by contemporary records and especially by sheriffs’ accounts and Fabric rolls, has been mainly attained by attention to the internal evidence afforded by the buildings themselves and their earthworks. Even where the castle is a ruin, where the ashlar casing has been stripped off, and little left but the rubble and concrete of the interior of the walls, as at Bramber, Saffron-Walden, and Thurnham, and the disintegrating effect of the weather has had full play, it is not impossible, nor very often difficult, to detect the general age of the several parts of the building by the thickness of the walls and the character of the materials and workmanship, as well as by the outline of the works. The absence of ornament and the general removal of window-dressings and door-cases often, it is true, render the absolute date difficult to discover, but even then, the general figure of the openings, the rough contour of the arches, the position and proportion of the buttresses may be detected, and a tolerably safe conclusion formed. Perhaps, on the whole, the greatest difficulties the military antiquary has to contend with are those where, as at Norwich, Lancaster, York, Oxford, Caermarthen, or Haverfordwest, the building is converted into a gaol, or where, as at Appleby and Chilham, it is part of or attached to a modern residence. Warwick, so remarkable on many accounts, is especially so for the skilful manner in which it has been made suitable for modern habitation without materially obscuring its ancient parts, and this merit may be claimed for Tamworth, and perhaps for Raby.

Our county historians are often diffuse upon the descent of a castelry, and the particulars of its area and tenures, but their descriptions of the buildings are seldom intelligible. Even Surtees, so distinguished for the wealth and lucidity of his style, whose history of Durham contains, entombed in folio, chapters that in a more accessible form would have met with far more than antiquarian attention, never attempts scientific description. Hunter, whose histories of Hallamshire and of the Deanery of Doncaster are perfect as records of the descent of families and property, is not at home in architectural detail; and even Whitaker, who, with Hunter, was quite aware of the interest which attaches to earthworks, gives plans of but few of them, and says very little about the details of the castles. To come down to the latest period, even Raine, Hodgson, and Eyton, in their histories of Durham, Northumberland, and Salop, so copious and so accurate in all matters of record, pass by with but short notice the various earthworks and castles in which those counties are so rich, and the details of which would be so valuable. We look in vain in the pages of these writers for any general conclusions as to the age, style, and points of resemblance or difference between these works, points which certainly fall within the province of the topographer.

The great work of King, the “Munimenta Antiqua,” three-quarters of a century or more older than most of the above, and full of absurd theories, misplaced learning, and fanciful and incorrect descriptions, recognises the importance of plans and details, and although those given with great show of accuracy are often very incorrect, they are worth a good deal, and with all its absurdities the book is on the whole valuable.

The “Vetusta Monumenta,” a work of the same school and period, includes a few castles, and gives plans and sections of two, the Tower and Hedingham, correctly, and in great detail. Unfortunately, these large and needlessly expensive plates are accompanied by no proper descriptions. The voluminous works of the industrious Britton include very few castles, but what there are, as Rochester, Kenilworth, and Castle Rising, are drawn and planned with extreme accuracy. The drawings of Grose and the brothers Buck serve to show the condition of many English castles a century ago, though the descriptions of Grose are poor, and his drawings are by no means clear. Buck’s perspective is very incorrect, but this allows of the bringing into view more of a building than can really be seen at once, which has its advantages.

Since the rise, during the last twenty years, of numerous county archæological societies, castles have received more attention; but no distinct work has appeared upon English castles, though many of the most remarkable are noticed by Mr. Parker in his excellent works on domestic architecture. More recently has appeared the book of the late Mr. Wykeham Martin upon his ancestral castle of Ledes, a work not only well illustrated and furnished with an excellent ground-plan, but in which the architecture and arrangements of the fortress are treated in a scientific manner, and his conclusions supported, in many instances, by original documents.

England contains many curious and some grand examples of military architecture; but that insular position and those industrious habits which have given her internal peace have not been favourable to the erection of fortresses of the larger class: for these we must pass to the Continent, and especially to France. In France not only were the works of imperial Rome of a grand and substantial character, but they were adopted and employed by the people after the fall of the empire, and both Franks and Visigoths, unlike our English Saxons, practised the arts of attack and defence upon Roman principles, and remodelled the older works to meet the later circumstances of the period. In the southern provinces, especially, are still to be found castles and fortified towns such as Tholouse, Narbonne, Beziers, and Carcassonne, where the old Roman circumvallation has been preserved, and may still be recognised amidst the additions and alterations of succeeding ages.

Like the Romans, their successors made use of earthworks and of timber both for attack and defence, and for permanent works employed masonry of a very Roman character. Such accounts as have descended to us of the great sieges of the Middle Ages show that the machines and methods in use were those handed down by tradition from Rome, many of them being such as Cæsar employed, while others were the same as those sculptured on the column of Trajan or described by Vegetius. Mines and countermines, battering-rams, balistæ, catapults, the cat, the mouse, the sow, and a large family of devices for reaching under cover the wall to be undermined, were all derived from Roman warfare, and were employed, if not with the skill and discipline of Rome, with a degree of vigour and boldness that was scarcely less effective.

Moreover, the political circumstances of France were eminently favourable to the construction of great military works. The great duchies and scarcely subordinate kingdoms which afterwards composed the French monarchy were, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, independent states, each with an open frontier needing defences, and with a brave and wealthy baronage very able and very willing to supply them. Hence France contains within its present borders not only cities of Roman origin and celebrated under the immediate successors of the Romans, but the remains of the castle-palaces of the dukes and barons of Normandy and Brittany; of Burgundy, Provence, Navarre, Flanders, Anjou, and many a lesser province; and he is but little qualified to judge of castles or of fortified mediæval cities who is unacquainted with Arques, or Falaise, or Loches; Coucy or Château-Gaillard, or Etampes; Carcassonne, Avignon, Villeneuve, or Beaucaire, or the splendid restoration of Pierrefonds.

The possession of these great works has drawn forth, though tardily, a few writers capable of comprehending and describing them. Those in Normandy are the subject of the well-known lectures of M. de Caumont, delivered at Caen in 1830 and published in 1835. They contain a very interesting section on military works, with plans and elevations which, though roughly executed and on a small scale, are valuable; his descriptions are clear, and his conclusions generally sound. Others, before M. de Caumont, have described particular structures, but he seems to have been the first to attempt a general classification based upon a critical examination of the examples in his own province.

Of detached writings, monographs, may be mentioned those of M. Deville upon Château-Gaillard, Tancarville, and Arques, published in 1828, 1834, and 1839. The first is particularly strong in its history of the castle and of its famous siege, and the last excellent both in history and description; and all three are accompanied by clear ground-plans.

The great work of Viollet-le-Duc, though not confined to military architecture, contains by much the most comprehensive, as well as the most detailed, account of French castles yet given to the world; and as, besides the general resemblance between all European castles, those of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Normandy are almost counterparts of those of the same period, and often built by the same nobles or their sons, in England, it has deservedly become our chief authority. Also the castles of France, being on a larger scale and often more perfect than our own, M. Le-Duc has been able to explain more satisfactorily than could have been done here, certain details, such, for example, as those of the gateway, drawbridge, and portcullis, and especially of the timber superstructures for vertical defence, known as “hourdes” and “bretasches,” terms represented with us by the “hoard” of a London builder, and the “brattice” of the mining engineer. M. Le-Duc’s work has given occasion and matter for a small volume from the press of Mr. Parker. There is besides a work in German, “Geschichte der Militär-Architectur des fruhern Mittelalters,” by M. G. H. Krieg von Hochfelden, which contains much of great interest concerning German castles, as well as a general notice of those in France and England.

Although military architecture in England, setting aside the works of the Romans, begins with the age, and probably with the actual period, of the Norman Conquest, the country contains numerous examples of military works of an earlier, and in many instances no doubt of a very remote, time. These works, executed in earth, or at least of which no parts but banks, mounds, and ditches remain, are sometimes of great size, but usually of extreme simplicity of plan. Of most of them, the Roman again excepted, the relative age is all that we can hope to ascertain, but even from this knowledge we are at present very far; and although it is probable that the simple encampments, of irregular outline, and on high ground, are the work of the earliest inhabitants of Britain, and those of circular or more regular outline, having higher banks, and placed in more accessible positions, are the works of the post-Roman period, yet the outlines are often so mixed, and the arrangement of the mounds and banks so alike, that it cannot always certainly be said what is sepulchral, what merely commemorative or monumental, and what military; what the works of the earlier or later Celts, what of the Saxons, what of their Danish conquerors, and sometimes even, though not often, what is Roman.

The particulars of these various earthworks, so different in plan and extending over so many centuries, deserve a separate notice, and therefore, though originally intended to have been here treated of, it seemed more prudent to lay this branch of the subject aside for the present, in the hope that it may be taken up when the completion of the larger scale Ordnance Maps shall afford more accurate and copious data than now can conveniently be procured. The subject, in fact, should have entered into the instructions given to the officers of the Survey, by which means we should at least have avoided the obscure and sometimes contradictory system of nomenclature by which these works have been designated at different periods of this great, and in most respects admirable, national undertaking.

But, although it be expedient here to pass by in silence those earthworks, irregular, rectangular, or concentric, which have no direct connexion with the subsequent castles of masonry, and therefore with military architecture, there remain, nevertheless, certain earthworks which are so connected, and which must therefore here be noticed, and are of importance sufficient to require a separate chapter for their consideration.

CHAPTER II.

EARTHWORKS OF THE POST-ROMAN AND ENGLISH PERIODS.

BUT little is recorded of the internal condition of Britain between the departure of the Legions, a.d. 411, and the arrival of the Northmen in force thirty or forty years later; but whatever may have been the effect of Roman dominion, or of the infusion of Roman blood, upon the social or commercial character of the Britons, it is at least certain that they had made little progress in the construction of places of defence. The Romans dealt rather with the country than with the people. The foreign trade under the Roman sway was no doubt considerable, and much land was under cultivation, but the Britons seem to have acquired but few of the Roman arts, and nothing of the Roman discipline. Neither have their descendants, the Welsh, many customs which can be traced distinctly to a Roman origin; and although there are many words in their language which show its origin to be cognate with the Latin, there are comparatively few which can, with any probability, be shown to be derived from the Latin. How far against the Scots and Picts they made use of Roman tactics or employed Roman weapons is but little known. In defending themselves against the Northmen they, no doubt, took advantage of the Roman walls at Richborough and Lymne, and afterwards of Pevensey, but on the whole with only temporary success; and from these they were driven back upon the earthworks of their probably remote predecessors. There is not a shadow of evidence that they constructed any new defensive works in masonry upon the Roman models, or even repaired those that were left to them in the same material.

There do, however, remain certain earthworks which seem to be laid out according to Roman rules, but which contain no traces of Roman habitations, are not connected with great Roman roads, and the banks and ditches of which are of greater height and depth than those generally in use among the Romans in Britain, and which therefore there seems reason to attribute to the post-Roman Britons. Such are Tamworth, Wareham, Wallingford, possibly Cardiff, though upon a Roman road, and the additions to the Roman works at York. The name Wallingford, “the ford of the Welsh,” may be quoted in support of this view. It is difficult to understand how it is that there are no remains in masonry which may be attributed to this period, for it is impossible that with the example of the Romans before their eyes, and a certain admixture of Roman blood in the veins of many of them, the Britons should not have possessed something of the art of construction. This difficulty does not occur in Gaul, whence the Romans were never formally withdrawn. On the Continent indeed, generally, buildings are found of all ages, from the Roman period downwards. Gregory of Tours, in his “Historia Francorum,” written towards the end of the sixth century, describes the fortified place of Merliar as of great extent and strength, in which there were included a sweet-water lake, gardens, and orchards; and M. de Caumont cites a description of an episcopal castle on the Moselle in the same century, which was defended by thirty towers, one of which contained a chapel, and was armed with a balista, and within the place were cultivated lands and a water-mill; and there were many such, like the defences of Carcassonne, of mixed Roman and post-Roman work, that is, of work executed before and about the fifth century.

In Britain, the course of events was different. The Northmen, men of the sea, and accustomed to life in the open air, had no sympathies with the Celts, and utterly disdained what remained of Roman civilisation; slaying or driving out the people, and burning and destroying the Roman buildings, which, in consequence, are in England fragmentary, and in most cases only preserved by having been covered up with earth or incorporated into later structures. The Roman works were mostly on too large a scale for the wants of new settlers, and even where these occupied the Roman towns they cared not to restore or complete the walls, but buried what remained of them in high earthen banks, upon which they pitched their palisades, and within which they threw up their moated citadels. The Northmen respected nothing, adopted nothing. Their earliest mission was one of violence and destruction. They appear, in the south and east at least, in a large measure to have slain and driven out the people of the land, and to have abolished such institutions as they possessed. But not the less did they carry with them the seeds of other institutions of a far more vigorous and very healthful character. Whether Saxons, Angles, or Jutes, though landing on the shores of Britain in quite independent parties, they had the substance of their speech, their customs, and their gods in common. They had the same familiarity with the sea, the same indisposition to occupy Roman buildings, the same absence of all sympathy with the native Britons. If they still held most of their lands in common, the house and the homestead were already private property. Their family ties were strong, as is shown in the nomenclature of their villages. As they conquered, they settled, and practised agriculture, and as they embraced Christianity they gradually established those divisions, civil and ecclesiastical, sokes and rapes, tythings, hundreds, wapentakes, and parishes, which still remain to attest the respect to which they had attained for law and order, for the rights of private property, and their capacity for self-government.

Much akin to, and before long to be incorporated into the English nation, were the Norsemen from the seaboard country north of the Elbe, the Danes of English history and of local tradition, who in the eighth century played the part of the Saxons in the fifth. They scoured the same seas, and harassed the Saxons as the Saxons had harassed the Britons, only the invaders and the invaded being, generally, of the same blood, finally coalesced, and the distinctions between them became well-nigh effaced; still, for three centuries, the ninth, tenth, and eleventh, the Danish name was the terror of the British Isles. They infested every strand, anchored in every bay, ascended every river, penetrated and laid waste the interior of the country.

Orkney is full of their traces, their language is the key to the topographical nomenclature of Caithness, the gigantic works at Flamborough Head are attributed to them; the great cutting, by which they carried a branch of the Thames across Southwark, is on record. In the year a.d. 1000, Ethelred found them forming much of the population of Cumberland. Such terminations as eye, ness, holm, and by, so common along the shores of England, or over the lands watered by the Trent and the Humber, the Tees and the Tyne, and not unknown on the western coast, show the extent and permanence of their settlements. It does not, however, appear that the Danish earthworks differed materially from those thrown up by the other northern nations in England. Camps tending to the circular form and headlands fortified by segmental lines of bank and ditch belong to all, and all when they settled and acquired property underwent very similar changes in their habits and modes of life.

No doubt, among the earlier works of the Northmen, those thrown up to cover their landing and protect their ships, were the semicircular lines of ditch and bank found on capes and headlands and projecting cliffs on various parts of the sea-coast. Usually they are of limited area, as the invaders came commonly in very small bodies, but the Flamborough entrenchment has a line of bank and ditch three and a half miles long, of a most formidable character, and including a very large area.

Along the coast of South Wales are many small camps, probably of Danish origin, such as Sully, Porthkerry, Colhugh, Dunraven, Pennard, Penmaen, five others on the headland of Gower, and five or six along the southern shore of Pembrokeshire. Besides these material traces of the invaders, are a long list of such names as Haverford (fiord), Stackpole, Hubberton, Angle, Hubberston, Herbrandston, Gateholm, Stockholm, Skomer, Musselwick, Haroldston, Ramsey, Strumble, Swansea, savouring intensely of the Baltic. The Dinas’ Head between Newport and Fishguard bays, though bearing a Welsh name, is fortified by an entrenchment due without doubt to the Northmen.

These and similar works evidently belong to the earlier period of the northern invasions, when the long black galleys of the vikings visited at not infrequent intervals the British and Irish shores, before they settled in either land. In the fifth and sixth centuries settlements began to be formed in Britain, and speedily assumed dimensions very formidable to the natives. The south-eastern coast of Britain, infested even in Roman times by the sea-rovers, and thence known as the Saxon shore, had been fortified by the Romans, but the works, intrinsically strong, were too weak in British hands to stem the progress of the foe. In a.d. 530, Cerdic and Cynric took the Isle of Wight, and slew many Britons at a place where Wightgar was afterwards buried, and where he probably threw up the work which bore his name, and afterwards, as now, was known as Carisbroke. In 547, Ida, the “flame-bearer” of the Welsh bards, founded Bebbanburgh, now Bamborough, and enclosed it first by a hedge [hegge], and afterwards by a wall; and in 552 Cynric engaged the Britons at Sorbiodunum, afterwards Searo-burh, and now Old Sarum; as did in 571 Cuthwulf or Cutha at Bedcanford or Bedford, in each of these two latter places, as at Carisbroke and probably at Twynham or Christchurch, throwing up the works which yet remain. The conquest of the Romano-British cities of Cirencester, Bath, and Gloucester, and the whole left bank of the Severn, from the Avon of Bristol to that of Worcester, was the immediate consequence of the victory of Deorham in 571, and was followed by the possession of Pengwern, afterwards Shrewsbury, a most important post, and one by means of which the Mercians, and after them the Normans, held the Middle March of Wales. All along the line from Christchurch and Carisbroke, by Berkeley and Gloucester, Worcester, Warwick and Shrewsbury, earthworks were then thrown up, most of which are still to be seen.

With the social changes among the invaders changed also the character of their military, or rather of their mixed military and domestic, works. The British encampments, intended for the residence of a tribe having all things in common, were, both in position and arrangements, utterly unsuited to the new inhabitants. The Roman stations, intended for garrisons, save where they formed part of an existing city, were scarcely less so, nor were the earlier works of the Northmen suited to their later wants. These were mostly of a hasty character, thrown up to cover a landing or to hold at bay a superior force. No sooner had the strangers gained a permanent footing in a district than their operations assumed a different character. Their ideas were not, like those of the Romans, of an imperial character; they laid out no great lines of road, took at first no precautions for the general defence or administration of the country. Self-government prevailed. Each family held and gave name to its special allotment. This is the key to the plan of the later and great majority of purely English earthworks. They were not intended for the defence of a tribe or territory, nor for the accommodation of fighting men, but for the centre and defence of a private estate, for the accommodation of the lord and his household, for the protection of his tenants generally, should they be attacked, and for the safe housing, in time of war, of their flocks and herds.

These works, thrown up in England in the ninth and tenth centuries, are seldom, if ever, rectangular, nor are they governed to any great extent by the character of the ground. First was cast up a truncated cone of earth, standing at its natural slope, from twelve to even fifty or sixty feet in height. This “mound,” “motte,” or “burh,” the “Mota” of our records, was formed from the contents of a broad and deep circumscribing ditch. This ditch, proper to the mound, is now sometimes wholly or partially filled up, but it seems always to have been present, being in fact the parent of the mound. Berkhampstead is a fine example of such a mound, with the original ditch. At Caerleon, Tickhill, and Lincoln it has been in part filled up; at Cardiff it was wholly so, but has recently been most carefully cleared out, and its original depth and breadth are seen to have been very formidable. Though usually artificial, these mounds are not always so. Durham, Launceston, Montacute, Dunster, Restormel, Nant cribba, are natural hills; Windsor, Tickhill, Lewes, Norwich, Ely, and the Devizes, are partly so; at Sherborne and Hedingham the mound is a natural platform, scarped by art; at Tutbury, Pontefract and Bramber, where the natural platform was also large, it has been scarped, and a mound thrown up upon it.

Connected with the mound is usually a base court or enclosure, sometimes circular, more commonly oval or horseshoe-shaped, but if of the age of the mound always more or less rounded. This enclosure had also its bank and ditch on its outward faces, its rear resting on the ditch of the mound, and the area was often further strengthened by a bank along the crest of the scarp of the ditch. Now and then, as at Old Sarum, there is an additional but slighter bank placed outside the outer ditch, that is, upon the crest of the counterscarp. This was evidently intended to carry a palisade, and to fulfil the conditions of the covered-way along the crest of one of Vauban’s counterscarps. Where the enclosure is circular, the mound is either central, as at Pickering, or Mileham, or at Old Sarum, where it is possibly an addition to an older work, such as Badbury, or it stands on one side, as at Tutbury. Where the area is oblong or oval, the mound may be placed near one end, as at Bramber. At Windsor and Arundel it is on one side of an oblong enclosure, producing a sort of hourglass constriction, and where this is the case a part of its ditch coincides with the ditch of the place. Where the court is only part of a circle it rests upon a part of the ditch of the mound. At Sarum there are two ditches concentrically arranged. At Berkhampstead the mound is outside the court. On the whole, as at Tickhill, Castle Acre, and Lincoln, it is most usual to see the mound on the edge of the court, so that it forms a part of the general “enceinte” of the place. Where the base court is of moderate area, as at Builth and Kilpeck, its platform is often slightly elevated by the addition of a part of the contents of the ditch, which is rarely the case in British camps. At Wigmore and Builth, where the mound stands on the edge of a natural steep, the ditch is there discontinued. The base court is usually two or three times the area of the mound, and sometimes, as at Wallingford or Warwick, much more. No doubt the reason for placing the mound on one side rather than in the centre of the court was to allow of the concentration of the lodgings, stables, &c., on one spot, and to make the mound form a part of the exterior defences of the place.

The mound and base court, though the principal parts, were not always the whole work. Often there was on the outside of the court and applied to it, as at Brinklow and Rockingham, a second enclosure, also with its bank and ditch, frequently of larger area than the main court, though not so strongly defended. It was intended to shelter the flocks and herds of the tenants in case of an attack. At Norham, the castle ditch was used for this purpose as late as the reign of Henry VIII. There are several cases in which the mound is placed within a rectangular enclosure, which has given rise to a notion that the whole was Roman. Tamworth is such a case, and there, fortunately, the mound is known historically to have been the work of Æthelflaed, as is that of Leicester, similarly placed. From this and from the evidence of the earthworks themselves a like conclusion may be drawn as to the superadded mounds at Wareham, Wallingford, and Cardiff. At Helmsley, as at Castle Acre, Brougham, and Brough, the earthworks stand upon part of a Roman camp, and at Kilpeck and Moat Lane, near Llanidloes, part of the area may possibly be British.

East Anglia contains some fine examples of these moated mounds, combined with rectangular encampments. Castle Acre is an excellent example, as are, in a less degree, Mileham and Buckenham.

When the English lord took up his abode within a Roman camp or station, he often turned the Roman works, whether of earth or masonry, to account, and threw up his bank in one corner, altering the contiguous banks and ditches to suit his new arrangements. Thus at Pevensey, Leicester, Cambridge, Lincoln, Southampton, Winchester, Chichester, Caerleon, Chester, English mounds and base courts are placed within Roman enclosures which either are or were walled. At Auldchester, near Bicester, the Roman Alauna, is a mound of later date than the camp. At Plessy, Tamworth, Wallingford, Wareham, Cardiff, are found mounds decidedly of later date than the enclosing works. There are also cases where the mound is placed within an earthwork with something of a tendency to the rectangular, though scarcely to be pronounced either Roman or Romano-British. Such are Clare, Hereford, Eaton-Socon, where the mound is very small indeed; and Lilbourne. Tempsford is very peculiar: it is a small rectangular enclosure close to the Ouse, and in one corner, upon the bank, is a small mound.

The group of works, of which the mound was the principal feature, constituted a Burh. The burh was always fortified, and each inhabitant of the surrounding township was bound to aid in the repair of the works, almost always of timber, a material which the Saxons, like other German nations, appear usually to have preferred for building purposes to stone, though some of their towns were walled, as Colchester and Exeter, and Domesday records the custom of repairing the walls of Oxford, Cambridge, and Chester.

In these English, as before them in the British works, the ditches were sometimes used to contain and protect the approaches. This is well seen at Clun and Kilpeck. At Tutbury the main approach enters between two exterior platforms, and skirts the outer edge of the ditch, until it reaches the inner entrance. The object was to place the approach under the eyes and command of the garrison.

As there are still some archæologists whose experience entitles their opinions to respect, who attribute these moated mounds to the Britons, it will be necessary to point out that the attribution of them to the English, though materially strengthened by the evidence of the works themselves, does not wholly, or even mainly, rest upon it. While the British camps are either præhistoric or unnoticed even in the earliest histories, and the age of the Roman works is only deducible from their plan and style, and from the known and limited period of the Roman stay in Britain, English works are continually mentioned in the chronicles, and the names of their founders and date of the construction of many of them are on record. Thus Taunton was founded by Ine a little before 721–2, when Queen Æthelburh destroyed it. The original earthworks still remaining are considerable, and formed part of the defences of a fortress erected long afterwards. In the ninth century, as the Danish incursions became more frequent, works of defence became more general, and are largely mentioned directly, or by implication, in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle. In 868–9, the Danish army was at Nottingham, a strong natural position, in which it was besieged by the West-Saxons. In 870, the Danes were a whole year at York and wintered at Thetford, where large earthworks remain. In 875 they were at Cambridge, and in 876 at Wareham, a West-Saxon fortress, whence they attacked Exeter, and at all these places are earthworks. In 878, we read that Ælfred “wrought” a fortress at Æthelney, and in 885 the Danes laid siege to Rochester and “wrought” another fortress about their position, no doubt the great mound that still remains outside the castle and the Roman area. In 893, the Danes ascended four miles along the Limen or “Lymne” river in Kent, and there stormed a work, “geweorc,” which was but half constructed. In the same year Hæsten entered the Thames and “wrought” him a work at Milton, and other Danes landed at Appledore, at the mouth of the Limen. In 894 Ælfred fought with the Danes at Farnham, where the episcopal keep still stands upon a burh. Hæsten or Hastings had already constructed a burh at Benfleet, which was stormed by Ælfred, who in the same year blocked him up at Buttington, on the Severn. In 896, the Danes threw up a work on the Lea, twenty miles from London, whereupon Ælfred threw up another work on each bank of that river lower down, and diverted the waters through a number of shallow courses, thus effectually shutting in the Danish ships. The Danes, in consequence, marched inland, and crossed the country to Quatbridge, on the Severn, and there “wrought a work” and passed the winter. Some of these works remain, and are good examples of moated mounds.

In the tenth century the number of English fortresses was prodigiously increased, chiefly by the energy of Æthelflaed. Ælfred died in 901, and was succeeded by Eadward, his son, who attacked, in the fortress of Badbury, his cousin Æthelwald, who held Christchurch and Wimborne. In 907, Chester, the Roman walls of which had long lain in ruin, was strengthened, probably by the earthworks still to be seen in its south-western corner, though the mound has been almost entirely removed. In 910, Æthelflaed, sister to Eadward and Lady of the Mercians, comes upon the scene as the greatest founder of fortresses in that century. In that year she built a burh at Bramsbury, and in 913 one at Scergeat or Sarrat, and at Bridgenorth (Oldbury). In 913, about the 14th of April, Eadward built the north burh at Hertford, between the rivers Memera or Maran, the Benefica or Bean, and the Lygea or Lea, upon which long after stood the shell keep of the Norman castle; and after May and before midsummer he encamped at Maldon while Witham burh was being built. Then also the second burh of Hertford, south of the Lea, was built. In the same year, 913, Æthelflaed and her Mercians built the burh of Tamworth in the early summer, and in August that of Stafford; and in the next year, 914, also in the summer, that of Eddesbury, and towards the end of autumn, that of Warwick, on which are still traces of a later keep.

In 915, Æthelflaed constructed a burh at Chirbury, probably in the field still known as the King’s Orchard, and at Wardbury, and before mid-winter that of Runcorn, where was afterwards a Norman castle. In that year the Danes ascended the Bristol Channel and entered Irchenfield, west of Hereford, remarkable, amongst many others, for its burhs of Kilpeck and Ewias-Harold, whence they were driven back by the men of Hereford and Gloucester, and of the surrounding burhs. In 916, Æthelflaed stormed the mound of Brecknock, and took thence the Welsh king’s wife and thirty-four persons. Late in the year Eadward was some weeks at Buckingham, and there constructed two burhs, one on each bank of the river, on one of which afterwards stood Earl Giffard’s keep. In 917, Æthelflaed took Derby, the gates of which town are mentioned, and in 918 the burh of Leicester, soon after which she died in her palace in Tamworth. In 919, Eadward went to Bedford, took its burh, the site of Lord Beauchamp’s keep, and there remained for four weeks, during which time he threw up a second burh on the opposite or south bank of the river Ouse. In 920 he constructed the burh at Maldon, and in 921, in April, that at Towcester, which in the autumn he girdled with a wall of stone. In the following May he directed the burh at Wigmore to be built, and in August the whole Danish army spent a day before Towcester, but failed to take it by storm. In that year the Danes abandoned their work at Huntingdon and wrought one at Tempsford, and thence moved to Bedford, whence they were repulsed. They also attacked the burh at Wigmore for a day, but without success. This was a busy year. In it the English stormed Tempsford burh, and beset Colchester burh, and slew there all but one man who escaped over the wall. Maldon burh also was attacked by the Danish army, but without success. In November, Eadward repaired the burhs at Huntingdon and Colchester and raised that at Cledemutha. In 922, the same great English leader, between May and midsummer, “wrought” a burh at Stamford on the south bank of the Welland, opposite to that already existing. He reduced the burh at Nottingham, repaired it, and garrisoned it with Englishmen and Danes. In 923, Eadward erected a burh at Thelwall, and in 924 one at Bakewell, and a second at Nottingham, opposite to the existing one, the Trent flowing between them. In 943, Olaf the Dane took Tamworth by storm. In 952, mention is made of the fastness of Jedburgh, and of the town of Thetford. In 993, Bamborough was stormed.

TOWCESTER BURGH BURY MOUNT

Of the fifty burhs named in the chronicle, about forty-one have been identified, and of these about twenty-nine still exist. Of this number, twenty-two are moated mounds, mostly with base courts also moated. At Taunton, as at Chirbury, there is reason to suppose that there was a mound, and the works at Exeter, Rochester, Colchester, and Pevensey, which are Roman, possibly succeeding earlier British works, have been taken possession of and altered by the English, as is the case also at Chester, where was, and at Pevensey, where still is, a mound. At Rochester is a large mound, though outside the fortress. Rougemont in Exeter is itself a natural mound, and Bamborough, from its great height and steepness, needed neither mound nor earthwork of any kind. Of double burhs, commanding the passage of a river, the chronicle mentions Nottingham and those on the Lea, and others at Hertford, Bedford, Stamford, and Buckingham. Unfortunately, none of these are perfect. At Nottingham and on the Lea both mounds have long been removed; one is remembered at Stamford and Buckingham, and one may still be seen at Hertford. But the only double mounds remaining to show how, in the tenth century, the English defended the passage of a river, are those at York, which are not mentioned in the chronicle.

It appears then, that setting aside works that have not been identified, or which have been destroyed before note was taken of them, there are above a score of burhs, the date of the erection of which, and the name of the founder, are entered in a trustworthy record, and which are still to be seen. What then is a burh? A burh is a moated mound with a table top, and a base court, also moated, either appended to one side of it, or within which it stands. But the burhs, the dates of which are on record, and which are thus described, are but a very few of those found all over England, in the lowlands of Scotland, and on the marches bordering on Wales, which from their precise similarity in character to those actually identified must be assumed to be of like date and origin, and may therefore safely be attributed to the ninth and tenth and possibly to the eighth centuries, and to the English people, that is to the Northern settlers generally, as distinguished from the Britons and the Romans.

It happens also that, in very many cases where these burhs are found, they can be shown to have been the “caput” or centre of an estate. It is probable that this was always the case, but as a rule it is only with respect to the very large estates that this can be proved from records. Thus the mound of Wallingford was the seat of Wigod, whose heiress married Robert D’Oyley; Bourne or Brum was held by Earl Morcar in 870; Edwin, Earl of Mercia, Lord of Strafford Wapentake, in Yorkshire, had an “aula” at Laughton-en-le-Morthen, and Conyngsborough was the centre of a royal fee. The English Lord of Richmondshire had a seat at Gilling, the mound of which has not long been levelled. The mound at Halton was the seat of Earl Tosti. At Berry Banks, near Stone, dwelt Wulfer, Lord of Mercia. The chief seats of the English lords of Hallamshire are not known, but in that district the latter thanes were Waltheof, Tosti, Sweyn Lord of Sheffield, and Harold, whose seats must be sought for in the mounds and banks of Castle Hill and Castle Bailey, near Bradford; Castle Hill, at the meeting of the Sheaf and Don; Tickhill, Wincobank, and Mexborough, all moated mounds; also in Lancashire and Yorkshire are Melling and Hornby in Lonsdale, Castle Hills at Black Bourton, Robin Hood’s butt at Clapham, and Sedbury or Sedda’s burh, a well-known mound with oval courts, Castle-dykes at Ledescal and Langwith, Maiden Castle at Grinton, and Kirkby Malessant. The great mound at Clare in Suffolk was the fortified seat of Earl Aluric, who held an enormous estate in that district. Eye, in the same county of Suffolk, the seat of Earl Edric, has a fine mound, as have Thetford and Haughley. The hill of Hedingham and that of Norwich are natural, but the latter was raised artificially and fortified with a ditch and horseshoe appendages, probably in the ninth or tenth centuries. Dudley also was a great English residence, as was Bennington mound in Hertfordshire. Hereford was fortified by the great Harold, Ewyas by another Harold; Kilpeck and Richard’s Castle were also early seats, as were the mounds of Clun, Oswestry, and Whittington, in Shropshire. In Scotland upon the mound called the “Butte of Dunsinane,” tradition places the residence of Macbeth early in the eleventh century. The butte stands within an oval area defended, says Pennant, by banks and ditches. Opposite Kingussie on the Spey is a very curious natural mound, rising on three sides out of the marshes of the river, and which is known to have been the residence of the celebrated Wolf of Badenoch. There is also a moated mound with appended courts on the banks of the Clyde.

LAUGHTON-EN-LE-MORTHEN

The burhs are mentioned in the early laws of England, but by this time the signification of the word had become extended, so that it was frequently applied not only to a moated mound but to the town that had sprung up around it. By the laws of Æthelstan, every burh was to be repaired within fourteen days after the Rogation days, and money was allowed to be coined at royal burhs. By the laws of Edmund the king’s burh was a place of refuge, and under those of Æthelred, he who fought in a king’s burh was liable to death. Burh-bryce was the violation of a castle or dwelling. Burh-bote, a payment for keeping burhs or fortresses in a state of defence, was a branch of the well-known “trinoda necessitas.” Originally, the English burh was a fortified house, the “Domus defensabilis” of Domesday, the “Aula,” the German “Saal,” of the owner of the surrounding estate or manor, which the tenants were bound to defend; of which the designation may sometimes be Norman, but the thing designated is undoubtedly of far earlier origin. The term burh naturally became extended to the cluster of surrounding huts, and a hedge with a ditch was their primary enclosure, the repair of which is provided for in very early Saxon laws. A good stout hedge, even of quickset, is not to be despised, and the cactus and bamboo hedges of India will turn a band of soldiers. The word “Haia” is not infrequent in Domesday, and it there means an enclosure into which wild beasts were driven, “Haia in qua capiebantur feratæ.” It was also used for the enclosure of a park, as the Haye Park, at Knaresborough, and the Hawe Park attached to Skipton Castle. King Ida’s hedge at Bamborough was for the defence of annexed pasture lands, for the castle scarce needed any such addition to its surpassing strength. The word was also extensively used in Normandy, both for a defence and for an enclosure. One of the old Herefordshire castles bears the name of Hay.

CASTLE HILL MEXBOROUGH

The Edictum Pistense of Charles the Bald, in 864 (cap. i.), expressly orders all “Castella et firmitates et haias,” made without his license, to be destroyed, “disfactas,” because they were injurious to the district. “Vicini et circummanentes exinde multas deprædationes et impedimenta sustinent” (“Rerum Gallicarum Scriptores,” vii., 677). Hedges therefore were not always mere enclosures, but sometimes a military defence.

These mounds, where they have descended to us, and have undergone no change at the hands of the Norman architect, are mere green hillocks, clear indeed in their simplicity, though having lost by time the sharpness of their profile, and more or less of their height and of the depth of their ditches. No masonry has ever been observed upon them which could by any possibility be attributed to their founders, or which could be supposed to be part of their original design. It is evident, however, that the earthwork was only the support of some additional defence. On the mound was certainly a residence, and both its crest and base, as well as the appended courts, must have been encircled by some sort of barrier besides the earth-bank. We read that Towcester was defended by a wall, which however was built very quickly, and probably was like a field wall, without mortar. But with or without mortar, no wall could have been placed upon a fresh heap of earth, and that spoken of must have stood upon the natural ground at or around the base of the mound. No doubt Exeter was walled by Æthelstan, and Colchester had walls, partly, as we see, Roman, but partly no doubt, English; and Derby had gates, though of what material is not stated. At Corfe is some masonry, certainly older than the Conquest, and part of its outer defences; but Corfe is a natural hill. It is well known that the English were from a remote period conversant with masonry, and constructed churches of stone or timber as suited them best; and nothing is more natural than that they should have employed the former where the object was to resist an attack. But upon a burh, or upon an artificial earthwork of any height, masonry of any kind was obviously out of the question. Timber, and timber alone, would have been the proper material. Timber was always at hand, and it was a material of which, possibly from their early maritime habits, the English were very fond. Also the rapidity with which these burhs were constructed shows that timber must have been largely employed. They were thrown up, completed, attacked, burnt, and restored, all within a few months.

There are not wanting descriptions of these timber-defended works. M. de Caumont cites a curious passage from Ernaldus Nigellus, an author of the ninth century, who relates an expedition under Louis le Debonnaire against the Breton king, Marman, whose strongholds were protected by ditches and palisades.

“Est locus hinc silvis, hinc flumine cinctus amoeno.

Sepibus et sulcis atque palude situs.”

Intus opima domus....

This however was a Breton work, and there is no mention of a mound. Two centuries later the mound was in general use, and another quotation, taken also from M. de Caumont, from the life of John, a canonised prelate of the church of Terouane, by Archdeacon Colmier, gives an account of the fortress of Merchen, near Dixmude, in which the material employed and the mode of construction are clearly set forth. The original, taken from the “Acta Sanctorum,” is appended to this paper, and is in truth a description of a moated mound, with its fence and turrets of timber, its central dwelling, and the bridge across the ditch rising to the top of the mound. The description is illustrated by the representation of the taking of Dinan, in the Bayeux tapestry. There is seen the conical mound surmounted by a timber building, which two men with torches are attempting to set on fire, while others are ascending by a steep bridge which spans the moat, and rises to a gateway on the crest of the mound.

Many of these mounds under the name of motes (motæ) retained their timber defences to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and that too on the Shropshire and Welsh border, crowded with castles of masonry.

Ducange defines mota as “Collis, seu tumulus, cui inædificatum est castellum. Olim castella numquam nisi in eminentissimis locis extruebantur. In Flandria vero, humili ac planissima regione, congestis undequaque terrarum molibus, fieri solebant motæ, quibus arces imponerentur”; and adds that mota is the same work known in Dauphigny as “poypia,” and in Auvergne as “mote seigneuriale.” From Lambertus Ardensis he quotes: “Motam altissimam, sive dunjonem eminentem in munitionis signum firmavit, et in aggerem coacervavit.” And Orderic tells that, in 1098, Pain de Mont-Doubleau delivered up to William Rufus, “Fortissimam, quam apud Balaonem possidebat, motam, per quam totum oppidum adversariis subactum paruit.” And in 1119, Fulk of Anjou, with 500 knights laid siege, “ad motam Galterii,” which the king had fortified. Also near Ponte-Corvo was “Motam magnam, quam faciebat facere Dominus Canis cum mulfossis et tajatis ad claudendum Paduanos,” like the great mound at Rochester, just outside the city wall. In the Roman de Rou:—

“Hubert de Rie est à sa porte

Entre le mostier et sa mote.”

“Mostier” being the church. Also in “La Bataille des Sept Arts”:—

“Qui fu fier cum chastel sur mote.”

Also the Consuetudines Trecensis speak of “Le principal chastel ou maison-fort, mote, ou place de maison seigneuriale”: and in Colletus, “Il y a des masures qui ont des droits très considérables; nous avons des simple poypes [ce sont des terres élevées et fossoyées] qui ont les plus beaux droits.” The History of Dauphigny has, in 1290, “Item castrum seu Poypiam de Montlyopart; item castrum seu fortalicium de Pusigniano.” Ducange is copious on this subject.

The use of the mound as the site of the “maison seigneuriale” was general in England, and several such—as Barwick-in-Elmet and Laughton-en-le-Morthen—are still pointed out as the seats of early English nobles and kings; and of others thrown up primarily for defence, as Tamworth and Leicester, and afterwards occupied as royal and other residences, the date is on record.

After the Conquest, the English term “burh” seems to have given place to the Latin “mota,” at least in public records. It is true that in a charter by the Conqueror, given by Rymer, occurs “Et in burgis, et muro-vallatis, et in castellis,” but “burgis” may be held to mean borough towns. In the charter of Matilda, 1141, bestowing the earldom of Hereford on Milo de Gloucester, she grants “Motam Hereford et cum toto castello,” words which evidently refer to the mound, now destroyed, and not, as has been supposed, to the right to hold a moot there. Also, in the convention between Stephen and Henry of Anjou the distinction is drawn between “Turris Londinensis et ‘Mota de Windesora,’” London having a square keep or tower, and Windsor a shell keep upon a mound. Probably when, as at Durham, keeps of masonry superseded the “ligna tabulata firmissime compacta,” the fortress ceased to be called a mote, and became a castle; but in very many instances this change was a long time in coming about, and in many of the less important and private residences it never occurred at all. Thus, the moated mounds on the Upper Severn show no trace whatever of masonry, and as late as the reign of Henry III., 159 years after the Conquest, and years too of incessant battling with a warlike and sleepless foe, timber was still the material of their defences. The Close Roll of 9 Henry III., 30 May, 1225, thus addresses the Custos of Montgomery:—

“Rex etc. dilecto et fideli suo Godescallo de Maghelins salutem. Precipimus tibi quod ex parte nostra firmiter precipias omnibus illis qui motas habent in valle de Muntgumery quod sine dilatione motas suas bonis bretaschiis firmari faciant ad securitatem et defensionem suam et parcium illarum.”[1] And not only in the defences of these lesser motes and fortified private houses did timber play an important part. Turrets of timber were prepared for the castle of Montgomery, and even Shrewsbury itself, the seat successively of three most powerful earls and the chief place in their earldom, was by no means wholly a work in masonry. In the reign of Edward I. the jurors appointed to report upon the condition of the castle, state: “Quod unus magnus turris ligneus qui edificatur in castro Salop corruit in terram tempore domini Uriani de St. Petro tunc vice comitis et meremium ejusdem turris tempore suo et temporibus aliorum vice comitum preterea existencium ita consummatur et destruitur quod nichil de illo remansit in magnum dampnum domini Regis et deterioracionem ejusdem castri.” In a French charter of 1329 occurs, “Premierement le motte et les fossez d’entour le motte de Maiex,” and in 1331, “Le motte de mon Manoir de Caieux et les fossez entour.” It appears, then, that from an early period, certainly from the ninth century, it was a common practice in constructing a strong place, whether a private dwelling or a military post, to place it upon the summit of a mound, and to surround both the mound and an appended enclosure with defences of earth, and that in many, probably for some time in all, cases the building within and the defences around such places were of timber, and indeed, so far as they stood on made ground, necessarily so. Sometimes probably, when the front was more extended, as when a small pasture ground attached to the main fortress was to be protected from sudden assaults, recourse was had to a “haia” or “clausura.”

In viewing one of these moated mounds we have only to imagine a central timber house on the top of the mound, built of half trunks of trees set upright between two waling pieces at the top and bottom, like the old church at Greensted, with a close paling around it along the edge of the table top, perhaps a second line at its base, and a third along the outer edge of the ditch, and others not so strong upon the edges of the outer courts, with bridges of planks across the ditches, and huts of “wattle and dab” or of timber within the enclosures, and we shall have a very fair idea of a fortified dwelling of a thane or franklin in England, or of the corresponding classes in Normandy from the eighth or ninth centuries down to the date of the Norman Conquest.

The existence of these mounds in distinct Welsh territory is very curious and requires explanation. That this form of dwelling was in common use among the Welsh is certainly not the case. Where moated mounds occur in Wales it is usually on the border, or near the sea-coast, or in or near the open valleys accessible to the English, which the English or Northmen are known to have invaded in the eighth and ninth centuries. The mound near Llanidloes is an exception, being distinctly within the hills. But that of Tafolwern, from which the Welsh princes dated several charters, is near the open valley. That of Talybont, whence Llewelyn dated a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1275, and which was afterwards visited by Edward the First, is on a plain within easy reach of the sea. Hên Domen and Rhos Diarbed on the Upper Severn are also good examples. Still, as the Welsh princes intermarried and had frequent communication with the English, they must have been familiar with a form of fortification very simple and easy to construct, and yet very capable of being held against a sudden attack. It must be observed, also, that the English hold upon the Welsh border was of a very fluctuating description, and the Welshmen must not only have been perfectly familiar with the English method of construction, but from time to time have been actually in possession of their strongholds. That the Welsh used timber for defensive purposes appears from their law by which the vassals were to attend at the lord’s castle for its repairs or for rebuilding, each with his axe in his hand. In some cases in these Border works there is scarcely any mound, at others the mound is low and hollow in the centre. Caer Aeron and another small earthwork near Builth seem to have been the earthen bases of a mere circular wigwam. Caer Aeron cannot have been a mere temporary structure, as the circumscribing ditch has been cut with considerable labour in the rock.

It is very evident, both from the existence of Offa’s dyke, and from the immense number of these moated mounds thrown up along its course, that the English had early and long possession of large tracts of the border territory. Offa ruled over Mercia from a.d. 757 to 796, and his dyke extends from the mouth of the Wye to that of the Dee. At its northern part, for about forty miles, is a second work, known as Wat’s Dyke, a little in its rear, and thought to be a somewhat earlier work, also by Offa. Before the actual line of a work so galling to the spirit of a turbulent people could have been decided upon there must have been many years of contest along the border, and the English must have had something like permanent possession of the land on either side, and have held estates of which the mounds still existing were the “capita” or chief seats. The dyke, it should be remembered, was rather a civil boundary than a military defence.

It is further to be remarked that moated mounds corresponding precisely in pattern to those in England, are very numerous in Normandy. In size they vary within much the same limits. All have or had a proper ditch, some, as Briquessart and Des Olivets, stand in the centre of the court, some at one end, others on the edge. The court is sometimes circular, most commonly oblong, very rarely indeed rectangular. The outer enclosures have their ditches, which communicate with those of the inner defences. M. de Caumont gives a list of fifty-four of these mounds, within a radius of sixty miles from Caen, and since he wrote many more have been observed. These also were, from an early period, the seats of great landowners, and from very many of them came the knights and barons who accompanied William to England, and there settled in posts very similar. Sir F. Palgrave gives a list of 131 of these fortified residences in the Cotentin, the Avranchin, and the Bessin, which includes only six of those mentioned by de Caumont. A large number of those earthworks seem never to have had, at any time, defences of masonry. Others, upon the mounds, had Norman shell keeps.

Besides the British theory, these mounds have been claimed as sepulchral. It is of course possible that such mounds as Arundel or Marlborough may have been originally sepulchral, and therefore older than their defensive additions. To few if any has the crucial experiment of opening them been applied; but this is not a very probable explanation, and could certainly not be applied to those mounds as a class. Among many other reasons for taking this view, it may be observed that sepulchral mounds are always artificial, whereas moated mounds are often natural, and still more frequently partly so. No one could suppose Hawarden, or Dunster, or Montacute, to be sepulchres, and yet these are as much moated mounds as Arundel and Tonbridge. Moreover, sepulchral mounds are not often placed where a defensive work is obviously needed, and most rude nations are superstitious, and would object to dwell upon or around a grave. The Tynewald in Man, Cwichelmsley Knowe in Berkshire, and a work upon the Clyde in Lanarkshire, are the only known sepulchral mounds which have been employed for other purposes, and of these the two former are judicial, not residential. The barrows round York, though smaller than most burhs, are big enough to have carried residences, but do not appear to have been so employed. Moreover, the common testimony of the country has generally given to the moated mounds some name, such as Castle Hill or Burh, indicative of their military origin.

It has been observed that moated mounds are usually near the parish church. This might be expected, since the parish, like the manor, was usually a private estate, and the church was originally provided by the lord for the accommodation of his tenants and himself.

There is a class of mounds due probably to the same people with those above described, but very seldom moated, and not usually accompanied by base courts and enclosures. These are the moot-hills, used for civil purposes, as the holding of courts-leet, of which the mound at Barton, in Northamptonshire, is a fine example. They are not uncommon. There is one near Kenilworth, close to Stoneleigh Church, one at Hawick, one called the Mote Hill, in Hamilton Park; there is also one on the right bank of the Neckar, below Heidelberg. Sometimes they are called toot-hills; hence Tothill Fields, though the mound is gone.

In claiming for these moated mounds a northern and in Britain an English origin it would be too much to assert that in no other class of works is the mound employed, or by no other people than the Northmen; but it may be safely laid down that in no other class of early fortification does the mound occur as the leading and typical feature. In Roman and Norman, and possibly in purely British works, the mound may be occasionally seen, like the cavalier in the works of Vauban, as at Kenilworth, or as an outwork, as at Caerphilly, or it may be employed to cover or divide an entrance; but such mounds are of irregular shape, mere detached and elevated parts of the general bank, and not likely to be confounded with the moated mound described above.

Appendix.

Vita Sti Johannis Epis: Morinorum. Ob: 1130.

[Acta Sanctorum, Januarii 27.]

Contigit ut in villa, cui Morchem vocabulum est, hospitii mansionem haberet [Johannes]. Erat autem secus atrium ecclesiae munitio quaedam quam castrum vel municipium dicere possumus valde excelsa, juxta morem terrae illius, a domino villae ipsius multis retro annis extructa. Mos namque est ditioribus quibuscunque regionis hujus hominibus et nobilioribus, eo quod maxime inimicitiis vacare soleant exercendis et caedibus, ut ab hostibus eo modo maneant tutiores, et potentia majore vel vincant pares, vel premant inferiores, terrae aggerem quantae praevalent celsitudinis congerere eique fossam quam late patentem, multamque profunditatis altitudinem habentem circumfodere, et supremam ejusdem aggeris crepidinem vallo ex lignis tabulatis firmissime confacto undique vice muri circummunire, turribusque, secundum quod possibile fuerit, per gyrum dispositis, intra vallum, domum vel, quae omnia despiciat, arcem in medio aedificare, ita videlicet ut porta introitus ipsius villae non nisi per pontem valeat adiri, qui ab exteriori labro fossae primum exoriens est in processu paulatim elevatus, columnisque binis et binis, vel etiam trinis altrinsecus per congrua spatia suffixis innixus, eo ascendendi moderamine per transversum fossae consurgit, ut supremam aggeris superficiem coaequando oram extremi marginis ejus, et in ea parte limen prima fronte contingat.

In hujus-modi ergo asylo Pontifex, cum suo frequenti et reverendo comitatu hospitali, quum ingentem populi turbam tam in ecclesia, quam in atrio ejus, manus impositione, et sacri Chrismatis unctione confirmasset, ut vestimenta mutaret, eo quod coemiterium humandis fidelium corporibus benedicere statuisset ad hospitium regressus est, unde illo, ut propositum perficeret opus, iterum descendente, et circa medium pontis, triginta quinque vel eo amplius pedum, altitudinem habentis, certa de causa subsistente, populique non modica caterva ante et retro, dextra lævaque circumstipante, continuo antiqui machinante hostis invidia, pons ponderi cessit, et dissipatus corruit, magnamque illorum hominum turbam cum episcopo suo ad ima dejicit; fragore autem ingenti e vestigio consecuto, transtris, trabibusque tabulatis, et ruderibus magno cum impetu pariter et strepitu concidentibus: nebula quaedam tenebrosa ita omnem illam ruinam repente circumfudit, ut quid ageretur vix quisquam discernere potuerit.

Translation.

It chanced that in a town called Merchem, Bishop John had a guest-house. There was also close to the court of the church a strong place, which might be regarded as a castle or a municipium, very lofty, built after the fashion of the country by the lord of the town many years ago. For it was customary for the rich men and nobles of those parts, because their chief occupation is the carrying on of feuds and slaughters, in order that they may in this way be safe from enemies, and may have the greater power for either conquering their equals or keeping down their inferiors, to heap up a mound of earth as high as they were able, and to dig round it a broad, open, and deep ditch, and to girdle the whole upper edge of the mound, instead of a wall, with a barrier of wooden planks, stoutly fixed together with numerous turrets set round. Within was constructed a house or rather citadel, commanding the whole, so that the gate of entry could only be approached by a bridge, which first springing from the counterscarp of the ditch, was gradually raised as it advanced, supported by sets of piers, two, or even three, trussed on each side over convenient spans, crossing the ditch with a managed ascent so as to reach the upper level of the mound, landing at its edge on a level at the threshold of the gate.

In this retreat the bishop with his numerous and reverend retinue, after having confirmed a vast crowd of people both in the church and its court, by laying on of hands and the unction of the sacred chrism, returned to his lodging that he might change his vestments, because he had resolved to consecrate a cemetery for the burial of the bodies of believers. When, in again descending from his lodging, in order to effect the proposed work, he halted for some reason about the middle of the bridge, which had there a height of thirty-five feet or more, the people pressing behind and before, and on each side, straightway, the malice of the old enemy so contriving, the bridge yielded to the weight and fell shattered; and the crowd with the bishop fell to the bottom with a great crash of joists, beams, and planks, with great force and noise, while a thick dust at once enveloped the ruin so that scarce any one could see what had happened.

The following is also curious:—

(Ludovicus Grossus, a.d. 1109.) “Puteolum regreditur antiquam antecessorum suorum destitutam Motam castro jactu lapidis propinquam, occupat. Castrum fundibalariorum, balistariorum, saggitariorum, emissa pericula sustinentes; etc.”

CHAPTER III.

OF THE CASTLES OF ENGLAND AT THE CONQUEST AND UNDER THE CONQUEROR.

IT has usually been assumed that the rapidity of William’s conquest was due to the absence of strong places in England. There is, however, ground for believing that England, in this respect, was exceedingly well provided,—quite as well provided as Normandy; and that, with the possible exception of a very few recently-constructed strongholds, the works in the two countries were very similar in character. The older sites of the castles of the barons in Normandy are nearly all ascertained, and are for the most part distinguished by a moated mound with an appended court or courts also moated. This simple and very effective form of defence has been shown to have been in use among the Northern nations, invaders both of England and the Continent, and in the ninth and tenth centuries was as common on the banks of the Thames, the Humber, and the Severn, as on those of the Seine and the Orne. It was in the eleventh century, and chiefly during the troubles attendant upon the accession and minority of Duke William, that the Normans seem to have adopted a new and more permanent description of fortress, and the old-fashioned structure of timber began to be replaced by walls and towers in masonry, and especially by keeps of that material. Of these the best-known, because the most durable, form was the rectangular, of which not above half a dozen examples can be shown with certainty to have been constructed in Normandy before the latter part of the eleventh century, and but very few, if any, before the English conquest; nor is there known to be in Normandy any specimen of the polygonal or circular form of keep as early as that event. De Caumont, indeed, attributes the rectangular keep of Langeais, in which brick is largely used, to the year 992; but there is great reason to doubt this conclusion, and Du Pin and St. Laurent are probably among the oldest of this form, and do not seem to be earlier than the reign of Duke William; and this is true also of Arques and Nogent-le-Rotrou. In Normandy, as in England, the polygonal or shell keep, though on the older site, seems usually to be in masonry, which is the later construction; that of Gisors was built by Robert de Belesme in 1097, and that of Carentan at about the same time. Many even of the most considerable mounds, as Briquessart and Vieux-Conches, show no trace of masonry. The shell keep of Plessis-Grimoult was held by De Caumont to have been constructed before 1047; but if this be so, it is certainly a singular exception. Castle-building in Normandy seems to have preceded the English conquest, if at all, by but a very few years.

The Romans left behind them in Britain many walled towns; but it is not known to what extent these defences were preserved by the Northmen, or in what condition they found them. At the conquest, Chester, Lincoln, Exeter, Hereford, Leicester, Oxford, Stafford, and Colchester, seem to have been already walled, and the walls of Exeter had been repaired or rebuilt by Æthelstan. Canterbury, Nottingham, and York were defended by a ditch. There were also probably some others, and possibly a few military towers in masonry of English workmanship; but there is no evidence of there having been anything like a rectangular keep, notwithstanding the special mention in 1052 of Richard’s Castle, the work of Richard, the son of Scrob. There is no reason to suppose that it possessed a tower of that character, which would have been quite out of keeping with the moated mound which even now marks the spot, and upon which the remains of the shell keep are still to be seen. Still less had the English any shell keeps constructed in masonry. What there really was in the way of military masonry and what was its character are not so clear. It was said of Dover, by William of Poictiers, that it was by Harold “studio atque sumptu suo communitum,” and that there were “item per diversa loca illius terræ alia castra ubi voluntas Ducis ea firmari jubet”; also in the account of the advance of William from Canterbury it is added, “Veniens ... ad fractam turrim castra metatus est,” pointing to a work in masonry, though no doubt it might, as at York, be Roman. Arundel, named in “Domesday” as having been a castle in the reign of the Confessor, was probably, from the size of its mound and the depth of its ditches, as strong as any castle of its type in Normandy; but no masonry has been observed there, either upon or about the mound, of a date earlier than the Conquest, if as early.

That there existed in England, at the Conquest, no castles in masonry of English work it may be too much to assert; but it may safely be said that, save a fragment of wall at Corfe, no military masonry decidedly older than that event has as yet been discovered. In 1052, when the Confessor and Earl Godwin came to terms, and the attack on London was set aside, it is stated that Archbishop Robert and his Frenchmen fled, some westward to Pentecost Castle and some northwards to Robert’s Castle; so that these places probably, like Richard’s Castle, were in Norman hands, though it does not follow that they were constructed of the material or in the fashion then coming into use in Normandy.

“Domesday” mentions directly forty-nine castles as existing at the date of the survey, and of these at least thirty-three were on sites far older than the Conquest; and of them at least twenty-eight possessed artificial mounds similar to Arundel and the castles in Normandy. “Domesday,” however, is notoriously capricious both in its entries and omissions on such matters as were not included in its proper view, and its list of castles is nearly as incomplete as its list of churches. Neither were required to be noted. “Of the forty-nine castles recorded,” says Sir H. Ellis, “eight are known, either on the authority of ‘Domesday’ or of our old historians, to have been built by the Conqueror himself; ten are entered as erected by greater barons, and one by an under-tenant of Earl Roger; eleven more, of whose builders we have no particular account, are noticed in the ‘Survey,’ either expressly or by inference, as new.” The fact is, however, that although the number of castles actually mentioned may be only forty-nine, of castles and castelries (which imply a castle) there are named in “Domesday” fifty-two. The castles reputed to have been built by the Conqueror himself are Lincoln, Rockingham, Wareham, two castles at York, Dover, Durham, London, and Nottingham, of which the last four are not mentioned in “Domesday.” Exeter, also omitted, is generally reputed to be one of William’s castles, as was Stafford; which, however, was constructed and destroyed before the date of the survey. “Terra de Stadford in qua rex percepit fieri castellum, quod modo est destructum,” a very short period for the construction and destruction of a work in masonry. Mr. Pearson, who has given great attention to the subject of Norman castles in England, tabulates the result of his researches in the atlas attached to his “History.” He there enumerates, as standing in the reign of the Conqueror, forty-nine castles belonging to the King and fifty to his subjects. Of these, at least thirty-eight have mounds. He gives also a list of fifty-three belonging to private persons in the reign of William Rufus, of which at least five have mounds. Probably there were of each class many more than these. Colchester, for example, is not included, nor Farnham, nor Berkhampstede.

Of the ninety-nine castles enumerated by Mr. Pearson as belonging to the reign of the Conqueror, at least fifty are on old sites. These are Arundel, Berkeley, Bramber, Cambridge, Carisbrook, Chester, Clare, Clifford, Caerleon, Coningsburgh, Dover, Durham, Dunster, Dudley, Eye, Ewias, Guildford, Hastings, Huntingdon, Launceston, Leicester, Lincoln, Lewes, L’wre, Marlborough, Montacute, Norwich, Oxford, Pevensey, Pontefract, Quatford, Raleigh, Richard’s Castle, Rochester, Rockingham, Shrewsbury, Striguil, Stafford, Stamford, Tickhill, Tonbridge, Trematon, Tutbury, Wigmore, Windsor, Wallingford, Wareham, Warwick, Worcester, and York. Almost as many are doubtful, and probably not more than two or three, such as Richmond, London, and possibly Malling, were altogether new. The fact is, that all these lists, however valuable they may be as showing what castles were taken possession of or re-edified or strengthened by the Normans, give no adequate idea of the fortresses already existing in England, and omit scores of earthworks as large and as strong as those occupied by the Normans in England or left behind them in Normandy, of a date long before the reign of William,—probably before the end of the tenth century. If, as said by William of Newbury, the castles were the bones of the kingdom, it must be admitted that the English skeleton was a very perfect one. Every part of England, much of Scotland, and the accessible parts of the Welsh border, were covered with strong places, which were, no doubt, defended, and well defended, with palisades, as more suitable to made ground than work in masonry such as was more or less in use for ecclesiastical purposes. If, at the Conquest, no English stronghold held out, it was not that such places were less capable of defence than those in Normandy, but that England was broken up into parties. Harold’s seat was too insecure and the few months of his reign far too brief to allow his great administrative talents to come into play; and his early death left the English without a leader. The power of the other earls was local. There was no organised opposition. Notwithstanding the assertion of Orderic that the English were mere tillers of the soil, a convivial and drinking race, they by no means submitted quietly to the Norman rule; but their efforts for freedom, boldly devised and gallantly executed, were ill-timed and ill-combined, and were in consequence put down in detail. Under such circumstances, the strongholds of the country availed little. Dover, Lewes, Arundel, Bramber, Tonbridge, Rochester, Guildford, Farnham, Wallingford, and Berkhampstede, had their strong earthworks been held in force, would have rendered William’s advance too imprudent to have been attempted; and that these and other not far distant positions were well chosen is shown by the fact that they were all adopted by the Conqueror. The conquest of England was made possible, not by the absence of strong places, but by the want of organisation for their defence.

But whatever may have been the character of the defences in use in England before the arrival of the Normans, it is certain that from that period they underwent a considerable and probably a rapid change, though scarcely so rapid as has been supposed. The Normans, who had so long, in common with the English (probably by reason of their common ancestry), employed the moated and palisaded mound, proceeded to carry out in England the important improvements they had already commenced in Normandy. William’s chief object, having conquered, was to secure his conquest; and his first care, on obtaining possession of each division of the kingdom or each capital city or town, was to regard it from a military point of view, and to order the construction of such strong places as might be necessary for the holding of it. How completely, in so doing, he trod in the footsteps of those who had gone before, is shown by what he found and what he did towards the covering of London and the maintaining of his communication with the sea. Thus he found and reinforced castles at Chichester, Arundel, Bramber, Lewes, Hastings, and Dover. On his road he found and strengthened Canterbury, Tonbridge, Rochester, and Ryegate. In London he founded the Tower, an entirely new work; but for the defence of the basin of the Thames he trusted to the ancient sites of Guildford and Farnham, possibly Reading, and certainly Wallingford and Berkhampstede. And so all over the kingdom, such strongholds as were central, in good military positions, or of unusual strength, or were placed in the ancient demesne lands of the Crown, were taken possession of or reconstructed for the sovereign; but every baron or great tenant in chief was permitted,—and, indeed, at first expected, and was no doubt sufficiently ready,—to construct castles for the security of the lands allotted to him, which in the vast majority of instances meant to remodel the defences of his English predecessors. This was under the pressure of circumstances; for William seems always to have been awake to the danger of uniting extensive hereditary jurisdictions, and even from the first to have contemplated governing the counties through the intervention of vice-comites, or sheriffs, who were appointed and could be displaced at pleasure. But this policy was at first, in certain districts, necessarily postponed; though even then William made it to be understood that the chief castles of the realm, by whomsoever built, were royal castles; and their actual acquisition was always an important part of the policy of both him and his successors so long as castles were of consequence. Thus Windsor, Cambridge, Exeter, Corfe, Wareham, Winchester, Porchester, Southampton, Carisbrooke, Canterbury, Dover, Lincoln, Rockingham, Nottingham, Stafford, Guildford, Warwick, Marlborough, and York were royal castles from the commencement. Wallingford, Gloucester, Bristol, Oxford, Tutbury, Worcester, though built by subjects, were not the less claimed and officered by the Crown. Even Durham, though held by the bishops, and Leicester, Lincoln, and Huntingdon, by the lords of those earldoms, were from time to time in the hands of the Crown, whose rights over them were of a far more direct character than those it claimed to exercise over the lands and other feudal possessions of the same lords.

Arundel, Shrewsbury, Montgomery, Bridgenorth, and some less important fortresses, fell to the Crown on the overthrow of the house of Talvas; and with this event a number of castles on the Welsh border, built by tenants of Earl Roger, became fiefs in capite, dependent directly upon the Crown. Besides these, there are on record in England about forty or fifty castles built by local barons, which, when it suited the Crown, were taken in hand and repaired and garrisoned at its charge.

Of nearly all the castles on record, as existing in the reigns of the Conqueror and his sons, the sites are well known; and of very many, fragments of the masonry remain. What is very remarkable is, that of this masonry there is but little which can be referred to the reign of either the Conqueror or William Rufus,—that is, to the eleventh century. Of that period are certainly London and Malling, Guildford, Bramber, Carlisle, the gate-house of Exeter, the lower story of Chepstow, the keeps of Chester, Goderich, Walden, Wolvesey, Colchester, and Newcastle, though this last looks later than its recorded date. Newcastle was probably on the site of an earlier castle; at least, the entry in the Hundred Rolls (ii., 119),—“Juratores dicunt quod Vicecomes ... fecit quandam inquisitionem ... super motam castri predictæ villæ,”—looks like it. There is some reason to regard the keep at Malling as the earliest Norman military building now extant in England, and as the work of Gundulf, the architect of the Tower keep. The North or Gundulf’s tower at Rochester Cathedral is by the same great builder, and possibly was intended as a military building: if so, it may rank with Malling. Probably there is more of this early masonry; but not much. Dover, Rochester, Porchester, and Hedingham, among our finest examples, are certainly later. Part of Durham Castle is, no doubt, of the age of the Conqueror; but the shell keep has been rebuilt, and it is doubtful whether the original work was of the age of the early Norman chapel and hall attached to it. Speaking generally, those castles in England which belong to what is called the Norman period are too late to be the work of the Conqueror or his personal followers, and too early to allow of any preceding work in Norman masonry (usually sound and solid), having been constructed and swept away. What is the solution of this difficulty? Of what character and material were the great majority of the castles which William ordered to be constructed? Of what character were those mentioned in “Domesday”?

That William ordered many castles to be constructed is certain; and among the orders left with Bishop Odo and William Fitz Osborn, when acting as joint regents of the kingdom, was one specially charging them to see to the building of castles; and no doubt these orders were obeyed. But it has been hastily assumed that the castles constructed were of masonry. The keeps of Dover and Rochester, for example (if such were erected under the Conqueror), were certainly not those now standing, which belong to the reign of Henry II.; and so of Norwich, and probably of Nottingham, now destroyed. And yet the masonry of William’s reign was of a very durable character, as is seen in the Tower of London, and in not a few still standing churches. Also it is stated that William “custodes in castellis strenuos viros collocavit, ex Gallis traductos, quorum fidei pariter ac virtuti credebat.” This looks very much as though the castellans were at first, at any rate, put in charge of existing castles; which must mean that in most cases some temporary arrangement was made, and the existing works strengthened until it was convenient to replace them by others more in accordance with the new ideas of strength and security.

William and his barons evidently employed two classes of castles,—one always in masonry, and one very often in timber. Where a castle was built in a new position, as in London, or where there was no mound, natural or artificial they employed masonry and chose as a rule for the keep the rectangular form,—a type said to have been introduced from Maine, and seen at Arques, at Caen, and at Falaise; but where the site was old, and there was a mound, as at Lincoln, Huntingdon, Rockingham, Wallingford, or York, they seem to have been content to repair the existing works, usually of timber only, and to have postponed the replacing them with a regular shell till a more convenient season, which in many cases did not occur for a century.

Nor was the postponement very serious, for the native fortresses, if well manned, were strong, at least for a limited time. The attacks of the Danes upon Towcester, Bedford, and Wigmore are on record; and yet these, of all of which the earthworks remain, were not burhs of the first class, and certainly would not contain a hundred men,—or, even if the base-court were occupied, more than thrice that number,—and the Danish army could scarcely be less than ten times as numerous. The fact is, however, that such a mound as Arundel or Tonbridge, palisaded, could be held for a short time by three or four score of resolute men against a sharp attack from any number, armed as men were armed in the tenth and eleventh centuries. No doubt, towers of masonry were more secure, because less dependent upon the vigilance of the garrison, less obnoxious to fire, and less liable to be taken by surprise. But the Normans were stout soldiers, well disciplined, and could from the first expect no quarter from the insurgent English.

Among the castles ordered by William to be built, one of the most important was York. The order was given in the summer of 1068; and it is known that the new castle was to be upon the old English site, which contained a moated mound of the first class, commanding and protected on one side by the Roman city, and on the others by the swamps and waters of the Ouse and Foss. William’s castle was to be garrisoned by three leaders and five hundred knights, which implied a considerable following. Its area, therefore, must have been spacious, and no doubt included with the mound its ample base-court as seen at the present day. In 1069, the castle was attacked by the citizens in revolt, and was even then capable of being held, and was held, till William came to its assistance. He then ordered a second castle to be constructed upon the Bayle Hill, the mound still to be seen on the opposite or right bank of the river; and this was completed in eight days, before he left the city. A few months later, before September, 1069, the citizens, aided by the Danes, again attacked and burned the castles, which in 1069–70 were again renewed. Now, York was the metropolis of the most disaffected half of the kingdom. There, if anywhere, a castle of stone would be desirable, and stone could readily have been brought by water; and yet York Castle was constructed and made capable of being defended in a few months, and its subsidiary fortress in eight days; and both soon after were taken and burned, and at once ordered to be reconstructed. It is clear, from the time occupied by the whole sequence of events, that these castles were not of masonry. Moreover, the masonry of the present York keep contains nothing that can be attributed to the eleventh century; but much that is far too early to have replaced a really substantial keep or curtain of Norman date had such been built. Upon the great and artificial mound of Bayle Hill, the site of the second castle, there is neither trace nor tradition of any masonry at all.

The building of a Norman castle required both time and money. The architects, overlookers, and probably the masons, had to be imported from Normandy, and in many cases the stone for the exterior; and as most of the existing square keeps, and very nearly all the shell keeps, are of the twelfth century, it seems probable that the Conqueror was to some extent content with such defences as he found in England; strengthened, no doubt, very materially by the superior skill and resources of his engineers. This is quite consistent with the fact that the art of castle-building did, from the building of the White Tower, undergo a great and somewhat rapid change. It is true of William, both in Normandy and in England, as Matthew Paris observes, “ad castra quoque construenda, rex antecessores suos omnes superabat”; and he, no doubt, as we are told by William of Jumieges, “tutissima castella per opportuna loca stabilavit.” Lanfranc, writing to Roger, Earl of Hereford, before his rebellion, assuring him of William’s confidence, adds, “et mandat ut quantum possumus curam habeamus de castellis suis, ne, quod Deus avertat, inimicis suis tradantur”; and in the subsequent rebellion, it was when Ralph Guader found the men of castles against him, that he left his wife and children to make terms from Norwich Castle, while he himself fled. Lanfranc’s despatch informs William, “Castrum Noruuich redditum est, et Britones qui in eo erant et terras in Anglia terra habebant, concessis eis vita et membris.” Besides the Bishop and Earl Warrene, the castle contained three hundred “loricati,” with cross-bowmen and many artificers of military machines. Also the same prelate charges Bishop Walcher, of Durham, “Castrum itaque vestrum, et hominibus, et armis, et alimentis vigilanti cura muniri facite.”

Castles, no doubt, there were at William’s command, many and strong. All that is here contended for is, that whatever he may have desired, William was able to construct but few castles such as London or Durham; and that the greater number of those that remain and exhibit the Norman style of architecture belong, some to the close of the eleventh, and a greater number to the twelfth century. But if William did not actually build so many castles as is supposed, he and his followers certainly restored and occupied an immense number, upon which those who came immediately after him built structures, the ruins of which we now see.

There is much to be learned from the consideration of the positions of these fortresses. William’s first care, on obtaining possession of each district, was to order the preparation of such strong places as might be necessary for the holding of it. But it is evident that he was influenced also by another consideration: he desired to be regarded as the legitimate heir of the Confessor, rather than as the conqueror of the kingdom; and so far as was consistent with his own security, he strove to administer the ancient laws, and to leave the ancient tenures and private estates, and even English owners, undisturbed. This indeed, owing to the strong national discontent, shown by repeated insurrections and by a general current of ill-will of which these were the indications, he speedily found to be out of the question. But even while driving out the native magnates, he was careful to associate the new men, as far as possible, with the past, in the hope (well founded) that before long the “successores et antecessores,” as they are called in “Domesday,” would be looked upon as part of a continued line,—Earl Roger, for example, as the representative of Edwin of Shrewsbury, Hugh Lupus of Morcar, and William Fitz Osbern of Ralph the Earl of Hereford under the Confessor.

And this policy is particularly evident in the sites of the castles. Where circumstances absolutely required it, an entirely new position was selected; but this was extremely rare, and probably did not occur in half a dozen instances, if indeed in more than London and Richmond. Usually it was found that the English lord had attached to his estate an earthwork upon which he and his ancestors had lived for centuries, which was identified with the estate or district, and regarded with respect and confidence by the surrounding tenantry. It is surprising to find how completely the leading positions in the country had thus been occupied. The upland passes; the margins of the rivers; the summits, where readily accessible, of the detached hills; the spots rendered strong by cliffs or ravines, or extended or impracticable marshes. Each had its aula, where a succession of lords had identified themselves with their people, afforded them protection, and received in return their support. Such were Guildford, Farnham, and Berkhampstede, in the clefts of the belt of chalk by which London is girdled; Hertford, Bedford, Wallingford, Tamworth, Worcester, Shrewsbury, Durham, and York, upon the banks of deep or rapid streams; Windsor, Belvoir, Lincoln, Corfe, and Montacute, placed on the summit of more or less detached hills, commanding a broad sweep of country; Dover, Scarborough, and Bamborough, upon rugged and lofty sea-cliffs, isolated by deep and formidable ravines; Huntingdon, Cambridge, Ely, and Oxford, more or less covered by marshy fens at that time almost impassable; while attached to and so placed as to overawe their adjacent cities or towns were such fortresses as Exeter, Leicester, Winchester, Chester, Chichester, Taunton, York, Norwich, and Nottingham. Each, including many that belonged to the Crown, represented an English estate. To many of them military service had long been paid; and now into them the knights and barons from Normandy and the lieutenants and governors for the Crown were inserted.

So far, the policy was sound and promised to be successful; but when the new lords began to build castles of stone they became obnoxious to both sovereign and people. The possessor of a strong castle was ever ready for rebellion, and was not uncommonly a tyrant even to his own people, of whom this made him independent: hence, castles properly so called,—buildings in masonry,—were hated by both king and people. The old-fashioned residence, half mansion, half fortress, formed of earth and timber or at best of a rude kind of masonry, such as Scott more by intuition than inquiry attributes to the Saxon Cedric, was strong when held by brave men in sufficient numbers for a short time; but under ordinary circumstances it could easily be attacked, and set on fire. These fortified residences were out of fashion with the Normans, and fell into disuse. The English lords were of the same immediate lineage with their tenants; and if they occasionally squeezed them, they did it as a man squeezes his own milch cow, tenderly. But the castle of stone was held by a stranger whose language, arms, and armour were strange to the people, and by them feared and hated. The Norman castle was a purely military building. It was not only strong when well garrisoned, but its passive strength was also great; and when the bridge was up and the gates closed it was at all times safe against an enemy unprovided with military engines. Fire, the ordinary and ready weapon of the populace, against such a wall, for example, as Cardiff (40 feet high and 11 feet thick), or against such a Tower as London, could do nothing. The garrison also, composed in the English times of the tenants of the lord, under the Normans were not unfrequently mercenaries,—men without ruth or conscience, distrusted even by their employers, whose trade was war and whose gain was plunder, and of whom Maurice de Bracy was a very favourable specimen. “Quot domini castellorum,” it was said “tot tyranni.” No wonder, then, that the Norman castles came to be regarded as the symbol of rebellion on the one hand, and of tyranny on the other.

Although the personal attention of the Conqueror was necessarily confined to the chief cities and central towns of England, to Exeter, Gloucester, Nottingham, Lincoln, York, or Durham, his western frontier was not neglected, although he was obliged to depute its ordinary defence to others. The Welsh, hardened by centuries of constant warfare, held with tenacity their strip of mountain land between Offa’s Dyke and the sea, and were ever on the watch to spoil that other more fertile tract which lay between the Dyke and the Severn and the Dee, known as the March. Foremost among the barons of the March were Roger of Montgomery and Hugh D’Avranches, Earl of Chester, to whom later generations gave the surname of the “Wolf.” The caput of this latter earldom, protected by the deep and rapid Dee, was posted at one angle of the old Roman enclosure; and the castle of Earl Roger, girdled by the convolutions of the Severn, was an almost impregnable citadel. From these fortresses these great earls exercised more than regal power over the counties of Salop and Hereford, composing the Middle March. The border barons, their feudatories, succeeded to no peaceful heritage; but by degrees they possessed themselves of the older English possessions upon the border, and along with them of the fortresses by which in Mercian times the Welsh had been held so long at bay. That these were numerous is evident from the remains of their earthworks; and that they were strong and well held against the Welsh is evident from the English names along and beyond the frontier. “Domesday,” however, though compiled after Earl Roger had held the Earldom of Shrewsbury about twelve years, only mentions four castles upon his border,—Oswestry, Montgomery, Shrewsbury, and Stanton or Castle Holgate, and the Earl’s house at Quatford. Bridgenorth and Carreghova were built a few years later, in the reign of Rufus; but Bridgenorth represented the burgh of Æthelflæda, the remains of which are possibly seen at Oldbury, as are earthworks of still stronger type, actually employed by Earl Roger at Quatford. Besides these, Wattlesborough and Clun exhibit rectangular Norman keeps; and eleven or twelve more castles in those districts are mentioned in records as early as the reign of Henry I. Altogether, by the close of the twelfth century there were from fifty to sixty castles in the county of Salop alone. Now, although the masonry of these castles, or of such of them as remain, can very rarely indeed be attributed to the Norman period, the earthworks show that they existed as fortresses long before that time; and it seems, therefore, certain that here, as in other parts of England, Earl Roger and his barons made the most of such works as they found ready to their hands; and this applies equally to the Palatinate of Chester and to the southern Marches, where also Norman castles took the place, with more or less of interval, of strongholds of the English type.

CHAPTER IV.

OF THE POLITICAL VALUE OF CASTLES UNDER THE SUCCESSORS OF THE CONQUEROR.

IT is rather remarkable that castles should not occupy, even incidentally, a more prominent place in the “Domesday Survey,” as they formed a very important feature in the country; were closely, for the most part, attached to landed property; and were of great political importance. No great baron was without a castle upon each of his principal estates, nor was any bishop secure of his personal safety unless so provided. At the death of the Conqueror, it was the possession of Winchester Castle that gave to William Rufus the royal treasure, and enabled his adherents to acquire the castles of Dover and Hastings, and thus, at the commencement of his reign, to secure a safe communication with Normandy. The king, it is true, had the people on his side and owed his eventual success to their support, but the barons of his party depended largely upon their fortresses. Archbishop Lanfranc held Saltwood, which the earthworks show even then to have been strong; Willam de Warren held Lewes and Ryegate and the strong hill of Coningsburgh in Yorkshire; Chester belonged to Earl Hugh, who was supported by his fifteen barons, each of whom had his castle; and in North Wales the Earl held Diganwy, which, covered in front by the Conwy water, closed the seaward pass from that aggressive district. With the Earl and on the side of Rufus were Robert de Tilliol, who held Flint and Rhuddlan, and Scaleby and other castles on the Scottish border; while Bishop Wolstan, representing the English feeling, held his episcopal castle of Worcester against Urso d’Abitot and a swarm of Marcher barons who crossed the Severn to assail him.

Nevertheless, the lords of the castles were mostly on the side of Duke Robert. Such were Alan the Black and Ribald his brother, the lords of Richmond and Middleham; Stephen of Holderness, strong in his sea-girt rock of Scarborough; the Mowbrays, Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutance, Justiciary to the Conqueror, and a great soldier; and Robert Mowbray, his brother’s son, who held the impregnable rock of Bamburgh and the great castle of Axholm in the fens of Lincolnshire; both strong, though in a different kind of strength. With them was the powerful Earl Roger of Shrewsbury with his border following; and at a later period Robert de Belesme, his successor, builder of Bridgenorth and Carreghova, and superior lord of many border castles. In the west, Duke Robert was supported by Bernard Newmarch, who held the castles of Brecknock and Builth, and a large and fortified tract of Monmouthshire; with whom were William of Breteuil, son of William Fitz-Osborn, and lord of Hereford; Roger de Lacy of Ewias; and William Earl of Eu, the owner of the strong rock of Hastings, who at that time held the castle and walled city of Gloucester. Besides these great leaders were, on the same side, Ralph Mortimer of Wigmore; Walter Giffard, whose castle on one bank of the Buckinghamshire Ouse, combined with a similar moated mound on the other, commanded that town and its river; Ralph Guader, who held Norwich; and Hugh Bigot, his successor there, lord of Framlingham, after Norwich the strongest place, both in earthworks and masonry, in East Anglia. Between Bristol and Bath the Mowbrays ravaged the country up to the tower of Berkeleyness, the present castle being then but an earthwork; and with them were Hugh de Graintmaisnel, who held Hinckley and Leicester castles; and William de Carileph, at first one of William’s prime councillors; but who afterwards changed sides, and was enabled to do so with safety from his possession of the keep of Durham. Bishop Odo, who held Rochester Castle (even then a place of great strength), and with it the passage of the Medway, placed there Eustace of Boulogne; and himself, with his brother Earl Robert and five hundred knights, held the Roman Pevensey, strengthened by a mound and some other English additions in earth.

Rufus, however, with far more energy than his brother Robert, had also the popular feeling on his side, which enabled him to make head even against this powerful combination. He laid siege to Pevensey, and took it after a seven weeks’ siege. He then assailed and took Rochester, and finally Tonbridge, held by Gilbert Fitz-Richard, the consequence of which success was the banishment of Bishop Odo. Robert Mowbray was beaten back from before the walls of Ilchester Castle, now utterly destroyed; and Bishop William was forced to surrender Durham. Carlisle, wasted by the Danes in 877, received from Rufus a castle and a keep, now standing; and Newcastle, similarly provided in 1080, also retains its keep, and a gatehouse with some traces of the exterior wall. In 1098 Malcolm of Scotland, the husband of St. Margaret, was slain before Alnwick, then better known as Murielden; and Mowbray was driven from Tynewald Castle back upon Bamburgh, which seems to have been finally taken by means of a “malvoisin,” which in this instance was evidently an entrenched camp thrown up to the west of the castle, and employed probably as the headquarters of a blockade. In this reign also the conquest of South Wales was completed, and the foundations laid of a chain of castles from Gloucester and Hereford to Pembroke, the main links of which were Chepstow and Abergavenny, Caerleon and Cardiff, Builth and Brecknock, Caerkennen, Caermarthen, Cardigan, Tenby, and Carew. How far these Welsh castles were at once constructed of masonry is uncertain. Besides Chepstow, two only, or at most three, and those subordinate, Ogmore, Penlline, and Newcastle, exhibit decided Norman features; but however this may be, neither Fitz-Hamon, Newmarch, nor Arnulph of Montgomery were likely, in the face of foes so formidable, to be satisfied with defences in any way inferior to the strongest of that day.

The reign of Henry I. was prolific in castles. It is probable that to him is due the greater number of our extant rectangular keeps, by the construction of which he carried to completion the plans sketched out by his father, which his brother had been too busy and too much pressed to take in hand. In this reign, especially between 1114 and 1121, most of the Welsh castles were completed. Bristol and Cardiff castles were the work of Robert Earl of Gloucester. Bishop Roger of Salisbury built Sherborne, Salisbury, the Devizes, and Malmesbury; and his brother, Alexander of Lincoln, Sleaford and Newark. “Castella erant crebra per totam Angliam.” Most of these were great and strong, very different from the hasty and unlicensed structures of the succeeding reign.

Henry, like Rufus, commenced his reign with the taking of Winchester with its treasures. Flambard, who had been entrusted with the great episcopal castles of Durham and Norham, was imprisoned in the keep of London. The outlawry of Robert Malet and Robert de Lacy, in 1101, gave Henry their castles in Yorkshire and Suffolk; and in 1102 Ivo de Graintmaisnel was driven from his mound at Hinckley, and forced to flee the country. Also the King obtained, by forfeiture, the castles of William de Warenne, though these were afterwards restored. Henry, in 1103, laid his hands upon Arnulph de Montgomery’s castle of Pembroke, and on those of Robert of Poitou, his brother, between the Ribble and the Mersey. The death of William Earl of Moretaine brought in the almost impregnable hill-castle of Montacute, with Trematon, Launceston, Tintagel, Boscastle, and Restormel, and other Cornish fortresses. The fall of Robert de Belesme gave the crown the castles of Arundel,—a lesser Windsor in its plan, and scarcely inferior in its position; of Shrewsbury, the mound of which still towers over the Severn, and dwarfs even the extensive and incongruous railway-station at its foot; of Bridgenorth, where a fragment of the keep shows what it must once have been; and of Carreghova, of which the very traces are well-nigh effaced. Belesme retired to Normandy, where he is said to have been lord of thirty-four castles; but the fragments of his power only betrayed him into further rebellion, so that he ended his life a prisoner and an exile on the castled mound of Wareham.

There still remained, indeed, in private hands a considerable number of castles, the owners of which found it convenient to give way, and thus to retain a portion of their influence. Such were Bourne in Lincolnshire; Malton, held by Fitz-John, in Yorkshire; Beaudesert in Warwickshire; the episcopal castles of Newark and Sleaford, and that of Oakham. There were also Warblington in Hampshire; and in Cumberland, Egremont and Cockermouth.

The rebellion of 1118 gave to Henry the castles of Hugh de Gournay in the west, of Stephen of Albemarle at Scarborough, of Eustace of Breteuil, of Richard de l’Aigle, and of Henry Earl of Eu; together with the Mowbray castles of Thirsk, Malzeard, and Burton in Lonsdale. Nearly the whole of the strongholds thus acquired were retained by Henry in his own hands, and Suger states that in Normandy the principal castles were by him either destroyed or held: “Fere omnes turres et quæcunque fortissima castra Normanniæ ... aut eversum iri fecit ... aut si dirutæ essent propriæ voluntati subjugavit.” In either country he laid hands on the castles; but where the delinquents held in both, it was upon those in England that the forfeiture was most rigidly enforced. Among the exceptions were William de Roumare, who was allowed to hold Lincoln; and similar protection was shown to Ralph de Conches, William de Tancarville, William de Warenne, Walter Giffard, and William d’Albini. Among their castles were Ryegate, Lewes, Coningsburgh, and Castle Rising, Buckingham and Arundel.

It has been said that Henry did not himself construct any new castles. This is probable enough, as all the sites of importance had been occupied by his father; but it is not improbable, judging from the internal evidence afforded by their remains, that he completed such of his father’s castles as were left unfinished. Of baronial castles, the grand fortress of Kenilworth, by far the most important strong place in the midland counties, was constructed in this reign, though very probably upon an English site, by the founder of the house of Clinton. In this reign also were probably constructed the masonry of Northampton Castle, by Simon de St. Liz, and that of Old Sarum and Odiham by Bishop Roger. The keep of St. Briavel’s, now destroyed, was reconstructed, or built of masonry; and Ralph Flambard laid the foundations of and seems to have completed the keep of Norham.

The issue of the contest between Matilda and Stephen turned very much upon the castles over which each had control. It was again by the seizure of Winchester Castle and its treasure that Stephen was able to celebrate his coronation in the adjacent cathedral. It was under the walls of Reading Castle, strongly placed between the meeting of the Kennet and the Thames, that he trusted himself to meet Matilda’s adherents, and with them to lay the corpse of her father before the altar of the great Abbey that he had founded, and the ruins of which have long survived those of its secular neighbour. From Oxford, strong in its walled city and partially water-girdled keep, Stephen issued his first charter, so full of promises to his new subjects; and thence he went to Durham, one of the strongest castles of the North, to meet David of Scotland, who had wasted the border from Carlisle to Newcastle, and taken Alnwick and Norham, though foiled before Wark and Bamborough. One of David’s principal concessions was the castle of Newcastle. On the other hand, he obtained the confirmation to him of that of Carlisle, long the gate of Scotland. The two, posted one at each end of the lines of Severus and Hadrian, are still tolerably perfect, as is the impregnable Bamburgh, the Norman keep of which, in Stephen’s time, was new.

From Oxford, still his central stronghold, on his return to the South, Stephen conceded his second charter, less distinct in its promises as the danger of his position seemed less pressing. On the report of his death in 1136, it was trust in their strong castles of Exeter, Plympton, Okehampton, Norwich, Framlingham, and Bungay, that encouraged Baldwin de Redvers and Hugh Bigot to rise in arms. Bath had then a castle and was a walled town. Stephen laid siege to and took the castle, and thence, with two hundred horse, rode to Exeter, where Rougemont, its citadel, was strong and well garrisoned. The siege was a remarkable one, and the warlike machines employed both within and without were of a formidable character. The citizens were with Stephen, so the attack was on the city front. The bridge from the city, still standing, was one point of attack. A “malvoisin” was constructed, whence stones were poured in upon the garrison; the walls were ruined, and the towers much injured. Finally the well ran dry, and the garrison surrendered upon terms. Plympton also capitulated, and Norwich was taken.

On Stephen’s arrival from Normandy, in 1137, he secured the castles of Bourne, Wareham, and Corfe, the two latter held by Fitz-Alured and Redvers. A second rising, in 1138, timed with an invasion by the Scots, turned in some degree upon the strength of the castle of Bedford, then including a pair of moated mounds on the opposite banks of the Ouse, of which one is entirely removed, and the other remains deprived of its masonry, and shorn of its fair dimensions. This castle was held by the sons of Milo de Beauchamp, its owner, and only surrendered after a long and severe siege conducted by Stephen in person, which terminated in a blockade. The defence was very able, and the surrender upon fair terms.

Meantime David, linking the interests of Matilda with his own claims to the great earldom of Huntingdon, twice crossed the border in the spring of 1128, retiring as Stephen approached, but a third time returning in August. He took Norham, and much injured its superb keep, built by Bishop Flambard in 1121, a noble ruin which still frowns over the Tweed, and is rich in historical recollections. Bamburgh, Alnwick, and Malton were held for Stephen by Eustace Fitz-John. Parts of the wall and inner gate of Alnwick are of about this date; but Malton has disappeared, though the earlier Roman camp may still be traced. David’s progress was also checked by Clitheroe, a very strong castle, of which the Norman keep, one of the very smallest extant, crowns the top of an almost impregnable rock.

At this period Stephen’s position was most critical. Against him, on the Welsh Marches, Talbot held Goderich and Hereford, while Ludlow and Dudley, Shrewsbury and Whittington, were in the hands of Paganel, Fitz-Alan, and William Peverel. Further south, the barons of Somerset were encouraged against him by William de Mohun from his hold at Dunster, strong naturally and by art; and by Fitz-John at Harptree, a castle in the defiles of the Mendips; while Maminot both held and strongly augmented Dover. Stephen, however, was active and he was brave. Leaving Archbishop Thurstan to muster and encourage his northern supporters, he himself marched south, strengthened the garrison of Bath, and threatened Bristol. Thence he entered Somerset, and took by siege the Lovel seat of Castle Cary, of which the earthworks cover a hillside; secured Harptree by surprise, and thence doubled back upon Hereford, which won, he next recovered the old British and English fortress of Pengwern or Shrewsbury. Bristol alone held out, strong in its newly-built keep, and in the presence of Robert Earl of Gloucester, its builder.

The “battle of the Standard,” a.d. 1138, was fought in the open field, under the leadership of D’Aumâle; but it was also named from North Allerton, where, intersected by the railway, are still seen formidable earthworks far older than Bishop Puiset’s castle which surmounted them, and which was afterwards entirely razed by Henry II. The victory of North Allerton was enhanced by the capture of Dover by Stephen’s Queen. The castle of Carlisle still remained in the possession of King David, and thence he renewed the war, and in the following year obtained for his son Henry the earldom of Northumberland; with the exception, however, of the castles of Newcastle and Bamburgh.

When, in 1139, Stephen’s change of policy lost him the support of the clergy, led by his ambitious brother the Bishop of Winchester, his first blow was struck at the episcopal castles. Of these, the Devizes, Sherborne, and Malmesbury belonged to Bishop Roger of Sarum. Malmesbury, an episcopal encroachment upon the adjacent Abbey, was wholly the Bishop’s work, and is now utterly destroyed. Sherborne, a very ancient episcopal seat, still retains its early earthworks, and a keep and gatehouse, the work of Bishop Roger; and although of the Devizes there remain but a few fragments of its circular keep, the earthworks (the grandest in England) show that it may well have deserved its great reputation. These Stephen seized upon, and he also took Newark-upon-Trent, still admired for its lofty and extended front, and for its magnificent Norman entrance. With Newark fell Sleaford, both built by Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, nephew of Bishop Roger, and also a great builder of castles. Sleaford is utterly demolished, and being entirely post-conquestal, had scarcely any earthworks to preserve its memory.

Among the events of this important year were the taking of Nottingham and Marlborough Castles by Stephen; his attack on Ludlow; the appearance on the scene of his rival, the Empress Matilda; and his siege of Arundel, in which castle she took refuge with D’Albini and Queen Adeliza his wife. Nottingham is gone. Of Marlborough only a fine mound remains, upon which stood its circular keep. Much of Ludlow, especially its rectangular keep, played a part in Stephen’s siege, as did a part of the existing exterior wall, whence the grappling-hook was thrown by which the King was hooked, and was being dragged up to its battlements, when he was rescued by the Scottish Prince Henry. Arundel preserves its earthworks pretty much as they must have appeared in the reign of the Confessor; and with its shell-keep on its mound, and the original gatehouse at its foot, gives to the modern visitor a fair notion of the appearance of the defences before which Stephen pitched his camp. It was also in 1139 that De Redvers, returning to England, landed under the Conqueror’s castle of Wareham, on the margin of the Poole water. From Wareham he proceeded to Corfe, a seat of the Kings of Mercia, where he was besieged by Stephen.

It was during this period of the war between Stephen, Matilda, and the Church party, that were constructed the multitude of unlicensed castles (“castra adulterina”) employed not merely for the security of the builders, but to enable them to prey upon their neighbours with impunity. Nothing could well be worse than the circumstances under which these castles were built, and the purposes for which they were employed. “Stephen,” says John of Tynemouth, quoted by Dugdale, “concessit ut quilibet procerum suorum munitionem, seu castrum, in proprio fundo facere posset.” William of Jumieges and Malmesbury compare the times to those of Normandy during the minority of Duke William; and other writers declare the state of England to have resembled that of Jerusalem during the Roman siege. There was no rule and no responsibility. The unhappy peasants were forced to labour in the construction of the strongholds of tyranny. It would seem that these castles were built with great rapidity, and with but little expenditure of labour upon earthworks, for in the next reign they were destroyed without difficulty, and scarcely any of their sites are now to be recognised. They were the work of the lesser barons, probably with the connivance of their chief lords, or even of Stephen and Matilda, who were little scrupulous as to the terms on which they accepted assistance. This multiplication of castles without the licence of the sovereign was no novelty, and was forbidden on the Continent by the celebrated “Edictum Pistense” of Charles the Bald in 864, already cited.

Another irregularity was the admission to the title of earl of several persons unfitted to receive so great an honour, and whose only claim to distinction was that they were leaders of mercenaries. Stephen was not in a condition to endow all of them with the third penny of the revenues of a county, the usual appanage of an earl. Many of the earls created by Stephen stood, however, in a very different position. Such were Geoffrey de Mandeville, Lord of Plessy and Walden, who accepted the Earldom of Essex from both parties; Alberic de Vere, who built the noble keep of Hedingham, and was the first of the long line of the Earls of Oxford; Hugh Bigot, who held the Earldom of Norfolk; Richard de Clare, who held that of Hertford; D’Aumâle, of Yorkshire; Gilbert de Clare, of Pembroke; Robert de Ferrers, of Derby; and probably William de Ypres, the Earldom of Kent. Stephen seems to have created, in all, eight; and the Empress six,—Cambridge, Cornwall, Essex, Hereford, Salisbury, and Somerset.

From Arundel, Matilda, it is said by Stephen’s courtesy, moved to Bristol, where her brother, Robert Earl of Gloucester, held his castle on the marshy confluence of the Frome with the Avon. Robert also at that time held the royal castle of Gloucester, long since destroyed, and a prison built on its site; and he was probably builder also of the shell-keep still standing upon the mound of Cardiff. At that time Matilda’s friends held Dover, with the square keep of Canterbury, placed just within the enceinte of the yet older city ditch, and almost within bowshot of the still more venerable mound of Dane John. Mention is also made of the castles of Trowbridge and Cerne as recently erected. The latter was taken by Stephen by storm, before the attack on Malmesbury. Trowbridge held out with success.

The great event of 1141 was the siege, or rather the battle, of Lincoln. The castle had been surprised, and was held by Ranulph Earl of Chester and his half-brother William de Roumare. As Stephen approached, Earl Ranulph left the place secretly to procure assistance from the Earl of Gloucester. This was afforded, and the two earls, with 10,000 men, some of them Earl Robert’s Welsh followers, crossed the Trent, and found Stephen drawn up to receive them. The result of the battle was the capture of Stephen, and the confirmation of Earl Ranulph in Lincoln Castle. On this Matilda went to her royal castle at Winchester, a part of the defences of the old Venta Belgarum, and characterised by a large mound, now removed. Here Bishop Henry, safe in his rectangular keep of Wolvesey, still standing near the Cathedral, in the opposite angle of the city, treated with her almost as equal with equal, but acknowledged her as Lady of England. Their accord, however, was neither cordial nor of long duration. Upon the Queen’s return, in some discredit, from London, an open quarrel broke out. She attacked Wolvesey, and the Bishop retaliated upon the royal castle with better success.

Under the escort of Brian Fitz-Count and Milo, to whom Matilda had given the Earldom of Hereford and the “Castle and Mote” of that ancient city, she fled from Winchester, Earl Robert guarding her rear. They were pursued. Matilda reached Ludgershall Castle in safety, and then went to the Devizes; but Earl Robert was taken on the way by William of Ypres, and imprisoned in Rochester Castle. Stephen was then a prisoner in Bristol Castle; and in November, 1141, the Earl and King were exchanged. A month later, at the Synod of Westminster, the pains of excommunication were denounced against all who built new castles, or offered violence to the poor,—a significant conjunction.

Stephen’s illness and Earl Robert’s absence in Normandy checked for a short time active hostilities, and meantime Stephen held the Tower of London, and Matilda the castle of Oxford. Late in 1142, Stephen attacked and took Oxford, and blockaded the castle until the winter set in, and the stock of provisions fell short. The Thames was frozen, and the ground covered with snow, by the aid of which Matilda, robed in white, escaped across the river, and fled to Fitz-Count at Wallingford. The castle was then surrendered. Its grand mound is yet untouched; and below it, upon the river, is a large square tower of the eleventh century. Part of the city wall also remains.

Before Reading, Stephen had taken several strong but less important fortresses, such as Bow and Arrow Castle on the Cliff of Portland, which still remains, and Carisbroke, the strength of the Isle of Wight. He took also Lulworth, in Purbeck, represented by a far later residence. Cirencester, which he burned, seems never to have been restored; and Farringdon, built in haste by the Earl of Gloucester, was also swept away. Stephen’s strength, however, lay in London and the east; and that of Matilda about Gloucester and Bristol, and in the west. Stephen also held Pevensey. The great midland barons stood aloof, biding their time. Thus Roger de Bellomont and his brother Waleran, of Meulan, held Leicester with its Roman walls and English earthworks, protected by the meads of the Soar; along the edge of which, and at the foot of the mound, is still seen the Norman Hall, and hard by the stately church of St. Mary de Castro, also in large part Norman. They also held Mount Sorrell, at that time a strong castle built upon a rock of syenite, but now quarried away, both rock and castle, to macadamise the highways of the metropolis. Saher de Quincy was strong about Hinckley, where the early mound, stripped of its masonry (if, indeed, it ever received any), still guards the eastern entrance to the town. The Earl of Chester held Lincoln as his own; and the hill of Belvoir, the cynosure of the Midland, was guarded by the grand shell-keep of Trusbut and De Ros, burned down and rebuilt after a tasteless fashion in our own days.

In 1146, death deprived Matilda of the Earls of Gloucester and Hereford. She retired to Normandy; but her place was taken by the younger Plantagenet, her son. In this year also Stephen availed himself of the presence of the Earls of Chester and Essex at his court to seize their persons, and to force them to render up, the one the castles of Lincoln and Northampton, the other that of Plessy, of which the moated mound and contained church are still seen, and Stansted Montfitchet, now almost merged in a railway station, and which then vied with the old castle of the Bishop of London at Stortford. Walden, also thus gained, is still famous for its earthworks, and for the fragment of its Norman keep, composed, like Bramber and Arques, of flint rubble deprived of its ashlar casing.

Earl Geoffrey having thus purchased his liberty, employed it in burning the castle of Cambridge, the mound of which, sadly reduced in size, still, from the interior of the Roman camp, overlooks the river. While in pursuit of the Earl, Stephen is said to have built certain new and probably temporary castles. More probably he refortified with timber some of the moated mounds, such as Clare, Eye, and Bures, of which there are many in Essex and Suffolk. Works in masonry he certainly had neither time nor means then to construct. Soon afterwards the Bishop of Winchester ceased to be papal legate, and found it convenient to support his brother’s party, and persuaded him to refuse permission to Archbishop Theobald to attend the new Pope at Rheims. Theobald, however, defied the King, and on his return took shelter within the unusually lofty walls and strong earthworks of Framlingham, a Bigot castle in Suffolk. About this time mention is made of castles at Cricklade in Wilts, at Tetbury and at Winchcombe in Gloucestershire. At Coventry also there was a castle, and another at Downton in Wiltshire, still celebrated for its moot-hill.

In 1149, York opened its gates to young Henry of Anjou, who assembled a considerable force, with which he met the royal army at Malmesbury, though without an actual collision. Of 1151 is on record a curious convention in which the Earls of Leicester and Chester were concerned, under which no new castles were to be built between Hinckley and Coventry, Coventry and Donnington, Donnington and Leicester; nor at Gateham, nor at Kinoulton, nor between Kinoulton and Belvoir, Belvoir and Oakham, Oakham and Rockingham. In 1152 occurred the celebrated siege of Wallingford, held for Matilda by Brian Fitz-Count. Enough of Wallingford remains to show how strong it must formerly have been; and the temporal was fully equalled by the spiritual power, for the town, always small, contained just twice as many churches as apostolic Asia. Stephen, unable to approach the Castle from its landward side, threw up a work still to be traced at Crowmarsh, on the left bank of the river, and there posted his engines. Young Henry, holding Malmesbury, Warwick, and about thirty other not very distant castles, marched to the relief of Wallingford, and invested the lines of Crowmarsh, besieging the besiegers. Stephen advanced to their aid from London, and Henry seems to have moved into the town, holding the passage of the river at the bridge by a special work. Wallingford was thus saved, and Henry, early in 1153, laid siege to Stamford, where, as at York, Hertford, and Buckingham, two mounds commanded the river; and stormed Nottingham, where were similar works upon the Trent. Stephen, falling back into the eastern counties, took Ipswich, a castle of which even the site is lost.

The death of Eustace, Stephen’s son, in August, 1153, paved the way to an arrangement between the rivals. Stephen was to remain King, and Henry became his acknowledged successor. William, Stephen’s surviving son, was to retain the Warenne castles and estates, which included Ryegate, of which traces remain; Castle-Acre, with its mound and other earthworks, placed within a Roman encampment; Castle-Rising, one of the least injured and most remarkable Norman keeps in England; Lewes, with its double mound and strong natural position; and Coningsburgh, an English site of excessive strength, though not then as yet celebrated for its noble tower. He also had the castles of Wirmegay and Bungay, Norwich, and the castle and honour of Pevensey. It was also agreed that the garrisons of the royal castles generally should swear allegiance to Henry and to Stephen; and the castellans of Lincoln, London, Oxford, Southampton, and Windsor gave hostages that on Stephen’s death they would give them over to Henry. It was also agreed at a conference at Dunstable in 1154, that all castles built since the death of Henry I. should be destroyed (a clause which may be taken to show that no absolutely new castles of very great importance had been built by Matilda or Stephen); and that all mercenary troops should be sent back to their own countries. The office of sheriff, as representing the crown in the counties, was to be strengthened.

Stephen died in October, 1154, and his rival ascended the throne as Henry II. without opposition.

CHAPTER V.

THE POLITICAL INFLUENCE OF CASTLES IN THE REIGN OF HENRY II.

HENRY II. was a great builder, and especially of military works. “In muris, in propugnaculis, in munitionibus, in fossatis, ... nullus subtilior, nullus magnificentior, invenitur.” This, however, does not so much refer to new castles, of which he built but few, as to the completion or addition of new keeps to the old ones, such, for example, as Dover.

A few days after his arrival in England he received the fealty of the magnates of the realm at Winchester Castle, and was crowned at Westminster, 19th December, immediately after which he granted to William, Earl of Arundel, the castle and honour of Arundel and the third penny of the county of Sussex. This was probably for life, for upon the Earl’s death in 1176 the castle and county reverted to the Crown, and were re-granted. Notwithstanding this beginning, Henry was fully determined to carry out the policy agreed upon at Wallingford in the face of the nation. A few days later he attended a council at Bermondsey, at which it was decided to order all foreign mercenaries to quit the kingdom on pain of death, and to raze all castles erected in the reign of Stephen. This decision was felt on all sides to be absolutely required; and it was, to a great extent, at once acted upon. Of these “castra adulterina” he destroyed, by some accounts, 375; by others, 1,115. Unfortunately, their names and sites have rarely been preserved, and can only be inferred where a castle played a part in the wars of Stephen and Matilda, and is not afterwards mentioned. These castles were, no doubt, built usually by men of limited means, and in haste; but even a small and badly-built castle of masonry would require some labour and outlay of money for its destruction. Possibly many of these buildings were of timber, upon the existing mounds. Also there are found slight earthworks of no great height or area, the plan of which seems that of a Norman castle, and which not improbably belong to this period. At Eaton-Socon, in Bedfordshire, and Lilbourne, in Northamptonshire, are such earthworks. Farringdon and Mount Sorrel Castles, and those of Stansted and Hinckley, Coventry, Cricklade,and Winchcombe, are thought to have been dismantled at this time. Drax Castle, in Yorkshire, stood out, and was destroyed, as, though far less completely, were Bungay and Tutbury, Thirsk, Malzeard, and Groby. Under the pressure of the times even ecclesiastical buildings had been occupied as castles. Ramsey and Coventry Abbeys were so used by Geoffrey Glanville and Robert Marmion, and the fine church of Bridlington by D’Aumâle.

Henry strove to carry out the new policy without respect for rank or party; but when he threatened the strongholds of the great nobles his difficulties began. Hugh Mortimer and Roger, son of Milo Earl of Hereford and High Constable, old supporters of Matilda, refused to surrender Wigmore, Cleobury, Bridgenorth, Hereford, and Gloucester. Henry at once took action. Leaving Wallingford Castle in the spring of 1155, he laid siege to Bridgenorth, whence one of his letters is dated “apud Brugiam in obsidione.” He also took by siege Cleobury and Wigmore. This success caused the Earl of Hereford to surrender Hereford and Gloucester, where Henry had received much of his education; and on his protestation of submission, the Earl was allowed to retain Hereford. Henry, Bishop of Winchester, Stephen’s brother, was forced to flee the country, and his castles were ordered to be destroyed; and that this order was executed appears from the charge for the work entered in the Pipe Roll for 1155–6. In like manner D’Aumâle, a baron of the house of Champagne, whose power lay in Holderness, and who had commanded at Northallerton, was forced, in January, 1155, after a short resistance, to give up Scarborough, the strongest castle in Holderness, and Skipsea, not far its inferior. Henry also visited Northampton, Nottingham, Lincoln, and York, and some of the western castles and counties. At Windsor the “fermor” of the castle expended £4. 15s. 5d. in his reception “in corredio regis.” According to Mr. Eyton, 140 castles were destroyed in the course of 1155. William of Ypres, a turbulent leader of Flemish mercenaries, who had been created Earl of Kent by Stephen in 1141, was banished. He was one of the “pseudo Comites.”

A part of the new policy, though not at once enforced, was the introduction, to a certain extent, of a money commutation for personal military service. The new payment, under the name of “scutage,” became an important branch of the revenue of the Crown. A rule was also established, which, if not always acted upon, was well understood, that no man should build a castle, or convert his dwelling into a “domus defensabilis,” without a licence from the King.

In 1156 Henry went, by way of Dover, to the Continent, where he took Mirabeau and Chinon, one of his charters being dated “Mirabel in obsidione,” and another, “apud Chinon in exercitu”; nor did he return to England till 1157, when he was at Southampton Castle, and went thence to Ongar, Richard de Lacy’s Essex castle, and received from William Count of Mortaine, King Stephen’s son, Pevensey and the Warenne castles, which had fallen to him with the name and estates of that family. Hugh Bigot also gave up Norwich, and made a general submission. Henry then visited Colchester and other Essex castles, and thence proceeded to Northampton. Malcolm of Scotland was fain to follow the example of his English friends, and gave up Carlisle, Bamborough, and Newcastle, together with the three northern counties. His personal submission was made to Henry at Peveril’s Castle in the Peak, on which occasion the sheriff’s expenses on his behalf were considerable. Malcolm was allowed to retain his grandmother’s honour and castle of Huntingdon.

The destruction of so many smaller and later castles restored to their former prominence those of greater strength and older date, which, being for the most part necessary for the defence of the kingdom, were preserved and strengthened, and entrusted to castellans of approved fidelity. Becket, before his ecclesiastical promotion, thus received the castles of the Tower and of Berkhampstead, and the castle and honour of Eye.

One of Henry’s chief difficulties arose out of the position of the marcher-lords, such as the De Clares and the Mareschals, whose almost regal powers, granted originally to enable them to hold the frontier against the Welsh, were more frequently used, in conjunction with the Welsh, to coerce the sovereign.

In 1157 Henry invaded North Wales, and while traversing Counsyth, a Flintshire pass, was for a moment in great personal peril. It was on this occasion that Henry de Essex threw down the standard and fled, and thus forfeited his castle of Raleigh. On his way back Henry repaired the castles of Basingwerk and Rhuddlan, and probably directed the construction of Bere Castle, a very curious fortress with some ornamental details in the Early English style, built upon a detached rock in a valley west of Cader Idris.

In 1158 Henry visited various parts of England. At Carlisle, in January, he knighted Earl Warenne, but refused that honour to Malcolm King of Scotland. While there he fortified Wark Castle, the sheriff’s charge for which was £21. 8s. 11d. At Nottingham he gave to Richard de Haia the custody “castelli mei de Lincoln,” showing that he claimed it for the Crown. In August he embarked at Portsmouth or Southampton for Normandy; and while abroad took the castles of Thouars, Amboise, Fretevel, Moulins, and Bon-Moulins. In 1159 he was occupied three months at the siege of Thoulouse, which he failed to take. Other castles in Normandy he took and repaired; others, again, he destroyed; and he built a few altogether new.

In January, 1163, Becket came to England with the King, and gave great offence to the baronage by claiming Tonbridge Castle for his see. Towards the close of the year Henry deprived him of the charge of the castles of Eye and Berkhampstead; and in December admitted him to a personal interview at Oxford Castle. In this year Henry was again at Peak Castle, and in March, 1164, at Porchester. Soon afterwards the strong castle of Tickhill fell to the Crown by escheat; and Henry spent Christmas at Marlborough, a royal castle.

In 1165, after a short visit to Normandy, during which the Queen visited Sherborne Castle, Henry was at Rhuddlan, and caused Basingwerk and the Flintshire castles to be again put in order. This was fortunate, for the campaign was unsuccessful. Expenses on that occasion were allowed at Oswestry (then called Blancmont), Shrawardine, and Chirk Castles. This was an assertion of ownership on the part of the Crown, although Oswestry was part of the private estate of William Fitz-Alan, then a minor. Henry retired to Shrewsbury, and soldiers were brought up from Worcester and Abergavenny, some of whom were quartered in the Corbet Castle at Caus. Grosmont, Llantilio or White Castle, and Scenfrith, the Monmouthshire trilateral, also contributed soldiers. From Shrewsbury, Henry, reinforced, advanced into Powis-land, and encamped on the Berwyn Mountain, where he was near being cut off by the Welsh, and had to take refuge at Shotwick Castle, a small fortress on the root of the peninsula of Wirrall, whence he retired to Chester, and returned to London.

In February or March, 1166, was compiled the return of military fiefs and tenants in chief, known as the Liber Niger, and which professes to represent the feudal military force of the kingdom, though so far only as the division of the land into military fees was then completed. The Liber Ruber states the fees, in the reign of Richard I., to have been 32,000. Orderic gives them at nearly double this, or 60,000. But there are no data for estimating, with any approach to correctness, the force that the King could bring into the field. Under Henry I. and Stephen, mercenaries were largely employed, drawn mainly from Flanders. The Liber Niger has received very valuable attention at the hands of Mr. Eyton and Professor Stubbs.

Early in Lent in this year Henry embarked at Southampton for Normandy, where he reduced the castles of Alençon and La Roche Mabile, and received a visit from the King of Scotland. Late in the year Geoffrey de Mandeville and Richard de Lacy engaged in an unsuccessful expedition into North Wales, and again strengthened Basingwerk Castle, during which they were attacked by the Welsh. Henry remained absent in Normandy, Gascony, and Brittany about four years, landing at Portsmouth in March, 1170; but he returned to Normandy in June. In October he wrote to Prince Henry, directing him to restore the honour of Saltwood to the Archbishop. On the 29th of December, Becket was murdered, the assassins having rested at Saltwood the preceding night. After the murder they went to Knaresborough Castle, then held by Hugh de Morville as castellan.

In August, 1171, Henry landed at Portsmouth, and early in September was in South Wales, where he took Caerleon from Iorwerth ap Owen, and went on to Pembroke Castle to meet Prince Rhys, to whom he made over a large part of Cardigan. From Pembroke, or rather from Milford, he went, in October, to Ireland, whence he returned, by St. David’s and by Cardiff, to England in April, 1172, and thence embarked from Portsmouth for the Continent in May.

In April, 1173, the confederacy between the King of France and Prince Henry, who carried with him the discontented party among the English barons, broke out into open war in both countries. Henry the elder remained at Rouen, and with the doubtful exception of a short visit to England was content to leave the conduct of the war there to the faithful and able Richard de Lacy.

The English rebellion was of a very grave character. Among the rebels were the Earls of Chester and Leicester, Ferrars Earl of Derby, Mowbray, and Paganel. Ferrars held Groby, Tutbury, Burton, and some other castles; Mowbray held Kinnard’s Ferry Castle in Axholm, Thirsk, and Malzeard, which seem again to have been repaired or rebuilt; David of Scotland, Earl of Huntingdon, held that castle; as did Bishop Puiset Norham and Durham. These northern castles were strong, and supported by the Scottish levies; but the great body of the baronage was with the king, and even in the North his party preponderated. It included Umfraville of Prudhoe, De Vesci of Alnwick, Ros of Hamlake, Bruce of Whorlton and Skelton; and in the south almost all the great barons. Lacy laid siege to and burned Leicester town; but the castle seems to have held out. He also, accompanied by Bohun, marched into the North and wasted the border country and the Lothians. The royal castles generally were ordered to be victualled and garrisoned.

In September, Robert, Earl of Leicester, landed at Walton in Suffolk with a body of Flemish mercenaries. Suffolk was, no doubt, selected for the landing as being opposite to the Flemish ports, and under the local influence of the house of Bigot, who held the castles of Framlingham and Bungay, and were hereditary Constables of Norwich, an office often forfeited, but which gave them great influence in the city. Leicester and his Flemings were at once received at Framlingham, and thence besieged Haganet Castle, governed for the king by Ranulph de Broc. This they took; but failed before the walls of Dunwich, and thence marched towards Leicester. Meantime Lacy and Humphrey de Bohun had hurried back from the Scottish border, were reinforced near Bury by the earls of Arundel, Cornwall, and Gloucester, and in October came up with the Flemish army at Fornham St. Geneviève. The invaders were routed, and Leicester and his countess taken and sent prisoners to Normandy. Lacy’s work was, however, but half completed. Mowbray still held Axholm, and Earl David, or probably for him, Anketil Mallori, held Leicester Castle. The King of Scots laid siege to Carlisle, while his brother took the castles of Knaresborough, Brough, and Appleby. In May, 1174, Leicester Castle was still untaken, and the Scots had reduced Warkworth and laid siege to Prudhoe and Alnwick. Lacy was engaged in the siege of Huntingdon, aided by St. Liz, who claimed it. But a second body of Flemings had landed, had attacked Norwich, and much injured Nottingham and Northampton. The Bishop of Lincoln had, however, taken Axholm.

In the midst of this critical state of affairs, Henry landed at Southampton in July, 1174, with his prisoners, whom he sent to Devizes. His arrival coincided with a sudden and material improvement in the state of his affairs. While Henry was engaged in an act of penance at Becket’s tomb, William, King of Scots, was taken before Alnwick. After a short illness in London, Henry went to Huntingdon in time to receive the surrender of the castle, and thence to Framlingham, which, with Bungay, was surrendered to him by Hugh Bigot. Prince Rhys, then in alliance with Henry, besieged and took Tutbury, and the Mowbray castle of Malzeard was also taken. At Northampton, in July, Henry received the submission of the Bishop of Durham, with the castles of Durham, Norham, and Northallerton. Thirsk Castle was given up by Roger de Mowbray; Tutbury and Driffield by Earl Ferrars, with Leicester, Mount Sorrell, and Groby.

Henry’s success was complete; but the rebellion showed how dangerous were the great castles to public order, and how necessary it was to dismantle a large number of them, and to keep the rest, as far as possible, in the hands of the Crown. This policy he continued to act upon to the end of his reign, treating all conquered rebels with great clemency as regarded their persons and their estates, but retaining their castles in his own hands. Even Richard de Lacy, to whom the hundred of Ongar was granted in 1174, was not allowed to retain the castle.

In May, 1175, Henry was in England, and in June received the surrender of Bristol Castle from William, Earl of Gloucester. In January, 1176, was held the council at Northampton, at which the kingdom was divided into six circuits, with three justiciaries for each circuit. Among the edicts which they were to enforce were those relating to castles. A strict inquisition was to be made into the tenure by castle-guard, and how far its duties were discharged.

It does not appear to what extent the new regulations were carried out; but the general effect of the new system was to check marauders, and to render insurrections more difficult and less frequent. Northallerton, more than once dismantled, was at last (1177) entirely destroyed; and the Bishop of Durham, its owner, had to pay a fine of a thousand marcs for his share in the last rebellion. Such castles as Durham, Norham, and Scarborough, which it was expedient to preserve, were attached to the Crown, and placed in the hands of faithful castellans. Bamburgh was entrusted to William de Stuteville, and Norham to William de Neville, Scarborough to the Archbishop of York, Berwick to Geoffrey de Neville, and Durham to Roger de Coniers. The assize of arms, by which, in 1180, it became the duty of each freeholder to provide himself with arms and armour according to his means and condition, rendered the commonalty more capable of resisting tyranny, and on the whole tended to strengthen the hands of any not very unpopular sovereign against the barons.

The general result of Henry’s domestic policy was undoubtedly successful, and his latter years were untroubled by any serious outbreak. In 1177, he returned to Normandy; but both there, and during his subsequent visits to England, he paid great attention to the castles of each country, visiting many of them, appointing and changing the castellans, and causing the defences to be kept in proper order. In February, 1187, he visited the very singular castle of Chilham by Canterbury. He died in the castle of Chinon, July, 1189.

CHAPTER VI.

THE CASTLES OF ENGLAND AND WALES AT THE LATTER PART OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY.

HOWEVER numerous may have been the castles destroyed under the Convention of Wallingford, or during the subsequent reign of Henry II., they seem to have been almost entirely fortresses of recent date, in private hands, and of little importance as regarded the general defence or the orderly administration of the kingdom. Among those that played at all an important part in the internal wars of the sons or grandsons of Henry, there are missing but very few known to have been built or restored by his predecessors or by himself; and the names that occur in the chronicles of the period, or are entered from time to time in the records of the realm, show that the country continued to be amply provided with castles, and that almost all of the first class were occasionally repaired at the cost of the Crown, and were governed by castellans holding office during the king’s pleasure, whom moreover it was the custom frequently to change. It is here proposed, at some length, to enumerate the fortresses of England and in the Marches of Wales, as they stood at the close of the reign of Henry II., so far at least as their names and positions or any account of them can be recovered.

Taking London as the centre, military and political, of the kingdom, we have, upon the Thames, the Tower, the first and chief fortress founded by the Conqueror, and which he considered sufficient to protect and overawe the city. In the city itself, also upon the banks of the Thames, near the outlet of the Flete, was Baynard’s Castle, the stronghold of the Barons Fitz-Walter, standard-bearers to the City of London, and an important branch of the House of Clare. At various distances from this centre, according to the disposition of the ground, were posted within the northern and southern passes of the chalk ridge, Berkhampstead, an appanage of the earldom of Cornwall, and Guildford, the early keep of which stands in part upon an artificial mound. Also, to the immediate south of London, were the episcopal castle, still inhabited, of Farnham, and Earl Warenne’s castle on the hill at Reigate, of which some traces remain. Higher up the Thames were Windsor, Reading, Wallingford, and Oxford, all fortresses of high antiquity and of the first rank. Between the Thames and the sea-coast the country was well guarded, and the communications with Dover, Portsmouth, and Southampton, so important to sovereigns with possessions on the Continent, rendered secure. Dover, called by William the Conqueror, according to Matthew Paris, “Clavis et repagulum,” the key and bolt of the kingdom, was one of its oldest, largest, and strongest fortresses, and covered a nearly impregnable area of thirty-five acres. It crowned the crest of a chalk rock which seemed to rise out of the sea, and steep by nature was rendered still more so by art, and bore traces of Norman, English, Roman, and probably British occupation. Its well of water is particularly specified, according to M. Paris, in Harold’s celebrated covenant with Duke William. Indeed, there seem to have been two wells in the keep, besides another, no doubt that of Harold, in the outer ward, probably a Roman work. The town also was walled. In the rear of Dover lay the city of Canterbury, mentioned in “Domesday” as fortified. It was strong to the landward, with a formidable bank and ditch, revetted by a Norman wall, and towards the water was covered by the marshes of the Stour, at one time navigable up to the quays of the ancient city. At one angle and just within the area, was a strong rectangular keep, a Norman addition, and near it was the Danejohn, a far older moated mound, older even than the bank and ditch of the city, which were laid out at an angle to include it. Near to Canterbury was Chilham, a Norman tower of peculiar form, on the site of a work burned by the Danes in 838–51; and at no great distance was Saltwood, given to the see of Canterbury in 1036, and said to owe the formidable banks and ditches which still surround it to a son of Hengist. West of Dover William d’Abrincis had built the castle of Folkestone, now, with the cliff it stood upon, swallowed up by the sea. It was preceded by an earlier work in earth a little further inland; Sandwich, one of the cinque ports, was also embanked and walled. Between Dover and London, upon the marshy windings of the upper Medway, stood the mound of Tonbridge, with its Norman walls and shell keep, a place of immense strength, and the subject of a long contest between the archbishops and the earls of the race of De Clare. Again, in the rear and upon the same road was the castle of Rochester sharing its defensive strength with the oldest tower of the contiguous cathedral and the walled city standing within or on the lines of a Roman enclosure, and commanding the lowest bridge upon the deep and rapid Medway. Many of the castles of Kent, especially those in private hands, were founded in the thirteenth century, or later; but Horton, Eynsford, and Lullingston, on the Darent, and that of Sheppy, on the Swale, are far more ancient. Besides these Otford, an archiepiscopal castle, was the “caput” of an Honour. Cowling is mentioned in Mercian charters in 808. The manor belonged to Leofwin, brother of Harold, and was held by Bishop Odo. Allington Castle was demolished by the Danes and afterwards held by Earl Godwin, and later on by Odo. The Norman additions were probably the work of Earl Warenne. Near to Maidstone is Malling, thought to be as early a Norman keep as any in England, and tolerably perfect though small; Thurnam or Godard’s Castle also has a square Norman keep and some early earthworks, and near to it were the very perfect moated mounds of Binbury and Stockbury. Ledes Castle, still inhabited, has a detached and water-girdled keep and a very complete barbican. The keep of Sutton, afterwards Sutton-Valence, seems to be Norman. Tong Castle, in Bapchild manor on the Swale, attributed to Hengist, was built as a castle by the St. Johns. Bayford Castle occurs in Sittingbourne; and Queenborough, in Sheppey, though called from the queen of Edward III., is probably of much older date. At Alfrington Alfred is said to have had a strong place, called afterwards Burlow. At Verdley, and Castlefield in Hartfield, are vestiges said to represent castles.

In Sussex each rape had its castle, founded probably by the Jutish settlers. Of these under the Norman rule Hastings, almost equal to Dover in its natural strength, though of smaller size, was the head of the barony of the earls of Eu. It is first mentioned in the Bayeux tapestry, where in one of the compartments is written, “Iste [comes Moretaine] jussit ut foderentur castellum ad Hasteng.” This probably relates to the double line of ditches by which the castle is cut off from the body of the hill. The town also was walled. Pevensey, strong in its Roman wall and added English earthworks, was the castle of De Aquila, the seat of the Honour called by the English of “The Eagle.” Here, in 1118, the Custos of Windsor expended £118. 4s. in repairing the palisades (“palicii”) of the castle. Lewes, with its mounds crowning each end of an isolated hill, was the favourite strength of the Warennes, Earls of Surrey. The natural platform, added ditches and mound, and square keep of Bramber, on the Adur, rendered almost impregnable this seat of the turbulent and powerful Barons Braose of Gower, who also owned Knepp Castle, nearer the head of the river, where a mound and some Norman masonry may still be seen. Knepp was afterwards held by King John on the attainder of William de Braose, and in 1216 was ordered to be destroyed. Arundel, the only castle named in “Domesday” as existing in the reign of the Confessor, and the seat successively of Earl Roger of Montgomery, of d’Albini, and the race of Fitz-Alan, still overlooks the dell of the Arun, and wears many of its older features; and finally Chichester, also a Montgomery castle, long since destroyed, or reduced to its primal mound, stood within the fortified area of the Roman Regnum. Besides these there seem to have been Norman castles at Eastbourne and Firle, all traces of which have, however, disappeared. Mention is also made of Sedgewick Castle, near Horsham.

More to the west in Hampshire, upon the Havant water, was Boseham, a very famous castle long since swept away; and upon the inlet of Portsmouth, Porchester, a noble combination of Roman and Norman masonry. Within its area is contained a parish church and churchyard, and here was the favourite muster-place for troops destined for Havre. On the opposite side of the Solent, in the centre of the Isle of Wight, is Carisbroke, celebrated for its keep and mound, and its wells of unusual depth, and on the opposite mainland, at the marshy junction of the Stour and the Wiltshire Avon, stands the ancient keep of Christchurch, placed exceptionally upon the mound of the earlier Twynham. Here also is preserved the Castle Hall, a late Norman building, almost a duplicate of a corresponding structure in Fitzgerald’s castle at Adare, near Limerick. Upon the verge of Southampton Water, between the Anton and the sea, occupying a strong peninsula, is the town of that name, still preserving the remains of its Norman walls, and of the keep of a very formidable castle once included within its area.

Inland of this line of castles from the sea northwards to the Thames, the counties of Wilts and Berks showed with Hampshire an abundance of strong places. There, though actually in Hampshire, was Winchester, the British Caerwent and the Roman Venta Belgarum, which in its English days contested with London the supremacy of the South. Strongly fortified with broad and high earthworks and deep ditches, it contained, attached to one angle, the royal castle, and within another, its diagonal, the episcopal keep of Wolvesey, of which the one is now represented by its noble hall, and the other by its rectangular Norman keep. The Hall at Winchester, though of very early English date, is after the Norman type, having three aisles. The castle was the prison of Archbishop Stigand in 1066. Before its gates, in 1075, Earl Waltheof was beheaded. Here, in 1102, was tried the memorable dispute for precedence between York and Canterbury. In 1141 it was defended by the Empress Maud, and here Henry II. held several Parliaments, and Cœur de Lion paused when in the adjacent cathedral he was a second time crowned on his return from captivity in 1189.

Scarcely second to Winchester in strength, and its equal in undefined antiquity, is Old Sarum, a hold of mixed but uncertain origin, where the concentric lines of masonry, girdling and crowning the central mound, included the cathedral of the diocese, and to which, according to the historians of Wiltshire, King Alfred caused an exterior bank and palisade to be added. In Wilts was also the Devizes, reputed the finest castle on this side the Alps. “Divisæ quod erat Salesberiensis Episcopi castellum, mirando artificio, sed et munimine inexpugnabili firmatum,” but of which there now remains little besides the gigantic mound and profound ditches. Of Marlborough the burh alone remains, while of Malmesbury, an encroachment of the secular upon the lands of the regular clergy, all traces are removed. Over the Hampshire border is Old Basing, where the Saxons were worsted by the Danes in a pitched battle in 871, which became the “caput” of the fifty-five lordships held by Hugh de Port in “Domesday,” and afterwards of the St. John’s oldest barony. Even in the time of Henry II. it was called the old castle, and in a rather later reign Robert, Lord St. John, had a licence to fix a pale along the base of his mote at Basing, and to maintain it so fortified during the king’s pleasure. The original circle of earthwork is nearly all that now remains. At no great distance is Odiham, once a possession of the see of Winchester, where is an early tower, stripped of its ashlar, and surrounded by marshy ground once famous for its forest sport. Castle Coombe was a famous and very early Wiltshire castle, now reduced nearly to an earthwork, and Warblington, a stronghold of the Montacutes, and the castle of Cirencester are both gone, the latter destroyed by Henry III.

Still further to the west are the castles of Dorset and Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. Wareham, the ancient Frome-mouth, placed between the Frome and the Piddle, once marked the limits of Poole harbour, and was a place of great strength and fame. As early as 876 its west side, the root of the twixt-waters peninsula, was criticised as weak. In one corner of its rectangular and pseudo-Roman area, a moated mound has been thrown up, as at Tamworth, by the river-side, and its earthworks and position justify its reputation as the key of Purbeck, of which Corfe was the citadel. Corfe, perched upon the summit and slope of a chalk hill between two clefts whence it derives its name, is now a magnificent ruin. Half its noble rectangular keep still stands, and incorporated into the wall of its middle ward is a fragment of the palace of the old West Saxon kings, probably the only material evidence extant that they ever employed masonry in their military works. Of Sherborne, an ancient episcopal seat, the spacious earthwork still contains much of a late Norman keep, and is still entered through a Norman gatehouse. Ilchester and Shaftesbury Castles are gone, and only a part of the earthworks of that of Dorchester remain. West of Purbeck, in Portland, is Bow-and-Arrow Castle, upon the sea-cliff, a curious and somewhat peculiar structure of early date, built or occupied by the De Clares. From Portland to the mouth of the Exe there do not appear to have been any strong places of importance.

Just within the mouth of the Exe is Powderham, the work of an Earl of Eu and of De Redvers, and their Courtenay successors, and higher up and opposite, Rougemont, the citadel of Exeter, which still exhibits the high banks, deep ditches, and ancient gatehouse, fragments of the defences behind which the citizens braved the fury of the Conqueror. Inland from the Exe is Okehampton, the earliest of the English possessions of the great family of Courtenay, and the work of Baldwin of Exeter, of the lineage but not bearing the name of De Clare. He was the builder also of Tiverton Castle which is now destroyed, as also is Bridgewater. Among the early castles of the district was Stoke Courcy, now a ruin; Stowey, “pulchrum et inexpugnabile in pelagi littore locatum”; and Dunster, the strongest place in the west, the “Domesday” castle of the Mohuns, and after them, as now, of the Luttrells. In the west of Devon there remains the mound of Plympton, a Redvers castle, and the shell keep of Totnes, the work of Joel of that place, and afterwards inherited by the Barons Braose. Barnstaple town was probably walled, and certainly had four gates. At Taunton a Norman keep and part of a Norman hall still stand on the banks of the Tone, and rise out of earthworks attributed to King Ine. At Montacute, the high ground marked by an immense Romano-British camp, ends in the sharp-pointed hill which William Earl of Moretaine selected for his castle, of which the name, appropriately transported from his Norman castle, alone remains, and but little more of Castle-Carey, the Lovell seat, besieged and taken by Stephen, or of the Norman keep of Harptree, in a pass in the Mendip range.

Of importance beyond all these more or less local castles was that of Bristol, founded by Robert, Earl of Gloucester, but found too valuable to be intrusted to his successors in the earldom. Its square Norman keep stood between the Frome and the Avon, and was strong both in works and in position. After centuries of contest for its possession between the earls of Gloucester and the Crown, it ceased to be of military value and was taken down. Upon and beyond the Tamar, as at Montacute, Wallingford, and Berkhampstead, may be traced the footsteps of the powerful noble who held the great earldom of Cornwall. Their principal Cornish castles,—Trematon, Launceston, where the town also was walled, and Restormel,—were the work originally of Robert, half-brother of the Conqueror. Their remains are considerable, and their strength and position were such as to give them immense influence in that wild and almost impenetrable district. St. Michael’s Mount remains strongly fortified; Carnbrea, the work of Ralph de Pomeroy, still marks the rocky ridge whence it derives its name, and there are traces of Boscastle, the hold of the Barons Botreaux, and of the Arthurian castle of Tintagel. There are besides in Cornwall a few fortified houses, and a multitude of strong places,—camps rather than castles, very peculiar in character, and probably the work of the native Cornish before the arrival of the stranger.

It appears, then, that south of and upon the Thames and Bristol Avon there stood, at the close of the twelfth century, at least eighty-nine more or less considerable castles, a very large number of which were kept in repair by the sheriffs of the counties and governed by castellans appointed by the king and holding office during pleasure. Of these, at least thirty contained shell keeps placed on moated mounds, and were in some form or other far older than the Conquest; and about seventeen were characterised by rectangular keeps, of which two only, Guildford and Christchurch, were associated with mounds, and of these very few indeed were of pure Norman foundation. Of the remaining forty-two the particulars are doubtful, so they cannot be counted with one class or the other, but most of them are also older than the Conquest.

Passing into the middle belt of country extending from the Thames and Avon to the Tees and the Lune, and from the German Ocean to the Severn, the provision for defence is found to be fully equal to that in the South. In the East Anglian province, in the counties of Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Cambridge, the chief strongholds were Colchester, Hedingham, Bungay, Framlingham, Castle Acre, Castle Rising, Norwich, and Cambridge. Colchester, the work of Hubert de Rye or his son, acting in some measure for the Crown, is built of Roman, or quasi-Roman, material upon a Roman site and within the area of a town mentioned in “Domesday” as fortified. It commanded the inlet of Harwich and the Blackwater, and in its rear, higher up the Coln, was the De Vere keep of Hedingham, still a very perfect structure, and unusually though severely ornate. This keep stands upon a natural mound, protected by a formidable ditch, and appended to it is an outer enclosure, older evidently than the keep. In the same county is Rayleigh, celebrated for the extent of its earthworks, and, with Clavering, attributed to Swegen or Suenus, sheriff of Essex under the Confessor, and ancestor of Henry de Essex, Henry I.’s disgraced standard-bearer. The earthworks of both places are, however, probably much earlier than the masonry. There also is Plessy, a Mandeville restoration in masonry, with the parish church within its enclosure; Ongar, for the time the castle of Richard de Lucy; and Stansted Montfichet, the remaining earthworks of which indicate its site. Bishops Stortford, or Weytemore, was an early manor of the Bishop of London, who there had a castle. These four last-named castles all had moated mounds. At Bures also was a moated mound eighty feet high, hence its name of Mount Bures; also at Birch Castle, near Colchester, and at Benyngton were castles. Canewdon was either a castle or a very old fortified house, dating from the time of Henry de Essex, and at Canfield, called from its castle, “Canefield ad Castrum,” the De Veres had a fortress of which the mound is still seen.

Framlingham is the chief castle of Suffolk. It is attributed originally to Redwald, king of East Anglia, at the close of the sixth century. Here there is at present no keep, but the Norman walls, of unusual height, forty to fifty feet, and eight feet thick, still enclose the court, and are protected by enormous earthworks, deep and high and of great extent. This was the chief of the Bigot castles, said to have been built by Hugh Bigot in 1176, and to the same powerful family belonged Bungay, “hard by the river Waveney,” with grand earthworks, a mound, and the remains of a square keep. Walton, another Bigot castle, was destroyed by Henry II. Clare, the manor whence the earls of Gloucester and Hertford derived their family name, retains its mound with part of a polygonal keep, and outworks in earth and masonry on a scale commensurate with the power of their lords. The area is occupied in part by a railway station. Eye, the mound of which remains, was a castle at Domesday, the seat of Robert Malet, and afterwards was given by Henry II. to Ranulph, Earl of Chester. Dunwich, though not a walled town, was protected by a deep ditch and high bank, upon which as late as the reign of Henry III. was a palisade.

The chief castle of Norfolk was Norwich, a place of immense strength and high antiquity. Its rectangular keep of great size and more ornate than usual, though much injured by injudicious repairs, and closed against the antiquary by its conversion to the base uses of a prison, still predominates grandly over the fine old city, of which it was long the glory and the dread. Its deep, single ditch, far older than its works in masonry, is now for the most part filled up and built over. The city also was strongly walled. Haganet, a Norfolk castle taken by the Earl of Leicester and his invading Flemings, is utterly destroyed. Mileham, of which the moated mound, though low, and a fragment of a square keep remain, was the work of Alan, son of Flaald, who held the manor from the Conqueror. To him also is attributed the adjacent castle of Burghwood, of which large earthworks remain. Orford, an almost solitary example of a Norman polygonal keep, is tolerably perfect. The keep of Castle Rising, though smaller in dimensions than Norwich, resembles it in type. It is the most highly-ornamented keep in England, and, though a ruin, is well preserved and cared for. Here also is that great rarity, a tolerably perfect and unaltered fore-building and entrance. This keep stands within a lofty bank, beyond which, on one side, is a spacious outwork, also heavily embanked. Castle Acre, best known for its Norman priory, contains also the mound and other earthworks and part of the shell keep of a large castle, and near to these is the town of Lynn, once strongly fortified, and still possessing an early gatehouse. At Thetford, girt by a double ditch, is the great mound thrown up by the Danes in 865–6 to command the then adjacent city, but this post, so important before the Conquest, does not seem to have been occupied afterwards. Other Norfolk castles were Buckenham and Tateshall, of which the date is doubtful, and Marnham, of which it was reported in the reign of Edward I.—“Quod erectio castri de Marnham est in præjudicium domini Regis.” Wirmegay, a Warenne castle, strong in its marshy approaches, was certainly earlier. At Weting, near the church, was a castle with a mound, on which a few years ago was a fragment of the keep. It was the seat of De Plaiz, who represented Mont Fitchet, and whose heiress married the ancestor of the house of Howard. There was also a castle at Kenningdale, near Diss.

Cambridgeshire contained but a few castles, the fens presenting little to attract the spoiler, and being in themselves a secure defence. At Cambridge, upon the banks of the sluggish and winding Cam, a prison has taken the place of the castle ordered by the Conqueror; but a part of the mound and a fragment of its subsidiary banks remain, and are not to be confounded with the still earlier Roman enclosure. At Ely a large mound with appended earth banks is thought to have been the site of the ancient castle of the bishop of that see. All traces of masonry are gone, as at Wisbeach. The camp at Castle Camps, the seat of the Saxon Wolfwin, once held a Norman castle, the work of the De Veres. Of Chevely, an episcopal castle, a fragment remains. Burwell, the masonry of which belonged to one of Stephen’s improvised castles, is remembered as that before which Geoffrey de Mandeville received his fatal wound. A fragment of its wall and the mound remain. Swavesey and Bassingbourne were early castles.

Hertford, Bedford, and Buckingham, the inland positions of which were insufficient to secure them from invasions from a foe beyond the sea, were not unprovided with castles. Hertford, visited by the Danes in 894, was fortified by Edward the Elder in 914, who there threw up a burh between the rivers Lea, Mineran, and Bean, and in the year following a second burh on the opposite bank of the Lea. Hertford, says Smith in 1588, has two castles, one on each bank of the Lea. These corresponded to the two banks already mentioned. Upon the still existing mound Peter de Valoines placed the keep ordered by the Conqueror. The Magnavilles next held it, and Henry of Huntingdon calls it, “castrum non immensum sed pulcherrimum.” Berkhampstead, as old, and a far more considerable fortress, and the head of a great Honour, has been mentioned as one of the northern defences of the metropolis. Its mound, wholly artificial, still supports the foundations of a Norman shell keep, and appended to it is a large oval platform, the walls and entrances to which remain. The whole is partially encircled by several concentric lines of bank and ditch, the character of which shows that they were protected by stockades instead of walls of masonry. Here the Black Prince spent his latter days, and here he died.

The chief castle of Bedfordshire, the head of the Beauchamp barony, was at Bedford, where the Ouse, menaced by the Danish galleys, was protected early in the tenth century by a mound upon each bank, one of which is now removed and the other was crowned by the keep of the Norman castle. Bedford Castle is famous for two memorable sieges in the reigns of Stephen and Henry III. Of its works, once extensive, the masonry has been removed, the fosse has also been filled up, and the mound somewhat reduced in size. Risinghoe, The Giants hill, on the Ouse below Bedford, seems to have had a shell keep, and at Tempsford is to be seen a curious but small earthwork thrown up by the Danes in 921, and taken by Edward the Elder late in the year. Whether this was the site of the subsequent Norman castle is very doubtful. There was also a castle at Odell or Wahull, the seat of the barons of that name. It is uncertain when was founded Bletsoe, a castle and the head of a Beauchamp barony. Below Bedford, on the Ouse, are the earthworks of Eaton-Socon, also a Beauchamp castle, but dismantled at an early period.

The remains of the castle of Huntingdon, though reduced to banks, ditches, and a mound, nevertheless show how spacious and how strong must have been this chief seat of the broad earldom of Countess Judith and her descendants the kings of Scotland, earls also of Huntingdon. The Danes were encamped here in 921, and the burh which had been ruined was restored by Eadward in the same year. The ditches were fed from the Ouse, which expanded before the castle as a broad marsh, now a fertile meadow. Of the early military history of the castles of Connington, Kimbolton, and Bruck, but little is recorded.

The castle of the Giffards, earls of Buckingham, included one of the two burhs which were thrown up on opposite sides of the Ouse, in 915, to command the river and protect the town. The castle was probably destroyed in the reign of Stephen, and the further mound levelled. The Paganels had a castle at Newport; the Hanslapes at Castlethorpe; the Barons Bolbec at Bolbec, now Bullbanks, in Medmenham; and there seem to have been castles at Winslow, Lavendon, and Whitchurch.

West of this district came Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and Gloucestershire. Windsor, Wallingford and Reading have been mentioned. The keep of Windsor has a late Norman base, and the foundation of a gateway is of that date, as is the entrance to a very curious gallery in the chalk, which ran from the interior of the place beneath the buildings and the wall and opened as a postern upon the scarp of the main ditch. The mound upon which the round tower is placed is artificial and was surrounded by banks and ditches much on the plan of Arundel. Reading was an early castle and strongly posted between the Thames and the Kennet, upon an earthwork long before contested between the Danes and the Saxons. The castle is supposed to have been demolished by Henry III., in pursuance of the treaty of Wallingford: no trace of it remains. Wallingford has had better fortune: its mound and enclosure, the seat of the English Wigod, occupy one corner of the rectangular earthworks of the town, and rest upon the river. It was attached to the earldom of Cornwall, and was a place of great strength and splendour. A few fragments of masonry still remain, and some traces of Stephen’s camp on the opposite bank at Crowmarsh. There were also castles, though of small consequence and doubtful age, at Newbury, Brightwell, Farringdon, and Aldworth, the latter the seat of the Barons de la Beche.

Oxford Castle was a place of great antiquity and very strong, and formed a part of the defences of the city. The mound remains and a crypt within it, but the keep is gone. There is seen, however, above the river bank a rude and early square tower of Norman work, now a prison. At Banbury, Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, built a castle in 1125, which was held by the Crown under Edward II. At Middleton was a strong castle, held by Richard de Camville in the reign of John, and there were others, smaller buildings, at Bampton, Bedington, Dedington, and Watlington, possibly demolished by Henry II. Broughton, the castle of the Lords Say, is in this county. Woodstock, though a royal manor, does not seem to have been fortified. The castles at Ardley and Chipping-Norton were destroyed by Stephen. The latter had a moated mound.

In Gloucestershire, besides Bristol, which was more connected with Somerset, is Berkeley Castle, mentioned in the survey, but in its present form built for its lord by Henry II. in acknowledgment of services rendered to the Duke of Anjou, which remains marvellously little altered to the present day. Gloucester, a royal castle, stood on the Severn bank at one angle of the Roman city. It had a mound and a shell keep, now utterly levelled, and the site partially built over. It was the muster-place and starting-point for expeditions against South Wales, and the not infrequent residence of the Norman sovereigns. Sudeley and Winchcombe were early castles; the latter stood near St. Peter’s Church, and was the seat of Kenulph, a Mercian king. There were also castles at Dursley and at Brimpsfield, built by Osbert Giffard. The only Gloucestershire castle of any consequence beyond the Severn was St. Briavels, built by Milo, Earl of Hereford, probably about 1130, upon or near the site of an earlier work, represented by an artificial mound. In the reign of Henry I. it was in the hands of the Crown. It is the special head of Dene Forest, of which the constable of the castle was warden. Here were held the miners’ courts, the usages of which were very peculiar. St. Briavels formed the connecting link between Gloucester and such of the Monmouthshire castles as were in the hands of the Crown. Of smaller castles in this district may be mentioned one at Aylesmore near Dymock, one near Huntley, and others at Ruardean and Penyard.

North of Gloucestershire came the castles of the more purely midland shires of Worcester, Warwick, Stafford, Northampton, Leicester, and towards the eastern seaboard, Lincoln. The castle of Worcester stood on the bank of the Severn, hard by the cathedral. The mound, now removed, was occupied with masonry by Urso d’Abitot, who, however, did not always get the best of it in his conflicts with the bishop. Also on the Severn was Hanley, long since destroyed, and Emly, also a Beauchamp seat. Hartlebury, the episcopal castle, is further inland, as is Dudley, the seat of the Barons Somery, a place of high antiquity and great natural strength.

Warwick was one of the greatest, and by far the most famous of the midland castles, famous not merely for its early strength and later magnificence but for the long line of powerful earls, culminating in the king-maker, who possessed it and bore its name. It was founded as a burh early in the tenth century, and the keep, said to have resembled Clifford’s Tower at York, stood upon the mound: both are now removed. The castle as usual formed a part of the enceinte of the town, and the wall from the west gate to the castle stood upon an early earth bank. Near to Warwick is Kenilworth, the chief fortress of the midland, including a large area, and strongly though artificially fortified. Of the English Kenelm nothing is recorded, but the founder of its Norman work was the first of the house of Clinton, one of Henry I.’s new earls, probably the only extant family descended in a direct male line from the builder of a Norman keep of the first class. The square keep and much of the existing wall are original, but the broad lake, which added so much to its strength and is now drained and converted into meadow, was probably a rather later addition, of the age of the gatehouse on the dam, and of the curious earthwork covering its head. The central earthworks are probably very early. Of Maxtoke, also a Clinton castle, there are remains. Of the castle at Fillongley, the chief seat of the Lords Hastings till they married the heiress of Cantelupe, and removed to Abergavenny, only a few fragments remain. Ralph Gernon had a castle at Coventry. Brownsover, Sekington, and Fullbrook castles were probably adulterine, and are known only by vague tradition, and it is doubtful whether the castle of the De Castellos included the burh at Castle Bromwich or was on the site of the later manor house. The burh at Sekington is very perfect. The Limesis had a castle at Solihull, of which the moat long remained, as had the Coleshills at that place. The Birminghams had a castle in the manor of that name, near the church; there were early castles at Erdington, at Studley on the Arrow, and at Oversley, long the seat of the Butlers, whose ancestor was “Pincerna” to the Earls of Leicester. Beldesert, built by Thurstan de Montfort soon after the Conquest, received a market from the Empress Maud, and Dugdale mentions Simili Castle, probably the seat of a family of that name. Ragley was a later castle. Coventry was strongly walled.

The line of the Trent on its passage through Staffordshire was amply fortified. Stafford, otherwise Chebsey castle, constructed by the Conqueror, probably upon the burh thrown up by Eathelflaeda in 913, was destroyed before the date of the Survey, and was, therefore, probably not a work in masonry. The town was fortified. The castle of the Barons Stafford was near the town, but outside it. Its foundations are original. Of the Ferrers castles Chartley is only indicated by a mound. Beaudesert and Burton are destroyed. Tamworth, their chief seat, as that of the Marmions before them, still retains its shell keep and part of the curtain wall, remarkable for its herringbone masonry. It was a royal Saxon residence in the eighth century, and the mound on which stands the keep was thrown up in 931. As at Wareham and Wallingford, it is placed near the river in one corner of a rectangular earthwork open on that side. Tutbury, also a Ferrers castle, occupied a natural knoll above the Trent, raised on one side by an artificial burh, and covered on the other by extensive works in earth of early date, probably original. The present masonry is chiefly the work of John of Gaunt, but the fine old Priory church, founded by the early lords, still stands just outside the ditch. Lichfield is reputed to have had a castle at the south end of the town. At the north end is the cathedral, “Lichfield’s moated pile,” defended by a broad and deep ditch, and on one side by a lake or pool. It is not improbable that these works, which are rectangular in plan, were executed by the Romanised Britons, and that their existence caused the selection of this spot as the seat of the bishopric. The Bishop’s castle of Eccleshall has lately been alienated. There was a castle at Heley, and at Alton, now Alton Towers, and at Stourton. Of the castle of Newcastle-under-Lyne, held by the Earl of Chester for John, all trace is lost.

The Northamptonshire castles stood mostly upon the lines of the Nene and the Welland. Northampton, built by Simon de St. Liz, certainly upon an earlier site, was a strongly walled and celebrated place, the scene of important events in English history. Its castle has long been reduced to a few earthworks and a fragment of masonry, and very recently these also have been destroyed. Of Fotheringay, a very ancient fortress, the scene of a siege by Henry III., there remains little in masonry, although the bank and mound are perfect. It was dismantled by James as the scene of his mother’s execution. Barnwell Castle is probably late, as is the fine fortified gatehouse of the Sapcote family, at Elton. At Castle Ashby, all trace of the castle is lost in the grand old house which has succeeded to it. Of Lilbourne, a moderate mound and a rectangular earthwork are the sole remains of the castle. Near Towcester at Moor End in Potterspury, and at Alderton, were castles, probably built and destroyed in the reigns of Stephen and Henry II. Towcester itself does not appear to have been fortified by the Normans, nor the curious burh at Earls Barton, the moot hill for the earldom of Countess Judith. But of all the Northamptonshire castles the most interesting, both from its history and its remains, is undoubtedly Rockingham, founded by the Conqueror upon an old site, standing in its old shire and forest, and which has been always inhabited and cared for. Near to Rockingham, but in Rutland, is Oakham, built by Walkelin de Ferrars in 1180, where the keep is gone, but the original late Norman hall is quite perfect and still in use. Of the defences of this remarkable fortress there remain ditches and banks, with a part of the curtain wall and a large outwork of earth. Belvoir, well deserving of the name, the only other Rutland castle, was the seat of the Todenis, ancestors of the D’Albini and Ros families, and of its present lords. Like Windsor, its circular keep, rebuilt nearly from its foundations, crowns a detached hill, and from its terrace is one of the richest views in England.

In Leicestershire, Leicester Castle, the seat of its powerful and turbulent Norman earls, stood, and in part still stands, between the Soar and the Roman Ratæ, the walls of which are said to have been destroyed in 1173. Of Hinckley, the seat of the Grantmaisnils, and the “caput” of their Honour, the mound alone remains by the side of the Roman way. The castle was probably dismantled by Henry II. Groby, a Ferrers castle, has long been reduced to a small mound, and Mount Sorrel, once so strong, is utterly destroyed. By a convention at Mount Sorrel in the reign of Stephen, between Robert, Earl of Leicester, and Ralph, Earl of Chester, already cited, it was agreed that Ralph Gernon’s castle of Raunston should be destroyed and Whitwick strengthened, but that no new castle should be built between Hinckley, Donnington, Leicester, Belvoir, Okeham, and Rockingham. Should any be so built, the two earls agreed to demolish the works. Sauvey Castle was an early work. Of Castle Donnington, the house of the Zouches of Ashby, the early history is obscure.

The main castles of Lincolnshire were Lincoln and Axholme. Axholme, built in the fens of that name, was a place of immense strength, and the head of a barony of the Mowbrays, a race always on the side of disorder. The castle has long been destroyed, and the fen, to which it owed much of its strength, is drained. Lincoln Castle has been more fortunate. The hill of Lincoln has been thought to retain traces of British occupation, and its Roman buildings and English earthworks are very remarkable. Soon after the Conquest 166 houses were destroyed to make room for the castle itself, and 74 more to give space around it. Its enormous banks occupy an angle of the Roman station, and contain parts of the ruined wall and gate, both Roman. The great mound, the larger of two, is occupied by the original shell keep, which, placed at the foot of the cathedral, towers high above the city, and overlooks the broad plain beyond. Often visited by the Norman kings, Lincoln Castle is specially famous for the great battle fought beneath its walls in 1141, in which Stephen was taken prisoner by Robert, Earl of Gloucester, and his men from Glamorgan.

There was a Mowbray Castle at Epworth, now destroyed, and one at Kenefar, laid level by Henry, Bishop of Lincoln, in the reign of Henry II. Bourne or Brun was in 870 the seat of a Saxon Thane, whose mound, after the Conquest, was occupied by the Lords Wake. It was at one time an important place, and the remaining earthworks show its area to have been considerable. Bolingbroke Castle, once the “caput” of an Honour, is now destroyed. Stamford-on-the-Welland was guarded by two mounds, thrown up in 922, of which one has disappeared, but the other, as at Bedford and Buckingham, was saved by its incorporation into a Norman castle, to be seen no longer. Sleaford, an episcopal castle, occasionally mentioned in the twelfth century, is now gone, as is the castle of Horncastle, restored to Adelais de Condie in 1151, but at the same time ordered to be demolished, and which probably stood within the walls of the Roman station, of which large fragments remain. Bitham also is gone, taken by siege and levelled by Henry III. in 1218. Folkingham, the “Mansio capitalis” of Ulf the constable, was held by Gilbert de Garod, and long afterwards fell to the Lords Beaumont. Boothby was a fortified house of the Paynells or Paganels, and is of late Norman date. Topclyve Castle was built by Geoffrey, bishop-elect of Lincoln, in 1174.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CASTLES OF ENGLAND AND WALES AT THE LATTER PART OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY (continued).

THE castles of the shires of Nottingham and Derby, of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Cheshire, complete the tale of the fortresses south of the Tees and Lune. Nottingham, one of the castles ordered and possibly built by the Conqueror, on a rock high above the Trent, contained one of the grandest of the rectangular keeps. It was removed in the seventeenth century, and replaced by a building of about the same dimensions, but of very different character. At the foot of the rock were the two mounds thrown up in the tenth century to command the passage of the Trent, but these also have been removed. Another castle upon the Trent was that of Newark, the work of Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, in the twelfth century. The very considerable remains include the front towards the river, an imposing mass of masonry, the effect of which is heightened by the great gatehouse upon its flank, a Norman work of very unusual size and splendour. The ground plan of this castle is nearly square, and may represent a Roman encampment. There was a castle at Worksop.

The oldest and most remarkable of the Derbyshire castles is that of Castleton or Peveril in the Peak, with its small but strong rectangular keep, built on the edge of the precipice, at the base of which is the celebrated cavern, one of the marvels of the Peak. Bolsover, now nearly all rebuilt, was also a Peveril castle. Of Sheffield, the castle of the Furnivals and Talbots, placed upon the junction of the Sheaf and the Don, nothing now remains. There seem to have been early castles, or perhaps fortified houses, at Codnor, a Zouch seat, Melbourne, and Gresley. Also Bogis and Hareston were Derbyshire castles in the reign of Henry II.

The wide expanse of Yorkshire contained much worthy of defence, and was inhabited by a race of men not indisposed to provide it. The mounds of York, both of the first class in bulk and elevation, were posted on either bank of the Ouse, here a deep and broad stream. Of these mounds, one stands on the junction of the Foss with the Ouse, above a tract of marshy ground, between it and the wall of the Roman Eboracum. Here the Conqueror placed his first castle, and in the keep and within the spacious area below he posted William Malet and his 500 knights and their followers. Amidst much of modern work the old walls may still be traced, and a very fine shell, though of Early English date, still stands on the summit of the mound. The other mound, the Bayle Hill, south of the river, and connected with the earthworks of the later city, was also fortified by William, but in haste and with timber only, which does not appear ever to have been replaced with masonry. The city is strongly fortified with walls and a ditch, and the celebrated gateways or bars contain each a nucleus or core of Norman masonry. Next to York in importance is Scarborough, the stronghold of William le Gros, Earl of Aumarle, and the citadel of Holderness. The castle may be said to contain the whole table top of a rocky promontory, defended on three sides by a precipitous cliff, at the foot of which is the German Ocean, while towards the land is a deep natural depression. The approach was over a narrow causeway, raised upon arches, broken in the centre by a drawbridge and bridge tower, covered at the outer end by a strong barbican, and terminating below a lofty rectangular keep, much of which still remains, and by the side of which was the final entrance, and probably another drawbridge. In the words of Robert de Brunne—

“Was there none entree

That to the castle gan ligge

But a straight causee

At the end a drawbrigge.”

Scarborough is not only a strong castle by nature and by art, but is capable of containing several thousand men,—in fact, a small army. South of Scarborough, also upon the coast, but where the natural advantages of the cliff had to be supplied by enormous earthworks, was Skipsea, held and strengthened by Drogo, William’s Flemish lieutenant in that country. Aldbrough was also a Holderness castle, built by Odo of Aumarle, of which there remain only the mound and the wall.

Between Scarborough and York stood Malton, a seat of Earl Siward, and held by David of Scotland against King Stephen. The masonry is now gone, but the site is still marked by the Roman camp within or upon the edge of which the castle stood. North of Malton is Pickering, once the burh of the English Morcar, where are the remains of a shell keep upon the mound. Here the mound is central between and common to both wards. The general enclosing curtain is tolerably perfect, and the whole affords an excellent example of the manner in which the Norman architects dealt with an earthwork when the mound stood in the centre of an enclosure, instead of as usual upon one side of it. On the edge of the Honour of Pickering is Hamlake or Helmsley, the seat of the Barons de Ros before they inherited Belvoir, and where the remains of a very late rectangular keep stand on one side of a rectangular court, having two regular gatehouses, walls built against lofty banks, and beyond them strong and extensive outworks in earth and masonry. It is difficult to form an opinion upon the age of these earthworks. They impinge upon and are certainly later than a small Roman camp. At Mulgrave and Normanby were castles; at the latter are still parts of a rectangular Norman keep. Mulgrave stands on the sea cliff. It was the seat of the Saxon Wada and afterwards the Castle of Nigel Fossard and the Mowbrays. At Gilling some early vaults and walls are worked into the later castle of the Fairfaxes. Thirsk, Black Bourton in Lonsdale, and Malzeard, the “capita” of three Mowbray Baronies, all contained castles of some importance in the twelfth century. Of Malzeard and Bourton the earthworks are considerable. Tadcaster, a place of strength both in Roman and Danish times, possessed also a Norman castle, of which, however, only the mounds remain; and there is even less of Hugh Puisèt’s work of Northallerton, surrendered to Henry II. in 1174, and ordered to be destroyed in 1177. Its earthworks are intersected by a railway. Of Tanfield, a Fitz-Hugh and Marmion castle, there are still some small remains.

The great castle of North Yorkshire is Richmond, so called by Earl Alan, who obtained in 1070 the possessions of the English Edwin, and removed the seat from the adjacent Gilling, where the earthworks long remained, to a stronger position on the Swale. The Norman Castle was built in 1071: it includes a large area, most part of which is defended by a natural cliff. The containing wall is mostly original, and within its substance is a curious small Norman chapel. The rectangular keep is placed at the weakest part of the circuit next to the town, and in front of it are the remains of a barbican. The well-known “Registrum Honoris de Richmond” specifies to which part of the castle the castle guard of each great tenant was due, and the Hall which the family of Scolland were bound to maintain and guard to this day bears their name. The town was also walled. Near Richmond are the scanty and late remains of Ravenswath, a Fitz-Hugh castle, and lower down the Swale was Bedale, the castle of “Le beau Bryan de Fitz-Aleyne,” now entirely gone, though the site is still pointed out. The warlike habits of the Lords are, however, represented by a curious portcullis closing the door of the belfry in the parish church. Middleham Castle, on the edge of its celebrated moor, was founded by Ribald, brother to Earl Alan, and ancestor in the female line of the great family of Neville, under whom the Norman keep received its handsome addition and gained its fame. Masham, a castle of the Scropes, is now a mere ruin. Drax seems to have been held by Ralph Paganel as early as the reign of Stephen. Merhall, in Weston, a castle of the Barons Lancaster, is reputed to have been demolished by King John. Killarby, Albruck-on-Tees, and Cawdwell were early castles, as were Armanthwaite, Bowes, Hatlesey, Sigston, and Whorlton. Of Gleaston, the moot-hill remains, which is thought to have been surmounted by a keep; and Hornby was also a Lonsdale castle. The passes of the Lune were, however, more celebrated for their defensive earthworks, due to the Danes or the English, than for Norman castles.

Coningsborough, on the Don, is no less from its position than its architecture one of the most remarkable of Yorkshire castles. Its grand cylindrical tower, supported by buttresses of great depth and height, is superior in design and workmanship to that of Pembroke, and almost rivals Coucy. It stands on the summit of a steep rocky knoll, and has been inserted into an earlier Norman wall, which is built upon the steep edge of the rock and encloses a court of moderate area. Upon the slope are the remains of the entrance and fortified approach, and at the base of the hill is a ditch, or rather a ravine, and on one side beyond it an outwork in earth. Probably the hill has been occupied as a place of strength from a very early time, but the masonry is the work of the Warrens Earls of Surrey, and is worthy of their greatness. Knaresborough Castle, on the Nidd, visited by Henry II. in 1181, occupies the top of a rocky promontory. Here the keep, though of Norman form and dimensions, is of Decorated date, and remarkable for the excellence of its details. The adjacent town has also been fortified, though apparently by a ditch and bank only. Pontefract, another celebrated Yorkshire castle, is also peculiar. Here the castle encloses a large and elevated platform of rock, scarped and revetted all round, and at one end of which, enclosing an earthen mound, is the circular keep. Much of its masonry is of the eleventh or the early part of the twelfth century. Its subterranean passages and chambers, of Norman date, are curious. Besides these, Yorkshire contains many other castles connected for the most part with great baronial families, and playing their part in the defence of the country against the Scots. Harewood, reputed a Danish seat, was the castle of Robert de Romeli; Skipton, also built by that family, contains some early parts, and has always been inhabited. Kilton was a castle of Cleveland, as was Castleton, where the Bruces fortified a moated mound. Burton was granted by the Conqueror to the same family, having been a seat of Earl Morcar; Danby was also a Bruce castle, and Skelton Castle, built in 1140, was the head of their barony. There was also the Archbishop’s castle of Cawood, and Crake, a castle of the Bishops of Durham, said to be mentioned in the seventh century. Baynard was a castle of the Lords Wake of Cottingham; Leeds Castle was besieged by Stephen in 1139; Wilton was an early castle of the Bulmers; Guisborough was founded in 1120; Sandal Castle, under the walls of which was fought the battle of Wakefield, was a late Warren castle, but the mound and earthworks are on a large scale and old. Yorkshire contained also a considerable number of fortified houses, some of which bore the names of castles, though whether of early date is uncertain; such were Ryther and Slingsby. There is said to have been a castle at Upsal, and one at Hilderskelf, in the grounds of Castle-Howard. Wressill and Sheriff Hutton in their present forms are very late, but the latter has an early history, and near the parish church are some remarkable earthworks, which it is thought mark the site of an early castle.

Yorkshire is rich in earthworks, and especially in moated mounds. Many have already been mentioned as having been incorporated into later castles; there are others of at least equal age and strength which do not seem ever to have been connected with masonry: such are Mexbrough, Castleton, Wakefield, Levington on the Leven, and others on the Lune. Some of these are known to have been the seats of English Earls and Thanes, and after the Conquest fell into disuse and decay, though at that period they were probably formidable.

Lancashire, in the castle-building age, was not recognised as a county, but was divided between the part then included in Yorkshire and the tract between the Mersey and the Ribble. This latter formed the great Barony of Roger of Poitou, a younger son of Earl Roger of Shrewsbury. His castle of Penverdant or Penwortham is named in “Domesday,” and its colossal mound is still called the Castle Hill, but the “caput” of the barony was the Castle of Clitheroe, the small but strong square keep of which stands on the point of a steep promontory of rock, and must have been nearly inaccessible to assault. Upon Earl Roger’s fall, Clitheroe came to the Lacys. The great castle of Lancashire is at Lancaster, well placed high above the broad water of the Lune, and within the area of a Roman castrum, whence it derives its name. Here, as at Carlisle, the railway is so laid out as to show the castle to great advantage. The castle is attributed to Roger of Poitou, but the Norman keep, a grand structure, ninety feet high, appears somewhat later, as is the Edwardian gateway, also a superb specimen of military architecture. Unfortunately, being a prison, the whole is closed against antiquarian visitors. There was a castle at Liverpool said to have been built by the same Roger in 1076. Merhull and Kirkby are Lancashire castles attributed to Gilbert Fitz-Reinfrid. There seems to have been a castle at Manchester, on the Irwell, just outside the old town, in Leland’s time, and one at Greenhalgh, and one near Rochdale, probably at Castleton, where was the burh of the English lord. At Halton is also a lofty burh, as usual near the church, indicating the site of the “aula” of the English lord, and of the keep of his Norman successor. Castlehead in Atterpole, near Cartmel, is also reputed an early castle. The castles of Holland, Hornby, Peel, Thurland, Ulverston, and Glaiston are probably of later date.

Cheshire, the palatine earldom of Hugh, named, probably by his posterity, “the Wolf,” standing upon the Welsh border, demanded and was supplied by many strong places. Chester, the seat of the earldom, represents the Roman Deva, the Castra Legionum; and the Norman castle, with a small and early rectangular keep occupying one corner of the area, stands on the verge of the river Dee. Near to Chester in Wirrall was Shotwick, of which the earthworks remain, and higher up upon the Dee was Holt. Beeston is almost the only remarkable fortress in the county. It stands on the platform of an inaccessible rock. The masonry is probably late, but the deep well may be a part of the Norman castle. All the fifteen barons of the palatinate, feudatories of Earl Hugh, had castles, but these, representing private estates, mostly continued to be occupied and became fortified houses. The sites and more or less of the remains are to be seen of Halton and Kinderton, the castles of William Fitz-Hugh and Venables; Shipbrook of the Vernons; Nantwich of Piers Malbanke; Malpas of Robert Fitz-Hugh; and Dunham of Hamo de Massy. There were also castles at Frodsham, Oldcastle, Uttersford, Pulford, Dodleston, Shockleach, Nantwich, Stockport, Burton, Ullerwood, Runcorn, West Derby, Northwick, Castle Cob, and probably some others. A large number of these sites are marked by moated mounds, and there are besides many similar mounds in the county to which masonry does not appear to have been added.

Thus, between the Thames and the Tees, the Bristol Avon and the Lune, the central parts of England contained at the close of the reign of Henry II. at the least 214 castles, of which about 17 had rectangular and 44 shell keeps. As to the remaining 153, nothing is accurately known, or they are found not to have belonged to either of the great types. Of these castles probably at least 180 stood on old English sites, and very few indeed can be said with certainty to have stood upon altogether new foundations.

There remain to be considered the castles of the northern counties, Westmoreland and Cumberland, Durham and Northumberland, for centuries exposed to invasions from beyond the Tweed, and fortified accordingly. In this tract were at least four castles of the first class,—Durham, Bamburgh, Norham, and the strongly-posted town and castle of Berwick; and of the second class Brough, Appleby and Brougham, Cockermouth, Carlisle, Prudhoe and Newcastle, Ford and Alnwick, and Warkworth. Besides these were others, some perhaps at times almost their equals in importance, but the continued incursions of the Scots were fatal to the English fortresses, as were those of the English to the Scotch, and thus many on both sides the border were again and again burned and levelled, until they were either not rebuilt or only represented by peel towers and castellets, which again were destroyed, so that of very many castles the names only are preserved.

The lake country of Westmoreland was strong and contained little to attract plunderers; but on its edge on the winding Eamont is Brougham Castle, with a pure Norman keep, bearing testimony to the power of the Barons Vipont, its early lords. It stands upon the side of a well-preserved Roman camp, as does Brough, another Norman castle, also with a rectangular keep. A similar keep at Appleby is still inhabited. Kendal Castle is probably an early fortress, though nothing remains of it but an encircling and not very early wall. Westmoreland is peculiarly rich in fortified manor-houses, some of which may be on old sites, though the greater number, like the castle of Penrith, belong to a later period. There were peels or castellets at Bewly, Hartley, Howgill, and Pendragon.

Carlisle is the citadel of Cumberland, and was for centuries the most important fortress in the North, playing a considerable part in every Scottish war. The name proclaims it to be of British origin, and its position led to its adoption by the Romans; and, indeed, it is said that the ditch of the southern of the two great lines of defence thrown up by that people divides the castle from the town. Cumberland bears many marks of Danish invasions, and in one of these in the ninth century Carlisle was laid waste, and so remained, until in 1093 William Rufus founded the castle and added the town to his kingdom. His successor raised the town into an episcopal city and completed what was needed in the castle. Patched and neglected as is the keep, still the principal features of the castle and the encircling walls are for the most part original. Rose Castle, the episcopal seat, higher up the river, is on an old site and in part old. Cockermouth, a castle of William de Meschines and the Lords Lucy, remains, and near it, towards St. Bees, is a fragment of Egremont, also built by De Meschines. Scaleby, on the most exposed frontier, a De Tilliol castle—though not of the eleventh century—is perfect; which cannot be said of Bewcastle, built by the Lords de Vaux. Naworth, still inhabited, was inherited by the Howards from the Dacres, who also probably gave name to Dacre, rather a strong house than a castle. Besides these there are or were strong places at St. Andrews, Askerton, Blencraik, St. Bees, Castle-Corrock, Corby, Cannonby, Dalby, Dilston, Down Hall, Dunvalloght, Drawdykes, Greystock, Horton, Harington, Hay-Castle, Heton, Highgate, Irton, St. John’s, Featherstone, Kirk-Oswald, Kyloe tower, Liddell Strength, Linstock, Lorton, Millom, Ousby, Rowcliffe, Shank, Triermain, and Wolsty. Many of these are dotted about the more exposed parts of the county; others are in the rear of the Roman wall.

The castle of Durham, taken alone, is rivalled both in position and grandeur by Bamburgh, but taken in conjunction with the cathedral and attendant buildings,

“Half church of God, half fortress ’gainst the Scot,”

the group is without an equal. The main feature of the castle is the circular keep, a rebuilding of probably the oldest and most complete of that type in Britain. The lower ward also is spacious, and includes many buildings, some of them of early Norman date. The castle is posted upon the root of the rocky peninsula included by a fold of the Tees, and stands between the city and the grand old shrine and final resting place of St. Cuthbert. The older parts were probably built in the reign of the Conqueror, about 1088, when William, having banished Carileph, held the temporalities of the see; other authorities attribute the work to Bishop Comyn in 1072. The two chief castles of the Bishopric are Raby and Barnard Castle, for Norham is virtually in Northumberland. Raby, the celebrated seat of the Nevilles, is of Norman origin, as is Barnard Castle, though its fine round tower is later. In plan this castle much resembles Ludlow, to which its position is not inferior. It is named from Barnard de Baliol. Branspeth, also a Neville castle, is a noble structure, but of later date than Raby. Bowes has a late Norman keep. Besides these may be mentioned Lumley, Staindrop, Streatlam, Witton, Stockton, and Bishop Auckland. In the local quarrels the names also occur of Evenwood Castle, near Auckland, Hilton, Holy Island, and, better known from its later possessors, Ravensworth. The Bishopric was well fortified, and was besides intersected by the deep ravines of the Tees, and possessed the Tyne for a frontier.

“Foremost,”—the quotation is drawn from the writings of an author who, beyond any other of the present day, makes his own mark upon what he writes,—“in interest among the monuments of Northumberland, in the narrower sense of the earldom beyond the Tyne, stand the castles; the castles of every size and shape, from Bamburgh, where the castle occupies the whole site of a royal city, to the smallest pele-tower, where the pettiest squire or parson sought shelter for himself in the upper stage, and for his cows in the lower. For the pele-towers of the Border-land, like the endless small square towers of Ireland, are essentially castles. They show the type of the Norman keep continued on a small scale to a very late time. Perhaps many of the adulterine castles which arose in every time of anarchy, and were overthrown at every return of order, many of the eleven hundred and odd castles which overspread the land during the anarchy of Stephen, may not have been of much greater pretensions. At any rate, from the great keep of Newcastle,—were we not in Northumberland we should speak of the far greater keep of Colchester,—to the smallest pele-tower which survives as a small part of a modern house, the idea which runs through all is exactly the same. The castles and towers then, great and small, are the most marked feature of the county. They distinguish it from those shires where castles of any kind are rare; and the employment of the type of the great keeps on a very small scale distinguishes it from the other land of castles. In Wales the Norman keep is not usual; the castles are, for the most part, later in date and more complex in plan; and the small square private tower, the distinctive feature of the North, is there hardly to be found. Northumberland has much to show the traveller in many ways, from the Roman wall onward, but the feature which is especially characteristic is that it is the land of castles.”

Northumberland is said to have contained sixty castles, but this must include many fortified houses and castles of the private gentry. Alnwick, better known as the seat of the earls of Northumberland than from its builder and early lords, is a very fine example of a baronial castle. The keep or central ward includes an open court, entered by a Norman gateway encrusted by a Decorated gatehouse, and round which, incorporated with the curtain, were the hall, kitchen, chapel, and the lord’s lodgings. Most of the court has been rebuilt, but the old lines and much of the old foundations have been preserved, and the effect is probably not unlike that of the original Norman court. The concentric defences, walls, towers, and barbican are old, though not original. The castle stands between the town and the Alne, beyond which is the park. The builder seems to have been Eustace de Vesci in the late Norman period, before 1157. Three miles to the north is the tower of Highfarland. Warkworth, built by one of the Fitz-Richard family in the reign of Henry II., was much injured by William the Lion, who laid siege to it in 1176, but still retains large remains of the original work. Tynemouth, an island fortress, seems to have been a seat of Earl Waltheof; it was long afterwards a Percy castle. Prudhoe, a castle of the Umfravilles, built in the middle of the eleventh century, has a small Norman keep, and most of the original curtain wall. The additions include a barbican and a curious chapel over the gateway. The original castle was attacked without success by William of Scotland in 1174. The castle of Newcastle, high upon the bank of the Tyne and included within the walls of the town, was built by Robert Curthose in 1080, and is a very perfect example of a rectangular Norman keep, with a curious oratory within the fore-building and a great number of mural passages and chambers, so that in many respects it has the appearance of being half a century later than its recorded date. It is also well preserved, saving some injudicious alterations made many years since, and it is accessible to every visitor, being in the hands of the local antiquarian society, and under the safe and skilful protection of the historian of the Roman wall.

Bamburgh is probably the oldest, and in all respects the noblest and most historical of the Northumbrian fortresses. It was founded by the flame-bearing Ida in the sixth century, when it was enclosed by a hedge and afterwards by a wall, but most of its circuit was already fortified by a natural cliff of great height. The castle occupies the whole of this elevated platform of basalt, one side of which is upon the sea beach. The wall is built along the edge of the precipice, and rising above all is a magnificent square Norman keep of rather late date, somewhat altered indeed within and still inhabited, but retaining most of its original features, and altogether presenting a very grand appearance. Bamburgh, like Alnwick, has come under the wand of the enchanter, and any reference to it would indeed be incomplete which took no notice of the following passage drawn from the Saturday Review:—“At Bamburgh, above all, we feel that we are pilgrims come to do our service at one of the great cradles of our national life. It is the one spot in northern England around which the same interest gathers which belongs to the landing-places of Hengest, of Ælle, and of Cerdic, in the southern lands. It is to the Angle what these spots are to the Jute and the Saxon. The beginnings of the Anglian kingdoms are less rich in romantic and personal lore than are those of their Jutish and Saxon neighbours. Unless we chose to accept the tale about Octa and Ebussa, we have no record of the actual leaders of the first Teutonic settlements in the Anglian parts of Britain. The earliest kingdoms seem not to have been founded by new comers from beyond the sea, but to have been formed by the fusing together of smaller independent settlements. Yet around Bamburgh and its founder, Ida, all Northumbrian history gathers. Though its keep is more than five hundred years later than Ida’s time,—though it is only here and there that we see fragments of masonry which we even guess may be older than the keep,—it is still a perfectly allowable figure when the poet of northern Britain speaks of Bamburgh as ‘King Ida’s fortress.’ The founder of the Northumbrian kingdom, the first who bore the kingly name in Bamburgh, the warrior whom the trembling Briton spoke of as the ‘flame-bearer,’ appears, in the one slight authentic notice of him, not as the leader of a new colony from the older England, but rather as the man who gathered together a number of scattered independent settlements into a nation and a kingdom. The chronicler records of him that in 547 ‘he took to the kingdom’; but nothing is said of his coming, like Hengest or Cerdic, from beyond sea. And all the other accounts fall in with the same notion. Henry of Huntingdon, though he has no story to tell, no ballad to translate, was doubtless following some old tradition when he described the Anglian chiefs, after a series of victories over the Welsh, joining together to set a king over them. And all agree in speaking of Bamburgh, called, so the story ran, from the Queen Bebbe, as a special work of Ida. Whatever may be the origin of the name, it suggests the kindred name of the East Frankish Babenberg, which has been cut short into Bamberg by the same process which has cut short Bebbanburh into Bamburgh. Yet Bamburgh was a fortress by nature, even before Ida had fenced it in, first with a hedge and then with a wall. Here we see the succession of the early stages of fortification, the palisade first and then the earthen wall, the vallum, not the murus, of the Roman art of defence. But, whether hedge or wall, the site of Bamburgh was already a castle before it had been fenced in by the simplest forms of art. That mass of isolated basaltic rock frowning over the sea on one side, over the land on the other, was indeed a spot marked out by nature for dominion. Here was the dwelling-place of successive Bernician kings, ealdormen, and earls; here they took shelter as in an impregnable refuge from the inroads of Scot and Dane. Here the elder Waltheof shut himself up in terror, while his valiant son Uhtred sent forth and rescued the newly-founded church and city of Durham from the invader. Here Gospatric the Earl held his head-quarters, while he and Malcolm of Scotland were ravaging each other’s lands in turn. In earlier days a banished Northumbrian king, flying from his own people to seek shelter with the Picts, defended himself for a while at Bamburgh, and gave the native chronicler of Northumberland an opportunity of giving us our earliest picture of the spot. Baeda, without mentioning the name, had spoken of Bamburgh as a royal city, and it is not only as a fortress, but as a city, that Bamburgh appears in the Northumbrian chronicler. He speaks of ‘Bebba civitas’ as ‘Urbs munitissima non admodum magna.’ It did not take in more than the space of two or three fields; still it was a city, though a city approached by lofty steps, and with a single entrance hollowed in the rock. Its highest point was crowned, not as yet by the keep of the Norman, but by a church, which, according to the standard of the eighth century, was a goodly one. This church contained a precious chest, which sheltered a yet more precious relic, the wonder-working right hand of the martyred King Oswald. We read, too, how the city, perched on its ocean rock, was yet, unlike the inland hill of the elder Salisbury, well furnished with water, clear to the eye and sweet to the taste. We see, then, what the royal city of the Bernician realm really was. It simply took in the present circuit of the castle. The present village, with its stately church, is, even in its origin, of later date. But by the time that we reach the event in the history of Bamburgh which is told us in the most striking detail, the keep had already arisen; the English city had become the Norman castle. In the days of Rufus, when the fierce Robert of Mowbray had risen a second time in rebellion, the keep of Bamburgh, safe on its rock and guarded by surrounding waves and marshes, was deemed beyond the power even of the Red King to subdue by force of arms. The building of another fortress to hold it in check, the ἐπιτειχισμὁς, as a Greek would have called it, which bore the mocking name of Malvoisin, was all that could be done while the rebel earl kept himself within the impregnable walls. It was only when he risked himself without those walls, when he was led up to them as a captive, with his eyes to be seared out if his valiant wife refused to surrender, that Bamburgh came into the royal hands.”

At Mitford is a very peculiar Norman keep still held by the descendants of its early lords. Bothal, the Ogle Castle, may be old, but its present remains are scarcely so, and this is also the case with Morpeth, a castle of the De Maulays.

Of Berwick Castle the remains are inconsiderable and are encroached upon by the railway station, but the adjacent town has a bank and ditch and a low tower or two or bastion, of its ancient defences, and within these is a citadel of the age of Vauban. Higher up and on the opposite or English bank of the Tweed is the grand episcopal castle of Norham, the special care of the bishops of Durham. Its rectangular keep is of unusual size, and though entirely Norman, of two periods. Parts of its containing wall are also original, as is the gatehouse, and about it are various earthworks, remains apparently of some of the sieges which it has undergone, and beyond these are the lines of a large Roman camp.

Norham, attributed to Bishop Flambard in 1121, was surrendered to Henry II. by Bishop Puisèt in 1174, and was entrusted to William de Neville in 1177. Beneath the walls and within the adjacent parish church Edward entertained and decided upon the claims to the Scottish throne. Among the more considerable of Northumbrian castles were Ford, Chillingham, Wark, and the Umfraville castle of Harbottle. There should also be mentioned as occurring in border story, Aydon, Bavington, Belsay, Bellister, Birtley, Blenkinsop, Bywell tower, Burraden tower, Capheaton, Carlington, Chipchase, Cornhill, Cockle Park tower, Coupland, Dale, Duddon tower, Edlingham, Errington, Elsdon, Etal, Eskott, Farne, Fenwick tower, Horton, Houghton, Heaton, Hirst, Hemmell, Kyloe, Langley, Littleharle and Lilburn towers, Lemington, Newton tower, Ogle, Pontland, Simonsburn, Spylaw, Swinbourne, Shortflatt tower, Tarot, Tynemouth, Thirlwall, Wallington, Widdrington, Witton, Williesmotewick, and a few more peels and castellets and early moats, showing where strong houses formerly stood. The fact was, that for many centuries no owner of land near the Scottish border could live without some kind of defence, and a careful survey, while it might fail to discover traces of some of the above, would probably establish those of many as yet unrecorded.

It appears, then, that in the four northern counties there are at least 103 strong places, of which ten boast rectangular Norman, and one or perhaps two, shell, keeps, while of ninety-one little is known.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CASTLES OF ENGLAND AND WALES AT THE LATTER PART OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY (concluded).

THERE remain to be enumerated the castles west of the Severn and the Dee up to the Dyke of Offa. To this tract must be added on the one hand the half of Shropshire, which was on the English side of the Severn; on the other, one or two valleys like those of the upper Severn and the Wye, penetrating into the heart of Wales; and to the north and south a tract of seaboard, reaching in the one case to the Conwy, and in the other to Pembroke and including Aberystwith. Of this border-land, divided between the northern, middle, and western Marches, the first was given in charge by the Conqueror to Hugh Earl of Chester; the second to Roger Earl of Shrewsbury, Arundel, and Montgomery; and opposite to the last, most of which was as yet unconquered, was placed William FitzOsbern, Earl of Hereford. In the north and middle Marches the opposing parts of Wales were mountainous and strong, exceedingly dangerous to invade, and of little value to a conqueror; but in the south the country was far more open and more fertile, far less dangerous to the invader, and offering far greater attraction to the cupidity of the settler. The general policy was to penetrate the country by the open valleys and the seaboard, and at certain frequent points to erect castles strong enough to resist a sudden attack, and occasionally capacious enough to contain men and stores sufficient to reinforce troops in the field, or to receive and rally them when worsted.

The three principal fortresses which, placed upon English territory, formed in a military point of view the base for operations in Wales, were Chester on the Dee, Shrewsbury upon the Severn, and Gloucester at the mouth of the same river, the last being under the Mercian kings a place of great strength and importance. Chester and Gloucester were of Roman, Shrewsbury of British origin. In advance of Chester, and beyond the estuary of the Dee, were the castles of Hawarden, Ewloe, Halkin, Flint, Diserth, Rhuddlan, and Diganwy, extending upon or at no great distance from the sea coast as far as the Conwy river. More inland and south of these are Caergwrle, Mold, Ruthyn, Denbigh, and Basingwerk, the last nearly upon Watt’s Dyke. Hope Castle is mentioned, but is probably the same with Caergwrle, and Overton, which, though on the Cheshire side of the Dee, was held by the Princes of Powis. It seems to have been founded by William Peverel, and was by him defended against Stephen in 1138. Most of these castles are mere ruins; of others the extant buildings are Edwardian additions. Hawarden, however, has a tolerably perfect circular keep, with a small mural oratory, and an exceedingly complex but later arrangement for defending the approach.

Considerably south of these castles, where the Dee has ceased to be the dividing stream of England and Wales, is the hill castle of Dinas Brân, an early and strong place, by whom built is uncertain, but which was held for long periods by the Welsh Princes. Again, south, upon the Ceiriog river, and a few yards east of Offa’s Dyke, is Chirk Castle, inhabited and much altered, but of early date.

The western side of Shropshire and the adjacent part of Montgomery formed nearly the whole of the Middle March. Earl Roger, its custos under the Conqueror with powers which William only delegated from absolute necessity, and which it took his successors centuries to resume, was the only Norman lord who gave name to a county in the conquered land. Under him and his lieutenants, Roger Corbet and Roger Mortimer, the March was feued out to a number of knights and lesser barons, all of whom built castles, and thus defended the common territory, while protecting their own private estates. The task of construction probably was not so onerous as at first sight might appear. Shropshire and Herefordshire, and especially their most exposed parts, were already studded over thickly with strong places constructed after their own fashion by the Mercian invaders and settlers, and of these it is evident that the new lords availed themselves until they were able to make additions to them in masonry.

Of Shrewsbury Castle, the citadel of the Middle March, and the “caput” of Earl Roger’s earldom, enough remains to show that, though small in area, it was a place of excessive strength. The mound upon which the Earl placed his keep in 1080 still rises to a great height direct from the river, and of the works to make room for which 51 English burgages were swept away there still remain parts of the wall, a gatehouse, and the foundations of a later hall. In the Hundred roll, in the reign of Edward I., occurs the following very curious entry:—“Quod unus magnus turris ligneus qui edificatur in castro Salop corruit in terram tempore domini Uriani de St. Petro tum vicecomitis et meremium ejusdem turris tempore suo et temporibus aliorum vicecomitum preterea existencium ita consummatur et destruitur quod nichil de illo remansit in magnum dampnum domini Regis et deteracionem ejusdem castri.” Was this a wooden keep upon the mound? “Quoddam Barbican” is also mentioned, and we are told the “dampnum mote” amounted to 60 marcs, which damage the jurors do not attribute altogether to the Abbot’s Mill, for thirty years earlier the mote of the castle was injured. This can scarcely mean the ditch, for which “fossa” is the word used. It is evidently the mound. The castle formed part of the town wall, and occupied an angle of its area. Both castle and town were included within the foldings of the deep and broad Severn, and indeed often needed its protection.

In advance of Shrewsbury and placed along the most exposed border of the county, and sometimes a little beyond it, were seventeen castles, all strong and of early foundation, though not all of equal importance. Of these, to the south, the principal were Cleobury, Ludlow, Richard’s Castle, Wigmore, Knighton, and Knucklas or Heyhope, some within and others a little to the outside of the dyke. To the west were Clun, Bishop’s Castle, Montgomery, Cause, Abberbury, and Knockyn, and to the north Oswestry, Whittington, Ellesmere, and Whitchurch.

Of these castles Ludlow stood next to Shrewsbury in importance, and was fully its equal in strength, and far its superior in dimensions and architectural display. It was, indeed, a superb Norman castle, the work of Roger de Lacy, in the reign of Rufus, and before it Stephen was foiled and very nearly captured in 1139. The rectangular keep, some of the mural towers, and most of the lower part of the containing wall are original. The curious circular chapel, though Norman, is rather later, and the magnificent hall, kitchen, and lodgings are later still. The castle is built on the eastern bank of the Lug, which here flows down a deep rocky ravine; the town also was strongly walled. Cleobury, to the east of Ludlow, attributed to Roger de Mortimer in 1074, is more probably the work of a later lord in the reign of Stephen. It was taken by Henry II. in 1155. Wigmore, of which the castelry is mentioned in “Domesday,” the chief seat of the great border family of Mortimer, is actually in Herefordshire, but belongs to the Shropshire fortresses. It occupies a rocky ridge, defended by a natural ravine and steep slopes. The small mound that bore its keep remains, and below is a Norman tower, and more or less of ancient masonry. The outworks seem to have been strong. Richard’s Castle, the Auretone of “Domesday,” founded by Richard Fitz Scrob in the reign of the Confessor, though also in Hereford, lies between Wigmore and Ludlow, and was closely associated with Shropshire. It retains its ancient mound near the church, and a part of its shell keep, and is still defended by a very formidable ditch. There is, however, no masonry of the age of the Confessor, nor is it probable that the keep was constructed before the reign of Stephen, if so early. Wigmore and Richard’s Castle were the advanced posts of Ludlow. Cleobury Mortimer was held by Ralph Mortimer at the Survey, and probably came to him from the forfeiture of Earl Roger de Britolio. Knighton and Knucklas are on the right bank of the Teme, just outside the Shropshire border. Their exposed position made them very important posts. In 1180 Randulf Puher, Sheriff of Herefordshire, accounted for the expenses of works at the castles of Knighton and Camerino, and a little later, while employed in building a border castle, he was slain by the Welsh. Of Knighton only the mound remains. The masonry, now removed, has been attributed to one of the Lords of Clun. Of Knucklas or Cnoclâs Castle there are scarcely any vestiges. It was probably built by Roger Mortimer soon after the Conquest, its mound, known as Castle Hill, being of course older. Clun Castle is three miles within the dyke, but the intervening country is very rugged, and exceedingly favourable to the operations of undisciplined troops such as the Welsh. Clun was held under Earl Roger by Picot de Say, and became afterwards the castle of Alan the son of Flaald, and the cradle of the House of Stewart. There remains a rough but grand square keep, a mound, strong circumscribing earthworks, and beyond the church an advanced bank and ditch of formidable dimensions. It is evident that those who laid out these earthworks were well aware of the peril of the position. Bishop’s Castle or Lydbury is well within the frontier. It was the residence of the bishops of Hereford from 1085 to 1154, and was taken by storm in 1235. By their possession of this castle the bishops became Lords Marchers. Montgomery was the centre and one of the most exposed castles of the frontier. It occupied the summit of a steep rock, and was almost impregnable. It has, however, been taken, destroyed, and re-built at least twice, so that little, if any, of its masonry is of the time of Earl Roger. It stands just within the dyke.

North of Montgomery, and protected by the well-known Long Mountain, is Cause Castle or Alreton, the earliest seat of the Corbets, who named it from the Pays de Caux, whence they came. It was built towards the close of the reign of the Conqueror, and is remarkable for its massive keep and capacious well, and for the rare example of the substitution of a Norman for a native name. North of Cause is Abberbury, the seat of the Fitz Warines before they held Whittington. It was held under Cause. Knockin Castle, the head of the Barony of Strange, was probably built by Guido le Strange in the reign of Henry II. Far more exposed, and having the mountainous ground of Denbigh in its front, is Oswestry, supposed by Mr. Eyton to be the Castel Luare (L’Ouvre) of “Domesday,” the work of Rainald de Ballieul, and long celebrated as a seat of the Earls of Arundel. It is now reduced to a mound and the foundations of a keep. The outworks have been levelled and built over by the encroaching town, and the ditches filled up. The town walls are also removed. Very near to Oswestry is Whittington, founded as a Norman work by William Peverel in 1138, but better known from its later lords the Fitz Warines. This is the castle that defied the Welsh in 1223, and the strength of which lay not only in its shell keep, towers, and gatehouse, parts of all which remain, but in a curious arrangement of outworks in earth, with several broad and deep ditches connected with a morass, the limits of which may still be traced. The original mound, scarped and enclosed like Bungay in a revetment wall by the Norman engineer, is a good example of the manner in which those early fortifications were adapted to the masonry of later times. Ellesmere is a Peveril castle, but was held by the Welsh Princes as late as the reign of Henry III. Whitchurch was founded probably by William de Warren, whose wife was stepdaughter to the Conqueror. It was the Weston of “Domesday,” and by a singular inversion became widely known afterwards as Blackmere. These complete the outer line of defence of the Middle March.

Connected with these were a large number of other castles, mostly, though not always, held by men of lesser rank and power. Wem, now entirely destroyed, was founded by William Pantulf, holding under Earl Roger. Middle Castle was held of the Fitz Alans by the Lords Strange, as was Ruyton. At High Ercal is a moated mound, but whether masonry was ever added to it is doubtful. Srawrthin or Sharwardine had a castle, probably before 1165. There seem also to have been castles at Charlton, Howgate, Braincroft, Corshall, Shipton, Ryton, and Le Botwood. Pulverbach was the castle of Robert Venator in the eleventh century. Tonge was Earl Roger’s private demesne, but the castle achieved its fame under the Pembrugge family. Church Stretton or Brockhurst Castle was held direct by the Crown, but was demolished at an early period. At Broymeron, near Tugford, there seems to have been a castle. Corfham was held by Fitz Ponce, the ancestor of the Cliffords. Wattlesborough, an early Corbet castle, still preserves a small but tolerably perfect rectangular keep. Stone has some traces of a castle, and at Hopton is a square keep of Decorated date, on a slightly raised knoll, with some extensive and marshy outworks. Besides these may be mentioned Castle Holgate, thought by Mr. Eyton to be one of the four earliest castles built under Earl Roger, the others being Shrewsbury, Montgomery, and Oswestry, all in some shape of earlier date than the great Survey. Holgate was built by Helgot de Stanton, and used by Henry II. in 1109. Bryn Castle was an early seat of the Gerards; Bromfield and Cainham are destroyed; of Shiffnall little is known; Stottesden was granted in 1159 by Henry II. to Godfrey de Gamaches or Gamage; Stokesay is said originally to have been built by Picot le Say; Tirley, near Market Drayton, was the work of Roger de Corcelle, but taken by Ralph le Botiler of Wem, who left it unfinished in 1281. The Fitz Alans seem to have had a castle at Wroxeter, the Lords Strange at Cheswardine, and at Morton Soret, now Corbet, the Sorets built a castle. West of Ludlow was a castle at Stapleton-en-le-Harness, built probably by the lords of Richard’s Castle. Kinnerley Castle, taken by Llewelyn in 1223, has long since disappeared. Alveton was held by Theobald de Verdon in 1389.

Robert de Belesme, the son of Roger and the third Earl of Shrewsbury, built two castles which played a part in the struggles of the time, and are mentioned by historians. One, Carregchova, was in advance of the frontier, and in Montgomery. It is said to have been built about 1101–2 in great haste. In 1160 it was held and garrisoned by Henry II. It has long been utterly destroyed. The other, Bruges or Bridgenorth Castle, was upon the Severn below and inland of Shrewsbury. Earl Roger had built a castle not far off upon the ancient earthworks of Quatford, opposite to Oldbury, one of the burhs thrown up by Queen Æthelflæda. This castle, of which there remain a mound and a deep well, Earl Robert removed in 1102 to the top of a steep rocky platform above the Severn. It was strong and spacious, and had the church of St. Mary Magdalen for its chapel, and within its area accommodation for some thousands of men. Of all this there remains now little save a fragment of the keep and parts of the containing wall. It was besieged by Henry II. in 1155, and was surrendered for political rather than for military reasons.

In advance of the borders of Shropshire are two or three castles of doubtful origin, and which were frequently held by the Welsh. Such were Powis or Pool Castle, attributed to Bleddyn ap Cynfin about 1109; Mathraval, on the Vyrnwy, the residence of the Welsh Princes, but fortified by Robert de Vipont. This was one of the few local castles that resisted the Welsh outbreak of 1212, soon after which it was destroyed. Dolforwin is a small hill-castle on the left bank of the Upper Severn, much resembling Dinas Brân, and far to the west. Deep in the defiles upon the western flank of Cader Idris is the castle of Bere, the remains of which fell into the friendly hands of the late Mr. Wynn of Peniarth, who has shown that the building was of the Early English period of architecture, and unusually ornate in its details. How an early castle came to be placed so far from the border, and in a position by no means abounding in the means of subsistence, is a mystery.

The plain of the Upper Severn, open and fertile, outside the Shropshire border, was contested from a very remote period between the Mercians and the Welsh, and was at times completely and permanently occupied by the former. The Mercian fortresses of this very perilous district were moated mounds similar to those thrown up in England in the ninth and tenth centuries. Of these there are very many along the course of the river or in its tributary valleys, of which the chief are Keri, Hên-domen near Montgomery, Nantcribba a fortified natural knoll, Guilsfield, a burh at Chirbury thrown up by Æthelflæda and now removed, Welsh Pool designated in 1299 as Mota de Pola, a mound on the Luggy, Winsbury, Dudston, Brynderwen, several mounds about Llanidloes and Moat-lane, Tafolwern, a fine mound upon the junction of two streams with the Afon Lwymyn, and whence some of the charters of the Welsh Princes are dated, and a remarkable mound at Talybont near Towyn, whence Llewelyn dated a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and which was visited by Edward I. Very few of these “Mottes” were surmounted by works in masonry, and the accompanying extract from the Close Roll shows that even as late as the reign of Henry III. timber was the recognised material for their defences:—

“Rex etc dilecto et fideli suo Godescallo de Maghelins salutem. Recipimus tibi quod ex parte nostra firmiter precipias omnibus illis qui motas habent in valle de Muntgumery quod sine dilatione motas suas bonis bretaschiis firmari faciant ad securitatem et defensionem suam et parcium illarum. Teste Rege apud Weston xxx die maii, 9 H iii, 1225.” (Close Roll.) The Brut y Tysogion says that the castles of Llandwnyl, Trevuverw, and Cynfig were begun in 1092 to be built stronger than before; for before that time castles were of wood, and before long the Frenchmen had built their castles over the whole country. Although it is evident that the moated mound was an English and not a Welsh fortification, yet many of these mounds are found in situations where no English household could have lived, and others, like Tafolwern and Talybont, are known to have been Welsh residences, so that it would seem that the Welsh, finding this form of fortification both simple and strong, easily thrown up, and when burned easy to repair, had recourse to it in imitation of their foes. Almost all the castles in Shropshire on the border were held of Earl Roger, or some Lord Marcher by the tenure of castle guard, and many of the lesser castles had lands attached to them held by the same honourable service. The usual condition was attendance upon the lord in time of war, armed, for a period of forty days, or an engagement to defend and sometimes to repair a particular part of the lord’s castle. Lord Coke indeed speaks of tenure by castle guard as always attached to some specific part of a castle. The manor of Hodnet was held by the service of seneschal, and in war by attendance in the outer bailey of Shrewsbury Castle. The inquest on William de Bollers in 1299 shows that he held a tenement in Mariton by the tenure of providing one soldier in war time at the Mote of Poole with a bow and arrow and a bolt for a night and a day. Mr. Eyton takes the Mote of Pool to be Powis Castle, but may it not more probably be the mote which is seen, or was recently to be seen, near the Welshpool railway station? In an old map in 1610 this mound is lettered, “Domine Castell,” and a mill near it the Domen (Tomen, Tumulus, Tump) Mill.

The Southern, commonly called the Western March, from its extension in that direction, included the counties of Radnor, Hereford, and Monmouth, the eastern part of Brecknock, much of Caermarthen and Cardigan, Pembroke and the whole of Glamorgan; that is to say, the country from the Teme to the Bristol Channel, and the whole seaboard of South Wales from Chepstow to Aberystwith, all which territory was thickly set with castles, the footprints of the Norman, and before him to some extent of the Englishman.

Included in South Wales, but in a military point of view more connected with Shropshire and the Middle March, was the county of Radnor. This was a mountainous tract, very Welsh, and but a small strip of which was on the English side of the dyke, but the imminence of the danger seems to have led to great encroachments upon the Welsh territory, and to the establishment of a considerable number of castles along the lines specially exposed to attack.

Knighton, the chief castle of Radnor, and Knucklas, both upon the Teme and bordering Shropshire, have been mentioned. South of Knighton was Norton, and again south Old Radnor, Cruker or Pen-y-Craig destroyed by Rhys ap Griffith in the reign of King John, and New Radnor, of which there remains a large mound with concentric entrenchments, and parts of the walls of the town are still to be seen. The castle is said to have been founded by Harold in 1064. Pains Castle or Llanbedr, in Elvet, near the southern border of the county, was so called from Pagan or Payne de Cadurces, Cahors, or Chaworth, Lord of Kidwelly, who built it about 1130, possibly to secure his passage into Caermarthenshire. A few fragments of masonry still remain. Pains Castle was taken by Rhys in 1196, and subsequently besieged by Gwenwynwyn, Prince of Powis, in 1198. Near to Pains Castle, on the left bank of the Wye, was Boughrood Castle, said to have been held by Eineon Clydd in 1140. Fragments of its masonry long remained visible. The passage of the Wye is commanded in this district by the strong castle of Builth. Just outside the county and higher up the river, which here divides Radnor from Brecknock, was Aberedw Castle, built by Ralph de Baskerville, one of the Norman invaders, but speedily taken and held by the Welsh. Still higher up is Rhyader-Gwy, founded it is said by Prince Rhys in the twelfth century, but better known as a castle of the Mortimers. It was taken by assault by the Welsh in the reign of Henry III. The outline of the works may still be traced. Nearer the centre of the county, upon the Ython and the Aran, were other castles. Moelynaidd and Castell Colwyn or Mauds Castle, fortified by the Earl of Chester in 1143, were on the former river, and near them was Cefn-Lys or Castell-glyn-Ython, a rather celebrated Norman castle, but often taken by the Welsh. It was held latterly by the Mortimers, and rebuilt by them in 1142. Dwybod Timpath or Tilloedd, also on the Ython, was a place of great strength of which many fragments of masonry remain. The name has been said to be a corruption of Talbot. This castle was levelled by Llewellyn in 1260. Cwm Aron, on the Aron river, was an early Norman castle, destroyed by the Welsh and restored by Hugh Earl of Chester in 1143. This also came to the Mortimers. There are considerable remains of the earthworks. Near to Presteign were Warden and Stapleton Castles, the latter built by Chandos the founder of Goldcliff Priory. There was also a castle at Clyro, and one upon the Lug at Castell Haled or Vallet; and at Clâs Cwm on the Arrow is some masonry said to represent Brynllys Castle.

The remaining parts of South and West Wales containing much open and tolerably fertile land, and having a long and exposed frontier towards the purely Welsh districts of Brecknock, Caermarthen and Cardigan, were the scene of perpetual inbreaks from the Welsh, and required more than usual strength in the defences. The castle of Gloucester, already mentioned, was the base of all extended operations in South Wales. Here the kings of England often held their court, and here their troops were mustered. Brichtric had a castle at Gloucester, but his mound has long been removed, and with it all traces of the Norman building.

Next to Gloucester in strength and importance and far more exposed came Hereford, strongly posted on the Wye, and surrounded by a very fertile territory. Unlike most other cities Hereford is of purely English foundation, though by whom founded is not precisely clear. It was fortified by Harold, and probably received the Norman additions to its castle from Osborne soon after the Conquest. The castle was attacked by Edric the Wild in 1067. Part of the defences of the city remain, and of those of the castle an immense bank and deep wet ditch, now in part being filled up, and formerly communicating with the river Wye. The keep stood upon a large mound now levelled. Herefordshire contained many castles, mostly, however, intended for the protection of private estates, and placed accordingly. Goderich on the Wye is one of the chief. It is large, well built, protected by the river, and has a small but early rectangular keep. It was long held by the Talbots. Ewias Harold and Kilpeck commanded from either side the valley of Irchenfield. Both were strong and had shell keeps built upon mounds of large size. Of Kilpeck parts of the wall remain, and a small Norman church. In 1134 Hugh, son of William Norman, gave to Gloucester Abbey the church of St. David at Kilpeck and the chapel of St. Mary in the castle. Ewias was a stronger place, but nearly all the masonry is now gone. The Harold from whom it derives its distinctive name was an English proprietor before the Conquest. Of the lesser castles were Croft, for centuries the seat of a still extant family of that name; Lingen, an early castle built by Turstine de Wigmore; Lyonshall, an early D’Evereux castle; Kingston, of which no trace remains; Almley, reduced to its original mound; Kingsland, reputed a Saxon seat; Weobley, a De Lacy castle in the reign of Stephen; Castle Frome, also built by the Lacys, and now a mound only. Asperton, a Grandison castle built on the edge of the Roman way, is now destroyed, as are Ellington and Mortimer’s Castle at Much Marcle. Of Huntingdon, on the Radnor border, a De Braose castle, the mound remains, as of Eardisley, called in “Domesday” a “domus defensabilis.” Cubbington was a castle of the De la Fields, and Bredwardine of a family of that name who gave place to the Baskervilles. Whitney Castle stood on the Wye, as a little higher up did Clifford, of which the masonry was the work of Ralph de Todeni and his successor Fitz Pons, ancestor of the great house of Clifford, who hence derived their name. The Castelry of Clifford was held at “Domesday” by Roger de Lacy. Wilton Castle on the Wye, the seat of a well-known barony, was built by Longchamp in the reign of Henry I., and of that age were Pembridge and probably Tretire, a Fitz Warine castle now destroyed. Besides these there are others of which less is known; Longtown or Ewias Lacy, built in part of Roman material; Snodhill, probably Norman; Twyford, and Urishay in Peterchurch, a De la Hay work; Eccleswall and Castle Comfort reduced to their mounds; the bank and ditches of the latter seen on a hill-side half a mile from Leominster, are the reputed remains of the palace of Werewald, King of Mercia, late in the seventh century. Mention is also made of Mouse Castle, near Hay; Dorston, a Soler’s castle; Cusop, a mere tower; Bransil, on the Worcestershire border, now a ruin; Kinnersley; Eaton Tregoz, a Baskerville seat in 1251; Moccas, of which the moat remains; and Penyard, probably Norman. It is to be remembered that most of the castles in masonry in Hereford and Radnor were built upon earthworks of far earlier date.

Brecknock, though a wild and mountainous and therefore strongly Welsh county, is penetrated both by the Usk and in some measure by the Wye, of which Bernard Newmarch and his invading followers well knew how to take advantage. The castles on the Wye being common to Radnor and Brecknock, have duly been enumerated. The strongest of them all, Builth, which played an important part in the local wars, was held by the Barons de Braose, the successors of Newmarch. Of masonry there remains but little, but the mound and annexed ditches and platforms are of a very formidable character, and justify the reputation of the fortress for strength.

Builth was placed near the junction of the Yrfon with the Wye, and thus commanded the entrance of an important pass leading into Caermarthen. It was, however, by the Usk that Bernard Newmarch marched in 1096 against Bleddyn ap Maenarch, and it was at Brecknock, not far from the Roman Bannium, that he established the strong and spacious castle of which the earlier mound and much of the masonry can still be seen. The possession of Brecknock, Builth, and Abergavenny castles secured the district, which Newmarch parcelled out among about fifteen of his chief followers, some of whom built castles which they continued to hold under his son-in-law, Milo Earl of Hereford, and their successors the Barons de Braose and Cantelupe. Next above Abergavenny was Crickhowell, of which the mound, ditches, and a tower remain. This was the castle of the Turbervilles. Near it is Tretower, an early and very curious structure, where a rectangular keep has been gutted and an early English round tower erected in its centre. Tretower stands in the marshes of the Rhiangol, higher up which stream is Dinas, a hill castle now in ruins, in form much resembling Morlais in Glamorgan, and commanding the pass from Abergavenny to Talgarth and the Wye. Higher up the Wye, upon a pass by which the road cuts off an inaccessible bend of the river, was Blaenllyfni, a large and strong castle usually held by the chief lord himself. Near it towards Brecknock was Pencelli Castle. At Devynock was the tower of Rhyd-yr-Briew, and some miles above Brecknock, near the head of the Usk, a tower at Trecastle, of which the mound remains, was placed at the summit of the regular road between Brecknock and Caermarthen. On the Honddu above Brecknock was Castell Madoc, probably a Welsh fortress, and on the Llyfni between Brecknock and Hereford the Peel of Talgarth and the very remarkable cylindrical tower of Bronllys. The remains of the castle of Hay stand upon the Wye at the north-eastern angle of the county. It was built by Sir Philip Walwyn, destroyed by Henry III. in 1231, and probably rebuilt soon afterwards. A part of it is still standing. The town was walled and had three gates.

Besides these were Scethrog, the tower of Sir Miles Pichard; Burghill, built by Sir Humphrey of that name; Langoed and some others, fortified houses rather than castles, and of which in most cases nothing remains but the moated mounds, only a few of which have been occupied by the Normans.

Monmouthshire, though exposed to occasional inbreaks, was, in the eleventh century, and especially after Harold’s Welsh war of 1063, as completely a part of England as Hereford or the contiguous parts of Gloucester. Its western border was the Rhymny, but by much its more important part lay between two very deep and rapid rivers, the Wye and the Usk, and upon each were posted formidable castles; those of Monmouth and Chepstow upon the one river, and those of Newport, Usk, and Abergavenny upon the other. Chepstow is placed upon a cliff on the western or right bank of the river, evidently, like Newport, intended as a “tête du pont” to cover the passage of troops, the river not being there fordable. As the name imports, the settlement is of English origin, though its Domesday designation, Estrighoil, corrupted into Striguil, is Welsh. The castle is divided from the town by a deep ravine, and is altogether outside the wall, which was unusual. The keep, of Norman masonry, may be the work of William Fitz Osborne, Earl of Hereford, or at latest of Roger de Britolio, his son and successor. As early as in the reign of Henry I., Chepstow had come into the possession of the De Clares of the Strongbow line, often called Earls of Striguil. Its possession enabled the Mareschals, successors to the De Clares, to hold their earldom against Henry III. Monmouth Castle occupied the top of a promontory of rock between the Wye and the Monnow, and was long held by a line of border barons to whom it gave a name.

Upon the Usk, the old castle of Newport has long been replaced by a later structure, but parts of Usk Castle, some miles higher up, are old, and Abergavenny, which descended from De Braose through Cantelupe and Hastings to the Nevilles, is still held by the chief of that family, though little remains of it save the original mound. It was at Abergavenny Castle that William de Braose slaughtered, in 1175, a number of unarmed Welshmen, in revenge for the murder of his uncle, Henry of Hereford. Caerleon, between Newport and Usk, though founded by a Norman upon an earlier English site connected with very celebrated Roman remains, was the heritage of a Welsh family, and continued long in their occupation. Between the Usk and the Wye the ground, in itself strong, was strongly occupied.

Upon the Monnow were placed Scenfrith and Grosmont, which with Whitecastle formed the famous trilateral, so important in the war between Henry III. and the Earl of Pembroke. The keep of Scenfrith is a round tower of early date placed within a right-lined enclosure. Though small, it was very strong, and its remains are tolerably perfect. Grosmont, also of early date, is somewhat larger, and its remains are also considerable. White Castle is an enormous shell of lofty walls and mural towers placed within a most formidable ditch, beyond which are very extensive outworks both of masonry and earth. It stands very high, commands a most extensive view, and its defences are wholly artificial. All these three castles are reported to have been originally Welsh seats; but their earthworks have an English aspect. They were obviously intended for the general defence of the country, and, as usual, were always in the hands of the great Lords or of the Crown; there were besides several smaller castles or fortified houses, the centre of private estates. Of these were the castles bordering the chase of Wentwood: Dinham, long since a ruin; Penhow, the cradle of the House of Seymour; Pencoed, which still retains some early masonry; Llanvair, built by the Pain or Pagan family; and Castroggy, where is seen a part of the hall and some other masonry. Upon the Ebbw, west of Newport, stood the small castles of Greenfield and Rogeston, and at Castleton is a mound, said at one time to have been accompanied by masonry. On the hill above Ruperra is a very large and very perfect moated mound, but without any trace or tradition of masonry. Llangibby is an old Monmouthshire castle.

The occupation by the Normans of the valleys of the Wye and the Usk no doubt served to protect the exposed flank of Monmouthshire, but beyond the Rhymny in Glamorgan this protection ceased, and the hill territory of Glamorgan contained a native population ever ready to assist their countrymen, who frequently invaded that Lordship from the north-west. The Norman settlers all dwelt in the strip of open and more fertile land from six to twelve miles in breadth that intervened, like the Concan of Western India, between the mountains and the sea, where the remains of their castles are placed so near together as to raise a question as to whence the inhabitants derived their means of subsistence. The chief castle of the Lordship was that of Cardiff on the Taff; but the lord also held castles at Dinas Powis, Llantrissant, Kenfig, and by an early acquisition, at Neath, all which may be presumed to have been intended for the general protection. Cardiff, upon the “via maritima” of the Romans, is a very remarkable fortification. It is rectangular, protected on three sides by a very high bank and ditch, and on the fourth, towards the river, by a very strong wall. In one corner at the river end is a large moated mound still bearing the Norman keep, and which stood upon the line of a second wall now destroyed, by which that end of the area was cut off and protected from the rest. The analogy of this work with those of Tamworth, Wareham, and Wallingford, and in some degree with Leicester, is remarkable. It also has some points of resemblance to Hereford. Dinas Powis is a small oblong enclosure of the type of Dinas Brân and Dolforwin, probably of Norman date. It occupies the top of a rock in the gorge of a deep valley, and must have been strong against any mere assault. Llantrissant Castle was of rather larger dimensions. It stood, and indeed a fragment of it still stands, in a notch in the hill high above the plain and many miles from the sea. Kenfig, which stood upon a brook near the sea coast, has been completely swallowed up by blown sand, “consumptum per sabulonem,” and only a fragment is now visible. Neath, the most exposed castle in the whole county, was founded by De Granville, said to be the brother of Robert Fitz Hamon. Save those of the Lord the only castle in the Lordship held by a public functionary was that of the Bishop at Llandaff, which seems to have been always a place of strength, though the gatehouse and enclosing wall still remaining are probably as late as the reign of Henry III. or Edward I.

Proceeding westward, the nearest castles to Cardiff were Sully and Barry, held by families from whom the manors derived their names, as did Bonvileston or Tre-Simon and its castle from Sir Simon de Bonville. Penmark was the seat of the Umfravilles; Fonmon, with its rectangular keep, of the St. Johns; Wrinston, of the De Reignys and Raleighs; Wenvoe, of Le Fleming; and St. Fagan’s, of the Le Sore family. Of Peterston and St. George’s there remain fragments of masonry. East Orchard, the seat of the Berkerolles family, and Beaupré, of the Bassets, probably were originally castles; but the one shows the ruins of a fortified house, the other of a manor-house of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Part of Castleton Castle is old; of Liege Castle there remains a light earthwork only. Llandough was built by the Welsh family, and Llanquian, a round tower, by the De Wintons. Llanblethian Castle was the seat of the St. Quintins, Talavan of the Siwards: at Penlline is a part of a rectangular keep with herring-bone masonry, built by the Norrises. Cowbridge town was an appanage of the chief Lord, and was walled and strongly fortified. St. Donat’s, in its present form, is very late, and it is doubtful whether the Haweys, the early lords, had a castle in this county. Part of Dunraven is old. It was built by the Butlers, who held it under Ogmore. Ogmore, the chief seat in this lordship of the De Londres, lords of Kidwelly, has a square keep. It stands on the river whence it is named. Near it are the remains of a small castle of the Cantelupes, known as Cantelupe’s-ton or Cantleston. At Bridgend is a late Norman gateway, the entrance to a small walled enclosure, also probably Norman. It bears the name of Newcastle. Near it is Coyty, a famous Welsh seat, but built or rebuilt by the Turbervilles. The buildings are considerable and tolerably perfect. The adjacent priory of Ewenny was fortified. The Welsh Barons of Avan had a castle upon the Avon river at Aberavan.

The Lordship of Cilvae extends from near the Neath to the Tawe, upon which is posted the castle of Abertawe or Swansea, a structure remarkable for its open parapet with a rampart wall above the arches, the work of Bishop Gower. Swansea was the “caput” of Gower under the Earls of Warwick and the De Braoses, and subsidiary to it were the castles of Oystermouth, still standing, and Lwchwr on the Burry river, called the keys of Gower. Lwchwr is now but a small square tower standing upon a small mound connected with a large Roman camp. Within the peninsula are Penrice, an early castle of that family with a good round keep, and in the same parish, and near the church, a moated mound; Oxwich, a late building of the Mansels, a good example of the transition from the castle to the fortified house; Pennard, a quadrangular castle of the Edwardian type; Weobley and Llanrhidian. At Scurlage and Llandewi were castles, and at Llandimor. Mr. Freeman has remarked that twelve of the sixteen churches of Gower have towers evidently built for defence. The exterior doors, where they occur, are usually insertions. The low country beyond the Burry is protected by Kidwelly, a tolerably perfect early castle built by the De Londres family, and inherited from them by the Chaworths. It stands upon the Gwendreath, and to its north is the strong castle of Carreg-Cennen. But the real defence of Caermarthen is the river Towy, strengthened by the four castles on its banks, Llanstephan, Caermarthen, Dynevor, and Drysllwyn, to which may be added Laugharne, upon an adjacent inlet of the sea, and the tower at Llangattock, which commanded the end of the pass from Brecknock. Near to Llandeilo was Llanymdhyfri, which in 1113 belonged to Richard de Pons. Most of these castles seem to have been established by the De Clares of the Strongbow line, but strong as they were, and usually well defended, they had to bear the brunt of the border war, and were often taken and retaken by and from the Welsh, who at times permanently occupied them.

This was much or even more the case with the castles of Cardigan, which, though usually small, and with two or three exceptions not individually of great importance, were very numerous, and collectively served sufficiently well for the ordinary defence of the territory. They were almost all founded by the De Clares and their followers early in the twelfth century. At the head of them and exceptionally strong stood Aberystwith near the north of the county, upon the shore of Cardigan Bay, and partly covered by the junction of the Ystwith with the Rheidol. Its position on the sea and in the rear of the strongest parts of South Wales made it particularly obnoxious to the Welsh; it was exposed to the full fury of the attacks from both North and South Wales, and strong as it was both by art and nature, was often taken and retaken, destroyed and rebuilt. Between it and the extreme limit of the county, the Dyfy, were the lesser castles of Geneur-glyn and Glan-Dyfi, and near it was Stradpythyll Castle, built by Ralph, steward to Earl Gilbert. It was besieged in 1122. Cardigan is traversed obliquely by the Teivi, and near the head of that stream was the great castle of Ystrad-Meyric founded by Gilbert de Clare, of which the ruins remain. Tregaron was lower down, as were a number of other strong places, such as Llanllwyni, Llanfihangel, Llandissul, Llangollen, of which it is difficult to say whether they were castles of the de Clare period or earlier residences. Blaen-porth-gwythian Castle was built by Earl Gilbert before 1112. At Newcastle was a strong castle also on the Teivi, and nearer to the mouth of the river, on the Cardigan bank, the castle of the town of Cardigan. Besides these there occur in local histories the names of Castell-Gwynionydd or Coedvon near Llampeter; Castell Abereinon; Humphrey’s Castle in Llandissil; Blaen Porth near Cardigan; Iscoed, where the mound seems to have had a keep in masonry; Llanven; Llampeter, where the mound remains but the masonry has been removed; Dinerth, the mound of which is called Danish, but where Roger de Clare founded a castle in 1135; Castel Rhos in Llanyrysted, built in 1158; Caerwedro, taken by the Welsh in 1135; and Llanyondri.

Pembroke, far less exposed than Cardigan to the common enemy, is divided by the Haven of Milford, owing to which the southern part of the county, partially peopled by a colony of Flemings, was completely sheltered from the Welsh incursions, and became in fact a purely English territory. It was protected but also dominated by the grand castle of Pembroke, founded by Arnulph de Montgomery, the first Norman invader, but better known as the seat of Strongbow and the Mareschals, who thence took the title of their earldom. Pembroke Castle, though a ruin, retains much of its ancient magnificence. The hall, gatehouse, curtain wall, and mural towers still remain, and the grand round keep continues to give mass and character to the whole group. The town also was strongly walled, the castle forming part of the circuit. At the other end of the root of the peninsula, on the sea, was the Castle of Tenby, also attached to the earldom, strong in its position, and also, as its remains show, well fortified. The town of Tenby was walled, and still retains a portion of the wall and one of its gates. Near Tenby was Manorbeer, an early castle, though in its present form probably of the date of Henry III. There is no keep, and the hall is vaulted. The gatehouse remains. The ruins show it to have been strong. It is celebrated as the birthplace of Giraldus Cambrensis or de Barri. Carew Castle no doubt represents an early fortress, and hence sprung, as is supposed, the families of Fitz-Gerald and Windsor, and most certainly that of Carew. Lamphey was a castle of the Bishops of St. David’s and has an arcaded parapet, a poor imitation of that of Bishop Gower at Swansea; and Castle Martin was the residence of the Barons Martin. At Nangle was a fortified house of the Sherbornes, and it is very probable that Stackpole Court was preceded by an early castle built by the founder of the family of that name. North of the Haven, that great fiord which gives its distinctive feature to the name of Haverford, is the strong rectangular keep of Haverford-West, the present state of which reflects utter discredit on the county. It was the work probably of Gilbert de Clare early in the twelfth century, and around it, scattered over the whole face of the county, are an unusually great number of small castles and strong houses, built and inhabited by the Norman knights who followed Arnulph and Strongbow, and whose descendants continued to hold them by military service under the succeeding earls. Such was Upton, the castle of the Malefaunts, of which remain the chapel and the gatehouse; Dale, placed on the root of the peninsula of St. Ann’s Head, belonged to the De Vales; Narberth was founded by the Perrotts; Lawhaden was the chief seat of the Bishop of St. David’s and the “caput” of the Episcopal Barony (of it there remain a fine gateway and some other buildings); Wiston, the castle of Sir Philip Gwys, and afterwards of the Wogans, is mentioned as taken by the Welsh in 1146; Picton is thought to have been founded in the reign of Rufus. Besides these are Wallwyn’s Castle, of which only the mound remains; Castle Byth; Little Newcastle; Castell Hendre or Henry’s Moat; Roche Castle, a square keep perched upon a rugged rock, and built by Adam de Rupe, founder of the De la Roche family; Cilgerran, on the Teivi, a very considerable castle, of which much remains: it was held by the chief lords; Nevern, the chief castle of the old barony of Cemaes, afterwards replaced by Newport, of which the remains are considerable. Mention is also made of Benton Castle; of Castle Coning, near St. Dogmell’s; Castleton, built by the family of Castle; and Punch or Poyntz Castle, a grange of the bishops of St. David’s, where there is a large moated mound. Probably there are many other castellets and fortified houses in the northern and more exposed half of Pembrokeshire, the sites of which are confounded with the earlier Raths and circular earthworks of a period preceding the Norman Conquest. The term Rath, and the pattern of the fortification also, are probably imported from Ireland, where a circular bank and ditch surrounded the dwelling-place of almost every landed proprietor, differing from that in use in England and Normandy by the absence of the mound. The Irish enclosure was little if at all raised above the exterior ground, and therefore, though perhaps more convenient, certainly less strong than the moated mound. Of these Raths there are several in Pembrokeshire. Here also is another rather peculiar feature. Many of the church towers, as in Gower, are evidently constructed for defence, intended no doubt as a ready refuge against a sudden and temporary incursion of the Welsh, or a descent upon the coast by the Scandinavian pirates. Such a post, like the Irish round towers, could be held safely for a few hours until the alarm brought relief.

The castles of the Welsh border have not been critically examined, and it is, therefore, difficult to give a list of them that shall at all approach accuracy; it may, however, be stated roughly that there were in Wales at the close of the reign of Henry II. 251 castles and castellets, of which 21 had rectangular keeps, and 20 shell keeps. Of castles of which little is accurately known, or which do not admit of classification, there were about 220.

According to the preceding enumeration, there were at the close of the reign of Henry II. in England and upon the Marches of Wales about 657 castles, of which 55 had rectangular and 96 shell keeps, while of 506 little is known, or else they do not come under one or the other of the regular Norman types. Considering the difficulties which stand in the way of accuracy in obtaining these figures, the above total does not differ very widely from Moore, the only authority on the subject, who gives a list of about 568 of the earlier castles, including therein those of the reign of Henry III. and the three Edwards.

With the reign of Henry II. may be said to close the principal castle-building period of English history. Cœur de Lion was scarcely an English sovereign. He designed, it is said, and certainly built, the great fortress of Château Gaillard upon the Seine; but he built no castle in England, nor does any castle of consequence appear to have been founded in his reign. John, his successor, was always moving from one castle to another, exercising in a very unpopular degree the royal prerogative of purveyance. He introduced the Writ known as “Commissimus,” by which castellans were appointed to the royal castles, and he showed his distrust even of his supporters, by continually transferring these officers from one castle to another, lest they should establish any local interest. The siege of Rochester Castle was the great military engineering operation of the reign, in which the outer wall was undermined near one angle, and the gallery carried on beneath the keep, which stood but a few feet within the enclosure. The result was to bring down the wall and the lower part of one angle of the keep, and the place and extent of the mischief may still be traced, owing to the angle having been rebuilt with very indifferent masonry. Almost the last event of his reign was the siege of Dover by Louis of France, who set up a “malvoisin” to overtop the walls, but failed to take the place, though before it for four months. John died at Newark, which, if not the finest castle of the Midlands, contains certainly the grandest Norman gatehouse in England. From his accession in May, 1199, to his death in June, 1207, John dated public instruments from 131 castles in different parts of England, and must have visited a great many more.

Henry III. found his realm over-built with castles, and amongst the vigorous exertions by which William Marshall and Hubert de Burgh restored the royal authority should specially be recorded the sieges of Biham and Bedford castles, two very strong places. The Close Rolls show the extent of the preparations for these sieges. The sheriffs of the whole Midland and westward to the Forest of Dean are directed to provide and forward materials and munitions of war. Carpenters, smiths, quarrymen to dress stone bullets, miners and engineers, are placed under requisition, and from all sides are ordered timber, stone, lead, cord, cable, chain, iron bars, balistæ, catapults, mangonels, crossbows of wood and horn, targets, quarrels, arrows, slings, hides to cover the malvoisins, and mining tools. Both castles were stiffly defended, and both were taken. Of Biham no trace remains; of Bedford a fragment of wall and a mound, reduced almost to a mole-hill, still shows that Henry’s work was not done negligently. Towards the end of the reign occurred a still more famous siege, that of Kenilworth. Here, as on the former occasion, Henry commanded in person, and the celebrated “Ban of Kenilworth” shows how complete was his victory. Henry also conducted a campaign in South Wales in which the castles of Monmouth, Usk, Chepstow, Caerleon, and Cardiff played important parts—castles calculated to prove a sharp thorn in the side of an English prince, and to render a uniform and just government impracticable. Henry is not certainly known as the founder of any important English castle, but he added to and restored very many. Skenfrith near Monmouth dates from a little before his time; but Grosmont and White Castle, the two other members of the great border trilateral, may be of that reign. Henry, no doubt, was a great builder, and very princely in his operations; but his works as regards castles were chiefly shown in building, repairing, and adorning the walls and windows of the royal lodgings, halls, and chapels in the royal castles, works which were in all cases carried on outside the keep, within the middle or outer wards, and which in most cases have long since been swept away. Henry found his castles built to his hands, and had no opportunity of introducing any specific style or type of military work. White Castle is a mere pen or enclosure, with high walls and mural towers, though its earthworks, probably of earlier date, are on a great scale.

Castles of the type known as Edwardian or concentric, though taking their name from Edward I., were, as a chronological fact, introduced in the reign of his father, and Caerphilly, one of the earliest, probably the very earliest, of the concentric type, and curiously enough one of the most complete, was constructed by the Lord of Glamorgan in the very last year of Henry’s reign. Caerphilly is second only to Windsor in extent, and second to no mediæval fortress whatever in the skill with which it is laid out, and the natural features of the ground turned to advantage. It was executed, and probably planned, with great rapidity. Its cost must have been enormous, and must have taxed to the utmost the resources of even so wealthy a noble as the Earl of Gloucester and Hertford.

The type thus introduced was adopted by Edward I., and is exemplified in the castles of Harlech and Beaumaris. Conway and Caernarvon, though superior in magnificence to these and less symmetrical, are chiefly remarkable because they form a part of the defences of the towns attached to them, the whole being of one date and parts of one plan. The reign of Edward much diminished the value of English castles. Even the fortresses erected by him in North Wales, when their end was attained and the province reduced to subjection, ceased to be of value and gradually fell into decay, and in England when once his rule was established and his power realised, the lords even of the strongest castles did not venture to garrison them against him.