Part 2
Since the time of the Norman landing Pevensey seems to have sustained at least four earnest sieges. The first took place in 1088, when Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, and supporter of Robert of Normandy, defended the castle against the Red King: the second in 1147, when the place was held for the Empress Matilda against King Stephen; and in both of these cases the defenders were compelled by famine to surrender. The third important attack was that of 1264, following the battle of Lewes, when Simon de Montfort and the Barons sought in vain to reduce a garrison of obstinate Royalists. It was during this particular siege that the larger gap in the original Roman wall was initiated. The fourth and last storming happened during the Wars of the Roses, when Lady Pelham, a stanch supporter of the Lancastrian cause, successfully held out against a force of local followers of Richard of York.
After that the glory of the place departed, and it became a State prison, wherein were incarcerated such illustrious personages as Edward, Duke of York; James the First of Scotland; and Queen Joan of Navarre, wife of Henry the Fourth. From the days of the seventh Henry onwards it gradually fell into decay; and its present dilapidated condition is due not so much to the violence of the sieges as to the habit of the local gentry of using the remains as a handy quarry for house-building purposes. For the presence of any remains at all our thanks are due to that much-reviled thing the Spanish Armada. In the year previous to the sailing of the fleet, orders were given for the complete restoration or total demolition of the castle. Happily, in the general confusion of the time, the instructions seem to have been forgotten. Pevensey now is one of the most picturesque spots in the south of England. The knoll on which it stands is sufficiently high to give the castle a dignified appearance, as it rises up out of the encompassing marshes; and yet there is none of that grim, forbidding aspect generally so noticeable about castles perched on an eminence. Rather is there about these ivy-mantled walls an atmosphere of sunlit serenity quite out of keeping with the story of the place. Around the little hill still stretch those amazing ancient Roman walls, with but two considerable breaches. These walls for the most part fail to get the attention they deserve. Visitors enter the little western gate and pass across the meadow--once the outer ward--and so come to the mediaeval castle; but the outer walls are nearly a thousand years older and of transcendent interest. What magnificent masons those old Romans were! And what a secret they must have possessed for the making of mortar and cement! In several places here the cement has endured through all these hundreds of years, while even the outer stones have crumbled away. At other points, too, the actual marks of the masons' tools are visible in the ancient mortar.
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Through centuries of serviceable isolation it has seen real life as a castle--withstood sieges, beaten off marauding foes, and taken sides in internal strife.
(_See page 23_)
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At the eastern end of the enclosure is the castle itself, with a reed-grown moat on the northern and western sides. Most of this ruin dates back only to the time of Edward the First, for the original Norman fabric suffered too many sieges to endure in any completeness. One of the great towers flanking the main gateway still stands, but the other, like the drawbridge, has long since disappeared; three others project from the wall at various intervals. Inside, very little remains. Fragmentary ruins reveal the original site of the keep: the extent of the chapel may be traced on the sward. But, for all the scarcity of definite relics, the place is one to linger in and conjure up the past, when these grass-grown spaces were instinct with a hurrying life, when the meadows where now the cattle browse were filled with anxious faces and beating hearts.
Pevensey can own to one famous son at least, Andrew Borde, a man of many parts. Carthusian monk, physician to Henry the Eighth, litterateur, poor Borde died a prisoner in the Fleet Prison in 1549. He was one of those unfortunates who seem never to do or say the right thing at the right time. Born at the vicarage early in the sixteenth century, he developed a turn for jesting, and it proved his undoing, for bishops and kings had not his lively wit, and failed lamentably to appreciate what was at once his gift and his failing. To his ready pen have been ascribed the immortal epic "Tom Thumb", and the oft-told "Merry Tales of the Wise Men of Gotham"--the latter collected and put into literary form from the oral traditions of the country-side.
Just up under the eastern wall of the castle is the so-called Mint House, where Borde is reputed to have spent many of his days. It was an interesting old place, with its panelled walls and numerous passages; but it has now been rendered quite impossible by reason of its conversion into a glorified old curiosity shop with a heterogeneous collection of antiques. Other delightful houses there are, too, in this double village of Pevensey and Westham, straggling away at either side of the castle--low, picturesque timbered dwellings, at once the delight and despair of would-be artists. At Westham is a noble old church, the first built by the Conqueror, with remnants of the original Norman fabric still serving their purpose.
Striking east from the castle, the way out to Hurstmonceux lies down through the village street, with the sea away to the right and the marsh to the left. All along the coast here stand the Martello towers, monuments to the hysteria of a former day. Poor Cobbett, in his _Rural Rides_, could scarce find words bitter enough for these works. "To think that I should be destined to behold these monuments of the wisdom of Pitt and Dundas and Perceval! Good G--! Here they are, piles of brick in a circular form about three hundred feet (guess) circumference at the base, about forty feet high, and about one hundred feet circumference at the top.... Cannons were to be fired from the top of these things, in order to defend the country against the French Jacobins! I think I could have counted along here upwards of thirty of these ridiculous things, which, I dare say, cost five, perhaps ten, thousand pounds each: and one of which was, I am told, _sold_ on the coast of Sussex, the other day, for two hundred pounds...." Some have now been dismantled, having been rendered useless or dangerous by the encroachments of the sea. Here and there is to be found one providing habitation for a fisherman or a coastguard, or let out for the purpose of a summer residence to some more than usually enterprising holiday-maker.
As soon as the water of Pevensey Haven is crossed, the way to Hurstmonceux turns sharply to the north; and thence onward the road is a perfectly flat one, winding in and out across the levels with seeming aimlessness. Ahead, visible nearly all the way, the castle nestles among the low hills that break sharply away from the flats, outposts of the uplands of that same sandstone Forest Ridge which presses on eastwards to form the cliffs beyond Hastings. On either side, away to the distant hills, stretch the greenest of meadows, intersected by innumerable watercourses, with but a few stunted thorns and an occasional tuft of rushes to break the trackless level. Here the soft-eyed Sussex beasts browse knee-deep in luxuriant pasturage. It is a lonely spot, a place of drowsy solitude, where the plaintive call of the plover seems the most natural melody. Yet, on a spring morning, when great white clouds ride across the clear blue sky, when the thorn is in bloom, and every ditch is brocaded with the gold of myriad kingcups, then, indeed, it is a place of indescribable sweetness.
Built at the time of the "last of the barons", Hurstmonceux marked the transition in domestic architecture from the heavily-defended fortress to the comfortable and luxurious manor-house. As early as the reign of Edward the Third attempts had been made to combine the strength of massive masonry with the convenience of more sumptuous apartments, such castles as Raglan and Warwick leading the way. We have only to stroll round the present remains to find ample evidence of this double service. The great arched gateway and battlemented walls, the machicolated octagonal towers, the moat and drawbridge, the loopholes for cross-bows, the oeillets for the matchlock guns,--all witness to the one purpose; while the size and number of the windows in the dwelling-rooms quite well testify to the other.
In these days the ruined castle is a place of great beauty. Time has dealt less hardly with it than with some. The colour of the huge red-brick front has been softened down by wind and rain to a restful mellow tint in full harmony with the sombre green of the overhanging masses of ivy; and, though the broken walls with their towers and half-towers still have a martial air, they have lost much of their severity of outline.
In the full flush of its being it was a magnificent structure. Just inside the great gateway there was a courtyard, generally known as the "Green Court", surrounded by the cloisters. Just beyond this stood the great dining-hall, a spacious chamber, 54 feet long and 28 wide, with massive timbered roof and tiled floor; and, opening from it, the Pantry Court, from which again a paved passage led to the garden. The east side of the castle included the principal dwelling-apartments,--the enormous drawing-room, where Grinling Gibbons's vine, a masterpiece of carving, spread its magnificence over the walls and ceiling; the chapel, extending up through the two stories; and, on the upper floor, the "Ladies' Bower" with its peculiar oriel window--a room wherein, tradition says, one of the fair daughters of Hurstmonceux was starved to death in her twenty-first year. On the west were the domestic apartments, among them the great kitchen and bakehouse, with an oven in which, it was declared, a coach and horses might easily turn. On the upper floor, lighted by the open space of the Green Court, were the Bethlehem chambers, otherwise the guest-rooms, and the Green Gallery, a room filled with pictures and hung with green cloth. One old writer speaks of these upper rooms as "sufficient to lodge a garrison"; and adequate provision would seem to have been necessary, for in its heyday Hurstmonceux had many and illustrious visitors. Everything seems to have been done on such a lavish scale that we are fully prepared for such interesting details as the record that at the marriage of Grace Naylor "butts of beer were left standing at the park gates for the refreshment of chance passers-by"; also that twenty old female retainers were kept constantly employed at the weeding and tidying of the Green and other courtyards.
For long it was a mere skeleton, at the mercy of nature and man. As late as 1752 Horace Walpole could write of it in a letter to his friend Richard Bentley: "It was built in the reign of Henry VI, and is as perfect as the first day. It does not seem to have ever been quite finished, or at least that age was not arrived at the luxury of whitewash, for almost all the walls are in their native brick-hood." And yet, despite Mr. Walpole's assertions as to its continued perfectness, so soon after this as 1777 the castle was dismantled. The truth is: if the castle has escaped the general fate of this region and avoided the scourge of the invader, it has nevertheless suffered much at the hands of its friends. In the year mentioned the owner was a Mrs. Henrietta Hare, ancestor of the author of _Memorials of a Quiet Life_, a volume which deals very faithfully with this ancient fabric. This lady, desiring to use the materials for the construction of a new mansion on a higher site, called in the arch-vandal Wyatt, and he (to quote Augustus Hare's _Memorials_) "declared that the castle was in a hopeless state of dilapidation, though another authority had just affirmed that in all material points its condition was as good as on the day on which it was built.... The castle was unroofed.... A great sale was held in the park, whither the London brokers came in troops, and lived in an encampment of tents during the six weeks which the sale lasted. Almost everything of value was then dispersed. Mrs. Hare and her husband afterwards resided at Hurstmonceux Place, the new house which Wyatt was commissioned to build, and lived there in such extravagance that they always spent a thousand a year more than their income, large as it was, and annually sold a farm from the property to make up the deficiency. It was a proverb in the neighbourhood at that time that 'people might hunt either Hares or foxes'."
And thus it stood, a ruined shell, until comparatively recent years. The many curious staircases built in the thicknesses of the walls, the secret underground passages, and the general isolation on the edge of the marsh, all contrived to render the ruin an ideal rendezvous for smugglers and a suitable depository for their stores of contraband.
Now, fortunately, the castle is in the hands of one who, appreciating such a possession, is taking steps to prevent any further decay, and with a loving care and a sense of fitness is proceeding with the delicate task of necessary restoration.
BATTLE ABBEY
To Battle is the excursion of paramount interest from the popular point of view. The association with one of the most momentous events in the history of the land, the peculiar entertainment of standing on the actual ground where the battle took place and the "last of the English" fell, the intrinsic pleasure in the inspection of a ruin at once rich in memories and comely in setting,--all contrive to make it the pilgrimage into the country around. Other ruins may surpass it in degree of preservation, in individual reminiscence, in charm of situation, but none, not even Pevensey, can vie with the Abbey in strength of appeal.
It was erected on the actual place of the contest. On the eve of the battle, when the rival forces were assembled and ready for the shock of arms, William, in a sudden fit of piety--or nervousness--made a solemn vow that, should victory be his, he would found a mighty church, in token of his thankfulness for the Divine intervention. And when it was all over, and the English had fallen, he quickly made good his promise. Practical men came to him urging the unsuitable nature of the site, high up on the hill-side away from all water. Rather would they build down there in the hollow, where the springs ever gushed forth freely. But not so William: the church should rise on the field of blood, and the high altar should mark the spot where his adversary had fallen. And for the matter of water: if that were lacking, well, wine should be more plentiful in the new Abbey than water in other religious houses. Thus came the venerable Abbey of St. Martin into existence.
The story of the battle is perhaps the most fascinating in all our catalogue of worthy fights. When William landed on these shores Harold was at York, recuperating after the superhuman efforts which culminated in the battle of Stamford Bridge, where he entirely defeated an invading force under Harold Haardrada and his own brother, Tostig. He had marched two hundred miles or more to defeat one foe, and it was now necessary for him to carry out a still greater expedition to engage a second. He halted several days in the capital while the process of collecting troops from the midlands and the south went on. At last, on October the twelfth, he moved on to meet William. With him he took but a small army. Had he waited just a short time longer (the delay would not have mattered, for William had no intention of leaving the coast) he could have gathered a force sufficiently large to overwhelm the invaders; but he made the common mistake of holding the enemy too cheaply. A series of forced marches commenced in the hopes of catching William unawares came to nought, owing to the vigilance of the Duke's marauding bands. On the night of the thirteenth he arrived at the fatal hill, and pitched his camp on the site of the present town of Battle.
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The Abbey was erected on the field of the Battle of Hastings. The gateway was added in 1338 to the work begun by William the Conqueror.
(_See page 36_)
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Harold apparently knew this part of Sussex quite well, being the lord of several manors round about; and so his well-chosen ground does not surprise us. A long spur of upland here thrusts out boldly from the main mass of wooded hill-side, and commands a view over a wide stretch of rolling ground away to the sea. On a crest of this spur he ranged his army, with the mailed warriors in front forming a continuous shield-wall.
The descriptions of the night before the battle--all from Norman sources, by the way--make vastly interesting reading. Albeit they vary in certain minor matters, they are in one accord concerning the characters of the rival armies--the drunken English and the pious Normans. The former spent the night in one big carousal--dancing, singing, drinking immense quantities of liquor; the latter devoted their time to prayers and the confession of their sins. And yet, strange to say, the English seem to have been quite fit in the morning, for they put up a remarkably good fight. They held their own through the best part of the day, and in the end were defeated only by their own eagerness.
Hour after hour the Normans surged up the hill, assailing the English position, and again and again were they driven back by the terrible battle-axes of their opponents. So well was Harold's position chosen that they could make little impression; and it is fair to hazard that in the end they would have met with defeat, had not some of the less-disciplined troops forsaken their advantage and impetuously pursued the panic-stricken enemy into the valley below. Here the conditions were different, and the sword was more than a match for the battle-axe and javelin, with the consequence that the rash English were badly cut up. William noticed this, and determined to try the "strategic retreat" on a larger scale. Accordingly one wing--the western--was ordered to turn tail and retire as though in disorder. This they did. The English, lured on by their wily foes, readily gave up their more favourable position, and then, as before, the French turned and engaged them, while a wedge of cavalry inserted itself and harassed them in the rear. This descending movement had left open a considerable portion of the English line, and on this William concentrated the pick of his forces. But still the English fought on stubbornly. In one place they also saw the advantage of the feigned flight, and induced the French cavalry to charge into an unsuspected ravine, whence not a man escaped.
As the shades of evening fell no one might say where the advantage lay: the English shield-wall was broken in places, but it still presented a formidable line; the French still pressed on eagerly. Then to Duke William came the great inspiration which turned the day, and won for him the battle and the crown. So far his archers had done little to justify their presence on the field. Now William saw that if they were ordered to shoot their arrows high into the air these would descend with terrific force upon the heads of the foe, and work great execution. The command was carried out, and one of the first to fall was the English king himself, his right eye pierced by a shaft.
With Harold fell the English fortunes. His soldiers struggled on desperately till night closed down, but their valour was in vain, and after a day's continuous fighting the Normans were left the victors of the field.
Building operations were duly commenced, and proceeded apace. The growing Abbey was richly endowed, and its Superior granted numerous and great privileges. Not, however, till William had been dead some seven years was it finished. Then for several centuries it enjoyed a flourishing existence, extending its scope and increasing its wealth. The great gateway was added in 1338, and was the work of Abbot Retlyng.
The income of the Abbey was enormous, and the wanton generosity of the brothers made Battle a happy hunting-ground for the pilgrims and vagabonds and ne'er-do-wells in the south-east of England. But its long years of prosperity proved its undoing, for slothful ease gave way to greater evils. The great place decayed in every sense, and when, in 1538, Henry's commissioners appeared at its gate, it was in a fit condition to be suppressed. Layton, the chief commissioner, says of it: "So beggarly a house I never see, nor so filthy stuff. I will no 20s. for all the hangings in this house, as the bearer can tell you.... So many evil I never see, the stuff is like the persons"; and he further speaks of the inmates as "the worst that ever I see in all other places, whereat I see specially the blake sort of dyvellyshe monks".
As we pass through the magnificent gateway, worthy indeed to guard the treasure within, our pleasure increases at every step, for though the ruins are but few and fragmentary they are enshrined in that most glorious of settings, a beautiful garden. The great church itself has long since disappeared, for Sir Anthony Browne, to whom the place was given after the visit of the vandal commissioners, saw nothing of worth in it. Just a fragment of the nave wall is pointed out in the woodyard at the back of the modern mansion, and a piece of the cloister arcading on the east side. But we can get a very good idea of its great size from the disposition of the ruins. The spot to which we turn with eagerness is the site of the high altar, the death-place of Harold. It is a spot of beauty now, with its moss-grown stones, its ferns and greenery; and we would fain linger awhile to think on all the Norman invasion brought, all its woes and its brightnesses; but the guide is inexorable: we must pass on with the flock of tourists to view the only considerable remain, the Early English hall, generally known as the Refectory. The walls of this stand roofless to the sky, with a lawn in place of a floor. Below there are three fine vaulted chambers--one, the Scriptorium, with a good geometrical window and a vaulted roof supported by graceful pillars.
But after all we come away with no very clear idea of the place; and perhaps it is as well. Instead, we have a vague, an impressionist picture of flowers and ruins, grey stones mantled with gorgeous blossoms; and over all a brooding serenity.