CHAPTER XII

THE AGE OF TRANSITION: THE FORTIFIED DWELLING-HOUSE

Some account has now been given of the change which came over the English castle in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The life of the feudal warrior in his stronghold gradually became the life of the country gentleman in a house whose fortification, such as it was, was of a merely precautionary character. It now remains for us to say something of those domestic buildings which are the principal feature of the English castles of the later middle ages, and of those houses which, while preserving the name and to some extent the appearance of castles, were designed primarily as dwelling-houses. In these examples the main lines of the normal dwelling-house plan, which have already been described, were preserved. The hall still formed the nucleus of the buildings and the centre of the life of the household: the kitchen, buttery, and pantry still took their place at the end of the hall next the screens, while the two-storied block, with the great chamber on the first floor, was found at the other end behind the dais. But, with the increase of comfort and splendour, came the desire for more space and greater privacy. The great hall at Ludlow (96), reconstructed in the early part of the fourteenth century, had a first-floor chamber at either end of the hall; and the additions made to these domestic buildings in the fifteenth century considerably increased the number of private apartments in a house which was already of great size. At Manorbier (208) the whole dwelling-house was enlarged and the number of rooms increased by a reconstruction in the second half of the thirteenth century. The dwelling-house in the inner ward of Conway, the hall and its adjacent rooms at Caerphilly, were planned on a more liberal scale than had been thought necessary in the castles of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The essentially military character, however, of the Edwardian castle cramped the free development of domestic buildings within the precinct; and it was not until the middle of the fourteenth century that the plan of the dwelling-house in the castle had reached the stage at which it began to be considered for its own sake, apart from the curtain wall which protected it.

The development of the private mansion within the castle is well illustrated at Porchester. The outer defences of the castle, the twelfth-century great tower, the curtain of the inner ward, the fourteenth-century barbican, were all kept under repair; for the French wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries made the defence of Portsmouth harbour a desirable factor in English strategy, and the considerations which prompted the building of Bodiam also demanded that the military character of Porchester castle should be preserved. The barbican, however, was the last important addition to the defences. The later work included the remodelling of the twelfth-century hall against the south curtain.[356] This was in great part rebuilt, the hall on the first floor being supplied with large traceried windows towards the interior of the bailey: late in the fifteenth century, a porch with an upper floor was added at the end next the screens. Along the west side of the inner ward, between the great hall and the keep, a smaller hall was added late in the fourteenth century, the towers upon the east curtain were converted to domestic purposes, and a range of buildings was eventually added upon this side of the bailey (97).

Externally, Porchester castle is simply a fortress: internally, the domestic buildings rivet the attention, and only the imposing mass of the keep (131) reminds us of the military origin of the stronghold. Similarly, in the Cornish castle of Restormel, where the one ward is nearly circular in shape, and is surrounded by a deep ditch, the whole interior face of the curtain is covered by a series of domestic buildings, with partition walls radiating from the centre of the plan. The position of the hall, kitchen, and great chamber can easily be traced: the chapel was on the east side of the ward, separated from the hall by the great chamber, and the chancel, with a substructure, formed a rectangular projection from the curtain at this point. Here, too, as at Porchester, Ludlow, or Manorbier, the dwelling-house was masked by the fortress. But there are also castles in which the importance of the dwelling-house, as time went on, began to overshadow its military surroundings. At Tutbury the strong position of the castle, an entrenched stronghold which was probably ditched about for the first time long before the Conquest, the high mound raised by the Norman founder of the castle, and the fine fourteenth-century gatehouse[357] (237), approached by an ascent which was commanded by the whole length of the eastern curtain, strike the visitor far less than the remains of the great hall and its adjacent chambers. This beautiful work, often attributed, like so much else in castles of the duchy of Lancaster, to John of Gaunt, is probably of the middle of the fifteenth century: there is a remarkable similarity between the details of the stonework here and at Wingfield, a house the date of which is well known to be somewhat later than 1441. As a whole, the castles which, like Tutbury, became merged in the possessions of the house of Lancaster, and came to the Crown on the accession of Henry IV., furnish us with some of the best examples of castle dwelling-houses on a palatial scale. At Pontefract, for example, a range of buildings, known later as John of Gaunt’s buildings, rose upon the site of the eastern mound. The drawings of Pontefract and of Melbourne in Derbyshire, preserved among the duchy records, show us castles which have utterly changed their aspect, and have become palaces. Nowhere, however, is this more noticeable to-day than at Kenilworth, where the erection of the great hall may be fairly attributed to John of Gaunt.[358] The whole of the north and part of the west side of the inner ward, on the summit of the raised ground on which the castle stands, are covered by a splendid series of late fourteenth-century buildings, chief among them the hall, probably the finest apartment of its date in England, Westminster hall alone excepted (337). Later still, just as at Carew, the transformation of the stronghold was completed by the addition, in Henry VIII.’s time, of apartments, which have now disappeared, along the south side of the ward; and, in the reign of Elizabeth, the south-west angle was filled by a tall block of buildings erected by the earl of Leicester.

One may compare the growth of the domestic element at Kenilworth with that of the French château of Blois, where the military aspect of the building was obliterated by degrees. To the great hall in the north-east corner of the castle bailey[359] were added, first, the buildings of Charles of Orléans (1440-65) on the west face.[360] Then came the late Gothic work, on the east, of Louis XII. (1498-1502). In the sixteenth century the hall was joined to Charles of Orléans’ block by the Renaissance pile of building raised under Francis I. and Henry II. The castle by this time had become a palace, and the transformation was completed in the seventeenth century (1635) by the erection of the tall range of Palladian buildings in the north-west angle, which is the most prominent feature in the northern view of the château.[361] A similar work of transformation took place at Amboise under Louis XII. and Francis I. In both these instances, however, the chief changes were made at a period when the Renaissance was exercising a powerful influence on French life and thought. As a rule, French castles of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, while increasing in splendour, preserved much of the character of the feudal stronghold. The two splendid halls and the northern range of buildings at Coucy, built by Enguerrand VII., lord of Coucy, in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, were added without detriment to the strength of the fortress; and to this same period belongs the talus covering the spring at the foot of the donjon curtain, a work of purely military character.[362] In the châteaux of Méhun-sur-Yèvre (Cher), built by John, duke of Berry, between 1370 and 1385, and Pierrefonds (Oise), built by Louis, duke of Orléans, between 1390 and 1420, the splendour of the palace was equally balanced by the strength of the fortress.

In tracing the development of the castle until it is merged in the manor-house, we must not forget that the fortified dwelling-house was not merely the creation of an age which was ceasing to build castles. Many of the strongholds to which allusion has been made, especially in the north and west of England, were dwelling-houses rather than castles. Acton Burnell, Aydon, Markenfield, Haughton, or those houses which, like Mortham in Yorkshire or Yanwath in Westmorland, have pele-towers attached to them, whether as part of their original equipment or as a later addition, are all fabrics in which military precautions had to be taken, but the everyday needs of the occupants were first considered. A castle is a military post which may include one or more dwelling-houses within its walls: the house which may be turned into a castle, when occasion requires, is on a different footing. Bishops’ palaces, such as Auckland, Cawood, Wells, or Lincoln, are examples of the large manor-house in which fortification was merely a measure of precaution. The splendid houses of the bishops of St David’s are not the least remarkable of the remains of medieval architecture, half-domestic, half-military, which are common in south-west Wales. Bishop Henry Gower (1328-47) developed at Swansea castle, and at his manor-houses of Lamphey and St David’s, a type of architecture which deserves mention on account of its originality. The three houses mentioned are somewhat different from each other.

Swansea castle is a large block of building, obviously military in character, and in general appearance not unlike the earlier castle which so nobly commands the town of Haverfordwest. Bishop Gower’s hall at Lamphey is a plain building, the chief architectural feature of which is the great cellar on the ground-floor: this was covered by a pointed barrel-vault, originally strengthened by heavy transverse ribs, most of which have fallen away. The vast palace of St David’s, on the other hand, displays in all its details, and especially in the ogee-headed doorway of the porch of its larger hall, a sumptuousness of decoration which is not often found in the domestic architecture of the time. The great hall on the west side of the courtyard, the smaller hall and private apartments on the south side, the vaulted cellars which occupy the whole of the basement in each range, are planned upon a scale equal to that of a castle of first-rate size. But, although these buildings differ so much in general character, they have a common feature in the parapet, pierced with a row of wide pointed arches, and corbelled out above the top of the walls. Comparatively rough and coarse at Swansea and Lamphey (341), this parapet at St David’s is treated with much delicacy, and the jambs of the arches are furnished with slender shafting. Whether there was any thought of its employment in war is a doubtful point; although it might be useful in such a case, it was probably intended in the first instance merely as an ornament. The corbelling is very slight, without machicolation. The whole design of the parapet is a curious feature which deserves special notice. There is another and later hall at Lamphey, west of the earlier building; and adjoining this on the north is the handsome chapel, built by Bishop Vaughan early in the sixteenth century. The gatehouse at Llawhaden, another manor of the bishops of St David’s, appears to be of the fifteenth century, and, with its flanking towers, rounded to the field, has a more distinctly warlike appearance than anything at Lamphey or St David’s.

We may now take a few typical examples which illustrate the change from the fortified residence to the large dwelling-house, which was accomplished by the beginning of the sixteenth century. At a comparatively early date, a divorce between military and domestic architecture is manifest in such a house as Stokesay (306). Here the hall and its adjacent buildings are those of a private house pure and simple; and the defensive portion of the plan is confined to the polygonal tower at the south end of the range of buildings, which, in time of war, could be used as a separate stronghold, and was ingeniously planned and well lighted.[363] But at Stokesay (207) the tower appears to be a somewhat later addition to a thirteenth-century dwelling-house. Defensive precautions are added. Of the opposite case, in which they disappear, Haddon hall (340), the most attractive and most thoroughly preserved of English medieval houses, is the best example. In its earliest state, it appears to have been a mere pele, occupying a portion of its present site, with a tower at its north-east and highest corner. The chapel (343), in which large portions of twelfth-century work still remain, was probably built outside the palisade, as the parochial chapel of the hamlet of Nether Haddon. As time went on, the fortified enclosure enlarged its boundaries. A wall was built round it, and the chapel was taken into the line of circumference.[364] In the fourteenth century the present hall was built between the upper and lower courts.[365] At its north end were the screens, forming the communication between the two courts, with the pantry, buttery, and passage to the kitchen leading directly out of them. At the south end, behind the dais, was the cellar with the great chamber above. Later on, a porch with an upper chamber was built at the entry to the screens. During the fifteenth century, the upper courtyard was gradually surrounded by buildings; a new chancel and octagonal bell-turret were built to the chapel; and, at the end of this period, the old curtain wall, between the chapel and the great chamber, was covered by an outer wall on either side, and reduced to the state of a mere partition wall on which wooden upper buildings were carried. Wide windows were opened in the west walls of the cellar and the great chamber, and the cellar was turned into a private dining-room at the back of the hall. Early in the sixteenth century, the buildings round the entrance court were completed, and the timber stage east of the chapel was rebuilt in stone. Finally, in the reign of Elizabeth, came the addition which marks the last stage in this transition from pele to dwelling-house, when, on the south side of the upper courtyard, was built the long gallery, with its row of wide mullioned windows, and deep bays projecting towards the garden. While the manor-house at Wingfield, not many miles distant, is practically all of one period, and illustrates a definite compromise between war and peace, Haddon is a growth of from four to five centuries, and from an early date showed a tendency to rid itself of its military character.

Wingfield manor is probably the most striking example of a later English manor-house with certain defensive features. It was begun by Ralph, Lord Cromwell, between 1441 and 1455. Its position is naturally strong. From an almost isolated hill, with steep slopes to the east, north, and west, it commands the valley in which it stands, but is itself commanded by the much higher hills which separate it from the Derwent valley on the west.[366] The buildings are arranged round two courtyards (346). The outer and larger court, which is entered by a wide gateway, with a postern on one side, at the south end of the east wall, contained store-houses and farm-buildings, with a large barn on the south side. This base-court, like the “barmkin” of a fortified house in the north of England, would be useful in time of war for the protection of tenants and their flocks and herds, who had no other means of defence. A gatehouse in the north wall gives admission to the second court, which was surrounded by buildings on all sides but the east. The whole length of the north side was covered by a magnificent block of buildings, which included the hall, kitchen, and chief private apartments (349). These buildings have not received the full attention which they deserve, but they obviously belong to two periods of work, the great kitchen block at the west end being added as an afterthought.[367] The plan is curious and unusual. The hall occupies the eastern extremity of the block. Although the roof and a large part of the south wall are entirely gone, and the north wall was mutilated by the later partition of the hall into two floors and a number of rooms, the porch, with its upper chamber, and the bay-window, at opposite ends of the south wall, are still fairly perfect. The hall was the full height of the block, and had a high-pitched roof, with large window openings in the gables: it is not certain whether the fireplace was in the centre of the room, with a louvre in the roof for the smoke, or in the south wall. The porch led into screens at the west end, over which was probably a minstrels’ gallery. At the north end of the screens was a lobby, from which a vice led to the upper floor of the building dividing the hall from the kitchen; while a wide and well-moulded doorway opened upon a stair which descended into the garden behind the hall. On this side the slope of the ground is very abrupt, and the hall is built upon a very large and handsome cellar (348), divided into two longitudinal halves by a row of five columns. The aisles thus formed are vaulted in oblong compartments upon broad four-centred ribs. The bold wave-mouldings of the ribs and the carving of the bosses at their junction are carved with a masculine vigour of design which gives this cellar a place among the chief architectural masterpieces of its age. There is a short vice with broad steps at each corner of the cellar: those at the north-east and south-east corners communicated directly with the dais and sideboard of the hall, the entrance to the south-east stair being a lobby opening on the bay-window. The south-west vice was entered from the courtyard, while the north-west stair opened into a room on one side of the passage from the hall to the kitchen.

The kitchen and its offices were not entered in the usual way, directly from the screens. A block of buildings, with its main axis at right angles to that of the hall, intervenes. There are, however, three doorways, as usual, in the west wall of the hall. Of these, the middle and largest was that of a central passage leading to the kitchen. A smaller doorway, on either side of this, gave access to two ground-floor rooms, beneath which were cellars. The whole floor above these, entered by a vice from the large lobby at the garden end of the screens, was the great chamber, which had a high-pitched roof, and was lighted, towards the courtyard, by a large window-opening of four lights, with good rectilinear tracery and transoms, beneath a segmental arch. It need hardly be said that the position of the great chamber, at the entrance end of the hall, is most unusual. The best parallel example is found in connection with the hall of the thirteenth-century bishop’s palace at Lincoln. Here the slope at the north end of the hall prevented the construction of a large block of buildings on that side. At the south end the ground fell away almost vertically, and here, upon a vaulted substructure, was built a block of two stories, the lower of which contained the pantry, buttery, and passage to the kitchens, while the upper was the great chamber. The kitchen was contained in a detached tower, between which and the intermediate block was a bridge, with a covered passage on the first floor. The two-storied block has now been converted into the bishop’s chapel, of which the windows of the great chamber form the clerestory; while the passage across the kitchen bridge has been turned into a vestry.

At Wingfield the great chamber was evidently placed at the entrance end of the hall to avoid the type of construction which had been adopted as a _pis aller_ at Lincoln, and the side of the hall was chosen where the ground was comparatively level. Nevertheless, at the dais end of the hall, where there is a fall of several feet in the ground, there are considerable remains of buildings on the lower level; and it is possible that the first kitchen buildings may have been planned at this end. The position, with easy access to the large cellar, and, by a stair which still partly remains, to the hall, would not have been inconvenient, and expense in building would have been saved by this reversal of the usual arrangement, which placed the more costly great chamber block on level foundations, although at the far end of the hall. The four stairs of the cellar made it easy, whatever the position of the kitchen might be, to serve food directly to the dais, or through the screens to the lower end of the hall. However, whether this was the original arrangement or not, the kitchen block west of the great chamber was an addition made probably a few years after the original planning of the house.[368] The central passage below the great chamber was continued to the kitchen, passing between a large pantry and buttery. Its south wall, next the buttery, is pierced by two broad arched openings, forming a buttery hatch upon a magnificent scale, through which drink would be served. There were upper floors to the buttery and pantry; but the kitchen itself, which contained three fireplaces, filled the whole west end of the block. Its floor is sloped and grooved, to facilitate drainage: the floor-drains were emptied through spouts in the west wall.

The use of the buildings on the south side of the inner courtyard, on either hand of the gateway, cannot be determined with certainty; but the west side of the court is covered by an important range of buildings, between the kitchen on the north and the high tower at the south-west corner of the enclosure. Of these buildings, which belong to the original fifteenth-century work, little remains but the west and the foundations of the east wall, in which were two bay-windows. They were probably a suite of private rooms, containing a smaller hall or private dining-room, such as is found at Conway and Porchester, and in most of our castles from the later thirteenth century onwards.[369] At the south end of this block stands the one distinctively military feature of the manor-house, the tall tower of four stories, which, containing comfortable apartments in time of peace, could be isolated and converted into a stronghold in time of war.[370]

This provisional arrangement for defence is characteristic of the age. The primary object of the house at Wingfield was comfort and pleasure; and its type is as far removed from the military perfection of Caerphilly or Harlech as it can possibly be. The need of a perpetual garrison was not felt; for, in case of war, siege would be only the last resort of an attacking force. Consequently, the defences of the house, apart from the accommodation for barracks and the safety of refugees in the base-court, and from ordinary strength of the gateways,[371] were restricted to the provision of a tower as a last resource. The house, however, which the builder of Wingfield constructed at Tattershall in Lincolnshire between 1433 and 1443, on the site of an earlier stronghold, took the shape of a brick tower of four stages, with a basement half below the ground (356). There is an octagonal turret at each angle, the vice which leads from the ground-floor to the roof being contained in the south-east turret (357). The walls are of considerable thickness throughout, but are pierced above the basement with large two-light windows, two in each stage of the west wall. In the east wall are the chimneys of the fireplaces on the ground-floor and first floor; but behind these the wall is pierced by mural passages, lighted to the field. The north wall on the first and third floor also is pierced by passages. These communicated with chambers in the turrets and with garde-robes. The internal features, the vaulted stairs and passages in the thickness of the walls, and the stone fireplaces on the upper floors, with rectangular mantels ornamented with shields of arms,[372] are elaborate and sumptuous; but the tower is a shell, and the floors above the vaulted basement are gone. A peculiar feature of the tower, however, is the covered gallery which is corbelled out on stone arches above each wall of the building between the turrets: the floor is machicolated between the corbels, and the gallery has rectangular windows opening to the field. Such a gallery is seen in French military architecture, as, for example, in the Pont Valentré at Cahors, but appears to be unique in England.[373] In the same part of Lincolnshire, and about the same period, towers of the type of Tattershall are not uncommon. Kyme tower, in the fens north-east of Sleaford, Hussey tower, on the north-east side of Boston, and the Tower on the Moor, between Tattershall and Horncastle, are cases in point: none of these, however, can compare with Tattershall in beauty and size, or can show anything like the same union of defensive with purely domestic arrangements.

Brick-work was employed in all these Lincolnshire towers: they lie in a district where stone was not abundant, and where brick-making on the spot was a more simple process than the conveyance of building-stone from Ancaster or Lincoln. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, brick was very freely used for domestic architecture in the eastern counties; and houses like Oxburgh in Norfolk or the rectory at Hadleigh in Suffolk, with their gatehouse towers, are prominent examples of late fifteenth-century work.[374] The old hall at Gainsborough in Lincolnshire is a large mansion of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This again is chiefly of brick, but with a considerable amount of timber and plaster employed in the hall and one of the wings; while the bay-window of the hall is of the grey Yorkshire limestone in large blocks, which was much used in the churches of the lower Trent valley. At one corner, however, is a polygonal tower entirely of brick, with cross-loops in the walls of the ground-floor, and battlements at the top. These battlements are corbelled out, so as to give an impression of machicolation: there is, however, no machicolation at all, and the spaces between the corbels are arched and filled with simple tracery. The principle here is the same as that at Wingfield and Tattershall: the residence is provided with its strong tower, which, at Tattershall, as at Warkworth, is identical with the residence itself. But while, at Warkworth, considerations of safety and comfort were fairly balanced, with perhaps a slight inclination of the scales to safety, at Tattershall, in spite of the covered gallery with its machicolated floor, the balance is on the side of comfort. Both at Tattershall and Wingfield the splendid residence is studied in the first instance, while the defensive stronghold is a secondary idea. The tower at Gainsborough is simply an imitation of the strong towers of the past, conceived in admiration of their strength and conservative love of their beauty, but with no serious idea of practical utility.[375]

The fine manor-house of Compton, in a secluded Devonshire valley a few miles west of Torquay, was probably built about 1420 by one of the family of Gilbert. The main entrance, in the centre of the east front, beneath a tall archway including the ground-floor and first floor in its height, is flanked by bold rectangular projections finishing in corbels some feet above the ground. It does not lead, however, into a vaulted passage barred by portcullises and flanked by guard-rooms, but into one giving direct access to the hall. This no longer exists, and a modern building covers part of the site, but the weathering of the high-pitched roof still remains, and at its south end we can still see the entrances of the kitchen and buttery, and the stair-door of the minstrels’ gallery. The courtyard and domestic buildings are enclosed by a wall with a continuous rampart-walk, from the parapet of which are corbelled out at intervals machicolated projections which are so arranged as to be directly above doorways and windows, and thus to protect the most vulnerable points of the house, such as the large four-light east window of the chapel, north of the hall. The house was not surrounded by a ditch; but the space between it and the road probably formed a base-court, although any remains of fortification have disappeared. The whole building is a good example of the reversal of the usual process. The dwelling-house has not grown up within a castle, but has been converted by a very thorough process of walling and crenellation into a fortified post to which the name of castle may well be applied. The situation is anything but commanding, but the house lying hidden in its valley, might be a formidable obstacle, like the neighbouring castle of Berry Pomeroy, to marauders pushing their way inland from Tor Bay.

The character of house first, and castle afterwards, which is remarkable at Wingfield, is also prominent in two of the great Yorkshire residences of the house of Percy, Spofforth and Wressell, princely manor-houses dignified by the name of castle. But perhaps the best example in England of a castle which is one only in name is the brick house of Hurstmonceaux in Sussex. This splendid building was begun about 1446 by Sir Roger Fiennes. Its position, in a sheltered hollow at the head of a small valley, has no military advantages: it may be compared with the secluded site of Compton Wyniates, or with the low sites, within easy reach of water, which the builders of Elizabethan houses were fond of choosing. The house was surrounded by a wet ditch—a feature shared by Compton Wyniates, Kentwell, and other Tudor houses.[376] The imposing gatehouse is in the centre of the south front, a rectangular building flanked by tall towers,[377] with its portal and the room above recessed beneath a tall arch which at once recalls the machicolated archways that guard the entrance to castles like Chepstow and Tutbury. The gatehouse has certain military features: its rampart and that of the towers is machicolated, and the entrance was closed by a portcullis (323). If cannon had made the curtain of comparatively little importance, it was still advisable to defend the gatehouse. There was no base-court, like that at Wingfield, in advance of the main buildings. The castle was simply a collection of buildings arranged round a series of courtyards, none of which was of any great size, or corresponded to that distinctive feature of the military stronghold—the open ward or bailey, which served as the muster-ground for the garrison. The hall was in its usual position, on the side of the first court opposite the main entrance. Most of the private apartments were against the east wall, from which the chancel of the chapel (359) projected in a half-octagonal apse.

An unrivalled opportunity for studying the progress of the castle in England is provided by a comparison of Hurstmonceaux with its neighbours at Pevensey and Bodiam. Pevensey, taking us back, in its outer circuit, to the Roman era, is, so far as the actual castle area is concerned, a Norman mount-and-bailey stronghold, with stone fortifications chiefly of the thirteenth century. Bodiam represents one of the last and highest efforts of perfected castle building in England. Hurstmonceaux is a house designed for ease and comfort, but keeping something of the outer semblance of the stronghold of an English landowner. A further step was taken at Cowdray, near Midhurst. Here the house, nominally a castle, was built about 1530 by Sir William Fitzwilliam: the battlements of the great hall and its beautiful porch-tower are the only relic of military architecture which it retains; and these are really no more military in character than the battlements of a church tower or clerestory. The comparison and contrast between these Sussex buildings may be further extended by including in the list the early fortresses of Lewes and Hastings, and the episcopal castle of Amberley.[378] In these, with what remains of the early castle of Arundel, we have as perfect an epitome of the history of the rise and decline of castle architecture in England as any county can afford.

Castle building, after the fitful examples of later Plantagenet times, ceased altogether under the powerful monarchy of the Tudors, when prominent subjects were made to feel the reality of the influence of the Crown. Only once again, during the civil wars of the seventeenth century, were castles generally resorted to as strongholds. The three sieges of Pontefract, the operations of the royal troops in the Trent valley, between the castles of Newark and Belvoir and the fortified house of Wiverton, the defence of Denbigh, Rockingham, and Scarborough, show that the private fortress could still be used on occasion; while such a mansion as Basing house proved itself capable of stubborn resistance. To this belated castle warfare we owe much destruction: it was followed by the “slighting” of defences, and the general reduction of castles to their present state of picturesque ruin. In concluding this account of military architecture, it may be useful to gather, from some of the surveys drawn up in the reign of Henry VIII., the state of some of our principal castles at a period when medieval ideas were disappearing. The coloured drawings, already mentioned, of castles among the duchy of Lancaster records, which probably belong to the early part of the reign of Elizabeth, may owe something to fancy. But of the general accuracy of these verbal surveys, apart from inadequate measurements, there can be less doubt. They all show clearly that castles, as military strongholds, were obsolete, and that not merely their defences, but even their domestic buildings, were allowed to go to decay in time of peace. A survey of Carlisle castle, returned 22nd September 1529, is eloquent of the neglect of the fortress by its constable, Lord Dacre. The wooden doors of the gatehouse of the base-court had rotted away: the lead of the roof had been cut away, probably with an eye to business, so that the rain soaked through the timber below, and had leaked through the vault into the basement, which was at this time used as the county gaol. The gatehouse of the inner ward was in a not much better state; but the gates were of iron and offered more resistance to the weather. The domestic buildings, on the east side of the inner ward, had been roofed with stone slates: the roof of the great chamber had fallen in, and the gallery or passage between the great chamber and hall was “clean gone down.” The chapel and a closet adjoining were partly unroofed: the closet chimney had fallen, and the parlour beneath was in a ruinous state. The hall itself was “like to fall”: the kitchen and some of its offices had fallen, and the bakehouse and pantry were on the point of falling, while rain had gone through the pantry floor into the buttery, which in this case was apparently on a lower level. The great tower, “called the Dungeon,” was, through the decay of the leaden roof, open to rain, and the floors of its three “houses” or stages were gradually rotting. The castle was supplied with artillery, but this was of “small effect and little value.” It included twenty-three iron serpentines or small cannon, six of which were provided with iron axletree pins or trunnions for use on gun-carriages; a small brass serpentine, a foot long; nine other serpentines; forty-five chambers; one iron sling for discharging stone shot; four “hagbushes” (arquebuses or hand-guns); and two bombards or mortar-shaped cannon. The ammunition for the serpentines and arquebuses consisted of 560 leaden bullets: there was also some stone shot and gunpowder. Some gun-stocks, bows, and arrows complete the list of artillery.[379]

Sheriff Hutton castle in Yorkshire, surveyed during the same year, was better off as regards its dwelling-house; for this, as we know from contemporary history, had been occupied with little intermission from the end of the fourteenth century onwards. There were three wards, the outermost being evidently a large base-court, and the middle ward probably, as at Carew, a small court in advance of the inner gatehouse. The hall, kitchen, buttery, pantry, bakehouse, chapel, and lodgings for the lord were in the inner ward. In the base-court were the brew-house and horse-mills, with stables, barns, and granaries. The lead on the roofs was in a generally bad state, and the gutters and spouts wanted mending; but the timber of the inner roofs was still fairly good. The walls and towers of the inner ward, the plan of which, as we have seen, was akin to that of the contemporary Bolton castle, were “strong and high, but must be mended with lime and sand.” Three tons of iron were required to mend the gate of the inner ward. The “mantlewall” of the middle ward was defective and partly in ruin; while the base-court was “all open,” its walls decayed, and its gates gone. In the inner ward was a well, and ponds “for baking and brewing” were near the outer walls. The artillery included “six brass falcons with their carts” and twenty-one arquebuses, for which six barrels of powder and ten score iron shots were provided, bows, bowstrings, and arrows, and two bullet moulds.[380]

After the attainder and execution of the third duke of Buckingham in 1521, two royal escheators took a survey of his lands and houses. Their return, contained in a book of eighty-eight pages,[381] supplies details as to eleven manor-houses and castles. Of these, Caus castle, in west Shropshire, was a mere ruin. Huntingdon castle was decayed, but a tower was reserved for prisoners. The description of Oakham castle might be repeated at the present day. It was “all ruinous, being a large ground within the mantell wall.” The hall, however, was in excellent repair, “and of an old fashion”: the escheators recommended its preservation, because the courts were held there. The three towers of the castle of Newport next the Usk are mentioned, with the water-gate below the middle tower, “to receive into the said castle a good vessel”: the hall and other lodgings were decayed, especially in timber, but the stone could be renewed with a quantity of freestone and rubble stored in the castle. Here, as at Carlisle, Launceston, and elsewhere, the basement of the gatehouse was used as a prison; and its maintenance is therefore insisted upon. The hall at Brecon castle had a new and costly roof with pendants: it was “set on height,” with windows at either end, and none upon the sides. As a matter of fact, the remains of this hall stand above a twelfth-century substructure, which was vaulted from a central row of columns: the south side wall still remains, and is pierced with a row of lancet windows, so that the statement of the survey may refer to a newer hall which has disappeared. There was a new hall in the inner ward at Kimbolton, which had been built some sixty years before by the duke’s great-grandmother. The old curtain against which it stood was in a bad way, and threatened to ruin the hall. Round the inner ward was a moat: the base-court on the outer edge was overgrown with grass, but the barn and stables were in good condition.

“The strongest fortress and most like unto a castle of any other that the Duke had” was the castle of Tonbridge, a mount-and-bailey stronghold whose shell-keep is still one of the finest examples of the type. The keep or “dungeon”—no mention of the mount is made—was at this time covered with a lead roof, half of which was gone. Otherwise, the castle and its curtain were in good repair, the rampart-walk keeping its battlemented outer parapet and rear-wall. The gatehouse, on the north side of the castle, was “as strong a fortress as few be in England”: on the east curtain was a square tower called the Stafford tower, and at the south-east corner, next the Medway, was the octagonal Water tower. The river constituted the chief southern defence of the castle, and there was no south curtain: the substructure of the hall and lodgings, 26 feet high and built of ashlar, was on this side, but the buildings themselves had never been finished.

Castles of a later type were Stafford, and Maxstoke (364) in Warwickshire. Stafford castle at this time consisted of a single block of lodgings with two towers at either end and another in the middle of the south front. The hall was in the centre of the block, with the kitchen, larder, buttery, and pantry beneath it: at one end of the hall was the great chamber with a cellar below, and at the other was a “surveying chamber,” or service-room, to which dishes would be brought from the kitchen. Each of the five towers contained three rooms, in each of which was a fireplace. The towers were machicolated, “the enbatelling being trussed forth upon corbelles.” Outside the house were the chapel, gatehouse, and another kitchen; but this front court was apparently without defensive walls. Maxstoke, originally a castle of the Clintons, which was built and fortified in or after 1345,[382] had been largely repaired by the duchess Anne, the builder of the hall at Kimbolton. There was a base-court with a gatehouse, stables, and barns, which were walled with stone and covered with slate. Round the castle, “a right proper thing after the old building,” was a moat. The house, with a tower at each corner, was built round a quadrangle, and in the side next the bridge over the moat was a gatehouse tower, with a vaulted entry. The hall, the chapel, the great chamber, and the lodgings generally were in good condition, although they were not entirely finished and much glazing was still necessary. The provision of fireplaces is specially mentioned, as well as a point in the planning of the house—the convenient access to the chapel, or, rather, to its gallery or galleries, from the various first-floor rooms at “the over end” of the hall and great chamber.

The moated manor-house of Writtle in Essex can hardly be counted among castles: it was a timber building round a cloistered quadrangle. There was no hall, but “a goodly and large parlour instead.” Thornbury castle in Gloucestershire, however, which was in great part of the duke’s own building, was one of those houses in which some semblance of military architecture was kept. There was no moat, but a base-court and an inner ward. The buildings of the base-court itself had been set out, but were in a very incomplete state, and little had been finished beyond the foundations of the north and west sides. The entrance to the inner ward was in the west face of the quadrangle; but of the west and north blocks only the lower story had been completed. This was of ashlar, while in the base-court ashlar had been used only for the window openings, doorways, and quoins. The hall and kitchen offices formed the east block, “all of the old building, and of a homely fashion”; but the south block, of the newer work, was “fully finished with curious works and stately lodgings,” and from it a gallery of timber cased with stone, with an upper and lower passage, crossed the south garden to the parish church and the duke’s chapel therein. A magnificent feature of this house, which became more and more characteristic of the palaces of noblemen of the age, were the great parks to the east of the castle, and the gardens on its east and south side. Between the east garden and the New park was the orchard, “in which are many alleys to walk in openly,” and round about the orchard were other alleys on a good height, with “roosting places,” covered with white thorn and hazel.

Thornbury castle had reached this degree of unfinished splendour only a few years before the survey was made. The gateway of the outer ward still bears an inscription with the date 1511, while at the base of the moulded brick chimneys of the south block is the date 1514. Remains may still be seen of most of the buildings mentioned in these surveys. Thornbury and Maxstoke are still occupied, and of Thornbury in particular the details of the survey still hold good. The great value of these descriptions is the fact that they tell us something, on the eve of the Renaissance period, of the state of a series of fortresses which represented almost every type of an architecture that had grown up under the influence of conditions rapidly becoming obsolete. At Tonbridge we see the mount-and-bailey fortress of early Norman times, built to meet needs which were purely military, and strengthened with a stone keep and walls and towers of stone as those needs became more pressing. At Carlisle we have the fortress with its compact inner ward and great tower, approached through the spacious base-court which served the needs of the garrison and might shelter flocks and herds in time of war. No castle of the most perfect type, planned in the golden age of military architecture, is represented. At Brecon, however, we can study the growing importance of the domestic buildings of the castle. At Sheriff Hutton we have the quadrangular castle of the fourteenth century with its angle-towers, and its walled base-court serving the purposes of a farm-yard. Stafford castle, the plan of which has been imitated in the modern house on the site, is a fortified residence built in a single block, to which some of the strong houses of the north of England are analogous. The moated house of Maxstoke preserves the quadrangular plan, and has its provisions for defence; but its domestic character was the first aim of its builders, and its walls and towers are without the formidable height and strength of Sheriff Hutton and Bolton. Here and at Thornbury the base-court was still retained; but at Thornbury the energy of the builders was concentrated in the beautiful mansion, and the idea of the defensive stronghold had almost departed. The day of the castle and the walled town was over, and, in the face of methods of attack of which the builders of Norman castles had never dreamed, military engineers were beginning to move along new lines to which architectural considerations were no longer a matter of great importance. An architecture which, developed from earthwork in the beginning, reproduced in stone, at its height, the disposition of the concentric earthworks of primeval times, gave place in its turn to a science in which the employment of earthwork and the natural resources of a defensive position played an increasingly prominent part.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Plan in Allcroft, _Earthwork of England_, 1908, p. 647. The same feature is well seen in the fine camp of Bury Ditches (6) in Shropshire, between Clun and Bishops Castle.

[2] The defences of Old Sarum are now in process of excavation, and the plan of the medieval castle, in the centre of the early camp, has been recovered. See _Proceedings Soc. Antiquaries_, 2nd series, vol. xxiii., pp. 190-200 and 501-18.

[3] It is well seen at Bury ditches (6), where the diagonal entrance is also a feature of the south-west side of the camp, and on the west side of Caer Caradoc, between Clun and Knighton.

[4] The effect of similar conditions on the construction of early Norman castles will be noticed in a later chapter.

[5] Plan in Allcroft, _op. cit._, p. 686; the camp is described fully pp. 682-97.

[6] See Bruce, _Hand-Book to the Roman Wall_, 5th ed., 1907 (ed. R. Blair), pp. 19-21.

[7] The list from the _Notitia Dignitatum_ is given, _ibid._, pp. 11, 12.

[8] The bank is, strictly speaking, the _agger_, the _vallum_ being the rampart on the top of the bank.

[9] The large villas of Romano-British landowners, as at Bignor (Sussex), Chedworth (Gloucestershire), Horkstow (Lincolnshire), were within easy reach of the military roads, but were not directly upon them.

[10] The topography of Roman Lincoln is described by Dr E. M. Sympson, _Lincoln_ (Ancient Cities), 1906, chapter I.

[11] See _Archæologia_, vol. liii., pp. 539-73.

[12] See below as to the blocking of the main gateways at Cilurnum after the building of the great wall. The small single gateways at Cilurnum are on the south side of the wall. At Amboglanna both gateways were south of the wall.

[13] Borcovicus is described by Bruce, _u.s._, pp. 140-60.

[14] Plan in Besnier, _Autun Pittoresque_, 1888. The north-west and north-east gateways of the Roman city remain, but the centre of the city was shifted in the middle ages.

[15] Plan in Allcroft, _u.s._, p. 322. As Burgh Castle had the sea on its west side, it possibly had no west wall. Another tower, on the east side of the north gateway, has fallen away from the wall.

[16] At Pevensey the foundation of the wall is of chalk and flint, covered in one part by an upper layer of concrete, composed of flints bedded in mortar. Below the foundation is a layer of puddled clay, in which oak stakes were fixed vertically at intervals. See L. F. Salzmann, F.S.A., _Excavations at Pevensey_, 1906-7, in _Sussex Archæol. Collections_, vol. li.

[17] Cilurnum is described by Bruce, _u.s._, pp. 86-119, with plan. See also the description and plan in _An Account of the Roman Antiquities Preserved in the Museum at Chesters_, 1903, pp. 87-120.

[18] This was not invariable. At Cilurnum the main street was from east to west, and this was also the case at Corstopitum (Corbridge-on-Tyne).

[19] In this case, the first cohort of the Tungri.

[20] The tenth cohort of the legion had its quarters here: hence the name.

[21] Or the east and west gateways, as already noted, at Cilurnum. The _forum_ occupied the centre of Cilurnum, the _praetorium_ forming a block of buildings east of the centre. The first wing or squadron of the Astures was stationed at Cilurnum.

[22] Prof. Haverfield holds the view that this southern extension is post-Roman. See _Archæol. Journal_, lxvi. 350.

[23] The same thing happened at Lincoln, where the eastern wall of the city followed a line now covered by the eastern transept of the cathedral.

[24] Wat’s dyke, of which remains can be traced south of Wrexham and near Oswestry, was to the east of Offa’s dyke.

[25] _A.-S. Chron._, anno 547.

[26] Bede, _Hist. Ecc._, iii. 16.

[27] It may be noted that not all names in “borough” and “bury” are derived from _burh_ and _byrig_. Some are merely derived from _beorh_ or _beorg_ = a hill (dative _beorge_).

[28] See Oman, _Art of War_, p. 120.

[29] In Germany the word _burg_ is also applied to the citadel of a town or to a castle. In England and France more careful discrimination was made between the two types of stronghold.

[30] References to _burhs_ wrought by Edward and his sister Æthelflæd will be found in _A.-S. Chron_. under the dates mentioned in the text. There is some variety of opinion with regard to the exact accuracy of these dates.

[31] _A.-S. Chron._, sub anno.

[32] _A.-S. Chron._, sub anno. The true date seems to be 837 or 838.

[33] The chief authority for the early invasions of the Northmen in France is the _Annales Bertinenses_, of which the portion from 836 to 861 is attributed to Prudentius, bishop of Troyes.

[34] _Timbrian_ is the ordinary Anglo-Saxon word for “to build,” but it indicates the prevalent material used for building.

[35] This is the main contention of the theory so attractively enunciated by the late G. T. Clark, and endorsed by the authority of Professor Freeman.

[36] Nottingham castle is, in fact, considerably to the west of the probable site of the Saxon _burh_, which was more or less identical with the “English borough” of the middle ages, the western part of Nottingham being known as the “French borough.”

[37] The Danes were again at Tempsford in 1010, and, if the earthwork is of pre-Conquest date, it is more likely to have been thrown up during the earlier than during the later visit.

[38] The story (_A.S. Chron._, sub an. 755) of the murder of Cynewulf and its consequences, mentions the _burh_ or _burg_ of Merton with its gate: the house in which the king was murdered within the _burh_ is called _bur_ (_i.e._, bower, private chamber).

[39] Dr J. H. Round, _Feudal England_, 1909, p. 324, points to the phrase _hoc castellum refirmaverat_ in the Domesday notice of Ewias, as indicative of the existence of the castle before the Conquest, and gives other reasons for the identification.

[40] Domesday, i., f. 23; “Castrum Harundel Tempore Regis Edwardi reddebat de quodam molino xl solidos,” etc. “Castrum Harundel,” however, applies to the town, not the castle; and it does not follow that the name was given to the town before the Conquest.

[41] Ord. Vit., _Hist. Eccl._, iii. 14; “id castellum situm est in acutissima rupe mari contigua.” The phrase may be used generally to describe a site which, in Ordericus’ own day, had become famous for its castle.

[42] Ord. Vit., _Hist. Eccl._ iv. 4.

[43] The Tower of London was outside the east wall of the medieval city. Baynard’s castle was at the point where the west wall approached the Thames.

[44] Ord. Vit., _op. cit._, iv. 4; “pinnas ac turres ... in munimentis addebant vel restaurabant ... Portæ offirmatæ erant, densæque turbæ in propugnaculis et per totum muri ambitum prostabant.”

[45] The foundation of these castles is noted by Ord. Vit., iv. 4, 5.

[46] The word “bailey” (_ballium_) literally means a palisaded enclosure. The synonym “ward,” applied to the various enclosed divisions of a medieval castle, means a guarded enclosure. The term “base-court” (_basse-cour_) is also applied to the bailey.

[47] It should be noted that at York there were not two distinct _burhs_ or fortified towns, such as are found in the earlier cases. The river passed through and bisected the _burh_, which was surrounded by an earthen bank, save at the point where the Foss formed the boundary of the city.

[48] Domesday, i. 248 _b_.

[49] An example of this is the fine earthwork at Lilbourne, in Northamptonshire. There are many other instances, and the lesser bailey at Clun partakes of this character.

[50] There are cases, of course, which give rise to perplexity. Thus at Earls Barton, in Northamptonshire, the famous pre-Conquest church tower stands on a site which appears to be within the original limit of the ditch of the adjacent castle mount. It is doubtful, however, whether the mount was ever ditched on this side; and the church does not encroach upon the mount.

[51] Cæsar, _De Bell. Gall._, vii. 73; “huic [vallo] loricam pinnasque adiecit, grandibus cervis eminentibus ad commissuras pluteorum atque aggeris, qui ascensum hostium tardarent.” See p. 60 below.

[52] See Enlart, ii. 494.

[53] Domfront, however, on its rocky site, may, like Richmond, have been surrounded by a stone wall from the first.

[54] L. Blanchetière, _Le Donjon ou Château féodal de Domfront (Orne)_, 1893, pp. 29, 30.

[55] See note above, p. 45.

[56] Ord. Vit., iii. 5.

[57] The essential portions of these texts are quoted by Enlart, ii. 497-9.

[58] The “lesser donjon” at Falaise, which contained the great chamber, is a rectangular projection of two stories from the great donjon.

[59] Mrs Armitage in _Eng. Hist. Review_, xix. 443-7.

[60] Ord. Vit., viii. 12; “fossis et densis sepibus.”

[61] _Ibid._, viii. 24; “Hic machinas construxit, contra munimentum hostile super rotulas egit, ingentia saxa in oppidum et oppidanos projecit, bellatores assultus dare docuit, quibus vallum et sepes circumcingentes diruit, et culmina domorum super inhabitantes dejecit.”

[62] Ord. Vit., viii. 13; “Callidi enim obsessores in fabrili fornace, quæ in promptu structa fuerat, ferrum missilium callefaciebant, subitoque super tectum principalis aulæ in munimentis jaciebant, et sic ferrum candens sagittarum atque pilorum in arida veterum lanugine imbricum totis nisibus figebant.”

[63] See J. H Round, _Castles of the Conquest_ (_Archæologia_, lviii. 333).

[64] _Adulterinus_ = spurious, counterfeit.

[65] Cæsar, _Bell. Gall._, vii. 68 _seq._ Alesia, near the modern village of Alise-la-Reine, is in the Côte d’Or department, some 36 miles N.W. of Dijon.

[66] Cæsar, _De Bell. Civ._, ii. 1 _seq._

[67] A detailed account of this siege is given by Oman, _Art of War_, pp. 140-7.

[68] Enlart, ii. 413, 414.

[69] Ord. Vit., vii. 10.

[70] _Ibid._ “Rex itaque quoddam municipium in valle Beugici construxit ibique magnam militum copiam ad arcendum hostem constituit.”

[71] _Ibid._, viii. 2.

[72] _Ibid._, viii. 23; Roger of Wendover.

[73] Thus Henry I., in his wars with Louis VI., conducted one blockade by building two castles, which the enemy called derisively Malassis and Gête-aux-Lièvres (Ord. Vit., xii. 1). So also (_ibid._, xii. 22) his castle of Mäte-Putain near Rouen. Many other instances might be named.

[74] Oman, _Art of War_, pp. 135, 139: his authority is Guy of Amiens, whose poetical rhetoric, however, may not be altogether accurate in description.

[75] Ord. Vit., viii. 24. _Cf._ viii. 16, where Robert of Normandy, another great Crusader, besieging Courcy-sur-Dives in 1091, caused a great wooden tower or belfry (_berfredum_) to be built, which was burned by the defenders. Robert of Bellême was also present at this siege.

[76] See below, p. 99.

[77] Suger, _Gesta Ludovici Grossi_ (ed. Molinier, pp. 63-66).

[78] Pent-houses were sometimes elaborately defended. Thus Joinville describes the large “cats” made by St Louis’ engineers to protect the soldiers who were making a causeway across an arm of the Nile near Mansurah (1249-50). These had towers at either end, with covered guard-houses behind the towers, and were called _chats-châteaux_.

[79] See the account of the sieges of Boves and Château-Gaillard by Guillaume le Breton, _Philippis_, books ii. and vii. At the siege of Zara in the fourth Crusade, after five days of fruitless stone-throwing, the Crusaders began to undermine a tower which led to the surrender of the city (Villehardouin).

[80] Abbo: see the account of the siege of Paris above.

[81] Ord. Vit., ix. 15: “Machinam, quam ligneum possumus vocitare castellum.” It was strictly a belfry (see below).

[82] _Ibid._

[83] _Cf._ the account of the operations at the siege of Marseilles (Cæsar, _De Bell. Civ._, ii. 11): “Musculus ex turri latericia a nostris telis tormentisque defenditur.”

[84] The _porte-coulis_ is literally a sliding door. Its outer bars fitted into grooves in the walls on either side. See pp. 227, 229.

[85] Vitruvius, _De Architectura_, x. 13, § 3, mentions among Roman scaling-machines, an inclined plane, “ascendentem machinam qua ad murum plano pede transitus esse posset.”

[86] Guillaume le Breton, _Philippis_, book vii. This poem is an important source of information for the wars of Philip Augustus, and for the siege of Château-Gaillard in particular.

[87] Ord. Vit., ix. 13.

[88] _Ibid._, ix. 11.

[89] _Ibid._, xii. 36.

[90] This is the usual distinction. But the use of the names varies. In Vitruvius (_op. cit._, x. 10, 11) the _catapulta_ or _scorpio_ is a machine for shooting arrows, while the _ballista_ is used for throwing stones. The pointed stakes at the siege of Marseilles (Cæsar, _De Bell. Civ._, ii. 2) were shot from _ballistae_. Vitruvius indicates several methods of working the _ballista_ by torsion: “aliae enim vectibus et suculis (levers and winches), nonnullae polyspastis (pulleys), aliae ergatis (windlasses), quaedam etiam tympanorum (wheels) torquentur rationibus.”

[91] For the injuries inflicted by stone-throwing machines, see Villehardouin’s mention of the wounding of Guillaume de Champlitte at Constantinople, and of Pierre de Bracieux at Adrianople.

[92] Oman, _op. cit._, 139, quotes Anna Comnena to this effect.

[93] Stone-throwing engines and _ballistae_ alike were employed by the Saracens at Mansurah (1250), for hurling Greek fire at the towers constructed by St Louis to protect his causeway-makers (Joinville).

[94] Thus, in the first siege of Constantinople by the Crusaders (1203), Villehardouin emphasises the number of siege-machines used by the besiegers upon shipboard and on land, but gives no account of their use by the defenders. They were employed, however, by the defence, as we have seen at Marseilles; see also Chapter I. above, for possible traces of their use in the stations of the Roman wall. A special platform might in some cases be constructed for them and wheeled to the back of the rampart-walk.

[95] Such crenellations are indicated even in the timber defences at Alesia and Trebonius’ second rampart at Marseilles. They are familiar features of oriental fortification, _e.g._, of the great wall of China or the walls and gates of Delhi.

[96] This roof was sometimes gabled, the timbers, as in the donjon at Coucy, following and resting on the slope of the coping of the parapet.

[97] Sometimes, as at Constantinople in 1204 (Villehardouin), towers were heightened by the addition of one or more stages of wood. _Cf._ the heightening of the unfinished _tête-du-pont_ at Paris in 885-6.

[98] Clark, i. 68-120, gives an elaborate list of castles in England and Wales at this date. A large number, however, of those which he mentions, had been already destroyed; and many were of later foundation.

[99] Accounts of this rebellion are given by Benedict of Peterborough and Roger of Hoveden.

[100] Nottingham was a foundation of the Conqueror: Newark was not founded until after 1123.

[101] Ord. Vit., xi. 2, mentions the capture of the castle of Blyth (Blida castrum) by Henry I. from Robert de Bellême. By this Tickhill is probably meant. It is four miles from Blyth, where was a Benedictine priory founded by Roger de Busli, the first Norman lord of Tickhill, and granted by him to the priory of Ste-Trinité-du-Mont at Rouen. Ordericus, who, as a monk of a Norman abbey, was familiar with the name of Blyth priory, may have supposed the castle of Roger de Busli to have been at Blyth.

[102] See Rymer, _Fœdera_ (Rec. Com., 1816), vol. i. pt. i. p. 429: “castrum de Pontefracto, quod est quasi clavis in comitatu Eborum.”

[103] The remains are chiefly of the second quarter of the fifteenth century; but it was a residence of the archbishops as early as the twelfth century.

[104] A. Harvey, _Bristol_ (Ancient Cities), pp. 35, 116.

[105] Rob. de Monte, quoted by Stubbs, _Select Charters_, 8th ed., 1905, p. 128: “Rex Henricus coepit revocare in jus proprium urbes, castella, villas, quae ad coronam regni pertinebant, castella noviter facta destruendo.”

[106] The curtain (Lat. _cortina_, Fr. _courtine_) is a general name for the wall enclosing a courtyard, and is thus applied to the wall round the castle enclosure.

[107] Martène, _Thesaurus Anecdotorum_, iv. 47, quoted by Enlart, ii. 418. From _alatorium_ is derived the word _allure_, often employed as a technical term for a rampart-walk.

[108] Ord. Vit., v. 19: “Lapideam munitionem, qua prudens Ansoldus domum suam cinxerat, cum ipsa domo dejecit.” In this case the wall seems to have been built, not round an open courtyard, but round a house or tower. The French term for a fortified wall, forming the outer defence of a single building, is _chemise_. Thus, in a mount-and-bailey castle, the palisade round the tower on the mount was, strictly speaking, a _chemise_, while that round the bailey was a curtain.

[109] Ord. Vit., vii. 10.

[110] _Ibid._, viii. 23.

[111] _Ibid._, viii. 5. Robert, son of Giroie, “castellum Sancti Cerenici ... muris et vallis speculisque munivit.”

[112] “Herring-bone” masonry consists of courses of rubble bedded diagonally in mortar, alternating with horizontal courses of thin stones, the whole arrangement resembling the disposition of the bones in the back of a fish. The horizontal courses are frequently omitted, and their place is taken by thick layers of mortar.

[113] See _Yorks. Archæol. Journal_, xx. 132, where the evidence quoted points to the conclusion “that the doorway was not erected later than about 1075.” Harvey, _Castles and Walled Towns_, p. 85, assumes that the doorway was cut through the south wall of the tower at a later date: the evidence of the masonry is decisively against this idea.

[114] The architectural history of Ludlow castle has been thoroughly examined by Mr W. H. St John Hope in an invaluable paper in _Archæologia_, lxi. 258-328.

[115] The original design probably included an upper chamber of moderate height. There was, however, a considerable interval between the completion of the gateway and the building of the upper stage.

[116] The large outer bailey at Ludlow was an addition to the original castle, late in the twelfth century, and is contemporary with the blocking of the gatehouse entrance. Originally the castle consisted merely of the present inner ward. The outer bailey or base-court gave enlarged accommodation for the garrison, and contained stables, barns, and other offices for which there was no room in the inner ward.

[117] The explanation of this passage through the wall was long a mystery. Clark, ii. 278, recognised that it led from an outer to an inner “room,” but was puzzled by the bar-holes which showed that the doors had been carefully defended.

[118] Mr Hope thinks that it was originally intended to cover the gateway with a semicircular barrel-vault. The lower stage of the keep at Richmond has a ribbed vault with central column. This, however, with the vice, now blocked, in the south-west corner, was inserted many years after the building of the great tower on the site of the gatehouse.

[119] The string-courses of the upper stages of the tower, and the windows of the southern chamber, which was of the full height of the two upper stories, and probably formed the chapel of the castle, have further enrichment; but the detail is nowhere elaborate. See T. M. Blagg, F.S.A., _A Guide to Newark, &c._, 2nd ed., pp. 19-22.

[120] Harvey, _op. cit._, p. 98, says that Newark castle “has now no trace of a keep, and possibly never possessed one.” The gatehouse, however, may fairly be considered as belonging to the category of tower-keeps, and has one characteristic of that type of building—viz., the cross-wall which divides the upper stages, and is borne by an archway in the centre of the gateway passage.

[121] The churches of Upton, near Gainsborough, Burghwallis, near Doncaster, and Lois Weedon in Northamptonshire, are examples of this type. “Herring-bone” work occurs at Brixworth, in a portion of the tower to which a pre-Conquest date cannot safely be attributed. At Marton, near Gainsborough, it occurs in a tower of “Saxon” type, which was probably not built until after the Conquest. It is found twice at York, but the date of the so-called Saxon work in the crypt of the minster is very doubtful; while the tower of St Mary Bishophill Junior, although Saxon in type, is more likely to be Norman in date. Examples of “herring-bone” work in the churches of Normandy are found, _e.g._, at Périers and in the apse at Cérisy-la-Forêt (Calvados).

[122] The donjon of Falaise belongs to the early part of the twelfth century, and is therefore a late example of “herring-bone” work. The “herring-bone” work in the keep at Guildford is probably still later, and that in the curtain wall at Lincoln, raised on the top of earthen banks, can hardly be attributed to a very early date.

[123] It has also been noted in the tower of Marton church, near Gainsborough.

[124] The lodge which now occupies its site was built in 1815, while the present main entrance to the castle, south-west of the mount, was made in 1810, and is quite outside the original _enceinte_.

[125] See note 122 on p. 100.

[126] A curtain is said to be flanked when its line is broken at intervals by projections, so near one another that the whole face of the piece of curtain between them can be covered by the fire of the defenders stationed in them.

[127] Much of the curtain of Lancaster castle is of fairly early date. For the supposed Roman origin of the castle and its probable history, see note 354 on p. 327 below.

[128] These additions have given rise to the common theory that this hall is a work of late twelfth century date.

[129] Other examples of early stone halls will be mentioned in a later chapter.

[130] This is very noticeable in Shropshire, where a large number of parish churches, to which rectors were presented and instituted in the ordinary way, are described as free chapels in the registers of the bishops of Lichfield and Hereford during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

[131] See Pat. Rolls, 18 Rich. II., pt. 1, m. 28; 3 Hen. IV., pt. 1, m. 6.

[132] Pat. 2 Edw. III., pt. 2, m. 4. The walls of this chapel, dedicated to St Peter, remain. In the fifteenth century it was enlarged as far as the west curtain by a western annexe, and in the sixteenth century it was divided into two floors, the upper floor being the court-house, and the lower floor the record-room of the court of the Marches.

[133] Pat. 2 Edw. II., pt. 2, m. 24.

[134] The word _keep_ is a comparatively modern term, unknown to medieval castle-builders, to whom this part of the castle was the _donjon_ or _dungeon_, or the _great tower_.

[135] Other important shell keeps of the normal type are at Arundel, Cardiff (114), Carisbrooke (111), Farnham, Lewes, Pickering, Totnes, and Tonbridge—the last one of the most considerable and finest examples.

[136] Clifford’s tower at York is sometimes quoted as a shell keep. It was actually a tower with a forebuilding.

[137] See Enlart, ii. 500, 676: Anthyme Saint-Paul, _Histoire Monumentale_, p. 168, gives the date 993, with an expression of doubt. Fulk the Black was count of Anjou 987-1039.

[138] Enlart, ii. 685, says “début du xiiᵉ siècle.”

[139] Ord. Vit., xii. 14.

[140] _Ibid._, viii. 19.

[141] _Ibid._, x. 18.

[142] _Ibid._, xi. 20: _adulterina castella_ is the phrase used.

[143] Enlart, ii. 710. Blanchetière, _op. cit._, 83, mentions Henry’s operations in 1123, but believes in an earlier date for the donjon.

[144] Rad. de Diceto, _Abbrev. Chron._, sub anno.

[145] _Pipe Roll Soc._, vol. i., pp. 13, 14; iv. 23.

[146] _Ibid._, i. 27.

[147] _Ibid._, i. 29, 30, 31; ii. 14; iv. 36; v. 50; vi. 57, 58; vii. 11, 12; xii. 79; xiii. 31.

[148] _Ibid._, ii. 12; v. 49.

[149] _Ibid._, iv. 35.

[150] _Ibid._, iv. 39.

[151] _Ibid._, iv. 40.

[152] _Ibid._, viii. 89; ix. 59, etc.

[153] _Ibid._, xiii. 107, 108; xv. 132; xvi. 32.

[154] _E.g._, _ibid._, xiii. 140.

[155] _Ibid._, xvi. 32; xviii. 110.

[156] _Ibid._, xviii. 110.

[157] _Ibid._, xiii. 161.

[158] _Ibid._, v. 35.

[159] _Ibid._, xix. 53.

[160] Charles Dawson, _Hastings Castle_, ii. 524.

[161] _Pipe Roll Soc._, ix. 17; xi. 18; xii. 15; xiii. 95; xv. 2; xvi. 2.

[162] _Ibid._, xviii. 16; xix. 68.

[163] _Ibid._, xix. 167; xxi. 77; see also xvi. 92.

[164] _Pipe Roll Soc._, xvi. 118, 119.

[165] _Ibid._, xvi. 141.

[166] _Ibid._, xvi. 137.

[167] _Ibid._, xix. 81.

[168] _Ibid._, xviii. 7; xix. 173.

[169] _Ibid._, xviii. 66; xix. 110; xxii. 183. Malcolm, king of Scots, yielded Bamburgh, Carlisle, and Newcastle to Henry II. in 1157; and the towers at all three places were begun within a few years of this event. That at Bamburgh is mentioned in 1164.

[170] _Ibid._, xix. 2.

[171] See evidence brought by Mrs Armitage, _Eng. Hist. Rev._, xix. 443-7.

[172] Ord. Vit., iv. 1. He calls these strongholds _firmamenta quaedam_.

[173] _A.S. Chron._, sub anno.

[174] Such cross-walls, found in the larger towers, were not merely useful as partitions between the rooms. They enabled the builders to lay their floors more conveniently, as timber of sufficient scantling for so large an undivided space was obtainable with difficulty. In case of the great tower being taken by storm, the cross-wall on each floor formed a barrier to the besiegers, shutting off the tower as it did into two halves. This is well seen, for example, at Porchester.

[175] At Norham and Kenilworth the towers are at an angle of the inner ward where the two wards are adjacent. At Porchester it is at an outer angle of the inner ward, so that two of its sides are on the outer curtain of the castle.

[176] At Hedingham and Rochester there are mural galleries above the level of the second floor, the height of which therefore corresponds to that of two external stories. Both towers are exceptionally lofty, Rochester being 113, Hedingham 100 feet high.

[177] We know from the Pipe Roll for 1173-4 that work was being done at Guildford in that year (_Pipe Roll Soc._, xxi. 3).

[178] This points to two separate dates for the structure. The earlier masonry has been attributed to Bishop Flambard, who founded the castle in 1121; the later to Bishop Pudsey, who made additions to the castle about 1157. If this is so, the history of the tower is parallel to that of Porchester—a low stone tower, possibly of the reign of Henry I., heightened in the reign of Henry II.

[179] Porchester, in spite of its great size, is a tower which was apparently built for exclusively military purposes. The floors are feebly lighted, and there is no fireplace in the building.

[180] Both these castles belong to the class of cliff strongholds which were walled from their earliest foundation.

[181] Further alterations were made in the fifteenth century, when a new stair was inserted in the north-east angle, and the outer stair against the west wall was removed.

[182] For the reason, see note 174 on pp. 121, 122.

[183] Legends about the cruelties practised on prisoners, often connected with these basement chambers, need not be believed too readily. Specially constructed prison chambers in castles usually belong to a period later than the twelfth century. On the origin of the word “dungeon” see Chapter III.

[184] See the description of the tower at Ardres in Chapter III. Such upper floors were probably divided into rooms by wooden partitions.

[185] It was thus impossible to reach the roof from the first floor without passing through the second-floor chamber—a precaution which was adopted also in the cylindrical tower at Conisbrough.

[186] Here the basement was probably used as a prison. The upper part of the original stair still remains.

[187] There are indications, however, of a second chapel in the keep itself, occupying the south-east angle of the third floor.

[188] The recently excavated chapel of the great tower of Old Sarum was a vaulted building occupying the south-eastern part of the basement of the tower itself. It was entered directly from the bailey, and had no direct communication with the first floor of the tower.

[189] Such as the so-called oratories in the fore-buildings of Dover and Newcastle.

[190] At Old Sarum, the room in the basement, west of the chapel, was probably the kitchen.

[191] _Cf._ the employment of one of the angle towers at the later castle of Langley in Northumberland as a garde-robe tower. Some of the late medieval pele-towers of the north of England, _e.g._, Chipchase and Corbridge, provide excellent examples of mural garde-robes with corbelled-out seats.

[192] Roger of Wendover, ann. 1215.

[193] See the description of the fortifications of Antioch in Oman, _Art of War_, pp. 527-9; plan facing p. 283.

[194] _Ibid._, 526-7.

[195] Enlart, ii. 504.

[196] _Ibid._, ii. 508: it is attributed to Amaury, count of Evreux (1105-37): the masonry (_ibid._, 461) is of coursed rubble with bonding-courses of ashlar.

[197] See note 161, p. 119. The keep of Orford is described at some length by Harvey, _Castles and Walled Towns_, pp. 106-111.

[198] Enlart, ii. 505.

[199] Possibly there was a trap-door in the centre of each floor: see below. All the floors are gone above the entrance stage.

[200] An embrasure is the splay or inner opening of a window. The word is also applied to the openings between the _merlons_ or solid pieces of a crenellated parapet.

[201] See pp. 217, 230, 233.

[202] It may also be noted that the practice of placing windows immediately above one another would be naturally avoided, as tending to weaken the masonry of the whole wall at these points. This is well seen in the irregular position of the numerous loops which light the vice of the donjon at Coucy.

[203] Enlart, ii. 735, gives the date of the donjon (Tour Guinette) at Etampes as about 1140.

[204] Enlart, ii. 674, gives the date of completion at Issoudun as 1202.

[205] Or _mâchecoulis_. _Coulis_ = a groove. The first part of the word is probably derived from _mâcher_ = to break or crush, and implies the purpose effected by missiles sent through those openings.

[206] Drawing in Enlart, ii. 504. Here there are two rectangular towers, with rounded angle-turrets, connected by a lofty intermediate building.

[207] The same cause undoubtedly led, at an earlier date, to the covering of Syrian churches with roofs of stone.

[208] Château-Gaillard was on the French side of the Seine, in territory purchased by Richard I. from the archbishop of Rouen.

[209] E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, _Le Château de Coucy_, pp. 48, 49, shows that the donjon forms part of the latest work undertaken by Enguerrand III., lord of Coucy, the founder of the present castle, who died in 1242: it was evidently completed about 1240.

[210] The town walls appear to be rather earlier than the castle (_ibid._, 34).

[211] On the third floor, these niches are divided into two stages and connected by an upper gallery which pierces the abutments of the vault, and surrounds the whole apartment. The method of vaulting this gallery behind the abutments, so as to give additional resistance to the masonry of the tower, is described by Lefèvre-Pontalis, _op. cit._ 94: see plan _ibid._, p. 93.

[212] In the angle-towers at Coucy, however, the stairs take the form of vices, and do not curve with the wall, although ceasing at each floor.

[213] The gabled coping of the parapet formed the central support for the sloping roof of the outer gallery and of the corresponding _coursière_ on the inner side.

[214] It stands on a promontory between two creeks at the head of the inlet known as the Pembroke river.

[215] The domestic buildings may be in part earlier, but were largely reconstructed in the thirteenth century.

[216] The tower is sometimes described as being of five stages: the dome, however, was merely a vault, and did not form a separate stage.

[217] An account of Flint castle is given by Harvey, _Castles and Walled Towns_, p. 123 _seq._ Speed’s map of Flintshire, made _c._ 1604, shows that the tower was joined to the adjacent curtain by a wall, the rampart-walk of which probably gave access to the entrance on the first floor of the tower.

[218] In 1277 the castle of Flint was a timber structure, so that the present work cannot be earlier than the end of the thirteenth century. The masonry is composed of large blocks of yellow sandstone, decayed where they are exposed to the tide. There was an outer bailey, the platform of which alone remains, with a ditch between it and the castle proper.

[219] These holes do not, however, surround the tower, so that the passage may have been only partially roofed.

[220] The keep of Launceston was probably built about the close of the twelfth century: that at Flint later, as already noted.

[221] Reproduced in _Memorials of Old Yorkshire_, 1909, opposite p. 256.

[222] _I.e._, retaining walls used to face (_revêtir_) a sloping surface.

[223] A bartizan is a small turret or lookout corbelled out at an angle of a tower or on the surface of a wall. The word is connected with “brattice” (_bretèche_); and such turrets, like the machicolated parapet, are the stone counterpart of the bratticing and hoarding of timber applied to fortresses at an earlier date.

[224] Ventress’s model of the castle, made in 1852, shows the great hall near the north-east corner of the outer ward, its west end being nearly opposite the main entrance of the castle. The outer ward nearly surrounded the small inner ward, which contained the keep.

[225] At Richmond the hall and its adjacent buildings were unusually complete for their date, and the tower-keep was not planned as a dwelling-house. None of our tower-keeps, Porchester excepted, are so purely military in character.

[226] The origin of this term is doubtful; some think it to be a corruption of “barbican”—a work covering the entrance to the house or castle proper. Large outer baileys, as at Ludlow (96) and Coucy, correspond to the “barmkins” of the north of England.

[227] At Arundel, Cardiff, and Warwick, mount-and-bailey castles which are still inhabited, the present great halls stand on sites which were doubtless occupied by the original halls built by the founders. All three were largely rebuilt at a later date, and have been further restored in modern times. Warwick was one of the Conqueror’s earliest castles; Arundel was founded before 1086, Cardiff about 1093. A large portion of the _enceinte_ at Cardiff follows the line of the curtain of the Roman station (see _Archæologia_, lvii. pp. 335-52).

[228] At Boothby Pagnell there is a cylindrical chimney-shaft very similar to that of the hall at Christchurch.

[229] The usual arrangement even in small cottages: _cf._ Chaucer, _Cant. Tales_, B. 4022 (the house of the dairy-woman in the Nonne Preestes Tale), “Ful sooty was hir bour, and eek hir halle.”

[230] The word “solar” or “soller” (_solarium_ = a terrace exposed to the sun) was used indiscriminately of any room, gallery, or loft above the ground-level of a building: _e.g._, the loft or gallery above a chancel-screen was commonly known as a “solar,” and the same word should be applied to the chamber, inaccurately called a “parvise,” on the first floor of a church porch. The word, however, is sometimes applied to a well-lighted parlour facing south, without respect to the floor on which it stands, _e.g._, the abbot’s solar at Haughmond (_Archæol. Journal_, lxvi. 307) and at Jervaulx (_Yorks. Archæol. Journal_, xxi. 337).

[231] Ord. Vit., iv. 19: “Super solarium ... tesseris ludere ceperunt.” The word “solarium” may be used, of course, in this passage with reference merely to the site of the house—_i.e._, it may mean “the first floor above the ground.” In this case William and Henry may have been playing dice in the hall itself, which, as at Christchurch, may have occupied the whole “solarium.” Robert was evidently outside the house.

[232] Bates, _Border Holds of Northumberland_ attributes the walling, etc., of Warkworth castle “on its present general lines” to Robert, son of Roger (1169-1214), who obtained in 1199, for 300 marks, a confirmation of the grant of the castle and manor from John.

[233] So called in Clarkson’s survey, made in 1567. One explanation of the name is that the tower was similar to one in Carrickfergus castle, on Belfast Lough. Clarkson describes its polygonal form as “round of divers squares.”

[234] This entrance has been blocked, and the modern entrance has been cut through a window-opening, in the adjoining bay to the west.

[235] The aisle-walls are low and the whole building is covered by a single high-pitched roof, so that there is no clerestory.

[236] The same feature occurs at the west end of the great hall at Auckland, where the daïs was placed: there are regular responds at the east end, but the eastern bay was made somewhat wider than the rest, to give room for the screens.

[237] Bishop Bek (1284-1311) probably heightened the aisle-walls and inserted traceried windows. Cosin (1660-72) rebuilt the greater part of the outer walls, renewed Bek’s windows, and added the present clerestory and roof: the splendid screen, which divides the chapel from the ante-chapel, was also part of his work.

[238] The work of this late period is attributed to Bishop Tunstall (1530-59). Cosin at a later date made additions to the chapel.

[239] At the fortified manor-house of Drayton, some fourteen miles south-east of Rockingham, the great hall is a fabric of the later half of the thirteenth century, although the date has been obscured by later alterations. The vaulted cellar at the east end of the hall (_c._ 1270) is almost intact; but the great chamber above was rebuilt about the end of the seventeenth century.

[240] As at Penshurst. The hearth-stone remains at Stokesay. At Haddon the great fireplace in the west wall was inserted several years after the hall was built.

[241] At Harlech the kitchen was at right angles to the hall, against the south curtain.

[242] The words “horn-work,” “demilune,” or “ravelin,” were applied in later fortification to flanked outworks which presented a salient angle to the field, _i.e._, on the side of attack. To such defences in the middle ages the general name of “barbican” seems to have been given.

[243] The mining operations, so successful at Château-Gaillard, were not without their own danger to the miners. In the siege of Coucy by the count of Saint-Pol in 1411, the traditional method was used to undermine one of the towers of the base-court. A party of the besiegers descended to admire the preparations. The wooden stays, however, were not strong enough to support the weight of the tower, which fell unexpectedly, and buried the men in the mine. Their remains have never come to light.

[244] These are additions to the wall, probably made soon after the building of the great cylindrical tower. The wall seems to be of the earlier part of the twelfth century, and may have enclosed the bailey from the first. No traces of a mount remain.

[245] The position of Appleby town and castle, within a great sweep of the Eden, is somewhat similar.

[246] Apartments, known as the Constable’s lodging, were on the first floor of the gatehouse: the portcullis probably descended through the thickness of the south wall of this floor, which was not pierced for a window.

[247] The common idea that molten lead was poured through these holes on the besiegers is a mere legend. This valuable material would hardly have been employed for this purpose. Powdered quick-lime, however, may have been used, with even more deadly effect.

[248] This applies, of course, to almost all vaulted towers which are cylindrical in plan, and not to gatehouse towers alone: _e.g._, the towers of the inner ward of Coucy. But, even where there is no vaulting, the interior plan of cylindrical towers is sometimes polygonal—_e.g._, in the western angle-towers at Harlech, on all floors as well as in the basement. In the eastern angle-towers of the same castle, the interior of the basements is cylindrical. Clark, ii. 73, describes these angle-towers inaccurately.

[249] The entrances to such guard-rooms, where great thickness was given to the outer wall, took the form of narrow elbow-shaped lobbies, which would be a source of difficulty and deception to an attacking force.

[250] The Black gate was built in 1247: the entrance was protected by an outer barbican in 1358.

[251] Holes in the masonry for the beam to which the pulley was fixed may be seen, _e.g._, in the gateways at Conway and Rhuddlan.

[252] At Sandal (86) there was a barbican guarding the entrance to a shell-keep.

[253] Conisbrough is virtually a castle of one ward set on an isolated hill, not unlike Restormel in Cornwall.

[254] The entrance may be compared to the more perfect plan of the barbican and platform at Conway (254).

[255] The wall of _enceinte_ at Scarborough is probably in great part the wall which defended the castle from its foundation.

[256] They appear to have been a feature of the keep at Pontefract; _cf._ also Micklegate, Monk, and Bootham bars at York, which have bartizans at the outer angles. At Lincoln the wall of the upper floor of the gatehouse, between the bartizans, presents an obtuse angle to the field.

[257] The main gatehouse (Belle-Chaise) was built under abbot Tustin (1236-64); the _châtelet_ was added under Pierre Le Roy in 1393.

[258] The fortifications of Coucy were built in the thirteenth century: the round tower in front of the Porte de Laon was superseded in 1551 by a bastion of pentagonal form. The southern gate of Coucy (Porte de Soissons) was made in a re-entering angle of the town wall: the southern gate at Conway (Porth-y-Felin) shows the same disposition. The walls of Tenby were originally built early in the reign of Edward III.: letters patent, granting murage for seven years to the men of Tenby for the construction of their walls, were issued 6th March 1327-28 (Pat. 2 Edw. III., pt. 1, m. 22).

[259] Plan in Oman, _Art of War_, opposite p. 530.

[260] The northern rampart-walk at Coucy was widened by the building of an arcade of thirteen pointed arches against the inner face of the wall, connecting a series of internal buttresses. Part of the western wall of the town of Southampton was widened, some time later than the actual building of the wall, by the addition of eighteen arches upon the outer face (293). The soffits of the arches were pierced by long machicolations—a necessary precaution in so exceptional an arrangement.

[261] In the battlement of the donjon of Coucy, each piece of solid wall between the arched embrasures is pierced by an arrow-loop (177).

[262] Viollet-le-Duc, _La Cité de Carcassonne_, p. 27, has a drawing of a similar device with an upper and lower shutter (245): the upper shutter is propped open by iron guards: while the lower is hung in iron hooks fixed in the face of the wall.

[263] _Cf._ sections of church parapets in Bond, _Gothic Architecture in England_, pp. 385-8.

[264] At Kenilworth the Water tower, on the south curtain of the base-court, has a fireplace in the basement.

[265] Garde-robes built upon arches across re-entering angles of a wall occur on each side of a large buttress in the west wall of Southampton. A similar feature occurs at the junction of the north curtain of Porchester castle with one of the Roman towers. In both cases the addition was probably made in the fourteenth century.

[266] These towers appear to be of the fourteenth century, and are therefore much later in date than the towers of the inner curtain.

[267] At Flint, Rhuddlan, and several other castles, the angle-towers were three-quarter circles, the face towards the bailey being a flat wall, on which, at Rhuddlan as at Harlech, the rampart-walk was corbelled out.

[268] These walls, pierced by seven gates and flanked by thirty-nine rectangular towers, were begun under Pope Clement VI. in 1345, and finished _c._ 1380. The rampart is reached by stairs set against the inner face of the walls. The walls of Aigues-Mortes, built 1272-5, and of Carcassonne, begun earlier and completed later than Aigues-Mortes, belong to an earlier period of fortification, corresponding to that of our Edwardian castles. Of other well-known French examples, the walls of Mont-Saint-Michel are of various dates from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century: those of Domfront are partly of the thirteenth, those of Fougères (250) of the fifteenth century, and those of Saint-Malo chiefly of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The thirteenth-century _enceinte_ of Coucy has already been referred to. A list of the numerous remains of town walls in France will be found in Enlart, ii. 623 _seq._, under the name of each department.

[269] Clark, i. 460, 312, 314.

[270] The cross-wall at Carnarvon is gone.

[271] The polygonal towers which flank the great gatehouse at Denbigh had the same characteristic of obtuse angles, as can be still seen where the masonry has not been stripped from the rubble core.

[272] The threshold of the gateway was from 35 to 40 feet above the bottom of the ditch.

[273] The eastern gateway was defended in the same way.

[274] Le Krak (Kala’at-el-Hosn) was rebuilt in 1202, and held by the Franks till 1271 (Enlart, ii. 536). It was a frontier fortress of the county of Tripoli in Syria, commanding the mountain country to the east, and must be distinguished from the great castle of Kerak in Moab, near the Dead sea, built about 1140, and surrendered in 1188, “the eastern bulwark of the kingdom of Jerusalem” (Oman, _Art of War_, 541). The entrance to the castle of Kerak has been described above, pp. 240, 241.

[275] One feature of the defences of Berkhampstead is the series of earthen bastions, applied to the outer bank on the north side of the castle, probably at a date long after the foundation of the stronghold.

[276] The breadth of the “lists” or intermediate defence of the town-walls at Carcassonne varies. On the steep western and south-western sides they are very narrow, and in one place are covered by the rectangular Bishop’s tower. The ground-floor of this was a gateway, which could be used to shut off one part of the lists from each other. Of the castle and its defences more will be said later.

[277] At Newcastle the plan was nearly concentric; but the curtains of the outer and inner ward met at one point, and the outer ward was a large space, containing the domestic buildings, while the inner was nearly filled by the keep. The concentric scheme was therefore almost accidental, and no simultaneous use of both lines of defence was possible.

[278] _Cf._ the outer ditch constructed to cover the barbican at Alnwick, where there was possibly a further outwork next the town.

[279] All these gatehouses, like the gatehouse at Rockingham and others of the same period, have a central passage, flanked by round towers towards the field. Traitors’ gate, however, has an entrance of great breadth, wide enough to admit a boat from the river; and the interior is an oblong pool, without flanking guard-rooms. The round towers cap the outer angles, but are of relatively small importance in the plan. The interior pool is actually part of the ditch between the outer ward and the Thames, and the gateway is “a barbican ... placed astride upon the ditch” (Clark, ii. 242).

[280] These angle-towers appear to belong in great part to the end of the twelfth century: the Beauchamp tower is generally attributed to the reign of Edward III.

[281] These and the adjacent curtain are largely of the twelfth century: the Bloody tower was added in the fourteenth century.

[282] Thus protecting the quay outside Traitors’ gate. _Cf._ the spur-wall at Beaumaris.

[283] The thirteenth-century work in the great hall (103) of Chepstow castle is unusually elaborate for military work of the period: nowhere in English castles have we such splendour and beauty of detail as that of which there remain many indications at Coucy.

[284] It was begun about 1267 by Gilbert de Clare, eighth earl of Gloucester and seventh earl of Hertford (d. 1295).

[285] The inner ward at Kenilworth lay at all points within an outer line of defence. The outer ward, narrow on the south and west, was very broad on the east and north, and its western half was cut up into sections by cross-walls: it was also crossed by a ditch in front of the inner ward. The lake did not surround the castle, and on the north its outer defence was a very deep dry ditch.

[286] The partisans of the Despensers held Caerphilly against Queen Isabel in 1326: its defenders were granted a general pardon, from which Hugh, son of Hugh le Despenser the younger, was excepted, 15th February 1326-7 (Pat. 1 Edw. III., pt. 1, m. 29). One of the defenders, John Cole, received a special pardon on 20th February (_ibid._, m. 32). There is no record of a definite siege.

[287] The earthwork or redoubt on the north-west side of the castle is probably of this period: no definite details of the destruction of the castle are preserved.

[288] The inner buildings at Rhuddlan have entirely disappeared: traces of one or two fireplaces are left in the curtain.

[289] At Rhuddlan a passage, protected by an outer wall ending in a square tower, descended the river-bank to the water-gate.

[290] Clark (i. 217) places the date of foundation about 1295.

[291] The outer drum towers are large and imposing, though low: the inner angles are capped by smaller towers, which bear much the same relation to the gatehouses as the outer round towers to Traitors’ gate in the Tower of London.

[292] Of these towers, that on the west has an outer salient or spur, on the sides of which two bartizans are corbelled out: these are united into one, so that the outer face of the upper stage of the tower is rounded into a semicircle. The eastern tower is smaller, with a solid base: the western part of the upper portion is corbelled off in the angle between the tower and a rectangular southern projection. The upper stages of the towers completely command the approach, while the projection just mentioned would conceal a small body of defenders posted between the gateway and the spur-wall (236).

[293] This was not founded by the Crown, like the great castles of North Wales, but, like Caerphilly, was a private foundation. It passed by marriage, early in the fourteenth century, into the possession of the house of Lancaster. Some of the most important English castles—_e.g._, Kenilworth, Knaresborough, Lancaster, Lincoln, Pontefract, and Pickering—came at various times into the possession of this royal house, and, at the accession of Henry IV., became castles of the Crown as seized of the duchy of Lancaster.

[294] The stair to the rampart-walk, built against the curtain, was, however, normal in the defences of towns (241).

[295] It may be compared with the division of the outer face of the polygonal tower at Stokesay into two smaller half-octagons (306).

[296] Viollet-le-Duc’s drawing (_La Cité de Carcassonne_, p.75) shows a rampart-walk on each of the enclosing walls of this passage. He also shows the passage crossed by a series of looped barriers, so placed that each formed a separate line of defence, guarded by a few soldiers, and compelled an enemy to pursue a zigzag course through the passage. Much allusion has been already made to oblique and elbow-shaped contrivances for impeding an enemy’s progress: the antiquity of these is evident from the entrances to earthworks like Maiden Castle (see