Part 2

Henry II held his court at Windsor at Easter, 1170, accompanied by William the Lion of Scotland and his brother David; there he held a parliament in 1175, and often resided; he knighted his son, Prince John, within its walls; and it is said that one of the apartments was decorated with a picture of a dying eagle attacked by four eaglets, to represent himself and his rebel sons. When Richard I lay in prison, on his way home from the Crusade, John seized Windsor, but was forced by the barons to give it up. When John succeeded to the kingdom he frequently kept Christmas at the Castle, and there in 1210 he confined William de Braose of Bramber's wife and son, and the son's wife, in chains until they died of hunger and misery. A contemporary says that the captives were shut in a room with a sheaf of wheat and a piece of raw bacon, and that in eleven days the mother was found sitting upright between her son's knees, her head thrown back on his breast, and that she had gnawed his cheek, probably after his death, as he sat with his face bowed. From Windsor John rode out to Runnymede in June, 1215, to sign _Magna Charta_. When he broke his faith soon after, Louis of France and the English barons subdued all the south of England save Dover and Windsor. Windsor they besieged with a great force under the Count de Nevers; but John corrupted him to treachery, and was then free to gather an army from his garrisons and lay waste the eastern counties, in that furious and hasty course which led to his death in 1216.

John's son, Henry III, was a great builder at Windsor. He raised the Bell, the Clewer, the Berners, and the Almoners' Towers on the north side, and on the south-west the Garter and Salisbury Towers, completed the ditch on the west and added a barbican, and in the upper ward made two great chambers for himself and his queen, and a chapel with painted windows. The King's Hall, in the Clewer Tower, is now the Library of the Dean and Chapter. In 1248 Henry received the Papal nuncios at the Castle. In 1261 he kept Christmas there with his queen and his daughter, the Queen of Scotland. It was a fine season, more like summer than winter, and Margaret of Scotland had come that she might bear her first child in her native place. She had been born at Windsor in 1240, and spent her childhood in the Castle with her brother, afterwards Edward I, who was a year older. Married as a child to Alexander III, she spent an unhappy girl-wifehood in Scotland, and was not allowed to visit England. But in 1261 she concealed the nearness of her time from the Scots and her husband and came to Windsor where, after a long waiting with her mother, the child was born. There was then no more splendid castle in Europe, says Matthew of Westminster. As a fortress it was of first importance, as a palace it was unrivalled. On the outbreak of the war with the barons Henry's son Edward occupied the Castle, placed his wife Eleanor there, and strengthened it with foreign troops, who devastated the surrounding country. It was used as a prison for London citizens. Two years later, in 1265, it surrendered to de Montfort. After his death, followed by the Ban of Kenilworth and the conclusion of peace, Henry came to Windsor again in 1268.

Edward I and his queen often lived at Windsor; three of their children were born there; and in 1278 he held a tournament in the Park with thirty-eight of his knights. His son, Edward II, kept Christmas at the Castle in 1308 and afterwards, and in 1312 his first son, Edward III "of Windsor", was born there. When the Despensers returned in 1321 and the opposition barons were put to death, Francis de Aldenham suffered at Windsor.

Edward III made Windsor his chief residence, and began a remodelling and rebuilding of the castle which lasted twenty years, though some of it was done in such haste that assuredly the oak timber did not lie long enough by the roadside for its ends to bourgeon into gophered fungi of the colour of gold. It was worth the haste, beyond doubt, for a boy to see it begun, then in his prime to ride back again and to see suddenly the whole range of it, beautiful in its pale new stone under the dawn, the trees of home whispering above him and the night of absence behind. The Castle of Edward III, in its outline, mass, extent, and arrangement, has dominated all succeeding changes until the present day, though little of the actual structure is to be seen except in the Dean's Cloister, the "Norman" gate at the Round Tower, the vaulted basement of the Devil's Tower, and the groined vaulting under the north side of the Castle between the kitchen and King John's Tower. He built the Round Tower on the mound, the great Hall of St. George, lodgings on the south and east of the upper ward, a Chapel of St. George (to supplant Henry I's chapel, dedicated to the Confessor), and the whole circumference of the walls with their towers and gates. Of those works it is possible to give some account. "The Tower, though usually called round," says the historian of the _Life and Times of Edward III_, "is not really so; the east side next the upper Castle is flattened to accommodate the building to the form of the mound--a clear proof that the mound was not made for the tower.... The tower was built entirely in ten months, in the eighteenth year of Edward III. It was built in great haste by the special command of the King, to receive the Round Table for the new order of Knights of the Garter, then just established.... A large number of hands were employed for a few weeks to collect materials, dig out stone, fell trees in the forest, prepare lime-pits and sand-pits, and all things necessary for a great work to be done in a short time. Many were employed in the royal quarry at Bisham, near Marlow, on the Thames, a few miles above Windsor, in digging out the chalk or soft stone there, of which the bulk of the wall consists; but it is faced with better stone, a large proportion of it having been brought from Wheatley in Oxfordshire, and a smaller part from Caen. Some of this was bought in London by the Dean of St. Paul's, who had prepared it for some other purpose, but as that was not enough, three ships' loads were brought direct from Caen. The timber must have been used quite green, as the carpenters were sent out to cut it in the forest. Messengers were despatched to every part of England to impress the most skilful workmen. For a short time as many as 600 men were employed in the Castle, and 122 in the quarry in addition. But the number was soon reduced rapidly, the chroniclers say, on account of the wars, and the consequent want of money, but more probably because, when the materials were all prepared, only a small number of hands were required, or could work at the same time. The drawbridges were strengthened for the purpose of carrying the materials across them, and in various ways it is evident that the circular wall which makes the Round Tower was built to receive the Round Table for the knights to dine at. The table was placed in a wooden gallery within the tower wall, with a passage under it for the servants, and an open space in the centre. The building was covered by a roof of tiles; part of the wooden arcade of the gallery remains, and nearly the whole of the cornice of the roof with the fine mouldings of the fourteenth century. There are entries in the accounts for the purchase of tiles for covering the wall of the building over the Round Table, and the carting of them from Penn in Buckinghamshire, where they were made. The kitchen for the table was on the top of the square tower on the slope of the mound, called the Kitchen Tower, which also served for the tower of a drawbridge over the moat.... The knights sat on one side only with their backs to the wall. The King and his sons dined with them all on the same level, without any high table. The whole cost of the Round Table, with the tower to contain it, was rather more than £500 of the money of that day, equal to about £10,000 of modern money."

But the new Castle, though so strong, was to be famous as a palace and a prison rather than a fortress. In 1347 King David Bruce of Scotland came to it as a prisoner after his defeat at Neville's Cross. His confinement in a tower on the south-west wall of the upper ward, and elsewhere, lasted eleven years, until the ransom of 100,000 marks, equal to £1,250,000 of our money, was paid. In or about the year of the Black Death, 1349, Edward founded the Order of the Garter at Windsor, perhaps in remembrance of the capture of Calais in 1347, perhaps fantastically influenced by a traditional association of the hill of Windsor with Arthur and his Round Table. This Order of twenty-six knights was to promote "honour and nobleness" under the patronage of the Trinity, the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. George of Cappadocia, and St. Edward the Confessor. There were to be annual Whitsuntide jousts for English and foreign knights, and feasts at a great Round Table; and in the first tournament Edward himself and the captive King of Scotland took part.

"He instituted the Order of the Garter," says the chronicler of the kings of England, "upon what Cause is not certain: The common opinion is, that a Garter of his own Queen, or (as some say) of the Lady Joan, Countess of Salisbury, slipping off in a Dance, King Edward stooped and took it up; whereat some of his Lords that were present, smiling, as at an amorous Action, he seriously said, It should not be long e'er Sovereign Honour should be done to that Garter; whereupon he afterward added the French Motto, _Honi soit qui mal y pense_; therein checking his Lords' sinister suspicion."

The Joan, or Alice, of Salisbury of the legend is that countess of whom Froissart tells one of the finest of his tales. Her lord had been taken prisoner by the French before Lille, and she was in his castle at Wark when King David of Scotland invaded England in 1341. The invaders and a drove of English beeves passed by without stopping, whereupon Sir William Montague, Captain of the castle, sallied out and carried off the cattle from the rear-guard. The Scots turned back to assault Wark. The besieged kept a brave heart, "for by the regard of such a lady and by her sweet comforting a man ought to be worth two men at need". After some days Sir William slipped out with a prayer for help to Edward III, then at York. The relieving army arrived on the day when the Scots raised the siege, and Edward stayed at the castle to salute the countess, whom he had not seen since her marriage, and to learn the conduct of the attack and defence.

"As soon as the lady knew of the king's coming, she set open the gates and came out so richly beseen, that every man marvelled at her beauty and could not cease to regard her nobleness, with her great beauty and the gracious words and countenance that she made. When she came to the king, she kneeled down to the earth, thanking him of his succours, and so led him into the castle to make him cheer and honour, as she that could right well do it. Every man regarded her marvellously: the king himself could not withhold his regarding of her; for he thought that he never saw before so noble nor so fair a lady. He was stricken therewith to the heart with a sparkle of fine love that endured long after: he thought no lady in the world so worthy to be beloved as she. Thus they entered into the castle hand in hand: the lady led him first into the hall and after into the chamber, nobly apparelled. The king regarded so the lady, that she was abashed: at last he went to a window to rest him, and so fell in a great study. The lady went about to make cheer to the lords and knights that were there, and commanded to dress the hall for dinner. When she had all devised and commanded, then she came to the king with a merry cheer, who was in a great study, and she said, 'Dear sir, why do ye study so for? Your grace not displeased, it appertaineth not to you so to do. Rather ye should make good cheer and be joyful, seeing ye have chased away your enemies, who durst not abide you. Let other men study for the remnant.' Then the king said: 'Ah! dear lady, know for truth that sith I entered into the castle, there is a study come to my mind, so that I cannot choose but to muse: nor I cannot tell you what shall fall thereof: put it out of my heart I cannot.' 'Ah! sir,' quoth the lady, 'ye ought always to make good cheer to comfort therewith your people. God hath aided you so in your business, and hath given you so great graces, that ye be the most doubted and honoured prince in all Christendom; and if the King of Scots hath done you any despite or damage, ye may well amend it when it shall please you, as ye have done divers times or this. Sir, leave your musing and come into the hall, if it please you: your dinner is all ready.' 'Ah! fair lady,' quoth the king, "other things lieth at my heart that ye know not of: but surely the sweet behaving, the perfect wisdom, the good grace, nobleness and excellent beauty, that I see in you, hath so sore surprised my heart, that I cannot but love you, and without your love I am but dead.' Then the lady said, 'Ah, right noble prince, for God's sake mock nor tempt me not. I cannot believe that it is true that ye say, nor that so noble a prince as ye be would think to dishonour me and my lord my husband, who is so valiant a knight and hath done your grace so good service, and as yet lieth in prison for your quarrel. Certainly, sir, ye should in this case have but a small praise, and nothing the better thereby. I had never as yet such a thought in my heart, nor I trust in God never shall have, for no man living. If I had any such intention, your grace ought not all only to blame me, but also to punish my body, yea, and by true justice to be dismembered.'...

"All that day the king tarried there and wist not what to do. Sometimes he imagined that honour and truth defended him to set his heart in such a case, to dishonour such a lady and so true a knight as her husband was, who had always well and truly served him. On the other part love so constrained him, that the power thereof surmounted honour and truth. Thus the king debated in himself all that day and all that night. In the morning he arose and dislodged all his host and drew after the Scots, to chase them out of his realm. Then he took leave of the lady, saying, 'My dear lady, to God I commend you till I return again, requiring you to advise you otherwise than you have said to me'. 'Noble prince,' quoth the lady, 'God the Father glorious be your conduct, and put you out of all villain thoughts. Sir, I am and ever shall be ready to do your grace service to your honour and mine.' Therewith the king departed all abashed; and so followed the Scots...."

At the same time as the Garter the College of St. George was founded, consisting of twenty-six Canons and twenty-six Poor Knights, all to live within the walls of the lower ward. The name of "Poor Knights" was recently changed, out of a characteristic modern dislike, to "Military Knights".

In 1357 King John of France arrived as a prisoner at Windsor. He and his son Philip were captured by the English at Creçy. He rode through London to the palace of the Savoy "on a white steed with very rich furniture, and the Prince of Wales on a little black hackney by his side". There he kept his household for a time, and was visited and entertained by the King and Queen of England, "consoling him"--whatever that may mean--"all in their power". He was transferred to Windsor, and there hunted and hawked and took what other diversions he pleased in the neighbourhood. Nevertheless he died in England in 1364. The tower at the north-west corner of the upper ward is called King John's after this captive.

A year after Creçy, in 1357, and also in 1358, the year of the great tournament, Chaucer was at Windsor, at the Garter feast of St. George. He was in the train of the Countess of Ulster, wife to Prince Lionel, and it is known that at Easter in 1357, when he was about seventeen, he received a short cloak, a pair of breeches in red and black, and shoes. On St. George's Day, sixteen years later, after his embassies in Italy and France, he was granted a daily pitcher of wine for life, which was commuted to a pension of the annual value of about £200 in modern money. Only forty years after Edward III built it, St. George's Chapel was threatened with ruin, and Chaucer superintended the repairs. Richard II was now king, and in his presence at Windsor Henry Bolinbroke accused Mowbray of treason in 1398. Bolinbroke's banishment followed, and few barons cared to come to the tournament proclaimed at the Castle by Richard, though "forty knights and forty squires clothed in green with the device of a white falcon" were to hold the lists against all comers, and the queen and her ladies were to grace the feast. The king parted from his wife in the old Deanery of the Castle, lifting her up in his arms and kissing her many times--"great pity it is they separated, for they never saw each other more".

Henry IV also used the Castle as a prison, first for the infant Earl of March and his brother, who were descended from an elder brother of Henry's father, John of Gaunt. Lady Despenser, who had the care of them, got them out of the Castle and on the way to Wales, but the alarm was given, and the maker of the keys lost his hands and then his head. In 1406 Prince James of Scotland, then eleven years old and on his way to school in France, was caught by a privateer and imprisoned in the Octagonal Tower at the top of Castle Hill, in the south-west corner of the upper ward--a tower once called the Maiden's but now the Devil's. Under Henry IV and Henry V the prince's imprisonment lasted seventeen years, during some of which he was King of Scotland by name. In 1413 he had Griffin ap Owen Glendower as a fellow prisoner, and in 1415 the poet Charles of Orleans, taken at Agincourt. The treaty of release in 1423 provided for the payment of 60,000 marks and his marriage with some English lady of noble birth. He chose his bride without difficulty--Jane Beaufort, a young daughter of the Earl of Somerset--married her at St. Mary Overy in Southwark, and at once set out for Scotland. He was a short stout man, but vigorous and agile, broad in the shoulders, narrow in the waist, and his hair auburn; he had a good singing voice, played on musical instruments, and excelled in games. He was murdered, and his Queen Jane wounded, by conspirators, thirteen years later. He loved his wife to the end, and was one of the few kings who had no mistress and no bastards. Before he left England he had written the poem, _The Kingis Quhair_, which records his captivity and courtship at Windsor. It was spring, but he was sad--

The bird, the beste, the fisch eke in the see, They lyve in fredome everich in his kynd; And I a man, and lakkith libertee--

yet not wholly sad, because he rose early and went to look out of the window at the world and at the people passing by, and though he was steeled against mirth, to look did him good. Outside his window, at the foot of the tower, was a fair garden, so fenced with hawthorns and so set with dense foliaged trees that a man walking in it could not be seen by the passer-by. There the nightingale sang on the small green branches. There he saw the maiden, Jane Beaufort. It is difficult and perhaps unnecessary to consider the poem apart from the known personality and acts of the king who wrote it, though nobody need trouble to say that he wrote like a king, for he did not; he wrote like a poet--much like Chaucer, in fact--and like a man. But allow what we know of him, his captivity, his hard life, and tragic death, to suffuse the images created by the poem, and _The Kingis Quhair_ is one of the loveliest ceremonious poems of love.

Under Henry V, in the year of Agincourt, the Emperor Sigismund came to the feast of St. George. He brought with him the heart of St. George as an offering to the chapel.

Henry VI, the founder of Eton College in 1440, was born at Windsor, and buried in the south aisle of St George's Chapel, but not until some years after his death.

Edward IV rebuilt St. George's Chapel, or began the building which was completed under Henry VIII and Edward VI. On the north side of the Chapel he built the Dean's and Canons' houses, and those of the petty Canons. Edward and his queen were buried near the altar under a tomb of such splendour that it was plundered in 1642.

Henry VIII began the royal tomb-house at the east end of St. George's as a sepulchral chapel for himself. Later he granted it to Wolsey, who caused a black marble sarcophagus to be made, bordered and canopied with costly bronze work. The Cardinal never lay under it. It was stripped, and the ornaments sold, by Parliament soldiers a century later. The sarcophagus itself was afterwards used to cover the body of Nelson at St. Paul's. In the choir of the Chapel of St. George lie Jane Seymour and Henry VIII, who built the gateway bearing his name, under which the public enter the lower ward.

When Henry VIII's queen, Anne Boleyn, was crowned in June, 1533, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and then about sixteen years old, carried the fourth sword. This young man, who was to be atrociously executed at the age of thirty by the same Henry, lived at Windsor for some time as the companion of the king's bastard son, the Duke of Richmond, and while confined there some years later he wrote a poem which gives perhaps the most beautiful picture connected with Windsor. I will belittle the rest of this little book by here quoting the poem in full: "Prisoned in Windsor he recounteth his pleasure there passed":