Castle: A History of the Buildings That Shaped Medieval Britain

by Marc Morris

  For me, part of Caernarfon’s appeal is its difference from the castles I grew up with in Kent, like Rochester and Dover. To begin with, there is no single great tower or keep. Instead, the castle derives its military strength from a huge circuit of walls. This was the big departure in castle design in the thirteenth century and, in this respect, Caernarfon is a ‘typical’ castle of its time. In every other way, however, this mighty fortress-palace, with its polygonal towers, masonry of different colours, and the carved stone figures on top of its battlements, is a truly exceptional building.

  As we shall see, Caernarfon is the work of many thousands of anonymous individuals. Ultimately, however, the castle is the accomplishment of one man – the English king, Edward I. It was built to mark, in the grandest way possible, his conquest of Wales in 1283. Edward wanted a castle that was a royal palace and an impregnable fortress, an administrative centre for his new dominions, and a grand statement that Wales had become part of a new ‘British’ empire. In Caernarfon, all his wishes were fulfilled.

  Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Caernarfon, however, is that it does not stand alone. The castle is ‘only’ the greatest of a whole string of new fortresses, all built by Edward I with astonishing speed at the end of the thirteenth century. The famous castles at Harlech and Conway, Rhuddlan and Flint, as well as the great unfinished castle of Beaumaris, were all built at the king’s command in the wake of his victory. Together they form a group of buildings that still rank among the most impressive engineering achievements the world has ever seen. Not only are they mighty fortresses – a perfect realization of the new ideas of the thirteenth century – they are also works of art, intended to spell out in the most dramatic fashion the achievement of a conquering king.

  So what drove Edward I to this excessive display of power? What kind of man was he? As a king, Edward had many great qualities. Physically very big and very strong, he was an expert warrior and a skilled general. He lived up to the image of an ideal Christian ruler by going on crusade. He was also a great legislator, and a faithful husband. But Edward also possessed several less endearing character traits – a dark side, if you like – which earlier historians tended to overlook. Contemporary chroniclers noted that he could be sly and duplicitous. He lacked the ability to see any issue except from a point of view other than his own. Most importantly, he was a king who would not tolerate any attacks on the dignity of the Crown.

  It is always dangerous to imagine we can read peoples’ thoughts and intentions, especially if they have been dead for seven hundred years. But if we were forced to psychoanalyse Edward, and to explain why he was so prickly about his royal dignity, we would probably point to the hard lessons he learnt in his father’s reign. Edward’s father was Henry III, whom we recently left as a little boy of nine, being crowned after the death of his own father, King John. From the time of his accession in 1216 until his death in 1272, Henry had a long but troubled reign. Although not actively unpleasant, like John (Henry actually comes across as quite an amiable chap) he lacked good judgement and made bad, even inept policy decisions. By 1258, the great men of the realm had had enough of his mistakes, and forcibly deprived the king of power.

  By this time, Edward was around. He was, however, still only a teenager, and powerless to assist his father. All he could do was stand in the wings and watch as the king was humiliated. One can easily imagine how angry he felt, and how frustrated he was at his inability to intervene. Just a few years later, Edward did lead the fight-back that restored Henry to power, but by then he had already learnt his hard lessons about rulership. The young Lord Edward was determined never to let such a shameful thing happen again. When he was king, he would defend his royal rights tooth and nail, and accept no challenges to his authority. By God, he was going to be absolute master in his own kingdom, and woe betide anybody who dared to suggest otherwise.

  Henry died in 1272, and in due course Edward succeeded him. Of course, once he was crowned, the new king faced political opposition just like any other ruler – occasional conflict between the monarch and his magnates was an accepted part of medieval government. Some English lords did stand up to Edward from time to time, and several of them lived to regret it. The greatest challenge to the king, however, came not from the political heartlands of England, but from the distant hills and valleys of Wales.

  At the start of Edward’s reign, Wales was a completely separate country from England. Of course, the kings of England had always huffed and puffed about their superiority, and expected Welsh rulers to acknowledge their subservient status. To all intents and purposes, however, these rulers were independent. English kings were able to cope with the reality of the situation because Wales was not a united country. The mountainous landscape made it difficult for any one Welsh ruler or dynasty to establish overall control, and as a result the land was divided into petty kingdoms.

  In the thirteenth century, however, things started to change. The rulers of Gwynedd, the tiny kingdom in the North-West of Wales, became steadily more powerful in their own region, and eventually began to establish control over their southern neighbours. From the middle of the century, the Welsh united under the leadership of one man. His name was Llywelyn ap Gruffudd.

  Llywelyn saw it as his destiny to lead a united Wales. When he was a young man, however, the prospects of doing so looked very bleak. His grandfather had started to build up a federation of Welsh rulers at the beginning of the century, but it had collapsed during the disastrous rule of his uncle Dafydd; all his grandfather’s achievements were undone, and the English invaded large parts of north Wales. As a result, when Llywelyn himself came to power in 1246, he succeeded only to his ancestral lands in Gwynedd and, because of Welsh laws of inheritance, even this meagre prize had to be shared with his brothers.

  From this unpromising start, Llywelyn rebuilt his family’s fortunes. Having defeated his brothers in battle in 1255, he went from strength to strength, driving the English out of north Wales, and establishing ever-stronger links with his southern neighbours. In time, he matched and then surpassed the successes of his grandfather. According to contemporaries, he was not only a skilled warrior, but also a charismatic leader. In the words of one English chronicler, the Welsh followed Llywelyn ‘as if they were glued to him’.

  Llywelyn’s rapid rise to greatness was helped enormously by the incompetence of Henry III. The events of 1258, as well as moulding the character of the young Edward I, had led to a civil war in England that left the country paralysed in the face of Llywelyn’s advances. When the war finally came to an end in 1267, the power of the English Crown was badly shaken. Henry III was forced to seek peace with the Welsh, and had no option but to recognize Llywelyn’s recent territorial gains. He also went one stage further, and bestowed a new title upon the Welsh leader. When the peace treaty was drawn up at the ford of Montgomery, Llywelyn was named ‘Prince of Wales’. He was the first native ruler of Wales to be accorded this title by an English king.

  He was also to be the last. The treaty of Montgomery, while it magnified Llywelyn personally and recognized his conquests, also carried the seeds of his destruction. For all the fine words it lavished on Llywelyn, it was, like Magna Carta, an ambiguous document, more likely to provoke further conflict than bring about lasting peace. Although Henry had acknowledged Llywelyn’s territorial gains, the English lords who had actually lost lands along the Welsh border were determined to claw them back. At the very end of Henry’s reign, a struggle for power began that eventually led England and Wales to all-out war.

  The scale and nature of the struggle is best illustrated by mighty Caerphilly Castle. Built by the Earl of Gloucester in an effort to assert his right to a disputed part of the border, and completed just as Edward I came to the throne, the new castle was one of the fundamental causes of the conflict that followed. It is, moreover, an ideal castle for illustrating the huge advances that had taken place in castle-building since the twelfth century.

  The biggest diffe
rence between Caerphilly and castles of the previous generation is that there is no sign of a keep. In the course of the twelfth century, the technology of attack had caught up with great towers, as the rebels at Rochester had learned to their cost. From the end of the century, therefore, castle designers began to experiment with a new idea. Rather than building a keep, they trusted instead to a large circuit of high walls, punctuated by even taller towers. The towers broke the walls at regular intervals, and were thrust forwards, enabling defenders to shoot arrows or crossbow bolts right down at the base of the wall. An early example of this new arrangement can be seen at Framlingham Castle in Suffolk, which was built in the 1190s; a similar set of walls was built around the keep at Dover shortly before. In both cases, however, the towers set into the walls are square. In the thirteenth century, the preference was almost always for round ones, as seen at Caerphilly. Without a doubt, this was because round towers were perceived to be stronger.

  The weakest point in a castle’s walls had always been the entrance, or gatehouse. In the twelfth century, this was typically a single tower, such as the one at Framlingham. In the early thirteenth century, however, a new, far more elaborate design was devised. Castle-builders realized that by building two round towers either side of the entrance, they could produce a much stronger type of gatehouse. Anyone approaching such a building had to pass between the towers, under the watchful gaze of the guards, and flanked on either side by menacing arrow-loops. This new design also created extra space over the gate which could be used for accommodation, usually for the castle’s constable. As time wore on, twin-towered gatehouses grew ever larger and more elaborate: so much so that, by the time we reach Caerphilly, the gatehouse is the same size as a twelfth-century keep.

  Finally, in the thirteenth century castle-builders developed the idea of ‘concentricity’, or having multiple lines of defence. If you look at Caerphilly, you can see that as well as the main inner walls which form the castle courtyard, there is another set of walls running all the way around the outside. Like the inner defences, this second line of walls is provided with crenellations (battlements), arrow-loops and gatehouses. Moving out even further from the centre, there is a third line of defence in the form of the enormous artificial lake which surrounds the castle. Water defences like this gave all kinds of protective benefits. As well as making it very difficult to storm the castle directly, they also prevented attackers from bringing their siege engines too close, and they made digging a mine under the walls completely out of the question.

  Caerphilly.

  At the time it was built, Caerphilly was an absolutely state-of-the-art castle, and one of the largest in Britain. The arrival of such a monster in what he considered to be his own backyard clearly left Llywelyn fuming. On two separate occasions during the building programme, the prince overran the area and brought construction to a halt, at the same time complaining to the English king. Henry III, however, was too feeble to stop Gloucester, and the regency government appointed after his death only made matters worse. By 1274, much to Llywelyn’s chagrin, Caerphilly was nearly completed. Bitter and resentful, the prince pinned all his hopes on the new English king – Edward. He had just returned from a crusade.

  Edward, to his credit, did not immediately take sides with his English barons: there was little love lost between the king and the Earl of Gloucester. There were also good reasons, from Edward’s personal point of view, for keeping Llywelyn happy. The king had returned from his crusade with large debts, and the Welsh prince owed him money. In return for the recognition of his title and conquests in 1267, Llywelyn had been charged 25,000 marks (£16,666), and was paying it off in instalments. Edward could ill afford to lose such a sum. Indeed, so great were the financial benefits of restoring Anglo-Welsh relations that Edward chose to ignore a calculated diplomatic snub from Llywelyn, when the prince failed to attend his coronation.

  So Edward did not take sides; but nor did he solve the prince’s problems, and the Welshman remained angry. If we look at the situation from Llywelyn’s point of view, 25,000 marks was a lot of money to pay for a treaty that wasn’t working. He was supposed to be Prince of Wales, for Heaven’s sake! If men like Gloucester could build castles like Caerphilly and get away with it, his new title was surely a joke, and everything he had struggled so hard to achieve seemed under threat. Llywelyn grew more and more frustrated, and in his frustration, he made a terrible, fatal error: he tried to coerce Edward I into action. Not only did he withhold money that he owed to the king; he also withheld his homage.

  Homage was a symbolic act. To pay homage to someone involved kneeling before them and placing your hands together as if in prayer. You then put your hands between the hands of the other person, and swore to serve them faithfully. It was a public ceremony, intended to advertise that a dependent relationship was being established. When he was invested as Prince of Wales at Caernarfon in 1969, Prince Charles carried out exactly the same procedure before Queen Elizabeth II, watched by a TV audience of over five hundred million people.

  In 1275, Edward I decided it was time to perform this elaborate ceremony with Llywelyn. The prince had been offered several previous opportunities to pay homage to the king, but on each occasion had found an excuse to be elsewhere. So at Easter that year, the king thought he would make things easier for Llywelyn by doing most of the travelling. The English court came to Chester, and members of the political communities of England and Wales convened there in order to watch. In an age before TV and newspapers, Edward’s only option for publicity was to pack the place with spectators. We must imagine a day of grand ceremony, just as in 1969; similarly stage-managed, with great solemnity and pageantry. Everyone was going to watch as Llywelyn kneeled before Edward and acknowledged him as his lord and master.

  Or at least they would have done, had the prince showed up. Instead, his non-appearance left them confused, disappointed and bored. Far worse, it left Edward looking foolish, with large amounts of egg on his face, and the blow to his dignity was fatal. In a furious rage, the king returned to Westminster. He was still cross two years later when he wrote to the Pope.

  ‘In order to receive [Llywelyn’s] homage,’ he fumed, ‘we so demeaned our royal dignity as to go to the confines of his land.’

  From Edward’s point of view, it didn’t matter what problems the prince had: his homage was absolutely non-negotiable. There were, therefore, to be no more concessions on Edward’s part. Llywelyn could come to Westminster, perform his homage and apologize, or he could face the consequences.

  The prince, however, was not for turning either. He refused to budge an inch, and the slide towards confrontation became irreversible. Matters were not helped when, later in the same year, Llywelyn uncovered a plot on his life by some of his own men. When their treachery was discovered, they fled to England, and Edward refused to hand them over. The king, meanwhile, discovered that Llywelyn was planning a marriage alliance with his enemies, and retaliated by seizing the prince’s bride-to-be as she was en route to Wales. Eventually, by the autumn of 1276, Edward decided he had had enough. On 12 November that year, in the presence of a full council of magnates at Westminster, he declared that Llywelyn was a rebel. Their personal quarrel was going to be settled by war.

  It was not, however, going to be a war of equally matched combatants. In the thirteenth century, the economic and the military power of England vastly outstripped that of its western neighbour. England had major cities, prosperous market towns and a booming economy. Edward could tap this wealth with taxes and customs, and supplement it with loans from Italian bankers. Wales, with a pastoral economy, few towns and little coinage in circulation, was going to be no competition.

  But at the same time, Llywelyn had one great advantage: geography. His ancestral lands were protected by the impenetrable mountains of Snowdonia. Many times in the past, English kings had attempted to lead armies into north Wales, only to be defeated by the harsh terrain and beaten back by the unforgiving weather. Just twen
ty years beforehand, Henry III, with young Edward in tow, had tried to advance into Wales, and failed miserably. So the prince remained defiant, confident he could weather any storm that Edward might unleash.

  The king launched a three-pronged attack, with one army moving up from the south, and a second driving into mid Wales. Edward himself took command of the third and largest contingent, which headed directly into north Wales. The strategy was an old one: he marched a route that had been trodden by Roman legions as well as his own Norman forebears. The king’s intention was to move slowly but surely along the north coast, establishing permanent bases as he went.

  The scale of the English war effort, however, was new. By the height of the campaign, the king’s force alone numbered fifteen thousand men. As they went, a separate army of eighteen hundred diggers cut a wide new road through the dense forest. The king sent his lieutenants to occupy the island of Anglesey, which supplied the heartlands of Gwynedd with much of its grain. The whole operation, as contemporaries observed, was like the undertaking of some massive siege, the object being to isolate Llywelyn in his stronghold of Snowdonia and starve him into submission.

  In the end, there was not very much in the way of actual fighting – by this stage, Llywelyn had lost much of his earlier adhesive appeal. In order to defend his new principality, and pay the annual render to the English king, the prince had been forced to extort large sums of money from all classes of society – churchmen, burgesses, nobles and peasants. Understandably, his popularity had started to suffer. During the summer, even while the English army was still mustering, many Welshmen had surrendered, and transferred their allegiance to Edward: more than half the king’s northern army was made up of men from south Wales. In such circumstances, Llywelyn had little option but to seek terms. On 2 November he met with members of Edward’s council at his palace at Conway. One week later, peace was proclaimed.