Castle: A History of the Buildings That Shaped Medieval Britain

by Marc Morris

  This, as their household accounts testify, was the diet of the English nobility in the Middle Ages. Moreover, by the time we reach Edward Dallingridge’s day, we know not just what the aristocracy ate, but also how they cooked it. In the 1390s, Richard II asked his master chef to compile a book of recipes, and the manuscript has survived. Known as the Forme of Cury, it is nothing less than the first English cookbook. There was more to medieval cooking, it transpires, than putting a pig on a spit and garnishing its mouth with an apple. As well as recommending simple dishes like ‘Chykens in Gravey’ and ‘Makerel in Sawce’, the book also contains wonderfully inventive recipes, calling for expensive spices and rare ingredients. One of my favourites (having tasted it) is the ‘Hastelet of Fruyt’, a joke dish of almonds and raisins, strung together and fried in batter so as to look like deers’ entrails. The book also indicates that English cooking was far from insular. Richard’s chef betrayed his knowledge of Italian cuisine with Lumbard Mustard, and could also serve up peas, German style (Peson of Almayne). Even pasta might have found its way on to the king’s menu – the Forme of Cury has a recipe for ‘Macrows’ (i.e. macaroni).

  We can imagine, therefore, similar dainty dishes being set before Sir Edward and Lady Elizabeth as they sat down to dinner in their great hall at Bodiam; though in fact, if they were throwing a major party, they might not have used this hall at all. To the north of the castle, 300 yards or so up the hill, is a grassy platform, now known as the Gun Garden, and for this reason long assumed to have been an artillery earthwork dating to the seventeenth century. Recent excavations, however, have revealed traces of a large medieval building, almost certainly contemporary with the castle. Its position, as well as its size, is very suggestive; from this point, the castle, with the river valley behind it, looks particularly splendid. The vanished building, it has been plausibly proposed, was once a banqueting hall, where Sir Edward could entertain honoured guests in grand style and, as they were eating, invite them to gaze on his achievement.

  So, let us picture the scene back at Bodiam Castle at the end of the fourteenth century. Sir Edward Dallingridge has given a feast, as great as his pocket can bear. He has invited a number of distinguished guests, including his friend and patron the Earl of Arundel. His lordship’s presence has pushed the numbers up, so the evening’s entertainment has taken place in the banqueting hall up on the hill. The meal has been served, the sun has started to set, and everybody has taken their cue and said how nice the new castle looks in its river valley setting. They have broken their bread, quaffed their ale and slurped their wine. At one point they were horrified to see deers’ entrails being carried into the room, but were relieved to discover it was just another hilarious joke dish. Minstrels have been hired especially for the evening, and the guests have listened attentively to their plaintive songs, and have had a dance to one or two of the more jaunty numbers. But now, the evening is finished, and everyone is very tired. Slowly they begin to filter out of the hall and make their way down the hill, where they can see the castle and its reflection clearly in the moonlight. Nevertheless, that wine was very good, and it is therefore with exaggerated carefulness that they make their way across the bridges, into the castle courtyard, and mount the stairs to bed.

  It is at this point that Sir Edward’s castle comes into its own. The amount of accommodation crammed inside the walls is one of the major differences between Bodiam and castles of an earlier generation. No longer were people expected to find a space on the floor of the hall at the end of the evening; anyone of any importance staying overnight at Bodiam was shown to his or her own room. Most of the chambers are squeezed into the towers, stacked vertically on top of one other, and therefore quite small and low roofed. All of them, however, are very well appointed; each has a fireplace and a window (with a window seat), and all have en suite toilets. Sadly, the castle’s interior is too ruinous to say exactly how many of these chambers were bedrooms; but the extent of the hospitality potentially on offer can be gauged from the surviving architectural details – altogether, there are no less than thirty-three fireplaces and twenty-eight toilets. Such lavish facilities give a strong indication of the role that Dallingridge envisaged for Bodiam. This was not a castle for keeping a garrison of soldiers, but for entertaining honoured guests. In order to play the role of the great lord he was becoming, it was essential for Edward to exhibit the virtue of generosity. ‘Mi Castillo es su Castillo’, he might well have said, for the architecture of the castle itself said as much. Observing its ponds teeming with fish, its well-stocked deer parks, its now-vanished banqueting hall, and especially its many, many suites of bedrooms, a visitor to Bodiam was intended to understand that guests were always welcome chez Dallingridge.

  The best private rooms, of course, were reserved for the Dallingridges themselves. Most of the east side of the courtyard is occupied by suites of grand chambers for Edward, Elizabeth and their children. As well as their bedrooms, there were great chambers where the Dallingridges could, if they wished, dine in private, or receive especially honoured guests. Although they are very dilapidated today, we must imagine these rooms as being richly decorated; perhaps not with tapestries (a bit too expensive, even for Sir Edward) but with painted wallhangings. As for other furnishings, we know from surviving wills and inventories the kinds of things that fourteenth-century aristocrats valued most highly. Fur-lined cloaks, silks from the Mediterranean, and bedding were all treasured and passed on, and so too was silver plate. In the Dallingridges’ private chambers, we can picture all these things. Perhaps, too, we can picture Sir Edward’s most prized possession hanging above the fireplace in his chamber. The mantelpiece in this room is carved, and you can still make out the little battlements on top. This, surely, was the perfect place to display a licence to crenellate.

  Close scrutiny of Bodiam castle, therefore, reveals a charming picture of medieval domestic bliss. It was a place where Dallingridge and his family intended to enjoy the good things in life. However, no sooner had Sir Edward conceived this vision than it was thrown into jeopardy. In 1386 the Earl of Arundel, in alliance with several other magnates, planned to seize control of the king’s government. Dallingridge, as Arundel’s right-hand man, backed the earl in his endeavour. If they succeeded, they knew, the rewards would be unimaginable; if they failed, it would cost them dearly. One false move, and Edward stood to lose everything: his castle, his family, and even his life.

  Arundel was prompted to act in 1386 by the policies of Richard II. The young king had been welcomed to the throne with much rejoicing, but the feel-good factor had quickly evaporated. As Richard had grown older, he had turned into a foolish, haughty, and self-obsessed king. From the point of view of Arundel and his allies, however, Richard’s biggest problem was his attitude to war; basically, he didn’t like it. As soon as the king was old enough to influence government policy, he began to negotiate with the French for peace. For war-profiteers like Arundel and Dallingridge, this was not good news. Towards the end of 1386, in the charged atmosphere created by the expectation of a French invasion, Arundel and his hawkish colleagues ousted the king’s existing councillors, seized control of government, and set about prosecuting the war with renewed vigour.

  A pro-war strategy, however, is only popular if you win convincing victories, and the new regime had little success. Arundel, with Dallingridge by his side, led two separate expeditions to France, both of which ended in failure. At home, meanwhile, the opposition of the king’s friends drove the new government to increasingly desperate measures. Having defeated Richard’s allies in battle, Arundel and his associates cornered the king and threatened to depose him, and shortly afterwards they sentenced four of his former councillors to death. With the war going badly, and the new government looking increasingly discredited, sympathy for Richard’s position grew. In 1389 the king managed to split his opponents, and on 3 May that year he declared he was resuming personal power. Arundel and his allies were ejected from the council, and anxiously awaite
d their fate.

  Dallingridge, however, proved once again what a skilled survivor he could be, even when the odds were stacked heavily against him. In the very week that Arundel was dismissed, the crafty Sir Edward quietly detached himself from his patron’s side and sought the protection of the royalist Earl of Huntingdon. The king, who was hardly in a position to refuse support from any quarter, graciously overlooked Edward’s recent opposition, and accepted him among his new councillors. Even as his old master’s ship was sinking, Dallingridge, with remarkable nimbleness, had hopped on board the royal barge.

  Having pulled off this breathtaking political stunt, Edward set about making his position secure through sheer hard work. Surviving royal records from the early 1390s show that he was the most frequent attendee of council meetings. Also revealing is a wonderful little expense account submitted by Dallingridge to the Exchequer in 1393, covering the costs that he had incurred in the previous year. As well as proving that he spent no less than 207 days in the king’s service, the roll also exposes the extent of his movements. Dallingridge seems to have acted as a liaison between the king, who still habitually toured the country, and the council, which for the most part met in Westminster. Destinations ranging from London to Stamford and Dover to Nottingham show that Edward was rarely out of the saddle. His assiduousness, however, paid off. After only a few weeks in the king’s service, Dallingridge was permitted to purchase new lands in Sussex, and was granted a royal pension of a hundred marks (£67) a year.

  The downside, naturally, was that Edward was not getting much free time to spend at his new castle (which by now must have been very nearly finished) or, for that matter, with his wife. Sadly, we do not have much specific information about Elizabeth Dallingridge; women have left fewer traces than men in the records of medieval royal government. The Dallingridges probably wrote personal letters to each other, just as the famous Paston family of Norfolk would do a century later, but none have survived. Similarly, there are no wills or prayer books, no inventories or epitaphs that can shed any light on Elizabeth’s personality or tastes. Nevertheless, using sources like this for other women of her age and upbringing, we can start to imagine what the life of Lady Dallingridge must have been like.

  During Edward’s long absences, Elizabeth would almost certainly have been in charge of running both the household and the Dallingridge estate. Although she would have delegated much of the humdrum work to a professional estates steward, he would have been answerable to Elizabeth, and she may well have overlooked his accounts. Likewise, the domestic staff – the cook, the huntsman, the chaplain and the butler – would all have looked to her for their orders. Elizabeth’s ability to act as lady of the manor during her husband’s long absences may have been part of her original appeal to the dashing Sir Edward. Of course, we should not kid ourselves here – the eligible young lady’s principal attraction, from Edward’s point of view, was undoubtedly her huge tracts of land. But it would be a mistake to imagine that men only married to get their hands on property, or because they wanted to produce an heir. While these were very important considerations, men like Edward also married for companionship and love. Chivalric romances are full of young knights doing quite ridiculously dangerous things to win a lady’s heart, and many of the most successful careers in the Middle Ages were built by a husband and wife team supporting each other and working together.

  Elizabeth, therefore, would have been an educated woman, able to read not just English, but also French and Latin. The spur to her literacy, however, would not have been its administrative usefulness, but its ability to bring her closer to God. The fourteenth century was a period when religion among the aristocracy was becoming a much more personal, introspective affair. Encouraged by the introduction of confession in the thirteenth century, men and women who could afford them were increasingly buying books of hours and prayer books so they could practice their devotions in private.

  This increasingly personal and private piety is reflected in the design of the chapel at Bodiam castle. Of course, chapels in castles are nothing new; even the earliest earth and timber castles had chapels within their bailey walls, and there are chapels at the Tower of London, Colchester and Rochester. The chapel at Bodiam, however, differs from these in two ways. First, it flaunts its vulnerability. As we noted right at the start of this chapter, the chapel is provided with a very large three-light Gothic window, which pierces the castle’s east wall. In addition, the chapel is the only room in the castle that interrupts the otherwise perfect symmetry of the overall design. Both effects are quite deliberate; the Dallingridges wished to advertise their devout Christianity. Such was their devotion, the architecture suggests, that they were willing to expose themselves to attack and to compromise the shape of their castle. Defence and consistency pointedly take second place to religious considerations.

  The second important innovation at Bodiam can only be seen from inside. By the start of the fourteenth century, it had become common for the main part of the chapel to be overlooked by a small, private room, so that privileged individuals (usually the castle’s owner) could observe the mass in private. At Bodiam, a door in the Dallingridge master bedroom led into a small closet that looked down directly on to the altar. Like the increasing use of personal books of religious devotion, and the tendency to employ confessors in aristocratic households, this arrangement at Bodiam speaks eloquently of the increasingly private religious life of the fourteenth-century nobility.

  Strange as it may seem at first, the movement towards a more personal form of worship was led by men like Dallingridge – men who had been soldiers in France, with quite bloody reputations. These, however, were the men who, as they grew older and closer to God, had the most on their consciences. Henry, Duke of Lancaster, for example, a veteran from the early campaigns of the Hundred Years War, picked painfully at his conscience in his Livre de Seyntz Medicines, describing the sores that afflicted his soul on account of the killings in his youth. Sir William Beauchamp, another old soldier, sought similar atonement by becoming an enthusiastic sponsor and devotee of new religious cults. Even the brutal Sir Robert Knowles, Dallingridge’s one-time captain, eventually repented of his earlier atrocities. Later in life he founded a church at Pontefract, and sought absolution from the Pope.

  Likewise, when Dallingridge joined the ranks of the kings’ councillors, he started to mix with another group of individuals who advocated a more contemplative, personal form of piety. The literati who gathered at the court of Richard II, like the king himself, were much given to such introspective musings, and shared Richard’s anti-war sympathies. Sir John Clanvowe, who like Dallingridge was a frequent attendee of council sessions and also a chamber knight, wrote poems deriding the ideals of chivalry, and condemning men who went to war for profit. John Gower, another court poet, echoed these views.

  ‘In the present day,’ he wrote, ‘chivalry is maintained for pride and foolish delight’.

  Another individual at court whom Dallingridge would certainly have met was Geoffrey Chaucer, who was already entertaining the great and the good with early drafts of The Canterbury Tales. At one level, their lives had strong parallels, even before they met in the king’s household. Both were born in the early 1340s and both fought in the French wars from 1359. Chaucer, like Dallingridge, had briefly been in the service of John of Gaunt, and had also served as a Member of Parliament at the same time as Sir Edward. But their careers had taken quite different turns. Dallingridge belonged to the gentry; Chaucer was the son of a merchant. Edward made money in the wars, but Geoffrey was captured on his first expedition and had to be ransomed. As he grew older, Chaucer increasingly took up his pen as a clerk and poet; Dallingridge continued to rely on his sword to cut a path to greatness.

  So what did the writer make of the fighter? Some modern authors suggest that, like Clanvowe and Gower, Chaucer was very critical of contemporary knighthood. Others contend that he has nothing but sincere praise for it. Others still maintain that the po
et was trying to reconcile the two contradictory positions. Ultimately, it all depends on whether or not Chaucer is being ironic, and this we have no way of knowing; he is simply too subtle a writer.

  A more important issue for us, and equally unfathomable, is how Edward Dallingridge regarded himself. Did he, like Clanvowe and Knowles, regret the killings of his youth, and seek absolution? Or did he not regard them as misdemeanours at all, but a necessary part of his chivalrous calling? Did he come to view himself as a medieval mercenary, or still regard himself a very parfit gentil knight? When, suddenly, he died late in the summer of 1393, did he go with his sins on his head, or repenting them? We do not know. Nor, frustratingly, do we know how or why he died. Probably in his late forties, he was not exactly old, even by medieval standards. Perhaps it was a lingering war wound, sustained on the battlefields of France. It could have been a sudden heart failure, brought on by his high-fat, low-fibre diet. Alternatively, as the hardest-working royal councillor, perhaps it was sheer exhaustion from all those long hours in the saddle that finally laid Sir Edward low.

  They may have been private in their devotions, but when it came to being buried, medieval aristocrats liked to be seen in public. Although they were hardly ever seen praying inside their local parish churches, they nevertheless lavished money on rebuilding them as a point of pride, and were often interred inside, encased in grand tombs. The tomb of Edward’s parents, Roger and Alice Dallingridge, has survived in the parish church of Fletching, then the centre of the family’s power. Although the stonework was sadly disfigured and destroyed in places during the Reformation, the carved coat of arms still survives, and matches the one on the front of the castle. Moreover, the lid of the tomb still has its fine monumental brass, depicting Roger and Alice in all their finery.