Castle: A History of the Buildings That Shaped Medieval Britain

by Marc Morris

  While the heart was being ripped out of his castle at Raglan, Henry Somerset, the Marquis of Worcester, lay dying in London. His ancestral home, he now knew, would not be passing to his heirs, as he had always imagined it must. The assurances of fair treatment made by General Fairfax had, in the end, counted for nothing. Having fought what he considered an honourable fight in defence of his faith and his king, the marquis had good cause to reflect on his shabby treatment at Parliament’s hands. By his bedside stood Dr Bailey, his chaplain, remembering the old man’s last words even as he administered the last rites.

  ‘Ah, Doctor,’ said the marquis, ‘I forsook life, liberty and estate… and threw myself upon their mercy; [but] if to seize all my goods, to pull down my house, and sell my estate… be merciful, what are they whose mercies are so cruel?’

  Nevertheless, in spite of his appalling experience that summer, the plethoric constitution that had preserved him for seventy years still refused to desert him. Even as he stared into the abyss, the Marquis of Worcester managed one last witticism. He asked where he was to be buried, and was told that his final resting place would be the great chapel at Windsor Castle.

  ‘Why then,’ he quipped, ‘I shall have a better castle when I am dead than the one they took from me when alive.’

  1. Both Henry Somerset and Raglan have complicated identities. Somerset was Earl of Worcester down to 2 March 1643, at which point he was promoted to the rank of marquis. For simplicity’s sake I have called him ‘the marquis’ throughout. Monmouthshire was considered part of Wales when Raglan was built in the fifteenth century, but its status became ambiguous after 1536, and it was often treated as an English county. The ambiguity persisted until 1974, when the county was absorbed into the Welsh administrative region of Gwent.

  EPILOGUE

  HENRY SOMERSET, MARQUIS of Worcester, died on 18 December 1646. He was aged about seventy. One week later, on Christmas Day, his body was laid to rest in the great chapel of St George in Windsor Castle. A marble tablet on the chapel wall still commemorates his passing.

  A little over two years later, the marquis was joined by his king. After his execution, Charles I’s head was sewn back on to his body, and his corpse was brought to Windsor in the midst of a blizzard. Attended by only a handful of mourners, and without any form of ceremony, the dead king was interred in the same royal chapel, alongside the marquis, and amid the bones of his ancestors.

  The Royalist cause, it seemed, was similarly dead and buried. Defeated in two separate conflicts by their Parliamentary opponents, the late king’s supporters were either imprisoned or had escaped into exile. Their estates were seized and their property impounded. In September 1651, the die-hard among them made a last-ditch attempt to reverse matters, only to be smashed with ease by Oliver Cromwell at Worcester. The figure they now championed, Charles I’s name-sake and eldest son, fled the field of battle, and was last seen hiding in an oak tree.

  The Commonwealth regime, however, survived its royal victim for barely a decade. With so many competing voices and ideas in government, and so few genuine supporters in the country at large, the administration was held together only by the magnetic personality and iron will of Cromwell. When he died in September 1658, the revolution was undone. Quicker than anybody could have imagined, the monarchy was restored. On 29 May 1660, amid scenes of great rejoicing, Charles II was crowned king at Westminster.

  Yet while the monarchy could be resurrected, the same was not true of the castle. The Civil War and the Commonwealth had dealt the ancient homes of the aristocracy a fetal blow. The destruction that had taken place at Raglan and Pontefract was repeated all over the country. Splintered and broken, undermined and collapsed, shelled, torched and smashed, castles everywhere were effectively written off. By the time the cull had finished, it was cheaper for the nobility to build from new than to restore the shattered homes of their ancestors. It was the dramatic end to a long, drawn-out process of abandonment. The aristocracy, who had been quitting their castles by stages and degrees for centuries, now deserted them en masse. After the Restoration, they invested in fashionable new stately homes, where the architecture spoke with a new vocabulary. Portcullises, drawbridges and battlements were consigned to the past. In came columns, porticoes and cupolas – neo-Classical elements for a new age.

  When the grandson of the Marquis of Worcester decided to invest in a new home after 1660, he built just such a house: a grand new building in the fashionable Palladian style. But it was not at Raglan, nor even in Monmouthshire, that he made his new home. Like scores of other nobles, the new marquis moved on, leaving the old neighbourhood as well as the castle behind him. The future home of the Somersets would be on the opposite side of the Severn, in the Gloucestershire village of Badminton. The mansion he built is there to this day – as indeed are his descendants, who live in it.

  At Raglan, time began to take its toll. Broken and exposed, the castle had to contend not only with the ravages of wind and rain, but also with the depredations of anyone seeking a convenient source of stone. The damage inflicted in the aftermath of the siege was compounded in the decades that followed by those in search of a nice fireplace or windowsill. In this respect the castle was no different to any other; almost every abandoned site suffered a similar fate. In some cases, destruction continued to be carried out for the sake of security – after the Restoration, Charles II countenanced the slighting of Caernarfon, Conway and Beaumaris. But in most cases, opportunistic pillage and plunder wreaked the most damage. The monarchy may have been welcomed back with open arms, but castles were still viewed with suspicion, hostility and contempt. Thomas Paulden, for example, escaped from Pontefract and lived to a ripe old age, but in the course of the siege he lost two of his brothers. Countless thousands of others like him had seen loved ones die in defence of castles, or fighting to reach their walls. While the memory of the war remained, castles could count on little sympathy.

  There were, however, exceptions to this pattern – survivors among the general carnage. In the period between the end of the first Civil War and the restoration of Charles II, when the worst cases of destruction occurred, a distinction was observed between coastal castles and those in land-locked counties. The fear of invasion persuaded even the most extreme hard-liners to preserve those buildings that might prove useful in the defence of the nation. In the South-East, castles were left intact at Dover and Rochester, Bodiam and Arundel, Hedingham and Orford. Elsewhere, castles survived because they were simply too strong. The efforts made to pull down Edward I’s great Welsh castles fortunately came to very little, because demolishing their stone fabric was uneconomical.

  In Scotland, castles fared far better than elsewhere during and immediately after the Civil War. Several tower houses suffered during Cromwell’s invasion of Scotland in 1650, including Borthwick, where the effects of the Parliamentary barrage can still be seen on the rear of the tower. Others, like Castle Urquhart, suffered as a result of later wars. Overall, however, Scottish castles were left far less scarred by the experiences of the seventeenth century than their counterparts in England and Wales. Yet while this may have protected them from total extermination, continuous occupation into the modern age has wrought its own change on these buildings. Very often they have had to endure radical customization and reconstruction by later owners, whose desire to modernize and improve their homes has altered many tower houses beyond all recognition.

  Throughout the eighteenth century, castles continued to be dismantled, sold for scrap and plundered for stone. Where preservation occurred, it was down to individual eccentricities. In 1766, a noble twelfth-century tower at Bungay in Suffolk was destroyed in order to provide rubble for new roads. What remained of the gatehouse, however, was acquired by the wife of a local solicitor, and converted into a home. But even the best intentions could have regrettable side-effects. In Colchester, the great keep of William the Conqueror had been reduced to half its height thanks to the assiduousness of a local ironmonger. The
surviving portion was purchased in the early eighteenth century and ‘restored’, but unfortunately the new owner believed he had acquired a Roman ruin rather than a Norman one. His new terracotta tiled roof, cupola and weathervane complete the catalogue of indignities inflicted on an already much-maligned building.

  It was only really at the end of the eighteenth century, and into the nineteenth, that indifference to castles started to give way to genuine affection. The thirst for a forgotten, Romantic British past, encouraged by writers like Sir Walter Scott, made castles desirable places to visit. Picturesque painters like Turner made them identifiable. Railways made them accessible. Once again they became treasured possessions, not just for the handful of people who had once owned them, but for everybody in the country. Men, women and children of all degrees could now visit the great homes of the Middle Ages and contemplate a vanished world.

  And now, almost a thousand years after their introduction to Britain, castles continue to exert a powerful hold on the public’s affection. We, however, can get nearer to them than our Victorian forebears. They preferred them as Nature had left them, all ivy-covered archways and crumbling walls. But in the course of the last century, the majority of ruined castles have been taken into the care of the state. Their walls have been shored up, their moats repaired and refilled, the trees and the bracken that had enveloped them have been cut back. Today castles stand closer in appearance to their original selves than they have done for centuries. It only requires us to visit them and use our imaginations, and their restoration is complete.

  FURTHER READING

  INTRODUCTION

  The standard introduction to the subject of castles in England and Wales remains R.A. Brown, English Castles (3rd edn, London, 1976). Also useful are M.W. Thompson, The Rise of the Castle (Cambridge, 1991) and The Decline of the Castle (Cambridge, 1987). For a fresh perspective, see M. Johnson, Behind the Castle Gate: From Medieval to Renaissance (London, 2002). For Scotland, see the section on Chapter Five below.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Justice has finally been done to early castles in R. Higham and P. Barker, Timber Castles (London, 1992). See the early sections of The History of the King’s Works, ed. R.A. Brown, H.M. Colvin, A.J. Taylor (6 vols, London, 1963) for the castle-building of William the Conqueror. For Hen Domen, see Hen Domen: A Timber Castle on the English-Welsh Border (Exeter, 2000) by Barker and Higham. R. Eales, ‘Royal Power and castles in Norman England’, Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood III (Woodbridge, 1990) is a very important and useful essay. For fortified homes in England before 1066, see A. Williams, ‘A Bell-house and a Burh-geat: Lordly Residences in England before the Norman Conquest’, Medieval Knighthood IV (Woodbridge, 1992). For the politics of the period before 1066 in England and Normandy, see F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor (3rd edn, London, 1997) and D. Bates, Normandy before 1066 (London, 1982). The career of an early castle-builder in England is dealt with in A. Williams, ‘The King’s Nephew: The Family and Career of Ralph, Earl of Hereford’, Studies in Medieval History presented to R. Allen Brown, eds. C. Harper-Bill, C.J. Holdsworth, J.L. Nelson (Woodbridge, 1989). For a biographical treatment of the Norman ducal dynasty before and after 1066, see D. Crouch, The Normans (London, 2002). Politics in England after the Conquest are fully explored in R. Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings (Oxford, 2000) and M.T. Clanchy, England and its Rulers (2nd edn, Oxford, 1998). Compare the vehemently pro-Norman account in R.A. Brown, The Normans and the Norman Conquest (2nd edn, Woodbridge, 1985) with the version of events in A. Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995). The best biography of William the Conqueror is D. Bates, William the Conqueror (London, 1989), although D.C. Douglas, William the Conqueror (London, 1964) contains much useful information. The purpose of Domesday Book continues to be debated, but I still adhere to the view set out in J.C. Holt, ‘1086’, Domesday Studies, ed. Holt (Woodbridge, 1987). For the difference in military tactics between the English and the Normans, see M. Bennett, ‘The Medieval Warhorse Reconsidered’, Medieval Knighthood V, ed. S. Church and R. Harvey (Woodbridge, 1995) and ‘The Myth of the Military Supremacy of Knightly Cavalry’, in Armies, Chivalry and Warfare in Medieval France and Britain, ed. M. Strickland (Stamford, 1995), as well as M. Strickland, ‘Military Technology and Conquest: the Anomaly of Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Norman Studies XIX (Woodbridge, 1997). The principal primary sources for the history of this period are Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall (6 vols, Oxford, 1969–1980) and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. and trans. G. N. Garmonsway (2nd edn, London, 1972).

  CHAPTER TWO

  An excellent up-to-date introduction to stone castles in the century after the Conquest is given in E. Fernie, The Architecture of Norman England (Oxford, 2000). For a more detailed view, The History of the King’s Works, ed. R.A. Brown, H.M. Colvin, A.J. Taylor (6 vols, London, 1963) is still in most respects unsurpassed. A revisionist perspective can be found in C. Coulson, ‘Peaceable Power in English Castles’, Anglo-Norman Studies XXIII (Woodbridge, 2001). P. Dixon, ‘Design in Castle-Building: the controlling of access to the Lord’, Chateau Gaillard, 18 (1998) explores a similar theme. For the two main castles discussed in this chapter, see R.A. Brown, Rochester Castle (2nd edn, London, 1986) and P. Dixon and P. Marshall, ‘Hedingham Castle: A Reassessment’, Fortress, 18 (1993). The politics of the twelfth century are covered by Clanchy, Bartlett and Crouch (see above), but see also C. Warren Hollister, Henry I (London, 2001) and W.L. Warren, Henry II (London, 1973). For John’s reign, W.L. Warren, King John (3rd edn, London, 1997) is still a rip-roaring read, but should be tempered with the views expressed in King John: New Interpretations, ed. S.D. Church (Woodbridge, 1999). S. Painter, The Reign of King John (Baltimore, 1949) and K. Norgate, John Lackland (London, 1902) can still be read with profit. For early thirteenth-century politics, see D.A. Carpenter, The Minority of Henry III (London, 1990) and J. Gillingham, ‘Magna Carta and Royal Government’, Richard Coeur de Lion (London, 1994). I also referred to I.W. Rowlands, ‘King John, Stephen Langton and Rochester Castle, 1213–15’, Studies in Medieval History presented to R. Allen Brown, eds. C. Harper-Bill, C.J. Holdsworth, J.L. Nelson (Woodbridge, 1989) and R. Eales, ‘Castles and Politics in England, 1215–1224’, Thirteenth Century England II (Woodbridge, 1988). For siege warfare, see Medieval Warfare: A History, ed. M. Keen (Oxford, 1999), J. Bradbury, The Medieval Siege (Woodbridge, 1992) and M. Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: The English Experience (Yale, 1996).

  CHAPTER THREE

  Arnold Taylor made Edward I’s Welsh castles his own. Above anything else, see his guidebooks for Rhuddlan, Harlech, Conway, Caernarfon and Beaumaris, all published by CADW: Welsh Historic Monuments. For more detailed expositions, his sections of The History of the King’s Works, ed. R.A. Brown, H.M. Colvin, A.J. Taylor (6 vols, London, 1963), and his own Studies in Castles and Castle-Building (London, 1985) are the places to look. For Caerphilly, see D. Renn, Caerphilly Castle (CADW, 1997).

  M.T. Clanchy, England and its Rulers (2nd edn, Oxford, 1998) is excellent for thirteenth-century politics, all the more so now it includes an epilogue on Edward I. The king has been given an expansive biography by M. Prestwich, Edward I (London, 1988). For a less sympathetic portrait, and an exploration of English imperialism in this period, see R.R. Davies, Domination and Conquest (Cambridge, 1990) and more recently The First English Empire (Oxford, 2000). The same author has written the definitive history of medieval Wales in Conquest, Coexistence and Change: Wales 1063–1415 (Oxford, 1987), reprinted as The Age of Conquest (Oxford, 1991), superseding the previous standard work, J.E. Lloyd, A History of Wales, from the earliest times to the Edwardian conquest, (2 vols, London, 1911). For a blow-by-blow account of the conquest, see J.E. Morris, The Welsh Wars of Edward I (Oxford, 1901). Edward’s interest in the legendary British past is examined in R. Morris, ‘The Architecture of Edwardian Enthusiasm: Castle Symbolism in the Reigns of Edward I and his Successors’, Armies,
Chivalry and Warfare in Medieval France and Britain, ed. M. Strickland (Stamford, 1995), building on the earlier work of R.S. Loomis, ‘Edward I, Arthurian Enthusiast’, Speculum, 28 (1953). For an introduction to medieval building practices, look no further than N. Coldstream, Masons and Sculptors (London, 1991).

  CHAPTER FOUR

  For later medieval English castles, see in general M. Johnson, Behind the Castle Gate: From Medieval to Renaissance (London, 2002) and M.W. Thompson, The Decline of the Castle (Cambridge, 1987). M.C. Prestwich, ‘English Castles in the Reign of Edward II’, Journal of Medieval History, 8 (1982) is important for the early fourteenth century. For Bodiam in particular, there are dozens of articles, debating the question posed by D.J. Turner, ‘Bodiam, Sussex: True Castle or Old Soldier’s Dream House?’, England in the Fourteenth Century (1986). The castle’s military reputation, however, has been blown clean out of the water by C. Coulson, ‘Some Analysis of the Castle of Bodiam, East Sussex’, Medieval Knighthood IV, eds. C. Harper-Bill and R. Harvey (Woodbridge, 1992). See also his ‘Structural Symbolism in Medieval Castle Architecture’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 132 (1979). The castle’s environs are examined in P. Everson, ‘Bodiam Castle, East Sussex: castle and its designed landscape’, Chateau Gaillard, 17 (1996). The early Dallingridges have been exhaustively studied by N. Saul, ‘The Rise of the Dallingridge Family’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 136 (1998), while there is biographical material on Sir Edward himself in The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1386–1421, ed. J.S. Roskell, L. Clark, C. Rawcliffe (4 vols, Stroud, 1992). For Edward’s run-in with John of Gaunt, see S. Walker, ‘Lancaster v. Dallingridge: A Franchisal Dispute in Fourteenth-Century Sussex’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 121 (1983). For the Hundred Years War, see C. Allmand, The Hundred Years War: England and France at War, c. 1300 – c.1450 (Cambridge, 1988) and D. Seward, The Hundred Years’ War: The English in France (London, 1978). J. Sumption, Trial By Fire: The Hundred Years’ War II (London, 1999) covers the campaigns in which Dallingridge participated early in his career. Richard II’s reign is dealt with comprehensively in N. Saul, Richard II (London, 1997). For Arundel’s rebellion, see A. Goodman, The Loyal Conspiracy: The Lords Appellant under Richard II (London, 1971). For English knighthood in general, see P. Coss, The Knight in Medieval England, 1000–1400 (Stroud, 1993) and M. Keen, Chivalry (Yale, 1984). As to what people thought about knights in Dallingridge’s day, compare the contrary views of T. Jones, Chaucer’s Knight: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary (3rd edn, London, 1994) and M. Keen, ‘Chaucer’s Knight, the English Aristocracy and the Crusade’, Nobles, Knights and Men-at-Arms in the Middle Ages (London, 1996). For the lifestyle of people like Edward and Elizabeth, see C. Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in England, 1200–1520 (Cambridge, 1989), J. Catto, ‘Religion and the English Nobility in the Later Fourteenth Century’, History and Imagination (London, 1981), and P. Coss, The Lady in Medieval England, 1000–1500 (Stroud, 1998). N. Saul, Scenes from Provincial Life: knightly families in Sussex, 1280–1400 (Oxford, 1986) provides some charming tableaux, but the comments on the Dallingridges have been superseded.