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[Pg iii]

THE EARLY NORMAN CASTLES
OF THE BRITISH ISLES

BY ELLA S. ARMITAGE

HONORARY FELLOW OF THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF SCOTLAND

AUTHOR OF “THE CHILDHOOD OF THE ENGLISH NATION”; “THE CONNECTION
OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND”; “AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH ANTIQUITIES,”
ETC., ETC.

WITH PLANS BY D. H. MONTGOMERIE, F.S.A.

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1912

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Some portions of this book have already appeared in print. Of these, the most important is the catalogue raisonné of early Norman castles in England which will be found in Chapter VII., and which was originally published in the English Historical Review (vol. xix., 1904). It has, however, been enlarged by the inclusion of five fresh castles, and by notes upon thirty-four others, of which the article in the Review gave only the names; the historical notes in that essay being confined to the castles mentioned in Domesday Book.

The chapter on Irish mottes appeared in the Antiquary (vol. xlii., 1906), but it has been revised, corrected, and added to. Portions of a still earlier paper, read before the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in March 1900, are incorporated in various parts of the book, but these have been recast in the fuller treatment of the subject which is aimed at here.

The rest of the work is entirely new. No serious attempt had been made to ascertain the exact nature of Saxon and Danish fortifications by a comparison of the existing remains with the historical records which have come down to us, until the publication of Mr Allcroft’s valuable book on Earthwork of England.[Pg viii] The chapters on Saxon and Danish earthworks in the present volume were written before the appearance of his book, though the results arrived at are only slightly different.

In Chapter V. an effort is made to trace the first appearance of the private castle in European history. The private castle is an institution which is often carelessly supposed to have existed from time immemorial. The writer contends that it only appears after the establishment of the feudal system.

The favourable reception given by archæologists to the paper read before the Scottish Society led the writer to follow up this interesting subject, and to make a closer study of the motte-castles of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. The book now offered is the fruit of eleven years of further research. The result of the inquiry is to establish the theory advanced in that earlier paper, that these castles, in the British Islands, are in every case of Norman origin.

The writer does not claim to have originated this theory. Dr Round was the first to attack (in the Quarterly Review, 1894) the assertion of the late Mr G. T. Clark that the moated mound was a Saxon castle. Mr George Neilson continued the same line of argument in his illuminating paper on “The Motes in Norman Scotland” (Scottish Review, vol. xxxii., 1898).[1] All that the writer claims is to have carried the contention a stage further, and to have shown that the private castle did not exist at all in Britain until it was brought here by the Normans.

[Pg ix]

The author feels that some apology is necessary for the enormous length of Chapter VII., containing the catalogue of Early English castles. It may be urged in extenuation that much of the information it contains has never before appeared in print, seeing that it has been taken from unpublished portions of the Pipe Rolls; further, that contemporary authorities have in all cases been used, and that the chapter contains a mass of material, previously scattered and almost inaccessible, which is here for the first time collated, and placed, as the author thinks, in its right setting. It is hoped that the chapter will prove a useful storehouse to those who are working at the history of any particular castle mentioned in the list.

To many it may seem a waste of labour to devote a whole book to the establishment of a proposition which is now generally adopted by the best English archæologists; but the subject is an important one, and there is no book which deals with it in detail, and in the light of the evidence which has recently been accumulated. The writer hopes that such fuller statement of the case as is here attempted may help not only to a right ascription of British castle-mounds, and of the stone castles built upon many of them, but may also furnish material to the historian who seeks to trace the progress of the Norman occupation.

Students of the architecture of castles are aware that this subject presents much more difficult questions than does the architecture of churches. Those who are seriously working on castle architecture are very few in number, and are as yet little known to the world at[Pg x] large. From time to time, books on castles are issued from the press, which show that the writers have not even an idea of the preliminary studies without which their work has no value at all. It is hoped that the sketch of castle architecture from the 10th century to the 13th, which is given in the last chapter, may prove a useful contribution to the subject, at any rate in its lists of dated castles. The Pipe Rolls have been too little used hitherto for the general history of castle architecture, and no list has ever been published before of the keeps built by Henry II. But without the evidence of the Pipe Rolls we are in the land of guesswork, unsupported, as a rule, by the decorative details which render it easy to read the structural history of most churches.

My warmest thanks are due to Mr Duncan H. Montgomerie, F.S.A., for his generous labour on the plans and illustrations of this book, and for effective assistance in the course of the work, especially in many toilsome pilgrimages for the purpose of comparing the Ordnance Survey with the actual remains. I also owe grateful thanks to Mr Goddard H. Orpen, R.I.A., for most kindly revising the chapter on Irish mottes; to Mr W. St John Hope (late Assistant Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries), for information on many difficult points; to Mr Harold Sands, F.S.A., whose readiness to lay his great stores of knowledge at my disposal has been always unfailing; to Mr George Neilson, F.S.A.Scot., for most valuable help towards my chapter on Scottish mottes; to Mr Charles Dawson, F.S.A., for granting the use of his admirable photographs from the Bayeux Tapestry; to Mr Cooper, author of the[Pg xi] History of York Castle, for important facts and documents relating to his subject; to the Rev. Herbert White, M.A., and to Mr Basil Stallybrass, for reports of visits to castles; and to correspondents too numerous to mention who have kindly, and often very fully, answered my inquiries.

ELLA S. ARMITAGE.

Westholm,
Rawdon, Leeds.

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The study of earthworks has been one of the most neglected subjects in English archæology until quite recent years. It may even be said that during the first half of the 19th century, less attention was paid to earthworks than by our older topographical writers. Leland, in the reign of Henry VIII., never failed to notice the “Dikes and Hilles, which were Campes of Men of Warre,” nor the “Hilles of Yerth cast up like the Dungeon of sum olde Castelle,” which he saw in his pilgrimages through England. And many of our 17th- and 18th-century topographers have left us invaluable notices of earthworks which were extant in their time. But if we turn over the archæological journals of some fifty years ago, we shall be struck by the paucity of papers on earthworks, and especially by the complete ignoring, in most cases, of those connected with castles.

The misfortune attending this neglect, was that it left the ground open to individual fancy, and each observer formed his own theory of the earthworks which he happened to have seen, and as often as not,[Pg 2] stated that theory as a fact. We need not be surprised to find Camden doing this, as he wrote before the dawn of scientific observation; but that such methods should have been carried on until late in the 19th century is little to the credit of English archæology. Mr Clark’s work on Mediæval Military Architecture (published in 1884), which has the merit of being one of the first to pay due attention to castle earthworks, counterbalances that merit by enunciating as a fact a mere guess of his own, which, as we shall afterwards show, was absolutely devoid of solid foundation.

The scientific study of English earthworks may be said to have been begun by General Pitt-Rivers in the last quarter of the 19th century; but we must not forget that he described himself as a pupil of Canon Greenwell, whose careful investigations of British barrows form such an important chapter of prehistoric archæology. General Pitt-Rivers applied the lessons he had thus learned to the excavation of camps and dykes, and his labours opened a new era in that branch of research. By accumulating an immense body of observations, and by recording those observations with a minuteness intended to forestall future questions, he built up a storehouse of facts which will furnish materials to all future workers in prehistoric antiquities. He was too cautious ever to dogmatise, and if he arrived at conclusions, he was careful to state them merely as suggestions. But his work destroyed many favourite antiquarian delusions, even some which had been cherished by very learned writers, such as Dr Guest’s theory of the “Belgic ditches” of Wiltshire.

A further important step in the study of earthworks was taken by the late Mr I. Chalkley Gould, when he founded the Committee for Ancient Earthworks, and[Pg 3] drew up the classification of earthworks which is now being generally adopted by archæological writers. This classification may be abridged into (a) promontory or cliff forts, (b) hill forts, (c) rectangular forts, (d) moated hillocks, (e) moated hillocks with courts attached, (f) banks and ditches surrounding homesteads, (g) manorial works, (h) fortified villages.

We venture to think that still further divisions are needed, to include (1) boundary earthworks; (2) sepulchral or religious circles or squares; (3) enclosures clearly non-military, intended to protect sheep and cattle from wolves, or to aid in the capture of wild animals.[2]

This classification, it will be observed, makes no attempt to decide the dates of the different types of earthworks enumerated. But a great step forward was taken when these different types were separated from one another. There had been no greater source of confusion in the writings of our older antiquaries, than the unscientific idea that one earthwork was as good as another; that is to say, that one type of earthwork would do as well as another for any date or any circumstances. When it is recognised that large classes of earthworks show similar features, it becomes probable that even if they were not thrown up in the same historic period, they were at any rate raised to meet similar sets of circumstances. We may be quite sure that a camp which contains an area of 60 or 80 acres was not constructed for the same purpose as one which only contains an area of three.

We are not concerned here, however, with the[Pg 4] attempt to disentangle the dates of the various classes of prehistoric earthworks.[3] Such generalisations are for the most part premature; and although some advance is being made in this direction, it is still impossible to decide without excavation whether a camp of class (a) or (b) belongs to the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, or the Iron Age. Our business is with classes (d) and (e) of Mr Gould’s list, that is, with the moated hillocks. We shall only treat of the other classes to the extent which is necessary to bring out the special character of classes (d) and (e).

Let us look more closely into these earthworks in their perfect form, the class (e) of the Earthwork Committee’s list. They consist, when fully preserved, of an artificial hillock, 20, 30, 40, or in some rare instances 100 feet high. The hillock carried a breastwork of earth round the top, which in many cases is still preserved; this breastwork enclosed a small court, sometimes only 30 feet in diameter, in rare cases as large as half an acre; it must have been crowned by a stockade of timber, and the representations in the Bayeux Tapestry would lead us to think that it always enclosed a wooden tower.[4] As a rule the hillock is round, but it is not unfrequently oval, and occasionally square. The base of the hillock is surrounded by a ditch. Below the hillock is a court, much larger than the small space enclosed on the top of the mount. It also has been surrounded by a ditch, which joins the ditch of the mount, and thus encloses the whole fortification. The court is defended by earthen banks, both on the scarp and counterscarp of the ditch, and these banks[Pg 5] of course had also their timber stockades, the remains of which have sometimes been found on excavation.[5]

These are the main features of the earthworks in question. Some variations may be noticed. The ditch is not invariably carried all round the hillock, occasionally it is not continued between the hillock and the court.[6] Sometimes the length of the ditch separating the hillock from the court is at a higher level than the main ditch.[7] Often the ditches were evidently dry from the first, but not infrequently they are wet, and sometimes vestiges of the arrangements for feeding them are still apparent. The hillock is not invariably artificial; often it is a natural hill scarped into a conical shape; sometimes an isolated rock is made use of to serve as a citadel, which saved much spade-work. The shape of the court is very variable: it may be square or oblong, with greatly rounded corners, or it may be oval, or semilunar, or triangular; a very common form is the bean-shaped. The area covered by these fortifications is much more uniform; one of the features contrasting them most strongly with the great prehistoric “camps” of southern England is their comparatively small size. We know of only one (Skipsea) in which the bailey covers as much as eight acres; in by far the greater number the whole area included in the hillock, court, and ditches does not exceed three acres, and often it is not more than one and a half.[8]

Now this type of fort will tell us a good deal about[Pg 6] itself if we examine it carefully. In the first place, its character is more pronounced than that of any other class of earthwork. It differs entirely from the great camps which belong to the tribal period. It was evidently not designed to accommodate a mass of people with their flocks and herds. It is small in area, and its citadel, as a rule, is very small indeed. Dr Sophus Müller, the eminent Danish archæologist, when dealing with the specimens of this class of fortification which are to be found in Denmark, made the luminous remark that “the fortresses of prehistoric times are the defences of the community, north of the Alps as in the old classical lands. Small castles for an individual and his warrior-band belong to the Middle Ages.”[9] These words give the true direction to which we must turn for the interpretation of these earthworks.

In the second place, this type presents a peculiar development of plan, such as we do not expect to find in the earliest times in these islands. It has a citadel of a most pronounced type. This alone differentiates it from the prehistoric or Keltic camps which are so abundant in Great Britain. It might be too hasty a generalisation to say that no prehistoric camps have citadels, but as a rule the traverses by which some of these camps are divided appear to have been made for the purpose of separating the cattle from the people, rather than as ultimate retreats in time of war. The early German camps, according to Köhler, have inner enclosures which he thinks were intended for the residence of the chief; but he calls attention to the great difference between these camps and the class we are now considering, in that the inner enclosure is of much greater size.[10] It would appear that some of the fortifica[Pg 7]tions in England which are known or suspected to be Saxon have also these inner enclosures of considerable size (6 acres in the case of Witham), but without any vestige of the hillock which is the principal feature of class (e).

It is clear, in the third place, that the man who threw up earthworks of this latter class was not only suspicious of his neighbours, but was even suspicious of his own garrison. For the hillock in the great majority of cases is so constructed as to be capable of complete isolation, and capable of defending itself, if necessary, against its own court. Thus it is probable that the force which followed this chieftain was not composed of men of his own blood, in whom he could repose absolute trust; and the earthworks themselves suggest that they are the work of an invader who came to settle in these islands, who employed mercenaries instead of tribesmen, and who had to maintain his settlement by force.

When on further inquiry we find that earthworks of this type are exceedingly common in France, and are generally found in connection with feudal castles,[11] and when we consider the area of their distribution in the United Kingdom, and see that they are to be found in every county in England, as well as in Wales and in the Normanised parts of Ireland and Scotland, we see that the Norman invader is the one to whom they seem to point. We see also that small forts of this kind, easily and cheaply constructed, and defensible by a small number of men, exactly correspond to the needs of the Norman invader, both during the period of the Conquest and for a long time after his first settlement here.

But it will at once occur to an objector that there have been other invaders of Britain before the Normans,[Pg 8] and it may be asked why these earthworks were not equally suited to the needs of the Saxon or the Danish conquerors, and why they may not with equal reason be attributed to them. To answer this question we will try to discover what kind of fortifications actually were constructed by the Saxons and Danes, and to this inquiry we will address ourselves in the succeeding chapters.

It will clear the ground greatly if it is recognised at the outset that these earthworks are castles, in the usual sense of the word; that is, the private fortified residences of great landowners. It was the chief merit of Mr G. T. Clark’s work on Mediæval Military Architecture, that he showed the perfect correspondence in plan of these earthen and timber structures with the stone castles which immediately succeeded them, so that it was only necessary to add a stone tower and stone walls to these works to convert them into a Norman castle of the popularly accepted type. We regard the military character of these works as so fully established that we have not thought it necessary to discuss the theory that they were temples, which was suggested by some of our older writers, nor even the more modern idea that they were moot-hills, which has been defended with considerable learning by Mr G. L. Gomme.[12] Dr Christison remarks in his valuable work on Scottish fortifications that an overweening importance has been attached to moot-hills, without historical evidence.[13] And Mr George Neilson, in his essay on “The Motes in Norman Scotland”[14] (to which we shall often have occasion to refer hereafter), shows that[Pg 9] moot-hill in Scotland means nothing but mote-hill, the hill of the mote or motte; but that moots or courts were held there, just because it had formerly been the site of a castle, and consequently a seat of jurisdiction.[15]

That some of these hillocks have anciently been sepulchral, we do not attempt to deny. The Norman seems to have been free from any superstitious fear which might have hindered him from utilising the sepulchres of the dead for his personal defence; or else he was unaware that they were burial-places. There are some very few recorded instances of prehistoric burials found under the hillocks of castles; but in ordinary cases, these hillocks would not be large enough for the mottes of castles.[16] There are, however, some sepulchral barrows of such great size that it is difficult to distinguish them from mottes; the absence of a court attached is not sufficient evidence, as there are some mottes which stand alone, without any accompanying court. Excavation or documentary evidence can alone decide in these cases, though the presence of[Pg 10] an earthen breastwork on top of the mount furnishes a strong presumption of a military origin. But the undoubtedly sepulchral barrows of New Grange and Dowth in Ireland show signs of having been utilised as castles, having remains of breastworks on their summits.[17]

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We have pointed out in the preceding chapter that when it is asked whether the earthworks of the moated mound-and-court type were the work of the Anglo-Saxons, the question resolves itself into another, namely, Did the Anglo-Saxons build castles?

As far as we know, they did not; and although to prove a negative we can only bring negative evidence, that evidence appears to us to be very conclusive. But before we deal with it, we will try to find out what sort of fortifications the Anglo-Saxons actually did construct.

The first fortification which we read of in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is that of Bamborough, in Northumberland. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us that in 547 Ida began to reign in Northumberland, and adds that he built “Bebbanburh,” which was first enclosed with a hedge, and afterwards with a wall. Unfortunately this celebrated passage is merely the interpolation of a 12th-century scribe, and is consequently of no authority whatever,[18] though there is nothing improbable in the statement, and it is supported by Nennius.[19][Pg 12] Ida’s grandson Ethelfrith gave this fortress to his wife Bebba, from whom it received the name of Bebbanburh, now Bamborough. It was built without doubt on the same lofty insulated rock where the castle now stands; for when it was attacked by Penda in 633, he found the situation so strong that it was impossible to storm it, and it was only by heaping up wood on the most accessible side that he was able to set fire to the wooden stockade.[20] Modern historians talk of this fort as a castle, but all the older authorities call it a town;[21] nor is there any mention of a castle at Bamborough till the reign of William II. The area of the basaltic headland of Bamborough covers 4¾ acres, a site large enough for a city of Ida’s day. The church of St Peter was placed on the highest point. The castle which was built there in Norman times does not seem to have occupied at first more than a portion of this site,[22] though it is probable that eventually the townsmen were expelled from the rock, and that thus the modern town of Bamborough arose in the levels below. Although 4¾ acres may seem a small size for an urbs, it was certainly regarded as such, and was large enough to protect a considerable body of invaders.

Strange to say, this is the only record which we have of any fortress-building by the invading Saxons. Until we come to the time of Alfred, there is hardly an allusion to any fortification in use in Saxon times.[23] It[Pg 13] is mentioned in 571 that the Saxons took four towns (tunas) of the Britons, and the apparent allusion to sieges seems to show that these British towns had some kind of fortification. The three chesters, which were taken by the Saxons in 577, Gloucester, Cirencester, and Bath, prove that some Roman cities still kept their defences. In 755 the slaughter of Cynewulf, king of the West Saxons, by the etheling Cyneard, is told with unusual detail by the Chronicle. The king was slain in a bur (bower, or isolated women’s chamber[24]), the door of which he attempted to defend; but this bur was itself enclosed in a burh, the gates of which were locked by the etheling who had killed the king, and were defended until they were forced by the king’s avengers. Here it seems to be doubtful whether the burh was a town or a private enclosure resembling a stable-yard of modern times. The description of the storming of York by the Danes in 867 shows that the Roman walls of that city were still preserved. These passages are the solitary instances of fortifications in England mentioned by the Chronicle before the time of Alfred.[25] The invasions of the Danes led at last to a great fortifying epoch, which preserved our country from being totally overwhelmed by those northern immigrants.

The little Saxon kingdom of Wessex was the germ of the British Empire. When Alfred came to the throne it had already absorbed the neighbouring kingdoms of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, and the issue hanging in the balance was whether this small English state would survive the desolating flood of pagan barbarism which had already overwhelmed the sister kingdoms of the[Pg 14] Midlands and the North. It was given to Alfred to raise again the fallen standard of Christendom and civilisation, and to establish an English kingdom on so sound a basis that when, in later centuries, it successively became the prey of the Dane and the Norman, the English polity survived both conquests. The wisdom, energy, and steadfastness of King Alfred and his children and grandchildren were amongst the most important of the many factors which have helped to build up the great empire of Britain.

We are concerned here with only one of the measures by which Alfred and his family secured the triumph of Wessex in her mortal struggle with the Danes, the fortifications which they raised for the protection of their subjects. From the pages of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle we might be led to think that Alfred’s son and daughter, Edward and Ethelfleda, were the chief builders of fortifications. But there is ample evidence that they only carried out a systematic purpose which had been initiated by Alfred. We know that Alfred was a great builder. “What shall I say,” cries Asser, “of the cities and towns which he restored, and of others which he built which had never existed before! Of the royal halls and chambers, wonderfully built of stone and wood by his command!”[26] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle notices the restoration of London (886),[27] about which two extant charters are more precise.[28] It also mentions the building of a work (geweorc) at Athelney,[Pg 15] and another at Limene-muthan (doubtless a repair of the Roman fort at Lympne), and two works built by Alfred on the banks of the river Lea.[29] William of Malmesbury tells us that in his boyhood there was a stone in the nunnery of Shaftesbury which had been taken out of the walls of the town, which bore this inscription: “Anno dominicæ incarnationis Alfredus rex fecit hanc urbem, DCCCLXXX, regni sui VIII.”[30] Ethelred, Alfred’s son-in-law, built the burh at Worcester in Alfred’s lifetime, as a most interesting charter tells us.[31]

It may be safely assumed, then, that when Edward came to the throne he found Wessex well provided with defensive places, and that when he and his sister signalised their conquests in the Midlands by building strongholds at every fresh step of their advance, they were only carrying out the policy of their father.

At the time of Alfred’s death, and the succession of Edward the Elder to the crown (901), Ethelfleda, daughter of Alfred, was the wife of Ethelred, ealdorman of Mercia, who appears to have been a sort of under-king of that province.[32] On the death of Ethelred in 912,[33] Edward took possession of London and Oxford and “of all the lands which owed obedience thereto”—in other words, of that small portion of Eastern Mercia which was still in English hands; that is, not only the present Oxfordshire and Middlesex, but part of Herts,[Pg 16] part of Bedfordshire, all Buckinghamshire, and the southern part of Northants. The Watling Street, which runs north-west from London to Shrewsbury, and thence north to Chester and Manchester, formed at that time the dividing line between the English and Danish rule.[34] It would seem from the course of the story that after Ethelred’s death there was some arrangement between Ethelfleda and her brother, possibly due to the surrender of the territory mentioned above, which enabled her to rule English Mercia in greater independence than her husband had enjoyed. Up to this date we find Edward disposing of the fyrd of Mercia;[35] this is not mentioned again in Ethelfleda’s lifetime. Nothing is clearer, both from the Chronicle and from Florence, than that the brother and sister each “did their own,” to use an expressive provincial phrase. Ethelfleda goes her own way, subduing Western Mercia, while Edward pushes up through Eastern Mercia and Essex to complete the conquest of East Anglia. A certain concert may be observed in their movements, but they did not work in company.

The work of fortification begun in Alfred’s reign had been continued by the restoration of the Roman walls of Chester in 908, by Ethelred and his wife; and Ethelfleda herself (possibly during the lingering illness which later chroniclers give to her husband) had built a burh at Bremesbyrig. During the twelve years which elapsed between Ethelred’s death and that of Edward in 924, the brother and sister built no less than twenty-seven burhs, giving a total of thirty, if we add Chester and Bremesbyrig, and Worcester, which was built in Alfred’s reign. Now what was the nature of these fortifications, which the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle uniformly calls burhs?

[Pg 17]

There is really not the slightest difficulty in answering this question. The word is with us still; it is our word borough. It is true we have altered the meaning somewhat, because a borough means now an enfranchised town; but we must remember that it got that meaning because the fortified towns, the only ones which were called burhs or burgi, were the first to be enfranchised, and while the fortifications have become less and less important, the franchise has become of supreme importance.

Bede, in the earliest times of our history, equated burh with urbs, a city; Alfred in his Orosius translates civitas by burh;[36] the Anglo-Saxon gospels of the 11th century do the same;[36] and the confederacy of five Danish towns which existed in Mercia in the 10th century is called in contemporary records fif burga, the five boroughs.[37]

Burh is a noun derived from the word beorgan, to protect. Undoubtedly its primitive meaning was that of a protective enclosure. As in the case of the words tun, yard, or garth, and worth or ward, the sense of the word became extended from the protecting bulwark to the place protected. In this sense of a fortified enclosure, the word was naturally applied by the Anglo-Saxons to the prehistoric and British “camps” which they found in Britain, such as Cissbury. Moreover, it is clear that some kind of enclosure must have existed round every farmstead in Saxon times, if only as a protection against wolves. The illustrated Saxon manuscripts show that the hall in which the thane dwelt, the[Pg 18] ladies’ bower, the chapel and other buildings dependent on the hall, were enclosed in a stockade, and had gates which without doubt were closed at night.[38] This enclosure may have been called a burh, and the innumerable place-names in England ending in borough or bury[39] seem to suggest that the burh was often nothing more than a stockade, as in so many of these sites not a vestige of defensive works remains.[40] We may concede that the original meaning of an enclosure was never entirely lost, and that it appears to be preserved in a few passages in the Anglo-Saxon laws. Thus Edmund speaks of mine burh as an asylum, the violation of which brings its special punishment; and Ethelred II. ordains that every compurgation shall take place in thaes kyninges byrig; and the Rectitudines Singularum Personum tells us that one of the duties of the geneat was to build for his lord, and to hedge his burh.[41] But it is absolutely clear that even in these cases a burh was an enclosure and not a tump; and it is equally clear from the general use of the word that its main meaning was a fortified town. Athelstan ordains that there shall be a mint in every burh; and his laws show that already the burh has its gemot or meeting, and its reeve or mayor.[42] He ordains that all burhs are to be repaired[Pg 19] fourteen days after Rogations, and that no market shall be held outside the town.[43] In the laws of Edgar’s time not only the borough-moot and the borough-reeve are spoken of, but the burh-waru or burgesses.[44] Burh is contrasted with wapentake as town with country.[45]

If we wish to multiply proofs that a burh was the same thing as a borough, we can turn to the Anglo-Saxon illustrated manuscripts, and we shall find that they give us many pictures of burhs, and that in all cases they are fortified towns.[46] Finally, Florence of Worcester, one of the most careful of our early chroniclers, who lived when Anglo-Saxon was still a living language, and who must have known what a burh meant, translates it by urbs in nineteen cases out of twenty-six.[47] His authority alone is sufficient to settle this question, and we need no longer have any doubt that a burh was the same thing which in mediæval Latin is called a burgus, that is a fortified town, and that our word borough is lawfully descended from it.

It would not have been necessary to spend so much time on the history of the word burh if this unfortunate word had not been made the subject of one of the strangest delusions which ever was imposed on the archæological world. We refer of course to the theory of the late Mr G. T. Clark, who contended in his[Pg 20] Mediæval Military Architecture[48] that the moated mound of class (e), which we have described in our first chapter, was what the Anglo-Saxons called a burh. In other words, he maintained that the burhs were Saxon castles. It is one of the most extraordinary and inexplicable things in the history of English archæology that a man who was not in any sense an Anglo-Saxon scholar was allowed to affix an entirely new meaning to a very common Anglo-Saxon word, and that this meaning was at once accepted without question by historians who had made Anglo-Saxon history their special study! The present writer makes no pretensions to be an Anglo-Saxon scholar, but it is easy to pick out the word burh in the Chronicle and the Anglo-Saxon Laws, and to find out how the word is translated in the Latin chronicles; and this little exercise is sufficient in itself to prove the futility of Mr Clark’s contention.

Sentiment perhaps had something to do with Mr Clark’s remarkable success. There is an almost utter lack of tangible monuments of our national heroes; and therefore people who justly esteemed the labours of Alfred and his house were pleased when they were told that the mounds at Tamworth, Warwick, and elsewhere were the work of Ethelfleda, and that other mounds were the work of Edward the Elder. It did not occur to them that they were doing a great wrong to the memory of the children of Alfred in supposing them capable of building these little earthen and timber castles for their personal defence and that of their nobles, and leaving the mass of their people at the mercy of the Danes. Far other was the thought of Ethelfleda, when[Pg 21] she and her husband built the borough of Worcester. As they expressed it in their memorable charter, it was not only for the defence of the bishop and the churches of Worcester, but “To Shelter all the Folk.”[49] And we may be sure that the same idea lay at the founding of all the boroughs which were built by Alfred and by Edward and Ethelfleda. They were to be places where the whole countryside could take refuge during a Danish raid. The Chronicle tells us in 894 how Alfred divided his forces into three parts, the duty of one part being to defend the boroughs; and from this time forth we constantly find the men of the boroughs doing good service against the Danes.[50] It was by defending and thus developing the boroughs of England that Alfred and his descendants saved England from the Danes.

Thus far we have seen that all the fortifications which we know to have been built by the Anglo-Saxons were the fortifications of society and not of the individual. We have heard nothing whatever of the private castle as an institution in Saxon times; and although this evidence is only negative, it appears to us to be entitled to much more weight than has hitherto been given to it. Some writers seem to think that the private castle was a modest little thing which was content to blush unseen. This is wholly to mistake the position of the private castle in history. Such a castle is not merely a social arrangement, it is a political institution of the highest importance. Where such castles exist, we are certain to hear of some of them, sooner or later, in the pages of history.

[Pg 22]

We can easily test this by comparing Anglo-Saxon history with Norman of the same period, after castles had arisen in Normandy. Who among Saxon nobles was more likely to possess a castle than the powerful Earl Godwin, and his independent sons? Yet when Godwin left the court of Edward the Confessor, because he would not obey the king’s order to punish the men of Dover for insulting Count Eustace of Boulogne, we do not hear that he retired to his castle, or that his sons fortified their castles against the king; we only hear that they met together at Beverstone (a place where there was no castle before the 14th century)[51] and “arrayed themselves resolutely.”[52] Neither do we hear of any castle belonging to the powerful Earl Siward of Northumbria, or Leofric, Earl of Mercia. And when Godwin returned triumphantly to England in 1052 we do not hear of any castles being restored to him.

Now let us contrast this piece of English history, as told by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, with the Norman history of about the same period, the history of the rebellion of the Norman nobles against their young duke, William the Bastard. The first thing the nobles do is to put their castles into a state of defence. William has to take refuge in the castle of a faithful vassal, Hubert of Rye, until he can safely reach his own castle of Falaise. After the victory of Val-ès-Dunes, William had to reduce the castles which still held out, and then to order the destruction of all the castles which had been erected against him.[53]

Or let us contrast the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of 1051 with that of 1088, when certain Norman barons[Pg 23] and bishops in England conspired against the new king, William Rufus. The first thing told us is that each of the head conspirators “went to his castle, and manned it and victualled it.” Then Bishop Geoffrey makes Bristol Castle the base of a series of plundering raids. Bishop Wulfstan, on the other hand, aids the cause of William by preventing an attempt of the rebels on the castle of Worcester. Roger Bigod throws himself into Norwich Castle, and harries the shire; Bishop Odo brings the plunder of Kent into his castle of Rochester. Finally the king’s cause wins the day through the taking of the castles of Tonbridge, Pevensey, Rochester, and Durham.

If we reflect on the contrast which these narratives afford, it surely is difficult to avoid the conclusion that if the chronicler never mentions any Saxon castles it is because there were no Saxon castles to mention. Had Earl Godwin possessed a stronghold in which he could fortify himself, he would certainly have used it in 1051. And as the Norman favourites of Edward the Confessor had already begun to build castles in England, we can imagine no reason why Godwin did not do the same, except that such a step was impossible to a man who desired popularity amongst his countrymen. The Welshmen, we are told (that is the foreigners, the Normans), had erected a castle in Herefordshire among the people of Earl Sweyn, and had wrought all possible harm and disgrace to the king’s men thereabout.[54] The language of the Chronicle shows the unpopularity, to say the least of it, of this castle-building; and one of the conditions which Godwin, when posing as popular champion, wished to exact from the king, was that the Frenchmen who were in the castle should be given up to[Pg 24] him.[55] When Godwin returned from his exile, and the Normans took to flight, the chronicler tells us that some fled west to Pentecost’s castle, some north to Robert’s castle. Thus we learn that there were several castles in England belonging to the Norman favourites.

It is in connection with these Norman favourites that the word castel appears for the first time in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This is a fact of considerable importance in itself; and when we weigh it in connection with the expressions of dislike recorded above which become much more explicit and vehement after the Norman Conquest, we cannot but feel that Mr Freeman’s conclusion, that the thing as well as the word was new, is highly probable.[56] For the hall of the Anglo-Saxon ealdorman or thane, even when enclosed in an earthwork or stockade, was a very different thing from the castle of a Norman noble. A castle is built by a man who lives among enemies, who distrusts his nearest neighbours as much as any foe from a distance. The Anglo-Saxon noble had no reason to distrust his neighbours, or to fortify himself against them. Later[Pg 25] historians, who were familiar with the state of things in Norman times, tell us frequently of castles in the Saxon period; but it can generally be proved that they misunderstood their authorities. The genuine contemporary chroniclers of Saxon times never make the slightest allusion to a Saxon castle.

The word castellum, it is true, appears occasionally in Anglo-Saxon charters, but when it is used it clearly means a town. Thus Egbert of Kent says in 765: “Trado terram intra castelli mœnia supranominati, id est Hrofescestri, unum viculum cum duobus jugeribus, etc.,” where castellum is evidently the city of Rochester.[57] Offa calls Wermund “episcopus castelli quod nominatur Hroffeceastre.”[58] These instances can easily be multiplied. Mr W. H. Stevenson remarks that “in Old-English glosses, from the 8th century Corpus Glossary downwards, castellum is glossed by wic, that is town.”[59] In this sense no doubt we must interpret Asser’s “castellum quod dicitur Werham.”[60] Henry of Huntingdon probably meant a town when he says that Edward the Elder built at Hertford “castrum non immensum sed pulcherrimum.” He generally translates the burh of the Chronicle by burgus, and he shows that he had a correct idea of Edward’s work when he says that at Buckingham Edward “fecit vallum ex utraque parte aquæ”—where vallum is a translation of burh. The difference between a burh and a castle is very clearly expressed by the Chronicle in 1092, when it says concerning the restoration of Carlisle on its conquest by William Rufus, “He repaired the borough (burh) and ordered the castle to be built.”

[Pg 26]

The following is a table of the thirty boroughs built by Ethelfleda and Edward, arranged chronologically, which will show that we never find a motte, that is a moated mound, on the site of one of these boroughs unless a Norman castle-builder has been at work there subsequently. The weak point in Mr Clark’s argument was that when he found a motte on a site which had once been Saxon, he did not stop to inquire what any subsequent builders might have done there, but at once assumed that the motte was Saxon. Of course, if we invariably found a motte at every place where Edward or Ethelfleda are said to have built a burh, it would raise a strong presumption that mottes and burhs were the same thing. But out of the twenty-five burhs which can be identified, in only ten is there a motte on the same site; and in every case where a motte is found, except at Bakewell and Towcester, there is recorded proof of the existence of a Norman castle. In this list, the burhs on both sides of the river at Hertford, Buckingham, and Nottingham are counted as two, because the very precise indications given in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle show that each burh was a separate construction.

[Pg 27]

Out of this list of the burhs of Ethelfleda and Edward, thirteen are mentioned as boroughs in Domesday Book;[61] and as we ought to subtract five from the list as unidentified, and also to reckon as one the boroughs built on two sides of the river, the whole number should be reduced to twenty-two. So that more than half the boroughs built by the children of Alfred continued to maintain their existence during the succeeding centuries, and in fact until the present day. But the others, for some reason or other, did not take root. Professor Maitland remarked that many of the boroughs of Edward’s day became rotten boroughs before they were ripe;[62] and it is a proof of the difficulty of the task which the royal brethren undertook that, with the exception of Chester, none of the boroughs which they built in the north-western districts survived[Pg 28] till Domesday. In all their boroughs, except Bakewell, the purpose of defending the great Roman roads and the main waterways is very apparent.

Our list is very far from being a complete list of all the Anglo-Saxon boroughs existing in Edward’s day. In the document known as the “Burghal Hidage” we have another quite different list of thirty-two boroughs,[63] which, according to Professor Maitland, “sets forth certain arrangements made early in the 10th century for the defence of Wessex against the Danish inroads.”[64] Five at least on the list are Roman chesters; twenty are mentioned as boroughs in Domesday Book. There are two among them which are of special interest, because there is reason to believe that the earthen ramparts which still surround them are of Saxon origin: Wallingford and Wareham. Both these fortifications are after the Roman pattern, the earthen banks forming a square with rounded corners.[65] See Fig. 3.

To complete our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon fortification, we ought to examine the places mentioned in Anglo-Saxon charters as royal seats, where possibly defensive works of some kind may have existed. Unfortunately we are unable to learn that there are any such works, except at one place, Bensington in Oxfordshire, where about a hundred years ago “a bank and trench, which seem to have been of a square form,” were to be seen.[66]

In the following chapter we shall deal in detail with such archæological remains as still exist of the boroughs[Pg 29] of Edward and Ethelfleda, but here we will briefly summarise by anticipation the results to which that chapter will lead. We see that sites defensible by nature were often seized upon for fortification, as at Bamborough, Bridgenorth, and Eddisbury; but that this was by no means always the case, as a weak site, such as Witham, for example, was sometimes rendered defensible by works which appear to have fulfilled their purpose. In only one case (Witham) do we find an inner enclosure; and as it is of large size (9½ acres) it is more probable that the outer enclosure was for cattle, than that the inner one was designed solely for the protection of the king and his court. We are not told of stone walls more than once (at Towcester); but the use of the word timbrian, which does not exclusively mean to build in wood,[67] does not preclude walls of stone in important places. In the square or oblong form, with rounded corners, we see the influence which Roman models exercised on eyes which still beheld them existing.

We see that the main idea of the borough was the same as that of the prehistoric or British “camp of refuge,” in that it was intended for the defence of society and not of the individual. It was intended to be a place of refuge for the whole countryside. But it was also something much more than this, something which belongs to a much more advanced state of society than the hill-fort.[68] It was a town, a place[Pg 30] where people were expected to live permanently and do their daily work. It provided a fostering seat for trade and manufactures, two of the chief factors in the history of civilisation. The men who kept watch and ward on the ramparts, or who sallied forth in their bands to fight the Danes, were the men who were slowly building up the prosperity of the stricken land of England. By studding the great highways of England with fortified towns, Alfred and his children were not only saving the kernel of the British Empire, they were laying the sure foundations of its future progress in the arts and habits of civilised life.

[Pg 31]

The bare list which we have given of the boroughs of Edward and Ethelfleda calls for some explanatory remarks. Let us take first the boroughs of Ethelfleda.

Worcester.—We have already noticed the charter of Ethelred and Ethelfleda which tells of the building of the burh at Worcester.[69] There appears to have been a small Roman settlement at Worcester, but there is no evidence that it was a fortified place.[70] This case lends some support to the conjecture of Dr Christison, that the Saxons gave the name of chester to towns which they had themselves fortified.[71] The mediæval walls of Worcester were probably more extensive than Ethelfleda’s borough, of which no trace remains.

Chester is spoken of by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 894 as “a waste chester in Wirral.” It had undoubtedly been a Roman city, and therefore the work of Ethelred and Ethelfleda here was solely one of restoration. Brompton, who wrote at the close of the 13th century “a poor compilation of little authority,”[72] was the first writer to state that the walls of[Pg 32] Chester were enlarged by Ethelfleda so as to take in the castle, which he fancied to be Roman;[73] and this statement, being repeated by Leland, has acquired considerable vogue. It is very unlikely that any extension of the walls was made by the Mercian pair, seeing that the city was deserted at the time when it was occupied by the Danes, only fourteen years before. But it is quite certain that the Norman castle of Chester lay outside the city walls, as the manor of Gloverstone, which was not within the jurisdiction of the city, lay between the city and the castle.[74] A charter of Henry VII. shows that the civic boundary did not extend to the present south wall in his reign. Ethelfleda’s borough probably followed the lines of the old Roman castrum.

Bremesbyrig.—This place has not yet been identified. Bromborough on the Mersey has been suggested, and is not impossible, for the loss of the s sometimes occurs in place-names; thus Melbury, in Wilts, was Melsburie in Domesday. Bremesbyrig was the first place restored after Chester, and as the estuary of the Dee had been secured by the repair of Chester, so an advance on Bromborough would have for its aim to secure the estuary of the Mersey. It was outside the Danish frontier of Watling Street, and could thus be fortified without breach of the peace in 911. There is a large moated work at Bromborough, enclosing an area of 10 acres, in the midst of which stands the courthouse of the manor of Bromborough. But this manor was given by the Earl of Chester to the monks of St[Pg 33] Werburgh about 1152, and it is possible that the monks fortified it, as they did their manor of Irby in Wirral, against the incursions of the Welsh. One of the conditions of the Earl’s grant was that the manor is to be maintained in a state of security and convenience for the holding of the courts appertaining to Chester Abbey.[75] Thus the fortification appears to be of manorial use, though this does not preclude the possibility of an earlier origin. On the other hand, if Bromborough is the same as Brunanburh, where Athelstan’s great battle was fought (and there is much in favour of this), it cannot possibly have been Bremesbyrig in the days of Edward. Another site has been suggested by the Rev. C. S. Taylor, in a paper on The Danes in Gloucestershire, Bromsberrow in S. Gloucestershire, one of the last spurs of the Malvern Hills. Here the top of a small hill has been encircled with a ditch; but the ditch is so narrow that it does not suggest a defensive work, and it is remote from any Roman road or navigable river.

Scergeat has not yet been identified. Mr Kerslake argued with some probability that Shrewsbury is the place;[76] but the etymological considerations are adverse, and it is more likely that such an important place as Shrewsbury was fortified before Edward’s time. Leland calls it Scorgate, and says it is “about Severn side.”[77] It should probably be sought within the frontier of Watling Street, which Ethelfleda does not appear to have yet crossed in 911.

Bridgenorth is undoubtedly the Bricge of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as Florence of Worcester identifies it with the Bridgenorth which Robert Belesme[Pg 34] fortified against Henry I. in 1101.[78] Bridgenorth is on a natural fortification of steep rock, which would only require a stout wall to make it secure against all the military resources of the 10th century. We may therefore be quite certain that it was here Ethelfleda planted her borough, and not (as Mr Eyton unfortunately conjectured) on the mound outside the city, in the parish of Oldbury.[79] This mound was far more probably the site of the siege castle (no doubt of wood) which was erected by Henry I. when he besieged the city.[80]

Tamworth was an ancient city of the Mercian kings, and therefore may have been fortified before its walls were rebuilt by Ethelfleda.[81] The line of the ancient town-wall can still be traced in parts, though it is rapidly disappearing. Dugdale says the town ditch was 45 feet broad. Tamworth was a borough at the time of Domesday.

Stafford has a motte on which stood a Norman castle; but this is not mentioned in the table, because it stands a mile and a half from the town on the southern side of the river Sowe, while we are expressly told by Florence that Ethelfleda’s borough was on the northern side, as the town is now. Stafford was a Domesday[Pg 35] borough; some parts of the mediæval walls still remain. The walls are mentioned in Domesday Book.[82]

Eddisbury, in Cheshire (Fig. 4), is the only case in which the work of Ethelfleda is preserved in a practically unaltered form, as no town or village has ever grown out of it. The burh stands at the top of a hill, commanding the junction of two great Roman roads, the Watling Street from Chester to Manchester, and the branch which it sends forth to Kinderton on the east. As a very misleading plan of this work has been published in the Journal of the British Archæological Association for 1906, the burh has been specially surveyed for this book by Mr D. H. Montgomerie, who has also furnished the following description:—

“This plan is approximately oval, and is governed by the shape of the ground; the work lies at the end of a spur, running S.E. and terminating in abrupt slopes to the E. and S. The defences on the N. and W. consist of a ditch and a high outer bank, the proportions of these varying according to the slope of the hill. There are slight remains of a light inner rampart along the western half of this side. The remains of an original entrance (shown in Ormerod’s Cheshire) are visible in the middle of the N.W. side, beyond which the ditch and outer bank have been partially levelled by the encroachments of the farm buildings. The defences of the S. side seem to have consisted of a long natural slope, crowned by a steeper scarp, cut back into the rock, and having traces of a bank along its crest. The S.E. end of the spur presents several interesting details, for it has been occupied in mediæval times by a small fortified enclosure, whose defences are apt to be confused with those of the older Saxon town. The rock makes a[Pg 36] triangular projection at this end, containing the foundations of mediæval buildings,[83] and strengthened on the N.E. by a slight ditch some 7 to 10 feet below the crest; the rock on the inner side of this ditch has been cut back to a nearly vertical face, while on the outer bank are the footings of a masonry wall extending almost to the point of the spur. There are traces of another wall defending the crest on the N.E. and S.; but the base of the triangle, facing the old enclosure, does not appear to have been strengthened by a cross ditch or bank.

“It may be noted that this enclosure presents not the slightest appearance of a motte. It is at a lower level than the body of the hill, and belongs most certainly to the Edwardian period of the masonry buildings.”

Warwick Castle has a motte which has been confidently attributed to Ethelfleda, only because Dugdale copied the assertion of Thomas Rous, a very imaginative writer of the 15th century, that she was its builder. The borough which Ethelfleda fortified probably occupied a smaller area than the mediæval walls built in Edward I.’s reign; and it is probable that it did not include the site of the castle, as Domesday states that only four houses were destroyed when the castle was built.[84] The borough was doubtless erected to protect the Roman road from Bath to Lincoln, the Foss Way, which passes near it. Domesday Book, after mentioning that the king’s barons have 112 houses in the borough, and the abbot of Coventry 36, goes on to say that these houses belong to the lands which the[Pg 37] barons hold outside the city, and are rated there.[85] This is one of the passages from which the late Professor Maitland concluded that the boroughs planted by Ethelfleda and Edward were organised on a system of military defence, whereby the magnates in the country were bound to keep houses in the towns.[86]

Cyricbyrig.—About this place we adopt the conjecture of Dugdale, who identified it with Monk’s Kirby in Warwickshire, not far from the borders of Leicestershire, and therefore on the edge of Ethelfleda’s dominions. It lies close to the Foss Way, and about three miles from Watling Street; like Eddisbury, it is near the junction of two Roman roads. There are remains of banks and ditches below the church. Dugdale says “there are certain apparent tokens that the Romans had some station here; for by digging the ground near the church, there have been discovered foundations of old walls and Roman bricks.”[87] Possibly Ethelfleda restored a Roman castrum here. At any rate, it seems a much more likely site than Chirbury in Shropshire, which is commonly proposed, but which does not lie on any Roman road, and is not on Ethelfleda’s line of advance; nor are there any earthworks there.

Weardbyrig has not been identified. Wednesbury was stated by Camden to be the place,[88] and but for the[Pg 38] impossibility of the etymology, the situation would suit well enough. Weardbyrig must have been an important place, for it had a mint.[89] Warburton, on the Mersey, has been gravely suggested, but is impossible, as it takes its name from St Werburgh.

Runcorn has not a vestige to show of Ethelfleda’s borough; but local historians have preserved some rather vague accounts of a promontory fort which once existed at the point where the London and North-Western Railway bridge enters the river. A rocky headland formerly projected here into the Mersey, narrowing its course to 400 yards at high water; a ditch with a circular curve cut off this headland from the shore. This ditch, from 12 to 16 feet wide, with an inner bank 6 or 7 feet high, could still be traced in the early part of the 19th century. Eighteen feet of the headland were cut off when the Duke of Bridgewater made his canal in 1773, and the ditch was obliterated when the railway bridge was built. From the measurements which have been preserved, the area of this fort must have been very small, not exceeding 3 acres at the outside;[90] and it is unlikely that it represented Ethelfleda’s borough, as the church, which was of pre-Conquest foundation, stood outside its bounds, and we should certainly have expected to find it within. As the Norman earls of Chester established a ferry at Runcorn in the 12th century, and as a castle at Runcorn is spoken of in a mediæval document,[91] it seems not impossible that there may have been a Norman castle on this site, as we[Pg 39] constantly find such small fortifications placed to defend a ferry or ford. It is probable that Ethelfleda’s borough was destroyed at an early period by the Northmen, for Runcorn was not a borough at Domesday, but was then a mere dependency of the Honour of Halton.

Hertford.—Two burhs were built by Edward at Hertford in 913, one on the north and the other on the south side of the river Lea. Therefore if a burh were the same thing as a motte, there ought to be two mottes at Hertford, one on each side of the river; whereas there is only one, and that forms part of the works of the Norman castle. Mr Clark, with his usual confidence, says that the northern mound has “long been laid low”;[92] but there is not the slightest proof that it ever existed except in his imagination. Hertford was a borough at the time of Domesday. No earthworks remain.

Witham (Fig. 4).—There are some remains of a burh here which are very remarkable, as they show an inner enclosure within the outer one. They have been carefully surveyed by Mr F. C. J. Spurrell, who has published a plan of them.[93] Each enclosure formed roughly a square with much-rounded corners. The ditch round the outer work was 30 feet wide; the inner work was not ditched. The area enclosed by the outer bank was 26¼ acres, an enclosure much too large for a castle; the area of the inner enclosure was 9½ acres. As far as is at present known, Witham is the only instance we have of an Anglo-Saxon earthwork which[Pg 40] has a double enclosure.[94] Witham is not mentioned as a borough in Domesday Book, but the fact that it had a mint in the days of Hardicanute shows that it maintained its borough rights for more than a hundred years. The name Chipping Hill points to a market within the borough.

Buckingham is another case where a burh was built on both sides of the river, and as at Hertford, there was only one motte, site of the castle of the Norman Giffards, now almost obliterated. The river Ouse here makes a long narrow loop to the south-west, within which stands the town, and, without doubt, this would be the site of Edward’s borough. No trace is left of the second borough on the other side of the river. Buckingham is one of the boroughs of Domesday.

Bedford has had a motte and a Norman castle on the north side of the Ouse; but this was not the site of Edward’s borough, which the Chronicle tells us was placed on the south side of that river. On the south side an ancient ditch, 10 or 12 feet broad, with some traces of an inner rampart, semicircular in plan, but with a square extension, is still visible, and fills with water at flood times.[95] This is very likely to be the ditch of Edward’s borough. Both at Bedford and Buckingham the Chronicle states that Edward spent four weeks in building the burh. Mediæval numbers must never be taken as precise; but the disproportion between four weeks and eight days, the space often given for the building of an early Norman castle, corresponds very well to the difference between the time needed to throw up the bank[Pg 41] and stockade of a town, and that needed for the building of an earthen and wooden castle.

Maldon.—Only one angle of the earthen bank of Edward’s borough remains now, but Gough states that it was an oblong camp enclosing about 22 acres.[96] It had rounded corners and a very wide ditch, with a bank on both scarp and counterscarp. Maldon was a borough at Domesday;[97] the king had a hall there, but there was never any castle, nor is there any trace of a motte.

Towcester (Fig. 5).—There is a motte at Towcester, but no direct evidence has yet been found for the existence of a Norman castle there, though Leland says that he was told of “certen Ruines or Diches of a Castelle.”[98] There was a mill and an oven to which the citizens owed soke,[99] and the value of the manor, which belonged to the king, had risen very greatly since the Conquest;[100] all facts which render the existence of a Norman castle extremely likely. But there can be no question as to the nature of Edward’s work at Towcester, as the Chronicle tells us expressly that “he wrought the burgh at Towcester with a stone wall.”[101] Towcester lies on Watling Street, and is believed to have been the Roman station of Lactodorum. Baker gives a plan of the remains existing in his time, which may either be those of the Roman castrum or of Edward’s borough.[102] The area is stated to be about 35 acres.

Wigingamere.—This place is not yet identified, for[Pg 42] the identification with Wigmore in Herefordshire, though accepted by many respectable writers, will not stand a moment’s examination. Wigmore was entirely out of Edward’s beat, and he had far too much on his hands in 918 to attempt a campaign in Herefordshire. As Wigingamere appears to have specially drawn upon itself the wrath of East Anglian and Essex Danes, it must have lain somewhere in their neighbourhood. The mere which is included in the name would seem to point to that great inland water which anciently stretched southwards from the Wash into Cambridgeshire. The only approach to East Anglia from the south lay along a strip of open chalk land which lay between the great swamp and the dense forests which grew east of it.[103] Here ran the ancient road called the Icknield way. On a peninsula which now runs out into the great fens of the Cam and the Ouse there is still a village called Wicken, 6 miles west of the Roman road; and possibly, when the land surrounding this peninsula was under water, this bight may have been called Wigingamere. This suggestion of course is merely tentative, but what gives it some probability is that the Danish army which attacked “the borough at Wigingamere” came from East Anglia as well as Mercia.[104]

Huntingdon.—The borough of Huntingdon was probably first built by the Danes, as it was only repaired by Edward. In Leland’s time there were still some remains of the walls “in places.” Huntingdon is one of the burgi of Domesday.

Colchester.—This of course was a Roman site, and Edward needed only to restore the walls, as the[Pg 43] Chronicle indicates. Colchester was placed so as to defend the river Colne, just as Maldon defended the estuary of the Blackwater. As the repair of Colchester and the successful defence of Wigingamere were followed the same year by the submission of East Anglia, it seems not unlikely that Edward’s various forces may have made a simultaneous advance, along the coast, and along the Roman road by the Fen country; but this of course is the merest conjecture, as the Chronicle gives us no details of this very important event.

Cledemuthan.—This place is only mentioned in the Abingdon MS. of the Chronicle, but the year 921 is the date given for its building. This date should probably be transposed to 918, the year in which, according to Florence, Edward subjugated East Anglia. It is well known how confused the chronology of the various versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is during the reign of Edward the Elder.[105] Cley, in Norfolk, would be etymologically deducible from Clede (the d being frequently dropped, especially in Scandinavian districts), and the muthan points to some river estuary. Cley is one of the few havens on the north coast of Norfolk, and its importance in former times was much greater than now, as is shown not only by the spaciousness of its Early English church, but by the fact that the port has jurisdiction for 30 miles along the coast.[106] It would be highly probable that Edward completed the subjugation of East Anglia by planting a borough at some important point. But as the real date of the fortifica[Pg 44]tion of Cledemuthan is uncertain, we must be content to leave this matter in abeyance.[107]

Stamford is another case where the borough is clearly said to have been on the side which is opposite to the one where the Norman castle stands. Edward’s borough was on the south side, the motte and other remains of the Norman castle are on the north of the Welland. It is remarkable that the part of Stamford on the south side of the Welland is still a distinct liberty; it is mentioned in Domesday as the sixth ward of the borough. The line of the earthworks can still be traced in parts. The borough on the north side of the Welland was probably first walled in by the Danes, as it was one of the Five Boroughs—Stamford, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, and Derby—which appear to have formed an independent or semi-independent state in middle England.[108] Stamford is a borough in Domesday.

Nottingham.—The first mention of a fortress in connection with Nottingham seems to suggest that it owed its origin to the Danes. In 868 the Danish host which had taken possession of York in the previous year “went into Mercia to Nottingham, and there took up their winter quarters. And Burgræd king of Mercia[Pg 45] and his Witan begged of Ethelred, king of the West Saxons, and of Alfred his brother, that they would help them, that they might fight against the army. And then they went with the West Saxon force into Mercia as far as Nottingham, and there encountered the army which was in the fortress (geweorc), and besieged them there; but there was no great battle fought, and the Mercians made peace with the army.”[109] Nottingham became another of the Danish Five Boroughs. The Danish host on this occasion came from York, no doubt in ships down the Ouse and up the Trent. The site would exactly suit them, as it occupied a very strong position on St Mary’s Hill, a height equal to that on which the castle stands, defended on the south front by precipitous cliffs, below which ran the river Leen, and only a very short distance from the junction of the Leen with the Trent, the great waterway of middle England.[110] Portions of the ancient ditch were uncovered in 1890, and its outline appears to have been roughly rectangular, like the Danish camp at Shoebury. The ditch was about 20 feet wide. The area enclosed was about 39 acres.

This borough was captured by Edward the Elder in 919, when after the death of his sister Ethelfleda he advanced into Danish Mercia, taking up the work which she had left unfinished.[111] The Chronicle tells us that he repaired the borough (burh), and garrisoned it with both English and Danes. Two years later, he evidently felt the necessity of fortifying the Trent itself, for he built another borough on the south side of[Pg 46] the river, and connected the two boroughs by a bridge, which must have included a causeway or a wooden stage across the marshes of the Leen. It is not surprising that the frequent floods of the Trent have carried away all trace of this second borough.[112] The important position of Nottingham was maintained in subsequent times, and it was still a borough at Domesday.

Thelwall.—According to Camden, Thelwall explains by its name the kind of work which was set up here, a wall composed of the trunks of trees. This was another attempt to defend the course of the Mersey, which was once tidal as far as Thelwall. No remains of any fortifications can now be seen at Thelwall, which was not one of the boroughs which took root. But the Mersey has changed its course very much at this point, even before the making of the Ship Canal effected a more complete alteration.[113]

Manchester.—The burh repaired by Edward the Elder was no doubt the Roman castrum, which was built on the triangle of land between the Irwell and the Medlock. Large portions of the walls were still remaining in Stukeley’s time, about 1700, and some fragments have recently been unearthed by the Manchester Classical Association. It was one of the smaller kind of Roman stations, its area being only 5 acres. Manchester is not mentioned as a borough in Domesday, but the old Saxon town was long known as Aldportton, which literally means “the town of the[Pg 47] old city.” This is its title in mediæval deeds, and it is still preserved in Alport Street, a street near the remains of the castrum.[114] The later borough of Manchester, which existed at least as early as the 13th century, appears to have grown up round the Norman castle, about a mile from the Roman castrum.[115]

Bakewell.—The vagueness of the indication in the Chronicle, “nigh to Bakewell,” leaves us in some doubt where we are to look for this burh, which Florence calls an urbs. Just outside the village of Bakewell there are the remains of a motte and bailey castle (a small motte and bailey of 2 acres), which are always assumed to be the burh of Edward. But the enclosure is far too small for a borough, and Edward’s burh would certainly have enclosed the church; for though the present church contains no Saxon architecture, the ancient cross in the graveyard shows that it stands on a Saxon site. It is more reasonable to suppose that Edward’s borough, if it was at Bakewell, has disappeared as completely as those of Runcorn, Buckingham, and Thelwall, and that the motte and bailey belong to one of the many Norman castles whose names never appear in history. There is no conclusive evidence for the existence of a Norman castle at Bakewell, but the names Castle Field, Warden Field, and Court Yard are at least suggestive.[116] Bakewell was the seat of jurisdiction for the High Peak Hundred in mediæval times.[117]

[Pg 48]

We must now inquire into the nature of the fortifications built by the Danes in England, which are frequently mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It has often been asserted, and with great confidence, that the Danes were the authors of the moated mounds of class(e); those in Ireland are invariably spoken of by Lewis in his Topographical Dictionary as “Danish Raths.” This fancy seems to have gone somewhat out of fashion since Mr Clark’s burh theory occupied the field, though Mr Clark’s view is often so loosely expressed as to lead one to think that he supposed all the Northern nations to be makers of mottes; in fact, he frequently includes the Anglo-Saxons under the general title of “Northmen”![118] We must therefore endeavour to find out what the Danish fortifications actually were.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions twenty-four places where the Danes either threw up fortifications (between 787 and 924) or took up quarters either for the winter, or for such a period of time that we may infer that there was some fortification to protect them. The word used for the fortification is generally geweorc,[Pg 49] a work, or fæsten (in two places only), which has also the general vague meaning of a fastness. There are ten places where these works or fastnesses are mentioned in the Chronicle:—

1. Nottingham.—We have already seen that the Danish host took up their winter quarters here in 868, and that there is the highest probability that the borough which Edward the Elder restored was first built by them. We have also seen that it was a camp of roughly rectangular form, and enclosed a very large area, necessary for great numbers.[119]

2. Rochester.—This city was besieged by the Danes in 885, and they fortified a camp outside. As the artificial mound called Boley Hill is outside the city, most topographers have jumped to the conclusion that this was the Danish camp. But the character of the Danish fortification is clearly indicated in the Chronicle: “they made a work around themselves,” that is, it was an enclosure.[120] They could hardly have escaped by ship, as they did, if their camp had been above the bridge, which is known to have existed in Saxon times. But Boley Hill is above the bridge.

3. Milton, in Kent (Middeltune).—Hæsten the Dane landed at the mouth of the Thames with 80 ships, and wrought a geweorc here in 893. Two places in the neighbourhood of Milton have been suggested as the site of it, a square earthwork at Bayford Court, near Sittingbourne, and a very small square enclosure called Castle Rough. Neither of these are large enough to have been of any use to a force which came in 80[Pg 50] ships.[121] Steenstrup has calculated that the average number of men in a Viking ship must have been from 40 to 50; Hæsten therefore must have had at least 3200 men with him. It is therefore probable that the camp at Milton has been swept away.

4. Appledore.—A still larger Danish force, which had been harrying the Carlovingian empire, came in 250 ships, with their horses, in 893, and towed their ships “up the river” (which is now extinct) from Lymne to Appledore, where they wrought a work. There are no earthworks at Appledore now, but at Kenardington, 2 miles off, there are remains of “a roughly defined rectangular work, situated on the north and east of the church, on the slope of the hill towards the marsh, a very likely place for an entrenchment thrown up to defend a fleet of light-draught ships hauled up on the beach.”[122] The enclosure was very large, one side which remains being 600 feet long.[123]

5. Benfleet.—Here Hæsten wrought a work in 894; here he was defeated by Alfred’s forces, and some of his ships burnt. Mr Spurrell states that there are still some irregular elevations by the stream and about the church, which he believes to be remains of the Danish camp.[124] “As the fleet of ships lay in the Beamfleet,[Pg 51] it is obvious that the camp must have partaken of the character of a fortified hithe, with the wall landward and the shore open to the river and the ships.” He also learned on the spot that when the railway bridge across the Fleet was being made, the remains of several ancient ships, charred by fire, and surrounded by numerous human skeletons, were found in the mud.[125] Benfleet must have been a very large camp, as not only was the joint army of Danes housed in it, that from Milton and that from Appledore, but they had with them their wives and children and cattle.

6. Shoebury (Fig. 6).—After the storming of the camp at Benfleet by the Saxon forces, the joint armies of the Danes built another geweorc at Shoebury in Essex. We should therefore expect a large camp here, and Mr Spurrell has shown that the area was formerly about a third of a square mile. About half the camp had been washed away by the sea when Mr Spurrell surveyed it in 1879, but enough was left to give a good idea of the whole. It was a roughly square rampart, with a ditch about 40 feet wide, the ditch having a kind of berm on the inner side. The bank also had a slight platform inside, about 3 feet above the general level.[126] As Hæsten had lost his ships at Benfleet, there would be no fortified hithe connected with it, and if there had been, the sea would have swept it away. The camp was abandoned almost as soon as it was made, and the Danish army started on that remarkable march across England which the Saxon Chronicle relates. They were overtaken and besieged by Alfred’s forces, in a fastness at

7. Buttington, on the Severn.—It has sometimes[Pg 52] been contended that this was the Buttington near Chepstow; but as the line of march of the army was “along the Thames till they reached the Severn, then up along the Severn,”[127] it is more probable that it was Buttington in Montgomery, west of Shrewsbury.[128] Here there are remains of a strong bank with a broad deep ditch, which was evidently part of a rectangular earthwork, as it runs at right angles to Offa’s Dyke, which forms one side of it. It now encloses both the churchyard and vicarage. Whether the Danes constructed this earthwork, or found it there, we are not told.

8. There appear to be no remains of the geweorc on the river Lea, 20 miles above London, made by the Danes in 896. But 20 miles above London, on the Lea, would land us at Amwell, near Ware. In Brayley’s Hertfordshire it is stated that at Amwell, “on the hill above the church are traces of a very extensive fortification, the rampart of which is very distinguishable on the side overlooking the vale through which the river Lea flows.”[129]

9. Bridgenorth, or Quatbridge.—The Winchester MS. of the Chronicle says the Danes wrought a geweorc at Quatbridge, in 896, and passed the winter there. There is no such place as Quatbridge now, only Quatford; and seeing there were so few bridges in those days, we are disposed to accept the statement of the Worcester MS., which must have been the best[Pg 53] informed about events in the west, that Bridgenorth was the site of their work, especially as the high rock at Bridgenorth offers a natural fortification. The only circumstance that is in favour of Quatford is that it is mentioned as a burgus in Domesday, which shows that it possessed fortifications of the civic kind; and we shall see later on, that such fortifications were often the work of the Danes. But this burgus may more probably have been the work of Roger de Montgomeri, who planted a castle there in the 11th century.

10. Tempsford.—Here the Danes wrought a work in 918.[130] There is a small oblong enclosure at Tempsford, still in fair preservation, called Gannock Castle, which is generally supposed to be this Danish work. The ramparts are about 11 or 12 feet above the bottom of the moat, which is about 20 feet wide. There is a small circular mound, about 5 feet high, on top of the rampart, which appears to be so placed as to defend the entrance. This mound is “edged all round by the root of a small bank, which may have been the base of a stockaded tower.”[131] This curious little enclosure is different altogether from any of the Danish works just enumerated, and it is difficult to see what purpose it could have served. The area enclosed is only half an acre, which would certainly not have accommodated the large army “from Huntingdon and from the East Angles,” which built the advanced post at Tempsford as a base for the forcible recovery of the districts which they had lost.[132] Such a small enclosure as this might possibly have been a citadel, but our[Pg 54] knowledge of Danish camps does not tell us of any with citadels, and it is hardly likely that the democratic constitution of these pirate bands would have allowed of a citadel for the chief. It is far more probable that this work belongs to a later time, and that the Danish camp has been swept away by the river.[133]

11. Reading.—There is no “work” mentioned by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle at this place, which the Danes made their headquarters in 871, but we add it to the list because Asser not only mentions it, but describes the nature of the fortification. It was a vallum drawn between the rivers Thames and Kennet, so as to enclose a peninsula.[134] It had several entrances, as the Danes “rushed out from all the gates” on the Anglo-Saxon attack. Such a fort belongs to the simplest and easiest kind of defence, used at all times by a general who is in a hurry, and it has therefore no significance in determining the general type of Danish works.

Besides these eleven places where works are mentioned, there are thirteen places where the Danes are said to have taken up their winter quarters, and where we may be certain that they were protected by some kind of fortifications. These are Thanet, Sheppey, Thetford, York, London, Torkesey, Repton, Cambridge, Exeter, Chippenham, Cirencester, Fulham, and Mersey Island. Four places out of this list—York, London, Exeter, and Cirencester—were Roman castra, whose walls were still available for defence. Three—Thanet, Sheppey, and Mersey—were islands, and thus naturally defended, being much more insular than they are[Pg 55] now.[135] Three—Thetford, Torkesey, and Cambridge—appear as burgi in Domesday, showing that they were fortified towns. It is highly probable that the Danes threw up the first fortifications of these boroughs. There are no remains of town banks at Torkesey; at Cambridge the outline of the town bank can be traced in places;[136] and at Thetford there was formerly an earthwork on the Suffolk side of the river, which appears to have formed three sides of a square, abutting on the river, and enclosing the most ancient part of the town.[137] Chippenham and Repton were ancient seats of the Anglo-Saxon kings, and may have had fortifications, but nothing remains now. Chippenham is a borough by prescription, therefore of ancient date. At Fulham, on the Thames, there is a quadrangular moat and bank round the Bishop of London’s palace, which is sometimes supposed to be the camp made by the Danes in 879; but it may equally well be mediæval. There was formerly a harbour at Fulham.[138]

It must be confessed that this list of Danish fortresses furnishes us with a very slender basis for generalisation as to the nature of Danish fortifications, judging from the actual remains. All we can say is that in six cases out of twenty-four (not including Tempsford or Fulham) the work appears to have been rectangular. In the case of Shoebury, about which we have the best[Pg 56] evidence, the imitation of Roman models seems to be clear. If we turn from remaining facts to à priori likelihoods, we call to mind that the Danes were a much-travelled people, had been in Gaul as well as in England, and had had opportunities of observing Roman fortifications, as well as much practice both in the assault and defence of fortified places. It may not be without significance that it is not until after the return of “the army” from France that we hear of their building camps at all, except in the case of Reading.

As far as our information goes, their camps were without citadels. What evidence we have from the other side of the channel supports the same conclusion. Richer gives us an account of the storming of a fortress of the Northmen at Eu, by King Raoul, in 925, from which it is clear that as soon as the king’s soldiers had got over the vallum, they were masters of the place; there was no citadel to attack.[139] Dudo speaks of the Vikings “fortifying themselves, after the manner of a castrum, by heaped up earth-banks drawn round themselves,” and it is clear from the rest of his description that the camp had no citadel.[140]

In no case do we find anything to justify the theory that mottes were an accompaniment of Danish camps. In five cases out of the twenty-four there are or were mottes at the places mentioned, but in all cases they belonged to Norman castles. The magnificent motte called the Castle Hill at Thetford was on the opposite side of the river to the borough, which we have seen reason to think was the site of the Danish winter quarters. Torkesey in Leland’s time had by the river[Pg 57] side “a Hille of Yerth cast up,” which he judged to be the donjon of some old castle, probably rightly, though we have been unable as yet to find any mention of a Norman castle at Torkesey; a brick castle of much more recent date is still standing near the river, and probably the motte to which Leland alludes was destroyed when this was built. The motte at Cambridge is placed inside the original bounds of the borough, and was part of the Norman castle.[141] We have already dealt with the Boley Hill at Rochester, and shall have more to say about it hereafter. The rock motte at Nottingham was probably not cut off by a ditch from the rest of the headland until the Norman castle was built.

It seems highly probable that besides providing accommodation in their camps for very large numbers of people, the Danes sometimes fortified the hithes where they drew up their ships on shore, or even constructed fortified harbours.[142] We have already quoted Mr Spurrell’s remark on the hithe[143] at Benfleet (p. 51), and there is at least one place in England which seems to prove the existence of fortified harbours. This is Willington, on the river Ouse, in Bedfordshire, which has been carefully described by Mr A. R. Goddard.[144] This “camp” consists of two wards, and a wide outer enclosure (Fig. 7). “But one of the most interesting features is the presence of two harbours, contained within the defences and communicating with the[Pg 58]
[Pg 59] river.” Mr Goddard points out that the dimensions of the smaller one are almost the same as those of the “nausts” (ship-sheds or small docks) of the Vikings in Iceland. He also cites from the Jomsvikinga Saga the description of a harbour made by the Viking Palnatoki at Jomsborg. “There he had a large and strong sea burg made. He also had a harbour made within the burg in which 300 long ships could lie at the same time, all being locked within the burg.” The harbours at Willington are large enough to accommodate between twenty-five and thirty-five ships of the Danish type. Unfortunately there is no historical proof that the Willington works were Danish, though their construction makes it very likely. Nor have any works of a similar character been as yet observed in England, as far as we are aware.

But if archæology and topography give a somewhat scanty answer to our question about the nature of Danish fortifications, there are other fields of research, opened up of late years, from which we can glean important facts, bearing directly on the subject which we are treating. Herr Steenstrup’s exhaustive inquiry into the Danish settlement in England has shown that the way in which the Danes maintained their hold on the northern and eastern shires was by planting fortified towns on which the soldiers and peasants dwelling around were dependent.[145] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives us a glimpse of these arrangements when it speaks of the Danes who owed obedience to Bedford, Derby, Leicester, Northampton, and Cambridge.[146] It also tells us of the Five Boroughs, which, as we have already said, appear to have been a confederation[Pg 60] of boroughs forming an independent Danish state between the Danish kingdoms of East Anglia and Northumbria.

The same system was followed by the Danes who colonised Ireland. “The colony had a centre in a fortified town, or it consisted almost exclusively of dwellers in one. But round this town was a district, in which the Irish inhabitants had to pay taxes to the lords of the town.”[147] The Irish chronicle called The Wars of the Gaedhil and the Gaill says, further, that Norse soldiers were quartered in the country round these towns in the houses of the native Irish, and it even says that there was hardly a house without a Norseman.[148] Herr Steenstrup does not go so far as to assert that this system of quartering obtained in England also; but he shows that it is probable, and we may add that such a system would help to explain the speedy absorption of the Danes into the Anglo-Saxon population, which took place in the Danelaw districts.[149]

The large numbers of the Danish forces, and the fact that in the second period of their invasions they brought their wives and children with them, would render camps of large area necessary. These numbers alone make it ridiculous to attribute to the Danes the small motte castles of class (e), whose average area is not more than 3 acres.

Finally, the Danish host was not a feudal host. Steenstrup asserts that the principle of the composition of the host was the voluntary association of equally[Pg 61] powerful leaders, of whom one was chosen as head, and was implicitedly obeyed, but had only a temporary authority.[150] We should not, therefore, expect to find the Danish camps provided with the citadels by which the feudal baron defended his personal safety. When Rollo and his host were coming up the Seine, the Frankish king Raoul sent messengers to ask them who they were, and what was the name of their chief. “Danes,” was the reply, “and we have no chief, for we are all equal.”[151] That such an answer would be given by men who were following a leader so distinguished as Rollo shows the spirit of independence which pervaded the Danish hosts, and how little a separate fortification for the chief would comport with their methods of warfare.[152]

We may conclude, then, with every appearance of certainty that the Danish camps were enclosures of large area which very much resembled the larger Roman castra, and that, like these, they frequently grew into towns. Placed as they generally were on good havens, or on navigable rivers, they were most suitable places for trade; and it turned out that the Danes, who were a people of great natural aptitudes, had a special aptitude for commerce.[153] Dr Cunningham remarks that they were the leading merchants of the country, and he attributes to them a large share in the development of town life in England.[154] The organisation of their armies was purely military, but at the same time[Pg 62] democratic; and when it was applied to a settled life in the new country, the organisation of the town was the form which it took. The Lagmen of Lincoln, Stamford, Cambridge, Chester, and York are a peculiarly Scandinavian institution, which we find still existing at the time of the Domesday Survey.[155]

Thus we see that the fortifications of the Danes, like those of the Anglo-Saxons, were the fortifications of the community. And we shall see in the next chapter that this was the general type of the fortifications which were being raised in Western Europe in the 9th century.

[Pg 63]

We have now seen that history furnishes no instance of the existence of private castles among the Anglo-Saxons or the Danes (previous to the arrival of Edward the Confessor’s Norman friends), and we have endeavoured to show that this negative evidence is of great significance. If, assuming that we are right in accepting it as conclusive, we ask why the Anglo-Saxons did not build private castles, the answer is ready to hand in the researches of the late Dr Stubbs, the late Professor Maitland, Dr J. H. Round, and Professor Vinogradoff, which have thrown so much fresh light on the constitutional history of England. These writers have made it clear that whatever tendencies towards feudalism there were in England before the Conquest, the system of military tenure, which is the backbone of feudalism, was introduced into England by William the Conqueror.[156] “Feudalism, in both tenure and government was, so far as it existed in England, brought full-grown from France,” says Dr Stubbs; and this statement is not merely supported, but strengthened, by the work of the[Pg 64] later writers named.[157] The institutions of the Anglo-Saxons, when they settled in England, were tribal; and though these institutions were in a state of decay in the 11th century, they were not completely superseded by feudal institutions till after the Norman Conquest.

We should naturally expect, then, that the fortifications erected by the Anglo-Saxons would be those adapted to their originally tribal state, that is, in the words which we have so often used already, they would be those of the community and not of the individual. And as far as we can discover the character of these fortifications, we find that this was actually the case. As we have seen, we find one of the earliest kings, Ida, building for the defence of himself and his followers what Bede calls a city; and we find Alfred and his children also building and repairing cities, at the time of the Danish invasions.

The same kind of thing was going on at about the same time in Germany and in France. Henry the Fowler (919-936), that great restorer of the Austrasian kingdom, planted on the frontiers which were exposed to the attacks of the Danes and Huns a number of walled strongholds, not only for the purpose of resisting invasion, but to afford a place of refuge to all the inhabitants of the country. He ordained that every ninth man of the peasants in the district must build[Pg 65] for himself and his nine companions a dwelling in the “Burg,” and provide barns and storehouses, and that the third part of all crops must be delivered and housed in these towns.[158] In this way, says the historian Giesebrecht, he sought to accustom the Saxons, who had hitherto dwelt in isolated farms, or open villages, to life in towns. He ordered that all assemblies of the people should be held in towns. Giesebrecht also remarks that it is not improbable that Henry the Fowler had the example of Edward the Elder of England before his eyes when he established these rows of frontier towns.[159]

The same causes led, on Neustrian soil, to the fortification of a number of cities, the walls of which had fallen into decay during the period of peace before the invasions of the Danes. Thus Charles the Bald commanded Le Mans and Tours to be fortified “as a defence for the people against the Northmen.”[160] The bishops were particularly active in thus defending the people of their dioceses. Archbishop Fulk rebuilt the walls of Rheims, between 884 and 900;[161] his successor, Hervey, fortified the town of Coucy[162] (about 900); the Bishop of[Pg 66] Cambray built new walls to his city in 887-911;[163] and Bishop Erluin fortified Peronne in 1001, “as a defence against marauders, and a refuge for the husbandmen of the country.”[164] But permission had probably to be asked in all these cases, as it certainly had in the last. The Carlovingian sovereigns represented a well-ordered state, modelled on the pattern of the Roman Empire; they were jealous of any attempts at self-defence which did not proceed from the State, and thus as long as they had the power they strove to put down all associations or buildings of a military character which did not emanate from their imperial authority.

The history of the 9th and 10th centuries is the history of the gradual break-up of the Carlovingian Empire, and the rise of feudalism on its ruins. In 877, the year of his death, Charles the Bald signed a decree making the counts of the provinces, who until then had been imperial officers, hereditary. He thus, as Sismondi says, annihilated the remains of royal authority in the provinces.[165] The removable officers now became local sovereigns. Gradually, as the Carlovingian Empire fell to pieces, the artificial organisation of the feudal system arose to take its place. By the end of the 10th century the victory of feudalism was complete; and the victory of feudalism was the victory of the private castle.

“The very word castle,” says Guizot, “brings with it the idea of feudal society; we see it rising before us. It was feudalism that built these castles which once covered our soil, and whose ruins are still scattered upon it. They were the declaration of its triumph. Nothing like them had existed on Gallo-Roman soil. Before the[Pg 67] Germanic invasion, the great landed proprietors dwelt either in the cities, or in beautiful houses agreeably situated near the cities.”[166] These Gallo-Roman villas had no fortifications;[167] nor were the Roman villas in England fortified.[168] It was the business of the State to defend the community; this was the theory so long sustained by imperial Rome, and which broke down so completely under the later Carlovingians.

In the time of Charlemagne and Louis le Debonnaire, even the royal palaces do not appear to have been fortified. They were always spoken of as palatia, never as castella. The Danes, when they took possession of the palace of Nimeguen in 880, fortified it with ditches and banks.[169] Charles the Bald appears to have been the first to fortify the palace of Compiègne.[170]

Although there can be no doubt that private castles had become extremely common on the mainland of Western Europe before the end of the 10th century, it is more difficult than is generally supposed to trace their first appearance. Historians, even those of great repute, have been somewhat careless in translating the words castrum or castellum as castle or château, and taking them in the sense of the feudal or private castle.[171] We[Pg 68] have already pointed out that these words in our Anglo-Saxon charters mean a town or village.[172] The fact is that from Roman times until toward the end of the 9th century the words castrum and castellum are used indifferently for a fortified city or town, or a temporary camp. The expression civitates et castella is not uncommon, and might lead one to think that a distinction was drawn between large and small towns, or forts. But it is far more likely that it is a mere pleonasm, a bit of that redundancy which was always dear to the mediæval scribe who was trying to write well. For as the instances cited in the Appendix will prove, we constantly find the words castrum and castellum used for the same town, sometimes even in the same paragraph. Later, from the last quarter of the 9th century to the middle of the 12th century, these same words are used indifferently for a town or a castle, and it is impossible to tell, except by the context, whether a town or a castle is meant; and often even the context throws no light upon it.

This makes it extremely difficult to say with any exactness when the private castle first arose. We seem indeed to have a fixed date in the Capitulary of Pistes, issued by Charles the Bald in 864,[173] in which he[Pg 69] straightly ordered that all who had made castles, forts, or hedge-works without his permission should forthwith be compelled to destroy them, because through them the whole neighbourhood suffered depredation and annoyance. This edict shows, we might argue, that private castles were sufficiently numerous by the year 864 to have become a public nuisance, calling for special legislation. But the chronicles of the second half of the 9th century do not reveal any extensive prevalence of private castles. Indeed, after studying all the most important chronicles of Neustria and Austrasia during this period, the present writer has only been able to find four instances of fortifications which have any claim at all to be considered private castles; and even this claim is doubtful.[174]

When we come to the chroniclers of the middle of the 10th century we find a marked difference. It is true that the words castrum, castellum, municipium, oppidum, munitio, are still used quite indifferently by Flodoard and other writers for one and the same thing, and that in a great many cases they obviously mean a fortified town. But there are other cases where they evidently mean a castle. And if we compare these writers with the earlier ones in the same way as we have already compared the pre-Conquest portion of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle with the chroniclers of the 11th and[Pg 70] 12th centuries, we find the same contrast between them. In the pages of Flodoard or Ademar the action constantly turns on the building, besieging, and burning of castles, which by whatever name they are called, have every appearance of being private castles. In fact before we get to the end of the century, the private castle is as much the leading feature of the drama as it is in the 11th or 12th centuries.

Why, then, had the chroniclers no fresh word for a thing which was in its essential nature so novel? The obvious and only answer is that the private castle in its earlier stages was nothing more than an embankment with a wooden stockade thrown round some villa or farm belonging to a private owner, and was therefore indistinguishable in appearance, though radically different in idea, from the fortifications which had hitherto been thrown up for the protection of the community.[175] How easily we may be mistaken in the meaning of the word castellum, if we interpret it according to modern ideas, may be seen by comparing the account of the bridge built by Charlemagne over the Elbe, in the Annales Laurissenses, with Eginhards narrative of the same affair. The former states that Charlemagne built a castellum of wood and earth at each end of the bridge, while the latter tells us that it was a vallum to protect a garrison which he placed there. This, however, was a work of public utility, and not a private castle. But scanty as the evidence is, it all leads us to infer that the first private castles were fortifications of this simple nature.[176] Mazières-on-the-Meuse, which was besieged[Pg 71] for four weeks by Archbishop Hervey, took its name from the macerias or banks which Count Erlebald had constructed around it. It is impossible to say whether this enclosure should be called a castle or a town, but in idea it was certainly a castle, since it was an enclosure formed for private, not for public interests.

Whether these first private castles were provided with towers we have no evidence either to prove or to disprove. No instance occurs from which we can conclude that they possessed any kind of citadel, before the middle of the 10th century.[177] But before the century is far advanced, we hear of towers in connection with the great towns, which, whether they were originally mural towers or not, are evidently private strongholds, and may justly be called keeps. The earliest instance known to the writer is in 924, when the tower of the presidium where Herbert Count of Vermandois had imprisoned Charles the Simple was burnt accidentally.[178] This tower must have been restored, as nine years later it withstood a six weeks’ siege from King Raoul. A possibly earlier instance is that of Nantes, where Bishop Fulcher had made a castle in 889; for when this castle was restored by Count Alan Barbetorte (937-943), we are[Pg 72] told that he restored the principal tower and made it into his own house.[179] Count Herbert built a keep in Laon before 931; and this appears to have been a different tower to the one attached to the royal house which Louis d’Outremer had built at the gate of the city.[180] We hear also of towers at Amiens (950), Coucy (958), Chalons (963), and Rheims (988). All these towers, it will be observed, are connected with towns.[181] The first stone keep in the country for whose date we have positive evidence, is that of Langeais, built by Fulk Nerra, Count of Anjou, about the year 994; its ruins still exist.

But we are concerned more particularly here with the origin of the motte-and-bailey castle. The exact place or time of its first appearance is still a matter of conjecture. Certainly there is not a word in the chronicles which is descriptive of this kind of castle before the beginning of the 11th century.[182] The first historical mention of a castle which is clearly of the motte-and-bailey kind is in the Chronicle of St Florent[Pg 73] le Vieil, where, at a date which the modern biographer of Fulk Nerra fixes at 1010, we learn that this same Count of Anjou built a castle on the western side of the hill Mont-Glonne, at St Florent le Vieil, on the Loire, and threw up an agger on which he built a wooden tower.[183] In this case the word agger evidently means a motte. But Fulk began to reign in 987; he was a great builder of castles, and was famed for his skill in military affairs.[184] One of his first castles, built between 991 and 994, was at Montbazon, not far from Tours. About 500 metres from the later castle of Montbazon is a motte and outworks, which De Salies not unreasonably supposes to be the original castle of Fulk.[185] Montrichard, Chateaufort, Chérament, Montboyau, and Baugé are all castles built by Fulk, and all have or had mottes. Montboyau is the clearest case of all, as it was demolished by Fulk a few years after he built it, and has never been restored, so that the immense motte and outworks which are still to be seen remain very much in their original state, except that a modern tower has been placed on the motte, which is now called Bellevue.[186]

[Pg 74]

It was a tempting theory at one time to the writer to see in Fulk Nerra the inventor of the motte type of castle, for independently of his fame in military architecture, he is the first mediæval chieftain who is known to have employed mercenary troops.[187] Now as we have already suggested in Chapter I., the plan of the motte-and-bailey castle strongly suggests that there may be a connection between its adoption and the use of mercenaries. For the plan of this kind of castle seems to hint that the owner does not only mistrust his enemies, he also does not completely trust his garrison. The keep in which he and his family live is placed on the top of the motte, which is ditched round so as to separate it from the bailey; the provisions on which all are dependent are stored in the cellar of the keep, so that they are under his own hand; and the keys of the outer ward are brought to him every night, and placed under his pillow.[188]

But unfortunately for this theory, there is some evidence of the raising of mottes at an earlier period in the 10th century than the accession of Fulk Nerra. Thibault-le-Tricheur, who was Count of Blois and Chartres from 932 to 962, was also a great builder, and it is recorded of him that he built the keeps of Chartres,[Pg 75] Chateaudun,[189] Blois, and Chinon,[190] and the castle of Saumur; these must have been finished before 962. Now there was anciently a motte at Blois, for in the 12th century, Fulk V. of Anjou burnt the whole fortress, “except the house on the motte.”[191] There was also a motte at Saumur;[192] and the plan of the castle of Chinon is not inconsistent with the existence of a former motte.[193] These instances seem to put back the existence of the motte castle to the middle of the 10th century.

We know of no earlier claim than this, unless we were to accept the statement of Lambert of Ardres that Sigfrid the Dane, who occupied the county of Guisnes about the year 928, fortified the town, and enclosed his own dunio with a double ditch.[194] If this were true, we have a clear instance of a motte built in the first half of the 10th century. But Lambert’s work was written at the end of the 12th century, with the object of glorifying[Pg 76] the counts of Guisnes, and its editor regards the early part of it as fabulous. That Sigfrid fortified the town of Guisnes we can easily believe, as we know the Danes commonly did the like (see Chapter IV.); but that he built himself a personal castle is unlikely.[195]

It is the more unlikely, because the Danes in Normandy do not appear to have built personal castles until the feudal system was introduced there by Richard Sans Peur. The settlement in Normandy was not on feudal lines. “Rollo divided out the lands among his powerful comrades, and there is scarcely any doubt that they received these lands as inheritable property, without any other pledge than to help Rollo in the defence of the country.”[196] “The Norman constitution at Rollo’s death can be described thus, that the duke ruled the country as an independent prince in relation to the Franks; but for its internal government he had a council at his side, whose individual members felt themselves almost as powerful as the duke himself.”[197] Sir Francis Palgrave asserts that feudalism was introduced into Normandy by the Duke Richard Sans Peur, the grandson of Rollo, towards the middle of the 10th century. He “enforced a most extensive conversion of allodial lands into feudal tenure,” and exacted from his baronage the same feudal submission which he himself had rendered to Hugh Capet.[198]

It is quite in accordance with this that in the narrative of Dudo, who is our only authority for the history of Normandy in the 10th century, there is no mention of a private castle anywhere. We are told[Pg 77] that Rollo restored the walls and towers of the cities of Normandy,[199] and it is clear from the context that the castra of Rouen, Fécamp, and Evreux, which are mentioned, are fortified cities, not castles. Even the ducal residence at Rouen is spoken of as a palatium or an aula, not as a castle; and it does not appear to have possessed a keep until (as we are told by a later writer) the same Duke Richard who introduced the feudal system into Normandy built one for his own residence.[200] It is possible that when the feudal oath was exacted from the more important barons, permission was given to them to build castles for themselves; thus we hear from Ordericus of the castle of Aquila, built in the days of Duke Richard; the castle of the lords of Grantmesnil at Norrei; the castle of Belesme; all of which appear to have been private castles.[201] But there seems to have been no general building of castles until the time of William the Conqueror’s minority, when his rebellious subjects raised castles against him on all sides. “Plura per loca aggeres erexerunt, et tutissimas sibi munitiones construxerunt.”[202] It is generally, and doubtless correctly, supposed that aggeres in this passage means mottes, and taking this statement along with the great number of mottes which are still to be found in Normandy, it has been further assumed (and the present writer was disposed to share the idea) that this was the time of the first invention of mottes. But the facts[Pg 78] which have been now adduced, tracing back the first known mottes to the time of Thibault-le-Tricheur, and the county of Blois, show that the Norman claim to the invention of this mode of fortification must be given up. If the Normans were late in adopting feudalism, they were probably equally late in adopting private castles, and the fortifications of William I.’s time were most likely copied from castles outside the Norman frontier.[203]

It might be thought that the general expectation of the end of the world in the year 1000, which prevailed towards the end of the 10th century, had something to do with the spread of these wooden castles, as it might have seemed scarcely worth while to build costly structures of stone. But it is not necessary to resort to this hypothesis, because there is quite sufficient evidence to show that long before this forecast of doom was accepted, wood was a very common, if not the commonest, material used in fortification. The reader has only to open his Cæsar to see how familiar wooden towers and wooden palisades were to the Romans; and he has only to study carefully the chronicles of the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries to see how all-prevalent this mode of fortification continued to be. The general adoption of the feudal system must have brought about a demand for cheap castles, which was excellently met by the motte with its wooden keep and its stockaded bailey. M. Enlart has pointed out that[Pg 79] wooden defences have one important advantage over stone ones, their greater cohesion, which enabled them to resist the blows of the battering-ram better than rubble masonry.[204] Their great disadvantage was their liability to fire; but this was obviated, as in the time of the Romans, by spreading wet hides over the outsides. Stone castles were still built, where money and means were available, as we see from Fulk Nerra’s keep at Langeais; but the devastations of the Northmen had decimated the population of Gaul; labour must have been dear, and skilled masons hard to find. In these social and economic reasons we have sufficient cause for the rapid spread of wooden castles in France.

The sum of the evidence which we have been reviewing is this: the earliest mottes which we know of were probably built by Thibault-le-Tricheur about the middle of the 10th century. But in the present state of our knowledge we must leave the question of the time and place of their first origin open. The only thing about which we can be certain is that they were the product of feudalism, and cannot have arisen till it had taken root; that is to say, not earlier than the 10th century.

[Pg 80]

The motte-and-bailey type of castle is to be found throughout feudal Europe, but is probably more prevalent in France and the British Isles than anywhere else. We say probably, because there are as yet no statistics prepared on which to base a comparison.[205] How recent the inquiry into this subject is may be learned from the fact that Krieg von Hochfelden, writing in 1859, denied the existence of mottes in Germany;[206] and even Cohausen in 1898 threw doubt[Pg 81] upon them,[207] although General Köhler in 1887 had already declared that “the researches of recent years have shown that the motte was spread over the whole of Germany, and was in use even in the 13th and 14th centuries.”[208] The greater number of the castles described by Piper in his work on Austrian castles are on the motte-and-bailey plan, though the motte in those mountainous provinces is generally of natural rock, isolated either by nature or art. Mottes were not uncommon in Italy, according to Muratori,[209] and are especially frequent in Calabria, where we may strongly suspect that they were introduced by the Norman conqueror, Robert Guiscard.[210] It is not improbable that the Franks of the first crusade planted in Palestine the type of castle to which they were accustomed at home, for several of the excellent plans in Rey’s Architecture des Croisés show clearly enough the motte-and-bailey plan.[211] In most of these cases the motte was a natural rock.

On the other hand, we are told by Köhler that motte-castles are not found among the Slavonic nations, because they never adopted the feudal system.[212] Nor are there any in Norway or Sweden.[213] Denmark has[Pg 82] some, which are attributed by Dr Sophus Müller to the mediæval period.[214]

Of course whenever a motte was thrown up, the first castle upon it must have been a wooden one. A stone keep could not be placed on loose soil.[215] The motte, therefore, must always represent the oldest castle. But there is no reason to think that the motte and its wooden keep were merely temporary expedients, intended always to be replaced as soon as possible by stone buildings. Even after stone castles had been fully developed, wood continued to hold its ground as a solid building material until a very late period.[216] And mottes were used not only throughout the 11th and 12th centuries, but even as late as the 13th. King John built many castles of this type in Ireland; and as late as 1242 Henry III. ordered a motte and wooden castle to be built in the island of Rhé.[217] Muratori gives a much later instance: in 1320 Can Grande caused a great motte to be built near Pavia, and surrounded with a ditch and hedge, in order to build a castle on it.[218][Pg 83] And as will be seen in the next chapter, there is considerable evidence that many mottes in England which were set up in the reign of William I., retained their wooden towers or stockades even till as late as the reign of Edward I. The motte at Drogheda held out some time against Cromwell, and is spoken of by him as a very strong place, having a good graft (ditch) and strongly palisaded.[219] Tickhill Castle in Yorkshire had a palisade on the counterscarp of the ditch when it was taken by Cromwell.[220]

The position of these motte-castles is wholly different from that of prehistoric fortresses. They are almost invariably placed in the arable country, and as a rule not in isolated situations, but in the immediate neighbourhood of towns or villages. It is rare indeed to find a motte-castle in a wild, mountainous situation in England. The only instance which occurs to the writer is that of the motte on the top of the Hereford Beacon; but there is great probability that this was a post fortified by the Bishop of Hereford in the 13th century to protect his game from the Earl of Gloucester. Nothing pointing to a prehistoric origin was found in this motte when it was excavated by Mr Hilton Price,[221] though the camp in which it is placed is supposed to be prehistoric.

The great majority of mottes in England are planted[Pg 84] either on or near Roman or other ancient roads, or on navigable rivers.[222] It was essential to the Norman settlers that they should be near some road which would help them to visit their other estates, which William had been so careful to scatter, and would also enable them to revisit from time to time their estates in Normandy.[223] The rivers of England were much fuller of water in mediæval times than they are now, and were much more extensively used for traffic; they were real waterways. When we find a motte perched on a river which is not navigable, the purpose probably was to defend some ford, or to exact tolls from passengers. Thus the Ferry Hill (corrupted into Fairy Hill) at Whitwood stands at the spot where the direct road from Pontefract to Leeds would cross the Calder. It was probably not usual for the motte to be dependent on a stream or a spring for its supply of water, and this is another point in which the mediæval castle differs markedly from the prehistoric camp; wells have been found in a number of mottes which have been excavated, and it is probable that this was the general plan, though we have not sufficient statistics on this subject as yet.[224]

Occasionally, but very rarely, we find two mottes in the same castle. The only instances in England known to the writer are at Lewes and Lincoln.[225] It is not[Pg 85] unfrequent to find a motte very near a stone castle. In this case it is either the abandoned site of the original wooden castle, or it is a siege castle raised to blockade the other one. We constantly hear of these siege castles being built in the Middle Ages; their purpose was not for actual attack, but to watch the besieged fort and prevent supplies from being carried in.[226] Hillocks were also thrown up for the purpose of placing balistæ and other siege engines upon them; but these would be much smaller than mottes, and would be placed much nearer the walls than blockade castles.

The mottes of France are in all probability much more decidedly military than those of England. France was a land of private war, after the dissolution of the empire of Charlemagne; and no doubt one of the reasons for the rapid spread of the motte-castle, after its invention, was due to the facilities which it offered for this terrible game. In England the reasons for the erection of mottes seem to have been manorial rather than military; that is, the Norman landholder desired a safe residence for himself amidst a hostile peasantry, rather than a strong military position which could hold out against skilful and well-armed foes.

Attached to the castle, both in England and abroad, we frequently find an additional enclosure, much larger than the comparatively small area of the bailey proper. This was the burgus or borough, which inevitably sprang up round every castle which had a lengthened existence. Our older antiquaries, finding that the word burgenses was commonly used in Domesday in connection[Pg 86] with a site where a castle existed, formed the mistaken idea that a burgus necessarily implied a castle. But a burgus was the same thing as a burh, that is, a borough or fortified town. It may have existed long before the castle, or it may have been created after the castle was built. The latter case was very common, for the noble who built a castle would find it to his advantage to build a burgus near it.[227] In exchange for the protection offered by the borough wall or bank, he could demand gablum or rent from the burghers; he could compel them to grind their corn at his mill, and bake their bread at his oven; he could exact tolls on all commodities entering the borough; and if there was a market he would receive a certain percentage on all sales. The borough was therefore an important source of revenue to the baron. Domesday Book mentions the new borough at Rhuddlan, evidently built as soon as the castle had been planted on the deserted banks of the Clwydd. In some cases a “new borough” is clearly a new suburb, doubtless having its own fortifications, built specially for the protection of the Norman settlers in England, as at Norwich and Nottingham.[228]

That even in the 12th century a motte was considered an essential feature of a castle is shown by Neckham’s treatise “De Utensilibus,” where he gives directions as to how a castle should be built; the motte should be placed on a site well defended by nature; it should have a stockade of squared logs round the top; the keep on the motte should be furnished with turrets and battlements, and crates of stones for missiles should be[Pg 87] always provided, as well as a perpetual spring of water, and secret passages and posterns, by which help might reach the besieged.[229]

What the outward appearance of these motte-castles was we learn from the Bayeux Tapestry, which gives us several instructive pictures of motte-castles existing in the 11th century at Dol, Rennes, Dinan, and Bayeux.[230] There is considerable variety in these pictures, and something no doubt must be ascribed to fancy; but all show the main features of a stockade round the top of the motte, enclosing a wooden tower, a ditch round the foot of the motte, with a bank on the counterscarp, and a stepped wooden bridge, up which horses were evidently trained to climb, leading across the moat to the stockade of the motte. In no case is the bailey distinctly depicted, but we may assume that it has been already taken, and that the horsemen are riding over it to the gate-house which (in the picture of Dinan) stands at the foot of the bridge. The towers appear to be square, but in the case of Rennes and Bayeux, are surmounted by a cupola roof. Decoration does not appear to be have been neglected, and the general appearance of the buildings, far from being of a makeshift character, must have been very picturesque.

The picture of the building of the motte at Hastings shows only a stockade on top of the motte; this may be because the artist intended to represent the work as incomplete. What is remarkable about this picture is that the motte appears to be formed in layers of different materials. We might ascribe this to the fancy[Pg 88] of the embroiderer, were it not that layers of this kind have occasionally been found in mottes which have been excavated or destroyed. Thus the motte at Carisbrook, which was opened in 1903, was found to be composed of alternate layers of large and small chalk rubble. In some cases, layers of stones have been found; in others (as at York and Burton) a motte formed of loose material has been cased in a sort of pie-crust of heavy clay. In the Castle Hill at Hallaton in Leicestershire layers of peat and hazel branches, as well as of clay and stone boulders, were found. But our information on this subject is too scanty to justify any generalisations as to the general construction of mottes.

The pictures shown in the Bayeux Tapestry agree very well with the description given by a 12th-century writer of the castle of Merchem, near Dixmüde, in the life of John, Bishop of Terouenne, who died in 1130. “Bishop John used to stay frequently at Merchem when he was going round his diocese. Near the churchyard was an exceedingly high fortification, which might be called a castle or municipium, built according to the fashion of that country by the lord of the manor many years before. For it is the custom of the nobles of that region, who spend their time for the most part in private war, in order to defend themselves from their enemies to make a hill of earth, as high as they can, and encircle it with a ditch as broad and deep as possible. They surround the upper edge of this hill with a very strong wall of hewn logs, placing towers on the circuit, according to their means. Inside this wall they plant their house, or keep (arcem), which overlooks the whole thing. The entrance to this fortress is only by a bridge, which rises from the counterscarp of the ditch, supported on double or even triple columns, till it reaches the upper[Pg 89] edge of the motte (agger).”[231] The chronicler goes on to relate how this wooden bridge broke down under the crowd of people who were following the bishop, and all fell 35 feet into the ditch, where the water was up to their knees. There is no mention of a bailey in this account, but a bailey was so absolutely necessary to a residential castle, in order to find room for the stables, lodgings, barns, smithies and other workshops, which were necessary dependencies of a feudal household, that it can seldom have been omitted, and the comparatively rare instances which we find of mottes which appear never to have had baileys were probably outposts dependent on some more important castle.

Lambert of Ardres, the panegyrist of the counts of Guisnes,[232] writing about 1194, gives us a minute and most interesting description of the wooden castle of Ardres, built about the year 1117. “Arnold, lord of Ardres, built on the motte of Ardres a wooden house, excelling all the houses of Flanders of that period both in material and in carpenter’s work. The first storey was on the surface of the ground, where were cellars and granaries, and great boxes, tuns, casks, and other domestic utensils. In the storey above were the dwelling and common living rooms of the residents, in which were the larders, the rooms of the bakers and butlers, and the great chamber in which the lord and his wife slept. Adjoining this was a private room, the dormitory of the waiting maids and children. In the inner part of the great chamber was a certain private room, where at[Pg 90] early dawn or in the evening or during sickness or at time of blood-letting, or for warming the maids and weaned children, they used to have a fire.... In the upper storey of the house were garret rooms, in which on the one side the sons (when they wished it) on the other side the daughters (because they were obliged) of the lord of the house used to sleep. In this storey also the watchmen and the servants appointed to keep the house took their sleep at some time or other. High up on the east side of the house, in a convenient place, was the chapel, which was made like unto the tabernacle of Solomon in its ceiling and painting. There were stairs and passages from storey to storey, from the house into the kitchen, from room to room, and again from the house into the loggia (logium), where they used to sit in conversation for recreation, and again from the loggia into the oratory.”[233]

This description proves that these wooden castles were no mere rude sheds for temporary occupation, but that they were carefully built dwellings designed for permanent residence. The description is useful for the light it throws on the stone keeps whose ruins remain to us. They probably had very similar arrangements, and though only their outside walls are now existing, they must have been divided into different rooms by wooden partitions which have now perished.[234]

In this account of Lambert’s it is further mentioned that the kitchen was joined to the house or keep, and was a building of two floors, the lower one being occupied by live stock, while the upper one was the actual kitchen. We must remember that this account[Pg 91] was written at the end of the 12th century. In the earlier and simpler manners of the 11th century it is probable that the cooking was more generally carried on in the open air, as it was among the Anglo-Saxons.[235] The danger of fire would prevent the development of chimneys in wooden castles; we have seen that there was only one in this wonderful castle of Ardres. But even after stone castles became common, we have evidence that the kitchen was often an isolated building in the courtyard. One such kitchen still exists in the monastic ruins of Glastonbury.

The word mota, which was used in the 12th century for the artificial hills on which the wooden keeps of these castles were placed, comes from an old French word motte, meaning a clod of earth, which is still used in France for a small earthen hillock.[236] The keep itself appears to have been called a bretasche, though this word seems to have meant a wooden tower of any kind, and was used both for mural towers and for the movable wooden towers employed for sieges.[237] At a much later period it was given to the wooden balconies by which walls were defended, but the writer has found no instance of this use of the word before the 14th century. On the contrary, these wooden galleries for the purpose of defending the foot of the walls by throwing missiles down are called hurdicia or hourdes in the documents, a[Pg 92] word of cognate origin to our word hoarding.[238] The word bretasche is also of Teutonic origin, akin to the German brett, a board.

The court at the base of the hillock is always called the ballium, bayle, or bailey, a word for which Skeat suggests the Latin baculus, a stick, as a possible though very doubtful ancestor. The wooden wall which surrounded this court was the palum, pelum, or palitium of the documents, a word which Mr Neilson has proved to be the origin of the peels so common in Lowland Scotland, though it has been mistakenly applied to the towers enclosed by these peels.[239] The palitium was the stockade on the inner bank of the ditch which enclosed the bailey; but the outer or counterscarp bank had also its special defence, called the hericio, from its bristling nature (French hérisson, a hedgehog). There can be little doubt that it was sometimes an actual hedge of brambles, at other times of stakes intertwined with osiers or thorns.[240]

Thus the words most commonly used in connection with these wooden castles are chiefly French in form, but a French that is tinctured with Teutonic blood. This is just what we might expect, since the first castles of feudalism arose on Gallic soil (France or Flanders), but on soil which was ruled by men of Teutonic descent. We may regard it as fairly certain that it was in the region anciently known as Neustria that the motte-castle first appeared; and as we have previously shown, there is some reason to think that the centre of that region[Pg 93] was the place where it originated. But this must for the present remain doubtful. What we regard as certain is that it was from France, and from Normandy in particular, that it was introduced into the British Isles; and to those islands we must now turn.

[Pg 94]

In this chapter we propose to give a list, in alphabetical order for convenience of reference, of the castles which are known to have existed in England in the 11th century, because they are mentioned either in Domesday Book, or in charters of the period, or in some contemporary chronicle.[241] We do not for a moment suppose that this catalogue of eighty-four castles is a complete list of those which were built in England in the reigns of William I. and William II. We have little doubt that all the castles in the county towns, such as Leicester, Northampton, and Guildford, and those which we hear of first as the seats of important nobles in the reign of Henry II., such as Marlborough, Groby, Bungay, Ongar, were castles built shortly after the Conquest, nearly all of them being places which have (or had) mottes. Domesday Book only mentions fifty castles in England and Wales,[242] but[Pg 95] it is well known that the Survey is as capricious in its mention of castles as in its mention of churches. It is possible that further research in charters which the writer has been unable to examine may furnish additional castles, but the list now given may be regarded as complete as far as materials generally accessible will allow.[243] One of the castles mentioned (Richard’s Castle) and probably two others (Hereford and Ewias) existed before the Conquest; they were the work of those Norman friends of Edward the Confessor whom he endowed with lands in England.

Out of this list of eighty-four castles we shall find that no less than seventy-one have or had mottes. The exceptions are the Tower of London, Colchester, Pevensey, and Chepstow, where a stone keep was part of the original design, and a motte was therefore unnecessary: Bamborough, Peak, and Tynemouth, where the site was sufficiently defended by precipices: Carlisle and Richmond, whose original design is unknown to us: Belvoir, Dover, Exeter, and Monmouth, which might on many grounds be counted as motte-castles, but as the evidence is not conclusive, we do not mark them as such; but even if we leave them out, with the other exceptions, we shall find that nearly 86 per cent. of our list of castles of the 11th century are of the motte-and-bailey type.

About forty-three of these castles are attached to[Pg 96] towns. Of these, less than a third are placed inside the Roman walls or the Saxon or Danish earthworks of the towns, while at least two-thirds are wholly or partly outside these enclosures.[244] This circumstance is important, because the position outside the town indicates the mistrust of an invader, not the confidence of a native prince. In the only two cases where we know anything of the position of the residence of the Saxon kings we find it in the middle of the city.[245] Even when the castle is inside the town walls it is almost invariably close to the walls, so that an escape into the country might always be possible.[246]

Of the towns or manors in which these castles were situated, Domesday Book gives us the value in King Edward’s and King William’s time in sixty-two instances. In forty-five cases the value has risen; in twelve it has fallen; in five it is stationary. Evidently something has caused a great increase of prosperity in these cases, and it can hardly be anything else than the impetus given to trade through the security afforded by a Norman castle.

Our list shows that Mr Clark’s confident statement, that the moated mounds were the centres of large and important estates in Saxon times, was a dream. Out of forty-one mottes in country districts, thirty-six are found in places which were quite insignificant in King Edward’s day, and only five can be said to occupy the centres of important Saxon manors.[247]

[Pg 97]

In the table in the Appendix, the area occupied by the original baileys of the castles in this list has been measured accurately by a planimeter, from the 25-in. Ordnance maps, in all cases in which that was possible.[248] This table proves that the early Norman castles were very small in area, suitable only for the personal defence of a chieftain who had only a small force at his disposal, and absolutely unsuited for a people in the tribal state of development, like the ancient Britons, or for the scheme of national defence inaugurated by Alfred and Edward. We may remark here that in not a single case is any masonry which is certainly early Norman to be found on one of these mottes; where the date can be ascertained, the stonework is invariably later than the 11th century.

Abergavenny (Fig. 8).—This castle, being in Monmouthshire, must be included in our list. The earliest notice of it is a document stating that Hamelin de Ballon gave the church and chapel of the castle of Abergavenny, and the land for making a bourg, and an oven of their own, to the Abbey of St Vincent at Le Mans.[249]

The castle occupies a pointed spur at the S. end of the town, whose walls converge so as to include the castle as part of the defence. The motte has been much altered during recent years, and is crowned by a modern building; but a plan in Coxe’s Tour in Monmouthshire, 1800, shows it in its original round form. The bailey is roughly of a pentagonal shape, covering 1 acre, and is defended by a curtain wall with mural towers and a gatehouse. The ditch on the W.[Pg 98] and N. is much filled in and obscured by the encroachment of the town. On the E. the ground descends in a steep scarp, which merges into those of the headland on which the motte is placed.[250]

Arundel (Fig. 8).—“The castrum of Arundel,” says Domesday Book, “paid 40s. in King Edward’s time from a certain mill, and 20s. from three boardlands (or feorm-lands), and 2s. from one pasture. Now, between the town feorm and the water-gate and the ships’ dues, it pays 12l.”[251] Castrum in Domesday nearly always means a castle; yet the description here given is certainly that of a town and not of a castle. We must therefore regard it as an instance of the fluctuating meaning which both castrum and castellum had in the 11th century.[252] Arundel is one of the towns mentioned in the “Burghal Hidage.”[253] But even accepting that the description in Domesday refers to the town, we can have very little doubt that the original earthen castle was reared by Roger de Montgomeri, to whom William I. gave the Rapes of Arundel and Chichester, and whom he afterwards made Earl of Shrewsbury.[254][Pg 99] Roger had contributed sixty ships to William’s fleet, and both he and his sons were highly favoured and trusted by William, until the sons forfeited that confidence. We shall see afterwards that their names are connected with several important castles of the early Norman settlement. We shall see also that the Rapes into which Sussex was divided—Chichester, Arundel, Bramber, Lewes, Pevensey, and Hastings—were all furnished with Norman castles, each with the characteristic motte, except Pevensey, which had a stone keep. Each of these castles, at the time of the Survey, defended a port by which direct access could be had to Normandy. It was to protect his base that William fortified these important estuaries, and committed them to the keeping of some of the most prominent of the Norman leaders.

The castle stands on the end of a high and narrow ridge of the South Downs, above the town of Arundel. It consists of an oblong ward, covering 4½ acres, in the middle of which, but on the line of the west wall, is a large motte, about 70 feet high, surrounded by its own ditch. The lower and perhaps original bailey is only 2 acres in extent. Round the top of the motte is a slightly oval wall, of the kind called by Mr Clark a shell keep. We have elsewhere expressed our doubts of the correctness of this term.[255] In all the more important castles we find that the keep on top of the motte has a small ward attached to it, and Arundel is no exception to this rule; it has the remains of a tower, as well as the wall round the motte. The tower is a small one, but it is large enough for the king’s chamber in times which were not extravagant in domestic architecture. It is probable that this tower, and the stone wall round[Pg 100] the motte are the work of Henry II., as he spent nearly 340l. on this castle between the years 1170 and 1187. His work consisted chiefly of a wall, a king’s chamber, a chapel, and a tower.[256] The wall of the motte corresponds in style to the work of the middle of his reign; it is built of flints, but cased with Caen stone brought from Normandy, and has Norman buttresses. The original Norman doorway on the south side (now walled up) has the chevron moulding, which shows that it is not earlier than the 12th century. The tower, which we may assume to be the tower of Henry II.’s records, has a round arched entrance, and contains a chapel and a chamber (now ruined) besides a well chamber.

There is earlier Norman work still remaining in the bailey, namely, the fine gateway, which though of plain and severe Norman, is larger and loftier than the early work of that style, and of superior masonry.[257] The one Pipe Roll of Henry I. which we possess shows that he spent 78l. 6s. 2d. on the castle in 1130, and possibly this refers to this gatehouse.[258] We know that Henry was a great builder, but so was the former owner of this castle, Robert Belesme, son of Roger de Montgomeri.

The value of the town of Arundel had greatly increased since the Conquest, at the time of the Domesday Survey.[259]

Bamborough, Northumberland.—We first hear of[Pg 101] this castle in the reign of Rufus, when it was defended against the king by Robert Mowbray, the rebel Earl of Northumberland; but there can be little doubt that the earliest castle on this natural bastion was built in the Conqueror’s reign. In the 13th century certain lands were held by the tenure of supplying wood to the castle of Bamborough, and it was declared that this obligation had existed ever since the time of William I.[260] William certainly found no castle there, for Bamborough had fallen into utter ruin and desolation by the middle of the 11th century.[261] William’s hold on Northumberland was too precarious to give opportunity for so long and costly a work as the building of a stone keep. It is more probable that a strong wooden castle was the fortress of the governors of Northumberland under the first Norman kings, and that the present stone keep was built in Henry II.’s reign.[262] There is no motte at Bamborough, nor was one needed on a site which is itself a natural motte, more precipitous and defensible than any artificial hill.[263] As the Domesday Survey does not extend to Northumberland, we have no statement of the value of Bamborough. The area of the castle is 4¾ acres.[Pg 102]

Barnstaple, Devon (Fig. 9).—This castle is not mentioned in Domesday, but the town belonged to Judhael, one of the followers of the Conqueror, whose name suggests a Breton origin. William gave him large estates in Devon and Cornwall. A charter of Judhael’s to the priory which he founded at Barnstaple makes mention of the castle.[264] Barnstaple, at the head of the estuary of the Taw, was a borough at Domesday, and the castle was placed inside the town walls.[265] The motte remains in good condition; the winding walks which now lead to the top are certainly no part of the original plan, but are generally found in cases where the motte has been incorporated in a garden. There was formerly a stone keep, of which no vestige remains.[266] The castle seems to have formed the apex of a town of roughly triangular shape. The bailey can just be traced, and must have covered 1⅓ acres.

The former value of Barnstaple is not given in the Survey, so we cannot tell whether it had risen or not.

Belvoir, Leicester.—This castle was founded by the Norman Robert de Todeni, who died in 1088.[267] It stands on a natural hill, so steep and isolated that it might be called a natural motte. The first castle was destroyed by King John, and the modernising of the site has entirely destroyed any earthworks which may have existed on the hill. There appears to have[Pg 103] been a shell wall, from the descriptions given by Nicholls and Leland.[268] It was situated in the manor of Bottesdene, a manor of no great importance, but which had risen in value at the date of the Survey.[269]

Berkeley, or Ness.—The identity of Berkeley Castle with the Ness castle of Domesday may be regarded as certain. All that the Survey says about it is: “In Ness there are five hides belonging to Berkeley, which Earl William put out to make a little castle.”[270] Earl William is William FitzOsbern, the trusty friend and counsellor of the Conqueror, who had made him Earl of Herefordshire. He had also authority over the north and west of England during William’s first absence in Normandy, and part of the commission he received from William was to build castles where they were needed.[271] Berkeley was a royal manor with a large number of berewicks, and the probable meaning of the passage in Domesday is that Earl William removed the geldability of the five hides occupying the peninsula or ness which stretches from Berkeley to the Severn, bounded on the south by the Little Avon, and appropriated these lands to the upkeep of a small castle. This castle can hardly have been placed anywhere but at Berkeley, for there is no trace of any other castle in the district.[272] Earl Godwin had sometimes resided at Berkeley, but probably his residence there was the monastery which by[Pg 104] evil means had come into his hands;[273] for we never hear of any castle in connection with Godwin. But a Norman motte exists at Berkeley, though buried in the stone shell built by Henry II. Mr Clark remarks: “If the masonry of Berkeley Castle were removed, its remains would show a mound of earth, and attached to three sides of it a platform, the whole encircled with a ditch or scarp.”[274] The motte raised by Earl William has, in fact, been revetted with a stone shell of the 12th century, whose bold chevron ornament over the entrance gives evidence of its epoch. What is still more remarkable is that documentary evidence exists to fix the date of this transformation. A charter of Henry II. is preserved at Berkeley Castle, in which he grants the manor to Robert Fitzhardinge, pledging himself at the same time to fortify a castle there, according to Robert’s wish.[275] Robert’s wish probably was to possess a stone keep, like those which had been rising in so many places during the 12th century. But there had been a Norman lord at Berkeley before Fitzhardinge, Roger de Berkeley, whose representatives only lost the manor through having taken sides with Stephen in the civil war.[276] This Roger no doubt occupied the wooden castle on the motte built by William FitzOsbern. Henry II.’s shell was probably the first masonry connected with[Pg 105] the castle. This remarkable keep is nearly circular, and has three round turrets and one oblong. As the latter, Thorpe’s Tower, was rebuilt in Edward III.’s reign, it probably took the place of a round tower. The keep is built of rubble, and its Norman buttresses (it has several later ones) project about a foot. The cross loopholes in the walls are undoubtedly insertions of the time of Edward III. The buildings in the bailey are chiefly of the time of Edward III., but the bailey walls have some Norman buttresses, and are probably of the same date as the keep.[277] This bailey is nearly square, and the motte, which is in one corner, encroaches upon about a quarter of it. The small size of the area which it encloses, not much more than half an acre, corresponds to the statement of Domesday Book that it was “a little castle.” There is no trace of the usual ditch surrounding the motte, and the smallness of the bailey makes it unlikely that there ever was one. A second bailey has been added to the first,[278] and the whole is surrounded on three sides by a moat, the fourth side having formerly had a steep descent into swamps, which formed sufficient protection.[279]

There is no statement in the Survey of the value of Ness, but the whole manor of Berkeley had risen since the Conquest.[280]

Berkhampstead, Herts (Fig. 9).—Mr D. H. Montgomerie rightly calls this a magnificent example of[Pg 106] an earthwork fortress.[281] It is first mentioned in a charter of Richard I., which recapitulates the original charter of William, son of Robert, Count of Mortain, in which he gives the chapel of this castle to the Abbey of Grestein in Normandy.[282] We may, therefore, with all probability look upon this as one of the castles built by the Conqueror’s half-brother. And this will account for the exceptional strength of the work, which comprises a motte 40 feet high, ditched round (formerly), and a bailey of 2⅔ acres, surrounded not only with the usual ditch and banks, but with a second ditch outside the counterscarp bank, which encircles both motte and bailey. At two important points in its line, this counterscarp bank is enlarged into mounds which have evidently once carried wooden towers;[283] if this arrangement belonged to the original plan, as it most probably did, it confirms a remark which we have made elsewhere as to the early use of wooden mural towers. Works in masonry were added to the motte and the bailey banks in the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries. There are traces of a semicircular earthwork outside the second ditch on the west, which appears to have formed a barbican. But the most exceptional thing about this castle is the series of earthen platforms on the north and east, connected by a bank, and closely investing the external ditch, which were formerly supposed to form part of the castle works. Mr W. St John Hope has suggested the far more plausible theory that they were the siege platforms erected by Louis, the Dauphin of France, in 1216. We are[Pg 107] told that his engines kept up a most destructive fire of stones.[284]

The value of the manor of Berkhampstead had considerably decreased, even since the Count of Mortain received it.[285]

Bishop’s Stortford, Herts (Fig. 9).—Waytemore Castle is the name given to the large oval motte at this place, which is evidently the site of the castle of “Estorteford,” given by William the Conqueror to Maurice, Bishop of London.[286] The manor of Stortford had been bought from King William by Maurice’s predecessor, William, who had been one of the Norman favourites of Edward the Confessor.[287] He may have built this castle, but he cannot have built it till after the Conquest, as the land did not belong to his see till then.

“The castle consists of a large oval motte, 250 × 200 feet at its base, rising 40 feet above the marshes of the river Stort, and crowned by a keep with walls of flint rubble, 12 feet thick. On the S. of the motte there are traces of a pentagonal bailey, covering 2½ acres. It is enclosed on four sides by the narrow streams which intersect the marshes. The dry ditch on the fifth side, facing the motte, is discernible. The castle abuts on the road called The Causeway, which crosses the valley; it is in a good position to command both road and river.”[288] The value of the manor had gone down at Domesday.[289]

Bourn, Lincolnshire (Fig. 10).—The manor of Bourn[Pg 108] or Brune appears to have been much split up amongst various owners at the time of Domesday. A Breton named Oger held the demesne.[290] A charter of Picot, the Sheriff of Cambridgeshire, a person often mentioned in Domesday Book, gives the church of Brune and the chapel of the castle to the priory which he had founded near the castle of Cambridge—afterwards removed to Barnwell.[291] Bourn was the centre of a large soke in Anglo-Saxon times. Leland mentions the “Grete Diches, and the Dungeon Hill of the ancient Castel,”[292] but very little of the remains is now visible, and the motte has been almost removed.

“The castle lies in flat ground, well watered by springs and streams. The motte was placed at the southern apex of a roughly oval bailey, from which it was separated by its own wet ditch, access being obtained through a gatehouse which stood on the narrow neck by which this innermost enclosure, at its N.W. end, joined the principal bailey, which, in its turn, was embraced on all sides but the S. by a second and concentric bailey, also defended by a wet ditch, which broadens out at the S.W. corner into St Peter’s Pool. There is another enclosure beyond this which may be of later date. The inner bailey covers 3 acres. Very little is now left of the motte, but a plan made in 1861 showed it to be fairly perfect,[293] and some slight remains of the gatehouse were excavated in that year. The castle is on the line of the Roman road from Peterborough to Sleaford, and close to the Roman Car-Dyke.”[294]

The value of Bourn had risen at Domesday.

[Pg 109]

Bramber, Sussex (Fig. 10).—Of the manor of Washington, in which Bramber is situated, the Survey says that it formerly paid geld for fifty-nine hides; and in one of these hides sits the castle of Bramber.[295] It must not be imagined that the castle occupied a whole hide, which according to the latest computations would average about 120 acres. It is evident that there had been some special arrangement between the King and William de Braose, the Norman tenant-in-chief, by which the whole geld of the manor had been remitted. The Domesday scribe waxes almost pathetic over the loss to the fisc of this valuable prey. “It used to be ad firmam for 100l.,” he says. The manor of Washington belonged to Gurth, the brother of Harold, before the Conquest, but it is clear that Bramber was not the caput of the manor in Saxon times; nor was Washington the centre of a large soke. Bramber Castle was constructed to defend the estuary of the river, now known as the Adur, one of the waterways to Normandy already alluded to.

The castle occupies a natural hill which forms on the top a pear-shaped area of 3 acres. Towards the middle rises an artificial motte about 30 feet high; there is no sign of a special ditch around it, except that the ground sinks slightly at its base. The bailey is surrounded by a very neatly built wall of pebbles and flints, laid herring-bone-wise in places, which does not stand on an earthen bank. The absence of this bank makes it likely, though of course not certain, that this wall was the original work of De Braose; the stones of which it is composed would be almost as easily obtained as the[Pg 110] earth for a bank. On the line of the wall, just east of the entrance, stands a tall fragment of an early Norman tower. The workmanship of this tower, which is also of flints laid herring-bone-wise, with quoins of ashlar, so strongly resembles that of the neighbouring church that it seems obvious that both were built at about the same time.[296] The church is dedicated to St Nicholas, who was worshipped in Normandy as early as 1067;[297] it was probably the Normans who introduced his worship into England. Both church and tower are undoubtedly early Norman. The motte shows no sign of masonry.

The value of the manor of Washington had slightly risen since the Conquest.

Bristol.—Robert, Earl of Gloucester, the Empress Matilda’s half-brother and great champion, is always credited with the building of Bristol Castle; but this is one of the many instances in which the man who first rebuilds a castle in stone receives the credit of being the original founder.[298] For it is certain that there was a castle at Bristol long before the days of Earl Robert, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions it in 1088, when it was held by Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances, and Robert Curthose against William II.; and Symeon of Durham, in the same year, speaks of it as a “castrum fortissimum.” Bishop Geoffrey held Bristol at the date of[Pg 111] the Domesday Survey, and he probably built the castle by William’s orders.[299] It was completely destroyed in 1655 (only a few 13th century arches in a private house now remain), and no trustworthy plan has been preserved, but there is clear evidence that it was a motte-and-bailey castle of the usual Norman type.[300] In Stephen’s reign it was described as standing on a very great agger.[301] An agger does not necessarily mean a motte, but it is often used for one, and there is other evidence which shows that this is its meaning here. A Perambulation of the bounds of Bristol in 1373 shows that the south-western part of the castle ditch, which enclosed the site of the keep, was called le Mot-dich; which should certainly be translated the ditch of the motte, and not, as Seyer translates it, the moat ditch.[302] Finally, the description of the castle in 1642 by Major Wood, says: “The castle stood upon a lofty steep mount, that was not minable, as Lieutenant Clifton informed me, for he said the mount whereon the castle stood was of an earthy substance for a certain depth, but below that a firm strong rock, and that he had searched purposely with an auger and found it so in all parts.”[303] He goes on to describe the wall of the bailey as resting on an earthen rampart, testifying to the wooden stockade of the first castle. The great tower of Earl Robert appears to have been placed on the motte, which must have been of considerable size, as it held not only[Pg 112] the keep, but a courtyard, a chapel, and the constable’s house, besides several towers on its walls. The whole area of the castle was very nearly 4 acres.[304]

Bristol Castle was no doubt originally a royal castle, though Earl Robert of Gloucester held it in right of his wife, who had inherited it from her father, Robert Fitz Hamon; but the crown did not abdicate its claim upon it, and after the troubles of 1174, Henry II. caused the son of Earl Robert to surrender the keep into his hands.[305]

Seyer very pertinently remarks that Bristol Castle “was erected with a design hostile to the town; for it occupies the peninsula between two rivers, along which was the direct and original communication between the town and the main part of Gloucestershire.”[306] It was outside the city, and was not under its jurisdiction till James I. granted this authority by charter.[307] The value T. R. E. is not given in Domesday Book.

Buckingham.—The only mention of this castle as existing in the 11th century is in the Gesta Herewardi,[308] an undated work which is certainly in great part a romance, but as it is written by some one who evidently had local knowledge, we may probably trust him for the existence of Buckingham Castle at that date; especially as Buckingham was a county town, and one of the boroughs of the Burghal Hidage, the very place which we should expect to find occupied by a Norman castle. This writer speaks of the castle as belonging to Ivo de[Pg 113] Taillebois; this is not inconsistent with the fact shown by Domesday Book, that the borough belonged to the king. That it was a motte-and-bailey castle is indicated by Speed’s map of Buckingham in 1611; he speaks of the “high hill,” though he only indicates it slightly in his plan, with a shield-shaped bailey. Brayley states that the present church is “proudly exalted on the summit of an artificial mount, anciently occupied by a castle.”[309]

The castle hill occupies a strong position on the neck of land made by a bend of the river; it extends nearly half-way across it, and commands both town and river. The original earthworks of the castle were destroyed and levelled for the erection of a church in 1777, but the large oval hill remains, having a flat summit about 2 acres in extent, and about 30 feet above the town below. Its sides descend in steep scarps behind the houses on all sides but the north-east. There can be no doubt that the motte has been lowered, and thus enlarged, in order to build the church. The foundations of a stone castle were found in digging a cellar on the slope of the motte.[310]

The value of Buckingham had considerably risen at the date of Domesday.[311]

Caerleon, Monmouthshire (Fig. 11).—Domesday Book speaks of the castellaria of Caerleon.[312] A castellaria appears to have meant a district in which the land[Pg 114] was held by the service of castle-guard in a neighbouring castle. The Survey goes on to say that this land was waste in the time of King Edward, and when William de Scohies, the Domesday tenant, received it; now it is worth 40s. Wasta, Mr Round has remarked, is one of the pitfalls of the Survey. Perhaps we shall not be far wrong if we say that in a general way it means that there was nobody there to pay geld. When this occurs in a town it may point to the devastations committed at the Conquest; but when it occurs in the country, and when it is accompanied by so clear a statement that the land which was wasta in King Edward’s time and at the Conquest is now producing revenue, the inference would seem to be clear that the castle of Caerleon was built on uninhabited land. Caerleon, however, had been a great city in Roman times, and had kept up its importance at least till the days of Edgar, when it is twice mentioned in Welsh history.[313] It must therefore have gone downhill very rapidly. Giraldus mentions among the ruins of Roman greatness which were to be seen in his day, a gigantic tower, and this is commonly supposed to have belonged to the castle.[314] It certainly did not, for Giraldus is clearly speaking of a Roman tower, and the motte of the Norman castle not only has no signs of masonry, but has been thrown up over the ruins of a Roman villa which had been burnt.[315] The motte and other remains of the castle are outside the Roman castrum, between it and the river. The[Pg 115] bailey is roughly pentagonal, and covers 4¾ acres. The manor of Caerleon was waste T. R. E. and had risen to 40s. T. R. W.[316]

Cambridge.—Ordericus tells us that William built this castle on his return from his first visit to Yorkshire in 1068,[317] and Domesday Book states that twenty-seven houses were destroyed to make room for the castle.[318] There can hardly be a clearer statement that the castle was entirely new. We have already seen that there is some probability that Cambridge was first fortified by the Danes; for though it has been assumed to be a Roman castrum, no Roman remains have ever been found there, and the names which suggest Roman occupation, Chesterton and Grantchester, are at some distance from Cambridge. The castle, according to Mr St John Hope’s plan,[319] was placed inside this enclosure, and the destruction of the houses to make room for it is thus explained. The motte and a portion of the bank of the bailey are all that now remain of the castle, but the valuable ancient maps republished by Mr Hope show that the motte had its own ditch, and that the bailey was rectangular. There was formerly a round tower on the motte, which, if it had the cross-loop-holes and machicolations represented in the print published in 1575, was certainly not of Norman date. The area of the bailey was 4¼ acres.[320] The castle was a royal one, and like[Pg 116] many royal castles, went early to ruin. Henry IV. gave the materials of the hall to the master and wardens of King’s Hall for building their chapel.

The value of Cambridge T. R. W. is not given in Domesday Book.

Canterbury.—Domesday Book only mentions this castle incidentally in connection with an exchange of land: “The archbishop has seven houses and the abbot of St Augustine fourteen for the exchange of the castle.”[321] It has been too hastily assumed that it was a pre-Conquest castle which was thus exchanged for twenty-one houses; but anyone who knows the kind of relations which existed chronically between the archbishop of Canterbury and the abbot of St Augustine’s will perceive that it was an impossibility that these two potentates should have held a castle in common. It was the land for the castle, not the castle itself, which the king got from these ecclesiastics. This is rendered clear by a passage in the Chartulary of St Augustine’s, which tells us that the king, who was mesne lord of the city of Canterbury, had lost the rent of thirty-two houses through the exchange of the castle: seven having gone to the archbishop, fourteen to the abbot, and eleven having been destroyed in making the ditch of the castle.[322] There can scarcely be any doubt that the hillock now known by the ridiculous name of Dane John is the motte of this original castle of the Conqueror. Its proper name, the Dungeon Hill, which it bore till the 16th and[Pg 117] even the 18th century,[323] shows what its origin was; it was the hill on which stood the dungeon or donjon of a Norman castle.[324] The name Dane John is not so much a corruption as a deliberate perversion introduced by the antiquary Somner about 1640, under the idea that the Danes threw up the hill—an idea for which there is not the slightest historical evidence.[325] We have seen that there is no reason to think that the Danes ever constructed fortifications of this kind, and their connection with this earthwork is due to one of those guesses, too common in English archæology, which have no scientific basis whatever.

Somner makes the important statement that this earthwork was originally outside the city walls. His words are:—

It is not often we are so fortunate as to have so clear a description of an earthwork which has almost entirely disappeared; but the description is confirmed by Stukeley and Hasted, and down to the making of the Chatham and Dover railway in 1860 the earthworks of[Pg 118] the part of the bailey which was left outside the city wall were still to be seen, and were noticed by Mr G. T. Clark.[327] It is clear that Somner’s description corresponds exactly, even in the detail of size, to the type of a motte-and-bailey castle.

There are certain facts, which have not been put together before, which enable us to make a very probable guess as to the date at which this ancient castle was cut through by the newer city bank. The walls of Canterbury have never yet received so careful an examination as those of Rochester have had from the Rev. Greville Livett;[328] but the researches of Mr Pilbrow about thirty years ago showed that the original Roman walls included a very small area, which would leave both the motte and the Plantagenet castle outside.[329] Certain entries in the Close Rolls show that the fortification of the town of[Pg 119] Canterbury was going on in the years 1215-1225.[330] But it is too often forgotten that where a wall stands on an earthen bank it is a clear proof that before the wall was built there was a wooden stockade in its place. Now the portion of the city wall which encloses the Dane John stands on an earthen bank; so, indeed, does the whole wall from the Northgate to the castle. It is clear that this piece of bank cannot have been made till the first Norman castle, represented by the earthwork, was abandoned; and fortunately we have some evidence which suggests a date for the change. In the Pipe Rolls of Henry II.’s reign there are yearly entries, beginning in 1168, of 5s. paid to Adeliza Fitzsimon “for the exchange of her land which is in the castle of Canterbury.” There can be little doubt that this land was purchased to build the great Plantagenet castle whose splendid keep was once one of the finest in England.[331] The portion of the castle wall which can still be seen does not stand on an earthen bank, an indication (though not a proof) that the castle was on a new site. Henry II. was a great builder of stone keeps, but he seldom placed them on artificial mottes. It is no uncommon thing to find an old motte-and-bailey castle abandoned for a better or larger site close at hand.[332]

The bailey of the second castle, according to Hasted, extended almost to the Dane John, which is about 800 feet from the present keep. The part of the older castle which lay outside the new city bank was possessed by a family of the name of Chiche from the time of Henry II. to that of Edward IV., while the[Pg 120] Dungeon Hill itself remained royal property.[333] That the new bank was Henry II.’s work we may conjecture from the passages in the Pipe Rolls, which show that between the years 1166 and 1173 he spent about £30 in enclosing the city of Canterbury and making a gate. We are therefore not without grounds for concluding that Henry II. was the first to enlarge the city by taking in the Dane John, cutting through the ancient bailey, and at the same time enclosing a piece of land for a new stone castle.[334] The very small sum paid for the city gate (11s., equal to about £11 of our money) suggests that the gate put up by Henry II. was a wooden gateway in the new stockaded bank. The stone walls and towers which were afterwards placed on the bank are of much later date than his reign.[335]

[Pg 121]

The Dungeon Hill appears to have been used for the last time as a fortification in 1643, when ordnance was placed upon it, and it was ordered to be guarded by the householders.[336] In 1790 it was converted into a pleasure-ground for the city; the wide and deep ditch which had surrounded it was filled up, and serpentine walks cut to lead up to the summit. Brayley says that “the ancient and venerable character of this eminence was wholly destroyed by incongruous additions.” Still, enough remains to show that it was once a very fine motte, such as we might expect the Conqueror to raise to hold in check one of the most important cities of his new realm.

The value of Canterbury had increased from 51l. to 54l. since the days of King Edward.[337]

Carisbrooke, Isle of Wight (Fig. 11).—There can be no doubt that this is the castle spoken of in Domesday Book under the manor of Alwinestone. Carisbrooke is in the immediate neighbourhood of Alvington. The language in which the Survey speaks of this manor is worthy of note. “The king holds Alwinestone: Donnus held it. It then paid geld as two and a half hides: now as two hides, because the castle sits in one virgate.”[338] Certain entries similar to this in other places seem to indicate that there was some remission of geld granted on the building of a castle;[339] but as here the king was himself the owner, the remission must have been granted to his tenants.

[Pg 122]

The original castle of Carisbrooke consists of a high motte, ditched round, placed at the corner of a parallelogram with rounded corners. This bailey, covering 2¾ acres, is surrounded by high banks, which testify to the former presence of a wooden stockade. There is another bailey on the eastern side, called the Tilt-yard. The excellent little local guide-book compiled by Mr Stone calls this a British camp, but there is no reason to believe that it was anything else than what it appears to be—a second bailey added as the castle grew in importance. On the motte is a shell of polygonal form, of rubble masonry, but having quoins of well-dressed ashlar. It is believed to be of the time of Henry I., since the author of the Gesta Stephani states that Baldwin de Redvers, son of Richard de Redvers, to whom Henry granted the lordship of the Isle of Wight, had a castle there splendidly built of stone, defended by a strong fortification.[340] This would indicate that, besides the stone keep, stone walls were added to the earthworks of the Domesday castle. The keep is of peculiar interest, as it still retains the remains of the old arrangements in keeps of this style, though of much later date. The motte was opened in 1893, and was found to be composed of alternate layers of large and small chalk rubble.[341] Little attention has hitherto been paid to the construction of these Norman mottes, but other instances have been noted which show that they were often built with great care. The whole castle, including the Tilt-yard, was surrounded with an elaborate polygonal fortification in Elizabeth’s reign, when the Spanish invasion was expected.

[Pg 123]

The value of the manor of Alvington had increased at the time of the Survey, though the number of ploughs employed had actually decreased. This increase must have been owing to the erection of the castle, which provided security for trade and agriculture. Alvington was not the centre of a large soke in the Confessor’s time, so it is unlikely that there was any fortification there in Saxon days.[342]

Carlisle, Cumberland (Fig. 12).—This castle was built by William Rufus in 1092, when for the first time Cumberland was brought under Norman sway. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says, “he repaired the burh, and reared the castle,” a passage which is sufficient of itself to show that burh and castle were two quite different things. Carlisle of course was a Roman fortress, and needed only the repairing of its walls. The castle was a new thing, and was placed outside the city. Its plan, which is roughly a triangle, with the apex formed into a small court by a ditch which (formerly) separated it from the bailey, looks very suggestive of a previous motte and bailey, such as we might expect the Norman king to have thrown up. The keep is known to have been built by David, king of Scotland, in Stephen’s reign,[343] and it is possible that he may have removed the motte. The castle appears to have had a wooden pelum or palicium on its outer banks as late as 1319.[344] The whole area covers 4 acres.

[Pg 124]

Castle Acre, Norfolk (Fig. 12).—There can be no doubt that this castle existed in the 11th century, as William de Warenne mentions it in the charter of foundation of Lewes Priory, one of the most interesting and human of monastic charters.[345] The earthworks still remaining of this castle are perhaps the finest castle earthworks in England; the banks enclosing the bailey are vast. The large and high motte carries a wall of flint rubble, built outside and thus revetting the earthen bank which formed its first defence. In the small court thus enclosed (about 100 feet in diameter) the foundations of an oblong keep can be discerned. A very wide ditch surrounds the motte, and below it is a horse-shoe bailey, about 2 acres in extent, stretching down to the former swamps of the river Nar. On the east side of the motte is a small half-moon annexe, with its own ditch; this curious addition is to be found in several other motte castles,[346] and is believed to have been a work intended to defend the approach, of the nature of a barbican. On the west side of the motte is the village of Castle Acre, enclosed in an oblong earthwork with an area of 10 acres. This work now goes by the name of the Barbican, but probably this name has been extended to it from a barbican covering the castle entrance (of which entrance the ruins still remain). It is most likely that this enclosure was a burgus attached to the castle. Mr Harrod, who excavated the banks, found quantities of Roman pottery, which led him to think that the work was Roman; but as the pottery was all broken, it is more likely that the banks were thrown up on the site of some Roman villa.[347] This earthwork has a northern[Pg 125] entrance in masonry, evidently of 13th century date; and as the scanty masonry remaining of the castle is similar in character, it is probably all of the same date. The area covered by the motte and the two original baileys is 3½ acres; that of the whole series of earthworks, 15 acres.

Acre was only a small manor in Saxon times; its value at the time of the Survey had risen from 5l. to 9l.[348]

Chepstow (Estrighoel or Strigul), Monmouthshire.—Notwithstanding the fact that there is another castle of the name of Strigul about 9 miles from Chepstow (known also as Troggy Castle), it is clear that Chepstow is the castle meant by Domesday, as the entry speaks of ships going up the river, a thing impossible at Strigul.[349] The castle occupies a narrow ridge, well defended by the river on one side, and on the other by a valley which separates it from the town. There are four wards, and the last and smallest of all seemed to the writer, when visiting the castle, to mark the site of a lowered motte. This opinion, however, is not shared by two competent observers, Mr Harold Sands and Mr Duncan Montgomerie, who had much ampler opportunities for studying the remains. This ward is now a barbican, and the masonry upon it belongs clearly to the 13th century; it occupies the highest ground in the castle, and is separated from the other wards, and from the ridge beyond it, by two ditches cut across the headland. The adjoining court must have belonged to the earliest[Pg 126] part of the castle, as it contains a very remarkable early Norman building (splendidly restored in the 13th century) which is regarded by most authorities as the original hall of William FitzOsbern. It must, however, have combined both hall and keep, otherwise the castle was not provided with any citadel, if there was no motte.[350] What is now the second ward has a Norman postern in the south wall, and may have been the bailey to the keep. All the other masonry is of the late Early English or the Perpendicular period, and the entrance ward is probably an addition of the 13th century. The shape of all the baileys is roughly quadrangular, except that of the fourth, which would be semicircular but for the towers which make corners to it. The whole area of the castle is 1⅔ acres.

We are not told what the value of the manor was before William FitzOsbern built his castle there, but from the absence of this mention we may infer that the site was waste. It paid 40s. in his time from ships’ dues, 16l. in his son Earl Roger’s time, and at the date of the Survey it paid the king 12l.[351] Chepstow was not the centre of a large soke, and it appears to have owed all its importance to the creation of William FitzOsbern’s castle.

Chester.—The statement of Ordericus, that William I. founded this castle on his return from his third visit to York, is sufficiently clear.[352] The very valuable paper of Mr E. W. Cox on Chester Castle[353][Pg 127] answers most of the questions which pertain to our present inquiry. The original castle of Chester consisted of the motte, which still remains, though much built over, and the small ward on the edge of which it stands, a polygonal enclosure scarcely an acre in extent. On the motte the vaulted basement of a tower still remains, but the style is so obscured by whitewash and modern accretions that it is impossible to say whether the vaulting is not modern. The first buildings were certainly of wood, but Mr Cox regarded some of the existing masonry on the motte as belonging to the 12th century; and this would correspond with the entry in the Pipe Rolls of 102l. 7s. 0d. spent on the castle by Henry II. in 1159.[354] The tower, nicknamed Cæsar’s Tower, and frequently mistaken for the keep, is shown in Mr Cox’s paper to be only a mural tower of the 13th century, probably built when the first ward was surrounded with walls and towers in masonry.[355] The large outer bailey was first added in the reign of Henry III.[356] It is further proved by Mr Cox that Chester Castle stood outside the walls of the Roman city. The manor of Gloverstone lay between it and the city, and was not under the jurisdiction of the city until quite recent times.[357] This disposes of the ball set rolling by Brompton at the end of the 13th century, and sent on by most Chester topographers ever since, that Ethelfleda, when she restored the Roman walls of Chester,[Pg 128] enlarged their circuit so as to take in the castle. We have already referred to this in Chapter III.

Chester, as we have seen, was originally a royal castle. And though it was naturally committed to the keeping of the Norman earls of Chester, and under weak kings may have been regarded by the earls as their own property, no such claim was allowed under a strong ruler. After the insurrection of the younger Henry, Hugh, Earl of Chester, forfeited his lands; Henry II. restored them to him in 1177, but was careful to keep the castle in his own hands.[358]

The city of Chester, Domesday Book tells us, had greatly gone down in value when the earl received it, probably in 1070; twenty-five houses had been destroyed. But it had already recovered its prosperity at the date of the Survey; there were as many houses as before, and the ferm of the city was now let by the earl at a sum greatly exceeding the ferm paid in King Edward’s time.[359] This prosperity must have been due to the security provided for the trade of Chester by the Norman castle and Norman rule.

Clifford, Herefordshire (Fig. 13).—It is clearly stated by Domesday Book that William FitzOsbern built this castle on waste land.[360] At the date of the Survey it was held by Ralph de Todeni, who had sub-let it to the sheriff. In the many castles attributed to William FitzOsbern, who built them as the king’s vicegerent, we may see an indication that the building of castles, even on the marches of Wales, was not undertaken without royal license. In the reign of Henry I. Clifford Castle had already passed into the[Pg 129] hands of Richard Fitz Pons, the ancestor of the celebrated house of Clifford, and one of the barons of Bernard de Neufmarché, the Norman conqueror of Brecon.[361]

The castle has a large motte, roughly square in shape, which must be in part artificial.[362] Attached to it on the south-west is a curious triangular ward, included in the ditch which surrounds the motte. The masonry on the motte is entirely of the “Edwardian” style, when keepless castles were built; it consists of the remains of a hall, and a mural tower which is too small to be called a keep. There is also a small court, with a wall which stands on a low bank. Below the motte is an irregular bailey of about 2⅓ acres, with earthen banks which do not appear to have ever carried any masonry, though in the middle of the court there is a small mound which evidently covers the remains of buildings. The whole area of the castle, including the motte and the two baileys, is about 3½ acres.

The value of the manor had apparently risen from nothing to 8l. 5s. Clifford was not the centre of a large soke.

Clitheroe, Lancashire (Fig. 13).—There is no express mention of this castle in Domesday Book, but of two places in Yorkshire, Barnoldswick and Calton, it is said that they are in the castellate of Roger the Poitevin.[363] A castellate implies a castle, and as there is[Pg 130] no other castle in the Craven district (to which the words of the Survey relate) except Skipton, which did not form part of Roger’s property, there is no reason to doubt that this castle was Clitheroe, which for centuries was the centre of the Honour of that name. The whole land between the Ribble and the Mersey had been given by William I. to this Roger, the third son of his trusted supporter, Earl Roger of Shrewsbury. One can understand why William gave important frontier posts to the energetic and unscrupulous young men of the house of Montgomeri, one of whom was the adviser and architect of William Rufus, another a notable warrior in North Wales, another the conqueror of Pembrokeshire. As it appears from the Survey that Roger’s possessions stretched far beyond the Ribble into Yorkshire and Cumberland, it seems quite possible—though here we are in the region of conjecture—that just as his father and brothers had a free hand to conquer as they listed from the North and South Welsh, so Roger had a similar commission for the hilly districts still unconquered in the north-west of England. But fortune did not favour the Montgomeri family for long. They were exiled from England in 1102 for siding with Robert Curthose, and in the same year we find the castle of Clitheroe in the hands of Robert de Lacy, lord of the great Yorkshire fief of Pontefract.[364]

The castle of Clitheroe stands on a lofty motte of natural rock.[365] There are no earthworks on the summit,[Pg 131] but a stout wall of limestone rubble without buttresses encloses a small court, on whose south-west side stands the keep. It is just possible that the outer wall may be the original work of Roger, as limestone rubble would be easier to get than earth on this rocky hill. The keep is small, rudely built of rubble, and has neither fireplace nor garde-robe, nor the slightest ornamental detail—not even a string course. But in spite of the entire absence of ornament, a decorative effect has been sought and obtained by making the quoins, voussoirs, and lintels of a dressed yellow sandstone. The care with which this has been done is inconsistent with the haste with which Roger must inevitably have constructed his first fortification, if we suppose, as is probable, that he received the first grant of his northern lands on William’s return in 1070 from his third visit to the north, when he made that remarkable march through Lancashire to Chester which is described by Ordericus. It seems more likely that even if the outer wall or shell were the work of Roger, he had only wooden buildings inside its circuit. Dugdale attributes the building of the keep to the second Robert de Lacy, between 1187 and 1194, and it is probable that this date is correct.[366] The bailey of Clitheroe lay considerably below the keep, and is now overbuilt with a modern house, offices, and garden. It covers one acre. A Roman road up the valley of the Ribble passes near the foot of the rock.[367]

[Pg 132]

As the very name of Clitheroe is not mentioned in Domesday Book, it clearly was not an important centre in Saxon times. The value of Blackburn Hundred, in which Clitheroe is situated, had fallen between the Confessor’s time and the time when Roger received it. It is quite possible that he never lived at Clitheroe, as he sub-infeoffed the manor and Hundred of Blackburn to Roger de Busli and Albert Greslet before 1086.[368]

Colchester, Essex.—The remarkable keep of this castle has been the subject of antiquarian legend for many centuries, and Mr Clark has the merit of having proved its early Norman origin, by its plan and architecture. A charter of Henry I. is preserved in the cartulary of St John’s Abbey at Colchester, which grants to Eudes the Dapifer “the city of Colchester, and the tower and the castle, and all the fortifications of the castle, just as my father had them and my brother and myself.”[369] This proves that the keep and castle were in existence in the Conqueror’s time; the Norman character of the architecture proves that the keep was not in existence earlier. We see, then, that the reason there is no motte at Colchester is that there was a stone keep built when first the castle was founded. As far as we are aware, Colchester, the Tower of London, and the recently discovered keep of Pevensey are the only certain instances of stone keeps of the 11th century in England.

That one of the most important of the Conqueror’s castles, second only to the Tower of London, and actually exceeding it in the area it covers, should be found in Colchester, is not surprising, because the Eastern counties at the time of the Conquest were not[Pg 133] only the wealthiest part of the kingdom (as Domesday Book clearly shows[370]), but they also needed special protection from the attacks of Scandinavian enemies. Mr Round has conjectured that the castle was built at the time of the invasion of St Cnut, between 1080 and 1085.[371]

The castle is built of Roman stones used over again, with rows of tiles introduced between the courses with much decorative effect.[372] The original doorway was on the first floor, as in most Norman keeps; but at some after time, probably in the reign of Henry I.,[373] the present doorway was inserted; and most likely the handsome stairway which now leads up from this basement entrance was added, as it shows clear marks of insertion. Henry II. was working on the walls of the castle in 1182, and it may be strongly suspected that the repairs in ashlar, and the casing of the buttresses with ashlar, were his work.[374] One item in the accounts of Henry II. is £50 “for making the bailey round the castle.”[375] There were two baileys to the castle of Colchester—the inner one, which scarcely covered 2 acres, and the outer one, which contained about 11. The inner bailey was enclosed at first with an earthwork and stockade, the earthwork being thrown up over the remains of some[Pg 134] Roman walls, whose line it does not follow. Afterwards a stone wall was built on the earthwork, the foundations of which can still be traced in the west rampart.[376] The outer bailey, which lay to the north, extended on two sides to the Roman walls of the town; on the west side it had a rampart and stockade. If the £50 spent by Henry II. represents the cost of a stone wall round the inner bailey, then the palicium blown down by the wind in 1219 must have been the wooden stockade on the west side of the outer bailey.[377] The question is difficult to decide, but at any rate the entry proves that as late as Henry III.’s reign, some part of the outer defences of Colchester Castle was still of timber.

The position of Colchester Castle is exceptional in one respect, that the castle is almost in the middle of the town. But this very unusual position is explained by Mr Round’s statement that the land forming the castle baileys, as well as that afterwards given to the Grey Friars on the east, was crown demesne before the Conquest, and consequently had been cultivated land, so that we do not hear of any houses in Colchester being destroyed for the site of the castle.[378] But by keeping this land as the inalienable appendage of the royal castle William secured that communication between the castle and the outside country which was so essential to the invaders.

The value of the city of Colchester had risen enormously at the date of the Survey.[379]

[Pg 135]

Corfe, Dorset (Fig. 13).—Mr Eyton has shown that for the castellum Warham of Domesday Book we ought to read Corfe, because the castle was built in the manor of Kingston, four miles from Wareham.[380] And this is made clear by the Testa de Nevill, which says that the church of Gillingham was given to the nunnery of Shaftesbury in exchange for the land on which the castle of Corfe is placed.[381] Because King Edward the Martyr was murdered at Corfe, at some place where his stepmother Elfrida was residing, it has been inferred that there was a Saxon castle at Corfe; and because there is a building with some herring-bone work among the present ruins, it has been assumed that this building is the remains of that castle or palace. But the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the only contemporary authority for the event, says nothing of any castle at Corfe, but simply tells us that Edward was slain at Corfe Geat, a name which evidently alludes to a gap or passage through the chalk hills, such as there is at Corfe.[382] Nor is there any mention of Corfe as a fortress in Anglo-Saxon times; it is not named in the Burghal Hidage, and we do not hear of any sieges of it by the Danes. Nor is it likely that the Saxons would have had a fortress at Corfe, when they had a fortified town so near as Wareham.[383][Pg 136] Kingston, the manor in which Corfe is situated, was not an important place, as it had no dependent soke. The language of Domesday absolutely upsets the idea of any Saxon castle or palace at Corfe, as it tells us that William obtained the land for his castle from the nuns of Shaftesbury, and we may be quite sure they had no castle there.[384]

Corfe Castle stands on a natural hill, which has been so scarped artificially that the highest part now forms a large motte. Three wards exist—the eastern or motte ward, the western, and the southern. The two former probably formed the original castle. On the motte (which possibly is not artificial, but formed by scarping) stands the lofty keep, of splendid workmanship, probably of the time of Henry I. In the ward pertaining to it are buildings of the time of John and Henry III.[385] The western ward has towers of the 13th century, but it also contains the interesting remains of an early Norman building, probably a hall or chapel, built largely of herring-bone work; this is the building which has been so positively asserted to be a Saxon palace. But herring-bone masonry, which used to be thought an infallible sign of Saxon work, is now found to be more often Norman.[386] The building is certainly[Pg 137] an ancient one, and may possibly have been contemporary with the first Norman castle; its details are unmistakably Norman. But very likely it was the only Norman masonry of the 11th century at Corfe Castle.[387] It is clear that the stone wall which at present surrounds the western bailey did not exist when the hall (or chapel) was built, as it blocks up its southern windows. Probably there was a palisade at first on the edge of the scarp. Palisades still formed part of the defences of the castle in the time of Henry III., when 62l. was paid “for making two good walls in place of the palisades at Corfe between the old bailey of the said castle and the middle bailey towards the west, and between the keep of the said castle and the outer bailey towards the south.”[388] This shows that the present wing-walls down from the motte were previously represented by stockades. The ditch between the keep and the southern bailey has been attributed to King John, on the strength of an entry in the Close Rolls which orders fifteen miners and stone-masons to work on the banks of the ditch in 1214.[389] But we may be quite certain that this ditch below the motte belonged to the original plan of the castle; John’s work would be either to line it with masonry, or to enlarge it. It is not without significance for the early history of the castle that Durandus the carpenter held the manor of Mouldham near Corfe, by the service of finding a carpenter to work at the keep whenever required.[390]

The area of Corfe Castle, if we include the large[Pg 138] southern bailey, is 3¾ acres; without it, 1½ acres. This bailey was certainly in existence in the reign of Henry III. (as the extract from the Close Rolls proves) before the towers of superb masonry were added to it by Edward I.

The value of Kingston Manor had considerably increased at the date of the Survey. After the Count of Mortain forfeited his lands (in 1105), the castle of Corfe was kept in the hands of the crown, and this increases the probability that the keep was built by Henry I.

About 400 yards S.W. of Corfe Castle is an earthwork which might be called a “Ring and Bailey.” Instead of the usual motte there is a circular enclosure, defended by a bank and ditch of about the same height as those of its bailey, but having in addition an interior platform or berm. This work is probably the remains of a camp thrown up by Stephen during his unsuccessful siege of Corfe Castle in 1139.

Dover, Kent (Fig. 14).—The Norman historian, William of Poitiers, tells us that the castrum of Dover was built by Harold at his own expense.[391] This comes from the celebrated story of the oath of Harold to William, a story of which Mr Freeman says that there is no portion of our history more entangled in the mazes of contradictory and often impossible statements.[392] But let us assume the statement about the castrum to be true; the question then to be answered is this: of what nature was that castrum? We never are told by English chroniclers that Harold built any castles, though we do hear of his fortifying towns. The present[Pg 139] writer would answer this question, tentatively indeed, and under correction, by the theory that the castrum constructed or repaired by Harold was the present outer rampart of Dover Castle, which encloses an area of about 34 acres, and may have enclosed more, if it was formerly complete on the side towards the sea.[393] The evidence in support of this theory is as follows:—

1. There certainly was a burh on the top of the cliff at Dover in Saxon times, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us that in 1048 Eustace of Boulogne, after coming to Dover, and slaying householders there, went up to the burh, and slew people both within and without, but was repulsed by the burh-men.[394] There was then a burh, and valiant burh-men on the cliff at Dover in Edward the Confessor’s reign. But the whole analogy of the word burh makes it certain that by the time of Edward it meant a fortified town.[395]

2. That the burh at Dover was of the nature of a town, with houses in it, is confirmed by the poem of Guy of Amiens, who says that when King William entered the castrum, he ordered the English to evacuate their houses.[396] William of Poitiers also states that there was an[Pg 140] innumerable multitude of people in the castle,[397] though he may refer to a multitude gathered there for safety.

3. Though the whole of the outer enceinte is generally credited to Hubert de Burgh in Henry III.’s reign, the truth probably is that he built the first stone walls and towers on the outer rampart; but the existence of this earthen rampart shows that there was a wooden wall upon it previously. It is not improbable that it was for the repair of this wooden wall that so much timber was sent to Dover in the reigns of Richard I. and John.[398] Dering, who was lieutenant of the castle in 1629, records the tradition that the tower in the outer enceinte, called Canons’ Gate, dates from Saxon times (of course this could only be true of a wooden predecessor of the stone tower), and that Godwin’s Tower, on[Pg 141] the east side of the outer vallum, existed as a postern before the Conquest.[399] Nearly all the towers on this wall were supported by certain manors held on the tenure of castle-guard, and eight of them still retain the names of eight knights to whom William is said to have given lands on this tenure. Mr Round has shown that the Warda Constabularii of Dover Castle can be traced back to the Conquest, and that it is a mere legend that it was given as a fief to a Fienes. He remarks that the nine wards of the castle named in the Red Book of the Exchequer are all reproduced in the names still attached to the towers. “This coincidence of testimony leads us to believe that the names must have been attached at a very early period; and looking at the history of the families named, it cannot have been later than that of Henry II.”[400] May it not have been even earlier? Eight of these names are attached to towers on the outer circuit,[401] and five of them are found as landholders in Kent in Domesday Book.

4. William of Poitiers further tells us that when the duke had taken the castle, he remained there eight days, to add the fortifications which were wanting.[402] What was wanting to a Norman eye in Anglo-Saxon fortifications, as far as we know them, was a citadel; and without laying too much stress on the chronicler’s eight days, we may assume that the short time spent by William at Dover was just enough for the construction of a motte and bailey, inside the castrum of Harold, but crowned by wooden buildings only.

[Pg 142]

Taking these things together, we venture to assume that the inner court in which the keep of Dover stands, represents an original motte, or at any rate an original citadel, added to the castle by William I. Whether what now remains of this motte is in part artificial, we do not pretend to say; it may be that it was formed simply by digging a deep ditch round the highest knoll of ground within the ancient ramparts.[403] Anyhow, it is still in effect a motte, and a large one, containing not only the magnificent keep, but a small ward as well. That this keep was the work of Henry II. there can be no manner of doubt; the Pipe Rolls show that he spent more than £2000 on the turris or keep of Dover Castle between the years 1181 and 1187, and Benedict of Peterborough mentions the building of the keep at this date.[404] The curtain around the motte may also be reckoned to be his work originally, as the cingulum is spoken of along with the turris in the accounts. Modern alterations have left little of Norman character in this curtain which shows at a glance, and the gateways (one of which remains) belong to a later period.

Attached to this keep ward is another ward, whose rampart is generally attributed to Saxon times. We are not in a position positively to deny that the Saxons had an inner earthwork on the highest part of the ground within their burh. But considering that small citadels are unusual in Saxon earthworks: considering also that this bailey is attached to the motte in the[Pg 143] usual manner of a Norman bailey, and that its size corresponds to the usual size of an original Norman bailey in an important place, it does not seem unreasonable to suppose that this was the original bailey attached to the Conqueror’s motte. Its shape is singular, part of it being nearly square, while at the S.E. corner a large oval loop is thrown out, so as to enclose the Roman Pharos and the Saxon church. The outline of the bailey certainly suggests that it was built after the Pharos and the church, and was built with reference primarily to the keep or motte ward. The nature of the ground, and the necessity of enclosing the church and the Roman tower within the immediate bailey of the castle, which would otherwise have been commanded by them, were the other factors which decided the unusual shape of the bailey.

On this earthwork the foundations of a rubble wall were formerly to be traced,[405] probably built by Henry II., as considerable sums for “the wall of the castle” are mentioned in his accounts.[406] Whether there are still any remains of this curtain we are unable to say, but so many of the features of the middle ward have been swept away by modern alterations, and the difficulty of examining what remains, owing to military restrictions, is so great, that little can be said about it, and we find that most authorities observe a judicious silence on the subject. But as the carriage of stone is expressly mentioned in Henry II.’s accounts, we may with great probability assign to him the transformation of the original wooden castle of William into a castle of stone; while the transformation of the Anglo-Saxon borough[Pg 144] into a stone enceinte was the work of Henry III.’s reign.

We think the evidence suggests that this burh or outer rampart was in existence when the Conqueror came to Dover, crowned in all probability with a stockade and towers of wood. It may possibly have been a British or even a Roman earthwork originally (though its outline does not suggest Roman work); or it may have been built by Harold as a city of refuge for the inhabitants of the port.[407] The Saxon church which it encloses, and which has long been attributed to the earliest days of Saxon Christianity, is now pronounced by the best authorities to be comparatively late in the style.[408]

The size of the inner castle of Dover appears to be about 6 acres, reckoning the keep ward at 2, and the bailey at about 4.

The value of the town of Dover had trebled at the time of the Survey, in spite of the burning of the town at William’s first advent.[409]

Dudley, Staffordshire (Fig. 15).—William Fitz Ansculf held Dudley at the time of the Survey, “and there is his castle.”[410] Mr Clark appears to accept the dubious tradition of a Saxon Dodda, who first built this castle in the 8th century, since he speaks of Dudley as “a great English residence.”[411] This tradition, however, is not supported by Domesday Book, which shows[Pg 145] Dudley to have been only a small and unimportant manor before the Conquest. The strong position of the hill was no doubt the reason why the Norman placed his castle there. There is no Norman masonry in the present ruins. The earliest work is that of the keep on the motte, a rectangular tower with round corner turrets, attributed by Mr W. St John Hope to about 1320. The first castle was demolished by Henry II. in 1175,[412] and an attempt to restore it in 1218 was stringently countermanded.[413] The case of Dudley is one of those which proves that Henry II. destroyed some lawful castles in 1175 as well as the unlawful ones. In 1264 a license to restore it was granted to Roger de Somery, in consideration of his devotion to the king’s cause in the Barons’ War.[414] The whole area of the castle, including the motte, but not including the works at the base of the hill on which it stands, is 1¾ acres. The bailey is an irregular oval, following the hill top. Dudley is an instance in which the value of the manor has gone down instead of up since the erection of the castle; this may perhaps be laid to the account of the devastation caused through the Staffordshire insurrection of 1069.

Dunster, Somerset (Fig. 15).—Called Torre in Domesday Book. “There William de Moion has his castle.”[415] The motte here appears to be a natural rock or tor, whose summit has been levelled and its sides[Pg 146] scarped by art. About 80 feet below the top is a (roughly) half-moon bailey, itself a shelf on the side of the hill; there is another and much smaller shelf at the opposite end.[416] Some foundations found in the S.W. corner of the upper ward appear to indicate a former stone keep.[417] Dunster was only a small manor of half a hide before the Conquest, but afterwards its value tripled. There was a borough as well as a castle.[418] The castle became the caput baroniæ of the De Moions, to whom the Conqueror gave fifty-six manors in different parts of the county. There is not the slightest reason to suppose that the site was fortified before the Conquest. Mr Clark remarks that “it is remarkable that no mouldings or fragments of Norman ornament have been dug up in or about the site, although there is original Norman work in the parish church.” The simple explanation, probably, is that the first castle of De Moion was of wood, although on a site where it would have been possible to build in stone from the first, as it does not appear that any part of the motte is artificial. The area of the bailey is 1¾ acres. The value of Dunster had risen at the date of Domesday.[419]

Durham (Fig. 16).—The castle here was first built by the Conqueror, on his return from his expedition against Scotland in 1072.[420] It was intended as a strong residence for the bishop, through whom William[Pg 147] hoped to govern this turbulent part of the country. He placed it on the neck of the lofty peninsula on which the cathedral stands. The motte of the Conqueror still remains, and so does the chapel[421] which he built in the bailey; probably the present court of the castle, though crowded now with buildings, represents the outline of the original bailey.[422] The present shell keep on the motte was built by Bishop Hatfield in Edward III.’s reign,[423] but has been extensively modernised. There can be little doubt that up to 1345 there were only wooden buildings on the motte, as the writer was informed by Canon Greenwell that no remains of older stone-work than the 14th century had been found there. It is so seldom that we get any contemporary description of a castle of this kind, that it seems worth while to translate the bombastic verse in which Laurence, Prior of Durham, described that of Durham in Stephen’s reign:[424]

“Not far hence [from the north road into the city] a tumulus of rising earth explains the flatness of the excavated summit, explains the narrow field on the flattened vertex, which the apex of the castle occupies with very pleasing art. On this open space the castle is seated like a queen; from its threatening height, it holds all that it sees as its own. From its gate, the stubborn wall rises with the rising mound,[425] and rising still further, makes towards the comfort (amæna) of the keep. But the keep, compacted together, rises again[Pg 148] into thin air, strong within and without, well fitted for its work, for within the ground rises higher by three cubits than without—ground made sound by solid earth. Above this, a stalwart house[426] springs yet higher than the [shell] keep, glittering with splendid beauty in every part; four posts are plain, on which it rests, one post at each strong corner.[427] Each face is girded by a beautiful gallery, which is fixed into the warlike wall.[428] A bridge, rising from the chapel [in the bailey] gives a ready ascent to the ramparts, easy to climb; starting from them, a broad way makes the round of the top of the wall, and this is the usual way to the top of the citadel.... The bridge is divided into easy steps, no headlong drop, but an easy slope from the top to the bottom. Near the [head of the] bridge, a wall descends from the citadel, turning its face westward towards the river.[429] From the river’s lofty bank it turns away in a broad curve to meet the field [i.e., Palace Green]. It is no bare plot empty of buildings that this high wall surrounds with its sweep, but one containing goodly habitations.[430] There you will find two vast palaces built with porches, the skill of whose builders the building[Pg 149] well reveals. There, too, the chapel stands out beautifully raised on six pillars, not over vast, but fair enough to view. Here chambers are joined to chambers, house to house, each suited to the purpose that it serves.... There is a building in the middle of the castle which has a deep well of abundant water.... The frowning gate faces the rainy south, a gate that is strong, high-reaching, easily held by the hand of a weakling or a woman. The bridge is let down for egress,[431] and thus the way goes across the broad moat. It goes to the plain which is protected on all sides by a wall, where the youth often held their joyous games. Thus the castellan, and the castle artfully placed on the high ridge, defend the northern side of the cathedral. And from this castle a strong wall goes down southwards, continued to the end of the church.”[432]

The original bailey of this castle covers 1 acre.

Ely, Cambridgeshire (Fig. 17).—This castle was built by William I. in 1070, when he was repressing the last struggle of the English under the heroic Hereward. The monks of Ely felt it a sore grievance that he placed the castle within their own bounds.[433] Both this castle and the one built by William at Aldreth, to defend the passage into the Isle of Ely, had a continuous existence, as they were both refortified by Nigel, Bishop of Ely in Stephen’s reign, and Ely Castle was besieged and taken by Stephen.[434] The earthworks of this castle still exist, to the south of the Minster. There is a fine motte with[Pg 150] an oval bailey, of which the banks and ditches are traceable in parts. The area of the bailey is 2½ acres. Of Aldreth or Aldrey there appear to be no remains.

The value of the manor of Ely was £33 in the Confessor’s reign; it fell to £20 after the devastations of the Conquest, but had risen again to £30 at the time of the Survey.[435]

Ewias, Herefordshire (Fig. 17).—The brief notice of this castle in Domesday Book throws some light on the general theory of castle-building in England.[436] William FitzOsbern, as the king’s vicegerent, rebuilt this march castle, and committed it to the keeping of another Norman noble, and the king confirmed the arrangement. But in theory the castle would always be the king’s. This is the only case in the Survey where we hear of a castle being rebuilt by the Normans. We naturally look to one of King Edward’s Norman favourites as the first founder, for they alone are said by history to have built castles on the Welsh marches before the Conquest. Dr Round conjectures that Ewias was the “Pentecost’s castle” spoken of in the (Peterborough) Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 1052.[437] No masonry is now to be seen on the motte at Ewias, but Mr Clark states that the outline of a circular or polygonal shell keep is shown by[Pg 151] a trench out of which the foundations have been removed. The bailey is roughly of half-moon shape and the mound oval. The whole area of the castle, including the motte and banks, is 2-⅓ acres.

Exeter.—This castle is not mentioned in Domesday Book, but Ordericus tells us that William chose a site for the castle within the walls, and left Baldwin de Molis, son of Count Gilbert, and other distinguished knights, to finish the work, and remain as a garrison.[438] In spite of this clear indication that the castle was a new thing, it has been obstinately held that it only occupied the site of some former castle, Roman or Saxon.[439] Exeter, of course, was a Roman castrum, and its walls had been restored by Athelstan. In this case William placed his castle inside instead of outside the city walls, because, owing to the natural situation of Exeter, he found in the north-west corner a site which commanded the whole city. Although Domesday Book is silent about the castle, it tells us that forty-eight houses in Exeter had been destroyed since William came to England,[440] and Freeman remarks that “we may assume that these houses were destroyed to make room for the castle, though it is not expressly said that they were.”[441]

Exeter Castle stands on a natural knoll, occupying the north-west corner of the city, which has been[Pg 152] converted into a sort of square motte by digging a great ditch round the two sides of its base towards the town.[442] That this ditch is no pre-Roman work is shown by the fact that it stops short at the Roman wall, and begins again on the outside of it, where, however, the greater part has been levelled to form the promenade of the Northernhay or north rampart of the city. On top of this hill, banks 30 feet high were thrown up, which still remain, and give to the courtyard which they enclose the appearance of a pit.[443] On top of these banks there are now stone walls; but these were certainly no part of the work of Baldwin de Molis, who must have placed a wooden stockade on the banks which he constructed. One piece of stonework he probably did set up, the gatehouse, which by its triangle-headed windows and its long-and-short work is almost certainly of the 11th century. It has frequently been called Saxon, but more careful critics now regard it as “work that must have been done, if not by Norman hands, at Norman bidding and on Norman design.”[444] It was no uncommon thing at this early period to have gatehouses of stone to walls of earth and wood. Of these gatehouses Exeter is the most perfect and the most clearly stamped with antiquity.

[Pg 153]

One thing we look for in vain at Exeter, and that is a citadel. There is no keep, and there is no record that there ever was one, though a chapel, hall, and other houses are mentioned in ancient accounts. Mr Clark says that probably the Normans regarded the whole court as a shell keep. It certainly was, in effect, a motte; but it was altogether exceptional among Norman castles of importance if it had no bailey. And in fact a bailey is mentioned in the Pipe Roll of 1 Richard I., where there is an entry for the cost of making a gaol in the bailey of the castle.[445] Now Norden, who published a plan of Exeter in 1619, says that the prison which formerly existed at the bottom of Castle Lane (on the south or city front of the present castle) was “built upon Castle grounde,” and he states that the buildings and gardens which have been made on this ground are intrusions on the king’s rights.[446] The remarkably full account of the siege of Exeter in the Gesta Stephani speaks of an outer promurale which was taken by Stephen, as well as the inner bridge leading from the town to the castle, before the attack on the castle itself. Unfortunately the word promurale has the same uncertainty about it that attaches to so many mediæval terms, and the description given of it would apply either to the banks of a bailey, or to the heriçon on the counterscarp of the ditch of the motte. We must, therefore, leave it to the reader’s judgment whether the evidence given above is sufficient to establish the former existence of a bailey at Exeter, and to place Exeter among the castles of the motte-and-bailey type.

The description of the castle given by the writer of[Pg 154] the Gesta has many points of interest.[447] He describes the castle as standing on a very high mound (editissimo aggere) hedged in by an insurmountable wall, which was defended by “Cæsarian” towers built with the very hardest mortar. This must refer to Roman towers which may have existed on the Roman part of the wall. Whether there was a stone wall on the other two sides, facing the city, may be doubted, as the expenditure entered to Henry II. in the Pipe Rolls suggests that he was the first to put stone walls on the banks, and the two ancient towers which still exist appear to be of his time.[448] The chronicler goes on to say that after Stephen had taken the promurale and broken down the bridge, there were several days and nights of fighting before he could win the castle, which was eventually forced to surrender by the drying-up of the wells. The mining operations which he describes were no doubt undertaken with the view of shaking down the Roman wall at the angle where it joins the artificial bank of Baldwin de Molis. Possibly the chamber in the rock with the mysterious passages leading from it, which is still to be[Pg 155] seen in the garden of Miss Owthwaite, at the point where the ditch ends, is the work of Stephen’s miners.[449] The description of his soldiers scrambling up the agger on their hands and knees (quadrupede incessu) will be well understood by those who have seen the castle bank as it still rises from that ditch.

The present ward of Exeter Castle, which is rudely square in plan, covers an area of 2 acres, which is as large as the whole area of many of the smaller Norman castles. The castle was allowed to fall into decay as early as 1549,[450] and since then it has been devastated by the building of a Sessions House and a gaol. No plan has been preserved of the former buildings in this court, though the site of the chapel is known.

There is no statement in Domesday Book as to the value of Exeter.

Eye, Suffolk (Fig. 17).—This castle was built by William Malet, one of the companions of the Conqueror, who is described as having been half Norman and half English.[451] Eye, as its name implies, seems to have been an island in a marsh in Norman times, and therefore a naturally defensible situation. The references in the Pipe Rolls to the palicium and the bretasches of Eye Castle show that the outer defences of the castle at any rate were of wood in the days of Henry II.[452] That[Pg 156] there were works in masonry at some subsequent period is shown by a solitary vestige of a wing wall of flints which runs up the motte. A modern tower now occupies the summit. The bailey of the castle, the outline of which can still be traced, though the area is covered with buildings and gardens, was oval in shape, and covered 2 acres.

The value of the manor of Eye had gone up since the Conquest from £15 to £21. This must have been due to the castle and to the market which Robert Malet or his son William established close to the castle; for the stock on the manor and the number of ploughs had actually decreased.[453] A proof that there is no deliberate register of castles in Domesday Book is furnished by the very careful inventory of the manor of Eye, where there is no mention of a castle, though it is noticed that there are now a park and a market; and it is only in the account of the lands of the bishop of Thetford, in mentioning the injury which William Malet’s market at Eye had done to the bishop’s market at Hoxne, that the castle of Eye is named.

Gloucester.—“There were sixteen houses where the castle sits, but now they are gone, and fourteen have been destroyed in the burgus of the city,” says Domesday Book.[454] Gloucester was undoubtedly a Roman chester, and Roman pavements have been found there.[455] The description in the Survey would lead us to think that the castle was outside the ancient walls,[456] though[Pg 157] Speed’s map places it on the line of the wall of his time, which may have been a mediæval extension. The castle of Gloucester is now entirely destroyed, but there is sufficient evidence to show that it was of the usual Norman type. There was a motte, which was standing in 1819, and which was then called the Barbican Hill;[457] it appears to have been utilised as part of the works of the barbican. This motte must originally have supported a wooden keep, and Henry I. must have been the builder of the stone keep which Leland saw “in the middle of the area;”[458] for in 1100 Henry gave lands to Gloucester Abbey “in exchange for the site where now the keep of Gloucester stands.”[459] The bailey had previously been enlarged by William Rufus.[460] Possibly the framea turris or framework tower spoken of in Henry II.’s reign may refer to the wooden keep which had been left standing on the motte.[461] The walls of Gloucester Castle were frequently repaired by Henry II.,[462] but the word murus by no means implies always a stone wall, and it is certain that the castle was at that time surrounded by a wooden stockade, as a writ of a much later period (1225) says that the stockade which is around our castle of Gloucester has been blown down[Pg 158] and broken by the wind, and must be repaired.[463] Wooden bretasches on the walls are spoken of in the Pipe Rolls of 1193, and even as late as 1222.[464]

The value of the city of Gloucester had apparently risen at the time of the Survey, though the entry being largely in kind, T. R. E., it is not easy to calculate.

Hastings, Sussex (Fig. 18).—In this case we have positive contemporary evidence that the earthen mound of the castle was thrown up by the Normans at the time of the Conquest, for there is a picture in the Bayeux Tapestry which shows them doing it. A number of men with spades are at work raising a circular mound, on the top of which, with the usual all-inclusiveness of mediæval picturing, a stockade is already erected. A man with a pick seems to be working at the ditch. The inscription attached is: “He commands that a castle be dug at Hestengaceastra.”[465] There is no need to comment on the significance of this drawing and its inscription for the history of early Norman castles; what is extraordinary is that it should have been entirely overlooked for so long. In no case is our information more complete than about Hastings. Not only does Domesday Book mention the castellaria of Hastings,[466] but the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle also tells us that William built a castle there, while the chronicle of Battle Abbey makes the evidence complete by telling us that “having taken possession of a suitable site, he built a wooden castle there.”[467] This of course means the[Pg 159] stockade on top of the motte, with the wooden tower or towers which would certainly be added to it. Wace states that this wooden castle was brought over in pieces in the ships of the Count of Eu.[468]

The masonry now existing at the castle is probably none of it older than the reign of Henry II. at the earliest, and most of it is certainly much later.[469] The Pipe Rolls show that Henry II. spent £235 on the castle of Hastings between the years 1160 and 1181, and it is indicated that some of this money was for stone, and some was for a keep (turrim).[470] There is no tower large enough for a keep at Hastings now, nor have any stone foundations been found on the motte, and Mr Harold Sands, who has paid particular attention to this castle, concludes that Henry II.’s keep has been carried away by the sea, which has probably torn away at least 2 acres from the area of the castle.[471] The beautiful[Pg 160] fragment of the Chapel of St Mary is probably of Henry II.’s reign; the walls and towers on the east side of the castle appear to be of the 13th century. The ditch does not run round the motte, but is cut through the peninsular rock on which the castle stands, the motte and its ward being thus isolated. The form of this bailey is now triangular, but it may have been square originally. Beyond the ditch is another bailey, defended by earthen banks and by a second ditch cut through the peninsula.[472] No exact estimate can be given of the original area of the castle, as so much of the cliff has been carried away by the sea.

Hastings itself had been a fortified town before the Norman Conquest, and is one of those mentioned in the Burghal Hidage. The name Hæstingaceaster, given to it in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (1050), is a proof that the Saxons used the name chester for constructions of their own, as no Roman remains have been found at Hastings. But the Norman castle is outside the town, on a cliff which overlooks it. As in the case of the other ports of Sussex, the castle was committed to an important noble, in this case the Count of Eu.

The manor of Bexley, in which Hastings Castle stood, had been laid waste at the Conquest; at the date of the Survey it was again rising in value, though it had not reached the figure of King Edward’s days.[473]

[Pg 161]

Hereford.—There can be little doubt that the castle of Hereford was built by the Norman Ralph, Earl of Hereford, Edward the Confessor’s nephew, about the year 1048.[474] It was burnt by the Welsh in 1055, after which Harold fortified the town with a dyke and ditch; but as Mr Freeman remarks, it is not said that he restored the castle.[475] The motte of Earl Ralph is now completely levelled, but it is mentioned several times in documents of the 12th century,[476] and is described in a survey of 1652, from which it appears that it had a stone keep tower, as well as a stone breastwork enclosing a small ward.[477] It stood outside the N.W. corner of the bailey, surrounded by its own ditch; the site is still called Castle Hill. If the castle was not restored before the Norman Conquest it was certainly restored afterwards, as in 1067 we find the “men of the castle” fighting with Edric Child and the Welsh. The castle appears to have had stone walls by the time of Henry II., as the mention of a kiln for their repair proves.[478] But these walls had wooden towers.[479] The timber ordered in 1213 “ad hordiandum castellum nostrum de Hereford”[480][Pg 162] refers to the wooden alures or machicolations which were placed on the tops of walls for the purpose of defending the bases.

Though Hereford was a private castle in the Confessor’s reign, it was claimed for the crown by Archbishop Hubert, the Justiciary, in 1197, and continued to be a royal castle throughout the 13th century.[481]

The bailey of Hereford Castle still exists, with its fine banks; it is kite-shaped and encloses 5½ acres. The castle stood within the city walls, in the south-east angle.

The value of Hereford appears to have greatly increased at the date of the Survey.[482]

Huntingdon (Fig. 18).—“There were twenty houses on the site of the castle, which are now gone.”[483] Ordericus tells us that the castle of Huntingdon was built by William on his return from his second visit to York in 1068.[484] Huntingdon had been a walled town in Anglo-Saxon times, and was very likely first fortified by the Danes, but was repaired by Edward the Elder. As in the case of so many other towns, the houses outside the walls had to pay geld along with those of the city, and it was some of the former which were displaced by the new Norman castle. Huntingdon was part of the patrimony of Earl Waltheof, and came to the Norman, Simon de Senlis, through his marriage with Waltheof’s daughter and heiress. The line of Senlis ended in[Pg 163] another heiress, who married David, afterwards the famous king of Scotland; David thus became Earl of Huntingdon. In the insurrection of the younger Henry in 1174, William the Lion, grandson of David, took sides with the young king, and consequently his castle was besieged and taken by the forces of Henry II.,[485] and the king ordered it to be destroyed. The Pipe Rolls show that this order was carried out, as they contain a bill for “hooks for pulling down the stockade of Huntingdon Castle,” and “for the work of the new castle at Huntingdon, and for hiring carpenters, and crooks, and axes.”[486] We learn from these entries that the original castle of the Conquest had just been replaced by a new one, very likely a new fortification of the old mounds by William, in anticipation of the insurrection. We also learn that the new castle was a wooden one; for a castle which has to be pulled down by carpenters with hooks and axes is certainly not of stone. It does not appear that the castle was ever restored, though “the chapel of the castle” is spoken of as late as the reign of Henry III.[487]

The motte of Huntingdon still exists, and has not the slightest sign of masonry. The bailey is roughly square, with the usual rounded corners; the motte was inside this enclosure, but had its own ditch. The whole area was 2½ acres, but another bailey was subsequently added.

[Pg 164]

The value of Huntingdon appears to have been stationary at the time of the Survey, the loss of the twenty houses causing a diminution of revenue which must have been made up from the new feudal dues of the castle.

Launceston, or Dunheved,[488] Cornwall (Fig. 19).—There, says Domesday Book, is the castle of the Earl of Mortain.[489] In another place it tells us that the earl gave two manors to the bishop of Exeter “for the exchange of the castle of Cornwall,” another name for Dunheved Castle. We have already had occasion to note that the “exchange of the castle,” in Domesday language, is an abbreviation for the exchange of the site of the castle. The fact that the land was obtained from the church is a proof that the castle was new, for it was not the custom of Saxon prelates thus to fortify themselves. The motte of Launceston is a knoll of natural rock, which has been scarped and heightened by art. This motte now carries a circular keep, which cannot be earlier than the 13th century.[490] There is no early Norman work whatever about the masonry of the castle, and the remarkably elaborate fortifications on the motte belong to a much later period.[491] The motte rises in one corner of a roughly rectangular bailey, which covers 3 acres. It stands outside the town walls, which still exist, and join those of the castle, as at Totnes. Launceston was only a small manor of ten ploughs in the time of the Confessor. In spite of the building of[Pg 165] the castle, the value of the manor had greatly gone down in William’s time.[492] The ten ploughs had been reduced to five.

Lewes, Sussex (Fig. 19).—The castle of Lewes is not mentioned in its proper place in Sussex by Domesday Book, and this is another proof that the Survey contains no inventory of castles; for that the castle was existing at that date is rendered certain by the numerous allusions in the Norfolk portion to “the exchange of the castle of Lewes.”[493] It is clear that at some period, possibly during the revolt of Robert Curthose in 1079, William I. gave large estates in Norfolk to his trusty servant, William de Warenne, in exchange for the important castle of Lewes, which he may have preferred to keep in his own hands at that critical period. This bargain cannot have held long, at least as regards the castle, which continued to belong to the Warenne family for many generations. We cannot even guess now how the matter was settled, but the lands in Norfolk certainly remained in the hands of the Warennes.

Lewes is one of the very few castles in England which have two mottes.[494] They were placed at each end of an oval bailey, each surrounded by its own ditch, and each projecting about three-fourths beyond the line of the bailey. On the northern motte only the foundations[Pg 166] of a wall round the top remain; on the other, part of the wall which enclosed a small ward, and two mural towers. These towers have signs of the early Perpendicular period, and are very likely of the reign of Edward III., when the castle passed into the hands of the Fitz Alans. The bailey, which enclosed an area of about 3 acres, is now covered with houses and gardens, but parts of the curtain wall on the S.E. and E. stand on banks, bearing witness to the original wooden fortifications. The great interest of this bailey is its ancient Norman gateway. The entrance was regarded by mediæval architects as the weakest part of the fortress, and we frequently find that it was the first part to receive stone defences.[495] It is not surprising that at such an important place as Lewes, which was then a port leading to Normandy, and at the castle of so powerful a noble, we should find an early case of stone architecture supplementing the wooden defences. But the two artificial mottes have no masonry that can be called early Norman.

Lewes is one of the boroughs mentioned in the Burghal Hidage, and was a burgus at the time of the Survey.[496] The value of the town had increased by £1, 18s. from what it had been in King Edward’s time.

Lincoln (Fig. 20).—Domesday Book tells us that 166 houses were destroyed to furnish the site of the castle.[497] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that William built a castle here on his return from his first visit to[Pg 167] York in 1068, and Ordericus makes the same statement.[498] Lincoln, like Exeter, was a Roman castrum, and the Norman castle in both cases was placed in one corner of the castrum; but the old Roman wall of Lincoln, which stands on the natural ground, was not considered to be a sufficient defence on the two exterior sides, probably on account of its ruinous condition. It was therefore buried in a very high and steep bank, which was carried all round the new castle.[499] This circumstance seems to point to the haste with which the castle was built, Lincoln being then for the first time subdued. The fact that it was inside the probably closely packed Roman walls explains why so many houses were destroyed for the castle.[500] Lincoln, like Lewes, has two mottes: both are of about the same height, but the one in the middle of the southern line of defence is the larger and more important; it was originally surrounded with its own ditch. It is now crowned with a polygonal shell wall, which may have been built by the mother of Ralph Gernon, Earl of Chester, in the reign of Henry I.[501] The tower on the other motte, at the south-east corner,[Pg 168] has been largely rebuilt in the 14th century and added to in modern times, but its lower storey still retains work of Norman character. There is good reason to suppose that this bailey was first walled with stone in Richard I.’s reign, as there is an entry in the Pipe Rolls of 1193-1194 “for the cost of fortifying the bailey, £82, 16s. 4d.”[502] The present wall contains a good deal of herring-bone work, and this circumstance led Mr Clark, who was looking for something which he could put down to William I.’s time, to believe that the walls were of that date. But the herring-bone work is all in patches, as though for repairs, and herring-bone work was used for repairs at all epochs of mediæval building. The two gateways (that is the Norman portions of them) are probably of about the same date as the castle wall. The whole area is 5¾ acres.

The total revenue which the city of Lincoln paid to the king and the earl had gone up from 30l. T. R. E. to 100l. T. R. W. For the sake of those who imagine that Saxon halls had anything to do with mottes, it is worth noting that the hall which was the residence of the chief landholder in Lincoln before the Conquest was still in existence after the building of the castle, but evidently had no connection with it.[503]

Monmouth (Fig. 21).—Domesday Book says that the king has four ploughs in demesne in the castle of[Pg 169] Monmouth.[504] Dr Round regards this as one of the cases where castellum is to be interpreted as a town and not as a castle. However this may be, the existence of a Norman castle at Monmouth is rendered certain by a passage in the Book of Llandaff, in which it is said that this castle was built by William FitzOsbern, and a short history of it is given, which brings it up to the days of William Fitz Baderun.[505] Speed speaks of this castle as “standing mounted round in compasse, and within her walls another mount, whereon a Towre of great height and strength is built.”[506] This sounds like the description of a motte and bailey; but the motte cannot be traced now. It is possible that it may have been swept away to build the present barracks; the whole castle is now on a flat-topped hill. The area is 1¾ acres.[507]

The value of the manor before the Conquest is not given.

Montacute, Somerset (Fig. 21).—This is another instance of a site for a castle obtained by exchange from the church. Count Robert of Mortain gave the manor of Candel to the priory of Athelney in exchange for the manor of Bishopstowe, “and there is his castle, which is called Montagud.”[508] The English name for[Pg 170] the village at the foot of the hill was Ludgarsburh, which does not point to any fortification on the hill itself, the spot where the wonder-working crucifix of Waltham was found in Saxon times. Robert of Mortain’s son William gave the castle of Montacute, with its chapel, orchard, and other appurtenances, to a priory of Cluniac monks which he founded close to it. The gift may have had something compulsory in it, for William of Mortain was banished by Henry I. in 1104 as a partisan of Robert Curthose. Thus, as Leland says, “the notable castle partly fell to ruin, and partly was taken down to make the priory, so that many years since no building of it remained; only a chapel was set upon the very top of the dungeon, and that yet standeth there.”[509] There is still a high oval motte, having a ditch between its base and the bailey; the latter is semilunar in shape. The hill has been much terraced on the eastern side, but this may have been the work of the monks, for purposes of cultivation.[510] There is no masonry except a quite modern tower. According to Mr Clark, the motte is of natural rock. The French name of the castle was of course imported from Normandy, and we generally find that an English castle with a Norman-French name of this kind has a motte.[511]

Bishopstowe, in which the castle was placed, was not a large manor in Saxon times. Its value T. R. E. is not given in the Survey, but we are told that it is[Pg 171] worth 6l. to the earl, and 3l. 3s. to the knights who hold under him.

Morpeth, Northumberland (Fig. 21).—There is only one mention known to us of Morpeth Castle in the 11th century, and that is in the poem of Geoffrey Gaimar.[512] He says that William Rufus, when marching to Bamborough, to repress the rebellion of Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland, “took the strong castle of Morpeth, which was seated on a little mount,” and belonged to William de Morlei. Thus there can be no doubt that the Ha’ Hill, about 100 yards to the N. of the present castle, was the motte of the first castle of Morpeth, though the remains of the motte, which are mentioned by Hodgson, have been destroyed.[513] A natural ridge has been used to form a castle by cutting off its higher end to form a motte, and making a court on the lower part of the ridge. The great steepness of the slopes rendered ordinary ditches unnecessary, nor are there any traces now of banks or foundations. In the court some Norman capitals and carved stones were found in 1830. This early castle was admirably placed for commanding the river and the bridge.[514] The present castle of Morpeth was built in 1342-1349.[515]

Newcastle, Northumberland.—The first castle here was built by Robert, son of William I., on his return from his expedition to Scotland in 1080.[516] It was of the[Pg 172] usual motte-and-bailey kind, the motte standing in a small bailey which was rectilinear and roughly oblong.[517] This motte was in existence when Brand wrote his History of Newcastle, but was removed in 1811. The castle was placed outside the Roman station at Monkchester, and commanded a Roman bridge over the Tyne, “and to the north-east overlooked a ravine that under the name of The Side formed for centuries a main artery of communication between England and Scotland.”[518] Henry II., when he built the fine keep of this castle, did not place it on the motte, but in the outer and larger ward, which was roughly triangular. The outer curtain appears to have stood on the banks of the former earthen castle, as the Parliamentary Survey of 1649 speaks of the castle as “bounded with strong works of stone and mud.”[519] The area of the whole castle was 3 acres and 1 rood.

Norham, Northumberland (Fig. 22).—The first castle here was built by Ranulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, in the reign of William Rufus. It was built to defend Northumberland against the incursions of the Scots, and we are expressly told that no castle had existed there previously.[520] This first castle, which we may certainly assume to have been of earth and wood, was destroyed by the Scots in 1138, and there does not seem to have been any stone castle until the time of[Pg 173] Bishop Puiset or Pudsey, who built the present keep by command of King Henry II.[521] Mr Clark tried hard to find some work of Flambard’s in this tower, but found it difficult, and was driven back on the rather lame assumption that “the lapse of forty [really fifty at least] years had not materially changed the style of architecture then in use.”[522] In fact, the Norman parts of this keep show no work so early as the 11th century, but are advanced in style, for not only was the basement vaulted, but the first floor also. The simple explanation is that Flambard threw up the large square motte on which the keep now stands, and provided it with the usual wooden defences. It also had a strong tower, but almost certainly a wooden one; hence it was easily destroyed by the Scots when once taken.[523] The motte was probably lowered to some extent when the stone keep was built. It stands on a high bank overlooking the Tweed, and is separated from its bailey by a deep ditch. The bailey may be described as a segment of a circle; its area is about 2 acres.

Norwich (Fig. 23).—We find from Domesday Book that no less than 113 houses were destroyed for the site of this castle, a certain proof that the castle was new.[524] It is highly probable that it was outside the primitive defences of the town, at any rate in part. Norwich was built, partly on a peninsula formed by a[Pg 174] double bend of the river Wensum, partly in a district lying south-west of this peninsula, and defended by a ridge of rising ground running in a north-easterly direction. The castle was placed on the edge of this ridge, and all the oldest part of the town, including the most ancient churches, lies to the east of it.[525] In the conjectural map of Norwich in 1100, given in Woodward’s History of Norwich Castle,[526] the street called Burg Street divides the Old Burg on the east from the New Burg on the west; this street runs along a ridge which traverses the neck of the peninsula from south-west to north-east, and on the northern end of this ridge the castle stands.[527] There can be little doubt that this street marks the line of the burh or enclosing bank by which the primitive town of Norwich was defended.[528] A clear proof of this lies in the fact that the castle of Norwich was anciently not in the jurisdiction of the city, but in that of the county; the citizens had no authority over the houses lying beyond the castle ditches until it was expressly granted to them by Edward III.[529] The mediæval walls of Norwich, vastly extending the borders of the city, were not built till Henry III.’s reign.[530]

The motte of Norwich Castle, according to recent[Pg 175] investigations, is entirely artificial;[531] it was originally square, and had “a prodigious large and deep ditch around it.”[532] The fancy of the antiquary Wilkins that the motte was the centre of two concentric outworks[533] was completely disproved by Mr Harrod, who showed that the original castle was a motte with one of the ordinary half-moon baileys attached. Another ward, called the Castle Meadow, was probably added at a later date. The magnificent keep which now stands on the motte is undoubtedly a work of the 12th century.[534] The castle which Emma, wife of Earl Ralf Guader, defended against the Conqueror after the celebrated bride-ale of Norwich was almost certainly a wooden structure. As late as the year 1172 the bailey was still defended by a wooden stockade and wooden bretasches;[535] and even in 1225 the stockade had not been replaced by a stone wall.[536]

Norwich was a royal castle, and consequently always in the hands of the sheriff; it was never the property of the Bigods.[537] As the fable that extensive lands belonging to the monastery of Ely were held on the tenure of castle guard at Norwich before the Conquest is repeated by all the local historians,[538] it is worth while[Pg 176] to note that the charters of Henry I. setting the convent free from this service, make no allusion to any such ancient date for it,[539] and that the tenure of castle guard is completely unknown to the Anglo-Saxon laws. The area of the inner bailey is 3¼ acres, and that of the outer, 4½ acres. The value of Norwich had greatly risen since the Conquest.[540]

Nottingham (Fig. 22).—This important castle is not mentioned in Domesday Book, but the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that William I. built the castle at Nottingham in 1067, on his way to repress the first insurrection in Yorkshire. Ordericus, repeating this statement, adds that he committed it to the keeping of William Peverel.[541] The castle was placed on a lofty headland at some distance from the Danish borough, and between the two arose the Norman borough which is mentioned in Domesday Book as the novus burgus. The two upper wards of the present castle probably represent William’s plan. The upper ward forms a natural motte of rock, as it is 15 feet higher than the bailey attached to it, and has been separated from it by a ditch cut across the rocky headland, which can still be traced below the modern house which now stands on the motte. Such a site was not only treated as a motte, but was actually called by that name, as we read of the mota of Nottingham Castle in the Pipe Rolls of both John’s and Richard I.’s reigns.

Mr Clark published a bird’s-eye view of Nottingham Castle in his Mediæval Military Architecture, about which he only stated that it was taken from the Illustrated London News. It does not agree with the[Pg 177] plan made by Simpson in 1617,[542] and is therefore not quite trustworthy; the position of the keep, for example, is quite different. The keep, which Hutchison in his Memoirs speaks of as “the strong tower called the Old Tower on the top of the rock,” seems clearly Norman, from the buttresses. It was placed (according to Simpson’s plan), on the north side of the small ward which formed the top of the motte, and was enclosed in a yet older shell wall which has now disappeared. The height of this motte is indicated in the bird’s-eye view by the ascending wall which leads up it from the bailey. It had its own ditch, as appears by several mentions in the accounts of “the drawbridge of the keep,” and “the bridge leading up to the dongeon.”[543] It is highly probable that this keep was built by King John, as in a Mise Roll of 1212 there is a payment entered “towards making the tower which the king commanded to be built on the motte of Nottingham.”[544] But the first masonry in the castle was probably the work of Henry II., who spent £1737, 9s. 5d. on the castle and houses, the gaol, the king’s chamber, the hall, and in raising the walls and enclosing the bailey.[545] The castle has been so devastated by the 17th century spoiler, that the work of Henry and John has been almost entirely[Pg 178] swept away, but the one round tower which still remains as part of the defences of the inner bailey, looks as though it might be of the time of Henry II. This bailey is semicircular; the whole original castle covers only 1⅔ acres. A very much larger bailey was added afterwards, probably in John’s reign.[546] Probably this later bailey was at first enclosed with a bank and stockade, and this stockade may be the palitium of which there are notices in the records of Henry III. and Edward I.[547] The main gateway of this bailey, which still remains, is probably of Edward I. or Edward II.’s reign.[548]

The castle of Nottingham was the most important one in the Midlands, and William of Newburgh speaks of it as “so well defended by nature and art that it appears impregnable.”[549] The value of the town had risen from £18 to £30 at the time of the Survey.[550]

Okehampton, Devon (Fig. 24).—Baldwin de Molis, Sheriff of Devon, held the manor of Okehampton at the time of the Survey, and had a castle there.[551] On a hill in the valley of the Okement River[Pg 179] stand the remains of a castle of the motte-and-bailey pattern. On the motte, which is high and steep, are the ruins of a keep of late character, probably of the 14th century.[552] The oval bailey covers ½ an acre, and the whole castle is surrounded with a very deep ditch (filled up now on the east side) which is in part a natural ravine. The usual ditch between the motte and the bailey is absent here. This castle appears to have continued always in private hands, and therefore there is little to be learned about it from the public records. The value of Okehampton manor had increased since the Conquest from £8 to £10. As there is no burgus mentioned T. R. E., but four burgenses and a market T. R. W., Baldwin the Sheriff must have built a borough as well as a castle. Otherwise it was a small manor of thirty ploughs.

Oswestry, Shropshire.—Mr Eyton’s identification of the Domesday castle of Louvre, in the manor of Meresberie, Shropshire, with Oswestry, seems to be decisive.[553] The name is simply L’Œuvre, the Work, a name very frequently given to castles in the early Norman period. Domesday Book says that Rainald de Bailleul built a castle at this place.[554] He had married the widow of Warin, Sheriff of Shropshire, who died in 1085. The castle afterwards passed into the hands of the Fitz Alans, great lords-marcher on the Welsh[Pg 180] border. As the Welsh annals give the credit of building the castle to Madoc ap Meredith, into whose hands it fell during the reign of Stephen, it is not impossible that some of the masonry still existing on the motte, which consists of large cobbles bedded in very thick mortar, may be his work, and probably the first stonework in the castle. A sketch made in the 18th century, however, which is the only drawing preserved of the castle, seems to show architecture of the Perpendicular period.[555] But probably the keep alone was of masonry in the 12th century, as in 1166, when the castle was in royal custody, the repair of the stockade is referred to in the Pipe Rolls.[556] No plan has been preserved of Oswestry Castle, so that it is impossible to recover the shape or area of the bailey, which is now built over. The manor of Meresberie had been unoccupied (wasta) in the days of King Edward, but it yielded 40s. at the date of the Survey. Eyton gives reasons for thinking that the town of Oswestry was founded by the Normans.

Oxford (Fig. 25).—This castle was built in 1071 by Robert d’Oilgi (or d’Oilly), a Norman who received large estates in Oxfordshire.[557] Oxford was a burgus in Saxon times, and is one of those mentioned in the Burghal Hidage. Domesday tells us that the king has twenty mural mansions there, which had belonged to Algar, Earl of Mercia, and that they were called mural mansions because their owners had to repair the city wall at the king’s behest, a regulation probably as old as the days of Alfred. The Norman castle was placed outside[Pg 181] the town walls, but near the river, from which its trenches were fed.[558] It was without doubt a motte-and-bailey castle; the motte still remains, and the accompanying bird’s-eye view by David Loggan, 1675, shows that the later stone walls of the bailey stood on the earthen banks of D’Oilly’s castle. The site is now occupied by a gaol. On the line of the walls rises the ancient tower of St George’s Church, which so much resembles an early Norman keep that we might think it was intended for one, if the Osney chronicler had not expressly told us that the church was founded two years after the castle.[559] It is evident that the design was to make the church tower work as a mural tower, a combination of piety and worldly wisdom quite in accord with what the chronicler tells us of the character of Roger d’Oilly.

Henry II. spent some £260 on this castle between the years 1165 and 1173, the houses in the keep, and the well being specially mentioned. We may presume that he built with stone the decagonal [shell?] keep on the motte, whose foundations were discovered at the end of the 18th century.[560] There is still in the heart of the motte a well in a very remarkable well chamber, the masonry of which may be of his time. The area of the bailey appears to have been 3 acres.

The value of the city of Oxford had trebled at the time of the Domesday Survey.[561]

In the treaty between Stephen and Henry in 1153 the whole castle of Oxford is spoken of as the “Mota” of Oxford.[562]

[Pg 182]

Peak Castle, Derbyshire.—The Survey simply calls this castle the Castle of William Peverel, but tells us that two Saxons had formerly held the land.[563] There is no motte here, but the strong position, defended on two sides by frightful precipices, rendered very little fortification necessary. It is possible that the wall on the N. and W. sides of the area may be, in part at least, the work of William Peverel; the W. wall contains a great deal of herring-bone work, and the tower at the N.W. angle does not flank at all, while the other one in the N. wall only projects a few feet; the poor remains of the gatehouse also appear to be Norman. It would probably be easier to build a wall than to raise an earthbank in this stony country; nevertheless, behind the modern wall which runs up from the gatehouse to the keep, something like an earthbank may be observed on the edge of the precipice, which ought to be examined before any conclusions are determined as to the first fortifications of this castle. The keep, which is of different stone to the other towers and the walls, stands on the highest ground in the area, apparently on the natural rock, which crops up in the basement. It is undoubtedly the work of Henry II., as the accounts for it remain in the Pipe Rolls, and the slight indications of style which it displays, such as the nook-shafts at the angles, correspond to the Transition Norman period.[564] The shape of the bailey is a quadrant; its area scarcely exceeds 1 acre.

[Pg 183]

The value of the manor had risen since the Conquest, and William Peverel had doubled the number of ploughs in the demesne. The castle only remained in the hands of the Peverels for two generations, and was then forfeited to the crown. The manor was only a small one; and the site of the castle was probably chosen for its natural advantages and for the facility of hunting in the Peak Forest.

Penwortham, Lancashire (Fig. 24).—“King Edward held Peneverdant. There are two carucates of land there, and they used to pay ten pence. Now there is a castle there, and there are two ploughs in the demesne, and six burghers, and three radmen, and eight villeins, and four cowherds. Amongst them all they have four ploughs. There is half a fishery there. There is wood and hawk’s eyries, as in King Edward’s time. It is worth £3.”[565] The very great rise in value in this manor shows that some great change had taken place since the Norman Conquest. This change was the building of a castle. The modo of Domesday always expresses a contrast with King Edward’s time, and clearly tells us here that Penwortham Castle was new.[566] It lay in the extensive lands between the Ribble and the Mersey, which were part of the Conqueror’s enfeoffment of Roger the Poitevin, third son of Earl Roger de Montgomeri.[567] Since Penwortham is mentioned as demesne, and no[Pg 184] under-tenant is spoken of, we may perhaps assume that this castle, which was the head of a barony, was built by Roger himself. He did not hold it long, as he forfeited all his estates in 1102. At a later period, though we have not been able to trace when, the manor of Penwortham passed into the hands of the monks of Evesham, to whom the church had already been granted, at the end of the Conqueror’s reign.[568] Probably it is because the castle thus passed into the hands of the church that it never developed into a stone castle, like Clitheroe. The seat of the barony was transferred elsewhere, and probably the timbers of the castle were used in the monastic buildings of Penwortham Priory.

The excavations which were made here in 1856 proved conclusively that there were no stone foundations on the Castle Hill at Penwortham.[569] These excavations revealed the singular fact that the Norman had thrown up his motte on the site of a British or Romano-British hut, without even being aware of it, since the ruins of the hut were buried 5 feet deep and covered by a grass-grown surface, on which the Norman had laid a rude pavement of boulders before piling his motte.[570][Pg 185] Among the objects found in the excavations was a Norman prick spur, a conclusive proof of the Norman origin of the motte.[571] No remains appear to have been found of the Norman wooden keep; but this would be accounted for by the theory suggested above.

Penwortham is a double motte, the artificial hill rising on the back of a natural hill, which has been isolated from its continuing ridge by an artificial ditch cut through it. The double hill rises out of a bailey court which is rudely square, but whose shape is determined by the ground, which forms a headland running out into the Ribble. The whole area cannot certainly be ascertained. There was a ferry at this point in Norman times.[572] The castle defends the mouth of the Ribble and overlooks the town of Preston.

Penwortham was certainly not the caput of a large soke in Saxon times, as it was only a berewick of Blackburn, in which hundred it lay. It was the Norman who first made it the seat of a barony.

Peterborough.—The chronicler, Hugh Candidus, tells us that Abbot Thorold, the Norman abbot whom William I. appointed to the ancient minster of Peterborough, built a castle close to the church, “which in these days is called Mount Torold.”[573] This mount is[Pg 186] still existing, but it has lost its ancient name, and is now called Tout Hill. It stands in the Deanery garden, and has probably been largely ransacked for garden soil, as it has a decayed and shapeless look. Still, it is a venerable relic of Norman aggression, well authenticated.

Pevensey, Sussex (Fig. 24).—The Roman castrum of Pevensey (still so striking in its remains) was an inhabited town at the date of the Norman Conquest, and was an important port.[574] After taking possession of the castrum, William I. drew a strong bank across its eastern end, and placed a castle in the area thus isolated. This first castle was probably entirely of wood, as there was a wooden palicium on the bank as late as the reign of Henry II.[575] But if a wooden keep was built at first, it was very soon superseded by one of stone.[576] The remains of this keep have recently been excavated by Mr Harold Sands and Mr Montgomerie, and show it to have been a most remarkable building[577] (see Chapter XII., p. 355)—in all probability one of the few 11th century keeps in England. We may perhaps attribute this distinction to the fact that no less a man than the Conqueror’s half-brother, the Count of Mortain, was made the guardian of this important port.

[Pg 187]

Pevensey is mentioned as a port in the Close Rolls of Henry III.’s reign, and was one of the important waterways to the Continent.[578] As has been already noted, the establishment of the castle was followed by the usual rise in the value of the burgus.[579] The area of the castle covers 1 acre.

Pontefract, Yorkshire (Fig. 26).—This castle is not spoken of in Domesday by its French name, but there can be no doubt that it is “the Castle of Ilbert” which is twice mentioned and several times alluded to in the Clamores, or disputed claims, which are enrolled at the end of the list of lands in Yorkshire belonging to the tenants-in-chief.[580] The existence of Ilbert’s castle at Pontefract in the 11th century is made certain by a charter (only an early copy of which is now extant) in the archives of the Duchy of Lancaster, in which William Rufus at his accession regrants to Ilbert de Lacy “the custom of the castelry of his castle, as he had it in the Conqueror’s days and in those of the bishop of Bayeux.”[581] As Mr Holmes remarks, this carries us back to four years before the compilation of Domesday Book, since Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, whom William had left as regent during his absence in Normandy, was arrested and imprisoned in 1082.[582]

Pontefract is called Kirkby in some of the earlier charters, and this was evidently the English (or rather the Danish) name of the place. It lay within the manor of Tateshall, which is supposed to be the same as Tanshelf, a name still preserved in the neighbourhood[Pg 188] of, but not exactly at, Pontefract.[583] Tanshelf claims to be the Taddenescylf mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where King Edgar received the submission of the Yorkshire Danes in 947. There is no proof that the hill at Kirkby was fortified before the Conquest. It was a steep headland rising out of the plain of the Aire, and needing only to be scarped by art and to have a ditch cut across its neck to be almost impregnable. It lay scarcely a mile east of the Roman road from Doncaster to Castleford and the north.

It is no part of our task to trace the fortunes of this famous castle, which was considered in the Middle Ages to be the key of Yorkshire.[584] In spite of the labels affixed to the walls we venture to assert with confidence that none of the masonry now visible belongs to the days of Ilbert. The structural history of the castle was probably this: Ilbert de Lacy, one of the greatest of the Norman tenants-in-chief in Yorkshire,[585] built in this naturally defensive situation a castle of earth and wood, like other Norman castles. Whether he found the place already defended by earthen banks we do not attempt to decide, but analogy makes it fairly certain that the motte was his work, and was crowned by a wooden tower. This motte, which was at least partially scarped out of the soft sandstone rock, is now disguised by the remarkable keep which has been built up around it, consisting at present of two enormous round towers and the ruins of a third. As a fourth side is vacant, it may[Pg 189] reasonably be conjectured that there was a fourth roundel.[586] If the plan was a quatrefoil it resembled that of the keep of York, which is now ascertained to belong to the reign of Henry III.; and the very little detail that is left supports the view that Pontefract keep was copied from the royal experiment at York, though it differed from it in that it actually revetted the motte itself. There is no ditch now round the motte, but we venture to think that its inner ditch is indicated by the position of the postern in Piper’s Tower, which seems to mark its outlet. It appears to have been partly filled up during the great siege of Pontefract in 1648.[587] The platform which is attached to the motte on the side facing the bailey is probably an addition of the same date, intended for artillery; its retaining wall shows signs of hasty construction. A well chamber and a passage leading both to it and to a postern opening towards the outer ditch appear to have been made in the rocky base of the motte in the 13th century.

The area of the inner and probably original bailey of this castle, including the motte, is 2⅓ acres. The Main Guard, and another bailey covering the approach on the S. side, were probably later additions, bringing up the castle area to 7 acres. The shape of the first bailey is an irregular oval, determined by the hill on which it stands.

The value of the manor of Tateshall had fallen at[Pg 190] the time of the Survey from £20 to £15, an unusual circumstance in the case of a manor which had become the seat of an important castle; but the number of ploughs had decreased by half, and we may infer that Tateshall had not recovered from the great devastation of Yorkshire in 1068.[588]

Preston Capes, Northants (Fig. 26).—That a castle of the 11th century stood here is only proved by a casual mention in the Historia Fundationis of the Cluniac priory of Daventry, which tells us that this priory was first founded by Hugh de Leycestre, Seneschal of Matilda de Senlis, close to his own castle of Preston Capes, about 1090. Want of water and the proximity of the castle proving inconvenient, the priory was removed to Daventry.[589] The work lies about 3 miles from the Watling Street. The castle stands on a spur of high land projecting northwards towards a feeder of the river Nesse, about 3 miles W. of the Watling Street. The works consist of a motte, having a flat top 80 to 90 feet in diameter, and remains of a slight breastwork. This motte is placed on the edge of the plateau, and the ground falls steeply round its northern half. About 16 feet down this slope, a ditch with an outer bank has been dug, embracing half the mound. Lower down, near the foot of the slope, is another and longer ditch and rampart. It is probable that the bailey occupied the flatter ground S.E. of the motte, but the site is occupied by a farm, and no traces are visible.[590]

[Pg 191]

The value of the manor of Preston Capes had risen from 6s. to 40s. at the time of the Survey. It was held by Nigel of the Count of Mellent.[591]

Quatford, Shropshire (Fig. 26).—There can hardly be any doubt that the nova domus at Quatford mentioned in the Survey was the new castle built by Roger de Montgomeri, Earl of Shrewsbury. We have already suggested that the burgus which also existed there may have been his work, and not that of the Danes.[592] The manor belonged to the church before the Conquest.[593] The oval motte, which still remains, is described as placed on a bold rocky promontory jutting into the Severn; it is not quite 30 feet high, and about 60 feet by 120 in diameter on top, and has a small bean-shaped bailey of 1 acre. It is near the church, which has Norman remains.[594] Robert Belesme, son of Earl Roger, removed the castle to Bridgenorth, and so the Quatford castle is heard of no more.[595] The manor of Quatford was paying nothing at the date of the Survey.

Rayleigh, Essex (Fig. 27).—“In this manor Sweyn has made his castle.”[596] Sweyn was the son of Robert Fitz-Wymarc, a half English, half Norman favourite of Edward the Confessor. Robert was Sheriff of Essex under Edward and William, and Sweyn appears to have succeeded his father in this office.[597] Sweyn built his castle on land which had not belonged to his father, so Rayleigh cannot be the “Robert’s Castle” of the Anglo[Pg 192]-Saxon Chronicle, to which some of the Norman adventurers fled on the triumph of Earl Godwin.[598] There is a fine motte at Rayleigh, and a semicircular bailey attached; the ditch round the whole is still well marked. There is not a vestige of masonry on the surface, but some excavations made in 1910 revealed stone foundations. The inner bailey covers ¾ of an acre. The value of the manor had risen since the Conquest, but it was only a small one, with no villages in its soke.

Richard’s Castle, Herefordshire (Fig. 27).—There can be little doubt that this is the castle referred to in Domesday Book under the name of Avreton, as it is not far from Overton, on the northern border of Hereford.[599] Richard’s Castle is almost certainly the castle of Richard, son of Scrob, one of the Normans to whom Edward the Confessor had granted large estates, and who probably fortified himself on this site. At the time of the Survey Richard was dead, and the castle was held by his son Osbern, and it is noted that he pays 10s., but the castle is worth 20s. to him. Its value was the same as in King Edward’s time, a fact worth noting, as it coincides with the assumption that this was a pre-Conquest castle. There is a high and steep motte at Richard’s Castle, and a small half-moon shaped bailey.[600] There are remains of a stone wing wall running down the motte, and on the top there is a straight piece of masonry which must be part of a tower keep. The area of the inner bailey is ⅔ of an acre. Avreton was[Pg 193] not the centre of a soke, but appears to have lain in the manor of Ludeford.

Richmond, Yorks (Fig. 28).—As in the case of Pontefract, this other great Yorkshire castle is not mentioned by name in Domesday Book, nor is there any allusion to it except a casual mention in the Recapitulation that Earl Alan has 199 manors in his castelry, and that besides the castelry he has 43 manors.[601] The castle must have been built at the date of the Survey, which was completed only a year before William I.’s death; for during William’s lifetime Earl Alan, the first holder of the fief, gave the chapel in the castle of Richmond to the abbey of St Mary at York, which he had founded.[602] The name, of course, is French, and it seems impossible now to discover what English manor-name it has displaced.[603] It is certainly a case in which the Norman castle was not placed in the seat of the former Saxon proprietor, but in the site which seemed most defensible to the Norman lord. The lands of Earl Alan in the wapentake of Gilling had belonged to the Saxon Earl Edwin, and thus cannot have fallen to Alan’s share before Edwin’s death in 1071. The Genealogia published by Dodsworth (from an MS. compiled in the reign of Edward III.), says that Earl Alan first built Richmond Castle near his chief manor of Gilling, to defend his people against the attacks of[Pg 194] the disinherited English and Danes.[604] The passage has been enlarged by Camden, who says that Alan “thought himself not safe enough in Gilling”; and this has been interpreted to mean that Alan originally built his castle at Gilling, and afterwards removed it to Richmond; but the original words have no such meaning.[605]

Richmond Castle differs from most of the castles mentioned in Domesday in that it has no motte. The ground plan indeed was very like that of a motte-and-bailey castle, in that old maps show a small roundish enclosure at the apex of the large triangular bailey.[606] But a recent examination of the keep by Messrs Hope and Brakespear has confirmed the theory first enunciated by Mr Loftus Brock,[607] that the keep is built over the original gateway of the castle, and that the lower stage of its front wall is the ancient wall of the castle. The small ward indicated in the old maps is therefore most likely a barbican, of later date than the 12th century keep, which is probably rightly attributed by the Genealogia cited above to Earl Conan, who reigned from 1148-1171.[608] Some entries in the Pipe Rolls make it almost certain that it was finished by Henry II.,[Pg 195] who kept the castle in his own hands for some time after the death of Conan.[609] There are some indications at Richmond that the first castle was of stone and not of earth and wood. The walls do not stand on earthen banks; the Norman curtain can still be traced on two sides of the castle, and on the west side it seems of early construction, containing a great deal of herringbone work, and might possibly be the work of Earl Alan.

The whole area of the castle is 2½ acres, including the annexe known as the Cockpit. This was certainly enclosed during the Norman period, as it has a Norman gateway in its wall.

As we do not know the name of the site of Richmond before the Conquest, and as the name of Richmond is not mentioned in Domesday Book, we cannot tell whether the value of the manor had risen or fallen. But no part of Yorkshire was more flourishing at the time of the Survey than this wapentake of Gilling, which belonged to Earl Alan; in no district, except in the immediate neighbourhood of York, are there so many places where the value has risen. Yet the greater part of it was let out to under-tenants.

Rochester, Kent (Fig. 28).—Under the heading of Aylsford, Kent, the Survey tells us that “the bishop of Rochester holds as much of this land as is worth 17s. 4d. in exchange for the land in which the castle sits.”[610] Rochester was a Roman castrum, and portions of its Roman wall have recently been found.[611] The fact[Pg 196] that various old charters speak of the castellum of Rochester has led some authorities to believe that there was a castle there in Saxon times, but the context of these charters shows plainly that the words castellum Roffense were equivalent to Castrum Roffense or Hrofesceastre.[612] Otherwise there is not a particle of evidence for the existence of a castle at Rochester in pre-Norman times, and the passage in Domesday quoted above shows that William’s castle was a new erection, built on land obtained by exchange from the church.

Outside the line of the Roman wall, to the south of the city, and west of the south gate, there is a district called Boley or Bullie Hill, which at one time was included in the fortifications of the present castle. It is a continuation of the ridge on which that castle stands, and has been separated from it by a ditch. This ditch once entirely surrounded it, and though it was partly filled up in the 18th century its line can still be traced. The area enclosed by this ditch was about 3 acres; the form appears to have been oblong. In the grounds of Satis House, one of the villas which have been built on this site, there still remains a conical artificial mound, much reduced in size, as it has been converted into a pleasure-ground with winding walks, but the retaining walls of these walks are composed of old materials; and towards the riverside there are still vestiges of an ancient wall.[613] We venture to think that this Boley Hill and its motte formed the original site[Pg 197] of the (probably) wooden castle of William the Conqueror. Its nature, position, and size correspond to what we have already observed as characteristic of the first castles of the Conquest. It stands on land which originally belonged to the church of St Andrew, as Domesday Book tells us William’s castle did.[614] The very name may be interpreted in favour of this theory.[615] And that there was no Roman or Saxon fortification on the spot is proved by excavations, which have shown that both a Roman and a Saxon cemetery occupied portions of the area.[616]

It is well known that between the years 1087 and 1089 the celebrated architect, Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester, built a new stone castle for William Rufus, “in the best part of the city of Rochester.”[617] This castle, of course, was on the same site as the present one, though the splendid keep was not built till the next[Pg 198] reign.[618] But if what we have maintained above be correct the castle of Gundulf was built on a different site from that of the castle of William. Nor are we without evidence in support of this. What remains of the original Norman wall of Gundulf’s castle (and enough remains to show that the circuit was complete in Norman times) does not stand on earthen banks; and this, though not a proof, is a strong suggestion that there was no earthen bank belonging to some previous castle when Gundulf began his building.[619] But further, Mr Livett has shown in his paper on Mediæval Rochester[620] that in order to form a level plateau for the court of the castle the ground had to be artificially made up on the north and east sides, and in these places the wall rests on a foundation of gravel, which has been forcibly rammed to make it solid, and which goes through the artificial soil to the natural chalk below. Now what can this rammed gravel mean but an expedient to avoid the danger of building in stone on freshly heaped soil? Had the artificial platform been in existence ever since the Conquest, it would have been solid enough to build upon without this expense. It is therefore at least[Pg 199] probable that Bishop Gundulf’s castle was built on an entirely new site.

It seems also to be clear that the Boley Hill was included as an outwork in Bishop Gundulf’s plan, for the castle ditch is cut through the Roman wall near the south gate of the city.[621] Mr Livett remarks that King John appears to have used the hill as a point of vantage when he attacked the city in 1215, and he thinks this was probably the reason why Henry III.’s engineers enclosed it with a stone wall when they restored the walls of the city.[622] Henry III.’s wall has been traced all round the city, and at the second south gate it turns at right angles, or nearly so, so as to enclose Boley Hill.[623] It is probable, as Mr Livett suggests, that the drawbridge and bretasche, or wooden tower, ordered in 1226 for the southern side of Rochester Castle,[624] were intended to connect the Boley Hill court with the main castle. In 1722 the owner of the castle (which had then fallen into private hands) conveyed to one Philip Brooke, “that part of the castle ditch and ground, as it then lay unenclosed, on Bully Hill, being the whole breadth of the hill and ditch without the walls of the castle, extending from thence to the river Medway.”[625]

The general opinion about the Boley Hill is that[Pg 200] it is a Danish earthwork, thrown up by the Danes when they besieged the city in 885. But if our contention in Chapter IV. is just, the Danish fortifications were not mottes, nor anything like them; and (as has already been pointed out) the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle indicates the nature of the fortress in this case by its expression, “they made a work around themselves”;[626] that is, it was a circumvallation. Moreover, at Rochester the Danes would have had to pass under the bridge (which is known to have existed both in Roman and Saxon times) in order to get to the Boley Hill; and even if their ships were small enough to do this they would hardly have been so foolish as to leave a bridge in their possible line of retreat. It is therefore far more likely that their fastness was somewhere to the north or east of the city.[627]

It is a noteworthy fact that up till very recently the Boley Hill had a special jurisdiction of its own, under an officer called the Baron of the Bully, appointed by the Recorder of the city. This appears to date from a charter of Edward IV. in 1460, which confirms the former liberties of the citizens of Rochester, and ordains that they should keep two courts’ leet and a court of pie-powder annually on the Bullie Hill. The anonymous historian of Rochester remarks that it was thought that the baron represented the first officer under the governor of the castle before the court leet was instituted, to whose care the security of the Bullie Hill was entrusted.[628] This is probably much nearer the truth than the theory which would assign such thoroughly feudal courts as those of court leet and[Pg 201] pie-powder to an imaginary community of Danes residing on the Boley Hill. When we compare the case of the Boley Hill with the somewhat similar cases of Chester and Norwich castles we shall see that what took place in Edward IV.’s reign was probably this: the separate jurisdiction which had once belonged to an abandoned castle site was transferred to the citizens of Rochester, but with the usual conservatism of mediæval legislation, it was not absorbed in the jurisdiction of the city.

The value of Rochester at the time of the Survey had risen from 100s. to 20l.[629] The increase of trade, arising from the security of traffic which was provided by William’s castles on this important route, no doubt accounts in great measure for this remarkable rise in value.

Rockingham, Northants (Fig. 29).—Here, also, the castle was clearly new in William’s reign, as the manor was uninhabited (wasta) until a castle was built there by his orders, in consequence of which the manor produced a small revenue at the time of the Survey.[630] The motte, now in great part destroyed, was a large one, being about 80 feet in diameter at the top; attached to it is a bailey of irregular but rectilateral shape (determined by the ground) covering about 3 acres. There is another large bailey to the S. covering 4 acres, formed by cutting a ditch across the spur of the hill on which the castle stands, which is probably later. The first castle would undoubtedly be of wood, and it is probable that King John was the builder of the “exceeding fair and strong” keep which[Pg 202] stood on the motte in Leland’s time,[631] as there is an entry in the Pipe Roll of the thirteenth year of his reign for 126l. 18s. 6d. for the work of the new tower.[632] This keep, if Mr Clark is correct, was polygonal, with a timber stockade surrounding it.

Rockingham was only a small manor of one hide in Saxon times, though its Saxon owner had sac and soke. It stands in a forest district, not near any of the great ancient lines of road, and was probably built for a hunting seat.

The value of the manor had risen at the time of the Survey.[633]

During the Civil War, the motte of Rockingham was fortified in an elaborate manner by the Parliamentarians, part of the defences being two wooden stockades:[634] an interesting instance of the use both of mottes and of wooden fortifications in comparatively modern warfare. Only the north and west sides of this mount now remain.

Old Sarum, Wilts (Fig. 30).—Sir Richard Colt Hoare printed in his Ancient Wiltshire a document purporting to be an order from Alfred, “King of the English,” to Leofric, “Earl of Wiltunshire,” to maintain the castle of Sarum, and add another ditch to it.[635] The phraseology of the document suggests some doubts of its genuineness, and though there would be nothing[Pg 203] improbable in the theory that Alfred reared the outer bank of the fortress, recent excavations have shown that the place was occupied by the Romans, and therefore make it certain that its origin was very much earlier than Alfred’s time. Moreover, the convergence of several Roman roads at this spot suggests the probability of a Roman station,[636] while the form of the enclosure renders an earlier origin likely. Domesday Book does not speak of Salisbury as a burgus, and when the burgus of Old Sarum is mentioned in later documents it appears to refer to a district lying at the foot of the Castle Hill, and formerly enclosed with a wall.[637] Nor is it one of the boroughs of the Burghal Hidage. But that Sarum was an important place in Saxon times is clear from the fact that there was a mint there; and there is evidence of the existence of at least four Saxon churches, as well as a hospital for lepers.[638]

For more exact knowledge as to the history of this ancient fortress we must wait till the excavations now going on are finished, but in the meanwhile it seems probable that the theory adopted by General Pitt-Rivers is correct. He regarded Old Sarum as a British earthwork, with an inner castle and outer barbicans added by the Normans. After building this castle in the midst of it the Normans appear to have considered the outer and[Pg 204] larger fortification too valuable to be given up to the public, but retained it under the government of the castellan, and treated it as part of the castle.

There is no mention of the castle of Salisbury in Domesday Book, but the bishop is named as the owner of the manor.[639] The episcopal see of Sherborne was transferred to Sarum in 1076 by Bishop Hermann, in accordance with the policy adopted by William I. that episcopal sees should be removed from villages to towns:[640] a measure which in itself is a testimony to the importance of Salisbury at that time. The first mention of the castle is in the charter of Bishop Osmund, 1091.[641] The bishop was allowed to lay the foundations of his new cathedral within the ancient fortress. As might be expected, friction soon arose between the castellans and the ecclesiastics; the castellans claimed the custody of the gates, and sometimes barred the canons, whose houses seem to have been outside the fortress, from access to the church. These quarrels were ended eventually by the removal of the cathedral to the new town of Salisbury at the foot of the hill.

The position of the motte of Old Sarum is exceptional, as it stands in the centre of the outer fortress. This must be owing to the position of the ancient vallum, encircling the summit of one of those round, gradually sloping hills so common in the chalk ranges, which made it necessary to place the motte in the centre, because it was the highest part of the ground. The[Pg 205] present excavations have shown that it is in part artificial. But though the citadel was thus exceptionally placed, the principle that communication with the outside must be maintained was carried out; the motte had its own bailey, reaching to the outer vallum. The remains of three cross banks still exist, two of which must have enclosed the magnum ballium which is spoken of in the Pipe Rolls of Henry II. Probably this bailey occupied the south-eastern third of the circle, which included the main gateway and the road to the citadel. In the ditch on the north side of this enclosure, an arched passage, apparently of Norman construction, was found in 1795; it was doubtless a postern or sallyport.[642] The main entrance is defended by a separate mount with its own ditch, which is conjectured to be of later date than the vallum itself. The area of the top of the motte is about 1¾ acres, a larger size than usual, but not larger than that of several other important castles.[643] In Leland’s time there was “much notable ruinous building” still remaining of this fortress, and the excavations have already revealed the lower portions of some splendid walls and gateways, and the basement of a late Norman keep which presents some unusual features.[644] The earthworks, however, bear witness to a former wooden stockade both to the citadel and the outer enclosure. The top of the motte is still surrounded by high earthen banks.

As that great building bishop, Roger of Salisbury[Pg 206] (1099-1139), is said to have environed the castle with a new wall,[645] it would seem likely that he was the first to transform the castle from wood to stone. But in Henry II.’s reign, we find an entry in the Pipe Rolls for materials for enclosing the great bailey. An order for the destruction of the castle had been issued by Stephen,[646] but it is doubtful whether it was carried out. The sums spent by Henry II. on the castle do not amount to more than £266, 12s. 5d., but the work recently excavated which appears to be of his date is very extensive indeed.

The mention of a small wooden tower in Richard I.’s reign shows that some parts of the defences were still of wood at that date.[647] Timber and rods for hoarding the castle, that is, for the wooden machicolations placed at the tops of towers and walls, were ordered at the end of John’s reign.[648]

It is not known when the castle was abandoned, but the list of castellans ceases in the reign of Henry VI., when it was granted to the Stourton family.[649] Though the earls of Salisbury were generally the custodians of Sarum Castle, except in the time of Bishop Roger, it was always considered a royal castle, while the manor belonged to the bishop.[650] It is remarked in the Hundred Rolls of Henry III., that no one holds fiefs for ward in[Pg 207] this castle, and that nothing belonged to the castle outside the gate.[651]

The value of the manor of Salisbury appears to have risen very greatly since the Conquest.[652]

Shrewsbury (Fig. 31).—The passage in Domesday Book relating to this town has been called by Mr Round one of the most important in the Survey, and it is of special importance for our present purpose. “The English burghers of Shrewsbury say that it is very grievous to them that they have to pay all the geld which they paid in King Edward’s time, although the castle of the earl occupies [the site of] 51 houses, and another 50 are uninhabited.”[653] It is incomprehensible how in the face of such a clear statement as this, that the new castle occupied the site of fifty-one houses, anyone should be found gravely to maintain that the motte at Shrewsbury was an English work; for if the motte stood there before, what was the clearance of houses made for? The only answer could be to enlarge the bailey. But this is exactly what the Norman would not wish to do; he would want only a small area for the small force at his disposal for defence. Shrewsbury was certainly a borough (that is, a fortified town) in Anglo-Saxon times; probably it was one of the towns fortified by Ethelfleda, though it is not mentioned by name in the list of those towns furnished by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.[654] Its[Pg 208] ancient walls were certainly only of earth and wood, for a writ of 1231 says that the old stockade and the old bretasche of the old ditch of the town of Shrewsbury are to be granted to the burghers for strengthening the new ditch.[655]

The castle of Shrewsbury was built on the neck of the peninsula on which the town stands, and on the line of the town walls. The oval motte, which still remains, stands, as usual, on the line of the castle banks, and slopes steeply down to the Severn on one side. Its nearness to the river made it liable to damage by floods. Thus we find Henry II. spending 5l. on the repair of the motte,[656] and in Edward I.’s reign the abbot’s mill is accused of having caused damage to the extent of 60 marks to the motte. But the men of the hundred exonerate the mill, and from another passage the blame appears to lie on the fall of a great wooden tower.[657] This can hardly have been other than the wooden keep on the motte, and thus we learn the interesting fact that as late as Edward I.’s reign the castle of Shrewsbury[Pg 209] had only a wooden keep. The present tower on the motte is the work of Telford.

The bailey of Shrewsbury Castle is roughly semilunar and covers nearly an acre. The walls stand on banks, which shows that the first wall was of timber. The Norman entrance arch seems to render it probable that it was in Henry II.’s reign that stone walls were first substituted for a wooden stockade, and the Pipe Rolls contain several entries of sums spent by Henry on this castle.[658] But the first mention of stone in connection with the castle is in the reign of Henry III.[659] In the reign of Edward I., a jarola or wooden wall, which had been raised above the outer ditch in the time of the Barons’ War, was replaced by a stone wall.[660] This perhaps refers to the second bailey, now destroyed, which lay to the south of the castle. In the time of Charles I. the castle still had a wooden palisade on the counterscarp of the ditch.[661] The two large drum towers on the walls, and the building between them, now converted into a modern house, belong to a much later period than the walls. The area of the present castle, including the motte, is ⅘ of an acre.

The value of the town of Shrewsbury had risen since the Conquest.

Skipsea, Yorks (Fig. 31).—There is no mention of this castle in Domesday Book, but the chronicle of Meaux Abbey tells us that it was built by Drogo de[Pg 210] Bevrère in the reign of William I.[662] This chronicle is not indeed contemporary, but its most recent editor regards it as based on some much earlier document. It was the key of the great manor of Holderness, which the Conqueror had given to Drogo, but which Drogo forfeited by murdering his wife, probably on this very site. The situation of Skipsea is remarkable, but the original plan of Kenilworth Castle presented a close parallel to it. The motte, which is 46 feet high, and ⅕ of an acre in space on top, is separated from the bailey by a level space, which was formerly the Mere of Skipsea, mentioned in documents of the 13th century, which reckon the take of eels in this mere as a source of revenue.[663] The motte thus formed an island in the mere, but as an additional defence—perhaps when the mere began to get shallow—it was surrounded by a bank and ditch of its own. No masonry is to be seen on the motte now, except a portion of a wing wall going down it. It is connected with its bailey on the other side of the mere by a causeway which still exists. This bailey is of very unusual size, covering 8¼ acres; its banks still retain the name of the Baile Welts, and one of the entrances is called the Baile Gate. Skipsea Brough, which no doubt represents the former burgus of Skipsea, is outside this enclosure, and has no defences of its own remaining. A mandate of Henry III. in 1221, ordered the complete destruction of this castle,[664] and it was no doubt after this that the earls of Albemarle, who had succeeded to Drogo’s estates, removed their caput baroniæ to Burstwick.[665]

[Pg 211]

The value of the manor of Cleeton, in which Skipsea lies, had fallen at Domesday.[666]

Stafford (Fig. 32).—The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that Ethelfleda of Mercia built the burh of Stafford; and consequently we find that both in King Edward and King William’s time Stafford was a burgus, or fortified town. Florence of Worcester, who is considered to have used a superior copy of the Chronicle as the foundation of his work, says that Ethelfleda built an arx on the north bank of the Sowe in 914. Arx, in our earlier chronicles, is often only a bombastic expression for a walled town, as, for example, when Ethelwerd says that Ethelfleda’s body was buried in St Peter’s porch in the arx of Gloucester.[667] But the statement led many later writers, such as Camden, to imagine that Ethelfleda built a tower in the town of Stafford; and these imaginings have created such a tangled skein of mistake that we must bespeak our readers’ patience while we attempt to unravel it.

Domesday Book only mentions Stafford Castle under the manor of Chebsey, a possession of Henry de Ferrers. Its words are: “To this manor belonged the land of Stafford, in which the king commanded a castle to be built, which is now destroyed.”[668] Ordericus also says that the king placed a castle at Stafford, on his return from his third visit to the north, in 1070.[669] Now the language of Domesday appears to us to say very plainly that in the manorial rearrangement which followed the Conquest some land was taken out of the manor of Chebsey, which lies immediately to the south of the[Pg 212] borough of Stafford, to furnish a site for a royal castle.[670] It is exactly in this position that we now find a large oblong motte, similar to the other mottes of the Conquest, and having the usual bailey attached to it. It lies about a mile and a half south-west of the town, near the main road leading into Shropshire.

The position was an important one, as the castles of Staffordshire formed a second line of defence against the North Welsh, as well as a check to the great palatinate earls of Shropshire.[671] The motte itself stood on high ground, commanding a view of twenty or thirty miles round, and both Tutbury and Caus castles could be seen from it. Between it and the town lies a stretch of flat ground which has evidently been a swamp formerly, and which explains the distance of the castle from the town; while the fact that it lies to the south of the Sowe shows that it has no connection with Ethelfleda’s work. There is no dispute that this motte was the site of the later baronial castle of Stafford, the castle besieged and taken in the Civil War; the point we have to prove is that it was also the castle of Domesday Book.[672]

[Pg 213]

If the first castle of Stafford was of earth and wood, like most of William’s castles, there would be nothing wonderful in its having many destructions and many resurrections. This castle was clearly a royal castle, from the language of Domesday Book. As a royal castle it would be committed to the custody of the sheriff, who appears to have been Robert de Stafford,[673] ancestor of the later barons of Stafford, and brother of Ralph de Todeni, one of the great nobles of the Conquest. Ralph joined the party of Robert Curthose against Henry I. in 1101, and it is conjectured that his brother Robert was involved in the same rebellion, for in that year we find the castle held for the king by William Pantolf, a trusty companion of the Conqueror.[674] It is very unlikely that this second castle of Stafford was on a different site from the one which had been destroyed; and an ingenious conjecture of Mr Mazzinghi’s helps us to identify it with the castle on the motte. In that castle, when it again emerges into light in the reign of Henry II., we find a chapel dedicated to St Nicholas, which Robert de Stafford gives to the abbey of Stone, and the king confirms the gift.[675] The worship of St Nicholas came greatly into fashion after the translation of his remains from Asia Minor to Bari, in Italy, in 1087. William Pantolf visited the shrine at Bari, got possession of some of the relics of St Nicholas, and with great reverence deposited them in his own church of Noron, in Normandy.[676] It is therefore extremely probable that Pantolf founded the chapel of St Nicholas in Stafford[Pg 214] Castle during the time that the castle was in his custody.[677] But about the situation of the chapel of St Nicholas there is no doubt, as its history is traceable down to the 16th century. It stood in the bailey of the castle outside the town. This castle was therefore certainly identical with that of Henry II., and most probably with that of Henry I. and William I.

So far, as we have seen, Stafford Castle was a royal castle. It is true that in the reign of Henry II.’s predecessor, Stephen, we find the castle again in the hands of a Robert de Stafford, who speaks of it as “castellum meum.”[678] Apparently the troubles of Stephen’s reign afforded an opportunity to the family of the first Norman sheriff to get the castle again into their hands. But under the stronger rule of Henry II. the crown recovered its rights, and the gift of the chapel in the castle evidently could not be made without the consent of the king. The gaol which Henry II. caused to be made in Stafford was doubtless in this castle.[679] John repaired the castle,[680] and ordered bretasches, or wooden towers, to be made in the forest of Arundel, and sent to Stafford:[681] a statement which gives us an insight into the nature of the castle in John’s reign. But it was the tendency of sheriffdoms to become hereditary, as Dr Stubbs has pointed out,[682] and this seems to have been the case at Stafford. In the reign[Pg 215] of Edward I. a local jury decided that Nicholas, Baron of Stafford, held the castle of Stafford from the king in capite, by the service of three and a half knights’ fees;[683] and in 1348, Ralph, Baron of Stafford, obtained a license from Edward III. “to fortify and crenellate his manses of Stafford and Madlee with a wall of stone and lime, and to make castles thereof.”[684] The indenture made with the mason a year previously is still extant, and states that the castle is to be built upon the moële in the manor, whereby the motte is evidently meant.[685] Besides, the deed is dated “at the Chastel of Stafford,” showing that the new castle of stone and lime was on the site of an already existing castle.

We might spin out further evidence of the identity of the site of William’s castle with that of the present one, from the name of the manor of Castel, which grew up around it, displacing the equally suggestive name of Montville, which we find in Domesday Book.[686] Against the existence of another castle in the town we have the absence of any such castle in William Smith’s plan of 1588; the silence of Speed and Leland, who only mention the present castle;[687] and the statement of Plot, who wrote about the end of the 17th century, that “he could not hear any footsteps remaining” of a castle in Stafford.[688] We may therefore safely conclude that it was only due to the fancy of some Elizabethan antiquary that in an old map of that time a spot to the south[Pg 216]-west of the town is marked with the inscription, “The old castle, built by Edward the Elder, and in memorie fortified with reel walls.”[689]

The value of Stafford town had risen at the time of the Survey, as the king had 7l. for his share, which would make the whole revenue to king and earl 10l. 10s., as against 9l. before the Conquest. The property of the canons of Stafford had risen from £1 to £3.[690]

The area of the bailey is 1⅗ acres.

Stamford, Lincoln and Northants.—This was one of the boroughs fortified by Edward the Elder, and consequently we find it a royal burgus at the time of the Survey. But Edward’s borough, the Chronicle tells us, was on the south side of the Welland; the northern borough, on the other side, may have been the work of the Danes, as Stamford was one of the towns of the Danish confederacy of the Five Boroughs. The Norman castle and its motte are on the north side, and five mansiones were destroyed for the site.[691] There is at present no appearance of masonry on the motte, which is partly cut away, and what remains of the castle wall is of the 13th century. It is therefore probable that the turris, or keep, which surrendered to Henry II. in 1153, was of wood.[692] Henry gave the castle to Richard Humet, constable of Normandy, in 1155.[693] It was a[Pg 217] very exceptional thing that Henry should thus alienate a royal castle, and special circumstances must have moved him to this act. The castle was destroyed in Richard III.’s time, and the materials given to the convent of the Carmelite Friars. It appears to have been within the town walls, with a bailey stretching down to the river; this bailey is quadrangular. An inquisition of 1341 states that “the site of the castle contains 2 acres.”[694]

Stamford had risen enormously in value since the Conquest. “In King Edward’s time it paid 15l.; now, it pays for feorm 50l., and for the whole of the king’s dues it now pays 28l.”[695]

Stanton, Stanton Long, in Shropshire (Fig. 32).—At the time of the Survey, the Norman Helgot was Lord of Corve Dale, and had his castle at Stanton.[696] The castle was afterwards known as Helgot’s Castle, corrupted into Castle Holdgate. The site has been much altered by the building of a farmhouse in the bailey, but the motte still exists, high and steep, with a ditch round about half its circumference; there are some traces of masonry on the top. One side of the bailey ditch is still visible, and a mural tower of Edwardian style has been incorporated with the farmhouse. The exact area cannot now be calculated, but it can hardly have exceeded 2½ acres. The manor of Stanton was an[Pg 218] agglomeration of four small manors which had been held by different proprietors in Saxon times, so it was not the centre of a soke. The value of the manor had risen.

Tamworth, Stafford (Fig. 32).—Although Tamworth Castle is not mentioned in Domesday Book, it must have been in existence in the 11th century, as a charter of the Empress Matilda mentions that Robert le Despenser, brother of Urso d’Abetot, had formerly held this castle;[697] now Urso d’Abetot was a contemporary of the Conqueror, and so must his brother have been. Tamworth Castle stands on a motte 50 feet high, and 100 feet in diameter across the top, according to Mr Clark. It is an interesting instance of what is commonly called a shell keep, with a stone tower; one of the instances which suggest that the shell did not belong to a different type of castle to the tower, but was simply a ward wall, which probably at first enclosed a wooden tower. The tower and wall (or chemise) are probably late Norman, but the remarkable wing wall (there is only one, instead of the usual two) which runs down the motte is entirely of herring-bone work, and may be as old as Henry I.’s time.[698] A bailey court, which cannot have been large, lay between the motte and the river Tame, but its outline cannot now be determined, owing to the encroachments of buildings. Tamworth is about a mile from the great Roman road known as Watling Street. We have already referred to the fortification of the burh here by Ethelfleda;[699][Pg 219] probably she only restored walls or banks which had existed before round this ancient capital of Mercia.

The value of the manor of Tamworth is not given in Domesday Book.

Tickhill, Yorks (Fig. 32).—The name Tickhill does not occur in Domesday, but it is covered by that of Dadesley, the manor in which this castle was built: a name which appears to have gone out of use when the hill was thrown up. There can be no doubt that it was the castle of Roger de Busli, one of the most richly endowed of William’s tenants-in-chief, as it is mentioned as such by Ordericus.[700] He calls it the castle of Blythe, a name which it probably received because Blythe was the most important place near, and Dadesley was so insignificant. Florence of Worcester, when describing the same events, calls the castle Tykehill. The remains furnish an excellent specimen of the earthworks of this class. The motte is 75 feet high, and its area on top about 80 feet in diameter; about a third of it is natural, the rest artificial. Only a slight trace remains of the ditch separating it from the oval bailey, which covers 2 acres. The foundations of a decagonal tower, built in the reign of Henry II., are still to be seen on the top.[701] The bailey retains its banks on the scarp, surmounted now by a stone curtain, which, along with the older part of the gatehouse, is possibly of the time of Henry I.[702] The outer ditch is about 30 feet broad, and is still full of water in parts. On the counterscarp a portion of the[Pg 220] bank remains. This bank carried a wooden palisade when the castle was besieged by Cromwell.[703] The site is not naturally defensible; it is about three and a half miles from the northern Roman road.

The value of the manor of Dadesley had risen at the time of the Survey.[704] The stone buildings which once stood in the bailey have been transformed into a modern house.

Tonbridge, Kent (Fig. 33).—This notable castle, the first English seat of the powerful family who afterwards took their name from Clare in Suffolk, is first mentioned in 1088, when it was stormed by William Rufus and his English subjects, who had adopted his cause against the supporters of his brother Robert.[705] The castle was one of great importance at several crises in English history; but it began as a wooden keep on a motte, and the stone shell which now crowns this motte cannot be earlier than the 12th century, and judging by its buttresses, is much later. The castle stands outside the town of Tonbridge, separated from it by moats which were fed from the river. The smaller bailey of 1½ acres, probably the original one, is square, with rounded corners. The palatial gatehouse, of the 13th or 14th century, is a marked feature of this castle. There appears to have been only one wing wall down the motte to the bailey, but a second one was not needed, owing to the position of the motte with regard to the river.

The value of the manor of Hadlow, in which Tonbridge lay, was stationary at Domesday.[706] It belonged to the see of Canterbury, and was held by[Pg 221] Richard de Bienfaite, ancestor of the House of Clare, as a tenant of the see.

Totnes, Devonshire (Fig. 33).—The castle of Totnes belonged to Judhael, one of King William’s men, who has been already mentioned under Barnstaple. This castle is not noticed in Domesday Book, but its existence in the 11th century is made certain by a charter of Judhael’s giving land below his castle to the Benedictine priory which he had founded at Totnes: a charter certainly of the Conqueror’s reign, as it contains a prayer for the health of King William.[707] The site was an important one; Totnes had been one of the boroughs of the Burghal Hidage; it was at the head of a navigable river, and was the point where the ancient Roman (?) road from Devonshire to Bath and the North began its course.[708] The motte of the castle is very high and precipitous, and has a shell on top, which is perfect up to the battlements, and appears to be rather late Norman. This keep is entered in a very unusual way, by a flight of steps leading up from the bailey, deeply sunk in the upper part into the face of the motte, so as to form a highly defensible passage. Two wing walls run down to the walls of the bailey. There is at present no ditch between the motte and the bailey. The whole area of the work is ¾ acre. It stands in a very defensible situation on a spur of hill overlooking the town, and lies just outside the ancient walls.

The value of the town of Totnes had risen at Domesday.[709]

The Tower of London.—Here, as at Colchester, there is no motte, because the original design was that there should be a stone keep. Ordericus tells us that[Pg 222] after the submission of London to William the Conqueror he stayed for a few days in Barking while certain fortifications in the city were being finished, to curb the excitability of the huge and fierce population.[710] What these fortifications were we shall never know, but we may imagine they were earthworks of the usual Norman kind.[711] Certainly the great keep familiarly known as the White Tower was not built in a few days; it does not appear to have been even begun till some eleven years later, when Gundulf, a monk celebrated for his architectural skill, was appointed to the see of Rochester. Gundulf was the architect of the Tower,[712] and it must therefore have been built during his episcopate, which lasted from 1077-1108.[713] In 1097 we read that “many shires which owe works to London were greatly oppressed in making the wall (weall) round the Tower.”[714] This does not necessarily mean a stone wall, but probably it does, as Gundulf’s tower can hardly have been without a bank and palisade to its bailey.

As the Tower in its general plan represents the type of keep which was the model for all succeeding[Pg 223] stone keeps up to the end of the 12th century, it seems appropriate here to give some description of its main features. Its resemblance to the keep of Colchester, which also was a work of William I.’s reign, is very striking.[715] Colchester is the larger of the two, but the Tower exceeds in size all other English keeps, measuring 118 × 98 feet at its base.[716] As it has been altered or added to in every century, its details are peculiarly difficult to trace, especially as the ordinary visitor is not allowed to make a thorough examination.[717] Thus much, however, is certain: neither of the two present entrances on the ground floor is original; the first entrance was on the first floor, some 25 feet above the ground, at the S.W. angle of the south side, and has been transformed into a window. There was no entrance to the basement, but it was only reached by the grand staircase, which is enclosed in a round turret at the N.E. angle. There were two other stairs at the N.W. and S.W. angles, but these only began on the first floor. The basement is divided by a cross wall, which is carried up to the third storey. There are at present three storeys above the basement. The basement, which is now vaulted in brick, was not originally vaulted at all,[Pg 224] except the south-eastern chamber, under the crypt of the chapel.

The first floor, like the basement, is divided into three rooms, as, in addition to the usual cross wall, the Tower has a branch cross wall to its eastern section, which is carried up to the top. This floor was formerly only lit by loopholes; Clark states that there were two fireplaces in the east wall, but there is some doubt about this. The S.E. room contained the crypt of the chapel, which was vaulted. It is commonly supposed that the rooms on the first floor were occupied by the guards of the keep. In the account which we have quoted from Lambert of Ardres, the first floor is said to be the lord’s habitation, and the upper storey that of the guards; so that there seems to have been no invariable rule.[718] No special room was allotted to the kitchen, as in time of peace at any rate, the lord of the castle and all his retainers took their meals in a great hall in the bailey of the castle.[719] The ceilings of the two larger rooms of this floor are now supported by posts, an arrangement which is probably modern, as the present posts certainly are.[720]

The second floor contains the chapel, which in many keeps is merely an oratory, but is here of unusual size. Its eastern end is carried out in a round apse, a feature which is also found at Colchester, but is not usual in[Pg 225] Norman keeps.[721] It is a singularly fine specimen of an early Norman chapel. This floor probably contained the royal apartments; it was lighted by windows, not loops. Both the eastern and western rooms had fireplaces; the eastern room goes by the name of the Banqueting Chamber.

The third storey is on a level with the triforium of the chapel.[722] This triforium is continued all round the keep as a mural passage, and it has windows only slightly smaller than those of the floor below. These mural galleries are found in most important keeps. As their windows were of larger size than the loops which lit the lower floors, it is possible that they may have been used for defence, either for throwing down missiles or for shooting with bows and arrows. But no near aim could be taken without a downward splay to the window, and the bows of the 11th and 12th centuries were incapable of a long aim. A plausible theory is that they were intended for the march of sentinels.[723]