Windsor (Fig. 38).—Here we have another of the interesting cases in which the geld due from the tenant of a manor is lessened on account of a castle having occupied a portion of the land.[769] The Survey tells us that the castle of Windsor sits in half a hide belonging to the manor of Clewer, which had become William’s property as part of the spoils of Harold. It was now held of the king by a Norman tenant-in-chief, but whereas it was formerly rated as five hides it was now (that is, probably, since the castle was built) rated as four and a half hides. Of course we are not to suppose that the castle occupied the whole half hide, which might be some 60 acres; but it extinguished the liability of that portion. At Windsor, however, we have no occasion to press this argument as a proof that the castle was new, since it is well established that the palace of the Saxon kings was at least 2 miles from the present castle and town, in the village long known as Old Windsor, which fell into decay as the town of Windsor sprang up under the Norman castle.[770] The manor of Windsor was given by Edward the Confessor to the convent of Westminster, but recovered by the Conqueror.[771] But as the Survey shows us, he did not build his castle in the manor of Windsor, but in that of Clewer. He built it for a hunting-seat,[772] and it may have been for the purpose of recovering forest rights that he resumed possession of Old Windsor; but he placed his castle in the situation which he thought best for defence. For even a hunting-seat in Norman times was virtually a castle, as many other instances show.
It is needless to state that there is no masonry at Windsor of the time of the Conqueror, or even of the time of his son Henry I., in spite of the statement of Stowe that Henry “new builded the castle of Windsor.” This statement may perhaps be founded on a passage in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which says that Henry held his court for the first time in the New Windsor in 1110. Perhaps the Chronicle here refers to the borough of New Windsor, as an entry in the Pipe Roll of Henry I. seems to show that he was the first to enclose the burgus of Windsor.[773] For it is probable that the first stone castle at Windsor was built by Henry II., who spent £1670 on it in the course of his reign. One of his first acts after his accession was an exchange of land at Windsor, which seems to have been for the purpose of a vineyard, and was possibly the origin of the second bailey.[774] At present the position of the motte is central to the rest of the castle, but this is so unusual that it suggests the idea that the upper ward is the oldest, and that the motte stood on its outer edge. Henry II. surrounded the castle with a wall, at a cost of about 128l.[775] The other entries in the Pipe Rolls probably refer to the first stone shell on the motte, and there is little doubt that the present Round Tower, though its height has been raised in modern times, and its masonry re-dressed and re-pointed so as to destroy all appearance of antiquity, is in the main of Henry II.’s building. The frequent payments for stone show the nature of Henry’s work.
Although so much masonry was put up in Henry II.’s reign, the greater part of what is now visible is not older than the time of Henry III. The lower bailey seems to have been enlarged in his reign, as the castle ditch was extended towards the town, and compensation given for houses taken down.[776] The upper (probably the original) ward is rectangular in shape, and with the motte and its ditches covers about 6½ acres.[777] The state apartments, a chapel, and the Hall of St George, are in the upper ward, showing that this was the site of the original hall and chapel of the castle. The charter of agreement between Stephen and Henry in 1153 speaks of the motte of Windsor as equivalent to the castle.[778] Repairs of the motte are mentioned in the Pipe Rolls of Henry II.[779]
The value of the manor of Clewer had fallen since the Conquest; that of Windsor, which was worth 15l. T. R. E., but after the Conquest fell to 7l., was again worth 15l. at the date of the Survey.[780]
Wisbeach, Cambridgeshire.—William I. built a castle here in 1072, after suppressing the revolt of Hereward, in order to hold in check the Cambridgeshire fen country.[781] There is an early mention of it in the Register of Thorney Abbey. This castle, after being several times rebuilt, is now completely destroyed, and “several rows of elegant houses built on the site.” Nevertheless, there still remain distinct traces of the motte-and-bailey pattern in the gardens which now occupy the site of the original castle of King William; the present Crescent probably follows the line of the ditch. The meagre indications preserved in casual accounts confirm this. There was an inner castle of about 2 acres, just the area of the present garden enclosure, and an outer court, probably an addition, of some 4 acres.[782] Both areas were moated. Weston, a prisoner who was confined in the keep of this castle in the 17th century, has left an account of his captivity, in which he casually mentions that the keep or dungeon stood upon a high terrace, from which he could overlook the outer bailey, and was surrounded by a moat filled with water.[783]
The castle is not mentioned in Domesday, but as might be expected in a district which had been so ravaged by war, the value of the manor had fallen.
Worcester.—This borough, as we have seen, was fortified by Ethelfleda and her husband Ethelred in the 9th century. That the fortifications thus erected were those of a city and not of a castle is shown with sufficient clearness by the remarkable charter of this remarkable pair, in which they declare that they have built the burh at Worcester to shelter all the people, and the churches, and the bishop.[784] The castle is first mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 1088, and it is to be noted that it is styled the king’s castle. Urse d’Abitot, the Norman sheriff of Worcester, has the credit of having built the first castle, and Malmesbury relates that he seized part of the monks’ cemetery for the bailey.[785] The monks, however, held on to their right, and in the first year of Henry III. the bailey was restored to them by the guardians of the young king, the motte being reserved for the king’s use.[786] The first wooden castle was burnt in 1113.[787] The tower or keep which succeeded it, and which was repaired by Henry II.,[788] may have been either of stone or wood; but in the order of John, that the gateway of the castle, which is of wood, is to be made of stone, we get a hint of the gradual transformation of the castle from a wooden to a stone fortress.[789]
Worcester Castle was outside the town, from Speed’s map, and was near the Severn. The area now called College Green was no doubt the outer ward of the castle, which was restored to the convent by Henry III. The tower called Edgar’s Tower was built by the monks as the gatehouse to their newly conceded close.[790] From the map given by Green, this outer bailey appears to have been roughly square; but there was also a small oblong inner ward, retained by the king, where the gaol was afterwards built. The area of the castle is said to have been between 3 and 4 acres.[791] The motte, which is mentioned several times in mediæval documents,[792] was completely levelled in 1848; it was then found out that it had been thrown up over some previous buildings, which were believed to be Roman, though this seems doubtful.[793]
The value of Worcester had risen since the Conquest.[794]
York (Fig. 39).—William the Conqueror built two castles at York, and the mottes of both these castles remain, one underneath Clifford’s Tower, the keep of York Castle, the other, on the south side of the Ouse, still bearing the name of the Baile Hill, or the Old Baile.[795] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle implies, though it does not directly state, that both these castles were built in 1068, on the occasion of William’s first visit to York. The more detailed narrative of Ordericus shows that one was built in 1068, and the other at the beginning of 1069, on William’s second visit.[796] Both were destroyed in September 1069, when the English and Danes captured York, and both were rebuilt before Christmas of the same year, when William held his triumphant Christmas feast at York.
This speedy erection, destruction, and re-erection is enough to prove that the castles of William in York were, like most other Norman castles, hills of earth with buildings and stockades of wood, especially as we find these hills of earth still remaining on the known sites of the castles. And we may be quite sure that the Norman masonry, which Mr Freeman pictures as so eagerly destroyed by the English, never existed.[797] But the obstinate tendency of the human mind to make things out older than they are has led to these earthen hills being assigned to Britons, Romans, Saxons, Danes, anybody rather than Normans. A single passage of William of Malmesbury, in which he refers to the castrum which the Danes had built at York in the reign of Athelstan, is the sole vestige of basis for the theory that the motte of Clifford’s Tower is of Danish origin.[798] The other theories have absolutely no foundation but conjecture. If Malmesbury was quoting from some older source which is now lost, it is extremely probable that the word castrum which he copied, did not mean a castle in our sense of the word at all, but was a translation of the word burh, which almost certainly referred to a vallum or wall constructed round the Danish suburb outside the walls of York. Such a suburb there was, for there in 1055 stood the Danish church of St Olave, in which Earl Siward was buried, and the suburb was long known as the Earlsburgh or Earl’s Burh, probably because it contained the residence of the Danish earls of Northumbria.[799] This suburb was not anywhere near Clifford’s Tower, but in quite a different part of the city. To prove that both the mottes were on entirely new sites, we have the assurance of Domesday Book that out of the seven shires or wards into which the city was divided, one was laid waste for the castles; so that there was clearly a great destruction of houses to make room for the new castles.[800]
What has been assumed above receives striking confirmation from excavations made recently (1903) in the motte of Clifford’s Tower. At the depth of 13 feet were found remains of a wooden structure, surmounted by a quantity of charred wood.[801] Now the accounts of the destruction of the castles in 1069 do not tell us that they were burned, but thrown down and broken to pieces.[802] But the keep which was restored by William, and on the repair of which Henry II. spent 15l. in 1172,[803] was burnt down in the frightful massacre of the Jews at York Castle in 1190.[804] The excavations disclosed the interesting fact that this castle stood on a lower motte than the present one, and that when the burnt keep was replaced by a new one the motte was raised to its present height, “an outer crust of firmer and more clayey material being made round the older summit, and a lighter material placed inside this crater to bring it up to the necessary level.” This restoration must have taken place in the third year of Richard I., when 28l. was spent “on the work of the castle.”[805] This small sum shows that the new keep also was of wood; and remains of timber work were in fact found on the top of the motte during the excavations, though unfortunately they were not sufficiently followed up to determine whether they belonged to a wooden tower or to a platform intended to consolidate the motte.[806] It is extremely likely that this third keep was blown down by the high wind of 1228, when 2s. was paid “for collecting the timber of York Castle blown down by the wind.”[807] In its place arose the present keep, one of the most remarkable achievements of the reign of Henry III.[808] The old ground-plan of the square Norman keep was now abandoned, and replaced by a quatrefoil. The work occupied thirteen years, from the 30th to the 43rd Henry III., and the total sum expended was 1927l. 8s. 7d., equal to about 40,000l. of our money. This remarkable fact has slumbered in the unpublished Pipe Rolls for 700 years, never having been unearthed by any of the numerous historians of York.
The keep was probably the first work in stone at York Castle, and for a long time it was probably the only defensive masonry. The banks certainly had only a wooden stockade in the early part of Henry III.’s reign, as timber from the forest of Galtres was ordered for the repair of breaches in the palicium in 1225.[809] As late as Edward II.’s reign there was a pelum, or stockade, round the keep, on top of a murus, which was undoubtedly an earthen bank.[810] At present the keep occupies the whole top of the motte except a small chemin de ronde, but the fact so frequently alluded to in the writs, that a stockade ran round the keep, proves that a small courtyard existed there formerly, as was usually the case with important keeps. Another writ of Edward II.’s reign shows that the motte was liable to injury from the floods of the River Fosse,[811] and probably its size has thus been reduced.
The present bailey of York Castle does not follow the lines of the original one, but is an enlargement made in 1825. A plan made in 1750, and reproduced here, shows that the motte was surrounded by its own ditch, which is now filled up, and that the bailey, around which a branch of the Fosse was carried, was of the very common bean-shaped form; it was about 3 acres in extent. The motte and bailey were both considerably outside what is believed to have been the Anglo-Saxon rampart of York,[812] but the motte was so placed as to overlook the city.
The value of the city of York, in spite of the sieges and sacks which it had undergone, and in spite of there being 540 houses “so empty that they pay nothing at all,” had risen at the date of the Survey from 53l. in King Edward’s time to 100l. in King William’s.[813] This extraordinary rise in value can only be attributed to increased trade and increased exactions, the former being promoted by the greater security given to the roads by the castles, the latter due to the tolls on the high-roads and waterways, which belonged to the king, and the various “customs” belonging to the castles, which, though new, were henceforth equally part of his rights.
The Baile Hill, York (Fig. 39).—There can be no doubt whatever that this still existing motte was the site of one of William’s castles at York, and it is even probable that it was the older of the two, as Mr Cooper conjectures from its position on the south side of the river.[814] The castle bore the name of the Old Baile at least as early as the 14th century, perhaps even in the 12th.[815] In 1326 a dispute arose between the citizens of York and Archbishop William de Melton as to which of them ought to repair the wall around the Old Baile. The mayor alleged that the district was under the express jurisdiction of the archbishop, exempt from that of the city; the archbishop pleaded that it stood within the ditches of the city.[816] The meaning of this dispute can only be understood in the light of facts which have recently been unearthed by the industry and observation of Mr T. P. Cooper, of York.[817] The Old Baile, like so many of William’s castles, originally stood outside the ramparts of the city. The original Roman walls of York (it is believed) enclosed only a small space on the eastern shore of the Ouse, and before the Norman Conquest the city had far outgrown these bounds, and therefore had been enlarged in Anglo-Saxon times. It appears that the Micklegate suburb was then for the first time enclosed with a wall, and as this district is spoken of in Domesday Book as “the shire of the archbishop,” it was evidently under his jurisdiction. At a later period this wall was buried in an earthen bank, which probably carried a palisade on top, until the palisade was replaced by stone walls in the reign of Henry III.[818]
The evidence of the actual remains renders it more than probable that this rampart turned towards the river at a point 500 feet short of its present angle, so that the Old Baile, when first built, was quite outside the city walls.[819] This is exactly how we should expect to find a castle of William the Norman’s in relation to one of the most turbulent cities of the realm; and, as we have seen, the other castle at York was similarly placed. By the time of Archbishop Melton the south-western suburb was already enclosed in the new stone walls built in the 13th century, and these walls had been carried along the west and south banks of the Old Baile, so as to enclose that castle within the city. This was the archbishop’s pretext for trying to lay upon the citizens the duty of maintaining the Old Baile. But probably on account of his ancient authority in this part of the city, the cause went against him; though he stipulated that whatever he did in the way of fortification was of his own option, and was not to be accounted a precedent. A contemporary chronicler says that he enclosed the Old Baile first with stout planks 18 feet long, afterwards with a stone wall:[820] an interesting proof that wooden fortifications were still used in the reign of Edward III.
Though the base court of the Old Baile is now built over, its area and ditches were visible in Leland’s time,[821] and can still be guessed at by the indications Mr Cooper has noted. The area of the bailey must have been nearly 3 acres, and its shape nearly square. This measurement includes the motte, which was placed in the south-west corner on the line of the banks; it thus overlooked the river as well as the city.[822]
Motte-castles are as common in Wales as they are in England, and in certain districts much more common. It is now our task to show how they got there. They were certainly not built (in the first instance at any rate) by the native inhabitants, for they do not correspond to what we know to have been the state of society in Wales during the Anglo-Saxon period.[823] The Welsh were then in the tribal condition, a condition, as we have shown, inconsistent with the existence of the private castle. The residence of the king or chieftain, as we know from the Welsh Laws, was a great hall, such as seems to have been the type of chieftains’ residence among all the northern nations at that time. “It was adapted for the joint occupation of a number of tribesmen living together.”[824]
Pennant describes the residence of Ednowen, a Welsh chieftain of the 12th century, as follows: “The remains are about 30 yards square; the entrance about 7 feet wide, with a large upright stone on each side for a doorcase; the walls were formed of large stones uncemented by any mortar; in short the structure shows the very low state of Welsh architecture at this time; it may be paralleled only by the artless fabric of a cattle-house.”[825] This certainly is a hall and not a castle.
The so-called Dimetian Code indeed tells us that the king is to have a man and a horse from every hamlet, with hatchets for constructing his castles (gestyll) at the king’s cost; but the Venedotian Code, which is the older MS., says that these hatchet-men are to form encampments (uuesten); that is, they are to cut down trees and form either stockades on banks or rude zerebas for the protection of the host.[826] It is clearly laid down in the Codes what buildings the king’s villeins are to erect for him at his residences: a hall, buttery, kitchen, dormitory, stable, dog-house, and little house.[827] In none of these lists is anything mentioned which has the smallest resemblance to a castle, not even a tower. We can imagine that these buildings were enclosed in an earthwork or stockade, but it is not mentioned.[828]
Wales was never one state, except for very short periods. Normally it was divided into three states, Gwynedd or North Wales, Powys or Mid-Wales, and Deheubarth, all almost incessantly at war with each other.[829] Other subdivisions asserted themselves as opportunity offered, so that the above rough division into provinces must not be regarded as always accurate. A Wales thus divided, and perpetually rent by internal conflicts, invited the aggression of the Saxons, and it is probable that the complete subjugation of Britain would have been accomplished by the descendants of Alfred, if it had not been for the Danish invasions. The position of the Welsh kings after the time of Athelstan seems to have been that of tributaries, who threw off their allegiance whenever it was possible to do so. But still the Anglo-Saxon frontier continued to advance. Professor Lloyd has shown, from a careful examination of Domesday Book, that even before the Norman Conquest the English held the greater part of what is now Flintshire and East Denbighshire, and were advancing into the vale of Montgomery and the Radnor district.[830] The victories of Griffith ap Llywelyn, an able prince who succeeded in bringing all Wales under his sway, devastated these English colonies; but his defeat by Earl Harold in 1063 restored the English ascendancy over these regions. The unimpeachable evidence of Domesday Book shows that a considerable district in North Wales and a portion of Radnor were held respectively by Earl Edwin and Earl Harold before the Norman Conquest. Moreover, the fact mentioned by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 1065, that Harold was building a hunting-seat for King Edward at Portskewet, after he had subdued it, suggests that the land between Wye and Usk, which Domesday Book reckons under Gloucestershire, was a conquest of Harold’s.[831]
The Norman Conqueror was not the man to slacken his hold on any territory which had been won by the Saxons. But there is no succinct history of his conquests in Wales; we have to make it out, in most cases, from notices that are scarcely more than allusive, and from the surer, though scanty, ground of documents. It is noteworthy that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is so hostile to the Norman kings that it discounts their successes in Wales. Thus we have only the briefest notice of William I.’s invasion of South Wales, which was very probably the beginning of the conquest of that region; and several expeditions of William II. are spoken of as entirely futile, though as we are told that the existing castles were still held by the Normans, or new ones were built, it is clear that this summing-up is not strictly correct.[832] Our Welsh authorities, the Annales Cambriæ and the Brut y Tywysogion,[833] seem to give a fairly candid account of the period, although the dates in the Brut are for the most part wrong (sometimes by three years), and they hardly ever give us a view of the situation as a whole. They tell us when the Welsh rushed down and burnt the castles built by the Normans in the conquered districts, but do not always tell when the Normans recovered and rebuilt them.
Fortunately we are not called upon here to trace the history of the cruel and barbarous warfare between Normans and Welsh. No one can turn that bloodstained page without wishing that the final conquest had come two hundred years earlier, to put an end to the tragedy of suffering which must have been so largely the portion of the dwellers in Wales and the Marches after the coming of the Normans.[834] Our business with both Welsh and Normans is purely archæological. We hold no brief for the Normans, nor does it matter to us whether they kept their hold on Wales or were driven out by the Welsh; our concern is with facts, and the solid facts with which we have to deal are the castles whose remains still exist in Wales, and whose significance we have to interpret.
“Wales was under his sway, and he built castles therein,” says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in summing up the reign of the Conqueror; a passage which is scarcely consistent with its previous almost complete silence about events in Wales. There can be little doubt that William aimed at a complete conquest of Wales, and that the policy he adopted was the creation of great earldoms along the Welsh border, endowed with special privileges, one of which was the right of conquering whatever they could from the Welsh.[835] To these earldoms he appointed some of his strongest men, men little troubled by scruples of justice or mercy, but capable leaders in war or diplomacy. It was an essential part of the plan that every conquest should be secured by the building of castles, just as had been done in England. And we have now to trace very briefly the outline of Norman conquest in Wales by the castles which they have left behind them.
We shall confine ourselves to those castles which are mentioned in the Brut y Tywysogion, the Pipe Rolls, or other trustworthy documents between 1066 and 1216, the end of King John’s reign. Of many of these castles only the earthworks remain; of many others the original plan, exactly similar to that of the early castles of Normandy and France, is still to be traced, though masked by the masonry of a later age. Grose remarked but could not explain the fact that we continually read of the castles of the Marches being burnt and utterly destroyed, and a few months later we find them again standing and in working order. This can only, but easily, be explained when we understand that they were wooden castles built on mottes, quickly restored after a complete destruction of the wooden buildings.
North Wales appears to have been the earliest conquest of the Normans, though not the most lasting. North Wales comprised the Welsh kingdoms of Gwynedd and Powys. Gwynedd covered the present shires of Anglesea, Carnarvon, and Merioneth, and the mountainous districts round Snowdon.[836] Powys stretched from the estuary of the Dee to the upper course of the Wye, and roughly included Flint, Denbigh, Montgomery, and Radnor shires. Hugh of Avranches, Earl of Chester, was the great instrument of Norman conquest in Gwynedd, and in the northern part of Powys, which lay so near his own dominions. He was evidently a man in whose ability William had great confidence, as he removed him from Tutbury to the more difficult and dangerous position of Chester, and gave his earldom palatine privileges; all the land in Cheshire was held under the earl, and he was a sort of little king in his county.
Hugh appears to have at once commenced the conquest of North Wales. As Professor Lloyd remarks, Domesday Book shows us Deganwy as the most advanced Norman post on the North Welsh coast, while on the Bristol Channel they had got no further than Caerleon.[837] In advancing to the valley of the Clwyd and building a castle at Rhuddlan, the Normans were only securing the district which had already been conquered by Harold in 1063, when he burnt the hall of King Griffith at Rhuddlan. Nearly the whole of Flintshire (its manors are enumerated by Domesday Book under Cheshire) was held by Earl Hugh in 1086, so that he commanded the entire road from Chester to Rhuddlan. His powerful vassal, Robert of Rhuddlan, who became the terror of North Wales, besides the lands which he held of Earl Hugh, held also directly of the King Rhos and Rhufeniog, districts which roughly correspond to the modern shire of Denbigh, and “Nort Wales” which Professor Lloyd takes to mean the remainder of the principality of Gwynedd, from which the rightful ruler, Griffith ap Cynan, had been driven as an exile to Ireland.
It does not appear that there was any fortification at Rhuddlan[838] before the “castle newly erected” by Earl Hugh and his vassal Robert. They shared between them the castle and the new borough which was built near it.[839] One word about this new borough, which will apply to the other boroughs planted by Norman castles. There were no towns in Wales of any importance before the Norman Conquest, and this civilising institution of the borough is the one great set-off to the cruelty and unrighteousness of the conquest. Mills, markets, and trade arose where castles were seated, and civilisation followed in their train.
The castle of Hugh and Robert was not the magnificent building which still stands at Rhuddlan, for that is entirely the work of Edward I., and there is documentary evidence that Edward made a purchase of new land for the site of his castle.[840] More probably Robert and Hugh had a wooden castle on the now reduced motte which may be seen to the south of Edward’s castle. In Gough’s time this motte was still “surrounded with a very deep ditch, including the abbey.” Nothing can be seen of this ditch now, except on the south side of the motte, where a deep ravine runs up from the river. As from Gough’s description the hillock (called Tut Hill)[841] was within the precincts of the priory of Black Friars, founded in the 13th century, it is extremely probable that Edward gave the site of the old castle to the Dominicans when he built his new one.[842]
Another of the castles of Robert of Rhuddlan was Deganwy, or Gannoc, which defended the mouth of the Conway.[843] Here it is said that there was an ancient seat of the kings of Gwynedd.[844] The two conical hills which rise here offer an excellent site for fortification, one of them being large enough on top for a considerable camp. The Norman Conqueror treated them as two mottes, and connected them by walls so as to form a bailey below them. The stone fortifications are probably the remains of the castle built by the Earl of Chester in 1211.[845] This castle was naturally a sorely contested point, and often passed from hand to hand; but it was in English possession in the reign of Henry III. It was abandoned when Edward I. built his great castle at Conway.
With its usual indifference, the Survey mentions no castle in Flintshire, but we may be sure that the castle of Mold, or Montalto (Fig. 40), was one of the earliest by which the Norman acquisitions in that region were defended,[846] though it is not mentioned in authentic history until 1147. The tradition that it was built by Robert de Monte Alto, one of the barons of the Earl of Chester, is no doubt correct, though the assumption of Welsh legend-makers that the Gwydd Grug, or great tumulus, from which this castle derives its Welsh name, existed before the castle, may be dismissed as baseless. The motte of Robert de Monte Alto still exists, and is uncommonly high and perfect; it has two baileys, separated by great ditches, and appears to have had a shell on top. [D. H. M.] The castle was regarded as specially strong, and its reduction by Owen Gwynedd in 1147 was one of the sweetest triumphs that the Welsh ever won.[847]
It is clear from the Life of Griffith ap Cynan[848] that the Earl of Chester had conquered and incastellated Gwynedd before the accession of William Rufus. This valuable document unfortunately gives no dates, but it mentions in particular the castle at Aberlleinog,[849] one at Carnarvon, one at Bangor, and one in Merioneth. The motte at Aberlleinog, near Beaumaris, still exists, and the half-moon bailey is traceable, but the curious little round towers and revetting wall in masonry on the motte were probably built to carry guns at the time of the Civil War, when this castle was besieged by the Royalists. At Carnarvon the magnificent castle of Edward I. has displaced all former erections, yet some evidence for a motte-and-bailey plan may be found in the fact that the northern portion of the castle has evidently been once separated by a ditch from the southern, and is also much higher.[850] On the hills above Bangor, Pennant thought he had discovered the remains of Earl Hugh’s castle, but having carefully examined these walls, we are convinced that they never formed part of a castle at all, as they are much too thin; nor are there any vestiges of earthworks.[851] We are disposed to think that instead of at Bangor, the castle of Earl Hugh was at Aber, often spoken of as Abermenai in the Chronicles, and evidently the most important port on the Straits. At Aber there still remains a motte which must have belonged to an important castle, as it was afterwards one of the seats of Llywelyn ap Jorwerth, Prince of Gwynedd. The castle in Merioneth cannot be certainly identified.
In one of the invasions of William Rufus, which both the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Brut describe as so unsuccessful, we hear that he encamped at Mur Castell, a place undoubtedly the same as what is now called Tomen-y-Mur, a motte standing just inside a Roman camp, on the Roman road leading from Shropshire into Merioneth and Carnarvon. This motte is surrounded by a ditch; there are traces of the usual earthen rampart round the top, now mutilated by landslips.[852] We may, with great probability, assume that this motte was thrown up by William Rufus, and that the Roman camp served as a bailey for his invading host. Whether it was garrisoned for the Normans we cannot say, but it evidently formed an important post on a route often followed by their invading armies, as Henry I. is said to have encamped there twice.[853] It is one of the few mottes which stand in a wild and mountainous situation, and its purpose no doubt was purely military.[854]
The earls of Chester did not retain the sovereignty of Gwynedd; on the death of Rufus, Griffith ap Cynan returned, and obtained possession of Anglesea. He was favourably received at the court of Henry I., and gradually recovered possession of the whole of Gwynedd. In 1114 Henry had to undertake a great expedition against him to enforce the payment of tribute;[855] from which, and from the peaceful manner in which Griffith seems to have acquired his principality, we may infer that this tribute was the bargain of his possession. It very likely suited Henry’s policy better to have a tributary Welsh prince than a too powerful earl of Chester.
The reigns of the three first Norman kings were the time in which Norman supremacy in Wales made its greatest advances. With the accession of Stephen and the civil war which followed it came the great opportunity for the Welsh of throwing off the Norman yoke. Powys appears to have been the only province which remained faithful to the English allegiance, under Madoc ap Meredith.[856] The history of Norman conquest in Powys is more confused than that of Gwynedd, but Domesday shows us that Rainald, the Sheriff of Shropshire, a vassal of Earl Roger of Shrewsbury, was seated at Edeyrnion and Cynlle, two districts along the upper valley of the Dee.[857] Robert of Rhuddlan held part of his grant of “Nort Wales,” namely the hundred of Arwystli, in the very centre of Wales, under Earl Roger. Professor Lloyd remarks, “Earl Roger claimed the same authority over Powys as Earl Hugh over Gwynedd, and the theory that the princes of this region were subject to the lords of Salop survived the fall of the House of Montgomery.”[858]
We have already spoken of Earl Roger de Montgomeri and his brood of able and unscrupulous sons.[859] The palatine earldom of Shrewsbury lay along the eastern border of central Powys, and must soon have proved a menace to that Welsh kingdom. Domesday Book shows us that Earl Roger had already planted his castle of Montgomery well within the Welsh border at that date. But the ambition of Earl Roger and his sons stretched beyond their immediate borders. It is probable that they used the upper Severn valley, which they fortified by the castle of Montgomery, and possibly by the castle of Welshpool, as their road into Ceredigion, for we find Earl Roger named by the Brut as the builder of the castle of Cilgerran,[860] and some say of Cardigan also. Possibly he was helping his son Arnolf in the conquest of Pembroke. In 1098 we find his successor, Earl Hugh, allied with the Earl of Chester in the invasion of Anglesea.
Montgomery.—This castle is named from the ancestral seat of its founder.[861] The motte-and-bailey plan is still very apparent in the ruins, though the motte is represented by a precipitous rock, only a few feet higher than the baileys attached, and separated from them by a ditch cut through the headland. The masonry, the chief part of which is the shell wall and towers on this isolated rock, is none of it older than the reign of Henry III., when large sums were spent on this castle, and it is spoken of in a writ as “the new Castle of Montgomery.”[862] Yet even then the whole of the defences were not remade in stone, as bretasches of timber are ordered in a mandamus of 1223.[863] The four wards are all roughly rectilateral. The castle was never recovered permanently by the Welsh, and after the forfeiture of Robert Belesme, the third Earl of Shrewsbury, in 1101, the Crown kept this important border fortress in its own hands throughout the Middle Ages.
Although Montgomery Castle is the only one mentioned in that region at the same date, there must have been many others, for in 1225 Henry III. ordered all who had mottes in the valley of Montgomery to fortify them with good bretasches without delay;[864] and the remains of these mottes are still numerous in the valley. It is quite possible that the mottes at Moat Lane and Llandinam were thrown up to defend the road into Arwystli; but this is conjecture.[865]
Welshpool, alias Pol or Pool (Fig. 40), is also called the Castle of Trallung.—In Powell’s History of Wales (p. 137) it is stated that Cadwgan ap Bleddyn, when Henry I. took Cardigan from him, retired to Powys, and began to build a castle here. Powell’s statements, however, have no authority when unconfirmed, and we are unable to find any confirmation of this statement in the more trustworthy version of the Brut. And as the House of Montgomeri was firmly established in the valley of Montgomery as early as 1086, it seems more probable that the two motte-and-bailey castles at Welshpool, lower down the Severn valley, are relics of the early progress of that family, especially as one of these castles is only about a mile east of Offa’s Dyke, the ancient border. This latter motte is partly cut into by the railway, and diminished in size, but the bailey is nearly perfect. The other one is in the park of Powys Castle, and is an admirable specimen of its class. The breastwork round the top of the motte remains. [H. W.] It seems probable that this was the precursor of Powys Castle, and was abandoned at an early period, as the newer castle was known by the name of Castell Coch, or the Red Castle, as early as 1233.[866] Leland states that there were formerly two castles of two different Lords Marchers at Welshpool;[867] possibly this throws some light on the existence of these two motte-castles.
When Henry II. came to the throne in 1154, one of the many questions which he had to settle was the Welsh question. His first expedition against North Wales was in 1157. Here he was one day placed in grave difficulties, and fortune was only restored by his personal courage. But in spite of this we learn even from the Welsh chronicler that he continued his advance to Rhuddlan, and that the object of the expedition, which was the restoration of Cadwalader, one of the sons of Griffith ap Cynan, to his lands, was accomplished. The English chronicler Roger of Wendover says that Henry recovered all the fortresses which had been taken from his predecessors, and rebuilt Basingwerk Castle; and when he had reduced the Welsh to submission, returned in triumph to England. The undoubted facts of the Pipe Rolls show us that in the year 1159 Henry had in his hands the castles of Overton, Hodesley, Wrexham, Dernio, Ruthin, and Rhuddlan, castles which would give him command of the whole of Flintshire and of East Denbigh and the valley of the Clwyd. Similarly, after the expedition of 1165, sometimes stated to have been only disastrous, we find him in possession of the castles of Rhuddlan, Basingwerk, Prestatyn, Mold, Overton, and Chirk;[868] so that after the battle of Crogen, or Chirk, he actually held the battlefield.
We are thus introduced to an entirely new group of castles, Rhuddlan being the only one which we have heard of before. But it is highly probable that most of these castles were originally raised by the earls of Chester or Shrewsbury, and were in Henry’s hands by escheat.
*Basingwerk.—The werk referred to in this name has probably nothing to do with the castle, but refers to Wat’s Dyke, which reaches the Dee at this point. The abbey at this place was founded by an earl of Chester,[869] which makes it probable that the castle also was originally his work, especially as Wendover says that Henry rebuilt it. There is no trace of a castle near the abbey,[870] but less than a mile off, near Holywell Church, there is a headland called Bryn y Castell, with a small mound at the farther end, which has far more claim to be the site of Basingwerk Castle, especially as it is mentioned in John’s reign (when it was retaken from the Welsh) as the castle of Haliwell.[871]
Overton, in East Denbigh, on the middle course of the Dee. In custody of Roger de Powys for the king in 1159-1160. As Leland speaks of the ditches and hill of the castle, it was probably a motte-castle of the usual type. “One parte of the ditches and Hille of the castel yet remaynith; the residew is in the botom of Dee.”[872] It is probably all there now, as not a vestige can be traced. [B. T. S.]
Dernio, or Dernant.—There can be no question that Dernio is Edeyrnion, the valley stretching from Bala Lake to Corwen. Domesday Book tells us that Rainald the Sheriff, a “man” of Earl Roger of Shrewsbury, held two “fines” in Wales, Chenlei and Dernio, that is, Cynllaith and Edeyrnion.[873] Towards the end of the 11th century there must have been a Norman castle at Rug in Edeyrnion, as it was to this place that the earls of Chester and Shrewsbury enticed Griffith ap Cynan, the rightful ruler of Gwynedd; they then sent him prisoner to Chester for twelve years.[874] Very likely the castle of Dernio, which Henry II. was putting into a state of defence in 1159,[875] was at Rug, 1½ miles from Corwen, where there is still a motte in some private grounds, and there was formerly a bailey also.[876] The place was the seat of an important family in later times. At any rate, the castle was in Edeyrnion, and shows that Henry was holding the northern part of Merionethshire.
Hodesley; undoubtedly “The Rofts” near Gresford, a motte with remains of a bailey, on a headland above the river Alyn. It is in the former lordship of Hoseley.[877]
Wrexham, the Wristlesham of the Pipe Rolls (Fig. 40).—Henry was paying for the custody of this castle and that of Hoseley in 1160 and 1161. Both castles are in the district of Bromfield, which was one of the early acquisitions of the earls of Chester. Mr Palmer remarks that this district was probably ceded to the princes of Powys, in return for the help which they often rendered to the English king against other Welsh princes, as it is found as part of Powys at a later period.[878] There are no remains of any castle at Wrexham itself, but about a mile off, in Erddig Park, there is a motte and bailey of considerable size (though the motte is reduced) showing that a castle of some importance once stood there. There were formerly some remains of masonry.[879] Wat’s Dyke has been utilised to form one side of the bailey. It is probable that the importance of the two Bromfield castles, Wrexham and Hoseley, was lost when the princes of Powys built their castle on Dinas Bran.
*Ruthin.—This important castle, defending the upper valley of the Clwyd, was probably in existence long before Henry II. repaired it in 1160, and may perhaps be attributed to Earl Hugh of Chester. The plan shows distinctly that it was once a motte and bailey, though the castle is now transformed into a modern house.[880]
Chirk, or Crogen, in the valley of the Ceiriog.—Henry was paying for the custody of this castle in 1164, and was provisioning it in 1167.[881] King John paid for the erection of a bretasche there, possibly after some destruction by the Welsh.[882] Probably the first castle of Chirk did not stand in the commanding situation now occupied by the castle of Edward I.’s reign, but is represented by a small motte in a garden near the Ceiriog stream, and close to the church. An Anglo-Norman poem of the 13th century attributes the first building of this castle to William Peverel, Lord of Whittington and Ellesmere, and says he placed it “on the water of Ceiriog.”[883] No doubt it defended the passage of the stream, and an important road into Shropshire.
Prestatyn.—This castle defended the coast road from Chester to Rhuddlan. Henry II. granted it to Robert Banaster for his services in 1165.[884] It was destroyed by Owen Gwynedd in 1167, and does not appear to have been rebuilt. A low motte with a half-moon bailey, and a larger square enclosure, still remain. [B. T. S.]
Mr Davis has remarked that John was more successful in extending his authority over the British Isles than in anything else.[885] In 1211 he led an expedition into the heart of Wales, and reduced his son-in-law Llywelyn ap Jorwerth to complete submission. As usual, the expedition was marked by the building or repair of castles. The Earl of Chester restored Deganwy, which shows that the English frontier was again advanced to the Conway; he also repaired the castle of Holywell, which the Pipe Roll shows to have been recovered from the Welsh about this time.[886] These Rolls also show that in 1212-1213 John was paying for works at the castles of Carreghova, Ruthin, and Chirk, as well as at the following castles, which have not been mentioned before.
Mathraval, Madrael in the Pipe Rolls (Fig. 40), near Meifod in Montgomeryshire, defending the valley of the Vyrnwy.—Here was the chief royal residence of Powys;[887] but the castle was built in John’s reign by Roger de Vipont. It occupied 2¼ acres, and the motte is in one corner of the area, which is square,[888] and surrounded only by banks; though ruined foundations are found in parts of the castle. John himself burned the castle in 1211, when the Welsh were besieging it,[889] but the Pipe Roll (1212-1213) shows that he afterwards repaired it. [D. H. M.]
Egloe, or Eulo, called by Leland Castle Yollo.—On the Chester and Holywell road, about 8 miles from Holywell. The mention in the Pipe Roll of pikes and ammunition provided for this castle in 1212-1213 is the first ancient allusion to it with which we are acquainted. It is a motte-and-bailey castle, with additions in masonry which are probably of the reign of Henry III. The keep is of the “thimble” plan, a rare instance.[890] [B. T. S.]
*Yale.—The Brut tells us that in 1148 (read 1150) Owen Gwynedd built a castle in Yale. Powell identified this with Tomen y Rhodwydd, a motte and bailey on the road between Llangollen and Ruthin. Yale, however, is the name of a district, and there can be little doubt that the castle of Yale was the motte and bailey at Llanarmon, which for a long period was the caput of Yale.[891] Yale undoubtedly belonged to the Normans when Domesday Book was compiled,[892] and it is therefore not unlikely that these earthworks were first thrown up by the Earl of Chester. The castle was burnt by Jorwerth Goch in 1158, but restored by John in 1212. One of the expenses entered for that year is “for iron mallets for breaking the rocks in the ditch of the castle of Yale.”[893] This ditch cut in the rock still remains, as well as some foundations on the motte,[894] which is known as Tomen y Vardra, or the Mount of the demesne.[895]
How long the two last-mentioned groups of castles continued in Anglo-Norman hands we do not attempt to say. North Wales, as is well known, reaped a harvest of new power and prosperity through the civil war of the end of John’s reign, and the ability of Llywelyn ap Jorwerth. Our task ends with the reign of John. We have only to remark that until the Pipe Rolls of Henry III.’s reign have been carefully searched, it is impossible to say with certainty what castles of North Wales, or if any, were still held by the English king.