Castles in Britain
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A number of castles in Britain are important to the history of England during the Norman Conquest and the centuries following. For two centuries after the Norman Conquest, castles proved of primary consequence in English political struggles, revolts and warfare.
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[edit] Norman England
The castles that existed in England at the time of the Norman Conquest seem to have offered little resistance to William of Normandy. Immediately after the Conquest, William, wishing to guard against invasions from without as well as to awe his newly-acquired subjects, began to erect castles all over the kingdom, and to repair and improve the old ones. Moreover, William had parceled out the lands of the English among his followers, who built strongholds and castles on their estates.[1] These "adulterine" (i.e. unauthorized) castles multiplied so rapidly during the troubled reign of King Stephen that they were said by Robert of Torigny to have amounted to 1115.[2]
In earlier times, when the interest of the king and his barons was identical, the king had only retained in his hands the castles in the chief towns of the shires, which were entrusted to his sheriffs or constables. But the great feudal revolts under the Conqueror and his sons showed that to have such fortresses in private hands was a formidable obstacle to the rule of the king. The people hated the castles from the first for the oppressions connected with their erection and maintenance.
It was, therefore, the settled policy of the crown to strengthen the royal castles and increase their number, while jealously keeping in check those of the barons. But in the struggle between Stephen and the Empress Matilda for the crown, which became largely a war of sieges, the royal power was relaxed and there was an outburst of castle-building, without permission, by the barons. The barons in many cases acted as petty kings.[3]
[edit] England under the Plantagenets
These excesses paved the way for the pacification at the close of Stephen's reign, when it was provided that all unauthorized castles constructed during its course should be destroyed. Henry II, in spite of his power, was warned by the great revolt against him that he must still rely on castles, and the massive keeps of Newcastle upon Tyne and Dover date from this period.
Under his sons the importance of the chief castles was recognized as so great that the struggle for their control was in the forefront of every contest. When Richard I made vast grants at his accession to his brother John, he was careful to reserve the possession of certain castles, and when John rose against the king's minister, William Longchamp, in 1191, the custody of castles was the chief point of dispute throughout their negotiations. Lincoln was besieged on the king's behalf, as were Tickhill, Windsor and Marlborough, while the siege of Nottingham had to be completed by Richard himself on his arrival.
To John, in turn, as king, the fall of Château Gaillard meant the loss of Rouen and of Normandy with it, and when he endeavoured to repudiate the newly-granted Magna Carta, his first step was to prepare the royal castles against attack and make them his centres of resistance. The barons, who had begun their revolt by besieging the castle of Northampton, now assailed that of Oxford as well and seized that of Rochester. The king recovered Rochester after a severe struggle[4] and captured Tonbridge, but thenceforth there was a war of sieges between John with his mercenaries and Louis with his Frenchmen and the barons, which was especially notable for the great defence of Dover Castle by Hubert de Burgh against Louis.
On the final triumph of the royal cause, after John's death, at the Battle of Lincoln, the general pacification was accompanied by a fresh issue of the Great Charter in the autumn of 1217, in which the precedent of Stephen's reign was followed and a special clause inserted that all "adulterine" castles, namely those which had been constructed or rebuilt since the breaking out of war between John and the barons, should be immediately destroyed. And special stress was laid on this in the writs addressed to the sheriffs.
In 1223 Hubert de Burgh, as regent, demanded the surrender to the crown of all royal castles not in official custody. Although he succeeded in this, Falkes de Breauté, John's mercenary, burst into revolt the next year, and it cost a great national effort and a siege of nearly two months to reduce Bedford Castle, which he had held.
Towards the close of Henry III's reign, in the Second Barons' War, castles again asserted their importance. The Provisions of Oxford included a list of the chief royal castles and of their appointed castellans with the oath that they were to take; but the alien favourites refused to make way for them till they were forcibly ejected. When war broke out it was Rochester Castle that successfully held Simon de Montfort at bay in 1264. In Pevensey Castle, the fugitives from the rout of Lewes were able to defy Henry's power. Finally, after his fall at Evesham, the remnant of his followers made their last stand in Kenilworth Castle, holding out nearly five months against all the forces of the crown, till their provisions failed them at the close of 1266.
Although, when the country was again torn by civil strife, the castles' military importance was of small account, the crown's historic jealousy of private fortification was still seen in the need to obtain the king's licence to crenellate (i.e. embattle) the country mansion.[5]
[edit] References
- ^ Colby, Charles William (1899). Selections from the Sources of English History, p. 52. New York: Longmans, Green and Co.
- ^ Coulson, Charles. "The Castles of the Anarchy" in King, Edmund (ed.) (1994), The Anarchy of King Stephen's Reign, p. 69. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198203640.
- ^ Bartlett, Robert (2000). England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075-1225, pp. 285-86. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0199251010.
- ^ Kaufmann, J. E. and Kaufmann, H. W. (2004). The Medieval Fortress: Castles, Forts and Walled Cities of the Middle Ages, p. 195. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0306813580.
- ^ Low, Sidney J. and Pulling, F. S. (1884). The Dictionary of English History, p. 233. Lodon, Paris, New York & Melbourne: Cassell & Company, Limited.
