OF THE POLITICAL VALUE OF CASTLES UNDER THE SUCCESSORS OF THE CONQUEROR.

IT is rather remarkable that castles should not occupy, even incidentally, a more prominent place in the “Domesday Survey,” as they formed a very important feature in the country; were closely, for the most part, attached to landed property; and were of great political importance. No great baron was without a castle upon each of his principal estates, nor was any bishop secure of his personal safety unless so provided. At the death of the Conqueror, it was the possession of Winchester Castle that gave to William Rufus the royal treasure, and enabled his adherents to acquire the castles of Dover and Hastings, and thus, at the commencement of his reign, to secure a safe communication with Normandy. The king, it is true, had the people on his side and owed his eventual success to their support, but the barons of his party depended largely upon their fortresses. Archbishop Lanfranc held Saltwood, which the earthworks show even then to have been strong; Willam de Warren held Lewes and Ryegate and the strong hill of Coningsburgh in Yorkshire; Chester belonged to Earl Hugh, who was supported by his fifteen barons, each of whom had his castle; and in North Wales the Earl held Diganwy, which, covered in front by the Conwy water, closed the seaward pass from that aggressive district. With the Earl and on the side of Rufus were Robert de Tilliol, who held Flint and Rhuddlan, and Scaleby and other castles on the Scottish border; while Bishop Wolstan, representing the English feeling, held his episcopal castle of Worcester against Urso d’Abitot and a swarm of Marcher barons who crossed the Severn to assail him.

Nevertheless, the lords of the castles were mostly on the side of Duke Robert. Such were Alan the Black and Ribald his brother, the lords of Richmond and Middleham; Stephen of Holderness, strong in his sea-girt rock of Scarborough; the Mowbrays, Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutance, Justiciary to the Conqueror, and a great soldier; and Robert Mowbray, his brother’s son, who held the impregnable rock of Bamburgh and the great castle of Axholm in the fens of Lincolnshire; both strong, though in a different kind of strength. With them was the powerful Earl Roger of Shrewsbury with his border following; and at a later period Robert de Belesme, his successor, builder of Bridgenorth and Carreghova, and superior lord of many border castles. In the west, Duke Robert was supported by Bernard Newmarch, who held the castles of Brecknock and Builth, and a large and fortified tract of Monmouthshire; with whom were William of Breteuil, son of William Fitz-Osborn, and lord of Hereford; Roger de Lacy of Ewias; and William Earl of Eu, the owner of the strong rock of Hastings, who at that time held the castle and walled city of Gloucester. Besides these great leaders were, on the same side, Ralph Mortimer of Wigmore; Walter Giffard, whose castle on one bank of the Buckinghamshire Ouse, combined with a similar moated mound on the other, commanded that town and its river; Ralph Guader, who held Norwich; and Hugh Bigot, his successor there, lord of Framlingham, after Norwich the strongest place, both in earthworks and masonry, in East Anglia. Between Bristol and Bath the Mowbrays ravaged the country up to the tower of Berkeleyness, the present castle being then but an earthwork; and with them were Hugh de Graintmaisnel, who held Hinckley and Leicester castles; and William de Carileph, at first one of William’s prime councillors; but who afterwards changed sides, and was enabled to do so with safety from his possession of the keep of Durham. Bishop Odo, who held Rochester Castle (even then a place of great strength), and with it the passage of the Medway, placed there Eustace of Boulogne; and himself, with his brother Earl Robert and five hundred knights, held the Roman Pevensey, strengthened by a mound and some other English additions in earth.

Rufus, however, with far more energy than his brother Robert, had also the popular feeling on his side, which enabled him to make head even against this powerful combination. He laid siege to Pevensey, and took it after a seven weeks’ siege. He then assailed and took Rochester, and finally Tonbridge, held by Gilbert Fitz-Richard, the consequence of which success was the banishment of Bishop Odo. Robert Mowbray was beaten back from before the walls of Ilchester Castle, now utterly destroyed; and Bishop William was forced to surrender Durham. Carlisle, wasted by the Danes in 877, received from Rufus a castle and a keep, now standing; and Newcastle, similarly provided in 1080, also retains its keep, and a gatehouse with some traces of the exterior wall. In 1098 Malcolm of Scotland, the husband of St. Margaret, was slain before Alnwick, then better known as Murielden; and Mowbray was driven from Tynewald Castle back upon Bamburgh, which seems to have been finally taken by means of a “malvoisin,” which in this instance was evidently an entrenched camp thrown up to the west of the castle, and employed probably as the headquarters of a blockade. In this reign also the conquest of South Wales was completed, and the foundations laid of a chain of castles from Gloucester and Hereford to Pembroke, the main links of which were Chepstow and Abergavenny, Caerleon and Cardiff, Builth and Brecknock, Caerkennen, Caermarthen, Cardigan, Tenby, and Carew. How far these Welsh castles were at once constructed of masonry is uncertain. Besides Chepstow, two only, or at most three, and those subordinate, Ogmore, Penlline, and Newcastle, exhibit decided Norman features; but however this may be, neither Fitz-Hamon, Newmarch, nor Arnulph of Montgomery were likely, in the face of foes so formidable, to be satisfied with defences in any way inferior to the strongest of that day.

The reign of Henry I. was prolific in castles. It is probable that to him is due the greater number of our extant rectangular keeps, by the construction of which he carried to completion the plans sketched out by his father, which his brother had been too busy and too much pressed to take in hand. In this reign, especially between 1114 and 1121, most of the Welsh castles were completed. Bristol and Cardiff castles were the work of Robert Earl of Gloucester. Bishop Roger of Salisbury built Sherborne, Salisbury, the Devizes, and Malmesbury; and his brother, Alexander of Lincoln, Sleaford and Newark. “Castella erant crebra per totam Angliam.” Most of these were great and strong, very different from the hasty and unlicensed structures of the succeeding reign.

Henry, like Rufus, commenced his reign with the taking of Winchester with its treasures. Flambard, who had been entrusted with the great episcopal castles of Durham and Norham, was imprisoned in the keep of London. The outlawry of Robert Malet and Robert de Lacy, in 1101, gave Henry their castles in Yorkshire and Suffolk; and in 1102 Ivo de Graintmaisnel was driven from his mound at Hinckley, and forced to flee the country. Also the King obtained, by forfeiture, the castles of William de Warenne, though these were afterwards restored. Henry, in 1103, laid his hands upon Arnulph de Montgomery’s castle of Pembroke, and on those of Robert of Poitou, his brother, between the Ribble and the Mersey. The death of William Earl of Moretaine brought in the almost impregnable hill-castle of Montacute, with Trematon, Launceston, Tintagel, Boscastle, and Restormel, and other Cornish fortresses. The fall of Robert de Belesme gave the crown the castles of Arundel,—a lesser Windsor in its plan, and scarcely inferior in its position; of Shrewsbury, the mound of which still towers over the Severn, and dwarfs even the extensive and incongruous railway-station at its foot; of Bridgenorth, where a fragment of the keep shows what it must once have been; and of Carreghova, of which the very traces are well-nigh effaced. Belesme retired to Normandy, where he is said to have been lord of thirty-four castles; but the fragments of his power only betrayed him into further rebellion, so that he ended his life a prisoner and an exile on the castled mound of Wareham.

There still remained, indeed, in private hands a considerable number of castles, the owners of which found it convenient to give way, and thus to retain a portion of their influence. Such were Bourne in Lincolnshire; Malton, held by Fitz-John, in Yorkshire; Beaudesert in Warwickshire; the episcopal castles of Newark and Sleaford, and that of Oakham. There were also Warblington in Hampshire; and in Cumberland, Egremont and Cockermouth.

The rebellion of 1118 gave to Henry the castles of Hugh de Gournay in the west, of Stephen of Albemarle at Scarborough, of Eustace of Breteuil, of Richard de l’Aigle, and of Henry Earl of Eu; together with the Mowbray castles of Thirsk, Malzeard, and Burton in Lonsdale. Nearly the whole of the strongholds thus acquired were retained by Henry in his own hands, and Suger states that in Normandy the principal castles were by him either destroyed or held: “Fere omnes turres et quÆcunque fortissima castra NormanniÆ ... aut eversum iri fecit ... aut si dirutÆ essent propriÆ voluntati subjugavit.” In either country he laid hands on the castles; but where the delinquents held in both, it was upon those in England that the forfeiture was most rigidly enforced. Among the exceptions were William de Roumare, who was allowed to hold Lincoln; and similar protection was shown to Ralph de Conches, William de Tancarville, William de Warenne, Walter Giffard, and William d’Albini. Among their castles were Ryegate, Lewes, Coningsburgh, and Castle Rising, Buckingham and Arundel.

It has been said that Henry did not himself construct any new castles. This is probable enough, as all the sites of importance had been occupied by his father; but it is not improbable, judging from the internal evidence afforded by their remains, that he completed such of his father’s castles as were left unfinished. Of baronial castles, the grand fortress of Kenilworth, by far the most important strong place in the midland counties, was constructed in this reign, though very probably upon an English site, by the founder of the house of Clinton. In this reign also were probably constructed the masonry of Northampton Castle, by Simon de St. Liz, and that of Old Sarum and Odiham by Bishop Roger. The keep of St. Briavel’s, now destroyed, was reconstructed, or built of masonry; and Ralph Flambard laid the foundations of and seems to have completed the keep of Norham.

The issue of the contest between Matilda and Stephen turned very much upon the castles over which each had control. It was again by the seizure of Winchester Castle and its treasure that Stephen was able to celebrate his coronation in the adjacent cathedral. It was under the walls of Reading Castle, strongly placed between the meeting of the Kennet and the Thames, that he trusted himself to meet Matilda’s adherents, and with them to lay the corpse of her father before the altar of the great Abbey that he had founded, and the ruins of which have long survived those of its secular neighbour. From Oxford, strong in its walled city and partially water-girdled keep, Stephen issued his first charter, so full of promises to his new subjects; and thence he went to Durham, one of the strongest castles of the North, to meet David of Scotland, who had wasted the border from Carlisle to Newcastle, and taken Alnwick and Norham, though foiled before Wark and Bamborough. One of David’s principal concessions was the castle of Newcastle. On the other hand, he obtained the confirmation to him of that of Carlisle, long the gate of Scotland. The two, posted one at each end of the lines of Severus and Hadrian, are still tolerably perfect, as is the impregnable Bamburgh, the Norman keep of which, in Stephen’s time, was new.

From Oxford, still his central stronghold, on his return to the South, Stephen conceded his second charter, less distinct in its promises as the danger of his position seemed less pressing. On the report of his death in 1136, it was trust in their strong castles of Exeter, Plympton, Okehampton, Norwich, Framlingham, and Bungay, that encouraged Baldwin de Redvers and Hugh Bigot to rise in arms. Bath had then a castle and was a walled town. Stephen laid siege to and took the castle, and thence, with two hundred horse, rode to Exeter, where Rougemont, its citadel, was strong and well garrisoned. The siege was a remarkable one, and the warlike machines employed both within and without were of a formidable character. The citizens were with Stephen, so the attack was on the city front. The bridge from the city, still standing, was one point of attack. A “malvoisin” was constructed, whence stones were poured in upon the garrison; the walls were ruined, and the towers much injured. Finally the well ran dry, and the garrison surrendered upon terms. Plympton also capitulated, and Norwich was taken.

On Stephen’s arrival from Normandy, in 1137, he secured the castles of Bourne, Wareham, and Corfe, the two latter held by Fitz-Alured and Redvers. A second rising, in 1138, timed with an invasion by the Scots, turned in some degree upon the strength of the castle of Bedford, then including a pair of moated mounds on the opposite banks of the Ouse, of which one is entirely removed, and the other remains deprived of its masonry, and shorn of its fair dimensions. This castle was held by the sons of Milo de Beauchamp, its owner, and only surrendered after a long and severe siege conducted by Stephen in person, which terminated in a blockade. The defence was very able, and the surrender upon fair terms.

Meantime David, linking the interests of Matilda with his own claims to the great earldom of Huntingdon, twice crossed the border in the spring of 1128, retiring as Stephen approached, but a third time returning in August. He took Norham, and much injured its superb keep, built by Bishop Flambard in 1121, a noble ruin which still frowns over the Tweed, and is rich in historical recollections. Bamburgh, Alnwick, and Malton were held for Stephen by Eustace Fitz-John. Parts of the wall and inner gate of Alnwick are of about this date; but Malton has disappeared, though the earlier Roman camp may still be traced. David’s progress was also checked by Clitheroe, a very strong castle, of which the Norman keep, one of the very smallest extant, crowns the top of an almost impregnable rock.

At this period Stephen’s position was most critical. Against him, on the Welsh Marches, Talbot held Goderich and Hereford, while Ludlow and Dudley, Shrewsbury and Whittington, were in the hands of Paganel, Fitz-Alan, and William Peverel. Further south, the barons of Somerset were encouraged against him by William de Mohun from his hold at Dunster, strong naturally and by art; and by Fitz-John at Harptree, a castle in the defiles of the Mendips; while Maminot both held and strongly augmented Dover. Stephen, however, was active and he was brave. Leaving Archbishop Thurstan to muster and encourage his northern supporters, he himself marched south, strengthened the garrison of Bath, and threatened Bristol. Thence he entered Somerset, and took by siege the Lovel seat of Castle Cary, of which the earthworks cover a hillside; secured Harptree by surprise, and thence doubled back upon Hereford, which won, he next recovered the old British and English fortress of Pengwern or Shrewsbury. Bristol alone held out, strong in its newly-built keep, and in the presence of Robert Earl of Gloucester, its builder.

The “battle of the Standard,” a.d. 1138, was fought in the open field, under the leadership of D’AumÂle; but it was also named from North Allerton, where, intersected by the railway, are still seen formidable earthworks far older than Bishop Puiset’s castle which surmounted them, and which was afterwards entirely razed by Henry II. The victory of North Allerton was enhanced by the capture of Dover by Stephen’s Queen. The castle of Carlisle still remained in the possession of King David, and thence he renewed the war, and in the following year obtained for his son Henry the earldom of Northumberland; with the exception, however, of the castles of Newcastle and Bamburgh.

When, in 1139, Stephen’s change of policy lost him the support of the clergy, led by his ambitious brother the Bishop of Winchester, his first blow was struck at the episcopal castles. Of these, the Devizes, Sherborne, and Malmesbury belonged to Bishop Roger of Sarum. Malmesbury, an episcopal encroachment upon the adjacent Abbey, was wholly the Bishop’s work, and is now utterly destroyed. Sherborne, a very ancient episcopal seat, still retains its early earthworks, and a keep and gatehouse, the work of Bishop Roger; and although of the Devizes there remain but a few fragments of its circular keep, the earthworks (the grandest in England) show that it may well have deserved its great reputation. These Stephen seized upon, and he also took Newark-upon-Trent, still admired for its lofty and extended front, and for its magnificent Norman entrance. With Newark fell Sleaford, both built by Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, nephew of Bishop Roger, and also a great builder of castles. Sleaford is utterly demolished, and being entirely post-conquestal, had scarcely any earthworks to preserve its memory.

Among the events of this important year were the taking of Nottingham and Marlborough Castles by Stephen; his attack on Ludlow; the appearance on the scene of his rival, the Empress Matilda; and his siege of Arundel, in which castle she took refuge with D’Albini and Queen Adeliza his wife. Nottingham is gone. Of Marlborough only a fine mound remains, upon which stood its circular keep. Much of Ludlow, especially its rectangular keep, played a part in Stephen’s siege, as did a part of the existing exterior wall, whence the grappling-hook was thrown by which the King was hooked, and was being dragged up to its battlements, when he was rescued by the Scottish Prince Henry. Arundel preserves its earthworks pretty much as they must have appeared in the reign of the Confessor; and with its shell-keep on its mound, and the original gatehouse at its foot, gives to the modern visitor a fair notion of the appearance of the defences before which Stephen pitched his camp. It was also in 1139 that De Redvers, returning to England, landed under the Conqueror’s castle of Wareham, on the margin of the Poole water. From Wareham he proceeded to Corfe, a seat of the Kings of Mercia, where he was besieged by Stephen.

It was during this period of the war between Stephen, Matilda, and the Church party, that were constructed the multitude of unlicensed castles (“castra adulterina”) employed not merely for the security of the builders, but to enable them to prey upon their neighbours with impunity. Nothing could well be worse than the circumstances under which these castles were built, and the purposes for which they were employed. “Stephen,” says John of Tynemouth, quoted by Dugdale, “concessit ut quilibet procerum suorum munitionem, seu castrum, in proprio fundo facere posset.” William of Jumieges and Malmesbury compare the times to those of Normandy during the minority of Duke William; and other writers declare the state of England to have resembled that of Jerusalem during the Roman siege. There was no rule and no responsibility. The unhappy peasants were forced to labour in the construction of the strongholds of tyranny. It would seem that these castles were built with great rapidity, and with but little expenditure of labour upon earthworks, for in the next reign they were destroyed without difficulty, and scarcely any of their sites are now to be recognised. They were the work of the lesser barons, probably with the connivance of their chief lords, or even of Stephen and Matilda, who were little scrupulous as to the terms on which they accepted assistance. This multiplication of castles without the licence of the sovereign was no novelty, and was forbidden on the Continent by the celebrated “Edictum Pistense” of Charles the Bald in 864, already cited.

Another irregularity was the admission to the title of earl of several persons unfitted to receive so great an honour, and whose only claim to distinction was that they were leaders of mercenaries. Stephen was not in a condition to endow all of them with the third penny of the revenues of a county, the usual appanage of an earl. Many of the earls created by Stephen stood, however, in a very different position. Such were Geoffrey de Mandeville, Lord of Plessy and Walden, who accepted the Earldom of Essex from both parties; Alberic de Vere, who built the noble keep of Hedingham, and was the first of the long line of the Earls of Oxford; Hugh Bigot, who held the Earldom of Norfolk; Richard de Clare, who held that of Hertford; D’AumÂle, of Yorkshire; Gilbert de Clare, of Pembroke; Robert de Ferrers, of Derby; and probably William de Ypres, the Earldom of Kent. Stephen seems to have created, in all, eight; and the Empress six,—Cambridge, Cornwall, Essex, Hereford, Salisbury, and Somerset.

From Arundel, Matilda, it is said by Stephen’s courtesy, moved to Bristol, where her brother, Robert Earl of Gloucester, held his castle on the marshy confluence of the Frome with the Avon. Robert also at that time held the royal castle of Gloucester, long since destroyed, and a prison built on its site; and he was probably builder also of the shell-keep still standing upon the mound of Cardiff. At that time Matilda’s friends held Dover, with the square keep of Canterbury, placed just within the enceinte of the yet older city ditch, and almost within bowshot of the still more venerable mound of Dane John. Mention is also made of the castles of Trowbridge and Cerne as recently erected. The latter was taken by Stephen by storm, before the attack on Malmesbury. Trowbridge held out with success.

The great event of 1141 was the siege, or rather the battle, of Lincoln. The castle had been surprised, and was held by Ranulph Earl of Chester and his half-brother William de Roumare. As Stephen approached, Earl Ranulph left the place secretly to procure assistance from the Earl of Gloucester. This was afforded, and the two earls, with 10,000 men, some of them Earl Robert’s Welsh followers, crossed the Trent, and found Stephen drawn up to receive them. The result of the battle was the capture of Stephen, and the confirmation of Earl Ranulph in Lincoln Castle. On this Matilda went to her royal castle at Winchester, a part of the defences of the old Venta Belgarum, and characterised by a large mound, now removed. Here Bishop Henry, safe in his rectangular keep of Wolvesey, still standing near the Cathedral, in the opposite angle of the city, treated with her almost as equal with equal, but acknowledged her as Lady of England. Their accord, however, was neither cordial nor of long duration. Upon the Queen’s return, in some discredit, from London, an open quarrel broke out. She attacked Wolvesey, and the Bishop retaliated upon the royal castle with better success.

Under the escort of Brian Fitz-Count and Milo, to whom Matilda had given the Earldom of Hereford and the “Castle and Mote” of that ancient city, she fled from Winchester, Earl Robert guarding her rear. They were pursued. Matilda reached Ludgershall Castle in safety, and then went to the Devizes; but Earl Robert was taken on the way by William of Ypres, and imprisoned in Rochester Castle. Stephen was then a prisoner in Bristol Castle; and in November, 1141, the Earl and King were exchanged. A month later, at the Synod of Westminster, the pains of excommunication were denounced against all who built new castles, or offered violence to the poor,—a significant conjunction.

Stephen’s illness and Earl Robert’s absence in Normandy checked for a short time active hostilities, and meantime Stephen held the Tower of London, and Matilda the castle of Oxford. Late in 1142, Stephen attacked and took Oxford, and blockaded the castle until the winter set in, and the stock of provisions fell short. The Thames was frozen, and the ground covered with snow, by the aid of which Matilda, robed in white, escaped across the river, and fled to Fitz-Count at Wallingford. The castle was then surrendered. Its grand mound is yet untouched; and below it, upon the river, is a large square tower of the eleventh century. Part of the city wall also remains.

Before Reading, Stephen had taken several strong but less important fortresses, such as Bow and Arrow Castle on the Cliff of Portland, which still remains, and Carisbroke, the strength of the Isle of Wight. He took also Lulworth, in Purbeck, represented by a far later residence. Cirencester, which he burned, seems never to have been restored; and Farringdon, built in haste by the Earl of Gloucester, was also swept away. Stephen’s strength, however, lay in London and the east; and that of Matilda about Gloucester and Bristol, and in the west. Stephen also held Pevensey. The great midland barons stood aloof, biding their time. Thus Roger de Bellomont and his brother Waleran, of Meulan, held Leicester with its Roman walls and English earthworks, protected by the meads of the Soar; along the edge of which, and at the foot of the mound, is still seen the Norman Hall, and hard by the stately church of St. Mary de Castro, also in large part Norman. They also held Mount Sorrell, at that time a strong castle built upon a rock of syenite, but now quarried away, both rock and castle, to macadamise the highways of the metropolis. Saher de Quincy was strong about Hinckley, where the early mound, stripped of its masonry (if, indeed, it ever received any), still guards the eastern entrance to the town. The Earl of Chester held Lincoln as his own; and the hill of Belvoir, the cynosure of the Midland, was guarded by the grand shell-keep of Trusbut and De Ros, burned down and rebuilt after a tasteless fashion in our own days.

In 1146, death deprived Matilda of the Earls of Gloucester and Hereford. She retired to Normandy; but her place was taken by the younger Plantagenet, her son. In this year also Stephen availed himself of the presence of the Earls of Chester and Essex at his court to seize their persons, and to force them to render up, the one the castles of Lincoln and Northampton, the other that of Plessy, of which the moated mound and contained church are still seen, and Stansted Montfitchet, now almost merged in a railway station, and which then vied with the old castle of the Bishop of London at Stortford. Walden, also thus gained, is still famous for its earthworks, and for the fragment of its Norman keep, composed, like Bramber and Arques, of flint rubble deprived of its ashlar casing.

Earl Geoffrey having thus purchased his liberty, employed it in burning the castle of Cambridge, the mound of which, sadly reduced in size, still, from the interior of the Roman camp, overlooks the river. While in pursuit of the Earl, Stephen is said to have built certain new and probably temporary castles. More probably he refortified with timber some of the moated mounds, such as Clare, Eye, and Bures, of which there are many in Essex and Suffolk. Works in masonry he certainly had neither time nor means then to construct. Soon afterwards the Bishop of Winchester ceased to be papal legate, and found it convenient to support his brother’s party, and persuaded him to refuse permission to Archbishop Theobald to attend the new Pope at Rheims. Theobald, however, defied the King, and on his return took shelter within the unusually lofty walls and strong earthworks of Framlingham, a Bigot castle in Suffolk. About this time mention is made of castles at Cricklade in Wilts, at Tetbury and at Winchcombe in Gloucestershire. At Coventry also there was a castle, and another at Downton in Wiltshire, still celebrated for its moot-hill.

In 1149, York opened its gates to young Henry of Anjou, who assembled a considerable force, with which he met the royal army at Malmesbury, though without an actual collision. Of 1151 is on record a curious convention in which the Earls of Leicester and Chester were concerned, under which no new castles were to be built between Hinckley and Coventry, Coventry and Donnington, Donnington and Leicester; nor at Gateham, nor at Kinoulton, nor between Kinoulton and Belvoir, Belvoir and Oakham, Oakham and Rockingham. In 1152 occurred the celebrated siege of Wallingford, held for Matilda by Brian Fitz-Count. Enough of Wallingford remains to show how strong it must formerly have been; and the temporal was fully equalled by the spiritual power, for the town, always small, contained just twice as many churches as apostolic Asia. Stephen, unable to approach the Castle from its landward side, threw up a work still to be traced at Crowmarsh, on the left bank of the river, and there posted his engines. Young Henry, holding Malmesbury, Warwick, and about thirty other not very distant castles, marched to the relief of Wallingford, and invested the lines of Crowmarsh, besieging the besiegers. Stephen advanced to their aid from London, and Henry seems to have moved into the town, holding the passage of the river at the bridge by a special work. Wallingford was thus saved, and Henry, early in 1153, laid siege to Stamford, where, as at York, Hertford, and Buckingham, two mounds commanded the river; and stormed Nottingham, where were similar works upon the Trent. Stephen, falling back into the eastern counties, took Ipswich, a castle of which even the site is lost.

The death of Eustace, Stephen’s son, in August, 1153, paved the way to an arrangement between the rivals. Stephen was to remain King, and Henry became his acknowledged successor. William, Stephen’s surviving son, was to retain the Warenne castles and estates, which included Ryegate, of which traces remain; Castle-Acre, with its mound and other earthworks, placed within a Roman encampment; Castle-Rising, one of the least injured and most remarkable Norman keeps in England; Lewes, with its double mound and strong natural position; and Coningsburgh, an English site of excessive strength, though not then as yet celebrated for its noble tower. He also had the castles of Wirmegay and Bungay, Norwich, and the castle and honour of Pevensey. It was also agreed that the garrisons of the royal castles generally should swear allegiance to Henry and to Stephen; and the castellans of Lincoln, London, Oxford, Southampton, and Windsor gave hostages that on Stephen’s death they would give them over to Henry. It was also agreed at a conference at Dunstable in 1154, that all castles built since the death of Henry I. should be destroyed (a clause which may be taken to show that no absolutely new castles of very great importance had been built by Matilda or Stephen); and that all mercenary troops should be sent back to their own countries. The office of sheriff, as representing the crown in the counties, was to be strengthened.

Stephen died in October, 1154, and his rival ascended the throne as Henry II. without opposition.

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