NAWORTH is one of the few remaining Castles of the Border rescued from the grasp of Time by the noble descendants of its ancient lords. It is the property of the Earl of Carlisle—the representative of “centuries of Howards”—who, according to Sir Walter Scott, “deserves high praise for the attention bestowed in maintaining the curious and venerable pile in its former state.” While, however, his Lordship has taken especial care to arrest the progress of Time over the old walls, he has been wisely cautious to prevent “repairs” from being unseemly patches upon the honoured face of “hore antiquitie.” Its condition is sufficiently dilapidated to carry instant conviction of its age; but nothing out of keeping with the solemn dignity derived from the weight of years is permitted to appear. To its early and existing condition his lordship has himself made happy reference, in some descriptive lines to this—the famous stronghold of generations of his ancestry:

The Castle stands on “a pleasant eminence” at the head of the Vale of Lanercost, or St. Mary’s Holme, and not far from the beautiful and picturesque ruins of Lanercost Priory, which cover the dust of the ancient Lords of Naworth,[7] and many other gallant chieftains who formerly held sway over the wild Border.

The approach to it is peculiarly striking. “The front is strengthened by a curtain wall, and a gateway embrasured, and the corners of the chief building on this side by lofty square towers.” On the north, it impends over the river Irthing, at a great height; the banks shagged with wood. “The whole house,” says Pennant, “is a true specimen of ancient inconvenience, of magnificence and littleness; the rooms numerous, accessible by sixteen staircases, with most frequent and sudden ascents and descents into the bargain; besides a long narrow gallery.” “The idea of a comfortable dwelling,” according to a more recent writer, “was, indeed, entirely excluded; the whole internal contrivance seeming only calculated to keep an enemy out, or elude his vigilance should he happen to get in; its hiding-holes are numerous; but it seems probable that many of its close recesses are even now unknown.”

We have no certain information as to the period of its erection. Tradition reports it to have been built by the Dacres; but “by which of them has not been ascertained.” The earliest mention of it occurs in the reign of Edward the Third, when “Ranulphus Dacre, who had married the heiress of the Multons, obtained a license to fortify and convert his mansion here into a castle.” In the family of the Dacres it continued until the year 1569, when, by the death of the last heir-male of the family, it passed to the Howards—by the marriage of William Howard, third son of Thomas Duke of Norfolk, with the Lady Elizabeth, sister of the last Lord Dacre.[8] When visited by Camden, in 1607, it was under repair; according to Bishop Gibson, it was “again repaired and made fit for the reception of a family by the Right Hon. Charles Howard, great-grandson to the Lord William.” By its present noble owner, the Earl of Carlisle, it is, as we have intimated, preserved from farther injury at the hand of Time,—and is the occasional residence of some members of his family, who resort to it in “the sporting season.”

The romantic fame of Naworth is derived from Lord William Howard—“belted Will Howard,” one of the heroes of Border Minstrelsy. The commencement of his chivalrous career was the first chapter to a volume of romance. He was the third son of the fourth Duke of Norfolk, and grandson of the famous Earl of Surrey—

His father lost his title, his estates, and his head, on Tower Hill; and bequeathed him to the care of his elder brother, as “having nothing to feed the cormorants withal.” He was married, in 1577, to the Lady Elizabeth Dacre, the ages of both together being short of eight-and-twenty. During the whole of the reign of Elizabeth, however, he and the several other members of his family were cruelly oppressed—subjected repeatedly to charges of treason, and kept in a state of poverty “very grievous to bear.” On the accession of James the Second their prospects brightened. Lord William was received into special favour; and, about the year 1603, turned his attention to the repairs of his Baronial Castle of Naworth—removing thither various paintings and articles of furniture from mansions still more neglected or dilapidated. Almost immediately afterwards he made it his permanent residence, having been—probably in the year 1605—appointed to the office of the King’s Lieutenant and Warden of the Marches.[9] The onerous and difficult duties imposed upon him he discharged, it would seem, with equal fearlessness and severity: so that, to quote from Fuller, “when in their greatest height, the moss-troopers had two fierce enemies—the laws of the land and Lord William Howard of Naworth, who sent many of them to Carlisle, that place where the officer always does his work by daylight.”

Although formidable to his enemies, the Lord William was fervent and faithful to his friends. His attachment to his Lady (whom he survived but a year) was “of the truest affection, esteem, and friendship;” and his love of letters, and the refined pursuits of leisure and ease, rendered him remarkable, even among the intellectual men of the period. To the courage of the soldier, “Belted Will” added the courtesy of the scholar, and, although “the Tamer of the wild Border” has been often pictured as a ferocious man-slayer, incapable of pity, history does him only justice in describing him as a model of chivalry, when chivalry was the leading characteristic of the age. He died in 1640, leaving issue by the “Lady Bessie” ten sons and five daughters—the eldest being the ancestor of the Earls of Carlisle.

This Border Castle—the Caste of “Bauld Wyllie”—remains then, as we have said, one of the least impaired and most interesting of the feudal dwellings of Ancient England. It is nearly quadrangular in form; of prodigious strength; and many indications of its early defences yet remain. The only access to it is from the south, on which side it lies low, and presents its principal front, “extending two hundred and eight feet.” Formerly (according to a MS. dated 1675), “it was surrounded by pleasant woods and gardens; ground full of fallow dear, feeding all somer time,—brave venison pasties; with great store of reed dear on the mountains, and white wild cattle, with black eares only, on the moores; and black heath-cockes, and brown more-cockes, and their pootes.”

The interior is even more primitive in character than the exterior. “The long Gallery” (which Mr. Cattermole has pictured), “extending one hundred and sixteen feet in length, is filled with many curious and interesting antiquities; among them are said to be the saddle, gloves, and belt of “Belted Will Howard.” It contains also various portraits of Members of the heroic race. The old windows are narrow and grated,

and the doors almost wholly cased with iron, moving on ponderous hinges, and with massive bolts, which ‘make a harsh and horrid clang that echoes fearfully through the winding passages.’ ‘The Great Hall,’ measuring 70 feet by 24, is lighted by a range of windows, placed high up near the ceiling, and a large oriel window at the southern end. The ceiling is formed of wood panels in large squares, in number above one hundred, on which are painted portraits of the Saxon Kings, and the Sovereigns of

England, down to the Union of the Houses of York and Lancaster, with many other noble personages; ‘they have, however, no recommendation but their antiquity.’ The Minstrels’ Gallery has been removed. In the Dining Hall are two portraits of the Lady of Lord William—one in her fourteenth year, just after she became a bride; the other when her years were three-score ten and three. The Chapel retains much of its original condition—a pulpit and stall of oak, and a painted window, exhibiting a Knight and Dame kneeling, being among the most remarkable objects that yet endure. The apartments of Lord William Howard are, however, those to which the chief interest is attached. They are entered at the east end of the long Gallery. The approach to them was secured by iron-bound doors, several in succession, containing numerous huge bolts, running far into the stone work. The strongest defends a narrow winding staircase, up which only one person can pass; a short dark passage leads to the bed-chamber; (pictured on the opposite page) in which the ‘original furniture’ is preserved.”[10] Among the rest, the plain and simple bed on which, it is said, belted Will slept. Above the stone mantel-piece are three sculptured shields with the arms of the Dacres. Above the bed-room, reached by the narrow stone staircase referred to, are the Library and the Oratory of Lord William.

The Library, here pictured, still contains some curious MSS., with a large collection

of rare old books, many of them having the autograph of Lord William. “Not a book has been added,” according to Pennant, “since his days.” The windows of this apartment are narrow, and are reached by an ascent of three steps:—“such was the caution of the times.” The ceiling is richly carved; the corbels and bosses being embellished with armorial devices; the skirting of the room is of oak, “black from age.” Lord William was—as he is styled by Camden, “a lover of the venerable antiquities,” and in this apartment much of his leisure time was spent.[11]

The other Chamber which tradition closely associates with the memory of the Lord William, is “the Oratory,” situated near the Library. “It is fitted up with plain

wainscot, painted red, and ornamented with escallop-shells and cross-crosslets—armorial devices of the Dacres and the Howards. There are also some fragments of what is supposed to have been the rich screen of the Rood-loft of Lanercost Priory Church, consisting of carved ornaments of pierced work, in wood, richly painted and gilt, nailed up on the walls of the apartment.” The Confessional is a small dark closet within the Oratory, unfurnished. The dungeons of the Castle consist of “four dens, under the great square Tower at the south-west angle.” They “instil horror into the beholder:” there is no chink or crevice for the admission of light; and, in one of the cells, a ring, to which prisoners were chained, is still appended to the wall. In a note to “The Legend of Montrose,” Sir Walter Scott states that a private staircase led to these dungeons from the apartment of Lord William. The author of a little book, “A Guide to Naworth and Lanercost,” from which we have borrowed some of our details, sought for this passage in vain.

Few of the ancient Baronial dwellings of our English nobles possess a deeper interest than that of Naworth. It supplies a striking and emphatic illustration of the rude and lawless period of its erection, when security was the object chiefly aimed at; but mingling adornment with strength, and being a refinement upon the cheerless and gloomy structures of the Anglo-Norman chiefs; “expanding into a mixture of the castle and the mansion;” and marking the splendour of our early nobles, “before they exchanged the hospitable magnificence of a life spent among a numerous tenantry, for the uncertain honours of Court attendance, and the equivocal rewards of ministerial favour.” To borrow an eloquent passage from the “Border Antiquities:” “The vast and solid mansions of our ancient nobility were like their characters—greatness without elegance; strength without refinement; but lofty, firm, and commanding.”