Doubting Castle

“ Notwithstanding which it is now demolished, and all this glory lyeth in the dust, buried in its own ruins; there being nothing standing but a few broken walls, which seem to mourn their own approaching funerals." The walls are formed of slate, and appear to be rapidly decaying. The grounds round the castle consist of steep eminences, covered with oak and other trees. Even in the court, and remains of the fortress itself, trees of nearly a century's growth are flourishing in luxuriance, and compose, with the shrubs thickly scattered within the area, a scene highly beautiful. ”

“ In its silent marshy moat reeds and rushes grow, and ivy covers its walls, and trees have sprung up in the quiet and deserted courts. Picnic parties encamp on the green sward, and excursionists amuse themselves in strolling along the walls and wonder why they were built so thick, and imagine that the castle was always a ruin erected for the amusement of the cheap-tripper for jest and playground. Happily care is usually bestowed upon the relics that remain, and diligent antiquaries excavate and try to rear in imagination the stately buildings. ”

“ Finally, although the stern necessities of war did not admit of the banded shafts, lofty vault, or woven window-tracery of Tintern, or Fountains, or many a less distinguished church, the ornamentation of the richer castles, as Dover, Rochester, Hedingham, Newcastle, Knaresborough, Castle Rising, and Coningsborough, is marked by a chastened fitness peculiar to such works; and of the ruder and less ornate castles, the ruins of very many present a savage grandeur which few who have visited Caerphilly, Harlech, or Scarborough, can fail to appreciate ”

“ The ruins are of vast extent; the situation of the castle must have been magnificent, as the lofty rock on which it stands is full 300 feet above the river; the royal apartments are beneath, the only habitable part of the edifice. The scene of the memorable interview between the Dauphin Charles, and the shepherd girl of Donrèmy, is now a broken ruin, open to the sky; there, where the careless and luxurious Charles enjoyed the splendours of his magnificent court, nothing now is to be seen but a mass of luxuriant vegetation instead of the gorgeous flooring ”

“ On this rock are the ruins of a very ancient castle or dungeon; some covenanters seem to have been imprisoned here sometime or other. I forgot to tell you that while coming along the coast of Northumberland we saw the ruins of several ancient castles—nests of robber-chiefs, which were very useful in the days of border warfare between the Percies and the Douglases, but which have now fallen to disuse and decay. They look noble even in their decay, and the associations of hundreds of years fling a charm round their ruins. ”

“ I was still somewhat fatigued by my yesterday’s expedition, and contented myself with a walk to the celebrated castle built by Edward I. the conqueror of Wales, and destroyed by Cromwell. It is one of the most magnificent ruins in England. The only thing to regret is, that it stands so near the town, and not in solitary grandeur amid the mountains. The outer walls, although in ruins, still form an unbroken line, enclosing nearly three acres of ground. The interior space, overgrown with grass and filled with rubbish and with thistles, is nearly eight hundred paces long. ”

“ One of the most shameful events in connexion with the story of the Castle is that of King John’s submission there to Pandulph, the Pope’s legate. Three years after this event, in the spring of 1216, Louis VIII of France, who had come over convoyed and supported by a powerful fleet under the command of Eustace the Monk, was before Dover Castle to besiege it after having landed at Stonor and captured Hastings and Rye. ”

“ A spur of the hill is crowned by a small keep, with a round tower attached to a square mass within its compass. But in the days of the Red King, the Guy’s Cliff of the Vexin, now the site of a castle so preeminently visible, was specially known as the site of the stronghold that was invisible. The castle bored in the rock. The lords of the rock had, like the Kenite of old, literally made their nest in the rock itself. The chalk is to this day habitually bored to make houses, churches, [458] any kind of excavation that may be needed. ”

“ The wooden donjon on the mount took the form of a square tower surrounded, at the edge of the mount, by a palisade, and approached, as has been described already, by a steep wooden bridge, which crossed the ditch into the bailey. But it is obvious that the existence of a castle in any given place as a permanent centre of royal influence must lead to the abandonment of wooden defences in favour of defences of more lasting material. ”

“ To see this strange old ruin, in the very heart of the peaceful country, without a feature of nature to correspond with its sullen strength, nor a circumstance to suggest the times and the danger which{4} made that necessary, is the strangest thing in the world; all the more that the ground has no special capacities for defense, and that the castle is not a picturesque baronial accumulation of turrets and battlements, but a big, austere, fortified dwelling-house, which modern engineering could make an end of in half a day. ”

“ Dover Castle.
The castle is the strongest place in the world, of old fortification; it takes up thirty acres of ground: it is an amazing congeries of walls, ditches, arches, embattlements, mounts, and all imaginable contrivances to render it impregnable after the old mode: but with highest regret I beheld this most noble and memorable fortress, once thought the key of Britain, and that has divers times had the honour to save the kingdom from conquest and slavery, now become a common prey to the people that belong to it: in the late wars with France they kept 1500 prisoners in the great castle ”

“ It formed the back of the stage, the permanent scene, and its enormous face was coated with marble. It contains three doors, the middle one being the highest and having above it, far aloft, a deep niche apparently intended for an imperial statue. A few of the benches remain on the hillside, which, however, is mainly a confusion of fragments. There is part of a corridor built into the hill, high up, and on the crest are the remnants of the demolished castle. The whole place is a kind of wilderness of ruin; there are scarcely any details; the great feature is the overtopping wall. ”

“ It is just this view-point that makes the study of the chateaux of Dauphiny the more interesting. Even the imperfectly preserved ruins which crown many a peak and hill-top are suggestive of this unique and effective manner of castle building, and though many have fallen from sheer decay in later years, it is chiefly because they were undermined or overthrown in some great or petty quarrel, and not because their design was not well thought out nor their workmanship thorough. The picks of Louis XI caused more actual depredation than has the stress of time. ”

“ Now, if you look back, you will see as pretty a view as there is on the whole of the Weeslade, Don't the pasture and park lands look well with the hills behind them, and dead astern, in the throat of the river, Warfinger Island with its hill, and on the top of the hill the old Castle standing out sharp against the sky, with the Tower of Silence highest of all?
"By-the-way, in a moment you will see why people got a superstitious feeling about that tower. Right in our wake is the Castle, and we are steering right into the sun. ”

“ The legend goes that the spirits of the former inhabitants are still wandering about in those two towers; at certain times at midnight the ruins become alive, and lords and ladies, in long sweeping dresses, followed by liveried servants of the olden style, pass up and down the ruinous stone staircases. Their heads are empty skulls, and they sit down in the great castle hall, where they try in vain to drink out of large goblets; being, however, unable to taste the beautiful wine with which they are brimming over, they dash the goblets against the walls and smash them into fragments. ”

“ Ever since the historic period, and doubtless long before the era of recorded things began, there existed a castle, or a fortified post, on this lofty cliff-top, where the shattered ruins of Hastings Castle still stand, few and almost formless—the long superannuated warden of the town that has grown so great and has now absolutely no defences against the foreign foe. ”

“ At six o'clock we caught a glimpse of the castle walls glittering in sunshine, a hopeful sign, and we set forward through the fog. The ruin stands at the brink of a more than perpendicular, an overhanging rock, on the top of a green hill, which rises abruptly from the town. The steepest parts are ascended by hundreds of stone steps, worn by age, often broken, and half-buried in turf and flowers. These steps brought us to a terrace bordered by neatly-trimmed vines ”

“ Stumbling along over the shell-ploughed, uneven ground, they walked for perhaps a mile until they turned into what had been a magnificent private estate. Nothing but cracked and crumbling posts were left of the splendid gateway. They passed onward through the ruins of a wonderful old park where they were twice stopped by vigilant sentries who demanded the countersign and turned a flashlight on their muddy faces. Turning and twisting, they followed the path up to the ruined castle which stood on a little rise of ground. ”

“ As we approach the castle now from any side, it is difficult to realize that it is a ruin—a mere empty shell. Outwardly its towers and walls rise sheer from the lily-covered waters of the moat in a fine state of preservation: curtain walls, round towers, square towers, battlements,—all are there as in the days that were. True, the drawbridges are gone, and of the barbican only a fragment remains; but of the great donjon itself nothing appears to be missing until—until we cross the causeway where once the drawbridge rose and fell, and so come to the interior. ”

“ Dover, Tuesday, July 11th.—We walked to the Castle before breakfast. The building, when you are [Pg 164] close to it, appears even sublime, from its immense height and bulk; but it is not rich or beautiful in architecture. The old warder stood in waiting upon the hill to lead us forward. After ascending above a hundred stone steps, we were greeted by the slender tinkling of a bell, a delicately wild sound in that place. It is fixed at the top of a pillar, on which is inscribed a poetical petition in behalf of the prisoners confined above in the Castle. ”

“ The castle where Charles V saw the light is a decrepit, unsightly kind of tenement, surrounded by water, and accessible only by a drawbridge. At the head of the bridge, on the parapet, there are two bronze statues; one is kneeling, and behind it there is the second with uplifted sword. Tradition has it that they represent two men condemned to death, father and son, for whom no executioner could be found. ”

“ From the first time I saw him climb the outside of the Queen's Tower, swinging himself upwards from branch to branch of the old ivy, he became my pattern: I resolved to follow him, and if it made Granny scream to see us, why, so much the better.
The Castle ruins were the best play-ground that children ever had. On half-holidays the whole school used to troop up there directly they were let out, and the old walls rang with shouts and laughter. Cuthbert and Hildred were always glad to see them, but I liked it best when we had it all to ourselves. ”

“ The “castled steep” is still crowned by a massive fragment of the old fortress that has braved, in its time, so many days of storm and stress. A good deal of the curtain wall, too, is standing, and the natural defences of the castle are admirable, for a deep ravine on the east and the river with its steep banks on the south made it practically unassailable at these points. ”

“ It stands grim and majestic, towering over the whole mass of tumbled walls and the few roofs and chimneys that are all that remain of the rich city. One can see stone stairs and galleries high up in the rock and can mount up to some of them. The dungeon, cut out of solid stone, shows a yawning hole in the ground. It lies open to the sky, but the ribs of its vaulting are still seen springing from the corners. Two sides of a rock hard by are scooped into cells. This was the great castle dovecot. There is a little ruined chapel, its roof delicately carved.
130a
THE CASTLE RUINS, LES BAUX
131a ”

“ The plan of the castle is a vast oblong, with a high cylindrical tower at each angle, and two additional towers on the side of the town. The deep and wide moat that still surrounds it, except where it has been filled up in front of the gateway from which the drawbridge was once raised and lowered, is like a ravine that is choked with brambles and shrubs. The exterior view is very striking. It is impossible to approach this ruin without being impressed by its mournful grandeur. From all these piled-up stones which the wild plants strive to cover, there comes the sentiment of pride in death. ”

“ About four miles south-east of the manor-house, the old Castle of Gorey arose out of the sea, almost as if it grew there, a part of the granite crag. A survival of the rude warfare of Plantagenet times, it bore—as it still does—the self assertive name of "Mont Orgueil," and boasted itself the only English fortress that had ever resisted the avenger of France, the constable Bertrand du Guesclin. But, in spite of its pride, it proved to be commanded by a yet higher point, sufficiently near to throw round shot into the Castle in the more advanced days to which our tale relates. ”

“ On an eminence near the village, and swelling above the river, is the picturesque ruin of its castle; a pile of no great extent, but well disposed, and profusely decorated with shrubs and ivy. The form of the structure is irregular: large circular towers cover the angles of the ramparts; within which are traces of the baronial hall, and other apartments, and beyond the mount are some remains of the barbican, or redoubt, and several entrenchments. All the door and window arches are pointed Gothic, and of the proportion in use about the thirteenth century ”