Kenilworth Castle

“ Kenilworth Castle was in former times one of the most magnificent piles in England. In the days of its prosperity it took a military part, and it still retains traces of a warlike character,—though the foliage which overspreads its remains, has softened down the ruins into the appearance of a peaceful mansion. It was first destroyed by Cromwell, in revenge of its possessor having favoured the royal cause. Since then it has been gradually decaying, and another century will probably bring it to the ground. ”

“ As we have before said, the chief attraction of Kenilworth nowadays is its ruined castle, a magnificent and impressive red sandstone pile, now overgrown with ivy and, alas, crumbling yearly into greater decay, which in ancient times saw so much of the stir, pageantry, and circumstance of life. And even if some of the legends and tales connected with this truly wonderful building have little foundation in actual fact, there is still much of unimpeachable history and romance welded into its very fabric. ”

“ The King kept his first Christmas at Kenilworth Castle, having previously visited the city of Coventry, at the festival of Corpus Christi, to see the plays. The accounts of Kenilworth Castle show that in 1484 John Beaufitz was paid £20 "for divers reparacions made in the Castell of Kyllingworth" by order of Richard III. At this time, says Philip de Comines, "he was reigning in greater splendour and authority than any king of England for the last hundred years." ”

“ Between Coventry and Warwick, in a green, quiet, rural district, stands Kenilworth. And Kenilworth is a castle, which absorbs into itself all of space, population, and history that belongs to the name. Not only novel readers but practical history readers at a distance, never think of anything but the castle when the name is mentioned or suggested. Still, there is a goodly, tidy, and comfortable village near the ruins worth visiting without the lion which attracts so many thousands a year to pay their homage and their admiration—to the genius of Sir Walter Scott. ”

“ In the year 1206 a festival was held at Kenilworth, attended by one hundred knights of distinction, and the same number of ladies, at which silks were worn for the first time in England, and in 1327 Edward II was there compelled to sign his abdication in favour of his son. Kenilworth Castle probably attained the zenith of its prosperity in the time of Queen Elizabeth, who in 1563 conferred it upon her favourite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who entertained her there with great magnificence on four different occasions, 1566, 1568, 1572, and 1575. ”

“ Assassins and their accomplices find no mercy at Kenilworth.—Guard him well, men, and with the first of the daylight let him die!"
Thus upon the morn of the new year, Tito Balzani met his death upon the battlements of Kenilworth Castle; but though the woods were scoured and the Castle hunted from end to end, no trace of the veiled maiden nor of Roger de Horn could be found. It seemed as if in the confusion the girl had slipped away, perhaps to give warning to their comrade without. None had seen her from the moment when Amalric had denounced the wizard in the hearing of the whole assembly. ”

“ Haddon Hall, Derbyshire (View in the Lower Courtyard) .
Another great house, dating largely from late in the fourteenth century, is Kenilworth Castle, which, though primarily a place of strength, has much that is interesting purely as domestic architecture. It has been held by kings and great nobles; some of the most celebrated names in English history are linked with its story; it has withstood sieges, when its walls enclosed despairing and disease-stricken men; it has witnessed the most gorgeous pageants of a gorgeous age. Reality and romance have vied to make it famous. ”

“ When the Countess of Leicester arrived at the outer gate of the Castle of Kenilworth, she found the tower, beneath which its ample portal arch opened, guarded in a singular manner. Upon the battlements were placed gigantic warders, with clubs, battle-axes, and other implements of ancient warfare, designed to represent the soldiers of King Arthur; those primitive Britons, by whom, according to romantic tradition, the Castle had been first tenanted, though history carried back its antiquity only to the times of the Heptarchy. ”

“ Such an example of a mediæval castle, the flower of a plant rooted in the interior of such a mound, may be recognized in Kenilworth. According to local tradition, the hill upon which Kenilworth Castle is built was once inhabited by fairies, who are remembered by the same characteristics as their kindred elsewhere. But the consideration of a Warwickshire mound might lead us too far away from the dwarfs more specially known as Picts or Pechts, and therefore it is better to continue as much as possible within the area already examined. ”

“ Kenilworth Castle conscientiously, and the people of Castle Green and elsewhere in this village-town find their account therein. Even those visitors who do not conscientiously “do” it—and they are by far the larger number, both because most have not the intellectual equipment necessary, and because in the rest the weakness of the flesh prevails over the willingness of the spirit—find copious refreshment necessary. There is in fact, a great deal to be seen, and the interest is sustained throughout. ”

“ Some antiquaries ascribe its foundation to the time of Kenelph, from whom the Castle had its name, a Saxon King of Mercia, and others to an early era after the Norman Conquest. On the exterior walls frowned the scutcheon of the Clintons, by whom they were founded in the reign of Henry I.; and of the yet more redoubted Simon de Montfort, by whom, during the Barons' wars, Kenilworth was long held out against Henry III. Here Mortimer, Earl of March, famous alike for his rise and his fall, had once gaily revelled in Kenilworth, while his dethroned sovereign, Edward II., languished in its dungeons. ”

“ MERVYN'S TOWER, KENILWORTH CASTLE.
Sir Walter Scott described Kenilworth as "a place to impress on the musing visitor the transitory value of human possessions, and the happiness of those who enjoy a humble lot in virtuous contentment," and it was with some such thoughts as these in our own minds that we hurried away across fields and along lovely by-lanes towards Leamington, our object in going there by the way we did being to get a view of the great mansion of Stoneleigh, the residence of Lord Leigh, who was also a landowner in our native County of Chester. ”

“ Its walls have been standing eight hundred years; and yet they seem imperishable. A novice like myself is 'taken aback' with the grandeur of these lordly abodes.
The change of the scene to the ruins of Kenilworth, in the course of an hour, naturally led to instructive recollections of the past. Here was once a castle as extensive and impregnable as the one we had just left; but now the lofty towers are fast falling to decay; and the sheep are grazing in peace and quiet, where once all the magnificence of the Elizabethan age was concentrated. ”

“ The Queen, who seemed to have remained there for the sole purpose of mortifying and taunting the Earl of Leicester, showed herself as skilful in that female art of vengeance, as she was in the science of wisely governing her people. The train of state soon caught the signal, and as he walked among his own splendid preparations, the Lord of Kenilworth, in his own Castle, already experienced the lot of a disgraced courtier, in the slight regard and cold manners of alienated friends, and the ill-concealed triumph of avowed and open enemies. ”

“ KENILWORTH. "Kenilworth Castle!" says the reader. That and more! The station is reached by a half-hour's ride from Leamington, being about five miles in a direct line from Stratford, Leamington, and Coventry. The country is hilly and abounds with fertile fields, on which are grazing sheep, cows, and horses in countless numbers. Everything has an inhabited look. Elms, oaks, horse-chestnuts, and poplars abound. There are fine groves that might be called woods. ”

“ During the same reign, in the year 1265, William Manduit, who had garrisoned the castle on the side of the king against the rebellious barons, was surprised by John Gifford, the governor of Kenilworth Castle, who, having destroyed a great part of the walls, took him, together with the countess, his wife, prisoners ”

“ We saw the picturesque ruins of Kenilworth Castle, the birthplace of Shakespeare, the homes of Byron and Mary Chaworth, wandered through Newstead Abbey, saw the monument to the faithful dog, and the large dining room where Byron and his boon companions used to shoot at a mark. It was a desolate region. We stopped a day or two at Ayr and drove out to the birthplace of Burns. ”

“ The great feast provided by the Earl of Leicester in honour of the visit of Queen Elizabeth to Kenilworth Castle in 1575 was of a degree of magnificence rarely equalled either before or since, extending continuously over the seventeen days of the queen's stay, beginning at two o'clock, at which time the great clock at the castle was stopped and stood at that hour until the Princess departed. ”

“ After taking lunch at the King’s Arms Hotel at Kenilworth, and seeing the room in which Scott wrote his novel, they proceeded to the castle. The afternoon was warm and sunny, with a blue sky and a summer haze over the landscape,—the kind of afternoon which invites one to day-dreams. Consequently, Mrs. Pitt ensconced herself against the crumbling wall of Cæsar’s Tower, put up her umbrella to keep off the glare of the sun, and sat dreaming over the remains of the once magnificent castle. Meanwhile the young people, accompanied by a guide, climbed all over the ruin. ”

“ Having delivered his horse to the charge of his attendant, he walked for a space in the Pleasance and in the garden, rather to indulge in comparative solitude his own reflections, than to admire those singular beauties of nature and art which the magnificence of Leicester had there assembled. The greater part of the persons of condition had left the Castle for the present, to form part of the Earl's cavalcade; others, who remained behind, were on the battlements, outer walls, and towers, eager to view the splendid spectacle of the royal entry. ”

“ Besides these he made, in 1716, a large finished drawing of Kenilworth Castle, with manuscript references, from a fresco occupying the whole side of a room at Newnham Paddox, a seat of the Earl of Denbigh. ”

“ Castle End is one of those scattered portions of the town that surprise the stranger. He thinks, time and again, that he has seen all Kenilworth, but there is always some more of it. You bear to the left and descend to a broad watersplash that crosses the road beneath densely overarching trees. The people of Kenilworth cling tightly to the preservation of their watersplash, and for several reasons: it is highly picturesque and keeps them in touch with the last elfin echoes of that Romance I have spoken of; the building of a bridge would cost them considerably ”

“ Sincerity, Thou first of virtues! let no mortal leave Thy onward path, although the earth should gape, And from the gulf of hell destruction cry, To take dissimulation's winding way. --DOUGLAS. It was not till after a long and successful morning's sport, and a prolonged repast which followed the return of the Queen to the Castle, that Leicester at length found himself alone with Varney, from whom he now learned the whole particulars of the Countess's escape, as they had been brought to Kenilworth by Foster, who, in his terror for the consequences, had himself posted thither with the tidings. ”

“ But Lambourne, who had taken upon him the part in the absence of Wayland, being chilled with remaining immersed in an element to which he was not friendly, having never got his speech by heart, and not having, like the porter, the advantage of a prompter, paid it off with impudence, tearing off his vizard, and swearing, "Cogs bones! he was none of Arion or Orion either, but honest Mike Lambourne, that had been drinking her Majesty's health from morning till midnight, and was come to bid her heartily welcome to Kenilworth Castle." ”

“ The great dramatist's birthplace lies in the midst of England's fairest rural scenery. When two Englishmen were asked to name the finest walk in England, one chose the walk from Stratford to Coventry, the other, the walk from Coventry to Stratford. A short distance northeast of Stratford are Warwick with its castle, the home of the famous king-maker, and Kenilworth Castle, whose historic associations were romantic enough to stir the imagination of a boy like Shakespeare. ”

“ In the Civil War, 1642, Warwick Castle, garrisoned for the Parliament, was besieged; and, after the battle of Edge Hill, when Charles left Birmingham, the inhabitants [Pg 101] seized the carriages containing the loyal plato, and conveyed them to Warwick Castle. Then Warwick and Kenilworth were in deadly hate: in 1230 (47th Hen. III.) , Maudit, Earl of Warwick, and his Countess, were surprised in Warwick Castle, by a party of rebels from Kenilworth Castle, when the walls were thrown down lest the royalists should use them again ”

“ They entered accordingly, in silence, the great outward court of the Castle, having then full before them that vast and lordly pile, with all its stately towers, each gate open, as if in sign of unlimited hospitality, and the apartments filled with noble guests of every degree, besides dependants, retainers, domestics of every description, and all the appendages and promoters of mirth and revelry. ”

“ Kenilworth, Stratford-on-Avon, and indeed the European tour, I know the subject has been pretty well used up, and scribblers must now be content to tell an old story as best they may. I might tell you how I went down to this famous castle, and knocked at the porter's lodge, and how he took me within it, to see the walking-stick of Guy, Earl of Warwick, nine feet high, and his 'porridge-pot' of iron, which would contain half a barrel!—how he sent me up a long circular path-way, cut through a solid rock, to the castle itself ”