Lincoln Castle

“ Upon this the Earl of Gloucester came in force for revenge against his treacherous ally, Fitz-Herbert, and, conducting him to Devizes, there hanged him. The surprise of Lincoln Castle, upon which the events of 1141 mainly turned, is equally characteristic of the age. Ranulf, Earl of Chester, and William de Roumare, his half-brother, were avowed friends of King Stephen. But their ambition took a new direction for the support of Matilda. The garrison of Lincoln had no apprehension of a surprise, and were busy in those sports which hardy men enjoy even amid the rougher sport of war. ”

“ THE OBSERVATORY TOWER, LINCOLN CASTLE.
In 1654, on the 19th August, Evelyn visited the city. He has left to us in his Diary an interesting record of the Lincoln of the Commonwealth:—"Lincoln is an old confused town, very long, uneven, steep, and ragged, formerly full of [40] good houses, especially churches and abbeys. The minster almost comparable to that of York itself, abounding with marble pillars, and having a fair front (here was interred Queen Eleanora, the loyal and loving wife who sucked the poison out of her husband's wound) ; the abbot founder, with rare carving in the stone ”

“ On January 9, 1643, Parliament appointed Lord Willoughby Sergeant-Major-General for the county, and ordered the removal of the prisoners in Lincoln Castle to the Bishop’s Palace for greater security, placing the Castle in the keeping of the Earl of Lincoln. Early in the year a stand was made for the King in the heart of the Parliament’s country. The men of Crowland, who were royal tenants, set to work in January to fortify their watery stronghold. They were undeterred by a friendly warning sent them by Mr. Ram, the Puritan minister at Spalding ”

“ John, of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward III., resided in Lincoln Castle. His son, “Henry of Bolingbroke,” afterwards Henry IV., was the only king born in this county. John of Gaunt married Catherine Swynford, sister of Chaucer the poet. She and a daughter were interred in the Cathedral, on the south side of the altar steps. The royalty of Lincoln Castle was shewn by a shield over a doorway, bearing the arms of England and France, quarterly, which were shewn in Buck’s engraving, date 1727. ”

“ The venerable walls of Lincoln Minster look down from their proud position upon a city far more ancient than themselves. Long before the arrival of the Saxons and Angles, the spot on which Lincoln Minster and Castle stand, had been occupied by a settlement bearing a name which has survived through various changes to the present day. ”

“ Mr. Nichols, in a very valuable paper upon the earls of Lincoln, has shown that Lucy married Ivo Taillebois, one of the Conqueror’s barons, a hero both of history and romance, and, in right of his wife, a great landowner in Lincolnshire. Her name occurs in his charter in 1085 concerning the church of Spalding. Ivo died in 1114, and their daughter, another Lucy, an heiress or co-heiress, and who claimed the constableship of Lincoln Castle, and fortified one of its towers, married, first, Roger de Roumare, and second, Ranulph de Briquesard, called Le Meschines, Earl of Chester, who died 1129. ”

“ Rochester Castle—the stately ruins of which, hard by the Medway, still attest its ancient grandeur, and recall the days when it stood in feudal pride, guarded by moat, and rampart, and lofty battlements—was deemed a place of immense importance; and Robert Fitzwalter and his confederates had intrusted it to the keeping of William Albini, Earl of Arundel, a great noble whose family had long maintained feudal state at Castle Rising, in Norfolk, and whose ancestor had acquired Arundel with the hand of Adelicia of Louvaine, the young widow of Henry Beauclerc. ”

“ Moreover, the citizens were chiefly men of Danish origin, and therefore to be dreaded; and the Conqueror, on taking Lincoln, resolved to build a strong castle, not only to keep the inhabitants in awe, but to guard against any attempt made by them, in concert with their kinsmen the Danish sea-kings, to throw off the Norman yoke; and having demolished about two hundred and seventy houses to make room for the edifice, the Conqueror crowned the hill with a stronghold, which frowned sullen on the city over which it looked, and awed all malcontents, whether Dane or Saxon. ”

“ Hastings is a fortress on a steep promontory: the mount, on the east side of the enclosure, was defended by a deep ditch, and covered by a large outer bailey with formidable earthworks. The curtain, on the east and north sides of the inner ward, is chiefly of the thirteenth century; but part of the north curtain, forming the north wall of the castle chapel, is of “herring-bone” construction. Lincoln, as we have seen, was a large mount-and-bailey fortress, surrounded by earthworks, which, on the west side, enclosed portions of the wall of the Roman city. ”

“ The keep and observatory tower were probably built, the upper floor of the gateways added, and the curtain raised and completed, in the reign of Stephen, who granted, with the castle and city of Lincoln, to Gernons, Earl of Chester, licence to fortify a tower in the castle, and to hold it until he recovered his own castle of Tickhill,—and even then, when he surrendered Lincoln, he was to retain his own tower, which his mother, Countess Lucia, had fortified, in the castle, of which also he was to retain the hereditary constableship. ”

“ The possession of these castles placed the whole of eastern England under his uninterrupted sway, and removed all serious obstacles, except one, to his communications with his allies in the north. That one obstacle was the castle of Lincoln, which under the command of a woman had hitherto resisted every assailant. Louis appears to have made a circuit of his new possessions—no doubt placing a garrison in each of them—and then proceeded to Lincoln, hoping that his personal presence and the isolation in which she was now placed might tempt or frighten Dame Nicolaa into a betrayal of her trust. ”

“ From nowhere does the minster look more imposing than from the towers of the castle; a water-colour by Frederick Mackenzie (see p. 53) , painted from the roof of "Cobb Hall," admirably illustrates this. For a closer prospect, the best position is undoubtedly the north-east corner, especially when the sun is setting behind the western towers. Lastly, the view from the High Street, beyond the Stonebow, should not be forgotten.
The minster is built of Lincoln stone, a hard limestone, well capable of resisting the action of the weather. ”

“ Between 1834 and 1845 he restored the keep, towers, and walls of Lincoln Castle, and had for more than twenty years the charge of that fabric as county surveyor. The Pelham Column, 128 feet high, on a hill at Cabourn between Caistor and Grimsby, was designed by Willson for the Earl of Yarborough. About 1818 an acquaintance with John Britton [q. v.] and Augustus Charles Pugin [q. v.] started him upon an industrious career as a writer on the phase of architecture then becoming popular. ”

“ Then came William the Conqueror, who raised a castle and made it the base of his operations against the northern counties. Lincoln soon was raised to a position of great ecclesiastical pre-eminence, when Remigius of Fécamp became the first Norman bishop, and ruled the vastest diocese in England, extending from the Humber to the Thames. The city was in the eleventh and twelfth centuries one of the greatest trading towns in the country, the resort of traders both of land and sea. Here King Stephen was vanquished and carried off a prisoner to Bristol. ”

“ But, in the other cases, although, at various dates during the middle ages, additions were made in stone, the nucleus of the plan is a collection of earthworks, which takes this form—a motte or mount with a bailey attached. At Lincoln there are two mounts. At York there are two castles, one on either side of the river, but each with its mount. On the mount of the castle north-east of the river is a later stone keep; the mount of the south-western castle has never carried stonework, and its bailey is now almost filled up with modern houses. ”

“ There were exceptions, and certainly several English castles have stonework of the period of the Conquest. London and Colchester (47) had rectangular donjons from the first. At Richmond (93) the stonework of part of the curtain and of the lower part of the rectangular tower-keep is unquestionably of the eleventh century, when the castle was constructed by Alan of Brittany. In several other places, in the curtain at Tamworth (48) and in part of the curtain at Lincoln, there is eleventh century stonework. But more will be said of these cases later. ”

“ Abraham Lincoln was born in a log-cabin [Pg 57] and taught himself to read and write in the early days of his hard boyhood. Woodrow Wilson was a schoolteacher. Rich men and poor men have risen to the presidency; men with the blood of many nations in their veins. The log-cabin or the castle birthplace has counted little; high posts of honor have been won by all.
Carl Schurz was born in a castle at Liblar, a small German town a few miles distant from the great city of Cologne, in the year 1829. But in spite of his castle birthplace, Carl was not of royal blood, but a poor boy. ”

“ To give an idea of the speed with which these fortresses could be made, we find that in a brief campaign of less than two months, in 1068, the king founded eight of considerable importance, including those at Nottingham, Warwick, Lincoln, Huntingdon, and York; in the following year the erection of a second castle at York only occupied eight days, and Baile Hill, the mount of the defence in question, sufficiently testifies to the magnitude of the work. ”

“ By letters patent, dated the fifth of September, 1551, Edward the sixth granted the castle with the manor, in fee, to Edward Lord Clinton and Saye, afterwards Earl of Lincoln. The Earl dying in 1584, was succeeded by his son Henry, who died in 1616, leaving issue a son and heir Thomas, who survived his father only two years, and was followed by his son Theophilus, who died in 1667. The next possessor was Edward, who was the grandson of Theophilus, and who died at Tattershall in 1692 ”

“ 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. ”

“ But first to say something of Sleaford itself. The Conqueror bestowed the manor on Remigius, first Bishop of Lincoln. About 1130 Bishop Alexander built the castle, together with that at Newark, which alone in part survives. These castles were seized by Stephen, and here King John, having left Swineshead Abbey, stayed a night before his last journey by Hough-on-the-hill to Newark, where he died 1216. Henry VIII., with Katherine Howard, held a council here on his way from Grimsthorpe to Lincoln, 1541, dining next day at Temple-Bruer, which he gave in the same year to the Duke of Suffolk. ”

“ Bishop Alexander’s work is richer than that of Remigius, and the shafts and capitals of his west doors are beautifully carved. In these, according to Norman custom, hunters are aiming at the birds and beasts in the foliage. This is best seen in the north-west doorway. King Stephen came to Lincoln in 1141, the year of the fire, and it was there that, after a fierce fight which raged round the castle and cathedral, he was taken prisoner and sent to Bristol, but in the following year terms were arranged between him and the Empress Maud, and he was crowned at Christmas in Lincoln cathedral. ”

“ Earl William died in the castle in 1226, when Ela, his widow, had custody of it. Her son and grandson seem to have claimed, but never to have obtained, the earldom, though, when the latter died in 1256, his daughter Margaret, who married Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, was known as Countess of Salisbury, probably on the death of Countess Ela in 1261. In 39 Henry III., 1254, an Inquisition declares that no fiefs are held by castle guard of the castle; and, in 52 Henry III., the bridge within the castle was under repair, and that and the gate were reparable by the Abbess of Shaftesbury. ”

“ Occasionally, but very rarely, we find two mottes in the same castle. The only instances in England known to the writer are at Lewes and Lincoln. [225] It is not [Pg 85] unfrequent to find a motte very near a stone castle. In this case it is either the abandoned site of the original wooden castle, or it is a siege castle raised to blockade the other one. We constantly hear of these siege castles being built in the Middle Ages ”

“ I have been unable to find any explanation of this exchange in any of the Norfolk topographers, or in any of the writers on Domesday Book.
[494] Lincoln is the only other instance known to the writer. Deganwy has two natural mottes. It is possible that two mottes indicate a double ownership of a castle, a thing of which there are instances, as at Rhuddlan.
[495] Exeter and Tickhill are instances of early Norman gateways, and at Ongar and Pleshy there are fragments of early gateways, though there are no walls on the banks. ”

“ The visitor to Woodhall, who has antiquarian proclivities, may well spend an enjoyable day at Lincoln, not only for the sake of seeing the p. 117Cathedral, which is unsurpassed by any in the kingdom, or, rather, as has been said by no less an authority than Ruskin, “worth any two others”; or of visiting the Castle, founded by the Conqueror; but there are many other objects of much interest. One of the most important discoveries of recent years is the remains of a Roman basilica, found beneath the house of Mr. ”