DISTRIBUTION AND CHARACTERISTICS OF MOTTE-CASTLES
The motte-and-bailey type of castle is to be found throughout feudal
Europe, but is probably more prevalent in France and the British
Isles than anywhere else. We say _probably_, because there are as
yet no statistics prepared on which to base a comparison.[205] How
recent the inquiry into this subject is may be learned from the fact
that Krieg von Hochfelden, writing in 1859, denied the existence of
mottes in Germany;[206] and even Cohausen in 1898 threw doubt upon
them,[207] although General Köhler in 1887 had already declared that
"the researches of recent years have shown that the motte was spread
over the whole of Germany, and was in use even in the 13th and 14th
centuries."[208] The greater number of the castles described by Piper
in his work on Austrian castles are on the motte-and-bailey plan,
though the motte in those mountainous provinces is generally of natural
rock, isolated either by nature or art. Mottes were not uncommon in
Italy, according to Muratori,[209] and are especially frequent in
Calabria, where we may strongly suspect that they were introduced by
the Norman conqueror, Robert Guiscard.[210] It is not improbable that
the Franks of the first crusade planted in Palestine the type of castle
to which they were accustomed at home, for several of the excellent
plans in Rey's _Architecture des Croisés_ show clearly enough the
motte-and-bailey plan.[211] In most of these cases the motte was a
natural rock.
On the other hand, we are told by Köhler that motte-castles are not
found among the Slavonic nations, because they never adopted the feudal
system.[212] Nor are there any in Norway or Sweden.[213] Denmark
has some, which are attributed by Dr Sophus Müller to the mediæval
period.[214]
Of course whenever a motte was thrown up, the first castle upon it
must have been a wooden one. A stone keep could not be placed on
loose soil.[215] The motte, therefore, must always represent the
oldest castle. But there is no reason to think that the motte and
its wooden keep were merely temporary expedients, intended always to
be replaced as soon as possible by stone buildings. Even after stone
castles had been fully developed, wood continued to hold its ground as
a solid building material until a very late period.[216] And mottes
were used not only throughout the 11th and 12th centuries, but even
as late as the 13th. King John built many castles of this type in
Ireland; and as late as 1242 Henry III. ordered a motte and wooden
castle to be built in the island of Rhé.[217] Muratori gives a much
later instance: in 1320 Can Grande caused a great motte to be built
near Pavia, and surrounded with a ditch and hedge, in order to build
a castle on it.[218] And as will be seen in the next chapter, there
is considerable evidence that many mottes in England which were set up
in the reign of William I., retained their wooden towers or stockades
even till as late as the reign of Edward I. The motte at Drogheda held
out some time against Cromwell, and is spoken of by him as a very
strong place, having a good graft (ditch) and strongly palisaded.[219]
Tickhill Castle in Yorkshire had a palisade on the counterscarp of the
ditch when it was taken by Cromwell.[220]
The position of these motte-castles is wholly different from that
of prehistoric fortresses. They are almost invariably placed in the
arable country, and as a rule not in isolated situations, but in the
immediate neighbourhood of towns or villages. It is rare indeed to
find a motte-castle in a wild, mountainous situation in England. The
only instance which occurs to the writer is that of the motte on the
top of the Hereford Beacon; but there is great probability that this
was a post fortified by the Bishop of Hereford in the 13th century to
protect his game from the Earl of Gloucester. Nothing pointing to a
prehistoric origin was found in this motte when it was excavated by Mr
Hilton Price,[221] though the camp in which it is placed is supposed to
be prehistoric.
The great majority of mottes in England are planted either on or near
Roman or other ancient roads, or on navigable rivers.[222] It was
essential to the Norman settlers that they should be near some road
which would help them to visit their other estates, which William had
been so careful to scatter, and would also enable them to revisit from
time to time their estates in Normandy.[223] The rivers of England were
much fuller of water in mediæval times than they are now, and were much
more extensively used for traffic; they were real waterways. When we
find a motte perched on a river which is not navigable, the purpose
probably was to defend some ford, or to exact tolls from passengers.
Thus the Ferry Hill (corrupted into Fairy Hill) at Whitwood stands at
the spot where the direct road from Pontefract to Leeds would cross the
Calder. It was probably not usual for the motte to be dependent on a
stream or a spring for its supply of water, and this is another point
in which the mediæval castle differs markedly from the prehistoric
camp; wells have been found in a number of mottes which have been
excavated, and it is probable that this was the general plan, though we
have not sufficient statistics on this subject as yet.[224]
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 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; their purpose was not for actual attack, but to watch the
besieged fort and prevent supplies from being carried in.[226] Hillocks
were also thrown up for the purpose of placing _balistæ_ and other
siege engines upon them; but these would be much smaller than mottes,
and would be placed much nearer the walls than blockade castles.
The mottes of France are in all probability much more decidedly
military than those of England. France was a land of private war, after
the dissolution of the empire of Charlemagne; and no doubt one of the
reasons for the rapid spread of the motte-castle, after its invention,
was due to the facilities which it offered for this terrible game.
In England the reasons for the erection of mottes seem to have been
manorial rather than military; that is, the Norman landholder desired
a safe residence for himself amidst a hostile peasantry, rather than
a strong military position which could hold out against skilful and
well-armed foes.
Attached to the castle, both in England and abroad, we frequently
find an additional enclosure, much larger than the comparatively
small area of the bailey proper. This was the _burgus_ or borough,
which inevitably sprang up round every castle which had a lengthened
existence. Our older antiquaries, finding that the word _burgenses_
was commonly used in Domesday in connection with a site where a
castle existed, formed the mistaken idea that a _burgus_ necessarily
implied a castle. But a _burgus_ was the same thing as a _burh_, that
is, a _borough_ or fortified town. It may have existed long before the
castle, or it may have been created after the castle was built. The
latter case was very common, for the noble who built a castle would
find it to his advantage to build a _burgus_ near it.[227] In exchange
for the protection offered by the borough wall or bank, he could demand
_gablum_ or rent from the burghers; he could compel them to grind their
corn at his mill, and bake their bread at his oven; he could exact
tolls on all commodities entering the borough; and if there was a
market he would receive a certain percentage on all sales. The borough
was therefore an important source of revenue to the baron. Domesday
Book mentions the _new borough_ at Rhuddlan, evidently built as soon
as the castle had been planted on the deserted banks of the Clwydd. In
some cases a "new borough" is clearly a new suburb, doubtless having
its own fortifications, built specially for the protection of the
Norman settlers in England, as at Norwich and Nottingham.[228]
That even in the 12th century a motte was considered an essential
feature of a castle is shown by Neckham's treatise "De Utensilibus,"
where he gives directions as to how a castle should be built; the motte
should be placed on a site well defended by nature; it should have a
stockade of squared logs round the top; the keep on the motte should
be furnished with turrets and battlements, and crates of stones for
missiles should be always provided, as well as a perpetual spring of
water, and secret passages and posterns, by which help might reach the
besieged.[229]
What the outward appearance of these motte-castles was we learn from
the Bayeux Tapestry, which gives us several instructive pictures of
motte-castles existing in the 11th century at Dol, Rennes, Dinan,
and Bayeux.[230] There is considerable variety in these pictures,
and something no doubt must be ascribed to fancy; but all show the
main features of a stockade round the top of the motte, enclosing a
wooden tower, a ditch round the foot of the motte, with a bank on
the counterscarp, and a stepped wooden bridge, up which horses were
evidently trained to climb, leading across the moat to the stockade of
the motte. In no case is the bailey distinctly depicted, but we may
assume that it has been already taken, and that the horsemen are riding
over it to the gate-house which (in the picture of Dinan) stands at the
foot of the bridge. The towers appear to be square, but in the case of
Rennes and Bayeux, are surmounted by a cupola roof. Decoration does not
appear to be have been neglected, and the general appearance of the
buildings, far from being of a makeshift character, must have been very
picturesque.
The picture of the building of the motte at Hastings shows only a
stockade on top of the motte; this may be because the artist intended
to represent the work as incomplete. What is remarkable about this
picture is that the motte appears to be formed in layers of different
materials. We might ascribe this to the fancy of the embroiderer,
were it not that layers of this kind have occasionally been found
in mottes which have been excavated or destroyed. Thus the motte at
Carisbrook, which was opened in 1903, was found to be composed of
alternate layers of large and small chalk rubble. In some cases, layers
of stones have been found; in others (as at York and Burton) a motte
formed of loose material has been cased in a sort of pie-crust of
heavy clay. In the Castle Hill at Hallaton in Leicestershire layers of
peat and hazel branches, as well as of clay and stone boulders, were
found. But our information on this subject is too scanty to justify any
generalisations as to the general construction of mottes.
The pictures shown in the Bayeux Tapestry agree very well with the
description given by a 12th-century writer of the castle of Merchem,
near Dixmüde, in the life of John, Bishop of Terouenne, who died in
1130. "Bishop John used to stay frequently at Merchem when he was
going round his diocese. Near the churchyard was an exceedingly high
fortification, which might be called a castle or _municipium_, built
according to the fashion of that country by the lord of the manor many
years before. For it is the custom of the nobles of that region, who
spend their time for the most part in private war, in order to defend
themselves from their enemies to make a hill of earth, as high as they
can, and encircle it with a ditch as broad and deep as possible. They
surround the upper edge of this hill with a very strong wall of hewn
logs, placing towers on the circuit, according to their means. Inside
this wall they plant their house, or keep (arcem), which overlooks
the whole thing. The entrance to this fortress is only by a bridge,
which rises from the counterscarp of the ditch, supported on double
or even triple columns, till it reaches the upper edge of the motte
(agger)."[231] The chronicler goes on to relate how this wooden bridge
broke down under the crowd of people who were following the bishop, and
all fell 35 feet into the ditch, where the water was up to their knees.
There is no mention of a bailey in this account, but a bailey was so
absolutely necessary to a residential castle, in order to find room
for the stables, lodgings, barns, smithies and other workshops, which
were necessary dependencies of a feudal household, that it can seldom
have been omitted, and the comparatively rare instances which we find
of mottes which appear never to have had baileys were probably outposts
dependent on some more important castle.
Lambert of Ardres, the panegyrist of the counts of Guisnes,[232]
writing about 1194, gives us a minute and most interesting description
of the wooden castle of Ardres, built about the year 1117. "Arnold,
lord of Ardres, built on the motte of Ardres a wooden house, excelling
all the houses of Flanders of that period both in material and in
carpenter's work. The first storey was on the surface of the ground,
where were cellars and granaries, and great boxes, tuns, casks, and
other domestic utensils. In the storey above were the dwelling and
common living rooms of the residents, in which were the larders,
the rooms of the bakers and butlers, and the great chamber in which
the lord and his wife slept. Adjoining this was a private room, the
dormitory of the waiting maids and children. In the inner part of the
great chamber was a certain private room, where at early dawn or in
the evening or during sickness or at time of blood-letting, or for
warming the maids and weaned children, they used to have a fire.... In
the upper storey of the house were garret rooms, in which on the one
side the sons (when they wished it) on the other side the daughters
(because they were obliged) of the lord of the house used to sleep. In
this storey also the watchmen and the servants appointed to keep the
house took their sleep at some time or other. High up on the east side
of the house, in a convenient place, was the chapel, which was made
like unto the tabernacle of Solomon in its ceiling and painting. There
were stairs and passages from storey to storey, from the house into the
kitchen, from room to room, and again from the house into the _loggia_
(logium), where they used to sit in conversation for recreation, and
again from the loggia into the oratory."[233]
This description proves that these wooden castles were no mere rude
sheds for temporary occupation, but that they were carefully built
dwellings designed for permanent residence. The description is useful
for the light it throws on the stone keeps whose ruins remain to us.
They probably had very similar arrangements, and though only their
outside walls are now existing, they must have been divided into
different rooms by wooden partitions which have now perished.[234]
In this account of Lambert's it is further mentioned that the kitchen
was joined to the house or keep, and was a building of two floors, the
lower one being occupied by live stock, while the upper one was the
actual kitchen. We must remember that this account was written at the
end of the 12th century. In the earlier and simpler manners of the 11th
century it is probable that the cooking was more generally carried on
in the open air, as it was among the Anglo-Saxons.[235] The danger of
fire would prevent the development of chimneys in wooden castles; we
have seen that there was only one in this wonderful castle of Ardres.
But even after stone castles became common, we have evidence that the
kitchen was often an isolated building in the courtyard. One such
kitchen still exists in the monastic ruins of Glastonbury.
The word _mota_, which was used in the 12th century for the artificial
hills on which the wooden keeps of these castles were placed, comes
from an old French word _motte_, meaning a clod of earth, which is
still used in France for a small earthen hillock.[236] The keep itself
appears to have been called a _bretasche_, though this word seems to
have meant a wooden tower of any kind, and was used both for mural
towers and for the movable wooden towers employed for sieges.[237] At a
much later period it was given to the wooden balconies by which walls
were defended, but the writer has found no instance of this use of the
word before the 14th century. On the contrary, these wooden galleries
for the purpose of defending the foot of the walls by throwing missiles
down are called _hurdicia_ or hourdes in the documents, a word of
cognate origin to our word _hoarding_.[238] The word _bretasche_ is
also of Teutonic origin, akin to the German _brett_, a board.
The court at the base of the hillock is always called the _ballium_,
_bayle_, or _bailey_, a word for which Skeat suggests the Latin
_baculus_, a stick, as a possible though very doubtful ancestor. The
wooden wall which surrounded this court was the _palum_, _pelum_, or
_palitium_ of the documents, a word which Mr Neilson has proved to be
the origin of the _peels_ so common in Lowland Scotland, though it has
been mistakenly applied to the towers enclosed by these peels.[239]
The _palitium_ was the stockade on the inner bank of the ditch which
enclosed the bailey; but the outer or counterscarp bank had also its
special defence, called the _hericio_, from its bristling nature
(French _hérisson_, a hedgehog). There can be little doubt that it
was sometimes an actual hedge of brambles, at other times of stakes
intertwined with osiers or thorns.[240]
Thus the words most commonly used in connection with these wooden
castles are chiefly French in form, but a French that is tinctured with
Teutonic blood. This is just what we might expect, since the first
castles of feudalism arose on Gallic soil (France or Flanders), but on
soil which was ruled by men of Teutonic descent. We may regard it as
fairly certain that it was in the region anciently known as Neustria
that the motte-castle first appeared; and as we have previously shown,
there is some reason to think that the centre of that region was
the place where it originated. But this must for the present remain
doubtful. What we regard as certain is that it was from France, and
from Normandy in particular, that it was introduced into the British
Isles; and to those islands we must now turn.