[Illustration: DUNHEVED CASTLE, CORNWALL.]
These mouldering ruins occupy the crest of the hill, upon which stands
the town of Launceston, near the centre of the eastern side of the
county of Cornwall. They are the works of a thousand years since, when
might triumphed over right with an unsparing hand, and when men
perpetrated by fire and sword millions of murders, which, through the
ignorance and credulity of their fellow creatures, have been glossed
over with the vain glory of heroism.
The ancient name of Launceston was Dunheved, or the Swelling Hill; its
present appellation, according to Borlase, the antiquarian illustrator
of Cornwall, signifies, in mixed British, the Church of the Castle. The
latter structure is the most important object in the town, to which, in
all probability, it gave origin. The remains surround a considerable
extent of ground, and prove it to have been a very strong and important
fortress. Borlase, who examined the building with great attention about
the middle of the last century, thus describes it:--
"The principal entrance is on the north-east, the gateway 120 feet long;
whence, turning to the right, you mount a terrace, running parallel to
the rampart till you come to the angle, on which there is a round tower,
now called the Witches' Tower, from which the terrace runs away to the
left at right angles, and continues on a level parallel to the rampart,
which is nearly of the thickness of 12 feet, till you come to a
semicircular tower, and, as I suppose, a guard-room and gate. From this
the ground rises very quick, and, through a passage of seven feet wide,
you ascend the covered way betwixt two walls, which are pierced with
narrow windows for observation, and yet cover the communication between
the base-court and the keep or dungeon. The whole keep is 93 feet
diameter; it consisted of three wards: the wall of the first ward was
not quite three feet thick; and therefore, I think, could only be a
parapet for soldiers to fight from, and defend the brow of the hill. Six
feet within it stands the second wall, which is twelve feet thick, and
has a staircase three feet wide, at the left hand of the entrance,
running up to the top of the rampart; the entrance of this staircase has
a round arch of stone over it. Passing on to the left, you find the
entrance into the innermost ward, and on the left of that entrance a
winding staircase conducts you to the top of the innermost rampart; the
wall of which is 10 feet thick, and 32 feet high from the floor; the
inner room is 18 feet 6 inches diameter; it was divided by a planking
into two rooms. The upper room had to the east and west two large
openings, which were both windows and (as I am inclined to think) doors,
also in time of action to pass from this dungeon out upon the principal
rampart, from which the chief defence was to be made; for it must be
observed, that the second ward was covered with a flat roof, at the
height of that rampart, which made the area very roomy and convenient
for numbers. These openings, therefore, upon occasion, served as
passages for the soldiers to go from one rampart to the other. In the
upper room of the innermost building there was a chimney to the north;
underneath there was a dungeon, which had no lights. The lofty taper
hill, on which this strong keep is built, is partly natural and partly
artificial. It spread farther in the town anciently than it does now;
and, by the radius of it, was 320 feet diameter, and very high."
The building of Dunheved Castle has been generally attributed to
William, Earl of Moreton and Cornwall, the son and heir of Robert, Earl
of Moreton, to whom 288 manors in this county were given by William the
Norman. "But this opinion is most probably erroneous, as the style of
workmanship exhibited in several parts of the remains, is apparently of
a much earlier date. The walls of the keep, in particular, have every
appearance of being considerably more ancient; and from a retrospective
view of the events that have happened in this county, the conjecture
appears to be fully warranted, that its foundation is as remote as the
time of the Britons, who would undoubtedly endeavour to defend their
territory both from Roman and Saxon usurpation, by fortifying the more
advanced and important situations. The most therefore that can with
certainty be attributed to the above earl, is the repairing and
extending the fortifications. Carew, in his _Survey of Cornwall_,
published in 1602, mentions the finding about sixty years before, 'of
certain leather coins in the castle walls, whose fair stamp and strong
substance till then resisted the assaults of time.' These singular
coins, if they had been preserved or their impressions had been copied,
might have thrown some light on the age of the building, as money of
similar _substance_ was employed by Edward I. in erecting Caernarvon
Castle in Wales, 'to spare better bullion,'[1] Some Roman coins have
likewise, according to Borlase, been found in this neighbourhood; so
that it is not unlikely that the Romans had possession of this fortress,
which, from its situation near the ford of the river Tamar, was a fort
of great importance. The earliest historical documents that are known
concerning the castle, mention the displacing of Othomarus de Knivet,
its hereditary constable, for being in arms against the Conqueror. It
was then, as before mentioned, given to Robert, Earl of Moreton, whose
son William, kept his court here. From him it reverted to the crown, but
continued attached to the earldom of Cornwall till Edward III. when it
was constituted and still continues, part of the inheritance of the
Duchy. In Leland's time, several gentlemen of the county held their
lands by _castle-guard_, being bound to repair and defend the
fortifications of this castle.[2] During the civil wars, this fortress
was garrisoned for the king, and was one of the last supports of the
royal cause in this part of the county."[3]
[1] Kennet's _Parochial Antiquities_.
[2] Leland says "the hill on which the Keep stands, is large and
of a terrible height, and the arx (i.e.) Keep, of it, having
three several wards, is the strongest, but not the biggest, that
I ever saw in any ancient work in England."
[3] _Beauties of England and Wales_, vol. ii.
The reader may more than once have noticed our predilection for
illustrating the castellated antiquities of Britain in our pages. We
have a threefold object in this choice: first, the architectural
investigation of these structures is of untiring interest; the events of
their histories are so many links in the annals of our country; while
they enable us to take comprehensive glances of the domestic manners of
times past, and by contrasting them with the present, to appreciate the
peaceful state of society in which we live.
Happily, such means of defence as castles supplied to our ancestors, are
no longer requisite. The towers, ramparts, and battlements that once
awed the enemy, or struck terror into an oppressed people, are now mere
objects of curiosity, The unlettered peasant gazes upon their ruins with
idle wonder; the antiquary explores their flittering masses with
admiration and delight. The breaches of the last siege are unrepaired;
the courtyard is choked up and overgrown with luxuriant weeds; the walls
become dank and discoloured with rank vegetation; the winds and rains of
heaven displace and disintegrate their massive stones; the tempest tears
them as in a terrific siege; or the slow and silent devastations of
nature go on beneath ivy and mossy crusts obscuring the proud work of
man's hand, and defacing its glories in desert waste. Such effects the
reader may witness in a few of the illustrations of the present volume:
the long tale of conquest upon conquest is told from the Norman sway to
the Revolution, in the history of Pontefract Castle (page 50); the
picturesqueness of decay in the towers of Wilton (page 306); and the
stratagems of war in the mounds and lines of Dunheved.
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