is plainly late Norman, and, likely enough, the work of Robert
Fitz-Ranulph, Lord of Middleham, in 1190; and to his immediate
descendants are certainly due the earlier alterations, especially the
chapel, before the extinction of the male line, in 1271.
No doubt the exterior ward is built on the site of a Norman _enceinte_,
and some of the original work may remain; but this part of the fortress
was completely recast by the Neviles, who married the Fitz-Ranulph
heiress, and, no doubt, either by Robert, called the Peacock of the
North, who had Middleham, &c., from his grandmother, and who died
before 5 Edward II., 1331, or by Ralph, Lord Nevile of Raby, his
brother and successor, who died 41 Edward III., 1367.
Of the later residence of Richard, Duke of York (Richard III.) the
traces are the large window opening on the west face of the keep, and
perhaps the upper story on the east side of the same building, and
certain details added to the ward.
Middleham was a part of the broad territory granted by the Conqueror
to Alan Fergaunt, the founder of Richmond Castle, and lord of that
extensive Honour, stepping thus into the seat of the English Earl
Edwin, which he shifted from the adjacent Gilling. His younger son,
Ribald, had Middleham for his especial lordship, by the gift of the
second Alan, his brother. Ribald was followed by Ralph, his son, and he
by Robert FitzRalph, or Ranulph, who married Berta, niece of Ranulph de
Glanvill, and is the reputed builder of Middleham Keep in 1191, 2 and 3
Richard I.
Ranulph FitzRobert was the founder of Coverham Abbey, “Near his
manor-house of Middleham,” and was there buried in 1251 (31 Henry
III.), leaving Ralph Fitz Ranulph, his son, who appears to have been
lord of Middleham Manor in an inquisition for the partition of his
lands (55 Henry III.), the year of his death. He left three daughters,
co-heiresses, of whom Mary, the eldest, married Robert de Nevile, and
had Middleham. Ralph died (55 Henry III.) 1271. It appears, by an
inquisition under the name of Peter of Savoy, that Middleham was a fee
owing suit of court to the Honour of Richmond. 18 Edward I., Maria de
Nevile is styled Domina de Middleham, and 13 Edward II. she had the
manor. She lived till 14 Edward II. (1320), having held Middleham for
life.
Their son was Ralph Nevile, who died 5 Edward III., (1331), and who
appears in an inquisition (1 Edward III.) as holding Middleham Manor
and Castle. His son, Robert Nevile, the Peacock of the North, had from
his grandmother the castle and manor of Middleham. He died, without
issue, before his father, leaving Ralph his brother and heir, who died
41 Edward III. This Ralph, Lord Nevile of Raby, took a very active part
in all the public transactions of his time, both in war and peace. He
died seized of the castle and manor of Middleham, and was the first
layman buried in the Cathedral of Durham.
The next lord was John, his son, also a great soldier and diplomatist.
He died 12 Richard II., 1388, leaving Ralph, his son and heir, who
added to the wealth and power of the family, and also held the castle,
manor, and lordship of Middleham at his death in 4 Henry VI., 1425.
John, son of Ralph, died before his father, 1423, who was succeeded
by his grandson, Ralph, Earl of Westmoreland, who died 2 Richard III.
Middleham, however, had passed to Richard Nevile, Earl of Salisbury,
son of Earl Ralph, who died 4 Henry VI., by his second wife, a daughter
of John of Gaunt. The Earl of Salisbury, by an inquisition of 12
Richard II., had then Middleham. This is the earl who, in 37 Henry
VI., marched with 4,000 men from Middleham into Lancashire on his way
to London, to obtain redress from the king and queen for injuries
done to his son. On this earl’s forfeiture, before 38 Henry VI., his
Lancastrian kinsman, Sir John Nevile, was made constable of Middleham
Castle, then in the Crown. Sir John fell at Towton, 1 Edward IV., and
his son Ralph became Earl of Westmoreland. But Middleham remained in
the Crown.
At Middleham, then in charge of Nevile, Archbishop of York, Edward
IV. was confined by Richard, Earl of Warwick, the prelate’s brother.
Edward escaped when hunting in the park. After Barnet the castle was
granted to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to the exclusion of the male
heirs of the Marquis Montagu, Warwick’s brother. Richard was much here;
raised the rectory to a deanery, with a view to the foundation of a
college; and here his son Edward, Prince of Wales, was born. After
Richard’s death, Middleham fell to the Crown, and was leased to various
persons. Finally it was sold to Mr. Wood, of Littleton, ancestor of the
present owner. Recently the keep has been partially cleared of rubbish,
and some of the most dangerous portions have been under-pinned; but a
little more assistance of the same character is much needed to save
some of the most prominent features of the ruin from destruction.
MITFORD CASTLE, NORTHUMBERLAND.
This is one of the most remarkable of the Northumbrian castles. It is
situated about two miles above and west of Morpeth, on the right bank
of the Wansbeck, which here makes two very sharp bends, the larger and
higher of which includes the castle, the church of St. Andrew, the
new Hall, and the ruins of the old one. The church, the nave of which
was long roofless, has been repaired, and is now in good order. It is
the burial-place of the ancient barons and modern lords of Mitford.
The chancel is early English; the nave rude but good Norman, with a
pointed south door in the same style. The old Hall, of which a tower
is standing, was a Tudor building, constructed by the Mitfords, in
part from the materials of the castle. The present Hall, the Mitford
residence, is modern.
What remains of the castle occupies the summit of a knoll of sandstone
rock, rising about 70 feet, on the north side abruptly, and elsewhere
more or less steeply, from a marshy meadow, which on the north, east,
and west is encircled by the folds of the Wansbeck, and on the south
by a sweep of a tributary stream, which joins the river just below
the castle. Each watercourse flows beneath a steep and high concave
bank, thickly wooded, and the result is a sylvan amphitheatre of great
seclusion and much beauty.
The castle knoll, at its summit, is about eighty yards across,
irregularly circular. Along its brow runs the _enceinte_ wall of the
place, much broken down, but which seems to have been about 20 feet
high and 7 feet thick. It may be traced all round, save at one point
on the south face, where it is encroached upon by a quarry opened for
the materials of the new Hall in 1810. Towards the north the wall
is tolerably perfect, though more or less riven, and without its
battlements. The inclosure is now an orchard.
The northern portion of the area is somewhat higher than the rest, and
has been parted off by a cross wall, creating an inner ward, of small
dimension, semi-circular plan, and considerable strength. In this ward
stands the Norman keep, a square of about 36 feet, but having its north
side in two oblique faces, forming a salient. It has, therefore, five
sides, a rare and certainly original departure from the usual Norman
plan. The walls are about 7 feet thick, and the interior area 22 feet 6
inches square. This space is divided by a cross wall, north and south,
into two equal parts, each barrel-vaulted, with a plain, round-headed
arch springing from a plain chamfered abacus. The north face of each
chamber is oblique, to match the exterior salient. Of these chambers,
one has a loop in the north gable, and the other, in the corresponding
place, two small stone spouts, about 3 feet from the floor, as though
for the admission of water. Both chambers are ruined at the south end.
All the keep above the ground-floor walls is destroyed, and the rubbish
conceals the exterior wall face, but the whole is clearly of excellent
ashlar. From and within the west wall a small mural stair descends,
turning the south-west angle to a door in the south wall, opening into
the west vault. This door has a flat segmental arch. The outer entrance
seems to have been in the west wall in the floor above the basement. It
is said that an exterior stone stair is concealed by the rubbish. This
keep stands upon the rock, here, perhaps, 20 feet above the rest of
the area. It blocks up the triangular, or rather segmental inner ward,
standing about 50 feet from one angle and 30 feet from the other. Its
salient extends to within 10 feet of the northern, or corresponding
salient of the ward, and its southern face is about 6 feet within
the cross wall. In the curved outer wall of this ward, towards the
north-west, is a very remarkable window recess, 8 feet broad and
of the same height, to the plain Norman abacus, whence springs its
round-headed arch, over which is a hood-moulding of the same pattern,
the only attempt at ornament. The wall here is 8 feet thick, but as the
outer 2 feet are not original, the window-case is gone. It was probably
of two lights, and opened upon the cliff.
Close south of this window, in the inner face of the same wall, are a
number of curious holes, irregularly placed, more or less rounded, as
though half a soda-water bottle had been thrust into the green mortar.
They occur at the joints, and the best marked are where three joints
meet. They are certainly not putlog holes, being too irregular and too
shallow.
The inner ward was entered from the outer by a small strong doorway in
the cross wall, now much ruined, a few feet west of the keep.
The outer ward had probably a chapel on its south side; many graves,
some covered with slabs, and one containing a stone coffin, having
been laid open when baring for the quarry. In the west wall is a good
plain Caernarvon-headed postern door of 5 feet opening, below a pointed
relieving arch. The main entrance to this ward was on the east side,
near the inner ward wall, and commanded by the keep. The gateway, said
to have been 15 feet deep, is now a ruin, but it opened upon a small
platform, a little lower than the ward, and defended by a wall, under
cover of which the road wound up from below. Some broken ground on this
side is said to indicate an ancient quarry, probably that employed when
the castle was built.
On the north-west quarter was also a spur from the hill, but lower
and narrower than the former one. This has been converted into a thin
falciform bank, concave to the castle, by the cutting of a deep ditch
in its rear, probably to provide a covered way to the postern, up which
cattle could be driven with safety.
The castle hill seems to have been girt, a few yards from its base, by
a wet ditch, in part artificial, which covered its north-west and south
sides, and communicated at each end with the Wansbeck, which completed
the circle on the east side. Whether there was a wall within the ditch
is uncertain, probably not, but it was guarded towards the north-east
by a gatehouse and enclosed space, in front of which, below the present
bridge, was the old fosse-bridge, by the tenure of guarding which
Walter de Swinhowe, in the reign of Edward III., held forty acres of
land.
A knoll so defined as Mitford, so secluded, and so protected by a river
and by marshy ground, was likely to have been a British camp as well as
a Saxon or English dwelling-place, and there is high probability of the
truth of the tradition that asserts the Barony of Mitford to have been
held in the reign of the Confessor by John of Mitford, whose daughter
Sybil is said to have carried it in marriage to Richard Bertram, a
follower of the Conqueror, and of the stock of Baliol. The first
recorded lord is, however, Roger Bertram, who held the Barony in 1155,
and certified to its having been held by his father and grandfather. At
that time the Barony extended over five parishes, and received payment
of castle-guard from nine manors, itself paying scutage to the castle
of Newcastle.
The Bertrams who, like the Baliols, bore an orle for their arms,
retained Mitford for eight generations, when Agnes, their heiress, sold
the estate, in 1275, to Alexander de Baliol, from whom it passed by
various changes to de Valence, and thence with part of his estate to
the Earl of Athol, one of his heirs general. There remained, however,
in the district a family who bore the surname of Mitford, and claimed
descent from a brother of John, whose daughter married the Bertram.
Their representative, William, in the tenth generation, held lands in,
and his son was actually of Mitford, and seems to have recovered the
castle, and to be the direct ancestor in the male line of the present
Mr. Mitford, of Mitford, and of his distant kinsman, Lord Redesdale.
The castle, though of no great magnitude, played, from its position
and strength, rather an important part in Border warfare. William the
Lion, who reigned from 1165 to 1214, dated a charter from hence, 28th
December, 1215. King John is said to have burned the vill, though
whether he took the castle is unknown. The public records, however,
make him visit Mitford from Berwick in 1216, and stay there the 24th,
25th, and 26th of January, going on the latter day to Newcastle.
Alexander, King of Scotland, failed to take the place in May, 1217,
when he lay in leaguer before it for seven days. Local history is
silent concerning it during the active reign of Edward I., but in the
wild times consequent upon Bannockburn, a notorious Border freebooter,
Sir Gilbert Middleton, made Mitford his stronghold, and here imprisoned
Henry, Lord Beaumont, while his brother Lewis, Bishop of Durham, was
shut up in Morpeth Castle.
The castle, by its present condition, affords evidence of the
vicissitudes it has undergone. Still, ruined as it is, careful
observation finds much from which its original plan, and even part of
its details, may be ascertained. Its general plan, the keep, and the
most part of the _enceinte_ wall, are evidently original, and late
Norman, probably the work of Richard Bertram early in the reign of
Henry II. The postern is, of course, later, either early Edwardian
or of the reign of Henry III. It is unusual to find so small a keep
divided by a cross-wall, or to find any Norman keep with an original
vaulted basement, though of this there is apparently an example in
the late Norman Keep of Norham. The salient on one side is unknown
elsewhere.
A good ground-plan and photographs on a large scale of the masonry are
much needed, and a very moderate amount of excavation in the inner ward
would probably throw light on the original structure of the keep. In
point of recorded history the very complete account of Mitford, given
in Hodgson’s “Northumberland,” leaves nothing to be desired; it is only
to be regretted that a corresponding industry and critical acumen have
not been brought to bear upon its architectural remains.
MONTGOMERY CASTLE.
It is by a singular chance that a rude and artificial mound of earth,
in an obscure part of a foreign province, should have given its name
to a British county and to the town that forms its capital. The proper
names of places in Britain are usually either British or English.
Once given in the latter tongue, they have but seldom been changed.
New creations, as Battle and Jervaulx, and some other ecclesiastical
houses, bear, indeed, new names; but these do not appear to have
displaced any already existing. Pontefract is a name probably derived
from an accidental circumstance; but Richmond and Montgomery are
solitary instances of a shire or a capital town deriving its name from
the inheritance of a Norman lord.
The castle of Montgomery is registered by that name in the Domesday
survey, and placed in the hundred of Wintentrue, in the county of
Salop. “Ad castellum de Montgomeri habet comes iiii carucas et vi
libras denariorum. habet de uno fine de Walis pertinente ad ipsam
castellariam. Rogerius [Corbet] habet ibi ij carucas, et de Walis, cum
fratre suo habet xl. solidos.” And further on, “Ipse comes construxit
castrum, Muntgumeri vocatum. Ad quod adjacent lii. hidæ et dimidia quas
tenuere Seuuar, Oslac, Azor, de rege Edwardo, quietas ab omni geldo;
ad venandum eas habuere.” Here, then, we have the name of the castle,
its inclusion in an English county, its castelry, its chief lord, Earl
Roger, and the fact that in the time of the Confessor, three Englishmen
held 52½ hides about it as a hunting-ground. The Englishmen are
entered, a few lines on, as Thanes. Seuuar was, no doubt, like Siward,
a very great, as was Azor a considerable, landowner in the same county.
“De fine de Walis” shows that Earl Roger’s territory included Welshmen
with his English tenants, just as the names of places, and especially
of parishes, in the district, show a great and early establishment of
English there. The castelry included twenty-two members, at no great
distance from the castle rock, and the castle was one of about fourteen
strong places mentioned in Domesday as then existing in Hereford,
Monmouth, and Salop. It only differed from most others, and especially
from such as Clun, Ludlow, Caus, Oswestry, or Whittington, in being
held by the earl himself, and not by one of his secondary barons.
Earl Roger, the “comes” of the above entry, upon the fall of Morkere,
added Shropshire to his Sussex earldom, and to him, with powers equal
in many respects to those of royalty, was committed the safety of the
middle march, with its extensive but imperilled English settlement
there. On the site of the British Pengwern and of the Saxon Shrobsbury,
folded securely within a remarkable convolution of the Severn, he
established his chief seat upon, and at the base of, the English mound,
which still looks down upon the deep and wide river; and with its
connected fragment of the ancient city wall forms a striking contrast
to the bustle and action carried out upon the railway and within its
ephemeral buildings at the foot of the slope. There is a tradition,
founded, however, upon error, that the earl’s lieutenant in the more
advanced frontier of his dangerous territory, was a certain Baldwin,
whose name is preserved in the Welsh appellation of Tre-Faldwin for
the town and castle, and of Frydd-Faldwin for a remarkable encampment
on the summit of an adjacent hill. But Baldwin, though not an uncommon
name with the Normans, does not occur in Shropshire among either the
tenants-in-chief or the under-tenants, in Domesday. There was indeed a
William Fitz-Baldwin, Lord of Rhydcors, in the reign of Rufus, but he
was a South Wales man, and unconnected with Earl Roger. But whether
as Tre-Faldwin or Montgomery, whether named from the hand or the head,
it is clear that the castle stood in a position most offensive to the
pride and patriotic feelings of the Welsh. The vale of the Severn from
Welsh Pool to a little short of Llanidloes, had for centuries been a
field of bitter contest. The Roman, the Dane, and the Englishman had
done violence to the “virgin daughter of Locrine,” and stained her
molten crystal with blood. Its broad band of flat and fertile meadow
made Powys-land a prize of great value, and the steep and lofty hills
between which it was contained, were highly favourable to both the
sudden attack and safe retreat of the Welsh. The plain and its lower
eminences, traversed by the dyke of Offa, are thickly studded with
moated mounds and earthworks, thrown up in the eighth, ninth, and
tenth centuries, and which show how far-reaching was, even in that
remote period, the Mercian and English power. The mound thrown up by
Æthelflaed in 916, at Chirbury, is destroyed; but those of Moat Lane,
of Newtown, of Hên-domen, of Kerry, and Nant-cribba, remain, and are
as large and as well-defined as that of Shrewsbury itself, and of
the very type of those more famous royal residences in Elmete and at
Laughton-en-le-Morthen, or of the works near Livarot, whence Earl Roger
derived his name, and which have survived all subsequent additions in
stone and lime.
That Earl Roger, between his acquisition of the earldom and the year
of the Domesday survey had built a castle, is on record, but what sort
of a castle may be a question. Norman towers were plain, solid, of
durable design, and excellent workmanship, too stout and too useful
to be intentionally pulled down, and usually, as at Wattlesborough,
outlasting all later additions; but assuredly there is now no trace of
any work of Earl Roger on the castle rock, nor anywhere near it; for
it has been supposed, without shadow of probability, that his castle
was placed, not upon the rock, but somewhere in its neighbourhood. It
seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that Earl Roger’s castle was
of a less durable character than is usually supposed, and that this
will account for its quick destruction in 1095, two years after his
death, by the Welsh, accompanied by the slaughter of his successor’s
(Earl Hugh) garrison. This was the event that brought Rufus into the
district, to the earl’s aid, in 1096, when, though he did but little,
he seems to have recovered the site of the castle, and to have given
the earl an opportunity of rebuilding or restoring it. Earl Hugh is
said to have done so, but however this may have been, Montgomery is not
mentioned among the castles held by his elder brother, but successor,
Robert de Belesme, the wicked earl, on his ruin and banishment in 1102.
Here, again, the probability is that any castle then standing was of
a light and not very durable character, not worthy of being mentioned
with Shrewsbury or Bridgenorth.
With the fall of the house of Montgomery, the earldom escheated to
the Crown, and with it its castle and castelry. Henry I. upon this
remodelled the hundreds of Salop, and raised Montgomery into an
Honour or barony, throwing into it the greater part of the adjacent
seignory of Chirbury, and several other manors. The valuable, and, on
the whole, compact territory thus constituted was at once granted by
Henry to a certain Baldwin de Bollers, who was the husband “Sibillæ
nepotis regis,” whatever relationship, legitimate or illegitimate, that
word may indicate. This lady is also designated, possibly from her
mother, as “Sibil de Faleise.” All that is known of Baldwin is that he
already held five knight’s-fees of the honour of Warden. He held the
new Honour, _in capite_, of the king, per baroniam; his under-tenants
holding of him, most of them, as set forth in the Hundred Rolls, by
castle guard. Baldwin began his reign by the very necessary act of
building a castle, though what he actually constructed is uncertain,
for there is no existing masonry that can be attributed to him or his
immediate successors. Still, he is reported to have built a castle, and
that he did so is probably just as certain that it is his name, and not
that of any lieutenant of Earl Roger, that is identified with the rock
by the Welsh. It is also reported that while Baldwin was preparing this
castle, he occupied the British camp above, known, in consequence, as
Ffrydd-Faldwin. This is most improbable. The camp, a very large and
very fine specimen of a British work, would hold five or six thousand
men, and could not well be defended by less than a third of that
number, for its front is extensive, and its slopes, though steep, are
by no means so steep as to stop, or materially to check the onset of
a tribe of light-armed mountaineers. Baldwin’s force was more likely
to be 500 than 5,000 men, and no doubt depended for its power far more
upon its arms and discipline than upon its numerical strength. The
castle rock would have held such a force with great security while the
operations of a castle were in progress, and probably did so.
The descendants of De Bollers, incorrectly given by Dugdale, have been
disentangled by Mr. Eyton, the real historian of Montgomery, with his
usual patience and skill, and seem to be as follows:—
Baldwin de Bollers, Lord of Montgomery, 1121, married, (1) Sibil
de Faleise, and had also a second wife. By Sibil he had Stephen de
Bollers, 1160, Lord of Montgomery, who married Maria, and had Robert,
who died young. Matilda, Sibil’s daughter, married Richard Fitz-Urse,
1130–58, and had Reginald Fitz-Urse, one of Becket’s murderers, and
Margery.