The character of ancient buildings, the various styles of architecture
which they present to us, their beauties as well as their blemishes,
enable any one whose darkness may be lightened by the diviner radiance
of a happy power of imagination to recall the persons and the events
with which these buildings have been associated. The gloomy feudal
fortress carries the mind back to the Middle Ages; the abbey, with
its cloisters and windows and all the surroundings of a dim religious
light, reminds us of days when the Head of the Church was indeed
Christ’s Vicar here upon earth; while the palace suggests, side by side
with its stories of games played at that great game in which men are
but as pawns, pictures of gallant gentlemen and fair ladies who, though
being dead, yet live before us. England is not so rich in these varied
combinations of palace, abbey, and tower as is France, for instance,
and particularly Touraine. Many of our most famous mediæval castles
have been suffered to fall into decay, or, worse still, have been
improved into modern shape by the rash hand of idle innovators.
[Illustration: WARWICK CASTLE, ENGLAND.]
There is one among our castles, however, which neither Time’s defacing
fingers nor man’s innovating hand has despoiled--Warwick Castle.
Possibly there is no place of this sort so well known to the whole
English world over, situated as it is within that Shakespeare country
from which proceeded those melodious sounds that yet fill the world. It
has always been the Mecca of the best and noblest of literary pilgrims
from America. Nearly half a century ago Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote for
an American magazine a series of sketches, in one of which, entitled
“About Warwick,” he tells us how “through the vista of willows that
droop on either side into the water we behold the grey magnificence
of Warwick Castle uplifting itself among stately trees and rearing
its turrets above their loftiest branches. We can scarcely think the
scene real, so completely do the machicolated towers, the long line of
battlements, the massive buttresses, the high-windowed walls, shape out
our indistinct ideas of the antique time.”
After all a castle, even so famous a one as Warwick, is not so
interesting in itself as the scenes it has witnessed and the people
who have lived in it or have visited it. The history of Warwick
Castle, for the last three hundred and fifty years at least, has been
no small part of the history of England. Personal and local history
in England does not so much begin with the Reformation as it does
in other countries; but this one thing is certain, that between the
pre-Reformation world and ourselves there is a great gulf fixed which
the historian has tried in vain to bridge. Not that the place before
that could have been devoid of interest: no castle in the stormy times
of the Wars of the Roses could have enjoyed the happiness of having
no history; and, surely, if any did, Warwick was not one of them.
Its very position, situated in the heart of England, must, from the
time when the Great Alfred’s daughter built the keep (“the monument
of the wisdom and energy of the mighty Ethelfleda”), have been such
that, in all the numerous brawls and butcheries dignified by the name
of civil war, the possession of it must have been a matter of supreme
importance. And so it was nearly four centuries before the outbreak of
the Wars of the Roses that William the Conqueror had made Warwick the
base of his operations for his campaign in the North. The fortress he
built there has gone--not one stone left upon another, and so utterly
perished that the very site of it is pure guess-work. The legendary Guy
and all his feats may be dismissed from any account which makes any
pretence to be historical. There is a curious account of the garrison
of Warwick Castle in the time of Henry II., when all his legitimate
sons were in arms against him, and the two illegitimate sons of Fair
Rosamond alone remained faithful. It was occupied for the King; and the
sheriff’s account rendered for the victualling of the place was this:
“xi. _li._ xiii. _d._ for 20 quarters of Bread Corn; xx.
_s._ for 20 quarters of Malt; c. _s._ for 50 Biefs salted up;
xxx. _s._ for 90 cheeses; and xx. _s._ for salt then laid in
for the victualling thereof.”
Of the importance of Warwick Castle in the Middle Ages we can well form
an idea from Dugdale’s statement:--
“Of what regard it was in those times may be discerned by the King’s
precept to the Archbishop of York, for requiring good security of
Margery, sister and heir to Thomas, then Earl of Warwick, that she
should not take to husband any person whatsoever in whom the said King
could not repose trust as in his own self: the chief reason being given
in these words, ‘Because she has a Castle of immense strength, and
situated towards the Marshes.’”
No mention of Warwick Castle would be complete if it left out the
famous Earl--“the King-Maker,” and the “Last of the Barons.” Never
was the “Bear and Ragged Staff” held in such high esteem as between
1455 and 1470. And when, a few years after the King-Maker’s death, the
avaricious Henry VII. annexed his various manors to the Crown, he got
possession of over a hundred of them, to say nothing of the whole of
the Channel Islands. A contemporary tells us that “at the Earl’s house
in London six oxen were usually eaten at breakfast, and every tavern
was full of his meat, for he that had any acquaintance in his family
should have as much sodden--_i. e._, boiled--as he could carry on
a long dagger.”
The Castle had remained for a very considerable period in the
possession of the successive earls. It next passed to the ill-starred
George, Duke of Clarence, and upon his death, “being seized into the
King’s hands, it continued in the Crown a great while.”
When the famous John Dudley became Earl of Warwick, the Castle was
granted to him, as well as divers lands which had belonged to former
earls. Of his fate in connection with the unhappy Lady Jane Grey
there is no need to speak here. The Castle and all his estates, upon
his attainder, escheated to the Crown. Thanks to the favour with which
Robert Dudley, better known as the Earl of Leicester, was regarded by
Queen Elizabeth, his brother Ambrose received from that queen a grant
of Warwick Castle, together with the dignities of Earl of Warwick and
Baron de l’Isle, in 1561. Three years later his brother Robert became
Earl of Leicester.
There were other subjects beside Lord Burghley who groaned inwardly
under “the extraordinary chardg in Enterteynment of the Queen.”
Elizabeth had more than the ordinary passion of the time for “rich
shews, pleasant devices and all manner of sports that could be
devised.” Notwithstanding the extent of her various progresses east and
west and north and south, there seemed to be always something freshly
arranged for her entertainment. In 1572 on her way to Kenilworth,
she stayed at Warwick, and visited the Earl of Warwick at the Castle
she had granted him eleven years before. She came to Warwick “on the
12th day of August, after dinner, about three of the clock, with the
Countess in the same coach.”
Evelyn, as the author of _Silva_ well might do, did not think much
of the gardens in 1654. To bring them to perfection was reserved for
that luckless of the heads of the Grevilles, George, the second Baron,
who “planned the park by his taste and planted the trees with his
hand.” The second son, Robert, who became the fourth Lord Brooke, was
one of the six lords sent by the House of Peers, together with twelve
of the members of the House of Commons, to present to Charles II. at
the Hague, “the humble invitation and supplication of the Parliament:
That His Majesty would be pleased to return and take the government of
the Kingdom into his own hands.” He was made Recorder of Warwick, and
being a great traveller added much to the embellishment of the Castle.
It was to him that the fitting up of the state apartments is due, and
he worthily continued to follow in the footsteps of his predecessors
in the title. His successors from one generation to another took pride
above everything else in the adornment and beautification of their
castle. In 1746 the eighth Baron was created Earl Brooke, and in the
last year of the reign of George II. the Earldom of Warwick, which
had been conferred in 1618 on the family of Rich, becoming extinct,
devolved upon Lord Brooke. The son of this first Earl of Warwick was
one of the most reckless of all connoisseurs, and Warwick Castle is
indebted to him for many valuable gems which his uncle, Sir William
Hamilton, collected. Many of the finest specimens of artistic work
at Warwick bear testimony to his taste, but the enlargement and
improvement of the grounds about the Castle are his special work, and
he expended over £100,000 in beautifying the interior of his home.
The entrance to the Castle consists of a plain embattled gateway,
leading to a picturesque winding roadway, cut, for upwards of a hundred
yards, through the solid rock, and overhung with shrubs, creepers, and
trees. This roadway conducts to the outer court, where a grand view of
the outer walls suddenly bursts upon the visitor, the main features
of which are Guy’s Tower on the right, the Gateway in the middle, and
Cæsar’s Tower on the left.
Guy’s Tower, so named in honour of the legendary warrior, was built
by the second Thomas de Beauchamp in the reign of Richard II., being
completed in 1394. It is twelve-sided, thirty feet in diameter at the
base, with walls ten feet thick, and rises to a height of a hundred and
twenty-eight feet. This tower contains five floors, each floor having a
groined roof and being subdivided into one large and two small rooms,
the sides of which are pierced with numerous loopholes, commanding
in various directions the curtains which the tower was intended to
protect. A staircase of a hundred and thirty-three steps leads to the
summit, which is crowned by a machicolated parapet. The vault beneath
has been constructed of great strength, apparently for the purpose of
supporting on the roof some ponderous and powerful engine, calculated
to annihilate anything which could be brought against it. The details
of the Castle can be best observed from this tower, and it commands a
fine view of the surrounding country, extending for many miles. The
second-floor chamber, now used as a muniment room, was the place of
confinement of the Earl of Lindsey, who, with his father, was taken
prisoner at the battle of Edge Hill.
Cæsar’s Tower was erected between 1350 and 1370 by the first Thomas
de Beauchamp, and it is a marvel of constructive skill. It is an
irregular polygon, a hundred and forty-seven feet in height, containing
four stories, each with a groined roof, and is crowned by a boldly
projecting machicolation. The part facing outward forms three segments
of a circle, the general construction being such as to constitute
it a fortress of the most formidable character. It is built on the
solid rock, and was therefore impervious to the miner. The loopholes
throughout are most scientifically contrived, not being cut in the
centre of the merlons in each instance, but being pierced in positions
commanding the most advantageous situations, and being made available
for the long or crossbow. The lower edges of the loopholes are also
sloped at the exact angle requisite to clear the gallery below. The
archers were securely protected by wooden screens, termed mantlets, and
by leather curtains, as well as by the roofs above them. The sloping
base of the tower constituted another formidable medium for launching
missiles against the enemy, being so constructed that a stone or metal
projectile, launched from the machicolation above, would rebound with a
point blank aim into the breasts of the attacking force beneath.
The Gateway was constructed in the Fourteenth Century, and was in
ancient times approached by a drawbridge, which formerly spanned the
moat, but is now replaced by a stone arch. On the inner side of this
is the Barbican, projecting some fifty feet from the wall, and rising
two stories in height above the archway. It is flanked by two octagonal
turrets, loopholed for the purpose of defending the bridge and its
approaches. Within the drawbridge is a portcullis, and behind the
portcullis are four holes overhead, through which blazing pitch, hot
lead, or other scarifying compounds could be poured on the heads of
the assailants....
The spacious Inner Court is nearly two acres in extent. In front
stands the Mound or Keep, studded with trees and shrubs, and crossed
by the fortifications, in which the Northern Tower forms a prominent
object. On the right, connected by walls of enormous strength, are two
incomplete towers, termed the Bear and Clarence Towers, the former
begun by Richard III., and the latter probably by his brother, George,
Duke of Clarence. On the left, extending to the Hill Tower at the base
of the Mound, is the inhabited part of the Castle, altered and enlarged
at various times since it was first built, but with so much skill as to
be in perfect keeping with the general aspect of the whole.
A fortress is said to have existed here in Roman times; and Ethelfleda,
daughter of Alfred the Great, is stated to have erected a keep or
dungeon on the Mound in the year 915, and this again is stated to have
been enlarged in the time of the Conqueror.
Warwick Castle still stands by itself amongst English castles. It not
only brings before us the people whom it had witnessed itself, from
William the Conqueror down to Queen Victoria, but it enables us to
represent what the baronial castles--Kenilworth and a host of others,
which have fallen into decay--once were: by it we can reconstruct their
halls and their bowers, their chapels and their dungeons, and can
reproduce them to ourselves as they were when great kings and dukes and
lords, who have long since crumbled into dust, filled them with their
sound and fury, which now signifies nothing: we can see the Beauchamps
and the Nevills and the Plantagenets, and those that went before them
and those that came after them, pass through its galleries in knightly
procession: we can be present there with Queen Elizabeth and Lord
Leicester when all was revelry and mirth; or with the stout old Sir
Edmund Peto, in that dark hour when he hung out a cross with a flag
upon it in defiance of the Papists. As we walk from gallery to gallery,
and from apartment to apartment, we can see, as in some splendid
and stately museum, everything which has beautified and adorned the
lives of seven centuries of English nobles. Over and above all this,
we can see in Warwick Castle the continuity of English life, ever
changing but yet ever the same; and as we view objects which illustrate
the arts and fashions and tastes and fancies of a bygone world, we
can feel conscious of the debt we owe to those who, mindful of the
responsibility bequeathed to them, have not been backward in amassing
treasures to be an “everlasting possession, not a sight to be seen and
then forgotten.”