Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/198

 182 MedicBval Military Architecture, completing their security, would most conveniently have been carried along the general direction of the western front, so as to connect the head of the Bow Burn with the Alne, and thus complete the seclusion of the peninsula. Such a site, so defended, was not uncommonly adopted or constructed by the Northmen and Saxons when they became settled, and they would have placed the timber and palisaded mansion of their thane upon the central entrenched knoll. Probably the Norman Gilbert Tison, of cloudy memory, who is the reputed pioneer of the Conquest in these wild regions, found and contented himself with some early kind of timber fortress, for the earliest traces of masonry that remain in situ or have been ex- tracted from the walls, though Norman, are of late character, and attributable to Eustace Fitzjohn, who married Beatrix, daughter and heir of Ivo de Vesci, who is thought to have married Tison's daughter. Eustace, called De Vesci, flourished under Henry I. and Stephen, and died in 1157. He was a likely man to have con- structed a great castle, being a baron of considerable power, sheriff of Northumberland, and founder of the abbeys of Alnwick and, in Yorkshire, of Malton. Also he must have felt the want of a strong place, for in his days, in 1135, Alnwick Casde was taken by David I., of Scotland, in the interest of the Empress Maud. Eustace no doubt built in the first half of the twelfth century a polygonal clustered keep upon the knoll, gave it the gateway we still see, and placed his residence within. Traces of his walls are said by Mr. Tate to have been discovered when the last rebuilding was being executed. No doubt also he cleared out the moat round the keep. To him also must be attributed the general wall of the enceinte, and possibly the ditch outside it ; and this would have been strengthened by mural towers, many of which must have stood where their successors are now placed. De Vesci's work is indicated by the stones being mostly square blocks of moderate size, laid in courses, but in beds more or less wavy, as though the mason used neither line nor level. The joints are open. Beyond question De Vesci constructed a castle in keeping with his wealth, and worthy of the chief baron of the Border. In July, 1 1 74, William the Lion, on his way back from an in- vasion of Cumberland, found himself, to his surprise, before Aln- wick. William, son of Eustace de Vesci, attacked him. He was unhorsed, captured, and sent into England, and beyond sea, to prison. Eustace, son of WiUiam, succeeded in 1190, and was visited by King John, 12th February, 1201, and 24th April, 1209, when the king received at the castle the homage of Alexander, king of Scotland. Four years later. May 14th, John ordered Philip de Ulecote to demolish the castle of Alnwick — a mandate which could scarcely have been obeyed, seeing the king himself was there 28th January, 12 13, and nth January, 12 16, no doubt unwelcome visits, for Eustace was a Magna Charta baron. He met his death from an arrow before Barnard Castle in the last year of King John.