Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/21

Introduction. 5 Sarum, and Windsor, for their subterranean outlets and countermines. Some, as Clitheroe and Peak, were structures purely military, intended to contain only a captain and a small garrison, and provided with scanty accommodation, and quite destitute of ornament ; in others, as Ludlow, Caerphilly, and Beaumaris, the interior arrangements were on a scale and of a character to accommodate a Royal Court. Even where the walls are destroyed, there often remain, in the earthworks, traces of a much earlier people than the Normans, a people who, as at Old Sarum, Castle-acre, Marlborough, Clare, Tonbridge, and the Devizes, occupied the ground with bank, ditch, and palisade, long before native skill had attained to the construction of wall or tower. Finally, although the stern necessities of war did not admit of the banded shafts, lofty vault, or woven window-tracery of Tintern, or Fountains, or many a less distinguished church, the ornamentation of the richer castles, as Dover, Rochester, Hedingham, Newcastle, Knaresborough, Castle Rising, and Coningsborough, is marked by a chastened fitness peculiar to such works ; and of the ruder and less ornate castles, the ruins of very many present a savage grandeur which few who have visited Caerphilly, Harlech, or Scarborough, can fail to appreciate ; any more than that union of strength with beauty so conspicuous in Chepstow, Raglan, and Ludlow, which, enhanced by an illustrious history, attains its highest perfection in Warwick.

The history of such castles as are connected with public events is seldom difficult to trace. They are mentioned by the ancient chroniclers, and their repairs and various particulars concerning them are often entered on the Pipe rolls, and in other of the records of the realm. About a score, such as Arundel, Bamborough, Taunton, Wigmore, and Hereford, are named in the Saxon annals, and in charters of the eighth and following centuries ; and others, though unnamed in these authorities, may from their general similarity safely be attri-buted to the same people and period. The castles on the Welsh Marches, as Ludlow, Montgomery, Chester, Rhuddlan, Cardiff, Chepstow, and Pembroke, had their special jurisdictions ; their courts of law and of record ; their chancellor, chancery, and official seal ; the lord's " Vicecomes " exercised powers of pit and gallows, and his court passed fines and recoveries, and other early instruments for the conveyance of land. In the northern Marches such castles as Norham, Prudhoe, Cockermouth, Alnwick, Naworth, Caerlaverock, and Home, constructed for the defence of an exposed frontier or a debatable district, the home of those who lived by " snaffle, spur, and spear," are commemorated in the records of either