Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/71

 Castles tmder the Sttccessors of the Conqtieror. 55 whence the grappling-hook was thrown by which the King was hooked, and was being dragged up to its battlements, when he was rescued by the Scottish Prince Henry. Arundel preserves its earthworks pretty much as they must have ap- peared in the reign of the Confessor ; and with its shell-keep on its mound, and the original gatehouse at its foot, gives to the modern visitor a fair notion of the appearance of the defences before which Stephen pitched his camp. It was also in 1 1 39 that De Redvers, returning to England, landed under the Conqueror's castle of Wareham, on the margin of the Poole water. From Wareham he proceeded to Corfe, a seat of the Kings of Mercia, where he was besieged by Stephen. It was during this period of the war between Stephen, Matilda, and the Church party, that were constructed the multitude of unlicensed castles (" castra adulterina") employed not merely for the security of the builders, but to enable them to prey upon their neighbours with impunity. Nothing could well be worse than the circumstances under which these castles were built, and the purposes for which they were employed. " Stephen," says John of Tynemouth, quoted by Dugdale, " concessit ut quilibet procerum suorum munitionem, seu castrum, in proprio fundo facere posset." William of Jumieges and Malmesbury compare the times to those of Normandy during the minority of Duke William ; and other writers declare the state of England to have resembled that of Jeru- salem during the Roman siege. There was no rule and no responsibility. The unhappy peasants were forced to labour in the construction of the strongholds of tyranny. It would seem that these castles were built with great rapidity, and with but little expenditure of labour upon earthworks, for in the next reign they were destroyed without difficulty, and scarcely any of their sites are now to be recognised. They were the work of the lesser barons, probably with the con- nivance of their chief lords, or even of Stephen and Matilda, who were little scrupulous as to the terms on which they accepted assistance. This multiplication of castles without the licence of the sovereign was no novelty, and was for- bidden on the Continent by the celebrated "Edictum Pistense" of Charles the Bald in 864, already cited. Another irregularity was the admission to the title of earl of several persons unfitted to receive so great an honour, and whose only claim to distinction was that they were leaders of mercenaries. Stephen was not in a condition to endow all of them with the third penny of the revenues of a county, the usual appanage of an earl. Many of the earls created by