Page:Old Castles.djvu/37

Rh stories to fill and thrill the heart and haunt the imagination for many a day.

The outer gate is a lofty stone entrance of immense strength and thickness, and dim and black hued by time to a still greater extent than the inner one. It has also a greater number still of antiquated initials, and over it, on the outer side, is a defaced tablet of the arms of Henry the Seventh. This gate, from its appearance, must have been coeval with the most ancient parts of the castle, and, as such, is of great interest, as under its solid masonry must have passed and repassed all the notabilia of the castle from Rufus's reign downwards. Peaceful to-day as a mountain cotter's rose-garnitured threshold, it has other and different memories. Royal retinues, and princely and priestly pageantries and personages have passed under its awed shade, with curious or abstracted vision, and from its defied heights have issued the solemn cortege of pinioned prisoners for Gallows Hill. It has strange histories, if we knew them, that old outer gate. From 1122, when the courtly and learned Beauclerc was here, and most probably lodged in some prepared part of the castle, its walls have echoed with stately steps, and renowned visitors. Here–and very familiar with this place, having taken the city in 1135, and retreated here from the dreadful Battle of the Standard passed David, King of Scotland, for the last of many times, to die alone in his chamber, devoutly kneeling to the King of Kings; and three years before that sad event, in 1150, our own Henry Plantagenet, then a ruddy, handsome, graceful youth passed here on his way, in company with the Earl of Chester, to this very