Kings and Castles

by Morris, Marc

  5. Goodrich Castle

  Colonel John Birch (1615-91) could boast an impressive CV – war-hero, politician, sometime wine-merchant – but he might well have failed an interview with English Heritage, especially had he been quizzed about Goodrich Castle. ‘I humbly conceive it is useless,’ he wrote to parliament in 1646, ‘and a great burden to the country’. As his letter to the house made abundantly clear, the colonel was all in favour of having the castle pulled down.

  We may be thankful that his advice was not followed: Goodrich still stands today, perched high above the banks of the River Wye in Herefordshire, and is one of the finest properties in EH’s care. At the same time, one has to sympathize somewhat with Birch’s destructive urges, for in 1646 the castle had given him an awful lot of trouble. That year had seen the conclusion of the English Civil War (the first one, at any rate), during which the colonel and his Parliamentarian comrades had spent a great deal of time and effort trying to wrest control of Goodrich, and other castles like it, from the hands of their royalist opponents.

  To tackle Goodrich itself, Birch had not only been forced to deploy the usual array of trenches, tunnels and cannon; in addition, he had also been obliged to have a new weapon, nicknamed Roaring Meg, made especially for the occasion. A squat little tub of malevolence, Meg was not a cannon but a mortar-piece, designed to lob 200lb grenades over the castle’s walls and amongst its defenders. Unsurprisingly, once she had been finished and brought out to play, the garrison at Goodrich soon decided it was time to surrender.

  Having gone to such lengths, Birch and his colleagues were anxious not to have to repeat the experience, and saw pulling down castles as the answer to their problem. Unfortunately for them, however, but luckily for us, outright demolition also proved to be problematic, owing to the time and costs involved. In the end the Parliamentarians had to content themselves with partial destruction – a process they called ‘slighting’. Castles that were slighted had their defensible parts knocked down or undermined so that they could not be held in future. Such was the fate of Goodrich, which is why it still stands today, albeit in ruins.

  Goodrich, of course, was not a new building when Birch and Meg began smashing it up in 1646. Like the vast majority of castles, it was established in the late eleventh century, in the wake of the Norman Conquest. Unfortunately, little is known about its actual beginnings. How it came to acquire its distinctive name is pretty clear: a documentary reference of 1102 reveals that this was once ‘Godric’s Castle’, and Godric himself is named as the local landowner in the Domesday Book (compiled 1086). Who he was, however, and what his castle looked like, is altogether more mysterious: this is Godric’s only brush with the historical record, and nothing survives of the castle’s original structure. The mystery is rendered all the more perplexing by the fact that name ‘Godric’ would appear to indicate we are dealing with Englishman. Precisely how an Englishman came to be holding a castle in Herefordshire in the immediate aftermath of the Norman invasion would have been a story well worth hearing.

  But no matter: whatever once stood at Goodrich, the building that stands today is unquestionably finer and has better tales to tell. Apart from its twelfth-century keep – a splendid building, but of uncertain sponsorship – the castle is chiefly the work of William de Valence, one of the most powerful and controversial magnates to have lived in thirteenth-century England.

  Valence owed his existence, in a fundamental sense, to King John, who in October 1216 obliged his wife Isabella of Angoulême and the rest of subjects by dropping dead. No sooner was the king in his tomb than the queen had abandoned England and with it her children by her late, unloved husband. Isabella returned to her homeland in France, remarried and had more children – nine more, to be precise. Valence was one of the youngest.

  As for his career in England, Valence owed that to King John’s son, Henry III. In 1247, Henry invited his young half-brother to cross the Channel and gave him the hand of a rich heiress, thereby making him the owner of vast estates – including Goodrich Castle. Unfortunately, the king’s indulgence also extended to turning a blind eye to Valence’s excessively violent behaviour, which so angered the rest of the aristocracy that it eventually helped trigger a constitutional crisis – the one usually associated with Simon de Montfort. It was, indeed, Montfort himself who told Valence in 1258 ‘make no mistake about it: either you lose your castles, or you lose your head’.

  So Valence wisely chose to forsake Goodrich Castle and go into exile, though only for a short time. His saving grace was his close friendship with Henry III’s son, Edward, later to become the formidable Edward I, who was able to make good use of his half-uncle’s penchant for violence. Valence fought with Edward at the Battle of Evesham (where Montfort met his end), accompanied him on crusade, and assisted the king in the most successful military enterprise of his reign – the Conquest of Wales.

  It is the Conquest of Wales that provides the most likely context for Goodrich’s reconstruction, although not in the obvious way that one might imagine. To subjugate his new territories, as is well known, Edward I built a string of celebrated castles – Conwy, Caernarfon, Harlech and Beaumaris being the most spectacular. His leading magnates followed suit, constructing new castles of their own or upgrading existing ones. In many cases, though, this massive aristocratic investment in stone was less about improving military security, and more about keeping up with the Joneses. Goodrich shares many architectural similarities with its near neighbour at Chepstow, rebuilt in the last decades of the thirteenth century by Valence’s contemporary, the earl of Norfolk. Neither man was really expecting much in the way of trouble from the already vanquished Welsh. But, with everyone’s attention focused on Wales, they were anticipating having to spend a lot more time in the region, with their great households in tow. The pressure was on to outdo each other, to entertain each other, and – occasionally – to entertain the king.

  What is striking about Goodrich, therefore, is not so much its strong stone walls as the wealth of luxury accommodation crammed within them. You’ll find many more window seats, fireplaces and toilets than you will arrow-loops. Indeed, with its well-preserved ‘solar’ of private apartments, and its chapel, complete with recently restored stained-glass windows, Goodrich possesses one of the best-preserved interiors of any thirteenth-century English castle. It’s not so much of a fortress; more of a stately home with attitude.

  For those who demand their history grisly, however, Goodrich can now boast an additional bonus. In 2003, having languished for many years outside a local museum, Roaring Meg returned. The last surviving mortar-piece of the English Civil War, she sits today within the courtyard of the castle she was specially created to ruin. To those unaware of her past, she must seem an unassuming object, no more terrifying than a cement mixer or a water-butt. But the ghosts of Goodrich Castle know better, and remember the sound of her roar.

  6. Framlingham Castle and the Bigods

  If you want to imagine yourself in the guise of a medieval warrior – and, let’s face it, who doesn’t – there are few better places to visit than Framlingham Castle in Suffolk. Approach as if to attack, and you are confronted with one of the most impressive and impregnable-looking fortresses in England: a mighty ring of stone walls, thirteen metres high, surrounded by a broad, deep ditch. Twelve surviving towers stand taller still, and are amply supplied with arrow-loops. Make no mistake about it: this is a fantastically tough old building, designed in expectation of trouble.

  To say that this is a veritable and venerable fortress, however, is to tell only a small part of its story. Inside those giant walls, the only structure that stands today is a seventeenth-century poorhouse. Now home to the local museum, it’s a building well worth visiting in its own right, with a harrowing history that once reduced the normally flinty Jeremy Paxman to tears. Medievalists, meanwhile, lament the fact that it was ever built at all, for its stones were salvaged from the castle’s original interior. As a result, the casual observer n
ow has a highly distorted view of Framlingham; one which reinforces the traditional misapprehension that castles were all about fighting, battlements and boiling oil. The reality was, of course, very different.

  Framlingham was established by the Bigods, a family who came to England with William the Conqueror in 1066 and quickly established themselves as the most powerful barons in East Anglia – a position officially acknowledged in the middle of the twelfth century when they were invested as earls of Norfolk. A cursory glance at the history of these men suggest that they liked nothing better than a scrap with England’s kings. Earl Hugh Bigod (d. 1177), for instance, unsuccessfully challenged Henry II, with the result that the original Framlingham Castle, a conventional earth-and-timber structure, was torn down by royal command in 1174. The present castle was built by Hugh’s son and successor, Roger (d. 1221), to proclaim that the Bigods were back in business – and ready to challenge King John, who laid siege to the castle in 1216. But in actual fact, the Bigods, like most medieval magnates, almost always worked in partnership with the Crown. Framlingham was hardly ever used as a fortress (even the so-called ‘siege’ of 1216 lasted less than 48 hours). It was, on the contrary, a place where power was expressed in a very different way – through benign local lordship, conspicuous consumption and luxurious living.

  Ironically, a fantastic snapshot of ordinary, everyday life at Framlingham has been preserved because of the desperate, extraordinary decision taken by the last of the Bigod line. In 1297, at the end of a long but fairly unremarkable career, Earl Roger IV led a movement of popular resistance against the indomitable Edward I, whose government was widely deemed to have become unjust and oppressive. Although he met with considerable success, the earl was bankrupted by this stand, and so ended up having to cut a deal with the king. In return for an annuity for the rest of his life, Roger agreed to make Edward his heir. Accordingly, when the earl died a few years later, his vast estate in England, Wales and Ireland – Framlingham Castle included – passed to the Crown. And so too did all his estate accounts, some 650 neatly written rolls of parchment, which survive to this day in the National Archives at Kew. It is these documents which permit a unique glimpse into the earl’s private affairs, and a window through which we can look at life inside Framlingham Castle.

  Roger himself was only occasionally in residence. Medieval magnates, like modern rock stars, were forever on tour. Nevertheless, in the earl’s absence, the castle did not stand idle. It was from here that his officials oversaw the workings of the entire Bigod administration in East Anglia, and it was to here that money generated on other manors was sent to be kept in the treasury. Framlingham was also an agricultural centre in its own right: the account rolls reveal all manner of produce being farmed, ranging from the expected (dairy, poultry, sheep and cattle) to the surprising (regular wages and robes were given to the earl’s vintner for tending his vineyards). Periodically there were visits from members of the earl’s own household: his knights came to hunt venison or to track falcons in the adjacent park; his accountants to check every bushel and barrel, even as they themselves consumed large quantities of fancy foodstuffs.

  When the earl himself was due to arrive, the administration went into overdrive. Roger typically travelled with around fifty people in tow, and the castle had to be brought rapidly up to speed to cater for this entourage. Produce and provender poured in from the outlying manors. Deer were driven from the park, beer was brewed and bread baked. At Easter 1286 it was even necessary to bring in extra crockery from Tattingstone, some twenty miles away. Equally as important, the buildings in the castle had to be cleaned, repaired and, where necessary, rebuilt. The full extent of the castle’s vanished interior stands revealed in the rolls. We read of service buildings, such as the saucery, larder and kitchen, and accommodation, including the chambers of the earl, his steward, his knights and his servants.

  The most important building of all was the castle’s hall. It was here that the earl and his household were wined, dined and entertained. Originally located on the eastern side of the courtyard, the hall was moved to face west when the castle was rebuilt around the year 1200, and this move reflects a corresponding shift in the Bigods’ domestic priorities. To the west of the castle, the ground falls away until it reaches a great lake or mere. This itself was a man-made feature, a piece of medieval landscaping. Of course, it could have helped to defend the castle, but its primary purpose was to provide dramatic effect. From afar, the castle’s appearance is greatly enhanced by its own reflection. From within, the views to the west are spectacular, which explains the relocation of the hall. The mere also provides the backdrop to the so-called

  Lower Court, a levelled area directly below the hall, almost certainly created as a private enclosure for the earl and his family. Whether in the hall or the garden, the Bigods and their guests could watch the sun setting across the water as they dined and relaxed. Such was the normal life at Framlingham during its thirteenth-century heyday. It was not a place that the Bigods used to confront their kings, but rather to welcome them. In 1256 Roger’s predecessor threw open his doors to Henry III, and Roger himself played host to Edward I in 1277 (sadly, a year for which no accounts exist). The earl died a peaceful death at Framlingham in 1306 and, under the terms of his agreement with Edward, his dynasty drew to an close. It seems only fitting, on the seven-hundredth anniversary of the family’s eclipse, that we remember their main castle as it really was. Mount the walls at Framlingham and exercise your imagination, but bear in mind that the sight of an advancing army would have been almost as surprising for the Bigods as it would be for us today. Picture instead a ‘landscape of lordship’: men fishing in the mere and felling trees, knights hunting in the park; carpenters and masons, glaziers and gardeners, all seeking to beautify the castle and its surroundings; carts creaking across the drawbridge, laden with building materials, fine foods and bags of money. A peaceful panorama, but a busy one, animated by the news that the earl was riding towards Framlingham, eagerly anticipating the comforts and pleasures to be had within.

  7. The King’s Companions

  Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk and marshal of England, was by all accounts a very bellicose and irascible chap, and so knew a golden opportunity to settle an old score when he saw one. In 1245, while travelling through France on diplomatic business, he was rudely detained by Arnaud, count of Guisnes. This minor French aristocrat failed to show the earl the respect he felt was his due and extorted money from him and his men in exchange for their continued safe passage. When, therefore, some four years later, Arnaud showed up on this side of the Channel, Bigod had no hesitation in ordering his immediate seizure. This led to the whole business coming before King Henry III (1216–72), enabling the earl to justify his retaliation: if an upstart French count was free to sell the roads and the air to travellers, Bigod reasoned, then so was he. ‘I am an earl’, he barked, ‘just as he is!’

  To modern ears this defence sounds puzzling: ‘earl’ is (almost self-evidently) an English word, and was used as a title from the eleventh century by those who governed large regions of Anglo-Saxon England in the king’s name. How, then, could it be applied to the count of Guisnes? The problem is that the sense of Bigod’s retort has been lost in translation. The above episode comes down to us thanks to the reporting of Matthew Paris, a gossipy monk of St Albans who was frequently at Henry III’s court. Paris wrote his account in Latin and, in Latin, ‘earl’ and ‘count’ are denoted by the same word – comes. Similarly, Bigod, while he probably understood English and knew that most of his fellow countrymen referred to him as an ‘earl’, was a high-ranking member of an aristocratic elite that still habitually spoke French. Thus the word he would have used to describe himself would have been cuens or conte: again, the same word used to describe a French count.

  At a purely linguistic level, therefore, Bigod was right – he and the count of Guisnes did have exactly the same title. On another level, however, he was quite wrong, as he must have known we
ll. The powers of a continental comes (a count) were very different to those of an English comes (an earl). The count of Guisnes was only small fry, but there were French counts in the thirteenth century who were virtually independent rulers of their own provinces – for example, the counts of Anjou, Toulouse and Flanders. Such men could make their own laws, mint coins in their own name, and answered in only a vague and occasional way to the king of France. By contrast, English earls like Bigod were altogether less impressive creatures, being merely the greatest subjects of the English king.

  The equation of English earls with French counts began, unsurprisingly, with the Norman Conquest. It was also, as we shall see, precisely at this point that the powers enjoyed by earls were dramatically curtailed. Prior to 1066, earls exercised real authority in their regions, albeit delegated from the king: they presided over the provincial courts, handing down judgements of life and death; they assisted in the collection of fines and taxes, in return for which they received a third of the profits from both; and, in times of war, it fell to them to lead the armies. Earls were essentially the same as ealdormen, who first occur in the seventh century, and who exercised the same kind of wide powers from the early tenth century. The preference for the shorter title was a semantic shift caused by the less-celebrated take-over of England by the Danes in 1016. King Cnut (1016–35) preferred to call his English provincial governors jarls like their contemporary Scandinavian counterparts. There was precious little difference, however, in the kind of powers they exercised. If anything, ealdormen/earls were becoming more powerful in the eleventh century. The greatest among them governed regions that corresponded to the former kingdoms that had combined to form the English state: Northumbria, East Anglia, Mercia and Wessex. Thus, hardly anyone blinked when, at the start of 1066, the earl of Wessex, Harold Godwineson, decided that he would be the best person to succeed the recently deceased Edward the Confessor and had himself crowned king.