Web
and Book design, |
Click
Here to return to |
|
|
ARUNDEL SALARINO described to the merchant of Venice the ocean where your argosies with portly sail, — One is tempted to
transpose that metaphor to Arundel. The poor little houses of the town are in a
perpetual attitude of reverent humility at the foot of the great towers which
over shadow them. At Richmond or at Norwich, after all, the signiors and rich
burghers, the castle towers, still overpeer the petty traffickers which line
the streets below, but there is no curtsying; the castles are lordless, and the
towns have a commercial importance of their own. Arundel, on the other hand,
renders almost feudal homage to the Dukes of Norfolk. Indeed, the town seems to
have no other reason for existence to-day —
although it is justifiably proud of its past traditions — than to
provide servants for the estate and accommodation for the thousands of tourists
who come to visit the castle. Roger de Montgomery
was the first to build a castle at Arundel soon after the Conquest. The
reference in Domesday to a castrum there in the time of Edward the Confessor
has been shown to mean the fortifications of the town, but the earth works
outside the castle walls prove that the place was fortified in early times.
Even if there were no such evidence one might assume it to have been fortified,
for Arundel was of outstanding military importance throughout the Dark Ages and
the Middle Ages. The castle is built
upon a spur of the downs commanding the River Arun at a point where there has
always been a bridge. Where there is a bridge there is a road, where there is a
river there is an avenue of attack from the sea, and where the river passes
through the downs there is a gap through which armies can march inland. That is
the importance of Arundel, but the lines of mediæval communication made that
importance even greater. Arundel held not a bridge, but the bridge over the
Arun. In the early
history of England, much more than in our day, rivers were used for commerce.
Consequently, bridges were not constructed over the mouths of rivers, but at
the point where ocean-going vessels could discharge their cargoes nearest to
the seats of trade. In Sussex especially, where a number of small rivers
parallel to one another opened the country to invasion, and where there were no
coastwise roads (for the roads ran from bridge to bridge some miles inland) it
was difficult to concentrate an army to repel an invasion. Local conditions
such as these made the importance of Arundel, as of Bramber or Lewes. Arundel
commanded an essential road at a point vital to the economic and military life
of the district. Only recently have bridges at Littlehampton, Shoreham, and New
haven linked together the coastal roads of Sussex. Roger de Montgomery
contributed sixty ships to the Norman fleet, commanded the centre at Senlac,
and became lord of Sussex. Later he was Earl of Shrewsbury, and the family of
the Norman adventurer left their name upon the map of Wales in the county where
the ruins of their great castle may be seen. At Arundel Roger built a stockaded
stronghold with a mound and court. Almost certainly the second court, which
gave Arundel the same plan as Windsor, was part of the original design, but it
is possible to consider this a later addition, for very little of the Norman
work can be identified at Arundel, which has been restored and rebuilt with
great care in recent years. The castle extends
its length from north-west to south-east. The long eastern wall is straight and
uninterrupted, but the western curtain bends inward at about the middle where
it crosses the ditch and climbs the mound to the wall of the keep. That is to
say, a portion of the wall of the shell-keep at the summit of the mound faces
the field, and the ditch below the mound becomes a part of the main ditch
running around the northern end of the castle. Within the enclosure the mound
forms the division between the two wards, leaving a narrow space from the edge
of the inner ditch to the east curtain. Probably there were never any buildings
in the upper ward to the north; this was used as an enclosure for cattle and
horses. The gatehouse, just
south of the keep, gives entrance to the lower ward, around three sides of
which are grouped the imposing buildings erected chiefly by the late Duke. The
basement of the range on the south is partly Norman work. Of the military
remains, the keep, a portion of the gatehouse, and the lower half of the Bevis
tower in the upper ward are also Norman. An account of
Arundel’s history is necessary for an under standing of the castle as it
appears at present. Arundel was lost to the family of Montgomery after it had
been enjoyed for a time by Roger’s son, Robert de Bellesme, who supported
Robert of Normandy against Henry I. Henry blockaded the castle with portable
wooden towers, and before long the garrison asked for a truce that they might
obtain permission to surrender from their lord in Shropshire. The permission
was granted, and the besieged were only too glad to march out of the castle, which
reverted to the Crown. Henry’s widow,
Adela of Louvain, brought Arundel in marriage to William de Albini, the Norfolk
landowner who built the keep at Castle Rising, and the ancestor of the present
Duke of Norfolk. Adela’s brother, Joscelin, was an ancestor of the ducal house
of Northumberland. Joscelin was given the domain of Petworth by William de
Albini “since which,” says Camden, “the posterity of that Joscelin, who took
the name of Percy [upon his marriage to Agnes, the heiress of the Percys], have
ever possessed it, a family certainly very ancient and noble, the male
representatives of Charlemagne, more direct than the Dukes of Guise, who pride
themselves on that account.” It is a curious
encounter in the bypaths of history to find the two eldest ducal houses of
England claimed as the representatives of Charlemagne’s line to the exclusion
of the French nobility. It is equally curious to find among the descendants of
Charlemagne (through Adela of Louvain) two of England’s most unhappy queens —
Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard. William de Albini
was chief butler or cup-bearer of the Duchy of Normandy. His descendants, the
hereditary Earls Marshal of England, retain the honour, and when a new monarch
drinks the health of his liege subjects at the coronation banquet the golden
goblet is the perquisite of the Duke of Norfolk. Adela spent long
periods at Arundel. In 1139 she gave refuge to the Empress Matilda, although
she held herself neutral in the struggles between Stephen and Matilda. The
latter immediately raised his siege of Marlborough, and blockaded Arundel,
demanding the surrender of Matilda. But he did not press the attack. According
to one account he chivalrously recognized Adela’s claim that she was sheltering
the daughter of Henry, not the enemy of Stephen. Another version is that
Stephen felt Arundel to be impregnable, and by allowing Matilda to escape to
the Earl of Gloucester at Bristol he would have all his opponents shut up
together in one part of the country. At all events, he allowed Matilda safe
conduct from Sussex. The great-granddaughter of William de Albini brought Arundel to her husband, John Fitz Alan of Clun, in Shropshire. The Fitz Alan line continued until 1580, when Arundel passed by marriage again to the family of Howard, Dukes of Norfolk. It cannot be said that Arundel had an eventful military history in the Middle Ages, despite its position of importance. The wars of the seventeenth century proved more destructive for the castle. There were occasions when artillery failed before walls built for the defence of mail-clad knights. Arundel may be cited as a good illustration of Shakespeare’s imagery— The strongest castle, tower, and town, In 1643 Waller
captured the castle with the loss of only one man. In Waller’s absence,
however, the Royalists under the command of Lord Hopton retook town and castle
after a three days’ siege, but within a fortnight Waller again appeared fully
prepared for a lengthy investiture. He planted cannon on the church tower to
batter the walls while his musketeers raked the battlements until the keep was
a ruin and the domestic buildings shattered to pieces. As usual the wits were
among the Royalist party. In an attempt to disguise a shortage of provisions,
they gravely offered to give the Puritans beef and mutton in exchange for sack,
tobacco, cards, and dice. Of course, the Roundheads had no cards to give away,
but they thankfully accepted some live oxen let down from the walls by the
garrison as a rather transparent advertisement of their superfluous provisions.
Shortly afterwards the garrison surrendered, to the number of about a thousand;
they were made prisoners of war. The Commonwealth slighted the castle to
complete the work already more than half accomplished by Waller’s cannon. Not until 1791 did
the Dukes of Norfolk begin the work of restoration, which was continued to the
end of the nineteenth century, when the buildings were practically constructed
anew and the defences restored. Much that was capable of restoration, the
chapel, for example, has been replaced by modern buildings. But the new chapel
in the Early English style is entirely admirable, and no visitor to the great
hall or to the library can feel that the restorations are incongruous to the
traditions of the castle. Probably the castle
besieged by Henry I was defended by palisades, and the buildings in stone were
begun by him when he had possession of the place. The oldest existing portion
is the inner gatehouse which contains dungeons reminiscent of the inner gateway
at Alnwick. It also covers the approach to the keep along the top of the curtain
wall running up the mound. Richard FitzAlan, in the thirteenth century,
constructed a more elaborate outer gatehouse with two towers fronting the draw
bridge, so that the whole work is not unlike the barbican at Warwick, the
passage 40 feet in length being defended by gate and portcullis. The shell-keep
probably dates from the time of Henry II. In this type of keep the rooms were
built against the inner walls, leaving an open space in the middle. They were,
no doubt, of wood, and have disappeared, but a musty cellar or storehouse
excavated from the space in the centre still remains. Originally the keep was
entered by a Norman door in the south face. Evidently the approach was too
easy, and there was no protection afforded to the well on the slope of the mound
near the curtain, so two towers were built to cover the entrance. The smaller
tower contains the well, and the larger tower encloses the keep entrance
underneath a small oratory dedicated to Saint Martin. An enemy who had captured
the gatehouse would have short shrift if he found himself upon the uncovered
curtain wall at the foot of those well-protected towers. The keep and its
towers were repaired by the late duke, as well as the machinery for working the
portcullis in the entrance tower. The Roundhead policy of dismantling the great
castles of the country is now thoroughly reversed, at Arundel at least, and the
visitor finds an equal interest in the walls and turrets of the upper ward, and
the books and paintings of the palace overlooking the River Arun.  ARUNDEL CASTLE. |
Click the book image to turn
to the next Chapter.