Kings and Castles Read Online Free Page B

motte -and-bailey without a motte .
Curiously, and by contrast, William’s other castle at Lewes has not one motte but two. One cannot help wondering if part of his
intention was to frustrate castle historians of the future.
    Unconventional he may have been when it came to building
castles, but in all other respects William was a textbook Norman conqueror, a
warrior who carved out an empire for himself and ran it with ruthless
efficiency. Such men wanted not only glory but profit – hence, in part, the
need for a town at Castle Acre. They also needed to atone for a lifetime of
maiming and killing. In the 1080s William set off on pilgrimage to Rome, but in the event got no further than Burgundy and the great abbey of Cluny. Suitably inspired, he returned to England and founded two priories of his own, one
at Lewes, the other at Acre. As the earlier of
the two, Lewes had the greater claim on the Warenne’s loyalties. When William died in 1088 – killed, appropriately, by an arrow-wound
sustained during a siege – he was buried there, as were all his later
descendants. But Lewes Priory suffered severely in later centuries, not least
from having a railway driven through its precinct. Castle Acre Priory, by
contrast, is a wonderfully well-preserved ruin, located in as serene a setting
as could be imagined. Visit on a fine day, and you’ll almost wish they were
still looking for new monks.
    Shortly before his death, William de Warenne was created earl of Surrey – a rare
distinction, and a final confirmation of his highly successful career. It was a
success replicated by his descendants who, over the next three centuries,
emulated his model of dynamic lordship and service to the Crown to maintain
their place at the top of society. But in the fourteenth century, the story
came to an abrupt end. John de Warenne , seventh earl
of Surrey, was by no means incompetent either
as a soldier or as a politician, but his personal life was a disaster. His
marriage, forced on him by Edward I, was doomed from the start: he was not
quite twenty, his new wife not quite ten. But, since she was the king’s
granddaughter, the match proved hard to dissolve, and successive popes refused
to grant a divorce. The earl’s case was not helped by his notorious way with
the ladies: he had at least two mistresses, and later confessed to having had
an affair with his wife’s aunt, a decidedly loose-living nun. Earl John ended
his days living with a certain Isabella Holland,
referred to in his will as ‘my companion’. Through these various liaisons he
had at least six children, but none by his wife. Thus, when he died in 1347,
his vast estate passed by law to his legitimate but distant relatives. Castle
Acre, where generations of his family had kept company with kings, fell quickly
into ruin. And so passed the Warennes ,
one of the greatest dynasties in medieval England, their fortune won with the
sword, but lost through lust and love.

 
    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