Historic Description of Ludlow Castle

Ludlow Castle

This is by far the most important castle of the whole Welsh border, surpassing Chepstow in size and Raglan in historic interest. It is splendidly placed for effect, on the culminating point of a hill, which, though not so precipitous as those of Harlech or Caer Cynan, commands the whole country round, and is a landmark for miles, the river Teme curls around its base on the steep side, the fine church and the picturesque streets of Ludlow town are grouped outside its more accessible front. Its history is interesting, and alone among all English castles it has its own mediaeval Romance surviving, the Geste of Fulk Fitzwarine, the only long tale of the life of an adventurous knight of the twelfth century, written out for the benefit of his admiring descendants, which has come down to us. It is more precious than many chronicles for those who wish to realize castle life in its prime. The whole of the incidents of its first half centre round Ludlow, and the very chequered fortunes of its owners during the troublous times of Stephen and the earlier years of Henry II.

The Norman Castle

Ludlow was a small border town in pre-Norman days, about the last inhabited place held by the English toward the side of Wales. The Palmers’ Guild, whose history is recorded in the fifteenth century windows of the church, was specially proud of its connection with Edward the Confessor. Domesday Book shows that William the Conqueror gave it to Osbern Fitz-Richard, the son of Richard Fitz Scrob of the neighbouring Richard’s Castle, which is only four miles off. But Osbern enfeoffed as his sub-tenant at Ludlow a person of some-what greater importance than himself, Roger de Lacy of Ewyas, and seems afterwards to have ceded all his rights to him. The Lacys, though in trouble for rebellion against William Rufus, continued to hold the castle intermittently for many generations, and were undoubtedly the builders of the original castle. It was presumably at first a motte and bailey fortress, though whether the bailey of 1100 included all the present outer ward, or only the inner and middle wards, is not certain. The great width and depth of the ditch which separates the two inner wards from the outer suggests that it was originally the main line of defence, and that the outer ward was an afterthought of the later twelfth century. There is plenty of room for an average Norman castle of early date if we take the keep and its immediate appurtenances as the original point of strength, and the middle ward as its original bailey.

Be this as it may, the replacing of palisades by a stone enceinte evidently came earlier at Ludlow than at many places, and its great square keep probably belongs to the time of Henry I, while the outer ward is not later than that of Henry II, if it be not contemporary with the inner buildings. In the anarchical reign of Stephen the castle was to see much fighting. At the death of Henry I it seems to have been out of the hands of the Lacys; the second of them had left his sister’s son as heir, having no child of his own, and the king had claimed it as an escheat, and had intruded one Pain Fitz John, to the great wrath of Gilbert the nephew aforesaid, who had assumed his uncle’s name and claimed all his heritage. Fitz John was slain by the Welsh, and soon after his death, at the outbreak of the general insurrection of the western barons against Stephen, in 1138, Ludlow was seized by Gervase Paganel of Dudley, one of the leaders of the revolt, and was besieged by the king, who failed to take it on this occasion, but was luckier on a second attempt, when he gave the castle to one of his few trusty followers, Josse (or Joyce) de Dinant, probably a member of the Northamptonshire family of Dinants, in which this queer Christian name was prevalent. Josse held the castle against all comers, till his death in or about 1166, his enemies being primarily the Lacys, Hugh, son of Gilbert, who was now dead, and Walter his heir, who held themselves entitled to the place; secondly, Hugh Mortimer of Wigmore, head of the party of Queen Maud in those parts, and thirdly, the Welsh. For Owen Kyveiliog of Powys, and Jorwerth ap Owen of Gwynedd, were well aware that times of English civil war were favourable to Welsh reaction.

The romance of Fulk Fitzwarine falls into the twenty troublous years during which Josse de Dinant was holding Ludlow against various foes. The hero of the tale was son of Warine de Metz, lord of Abberbury, from whom came the family name, and was the first of no less than nine successive Fulk Fitzwarines, for the house was lucky in preserving its male descent from the reign of Henry I down to that of Henry VI. Warine of Metz sent his son, as was the custom in that age, to serve as a page in the household of Josse de Dinant and there to learn courtesy and knightly exercises. His long stay at Ludlow was to be full of adventure. The first event of note that he saw was the capture of Josse of Hugh Mortimer, who was taken by an ambush, confined in the tower in the outer ward, which still bears the name of Mortimer’s Tower, and released only on paying an enormous ransom. If the romance speaks true, this would prove that the outer ward had been built in stone by 1150. Some years later it was the Lacys who were most in evidence. They beset Ludlow intermittently and once committed themselves to a pitched battle under the walls. Fulk was then a stripling, and not permitted to go out to the combat. But as he watched it from the tower in company with Jesse’s wife and daughter Hawise, they saw the castellan beset by Walter de Lacy and three other knights, well in sight of the walls. Fulk ran down, snatched up an axe, put on a rusty helm, and supervening unexpectedly, just as Josse had been beaten down and dismounted, slew two of his assailants and captured Walter and the fourth knight, both of whom had already been severely wounded by Josse before he fell. After this exploit Fulk was naturally admitted to bear arms with is patron, whose life or liberty he had saved, and was very much in the good graces of Josse’s daughter.
But disaster was pending over Ludlow. Arnold de Lisle, the knight who had been captured along with Walter de Lacy, won favour with Marion de la Bruyere, a damsel of good family who was being reared in the castle by Josse’s wife. She was cajoled into furnishing him with rope of knotted linen, by which he and Lacy let themselves down from their prison and escaped. After some time “the neighbours” – not the king whose peace was being broken – negotiated pacification between the rival claimants for Ludlow. All seeming quiet, Josse proceeded to give the hand of his very willing daughter to Fulk; they were married in the castle chapel, and then accompanied by the old Warine, Fulk’s father, went off on a long journey to “Hartland” – wherever that may have been – it hardly seems likely to be Hartland in Devon.

Tragedy followed on the absence of the lord. The damsel Marion de la Bruyere, who was absolutely besotted on Arnold de Lisle, sent him a secret message that she was almost alone in the castle, and that Josse and his train were far away. He might visit her without danger, and she would let him in by the same window by which he had escaped before. De Lisle was more of a traitor than a lover: he pointed out to de Lacy that they had a unique opportunity of surprising the castle. Accordingly he came by night to the rendezvous, apparently alone, but with some hundreds of men-at-arms following at a discreet distance. He was admitted, left his ladder hanging from the window, and went off with the lady to her bower. While they were pleasantly employed, a hundred Lacy retainers mounted the ladder with vast precautions, and while some stole to the dormitory of the garrison, others descended to open fortress, slew the watchman and admitted the main body. Without delay the sleeping garrison were murdered in their beds, as well as many menials. The screams of the dying roused Marion in her lover’s arms, she ran to the window, saw and understood what had happened, and before de Lisle realized her purpose ran him through with his own sword, which was lying on the table. She then leapt from the window and broke her neck on the rock below.

Thus de Lacy got possession of the much-desired heritage of his family, but he had soon to stand a siege from Josse and Fulk, who returned in haste on receiving the horrid news. They gathered all the men they could, established themselves in the British camp at Kaynham, three miles away, and beset the castle. After much fighting outside the walls the besiegers got in close on the side of the town, and attacked the outer ward. They ultimately broke in by using the primitive device of heaping burning brushwood and faggots against the gate, and throwing grease upon it till it was charred through, and a storming party burst in over the burning embers.

Walter de Lacy, pent up in the inner ward, was soon in such desperate straits that he sent a message to Jorwerth ap Owen of Gwynedd offering to take him as lord and secure him many lands, if he would drive off the besiegers. This was contrary to marcher etiquette – but proved a successful device. The Prince of Gwynedd came up, and Owen Kyveiliog of Powys with him, bringing tribal levies in great force, and fell upon Josse’s base-camp at Kaynham. The siege of Ludlow had to be raised, the garrison joined the Welsh, and between them they beat the host of Josse and Fulk, taking the former prisoner, while the latter, badly wounded, escaped only by the speed of his horse.

Then only, and not before, did Fulk go to the court of King Henry, and plead his cause. Evidently, in the mind of a marcher baron, it was almost as bad to call in the king as to call in the Welsh. The results were no altogether satisfactory: even the first of the Plantagenets was not a perfect deus ex machina. Henry ordered de Lacy to release Josse de Dinant, and to get rid of his Welsh allies. The former command was carried out at once, but as Josse died very soon after, the Lacys were allowed to keep Ludlow. But to dismiss the Welsh was another matter: they overran the whole march, and though Fulk was made constable of an army sent against them, it took four years to clear them out of Shropshire, and even then the king had to bribe them to peace by ceding the border district of Maelor and the castle of Whittington.

Here we dismiss the Romance, which goes on to tell the story of Fulk II, son of Fulk I, and his rebellion against King John. The restored de Lacys who had much to suffer from that unpopular monarch, kept Ludlow in the end. Their house died out in the male line in 1240, and its scattered lands were parted between two co-heiresses – Matilda de Lacy took Ludlow to her second husband, Geoffrey de Geneville, one of the South-French favourites of King Henry III: Margaret took Ewyas to John de Verdun. But the Geneville line only endured for two generations: Joan, the grand-daughter of Matilda, was left sole heiress, and married Roger Mortimer, the wicked Earl of March, the murdered of Edward II. Through this wedlock Ludlow got swallowed up in the immense holding of the Mortimer’s, “not kings themselves, but the ancestors of many kings.”

Five generations of Mortimer’s lived at Ludlow, which was almost more the centre of their power than their ancestral Wigmore, for it was a larger and a stronger castle. How to divide the thirteenth and fourteenth century additions to Ludlow’s architecture between Lacys, Greneville’s and Mortimer’s is somewhat of a puzzle. It is complicated by the fact that the Romance of Fulk Fitz-warine, written in the later thirteenth century, speaks of many towers, chambers and walls of the castle by name as existing in circ 1160, which appear to be somewhat later date i.e., it may be describing the Ludlow of about 1250 rather than that of Fulk’s day. Be this as it may, the keep at least is probably of the time of Henry I, and there are traces of Norman work in the much-rebuilt corner towers of the middle ward which overhang the river. Lat Norman also is the very curious round chapel of St Mary Magdalen, which stands in the middle of the ward, and displays a particular fine entrance door with zig-zag moulding, and another arch opening into the place where the now-vanished chancel stood. The interior, now open to the sky, was once very elaborately decorated with woodwork of armorial designs, which was standing perfect in the late eighteenth century.

The Castle gets a Tudor Facelift

The interior of the keep has been at least twice remodelled, the last changes having been made as late as Tudor times, when Sir Henry Sydney, the great Elizabethan President of the Council of Wales, built the now existing gate-house adjacent to the keep, and put on it his won and his mistress’s coats-of-arms, and the curious inscription – “Hominibus Ingratis Loquimini Lapides.” But its dominating character in the line of defence of the inner ward has always been the same.

Far more imposing ranges of building in Ludlow Castle are undoubtedly the great five-storied blocks of the north front, from the tower of the Two Princes (Edward V and his brother) on the north-east, to that of Prince Arthur on the north-west. These look like the Mortimer’s work, with the interior pulled about by fifteenth and sixteenth century successors. For while some of the fireplaces and the lines of the windows are in good “Decorated” style, others are undoubtedly Elizabethan. The Great Hall in the centre of the block is a magnificent room, 60 feet by 30, with a roof 35 feet high. And the State Apartments to the right of it contain spacious and highly decorated chambers.

Ludlow was kept in good repair, and inhabited, down to a date far later than that at which most of the castles of the Marches had gone to decay. When the last heiress of the Mortimer’s married Richard of Cambridge, and passed on her ancestors’ wide lands to the House of York, the castle became more important than ever, as the chief abode and stronghold of a royal line with strong aspirations to the crown. It was the place at which Anne Mortimer’s son Richard, Duke of York, mustered his army for his abortive insurrection in 1459, and the rout of Ludford Bridge, which wrecked his hopes, took place before its walls. Richard’s son, Edward IV, prized Ludlow greatly, and made it the regular abode of his two much-cherished sons, the princes after whom the north-east tower is named. It was from there that they set out on that unhappy journey to London in 1483, which led them to a secret grave in the Tower. Not-withstanding these sinister associations, Henry VII gave it to his son Arthur as his abode, when he had married Catherine of Aragon, and had started an establishment of his own. Arthur left his name to the north-west tower, in which he died in April 1502, only a few months after his marriage – thereby ensuring the succession of his formidable younger brother Henry VIII.

Ludlow was never again a royal residence, but it was made the site of the “Council of Wales” after Arthur’s death. This important local delegation of the king’s own Council, which had as its parallel “the Council of the North” at York, had charge of the principality and the March right down to the Civil War 1642-46. It had even a nominal – but only a nominal – restoration after 1660, and was only abolished in 1689. The Lord President of the Council was almost a Viceroy, and lived in great state at Ludlow, with a great body of clerks and officials, who occupied the whole of the buildings. Many of the Presidents were bishops, but the most notable and long-lived of them was a layman, Sir Henry Sydney, a great favourite of Elizabeth I, who held the post from 1559 to 1586, and left traces of his work all over the castle, and a magnificent tomb in the adjacent church.

The Whigs of the Revolution abolished the Council of Wales as one of the engines of royal bureaucracy – if not a very effective one of late. Ludlow was left for a few years theoretically as a garrison – with a retired colonel as governor, and a skeleton company, whose barracks may be seen in the outer ward. Only small part of the castle was occupied, and in the reign of George I, the crown (or Sir Robert Walpole) came to the conclusion that to keep up such a vast place was an unjustifiable extravagance. The lead was stripped from the roofs and sold, and the castle was allowed to moulder. Visitors as late as 1768 and 1774 reported that many of the floors and some of the roofs were still standing, and that the woodwork of the chapel was wonderfully preserved. But by 1800 all had fallen in, the ruins were sold to the Earl of Powys, the greatest landowner of the district – a guarantee that no wilful dilapidations would follow.

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