Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB
[graphic][merged small][subsumed]

alliance was frequently of no small importance to the Sovereign of the realm. In cases of disputed title to the crown, the lords of these castles were enabled on many occasions to prolong the contest between the claimants; they opened their gates, perhaps, to the vanquished or retiring party, who, safe within their entrenched and embattled circuit, had time to gain breath, and to renew the struggle with recruited fortunes. Instances of this application of the political strength of domestic castles are particularly numerous in the war between Matilda and Stephen; memorable traits of their importance abound in every period of our history, down to the rebellion of fanatical republicanism by which it was tarnished in the seventeenth century.

During the anarchy which prevailed in the reign of Stephen (the sure concomitant, in a greater or less degree, of political divisions), the feudatory castellans were the actors of gross oppressions of the subject. So dangerous is it to the liberty of the community that power should fall into the uncontrolled hands of any particular class of the members of the state. Of this truth, in the time of Cromwell, we have had warning experience.

Malmsbury, who was cotemporary

with most of the events recited in his Historia Novella, affords us the following picture of these outrages, in the year 1140.

as

"The whole of this year was embittered by the horrors of war. There were many castles throughout England each defending their neighbourhood, but more properly speaking laying it waste. The garrisons drove off from the fields both sheep and cattle, nor did they abstain either from churches or churchyards. Seizing such of the country vavasours were reputed to be possessed of money, they compelled them by extreme torture to promise whatever they thought fit. Plundering the houses of the wretched husbandmen, even to their very beds, they cast them into prison, nor did they liberate them but on their giving every thing they possessed for their release. Many calmly expired in the midst of torments, inflicted to compel them to ransom themselves, bewailing, which was all they could do, their miseries to God."+

Of a certain marauding castellan the following is the animated sketch given by the same writer. ‡

"Robert Fitzherbert, a character well calculated for the stratagems of war, surprised the castle of Devizes; a man by far the most cruel of any

*This word is not employed in the Latin version before me, edit. 1596. It has, probably, been restored from a MS. copy by the translator.

Malmesbury's account of these transactions is so remarkably corroborated by the Saxon Chronicle, that I cannot forbear transcribing the concurrent passages from the latter in this place. "Anno 1137. Every rich man built his castles and defended them against him (Stephen), and they filled the land full of castles. They greatly oppressed the wretched people by making them work at these castles, and when the castles were finished, they filled them with devils and evil men. Then they took there whom they suspected to have any goods, by night and by day, seizing both men and women and put them in prison for their gold and silver, and tortured them with pains unspeakable, for never were any martyrs tormented as these were. They hung some by their feet, and smoked them with foul smoke; some by their thumbs, or by the head, and they hung burning things on their feet. They put a knotted string about their heads, and writhed it till it went into the brain. They put them into dungeons, wherein were adders and snakes and toads, and thus wore them out. Some they put into a crucet house, that is, into a chest that was short and narrow, and not deep, and they put sharp stones in it, and crushed the man therein, so that they broke all his limbs. There were hateful and grim things called sachenteges in many of the castles, and which two or three men had enough to do to carry. The sachentege was made thus-it was fastened to a beam, having a sharp iron to go round a man's throat and neck, so that he might by no ways sit nor lie nor sleep, but he must bear all the iron, I cannot and I may not tell of all the wounds and all the tortures they inflicted upon the wretched men of this land; and this state of things lasted the nineteen years that Stephen was king, and ever grew worse and worse," &c. &c.-Saxon Chron. Miss Gurney's version.

Will. Malm. Modern Hist. of the Kings of England, Sharpe's translation, p. 580. GENT. MAG. VOL. VII.

X

within the circle of this age's memory, blasphemous also towards God. He used voluntarily to boast of having been present at a place where twenty monks were burnt, together with the church, declaring that he too would frequently do the like in England, and grieve God by the plunder of the church of Wilton. . . I myself have heard, when at any time, which was extremely rare indeed, he liberated his captives without torture, and they thanked him for it on the part of God; I have heard him, I say, reply, never let God owe me any thanks. He used to expose his prisoners, naked and rubbed with honey, to the burning heat of the sun, thereby exciting flies and other insects of that kind to sting them. But having now got possession of Devizes, he hesitated not to boast, that he should gain, by means of this castle, the whole district from Winchester to London, and that he would send to Flanders for soldiers to defend him. While meditating, however, such a scheme, Divine vengeance overtook him through the agency of one John Fitz Gilbert, a man of surprising subtlety, who had a castle at Marlborough; for, being thrown into chains by him because he refused to surrender Devizes to his sovereign the empress, he was hanged like a common thief."*

Henry the Second reformed the abuse of these private fortresses, and it was, probably, from the period of his reign, that it became necessary for every subject wishing to embattle, crenellate, and entrench his house by a moat, to obtain a license for that purpose from the Crown. In the reign of Edward the Second, the moated castle at Leeds in Kent, the mansion of Lord Badlesmere, shut its gates against the Queen; was in consequence regularly beleaguered by a royal force; the castellan Thomas Colepeper, on surrender, was hanged as a traitor, and its noble owner shortly after shared the same fate.

There is no record that the moat or fortalice at Ightham was distinguished by any military encounter, but it is

* Ibid. p. 584.

certain that the site was occupied at an early period of the Anglo-Norman dynasty. Ivo de Haut, of the great Kentish family of Haut, in the time of Henry the Second, was possessed of this place; in the reign of Henry III. it was held by Sir Piers Fitzhaut, steward of the Royal Household; in that of Richard III. we find it still occupied by a gentleman of the same stock, Richard Haut, who in the 18th and 22d of Edward IV. had been Sheriff of Kent. He joined the Duke of Buckingham in his abortive attempt in favour of the Earl of Richmond, his manors became forfeit to the Crown, and this of the Mote was given to Sir Robert Brakenbury, the Lieutenant of the Tower, whose name so frequently occurs in the annals of that period, and to whose honour it is recorded that he refused to be concerned in taking away the lives of the youthful princes, his prisoners, shewing that whatever his official allegiance to his master, his person was yet the cover of a fairer mind, than to be butcher of an innocent child." Brakenbury sealed his fidelity, in other respects, to his sovereign at Bosworth-field, where he was slain. On the accession of Richmond to the throne, the Mote was restored to Richard Haut. lt afterwards passed through female heirs into the possession of other names, as of Clement, Pakenham, Alleyn, till in the reign of James the First, it became vested in Sir William Selby,† of Branxton in Northumberland, a military officer of repute in the low country and Irish wars: he died in 1611, at the age of 80. There are curious monuments in Ightham Church to his memory and that of his widow Dame Dorothy, who died in 1641.

Whether the beautiful effigy in the chancel, of an armed knight in the costume of the fourteenth century, belonged to one of the early possessors of the Mote, is uncertain. Some have considered the figure to represent a Haut, others say it is Sir Thomas Cawne, who possessed an estate called Nulcomb, in the adjoining parish

Anno 1607, a Bill was brought into Parliament, confirming the sale of the Mote from Charles Alleyn, Esq. then deceased, to Sir William Selby. Hasted says, from some informality it was sent back.

Qy. what were the arms of Haut? Will some Kentish antiquary inform me?

of Seale, in the reign of Edward III. On his surcoat he bears a lion rampant Ermine, with a double tail (queue fourchée). This circumstance may perhaps at length settle the difference.*

It now remains for me to add a few notes in illustration of the excellent drawing of the Mote, which has kindly been contributed by John Buckler, Esq. F.S.A. to whom also we were indebted for his view of the ancient house in the village of Ightham, which formed the subject of a plate in your Magazine for December 1835.

The Mote is seated in a deep ravine of the weald or forest, about two miles south of the Roman station on Oldbury Hill, near the rise of a streamlet which probably here formed a little islet or eight, giving name, as I have before supposed, to the parish of Ightham (Eight-ham). The constructors of the Mote had but to deepen the channel of the waters, and give it the regularity of a foss. The house is principally of stone, and forms a quadrangle surrounding a court, the exterior sides of which may perhaps be each in extent about a hundred feet. I speak from recollection, not finding any note of the dimensions of the area comprised among my memoranda.

the large window divided by mullions into five compartments, was introduced into the front of the Hall.

The main body of that structure may be safely referred to the period of Henry III. or Edward I.; it was probably the work of Sir Piers Fitz-Haut.

The weatherings of the entrance door are adorned at either end by human heads, one that of a female wearing a wimple and chaplet of roses, a custom frequently alluded to by Chau

cer.

"She gatherith flouris white and redde, To make a sotill garland for hir hedde."

The roof of the hall has undergone some alteration, but at either end two of the acutely pointed arches, its original supporters, remain; these have curiously carved finials.

The huge timber logs placed on and-irons, still blaze in the capacious chimney of this most venerable hall. Through a dark and vaulted corridor which runs round the building, and through which the breeze of autumn was moaning, myself and two antiquarian friends approached the stairs leading to the family chapel. This most interesting apartment remains, pulpit, confessional and all, in the same state as when decorated in the time of the seventh Henry. St. George, with his azure surcoat and ensanguined cross, is seen effulgent in the windows. The ceiling is painted with the portcullis (a badge of the monarch above-named), and with a quiver and arrows, a cognizance perhaps of Haut.

The tendrils of the ivy, as at the chapel at Sutton-place, formerly described in your pages, make their way in at the shattered panes, and form a rich though melancholy appendage of this antique house of prayer. The illusion was almost complete. One could have fancied that one saw Sir Richard Haut returned from Bos

The principal front seen in the view faces the north. In the centre is a handsome gate tower, above which rises a staircase turret; the approach to this tower is by a bridge composed of one low circular arch; the form of this arch leads me to suppose that the bridge is of modern construction, and that it may have replaced a drawbridge. The gate tower was evidently the keep or master tower of the mansion. Passing under the gate we enter the court, in the front of which is the hall, the remaining space being filled up by buildings, the upper stories of which are in the old English half-worth's bloody fray, offering up his timbered style, the gables acutely pointed, and the windows surmounted by the label moulding known as the Tudor, a presumptive evidence that Richard Haut, in the reign of Henry the Seventh, had made large additions and alterations in the fabric. At this period

*It was accurately and beautifully Monumental Effigies of Great Britain.

+ Gent. Mag. Vol. I. N. S. p. 490.

praises in this his own family oratory, to the arbiter of battles, for the event of that which had restored to him his home and patrimonial possessions. In quitting this most interesting relic of the feudal age, we returned our hearty thanks to the lady there resident, the delineated by the late C. A. Stothard. See

قت

« AnteriorContinua »