264 CAERNARVON CASTLE.
wild men ("gentz sauvages"), who well knew how to teach their management to the young sons of great lords.^
Besides the inquisitions into the actual state of the castles, documents upon which the amount and nature of their dead stock is registered, there are also still remaining separate inventories of armour and military weapons, containing several curious entries illustrative of warlike costume, and various methods of domestic and personal defence, as well as minor evidences of the care with which the buildings and their contents were preserved.[1] It is to these records and to the various Expense Rolls of the period, written in bad Latin, or occasionally in Anglo-Norman French, with all the repulsive aspect of contractions, and in a character, when legible, confusing from the similarity of several of its letters, that we must refer for all information on military architecture. They not only detail, with laborious accuracy and minuteness, all the charges incurred in erecting and in sustaining, for a series of years, these noble structures, but as being the official evidences of the time, they are the most authentic and certain testimony that can be consulted. There is no class of documents so full, so fresh and satisfactory, nor any bearing upon architectural history at all comparable for the precise way in which they exhibit the industrial economy of the time, the rate of wages, the price of materials, the method of carrying on large works, and the various means by which labour was organised, and the weekly accounts drawn up.
For this reason I have, in the preceding inquiry, drawn copiously from these pure sources of history, and endeavoured
This letter is here given in its quaint original language, as a specimen of the collection. The Count was brother to Philip IV., then King of France:—
"(Langley, 26th May, 1 305.)
"Au noble home son trescher cosyn Monsieur Lowyz de France Counte Devreux, Edward, &c., saluz e cheres amistez. Nous vous enveoms un gres palefrei trotant que a peyne poet porter sa charge demeigne, e vous enveoms de noz crocuz levrers de Gales que bien ateindroient un levre sil le trovassent endormaunt, e de noz chiens corantz que suefe vont lamblure. Pur ceo que nous eavom bien que vous amez bien lo deduit des chiens perezons. E cher cosin si vous volez dautres choses que sont en nostre pais de Gales, uncore vous envorriom bien des gentz sauvages, si vous volez, qui bien sauroient aprendre norture as joefnes einfens des grauntz seignurs. Trcs cher cosin, nous vous fesom savoir que au partir de ces lettres nous fuimes saiuz e heitez e en bon estat, dieu merci, ceo que nous desirom molt de vous touz jours oir e savoir; e vous prioms que vostre estat que dieu par sa grace face toutz joui's bon, nous voillez sovent maunder, kar nous sumos a esc de quer totes les foiz que nous cnvoioms bones noveles. Nostre seigneur vous gard."
- ↑ See Bag, No. 4, bundle 2, in the Chapter House.
