against Stephen. Here, too, lived his grandson William de Vernon, who helped to bear the canopy at Richard's second coronation at Winchester. Afterwards, the manor passed into the hands of Isabella de Fortibus, who, on her death-bed, sold it, with all her possessions, to Edward I., who well knew the value of such a stronghold. Though Edward II. bestowed the estate on Sir William Montacute, yet the castle still remained in the hands of the Crown.
It was standing, though no longer a fortification, in the Commonwealth period. Nothing, however, now remains but the mere shell of the keep, whose walls are in places four yards thick.[1]
Below it stands what was, perhaps, the house of Baldwin de Redvers, also in ruins, and roofless, but still a capital specimen of what is so rarely seen, the true domestic architecture of the twelfth century. Like all the other remaining houses of this period, it is a simple oblong, seventy-one feet by twenty-four broad, and only two stories high, placed for defence on a branch of the Avon, which serves as a moat. On the south-east it is flanked by a small attached tower, now in ruins, under which
- ↑ Grose, in his Antiquities (vol. ii., under Christchurch Castle), gives the following curious extract from a survey, dated Oct. 1656, concerning the duties of Sir Henry Wallop, the governor:—"Mem.: the constable of the castle or his deputy, upon the apprehension of any felon within the liberty of West Stowesing, to receive the said felon, and convey him to the justice, and to the said jail, at his own proper costs and charges; otherwise the tything-man to bring the said felon, and chain him to the castle-gate, and there to leave him. Cattle impounded in the castle, having hay and water, for twenty hours, to pay fourpence per foot." The fee of the Constable in the reign of Elizabeth was 8l 0s. 9d. Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, vol. i., book ii., part. 5, p. 71. In the Chamberlain's Books of Christchurch we are constantly meeting with some such entry as, "1564, ffor the castel rent for ij yeres—xiijs. vd." "1593, ffor the chiefe rent to the castel—vis. xid.
