Old Castles/Carlisle Castle
CARLISLE CASTLE.
THE FIRST ENGLISH PRISON OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.
“How fair amid the depth of Summer green
Spread forth thy walls, Carlisle! Thy castled heights
Abrupt and lofty: thy Cathedral dome
Majestic and alone; thy beauteous bridge
Spanning the Eden, where the angler sits
Patient so long, and marks the browsing sheep
Like sprinkled snow amid the verdant vales.
Old Time hath hung upon thy misty walls
Legends of festal and of warlike deeds–
King Arthur’s wassail cup; the battle axe
Of the wild Danish sea-kings; the fierce beak
Of Rome’s victorious eagle: Pictish spear
And Scottish claymore in confusion mixed
With England’s clothyard arrow. Every helm
And dinted cuirass hath some stirring tale–
Yet here thou sitt’st as meekly innocent
As though thine eager lip had never quaffed
T is an old adage that familiarity breeds contempt; and there is something of truth, but also something of untruth, in it for our contempt for what is familiar oftener arises from want of thought and reverence than from frequency of sight. "A thing of beauty," a thing of interest "is a joy for ever" to the refined, the intellectual, but like the famous potter, Peter Bell, of whom it is written that
"A primrose on a river's brim,
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more. "
many of us in this old city of Carlisle are apt, we fear, to look upon our ancient castle simply as a castle, and nothing more; either forgetful or uninformed of all its strange brave histories, and its equally strange and striking perils and pageantries and long silenced sorrows. In these days we read so much history that its truth—its vivid living realities almost escape us: we do not hear the rush and push and struggle of the brave, or see the tears and terrors which in far off homes, or subsequently, in nearer dungeons, were often their tragic accompaniment.
But coming out of the obliquity of the accustomed flow of house and street life, and standing as we stood on a bright November afternoon lately, in cells where the chained captive must often have sighed for death—thought returns, the imagination clears, and the wonderful panorama of the past rushes on and on before the excited mind in all the vivid hues of restless, changing, struggling, suffering human life. Sir Walter Scott said that "There are few cities in England which have been the scene of more momentous and more interesting events than Carlisle;" and what is true of the city is true also of the castle, whose history is in reality the history of the city, and which has ample claim in comparison with all other castles in England to all that is stated in this assertion.
Carlisle Castle stands at the north west side of the city, on the left bank of the Eden, and is a massive building in the form of an irregular triangle, of various architecture, but principally in the Anglo Norman style, as the ingenious visitor will discern from its internal arrangement and construction, the material of its composition being chiefly red sand stone.
The entrance to it is through two ancient double gateways or towers of immense strength, and connecting the outer and inner wards, before both of which gates there was formerly a portcullis.
The castle now consists of one principal tower, with the ancient keep, (which is still in a sound and staunch looking state,) and the remains of what is called Queen Mary's Tower, from its having been the place where that unfortunate lady was confined in 1568, and which appears from its ornamental exterior to have been appropriated before that time to the use of royal or other stately visitors of the castle.
This tower is on the left side of entrance from the inner gate, and the interior of it is attained by going through the officers' rooms, including a large mess room, etc., which are at its rear, and which occupy the basement of what was formerly the chapel of the castle. But only a fraction of it is now standing, as its insecurity, it is said, necessitated its removal some years ago—a necessity much to be regretted by every intelligent visitor of the castle. Inside this tower, and in a sort of place which seems to have been extemporized into an officers' kitchen, there are still remaining a few of the steep steps of the stairs that once led up into it, and over which have doubtless rustled the floating trains of the beautiful quartette of Marys and their sorrowful mistress; and we could not help thinking as we looked on them that the very foot which had taken precedence of the proud Catherine de Medeci in the regal ceremonials of courtly France, had passed in far different fashion up and down there.
A rampart of immense thickness and strength surrounds the castle on the north, east, and west sides, in which are embrasures for cannon. On the west side of this rampart is the present entrance to the tower, which opens into the armoury over the dungeons entered from the inner court. At present the arms in it consist only of about twenty very indifferent old swords hanging up and down on the bare walls, the interior of the room being occupied with a very goodly quantity of hospital clothing and requisites—and some of the rooms are filled with the general stores of the castle.
Leading out of these apartments, and on the same floor, are two cells which have been used formerly as places of confinement. One of them has the reputation of having been the prison of that eccentric Jacobite, Fergus Mc.Ivor, the hero of Waverley, and who, as the initiated know, was meant to represent the real, and we hope not less heroic, Major McDonald of Kippoch. In this cell the loop hole looks out upon the pleasant Scotch country and on its base are two deep indentions of fingers, one of three, and the other of four, in what appears to be the solid stone. These are said to be the impression of the fingers of the poor Scotch prisoners, who as they incessantly stood gazing on their own dear distant hills, wore the impression of their strained fingers on the hard stone. It is a sad momento of the stern past, and one of the most pathetic of the many touching records time has left on these old walls. This cell has also an additional interest from the fact of Sir Walter Scott having been here on his last sad journey home—from Italy. He was accompanied by his daughter Ann, and the officious conductor, unknowing his visitor, explained to him how this had been Fergus's cell, and those the print of his fingers.
Outside these two cells there is a great deal of rude carving on the walls all around, of grifiins, boars, scorpions, and armorial emblems, some of these latter being the arms of the ancient families of the county. There are some also of more pious design—women with lifted hands and eyes, and one with a child bearing the cross. One, too, we noticed, of Justice, her eyes bandaged, and the scales; and there was one also of Fortune and her wheel. That grand monster of the good old times, the rack, is also duly depicted, as is its ally and competitor, the redoubted thumbscrew—figures under the operations of these mixing wofully with bands of pilgrims and solitary palmers, a pictorial compendium of the history of the times. These want no comment. Stolid indeed must he be who cannot read thoughts in things here; and more stolid still who, when read, cannot sympathize with the great pondering, yearning human heart from which these thoughts flowed.
Passing from these cells, our conductor led us to an apartment on the same floor, containing a large quantity of exceedingly dusty lumber, among which he showed us what is said to have been Queen Mary's dining table. It is a veritable relic apparently, the two stands, one at each end, by which it is supported having been largely cut all round by the curious—not the reverentially—for chips or pieces of it. The table, which is a very plain, substantial one, is of oak, and about five feet in length by two and a half in breadth. Its antiquity is demonstrated by its workmanship, the nails by which the top is attached to the stands appearing in regular order on the surface of it. Poor Sir Francis Knollys, we fancy, if he had written that "story instead of a letter" he talked about, many a scene of it would have been described as taking place at this identical table. It was a sad charge his—sad for him, but still more sad for Mary. Here, during two long, sweet spring months, when the bright, glinting sun smiled down in beguiling blessedness over all the green rejoicing earth, peering even into her prison, with its old, old sweetness, how must that yet youthful heart have rankled under the unexpected restraint to which she was reduced. Often and often the substance of her thoughts must have been—
Now blooms the lily by the bank,
The primrose clown the brae,
The hawthorn's budding in the glen,
And milkwhite is the slae;
The meanest hind in fair Scotland
May rove their sweets amang,
But I, the queen of all Scotland,
Maun lie in prison strang.
There are tears, hot, burning tears, under those ceremonious sentences she wrote to Elizabeth from here. Her heart was full of them, though the Queen awed the woman, and kept them there. Sad restless nights must she have passed under those soft starry June skies, though her days were pomped out with the regal strain of her grand rank. It was the Queen who looked on for two hours while her faithful followers played football for her amusement "on a playing green towards Scotland," and that beautiful face undoubtedly had its full complement of smiles and graces; but that proud passioned heart in whose depths pulsed the blood of the heaven-scaling Guises and the absolute Tudors, must have had hours of dreadful hard human suffering here, as it was here that her pleasant sustaining dream of Elizabeth's sympathy and help was first so utterly dispelled. But the heathery hills of Scotland were still in sight here, and here also she could still hear the clear ringing accent and heart hallowed speech of her own loved land, and the attraction bound her—she wished to stay here. Poor lady, on her beautiful head descended the retribution of many wrongs. Queen of Scotland, and born on its rugged soil, she yet through her maternity and education was entirely French. All her affinities with the Scotch nature had been destroyed, and from this all her troubles sprang. She was the victim of circumstances—the heiress of the results of a century of mistakes and acrimonious unwisdom. We must pity her. She must ever be pitied, and her final treatment must be for ever deprecated. But still Elizabeth acted not alone. Terrible things—the Massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572, in which at least thirty thousand Protestants had been shamefully murdered, and the dreadful executions in the Netherlands by the ferocious Alva, of ten thousand Protestants, together with the sacking of Antwerp by the same Duke—had taken place during Mary's imprisonment, and these with the recollection of the fierce fires of Mary Tudor's reign, and the fear of their renewal, led the people as well as the nobles, who were already becoming ultra-Protestants or Puritans, to desire the death of Mary, who with Tudor tenacity still held fast to all the revoked ritual of her fallen church; thus allying herself with the enemies of England and her own country, and also with all the enemies of truth and progress and enlightend piety throughout the world. Mary died a martyr to her religion, as she herself declared, when she took that last lone sacrament at Fotheringay; but it was the hard and fearful events of the times rather than the evil disposition of either the nobles or the people, or even the sovereign, which principally procured her death. Requiescat in pace. There seems injustice, but in the vast reaches of celestial jurisdiction good and evil interflow, and the wise and the thoughtful are "reduced as they ponder the solemn mysteries of life and time to a devout belief in a sublime optimism, which for ever and ever, in large and in little, by suffering and by peace, works out a greater and still a greater good.
Concluding this episode, and taking a last look at this antique table, at which we almost seemed to feel the inspiring presence of the fair captive, we resume our explorations of the castle, our next progress being to the top of the tower, which is three stories high, each of sixteen feet in height, and which is, from the ground to the top of the parapet, sixty-eight feet in height. The prospect seen from here is a very fine one. On the south Skiddaw stretches its sublime circumference on the far off margin of vision, and to the west, beyond the silver Solway, rises the dark crest of Criffel, while the northern and eastern views are bounded by irregular heights of cloud capped fell, between which flows the tranquil Eden.
Within this area, and all around Carlisle, sweeps a beautiful and fertile extent of rich cultivated land, over which peaceful white villages and farms cluster thickly. This tract includes also many noted border towers and castles—Corby, Naworth, Brougham, Linstock, Penrith, and Rose Castle, for instance; but no helmed warders pace their keeps now. The times have changed, and one noble border chieftain, now, alas! no more, has sweetly tuned his peaceful lyre to the praises of the "wild and winsome jessamine tree" that blooms upon his border tower.
There are, also, many sweet rural solitudes in the interspaces of this prospect, where in the green summer time the honeysuckle and the wild rose and the satin-threaded bramble flower far up in mid air scatter their gracious healing beauty and fragrance on the unworldly wanderer. From here also the whole country may be reconnoitred for miles, the roads on every hand being visible for great distances.
Underneath the armoury, and on the ground floor of the tower are the solitary dungeons. They are entered mostly by narrow doors, and are utterly dark, no narrow chink of any kind communicating with the sweet upper air. The bare damp clay is all that is at the bottom of them, all round them at regular intervals are horizontal apertures, where we were told rings had once been to tie the prisoners up to, and the sad fact seemed but too conspicuously apparent for any less barbarous explanation. A large ancient gothic door in the inner ward, and not far from the inner gate, leads to these, from which there is a descent of stone steps, apparently the very same over which the bleached visages of those miserable prisoners must have come and gone. Grim, defiant faces, full of mad daring, and a wild half noble heroism, they rise upon the imagination; and what numbers of them must have passed that fearful threshold in the days when the slogan broke the bright silences of morning and evening full often round the purple hills of the border, and the hot-trod[1] was a common spectacle and a common fear to the irreclaimable moss-trooper. What numbers also must have repassed it to swift and summary execution, or in another fearful form as livid corpses, whose ghastly emaciations no bed had comforted, and whose last irrepressible sorrows no eye had watched, and no ear heard.
The outer and inner wards of the castle are separated by a wall and tower gate. The great tower, or keep, and the principal buildings of the castle, including those we have seen, are in the inner ward, which is of a triangular form. Formerly this ward was enclosed by a wide and deep ditch, with a drawbridge; but there is scarcely a trace now of such having been. The tower gate is apparently of very ancient date, being all black and grim underneath, and bearing on its sides many quaint initials. On the left side of the entrance by this, there are still a great many ancient rooms and other buildings, some parts of which were taken down in 1820, and it was here that at that time the skeleton of a lady was found walled up. Looking up, on passing under the gate on that side, the place is still visible where this singular discovery was made, though the walls which enclosed it are gone. This lady, it is authentically stated, wore a Scotch tartan silk dress, and had on her fingers two gold rings, while her feet were placed on several silk handkerchiefs—facts which the curious may like to know, but which, nevertheless, avail little. There have been many conjectures respecting this mysterious person; and it has been made the subject of more than one tale; but there is no authentic idea, either traditional or otherwise, relating to it. The tales which have been written on it refer the atrocity of the deed to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who was Governor of the Castle and Sheriff of Cumberland during his brother Edward the Fourth's reign; but this is entirely supposititious and quite questionable, as a wall built in the thorough fashion of those times at that date would scarcely have become insecure so soon as 1820. Nothing certain is, or can be known about this mystery. In the far past such dreadful deeds were not uncommon in many countries of Europe, and this may have been done by some impoverished Crusader, who, among his many ideas derived from travel and foreign association, had got this one of walling up alive any one whom jealousy or fear or avarice might make it desirable for him to dispense with. Ah! those were barbarous times, we exclaim. Truly, they were. Nor is the world quite free from that barbarism yet, nor will be till ambition, the great master passion of man, true to the central fact of all truth, revolves universally in its own legitimate track round Life, making that, in lieu of wealth, power, or position, the passion and purpose of existence.
Where all is so vague and conjectural, very little can be said; but in perambulating the precincts of the Castle it is well to pause here and let the mind realise the fact that a living lady was once the sufferer of an extraordinary barbarism there, since it is the spirit which we bring to or find amongst things which is the best help to knowledge, and which avails the most also in producing within us the faculties which lead to its proper use.
Passing out of this ancient gateway, before which now lies a very large open space of ground used for drilling, &c., and beyond which are the barracks, we come to the guard house and outer gate. The first of these is a very old place, close by the gate, with windows in the old barbaric style of one pane only. Our conductor told us there was nothing to be seen there, and so we did not go in; but these guard houses were the old novelist's favourite places for intrigues and midnight machinations; and could the old dim walls of this guard house articulate, we might possibly hear stories to fill and thrill the heart and haunt the imagination for many a day.
The outer gate is a lofty stone entrance of immense strength and thickness, and dim and black hued by time to a still greater extent than the inner one. It has also a greater number still of antiquated initials, and over it, on the outer side, is a defaced tablet of the arms of Henry the Seventh. This gate, from its appearance, must have been coeval with the most ancient parts of the castle, and, as such, is of great interest, as under its solid masonry must have passed and repassed all the notabilia of the castle from Rufus's reign downwards. Peaceful to-day as a mountain cotter's rose-garnitured threshold, it has other and different memories. Royal retinues, and princely and priestly pageantries and personages have passed under its awed shade, with curious or abstracted vision, and from its defied heights have issued the solemn cortege of pinioned prisoners for Gallows Hill. It has strange histories, if we knew them, that old outer gate. From 1122, when the courtly and learned Beauclerc was here, and most probably lodged in some prepared part of the castle, its walls have echoed with stately steps, and renowned visitors. Here–and very familiar with this place, having taken the city in 1135, and retreated here from the dreadful Battle of the Standard passed David, King of Scotland, for the last of many times, to die alone in his chamber, devoutly kneeling to the King of Kings; and three years before that sad event, in 1150, our own Henry Plantagenet, then a ruddy, handsome, graceful youth passed here on his way, in company with the Earl of Chester, to this very David, for counsel as to his course with Stephen. It ended in their entering into a league against Stephen, and Henry being knighted by David; and with such results, Henry most probably repaced this portal in pleasant spirits, the Earl of Chester and many a noble English youth by his side.
After David's death the castle again came into the hands of the English, and, twenty years after, we find that gallant governor, Robert de Vaux, pacing these old arches. A right heroic princely man, he rises upon us through the mists of time, his successful defence of the castle against William the Lion, of Scotland, during many months' siege, being the grand deed about which his name and fame revolve. And this was no common deed, for the city during that time was invested with 8,000 Scotch soldiers, and the resolute garrison were at fearful extremities, and on the very brink of yielding, when an accident–the Scotch king being taken prisoner at Alnwick–at last delivered them from their peril. Thirteen years after this Henry Plantagenet, now Henry II., again passed these portals. He was now no longer young, had reigned thirty-two years, and was within three of his death. Fierce struggles and fierce sorrows had passed over him, but great events and great things had also transpired and been done. Active, and hurrying hither and thither to the last, he came this time with a large army and met William the Lion (who had been in league with his own sons against him, but it seems forgiven,) and David his brother here. He was now lord of Scotland, William, on his defeat at Alnwick, having acknowledged himself his vassal; and the great king must have caused on this last visit of his a great deal of running and riding through this grand old gateway.
In 1216 another Scotch King appears on the scene–Alexander, successor to William the Lion. In this year that king took the city, after a long and miserable siege, gracing, undoubtedly, these dim walls with his daily presence for some short time. But his sway here was but of one year's duration, for, though England was in a troubulous state then–the first year of Henry III. the English won back the city in 1213, and Walter de Grey, Archbishop of York, was made Governor of the Castle.
But the century did not close over the city and castle peaceably, for in 1296 siege was again laid to the city by the Scotch, though ineffectually this time, owing to the bravery of the inhabitants–the women even pouring boiling water over their heads from the walls, so that in three days it was abandoned by them. Stirring times these for these old walls, shrill women's voices even mingling with the martial din constantly pervading here!
At this very time–Scotland's fiercest foe, the fiery Edward the First, was pouring thousands of soldiers into the Border country, Dunbar and Falkirk battles being fought in 1296 and 1298, in which year the victorious Edward having reigned twenty-six years, and being at the height of his fame–marched his army here on their way from Falkirk; and in the September following, while the white autumn mists silvered field and fell in the holy hours of twilight, winning to ecstatic contemplations and devotions, unknown, but not unhonoured saints, this ambitious king held a parliament within these walls.
A year before this Wallace himself had appeared before these walls demanding the surrender of the city, but once more we find the old city awake and vigilant in all needful dues for its own defence, and the brave Wallace himself retired from before it.
In 1300 Edward was again here on his route to Scotland, attended by his nobles and his army; and again in 1306, the very year his grand adversary, Robert Bruce, was crowned king of Scotland, and one year after the noble Wallace had been "hung, drawn, and quartered," most likely in his august presence, in his English capital.
This last time Carlisle was the appointed rendezvous of his army; and he himself was accompanied by his second young queen, Margaret of France, and his son Edward, Prince of Wales, eighteen years old that year. Here also, at the same time, were assembled nineteen bishops, and between fifty and sixty mitred abbots, the archbishop of York, and a great number of barons, with the Cardinal d'Espagnol, the Pope's legate. The redoubtable John Hilton, Bishop of Carlisle was at that time governor of the castle and factotum of the king in this border country, and during his stay here Edward was a frequent guest at Linstock castle, the Bishop's residence. All the succeeding winter of this year, and till the July of the following, the time of his death, the king and court remained either here or at Lanercost, and another Parliament was held here on the 20th of January, 1307. This was in all probability the acme of the great days of our castle–the grandest and most distinguished times these old Gothic walls ever knew. What gay hunting cavalcades, alight with sweet ladies' faces, their smiles and voices the wonder of northern ears and eyes, must have issued from these gates in the golden dawns of those years to Inglewood or otherwhere. And what great fires must have roared, that holy Christmas time, on the open hearths of the royal tower and apartments of this comely castle–a king and queen eating their brawn and plumb porridge in its then glowing chambers.
But these men, with all their faults, were something more than mere pleasure takers. War was their religion, and to its heroisms they devoted themselves, kindling the defiance they sought to subdue. They had conquered Wallace, one of the noblest patriots that ever breathed the sweet airs of earth, and of kindred, if not equal virtue, with Themistocles and the Gracchi; but he also had conquered them, and though now no more, his spirit survived in Bruce and his countrymen. It was in fact a Titanic war, great men being in both camps; but all our sympathies are with the brave Wallace and his brave compeers.
One little fact looming out here will show the superstitious tendency of even the strongest minds of that period. In the February of that year, 1307, Edward being already an invalid at Lanercost, and doubtless much mortified by the fact of Bruce's accession, despite of himself, to the Scotch throne, caused him to be excommunicated with bell, book, and candle, in the cathedral here, the Pope having previously commissioned the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Carlisle, the doughty John Hilton, to do this deed.
Among the governors of the castle sometime during the early part of this reign was John Baliol, the "Toom Tabard" of the Scots. He invaded Cumberland while king, and most probably gained some short space of sway here as a result. Bruce also was here more than once–the Bruce whose heart the brave Douglas carried forth to Palestine, though he never got there for his many wars. He was a hero of the grand line, and is one of the greatest presences that have graced these gates.
In 1307, after Edward II. had been proclaimed king in this city, on his father's death, and gone with all his "dool" vested followers to London, and from thence to France, to fetch his unfortunate "fate" Isabella, we find the same Robert Bruce besieging the city for ten days; but it was gallantly defended by Andrew de Harcla, the first Earl of Carlisle. In 1315 Bruce again besieged the place unsuccessfully, and eight years afterwards Harcla was arrested in this castle for having treasonously purposed to convert it into a garrison for his former enemy, de Brus. It is also said that that witty unprincipled favourite of Edward's, Piers Gravestone, was sometime governor of this castle, but if so, it must have been for a very short time. Let him pass. He is grand jester in our train of notabilia, and during his brief sway, if ever he ruled here, kept the old city company in its renowned characteristic right heartily we opine.
A quarter of a century after this, in 1335, we find the active and ambitious Edward III. here with a large army, his object being the assistance of his ignoble vassal, Robert Baliol, in whose interest he had two years before been at Hallidon Hill. Edward was little more than twenty-three when here, though he had already reigned eight years; but his head was already teeming with great ideas, and though we cannot sympathize with his mission, it must have been a sight worth seeing to have looked on that absorbed visage, as with his great ambitions just budding into determinate deeds—a real man under the gay garniture of person that then prevailed, he rode up and down this antique entrance. His five year old son, the Black Prince, with the good and wise Phillipa, his mother, was then at Windsor, a place which that great man, William of Wykeham, then but eleven years old, was soon to fashion into its present grandeur.
Bolingbroke and his sad captive, Richard II., are also said to have lodged here for a night on their way southward. A king in name and a real king: the man whom everybody blessed and the king whom nobody blessed—the melancholy, misled Richard, and the smiling, gracious Henry. Curious citizens would doubtless watch for these as they quitted at early morn these grey arches, looking with strained eyes after the royal cortege, while they brought up old memories and recounted new tales of the two principal figures in it. Poor Richard! the saddest king undoubtedly that ever passed out here; his sad downcast face mingles with the old vivid fancies of the castle as a pathetic phantom or a sorrowful apparition sent to touch the soft airs and fair stars of to-day with a sense of pity which now, as ever, makes the heart, amid all its vain ambitions, wise and good.
Ten years after Edward the Third's visit here, the Scotch again besieged Carlisle, burning both it and Penrith, and plundering very heavily, as it seems from the old chronicles. But once more they were defeated by the brave natives, their leader, the renowned Sir William Douglas, being taken and laid in irons in the castle, the common fate of all prisoners in those "stern old times."
We find also that during the Wars of the Roses, Carlisle was harassed to an unprecedented extent, and doubtless, the castle all through these Wars was the scene of strange and fearful events if we knew them. The scots especially sympathized with Henry the Sixth, and made an ineffectual attempt to take Carlisle for him; and all through the reigns of Henry IV., V., and VI., the city was miserably harassed, the suburbs and adjacent parts, up to the very gates, being destroyed by fire. For all England this was a time of terror, and probably this old castle suffered greatly from the constant hostilities of the times, and doubtless many brave men and true passed these portals during all these years, for calamity also produces "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears;" and where we stand to-day as mere conjecturers, souls, whose names have been blown by heavenly trumps, may have prayed and perished, or, in the pressure of troubles, conceived thoughts or done deeds whose praise lingered in the local heart with loving pride for many a meagre-lettered generation.
Passing on to Edward the Fourth's reign, we find his brother, the notorious Duke of Gloucester, governor of the castle. He was also sheriff of the county, and must have been in the north for a considerable time, since we find him residing at Penrith Castle, then barely finished; and Camden says "this castle" i. e. Carlisle, "King Richard III., as appears by his arms, repaired;" and these repairs were most probably either planned or begun while Richard was here. There is also a tower called the "Tile Tower," or "King Richard's Tower," which was built at the same time. This Tile Tower is a very short distance west of the castle, and was originally on the city walls, being built to defend the wall on that side of the city. It is not a place of very large dimensions or height. One apartment only is open now, but out of this a doorway which led to some other has been walled up. A subterranean passage from the castle to the cathedral ran through the tower, and is said to have been used by Queen Mary and her ladies, but it is now walled up within on each side of the base of the tower, and the entrance to it, which was somewhere by the inner gate, has been closed up also. This building, which is now in a very dilapidated condition, bears the arms of Richard on its western side. We confess to being not very greatly interested in this king, yet though "cheated of feature by dissembling nature," he seems not to have wanted many of the principal characteristics of the Plantagenets, viz.–strength, ambition, and resolution, and the genius of improvement; and his faults have in all probability been greatly exaggerated by our great poet, who doubtless remembered that the fair lady he wished to please was a Tudor. But if Richard himself is something lacking in interest, the time of his stay here was one of particular note in the history of modern times, for during that time William Caxton was revising his first proofs in the sacred purlieus of Westminster, and Christopher Columbus was waiting on the western coast of Spain in a poor convent for the means to realize his sublime idea of a vast India over the virgin waves of the great Atlantic. Both these things perhaps were in Richard's thoughts as he came and went here, and not improbably formed the topic of talk at some of the suppers he and his retainers ate together in our castle.
After this, and in 1537, we find, as a result of the growing intelligence of the times, the first signs of desires for peace between the English and the Scots. In that year, and most likely within the walls of the castle, the Bishops of Durham and Orkney met at Carlisle as commissioners for a treaty of peace between the two countries. But these ancient towers had many a storm in reserve then, the first of which occurred in the very same year–the year of the Pilgrimage of Grace. In that year the city was besieged by those misguided men, which resulted in their being repulsed by the garrison and citizens, and seventy-four of their principal officers being executed on the city walls. Subsequently, their ghastly heads gleamed from these towers or the walls, scaring the mid-day airs even with fearful terror; for these were not the hated Scotch, but English gentlemen, and some of them probably well known and much loved in the city. There must have been many a sad procession through these gates, both in and out, during this "rising." Here in these border counties the two great antagonistic forces of the time, Protestantism and Catholicism, met, and the latter was utterly defeated. It was too late to burn Bibles as they were burnt by the people at Durham; too late to restore the mass in England, though for a century after this hope lingered in the Catholic heart; still, the genuine enthusiasm of many of the leaders of this Rebellion, gives a touch of grandeur to the determinate effort of this desperate band of men, and adds to the regret which spontaneously rises in generous minds in contemplating the fearful severities they suffered. One in every village for sixty miles around, and in many of them many more, was hung, to awe the disaffected. It was a sad time. Anti-progressionists have ever been persistent persecutors, and most of all so in all times when the progression has been one in connection with Religion–the mind of man still confounding its passing forms with its eternal spirit and substance. In the year 1400, a century and a quarter before this, the stake had been set up in England, but the flame only increased the fury of zealots, the unswerving victims of the inquisition, by their noble behaviour, but creating new supplies for its horrid tortures and in conjunction with this the grim age still held its cord and axe, as though sure of the occasion which, in the insecurity of the times, was never wanting. It was the God of the Old Testament, not of the New, the age worshipped–a God of vengeance, not the God of Love; and Shakespeare, yet unborn, had yet to teach men the qualities of mercy, and how
"It becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown."
In 1596 we find that famous borderer, Kinmont Willie, in irons in the castle. He was taken prisoner during a time of truce, and imprisoned contrary to the express agreement of the truce, and William Scott, the Lord of Buccleuch, whose follower he was, demanded his instant release. This demand was not complied with, and his angry chief, after the fashion of those times, came here at once with two hundred horsemen, provided with ladders for scaling the walls, and instruments of iron for forcing the gates; and before the garrison could prepare for resistance, in the brightening dawn of an April morning, forced the castle, and carried off the renowned Willie, his irons still on, which Sir Walter Scott says a smith knocked off at a cottage by the road side between Longtown and Langholm. Summary proceedings these. These men had not yet acquired our modern notion of debating the question. They did not palter whatever they did, nor cheat their consciences with the questionable virtue of votes.
Another of our English monarchs, James the First, visited Carlisle in 1617, and very probably lodged in the castle, perhaps in the very apartments his mother once occupied. The object of his journey to Scotland–the establishment of Episcopacy in the place of Presbyterianism–was a very unwise one, and together with his intolerance of the English Puritans and his universal despotism, the source of all the long train of evils that troubled all, or nearly all, his descendants. But the pedant king appears to have found favour with the pleasant people of Carlisle, for they, with all due speechifying and kissing of hands, presented him with a "cup of golde" valued at thirty pounds, and "a purse of sylke containing forty jacobuses of the same." A most welcome gift we have no doubt to the needy monarch, who, we are told, used this obliging "Maiore and his brethren very graceouslye."
At this time James had been fourteen years in England, and was more than fifty years old. His eldest son and heir, Henry, was already dead in his prime, his Queen, Ann of Denmark, was a trouble to him, and the country was fermenting with the new religio-political emotion of Puritanism, made daily stronger by his prohibitions. Three years after this the May Flower left the coast of Holland for America; and while James was here receiving cups and purses of gold from the gracious Mayor and citizens, many of the noblest of his subjects were flying from his arbitrary rule to Holland and other places, and the great men who were to put the disjointed times right–Milton, Cromwell, and Hampden, were already ripening into manly life and deed. But James was no seer, and consequently, with "feast royall" and public church going, enjoyed himself in right kingly style here with his rattling retainers and the "merrie" citizens, he and they talking Armenian Theology and Universal Episcopacy in the calmer intervals of their noisy plays and pageantries.
In 1639 five hundred Irish soldiers were sent as a garrison to this castle, and remained here two years. The commotion in Scotland caused by the imposition of Bishops, etc., necessitated this precautionary movement. The great struggle was just commencing between king and people, which for more than ten years after this was to break nearly every sweet silence of wood and field between the Grampians and Land's-end with the fierce din of war. And in this war this city and castle had a full share of the general tumult of the times. The royalists held the city in 1644, of Marston Moor memory, and we find General Leslie besieging Sir Thomas Glenham, commander-in-chief for his majesty here the same year. More than seven months this siege lasted–from October, 1644, to June, 1645, a long winter through, and the calamity consequent was very great. "Flesh of horses, dogs, and other animals" was for some time the subsistance of the besieged. The old city, notwithstanding its bravery, must have been fearfully tried during all this time, and gaunt anxious faces must have passed through these old arches in those drear winter months; but the brave garrison capitulated to Leslie at last, almost death driven.
In 1648 the city again fell into the hands of the Royalists, having been taken by surprise by Sir Philip Musgrave, who after two months' occupation gave it up to the Duke of Hamilton, and by him it was garrisoned with Scots, Sir William Livingstone being appointed governor. This same year, on the first of October, and after the defeat of Hamilton and Langdale at Preston, by Cromwell, this city also quietly surrendered to him. During this year the city had been the scene of the most distressing suffering. The siege of Carlisle of 1644–5 is one of three of the most determined for the king's cause. Isaac Tullie, who was in the city the whole time, gives a very striking account of it. "The citizens' clothes hung on them," he says, "like those of men on gibbets; and one day some officers and soldiers came to the common bakehouse, and took away the horse flesh from the poor people who were as near starving as themselves.
"Women met at the cross abusing Sir Henry Hadling the governor, who threatened to fire upon them; they begged it as a mercy, and the old soldier went away with tears in his eyes–he could not help them. This was Leslie's siege." Sad troubled times of change and commotion were these, but the strong man had now come, and the storm subsided. Cromwell is one of the very noblest and bravest who have graced these gates; and even to-day, dwelling on those stormy times, his presence is half realized. Fresh from the signal victory, or rather victories, at Preston, his heart, as he passed these portals, which he undoubtedly did, would perhaps be revolving his favourite Scripture, "Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, 'Let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh, the Lord shall have them in derision.'" Brave Oliver! we wonder if he also lodged within these towers, and whether amid all the multitude of sounds that have passed hence, the audible morning and evening prayer of that great true man mingled.
Pacing these arches on a different errand, another great hero of the time was at this castle, in 1653. This was that truly noble man, George Fox, whose manly zeal inspired him with the idea of preaching to the garrison here. His discourse was most likely delivered in the inner court of the castle, and it being the fourth year of the Protectorate, it is not improbable that some of Cromwell's soldiers might be intermixed with the troops, which may account for his favourable reception, for we find the soldiers on the morrow taking his part when he was arrested after preaching at the Market Cross. However this may be, his being here adds to the interest of these ancient walls, and to him who lingers lovingly over all their great past, imbibing not only the fact, but the spirit of the times out of which the fact grew, this one calm voice amid the multitudinous din of years will be precious indeed–precious as the augury of a new era, as the first receding wave of a many centuried strife-tide which, not here only, but throughout the whole world, had spread perpetual desolation and perpetual sorrow. It would be worth much now to many to annihilate the intervening years, and catch but for one brief minute the look and tone that pierced the hearts of that grotesque auditory on that special day in this castle court. So plain a man and yet so powerful, so courageous and yet so humble he rises on the imagination; and then his truth so great that it has yet to live on and refresh unknown generations–not yet fully apprehended, but finally to be both apprehended and honoured. No wonder that a preacher of such doctrines–a denouncer of routine and formula–should here, as every where, have found a prison. One of the most faithful and farseeing of the spiritualists of all times, his imagined presence still hallows these scenes; and though there is no authentic proof of his having been confined in these dungeons, yet his followers, as well as others, may still gain some instruction by coming to see where he preached.
A century after this, in 1745, the "Young Pretender," Charles Edward Stuart, came hither from Scotland with an army of nine thousand men, and laid siege to the city on the 9th of November, demanding its instant surrender in the name of his father. On the 15th the gates of the city were opened to him, and his father was proclaimed king at the Cross. This done, they marched southward as far as Warwickshire, contemplating, in their hour of victory, the subduction of the metropolis. But other and sadder fortunes awaited them. The Duke of Cumberland was already in the field as their opponent, and at Derby they found three armies in front of them. Charles Edward, perhaps wisely for him, following the counsels of his officers, at once retreated before these forces, taking the direct way back to Carlisle, the Duke and his ponderous army all pursuing. The Prince's army arrived in Carlisle on the 19th of December, after some severe skirmishing at Penrith the previous day. The Duke followed hard after, and, in the interval of eleven days, Carlisle, with little loss, was once more in the hands of his majesty King George. During this interval the city had been besieged, the fire of the besiegers being directed "wholly against the Castle," which the Duke in scorn had called "a miserable hencoop," and which Lord Murray, of the Prince's army, would have blown up, if his own will had been done, ere the Prince's party left it. The castle was in fact the great scene of action during all this disastrous time.
Three hundred and ninety-six men, of various ranks, became prisoners of the Duke by the recapture of the city. Hamilton, governor of the castle, and Colonel Townley, governor of the city, were subsequently executed in London, undergoing to the letter, as did all the long list of these prisoners, their whole horrid sentence of being half hung, embowelled while yet alive, and afterwards quartered. The heads of Hamilton, and Cappoch, the "rebel bishop," were sent to Carlisle and placed on the Scotch gate, and the heads of Captain Berwick and Lieutenant Chadwick were also sent, and placed on the English gate.
The August following 382 prisoners were sent here, after the Battle of Culloden. Of these, 125, all heavily ironed, were thrust into one room in the castle keep–probably the large cell on the ground floor–partial suffocation and indescribable miseries assailing them while they awaited the tender mercies of judge and jury. Many of these were afterwards executed, numbers at Gallows Hill in the ensuing October and November, among whom was Major McDonald of Kippoch, (the Fergus McIvor of Waverley,) a really brave and generous gentlemen, his head all beautiful with bonny bland locks "fearsomely" withering for long after on the Scotch Gate, he himself having, with his companions in sorrow, been hung, drawn, and quartered at the common place of execution, where now blooms the golden celandine encinctured with dappled daisies. Besides these, six were executed at Brampton, seven at Penrith, and twenty-two at York. So ended these last efforts of the Stuarts. They were gallantly made, but they shared the sad fate of all their projects–the blood of many a strong Scotch heart being the unhappy result. There is much in Sir Walter Scott's Waverley illustrative of this special enterprise with which every visitor of the castle should be acquainted, as these old stones will be nothing to him whose heart has never been touched by the emotions of pity and regret for the noble young hearts that perished in their shadow.
Sir Walter Scott himself is among our notabilia, having visited the castle many times–a reverend and loving connoisseur of all its old glories and many legends, "part seen, imagined part." How he lingered in these old stately ways with his soul o'erbrimmed with thought, we can well imagine every tower and turret bringing to his great worshipping heart some tale of that stirring past of his country and this brave Border land on which he so loved to dwell.
Besides him, it has been visited by many noble and learned authors; but it has no book for visitors' names, and, consequently, they are but very indefinitely known. Mrs. Sigourney of America is something of an exception to this rule, as she has immortalized her visit by her ready pen. As Mary Queen of Scots first English prison she seems to have visited it, and on the other side of the Atlantic its fame is almost exclusively derived from this sad circumstance.
We close the list of our notabilia with the present Prince of Wales. He visited the castle when about fourteen. It was a mere tourist's visit on his way to Scotland one bright summer morning; but we hope in time to come, when he has won the noble fame of a just and wise king, even this short visit may be remembered and added to the worthiest memories of this ancient castle.
The exact time of the erection of this castle is uncertain; but it is supposed to occupy the site of the old Roman fort, which was probably one of those built by Agricola in his westward progress to Scotland, about the year 80. That it was originally of Roman construction is proved by a Roman well which still exists in the north wall of the keep, and which was made of an immense depth, for the purpose of furnishing the garrison with a supply of water which could not be cut off by an assailing enemy. Egfrid the Christian king of Northumbria, and a descendant of Bertha, the wife of Ethelbert, king of Kent, through their daughter Ethelburger, repaired the castle in 680; and six years after we find the Bishop of Lindisfarne at Carlisle to obtain an audience of Queen Ermengard, the wife of Egfrid, who was then on a visit to her sister, the abbess of the nunnery here. Egfrid, it is possible, was at the castle at the same time as the great Bishop is said to have been his guest; but whether or not, the citizens brought St. Cuthbert out to show him their walls and this famous well while he was here; and as we stood in the very place where the holy man had stood so many dim centuries ago, and looked down its morticed sides, a cartoon of the whole scene involuntarily arose upon the imagination–the devout Christ-hearted Cuthbert, and the curious awed train of Volanti "people of the forest," as the inhabitants of these northern counties were then called, which undoubtedly followed him.
Two centuries after this the city was destroyed by the Danes, the castle in all probability being greatly injured, for the whole place, it is said, lay in desolation for the space of two centuries, till in 1072 the Conqueror returning from Scotland, ordered the city to be restored and fortified. But it was not till 1092, when Rufus also returning from Scotland, observing the beautiful situation of the city, ordered it at once to be rebuilt; and this included the restoration of the castle, which forthwith proceeded without delay. Ranulph de Meschines, who before this time had received Cumberland as a grant from the Conqueror, was the restorer of Carlisle. He was a very noted man of those times, and one whose name is deeply inwoven into the past annals of this city and county.
Previous to this a few poor Irish alone tenanted the forlorn and devastated city; but about this time a colony of Flemings had settled here, it is said, for a while, being at length "replaced by a colony of south Britons, who cultivated the wild Forest of Inglewood, and taught the natives the art of profiting by the natural fertility of the soil." These in all probability–i.e. the Flemings and Britons–were the principal "hands" in raising once more the solid bastions of our ponderous castle. Let us pause a moment, and looking through the silent centuries, try to get a sight of those quaint, strange tongued men working in the same holy sun which shines to-day. How modern they are–they shout and joke and laugh as though they wore corduroy and ankle-jacks, and anon they praise the Red Roysterer for his sagacity in appreciating the fertile country and the precious worth of the old city, and also for his energy in action respecting it, their poor animated Irish hodmen meanwhile performing some equivalent for tossing their caps–for caps there were none in those days–their prolix tongues, then as now, always ready with a chorus for every chant. But where are all those brave workers now? They also are gone with all the brave thousands who have defended or assailed these gates before or since. But we feel to-day that these also are sanctified by death and time, and that their honourable names, though unknown, are woven into the great anagram of human helpers, and also into the notabilities of our castle.
Before closing this sketch, there are one or two things of interest which seem to demand some word or two. The first is respecting "The Lady's Walk," which lies on the outside of the outer Gate, the gate called "John de Ireby," (the inner one for some unknown reason being called "The Captain.") It leads along close by the outer wall on that side till it comes to a postern now walled up, which formerly led to the Sorceries, and through which Queen Mary and her ladies would pass when they went to see the football playing on "a green toward Scotland." This postern may still be seen by persons going the usual way to what is called the "Castle Bank." The door from the castle to this walk has also been walled up, but may be recognised by a shield charged with the arms of the Dacres over it. Formerly two ash trees, planted, tradition says, by the captive Queen, grew here, forming an ornamental appendage to the castle. They were cut down in 1804, by order of the Board of Ordnance, a proceeding as little to be understood as commended.
On the outer wall of the ancient Chapel of the castle, close behind Queen Mary's Tower, and which seems from its architecture to have been of Tudor origin, are the arms of Queen Elizabeth, with an inscription to this effect—"Queen Elizabeth made this work at her own expense, while Lord Scrope was Warden of the Western Marches." It was originally on the old barracks, and the work in question was most likely "made" about the time that this Lady, siding with Mary in her fallen fortunes, against the Lords, charged this Lord Scrope to allow the Scotch marauders of the Borders to pursue their course unmolested, Bothwell's followers being supposed to be among them. Opposite to this Chapel, which the visitor will easily recognise, the ramparts are all hollow, having a face of stone to the inner ward in the building, of which the curious may see several stones, which still bear the diamond shaped mark of the Roman pick on their exterior, proving them to be nearly eighteen centuries old, the remains, most likely, of some more ancient and ruined part of the castle, which is now entirely non-existent. At the end of this, and by Queen Mary's Tower, there are also the remains of an ancient portcullis, the use of which seems now somewhat inexplicable, but in the olden days of the castle it doubtless had one.
In the cells also let the visitor look carefully at the locks; some of them are now detached and hanging in the armoury. Each door had four, and their weight and size is something extraordinary, some of them being of themselves a good half-hundredweight. But cumbrous and heavy as they are they will still act—the bolt still flying in response to the ponderous key, though in all probability some of them are more than a thousand years old.
In the upper rooms of the keep the visitor may also see remains of the ancient spiral stairs which led to the top, and with which there seem to have been private communications in different places. He will notice also that the immense rooms at the top have had a door between them, in the centre of the wall, which is now closed up, and that opposite to this closed up door, is a fire place, also closed up. Probably in these large rooms the Parliaments were held which have been held here; and it is not impossible to imagine that the large courts occasionally remaining here may have been feasted, and perhaps some of their numbers even bedded in these spacious chambers now, happily for the times, entirely silent, and divest of all their former martial adjustments, their strange and changing histories almost wholly conjectural. Yet we know that hearts with human passions once beat here, and that forms now dead and turned to clay once animated this forlorn silence.
There are many other traditions of the castle than these. It is said, for instance, that King Arthur and his renowned knights once drank their wassail bowl within it; and hence the story of King Arthur's cup, which tradition is doubtless truth. There are many traditions, too, of Lord William Howard, the "Belted Will" of Border story; but truth and fiction are so largely blended, that to dissever and disentangle is almost impossible. This gentleman was, it is true, the Warden of the Marches here for many years, and was doubtless a frequent visitor of the castle, his vigour in putting down the mosstroopers being a special advantage to the city, which before his time was constantly suffering from their depredations. He was in reality a good and worthy man, possessing even in the midst of his stern work, many of the fine tastes of his renowned ancestor, Sir Philip Sidney; he himself, as my reader should note, being a son of that Duke of Norfolk who lost his life for his tender attachment to Mary Queen of Scots.
Whatever we have missed of all the scenes and story of this really interesting relic of antiquity, we feel that for our purpose it is enough to know that here is a spot which, for nearly eighteen lasting centuries of night and day has really been the focus of a great share of all the events and histories of our brave England; and that where we stand to-day, many of all the bravest and noblest men of those centuries have stood also. This we know is true, and hence the inspiration and instruction these many-centuried walls afford. The shout of warders and guards is all silent now; but those old ages have left stern witnesses of their strength in these twelve feet thick walls; and these are at the same time witnesses also of the persistent courage and practical wisdom of the antagonists of this city. The castle is in fact a condensed history of the past–of all the jealousies and criminal ambitions of rival nations, and all the evils and miseries which spring from unchristianized might; and its dim walls and dark dungeons, with their now darkened grating, to which sad hungering eyes once looked so anxiously and enviously, coveting the blessed light, with all the other saddening purlieus of the place, still, well repay the visitor who values either poetical emotion or suggestive and enlarging thought.
- ↑ The hot-trod was a pursuit maintained with a lighted piece of turf carried on a spear with hue and cry, and bugle, horn, and blood-hound, and all who heard the alarm were expected to join in the chase. In many of the villages there were blood-hounds kept for this purpose.