Castles at the Latter Part of the Twelfth Century. 93 William, having banished Carileph, held the temporalities of the see ; other authorities attribute the work to Bishop Comyn in 1072. The two chief castles of the Bishopric are Raby and Barnard Castle, for Norham is virtually in Northumberland. Raby, the celebrated seat of the Nevilles, is of Norman origin, as is Barnard Castle, though its fine round tower is later. In plan this castle much resembles Ludlow, to which its position is not inferior. It is named from Barnard de Baliol. Branspeth, also a Neville castle, is a noble structure, but of later date than Raby. Bowes has a late Norman keep. Besides these may be mentioned Lumley, Staindrop, Streatlam, Witton, Stockton, and Bishop Auckland. In the local quarrels the names also occur of Evenwood Castle, near Auckland, Hilton, Holy Island, and, better known from its later possessors, Ravensworth. The Bishopric was well fortified, and was besides intersected by the deep ravines of the Tees, and possessed the Tyne for a frontier. " Foremost," — the quotation is drawn from the writings of an author who, beyond any other of the present day, makes his own mark upon what he writes, — "in interest among the monuments of Northumberland, in the nar- rower sense of the earldom beyond the Tyne, stand the castles ; the castles of every size and shape, from Bam- burgh, where the castle occupies the whole site of a royal city, to the smallest pele-tower, where the pettiest squire or parson sought shelter for himself in the upper stage, and for his cows in the lower. For the pele-towers of the Border-land, like the endless small square towers of Ireland, are essentially castles. They show the type of the Norman keep continued on a small scale to a very late time. Perhaps many of the adulterine castles which arose in every time of anarchy, and were overthrown at every return of order, many of the eleven hundred and odd castles which overspread the land during the anarchy of Stephen, may not have been of much greater preten- sions. At any rate, from the great keep of Newcastle, — ■ were we not in Northumberland we should speak of the far greater keep of Colchester, — to the smallest pele-tower which survives as a small part of a modern house, the idea which runs through all is exactly the same. The castles and towers then, great and small, are the most marked feature of the county. They distinguish it from those shires where castles of any kind are rare ; and the employment of the type of the great keeps on a very small scale distinguishes it from the other land of castles. In
