2 Mediæeval Military Architecture in England.
much to attract those who care to know of the life and customs of former generations. Many of these buildings were the work and residence of persons who have left their mark upon the history of our country. Some, as York, Lincoln, Norwich, Dover, Rochester, Chester, Colchester, Wallingford, have been the seats of Saxon thanes or Danish jarls, succeeding a Roman or perhaps British occupant ; others, as Bamborough, Taunton, Sarum, Tutbury, and Hereford, are associated with the earliest, most celebrated, or most patriotic of our purely English kings ; others, as the Tower, Windsor, Winchester, Berkeley, Pontefract, Newark, Carisbrook, were the scene of the splendours of our greatest or the miseries of our most unfortunate monarchs ; some, as Oxford, Northampton, Lewes, Kenilworth, are connected with great constitutional struggles between prince and subject ; some, as Exeter, Bedford, Rochester, Pembroke, Chepstow, and Raglan, remind us of bloody combats and sieges from the times of the Conqueror to those of Charles the First. Some castles, as Sherborne, the Devizes, Malmesbury, Wolvesley, Newark, Farnham, Norham, and Durham, were constructed by lordly ecclesiastics who brought the arm of the soldier to support the brain of the priest and statesman ; some again, as Hedingham, Bungay, Axholm, Alnwick, Raby, Tonbridge, Warwick, Wigmore, Powderham, Goderich, and Helmsley, are intimately bound up with the great baronial names of De Vere, Bigot, Mowbray, Percy, Neville, Clare, Beauchamp, Mortimer, Courtenay, Talbot, and De Ros, those "ancient stocks that so long withstood the waves and weathers of time." Ludlow is identified with the fairest creation of Milton's genius ; Caerleon and Tintadgel glitter bright in mediæval romance ; while Shrewsbury, Chester, the Welsh castles, Carlisle, Newcastle, Prudhoe, Ford, Hermitage, Jedburgh, Berwick, and a host of subordinate towers and peels, are celebrated in Marchman's warfare or Border Minstrelsy, and played a part in the politic but unjust aggressions of our earlier Henrys and Edwards.
The histories and remains of these fortresses are full of interest to the antiquary, whether his branch of study be legal, social, architectural, or military. Almost all the most important of our English castles date, in some form or other, from remote antiquity, and their associations were of slow growth, and deeply rooted in many centuries of the national history. Most were the centres of estates which had become great in the course of many generations, and for the protection of which they were established ; and the tenure and services of the tenantry had grown up gradually, so that the
