erected in stone by the monkish builders, who, be it remembered, were the only architects of those days. But these structures were of the ecclesiastical kind, and such buildings formed the style now called Saxon,* which, from its similarity in parts to the worst Roman, may fairly warrant us in concluding that those people designed them from the recollections of the edifices of their predecessors, or perhaps after the destruction of those edifices by the conflicting parties. The elements of this style (Saxon) are heavy, round columns, and semicircular arches-bad resemblances of the Doric and Tuscan orders, from which are seen to spring round, but sometimes plain, and at others moulded archivaults.

ANGLO-NORMAN ARCHITECTURE.

At the Conquest, A. D. 1066, after the Anglo-Saxon monarchy was overthrown, a new era in architecture appeared in England, brought in by the conqueror and his followers from Normandy, though originating in Lombardy, which spread, and at last became general throughout these dominions, under the character of castles, which we find were erected under the following policy:William, to secure himself more firmly in his new dominions, a few years after the battle of Hastings, bestowed nearly all the lands in this realm upon his Norman followers, on conditions of military services, granting them the title of haron, and a licence to erect on their baronies fortified castles; which buildings became their residence, as well as the regular fortress of the manor and thus the lives and fortunes of the vassals were held in dependence upon the uncontrolled wills of these potent barons. For the better appropriation of those captured and forfeited lands, a survey was made throughout England, in 1085, and registered in Doomsday Book. After this, the lands were divided into distinct baronies, each barony producing an annual revenue of £20, called a knight's fee, every holder of which domain was bound personally to serve the king, with his vassals at home, and himself to guard the conqueror's possessions abroad, at his own expense, for forty days in each year, providing himself with a horse and the requisite arms and accoutrements for the purpose; at the termination of that period he was at liberty to return home. What is called the feudal system was then introduced and established in England, and calculating the number of knight's fees at 60,000, the king was thus at all times enabled to command an immense effective body of cavalry for any emergency.‡

Hence the more substantial castle-buildings of stone, having now become necessary, were adopted§many of which exist to this day, frowning in awful grandeur from the mountain's brow, attest

* Benedict Biscop, a Christian Saxon, Wilfred, Bishop of York, and Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, living about the middle of the seventh century, respectively visited Rome, and other foreign cities, for the purpose of collecting books, pictures, statues, &c. and engaging builders, and other artizans, to visit England.-(William of Malmsbury.)

The battle of Hastings was fought in 1066, between William of Normandy and Harold the English king. William, on his landing in this country, had determined to win a crown or lose his life; but he proved successful. In this conflict both the English and the French historians agree that not only Harold and his brother lost their lives, but with them at that time perished all the nobility of the South of England, and whose lands fell into the possession of the conqueror.— (Rapin and Harrison's History of England.)

The feudal system inculcated a high sense of honour and military pride, but admitted only two ranks of societythe potent barons and their vassals, who were chiefly employed in cultivating the lands of the manor, which they held under certain productive tenures, and rendering suit and service to their lords on all occasions. It is probable that the towns near which the ancient castles are frequently to be found, were at first formed by the resort of the vassals of the feudal lords, with their families and property, as near to the walls as possible. The only trade then carried on was by means of periodical fairs.-(Holingshed's Chronicles.)

§ Theophrastus, quoted by Pliny, attributes the first use and digging of stones from the quarry to Cadmus, grandson to Agenor, king of Tyre--(Pliny's Letters.) Bricks, which were in use from the earliest ages, being mentioned in Holy writ, would no doubt have continued in use, had not nature at last discovered, to those who dug for that poor material, her mines of freestone and marble, which then promised a longer duration; and on the discovery of stone men naturally conceived the ideas of nobler and more magnificent structures.

ing the strength of their masonry, and bringing forcibly to mind the absolute power which was once exercised within their massy walls by the early barons. As examples of castles of the first era now remaining, those of Castleton in Derbyshire, Conisburgh in Yorkshire, and Hedingham in Sussex, may be noticed as proudly pre-eminent, and seeming to defy the hand of time, which sooner or later lays all human fabrics in the dust.

The sites which the Norman barons selected for these castles were, as in their own country, such as they deemed most impregnable or eligible for the purpose of protection and defence—that of some lofty eminence, commanding an extensive view of the domain around it, and in the immediate vicinity of their vassals-sometimes upon a peak, on the high brow of a precipitous cliff, near the sea, or some majestic river, or on the summit of a headland. But where the locality of the barony did not possess either, then an artificial mount was thrown up for the purpose, many of which are still in existence.* The general character of the castle may be described as follows:A broad deep moat, which was always dug round the walls of the area of the part destined for the fortress, and if the site, as we have just observed, was not sufficiently elevated and precipitous, the earth excavated from thence was employed to form the mount upon which the castle was to be erected. These edifices were from four to five stories high, and in their plan were generally quadrangular, though sometimes circular, and at others polygonal, and composed of prodigiously thick walls,+ with circular battlemented and machicolated towers at the angles, rising above the summit of the main building which joined them; they were battlemented on the top, and had loop-holes in the small towers to admit light to the stairs, and were pierced with oilets (œillets) or cross-windows for discharging arrows at those who might hostilely approach its walls. In the middle of the castle was a massy round tower, seen rising majestically above the outer buildings, and commanding a view of the country, which was called the keep; and around this tower, circumscribed by the outer walls, was the area, or court-yard. The ground-floor of the keep was without light, and was made the dungeon. (donjon) for the prisoners. The second story formed a large vestibule for the guards and attendants of the baron, and contained the principal entrance to the upper part of the castle, which entrance was ascended by a flight of stone steps from the area. The third story was devoted to the state apartments, and the upper one for domestic accommodation.‡

The outer court, or ballium, was surrounded by a rampart or thick dwarf wall, with a cranulated or battlemented top, and had flanking towers at different distances along the parapetted sides. The entrance-gateway had two large circular towers, one on each side, with a portcullis and drawbridge that communicated across the moat; which bridge was drawn up every night and let down

* At Plympton, near Plymouth, in Devonshire, is an artificial mount of this description, on which are the ruins of a fortified castle. (B.)

+ The materials of which castles were composed varied much, according to the strata of the country where they stood. Walls of the thickness of twenty feet were faced only with hewn stone; the intermediate part was composed of pebbles, rubble stone, or flint, imbedded in a mass of fluid mortar, which acquired by time such an induration as scarcely to be separated by any possible means. Upon the sea-coast, squared flints were used for the external walls; and in countries which produced the better kind of stone, regular masonry was not spared. (Dallaway's Observations on Architecture.) King's History of Castles.-(See Archæologia.)

in the morning by the warder or porter. The bridge had also an external defence, called the barbican, or advance-work, with bastions, a place where to watch the approach of an enemy.* The chief dependence for strength in the feudal castles seems to have been in the height and thickness of the walls, and the breadth of the surrounding ditches; but where it was impossible to obtain the latter, machicolations, or invisible openings, were formed in the projecting corbeled cornice, or parapet, of the towers; a contrivance from which to discharge missiles on the head of an assaulting enemy. It was used in its boldest form in gateways; that of Lancaster Castle, (see Vetusta Monumenta,) was retained from being a picturesque ornament, long after it had ceased to be of use. This tower, which served always as a refuge at the last extremity, generally formed one of the most important features in the feudal castles.†

These fierce and despotic Norman barons, at last, greatly oppressed the people from one end of the nation to the other by their feudal exactions. In the reign of Stephen, they had erected since their arrival in this country, says William of Malmsbury, 1500 strongholds, by which they were enabled to overawe the monarchy. They consequently took advantage of the unsettled state of the kingdom, which, some time after the death of William, arose among his successors, and thus excited feuds in the nation for the purpose of reducing the prerogative of the throne. Even the dignitaries of the church began to assume to themselves a military power, by building castles as well as cranalating the parapet-walls of their churches, which gave those fanes more the appearance of temples erected to Mars than to the God of the universe. Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, and Roger of Salisbury, were among this number of prelates. Henry II. (Plantagenet,) immediat ly on his accession to the throne, after the extinction of the Norman line, being sensible of the danger and disadvantages which attended the unlimited building of fortified castles, which had greatly increased under his predecessor, Stephen, enacted a law, ordering many of these threatening edifices to be demolished, and prohibiting the building of others, without an express licence from the king, called "licentia crenellare." Those, however, that rose up under his reign were of greater splendour and dimensions than had hitherto appeared, but had not so much of the military character, as the present magnificent structures at Rochester§ and Norwich; to which may be added Kenilworth and Castle Rising,-the latter, a fine specimen, containing all the beautiful, rich, and elaborate details of interlacing arches, zig-zag ornaments, beak-heads, and billet-mouldings of the last style of Norman architecture.

After this period, and when the nation had become more settled, the barons who inhabited these castles began to relax, and to desire a more cheerful and comfortable habitation. The keep, in the centre of the castle, was now either much enlarged or altogether relinquished as a place of defence, except in times of siege; while more convenient apartments were sometimes erected in the entrance

*Grose's Antiquities.

+ Although the castles of the Anglo-Norman barons of this period were very superior to the residences of their Anglopredecessors, the Thanes, yet the houses of men of eminence and of the burgesses in cities and large towns, were very little improved in their design or construction; even in the city of London, all the houses of the mechanics and shopkeepers still remained of wood, and covered with straw or reeds, as they had been in the time of the Anglo-Saxons, and so continued up to the end of the twelfth century. (Stowe's Survey of London, vol. i. p. 69.)

Roger of Salisbury, at this time, built a military castle for himself at Devizes in Wiltshire.

§ The castle at Rochester, built by Gundulf, a Norman ecclesiastic, was the first castle that experienced a change from the round to the square form, though not the first that had its windows ornamented with small round pillars and zig-zag architraves, which abound there; and in the fine old church near it, built by the same Catholic prelate, who was a celebrated architect in his day. In those castles the windows, which were always narrow, were sometimes divided by piers and small pillars, into two or more divisions, within round-headed arches, enriched with zig-zag ornaments, an enrichment exclusively of Norman origin.-(Ducral's Norman Antiq.)

tower over the gateway, which led to the mner ballium, or court-yard. Thus, at Tonbridge castle-this part of which is referred by Mr. King to the end of the twelfth century—there is a room, twenty-eight feet by nineteen, on each side of the gateway; another over these, of the same dimensions, with an intermediate room above the entrance, and one large apartment on a second floor, occupying the same space, and intended for state. The windows in this class of castles were still little better than loop-holes in the basement story, but in the upper rooms they were often large, with several divisions of mullions, and beautifully ornamented, though generally looking inwards to the court-yard. Edward I., however, afterwards introduced a more splendid and convenient style of castles, less frowning, and having more cheerful and habitable rooms, with towers, each containing a staircase, that led to and communicated with the apartments above; in the end polygonal bay-windows were built in the external or outer elevations; those windows faced the country, and commanded various views. Borston castle, on the borders of Buckinghamshire, is a good example of this change.

*

As a general character we may observe, that the first castles were massy, square, lofty towers, strengthened at the four angles by flat thin projecting buttresses. The second order were quadrangular edifices, inclosing a court, with massy walls, but not so lofty as the others, and had circular towers at the four angles, which towers rose higher than the other parts of the edifice: they also had loop-holes, or upright slips of windows. The third were also quadrangular, and had bold square towers at the angles, sometimes placed diagonally, with oilet-holes, or cross loophole windows, from which to discharge arrows. A large round keep-tower was now erected in the middle of the inner court, which rose with imposing grandeur, and frowned defiance on all around The roofs were flat and concealed, covered with lead, and surrounded with battlemented parapets.† In the course of time, however, all these divisions and forms of construction peculiar to a regulated castle, as deemed necessary at first by the Anglo-Normans, were, on account of the discovery of gunpowder and the invention of cannon, no longer available as a means of positive resistance. Therefore, wherever such structures are now erected, as sometimes happens in the present day, in the most inconsistent and inappropriate sites, where even there is high ground at the back overlooking the castle, it is evidently a misapplication of style and character. Of the baronial castles which remain, and are still inhabited by puissant lords and noble families, the most remarkable are those of Arundel, Sussex; Belvoir, Leicestershire; Berkeley, Gloucestershire; Alnwick, Northumberland; Lumley, Durham; Powderham, Devonshire; Raby, Warwickshire; and that of Warwick. Of this last, so distinguished in story through Guy Earl of Warwick, Jago pleasingly descants:

"Now Warwick claims the song; supremely fair

In this fair realm, conspicuous raised to view

On the firm rock, a beauteous eminence

For health and pleasure formed. Full to the south

A stately range of high embattled walls

And lofty towers and precipices vast,

Its grandeur, worth, and ancient pomp confess."

* From the period of the conquest till the reign of Edward I., the dwellings of the kings and the higher order of nobility were completely castellated. (Henry's History of England.)

+We have a very beautiful and poetical description of an ancient castle given by Mr. Howit, in his "Traditions of the most Ancient Times," vol. i. p. 283.

E

PLANTAGENET CASTLE-PALACE.

The next and most important change of architecture in England was that of the castle-palace-a gorgeous style of composition in building-which was introduced in the fourteenth century,* by William of Wyckham, in the royal palace of Windsor, during the reign of his patron, Edward III. After the accession of William the Conqueror, the dwellings of princes and nobles, as we have shown, were regular fortresses, then rendered necessary for their personal safety, and for maintaining that system of tyranny and oppression which they exercised over their conquered subjects and enslaved vassals. The monarchs, however, having afterwards obtained more permanent security on the throne, and the nobles being safe in their landed possessions, they now began to build for the arrangement of domestic luxury and splendid hospitality. When defence became unnecessary, a different form of plan was essential; the mere fortress was abolished, and the magnificent castle-palace arose in its place. The architectural mode here observed was first, that of dividing the edifice into two courts, called the upper and lower quadrangles, which were separated by the keep, or round tower; next, in having all the habitable rooms placed about a quadrangle, like our colleges; the side-buildings being connected together. The second was the introduction of square projecting towers and turrets, dividing the elevations at regular distances, but rising above them, like so many watch-towers, with bold corbelled cornices, within range of each other, and the whole being embattled, produced a most majestic effect. The windows now opened towards the country as well as towards the quadrangle, and were of an increased size, placed with regularity in the elevations, having upright mullions, and cross transoms, and formed in the low-pointed obtuse style of the Gothic arch, instead of the previous circular-headed Norman. The intermediate buildings between the towers formed three stories; that of the towers, four. The outworks around the palace consisted of a wide, raised terrace, inclosed with a low, inclined breast-wall, with bastions at the angles. The castle was, however, still surrounded by a moat and draw-bridge at the portal or great gate of entrance, which was defended by a portcullis, and flanked on each side by strong square towers, as in the more ancient castles of the middle period. In this style, which was both sublime and majestic, Edward III. wholly remodelled the kingly palace at Windsor.†

*

Wyckham was Bishop of Winchester, but then it must be remembered, that during the middle ages there were no architects but what were either monks or ecclesiastics, as all the learning was confined to the monasteries.—(Lingard's History of England.)

Wyckham, as architect, was paid by the king one shilling daily, as his salary, during its progress, for devising and directing; and three shillings a week for his clerk of the works. To obtain artizans (which at this time were scarce) the king issued writs to the sheriffs of several counties, directing them, under a penalty of one hundred pounds, to provide a certain number of workmen, and send them to Windsor within ten days, to be employed at the king's wages as long as was necessary. And because divers of these workmen did afterwards clandestinely leave Windsor, and were entertained by other persons upon greater wages, to the king's great damage, and manifest standing of his work, the sheriffs were ordered to make proclamation, that those persons who should presume to employ any of the fugitive artizans should be dispossessed of all their property. The sheriff's were also directed to arrest the runaways, and commit them to Newgate.— (Holingshed's Chronicles.)

+ Windsor Castle, the magnificent residence of the British sovereigns, is supposed to have been originally founded by William the Conqueror, in the beginning of his reign. His son, Henry I., added much to it, and surrounded the whole with a strong wall. Edward III., of the line of the Plantagenets, was born here, who, after coming to the throne, rebuilt it in an entirely new style of domestic architecture, under William of Wyckham, in which style it now appears, with the exception of some renovations made from time to time, and the late extensive additions by Sir Jeffrey Wyattville, but who, to his credit, has closely followed Wyckham's style. (Moule's History of Berkshire.)

From the summit of this palace is seen a combination of the most interesting views in England: the immense variety of objects included within the sphere of vision from this spot excites the most pleasing sensations;-the windings of the Thames through a wide extent of country; the scenery of the forest; the venerable groves; the busy hamlets; the variegated fields; the crowded towns, and all the variety of elegant mansions, embosomed in wood, and tastefully situated on the borders of the river, mingle in the landscape, and compose a picture which the luxuriant pencil of the most fertile imagination must fail to delineate.-(Brayley's History of Windsor Castle.)