Siege of the Castle. 217 
fruitless, for the besieged were neither injured by his machines, nor 
at all daunted by his blockade, though it was long and strict. The 
barons therefore who were present at the siege, some wearied out 
by its being long protracted, and others who were their false and 
treacherous comrades, united in apprehensions that the Earl of 
‘Gloucester would collect all his forces and suddenly attack them. 
The king therefore consulting his friends, retired to London to 
rally his strength, and then advance when fortune summoned him 
to some safer enterprise. He left however in the castle at Devizes, 
for the annoyance of Trowbridge to which it was near, a chosen 
and disciplined body of soldiers, and the two parties alternately by 
_ their hostile incursions reduced all the neighbouring country to a 
‘desolate solitude.” ! 
But a question of much interest now arises. Where was the site 
of the castle? and what was the probable extent and direction of 
its fortifications ? 
Leland’s brief notes concerning its condition in 1540—42, when 
‘he visited the town, imply that it must have been a fortress of 
‘considerable strength. He says— The castelle stoode on the south 
side of the toune. It is now clene down. ‘Ther was in it a seven 
‘gret toures, whereof peaces of two yet stande. The river rennith 
hard by the castelle.” Wiltshire Magazine, i., 151. Bodman, who at 
‘the time when he wrote (1814) was advancing in years himself, tells 
‘us he had known men who remembered having seen fragments of no 
Jess than four of the towers standing, about 1660 or 1670.2, He adds 
‘moreover that there were two draw- bridges across the moat which sur- 
‘rounded the castle walls, one to the west, close by the old bridge which 
‘ran some twenty or thirty feet to the southward of the present one,and 
“in a more direct line with Stallard Street ; and the o¢Aer towards the 
eeast,at that break in Fore Street, where there isan entrance into Court 
‘Lane. An attempt has been made, by means of enquiry from persons 
_ Jong acquainted with the locality, as well as by personal inspection 
} 
: 
x 
‘of the site itself, to forma probable conjecture as to the line of the 

1See “* Acta Stephani ’’ (Anno 1189). 
; ? Aubrey in his “‘ Miscellanies” (p. 14), writing in 1670, speaks of it as ‘a 
“ruinated castle of the House of Lancaster.” 
