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The island of Purbeck in the time of the Heptarchy was a 
Royal forest belonging to the Kings of the West Saxons, and - 
King Edgar built at Corfe a hunting box, part of which still 
remains in the walls built in herring-bone fashion to the W. of 
the second ward. In this building, A.D. 978, the second Queen 
of Edgar, Elfrida, committed what the Saxon annalist styles 
“The foulest deed ever committed by the Saxons since they 
landed in Britain,” viz., in handing a stirrup-cup of wine to 
her step-son King Edward, she either personally or by the hand of 
a servant drove a poignard into his back, and so succeeded in 
obtaining the crown for her own feeble son, Ethelred II. 
The body of Edward the Martyr was buried at Wareham in a 
wattle Church, but three years subsequently was carried to the 
_ Abbey of Shaftesbury, where many miracles were wrought on the 
faithful who visited the Royal relics. 
Curiously enough no mention is made of this Castle in 
Domesday book, but it was seized in the reign of King Stephen 
by Baldwin de Rivers, Earl of Devon, for the Empress Maud. 
King John, 1200, made this Castle his head-quarters and 
deposited his Regalia therein for safety against the lawless Barons. 
In 1203, after slaying his nephew Arthur in Rouen, he brought to 
this Castle his niece Eleanor, “ the damsel of Brittany,” and 24 
Poitevin nobles whom he took prisoners at Mirabeau in Poitou, 
the former was sent to Bristol in 1216 by Henry III., and died 
after 40 years’ imprisonment, ‘22 of the latter were starved to death 
at Corfe. Peter of Pomfret, a mad Monk, was also a prisoner here, 
and was dragged by horses’ tails through Wareham, and hung and 
quartered. 
On King John’s decease and accession of Henry III., A.D. 1216 
Sir Peter de Mauley, Governor of the Castle, handed over the keys 
and Regalia to the King. The Norman Keep of the Castle is a 
lofty building of Henry I. time, the S. annexe is allotted to 
Henry II. but most of the towers and the whole of the outer ward 
and its gateway to Henry III. The inner gateway, which defied the 
