102 
Passages in the History of Botonton, 
AOS 1135-1380. 
Chielly from the Public Records. 
By Rev. J. K. Fuover, M.A., F.S.A. 
entries in the Manorial Court Rolls of that place, that 
there was in former times a castle of King John existing there, and 
some topographical writers have supposed that the ‘ Moot ”—a 
British and Saxon earthwork of considerable extent—was the site 
of it. The tradition, however, is really a confusion of two facts : 
first, that there was a castle here; and secondly, that King John 
stayed in it. It was built in 1138 by Henry de Blois, Bishop of 
Winchester, the lord of the manor. This appears from the following 
entry :— 
A.D. 1138. “Hoc anno fecit Henricus episcopus aedificare domum quasi 
palatinum cum turri fortissima in Wintonia: castellum de Merdona et de 
Fernham et de Wautham et de Duntona et de Tautona.”’ } 
ey TRADITION exists in Downton, based, it may be, on some 
The erection of these castles was probably to assist in the es- 
tablishment of order in the troublous days of Stephen, Bishop 
Henry de Blois being his brother. 
There are now no architectural remains whatever of it except such 
portions of the stonework as may be worked into the construction 
of other buildings, and two crowned wooden heads, one of aman, — 
the other of a woman, now on the front of the “‘ White Horse Inn,” 
which are said to have been brought from it. Tradition ascribes 
the first to King John, but his beard is a good deal longer, and the 
side locks less conspicuous, than in the nearly contemporary effigy 
on his tomb in Worcester Cathedral. Britton, writing in 1801, 
states that the date 1225 was on the niche, but, if so, it could only 
1 Annales Monastici Winton, 
