'220 Observations on English Castles. 



But if William found no castles erected to oppose his progress, he seems 

 to have determined that no future invader should be able to make the same 

 remark. He himself laid the foundation of a large number of edifices, and 

 in the reign of Stephen, owing to the turbulent state of the country, and 

 the increasing power of the grand feudatories of the crown, their sum, ac- 

 cording to an authority cited by Grose, had increased to 11 15, a prodigious 

 number. 



Each of these castles, as the feudal system gathered force, became the 

 centre of a barony, and the residence of some turbulent baron, who exer- 

 cised a severe, because undefined and often usurped, authority, over his 

 wretched vassals. To such a pitch had this baronial insolence risen, and 

 such were the scenes carried on in their castles, that they are called by a 

 contemporary writer, " nests of devils, dens of thieves." Every man of 

 baronial, and many of knightly rank, possessed one or more castles, from 

 whence he conld sally forth, and lay his neighbour's lands under contri- 

 bution. The lords spiritual had also their castles; and, to judge from the 

 behaviour of some of them, they were rather worse than better than those 

 of their temporal brethren. 



But this evil in some measure corrected itself, for by a treaty between 

 Stephen and Henry duke of Normandy, all castles erected within a cer- 

 tain period were rased, and Henry on his accession to the English throne 

 destroyed many more, and finally established the licence to build them as 

 a part of the regal prerogative. Such a permission was called " Licentia 

 crenellare," and continued to be sought after for some centuries. 



The castles of the crown were held by some trustworthy castellan, and 

 were garrisoned by the immediate retainers of the monarch. Grants of 

 estates were not unfrequently made to individuals, on condition of their 

 performing annually so many days' castle guard ; and occasionally the 

 tenure bound them to repair some particular tower or bulwark, as at 

 Dover. Nor was this prerogative confined to the crown ; the twelve pa- 

 ladins of Glamorgan held their estates on condition of defending Fitz- 

 hamon's castle of Cardiff, and at Belvoir is still a tower repaired by the 

 ancient family of Stanton, whose representative, not very many years 

 since, attended at Belvoir, nominally for that purpose. Castle guard te- 

 nure was usually, in after times, commuted for a sum of money j and, after 

 having been limited by Henry the eighth, was finally swept away with the 

 whole vexatious systc m of feudal tenures, by the celebrated act of the 

 12th of Charles the second. 



As the country became by degrees more peaceful, structures devised 

 solely with a view to military purposes, and with very little or none to 

 comfort, became irksome and uninhabitable dwellings. The owners either 

 altered them, or suffered them to fall into decay, or pulled them down and 

 erected modern houses out of the materials. The discovery of gunpowder, 

 and the introduction of a totally new system of defence, rendered even 



