38 SANDSFOOT AND PORTLAND CASTLES. 



Also, upon the lower battery where five pieces (of artillery) stand, 

 each of them wants a platform which will cost 16 10s. Also, in the 

 same room the lodgings for gunners, of which one is half decayed, must 

 be newly lathed and plastered, with several partitions to the same ; 

 also, about the house, removing the staircase which "hinders the 

 traversering of a piece " ; making a door at the coming in ; mending 

 glass windows and the bridge at the coming in, with a palisado before 

 it. Estimated to amount to 41 9s. 6d. 



Upon the south-west side of the bridge the moat is overgrown and 

 must be dug wider and deeper, and enclosed on the inside with a stone 

 wall 26 rods long to the bridge, at 35s. the rod, which will cost, with 

 digging the moat, 45 10s. 



Also, towards the north-west side of the bridge the moat is daily 

 overflowed by the sea, so that at high water there is no passage to the 

 castle on that side ; there, the moat must be mended with a counter- 

 scarp to withstand the sea and prevent its overflowing, which being 15 

 rods in length, at 45s. a rod, with cleansing the moat, together with a 

 stone traverse towards the sea to keep the water in the moat and resist 

 the force of the sea on that side, will amount to 68 15s. 



The main defect in this castle, as in several others, is that it is under- 

 mined by the waves of the sea ; there is fallen down some 4 rods of 

 freestone wall about 5 feet high which is to be new made, and it will 

 cost to do it substantially 7 a rod, 28. For preventing the like 

 accident, which may cause the ruin of this fort, there must be 80 rocks 

 of 3, 4 or 5 tons apiece laid before the same for a bank against the force 

 of the water, each rock being brought from several places about the 

 island by water, which would amount to about 240. 



The whole sum by the engineer's estimate is 554 18s. 6d. There is 

 missing a brass piece of ordnance whereof the lieutenant is to give an 

 account, also of 10 men at 6d. the day whom we found to be deficient 

 at our being there. 



An old trench without the wall of the castle, more dangerous than 

 profitable, is to be thrown down at the charge of the islanders. (Harl. 

 MSS. 1326.) 



As in the case of Sandsfoot, I think we may believe that 

 Henry VIII. 's bulwark at Portland was restored, shortly after 

 1623, to a condition approaching its former strength. During 

 the Civil War it was held in turn by both parties, and its 

 resistance under Colonel Wm. Ashburnham until April, 1646, 

 proved to be the last serious effort on behalf of the Royalist 

 cause in Dorset. The Commonwealth Government placed 

 one company of troops in charge of the fort, a better provision 



