xli. 



my hearers may remember the scene as dramatised by Shakespeare in 

 his " King John " 



' King : Thou idle dreamer, wherefore didst thou so? 



Peter : Foreknowing that the truth would fall out so. 



King : Hubert, away with him, imprison him ; and, on that day, at 

 noon, whereon he says I shall yield up my crown, let him 

 be hanged.' 



He was, in fact, brought here, as I have said, and afterwards dragged by 

 horses about the town of Corfe, together with his two sons, and then 

 hanged. King John, who frequently visited Corfe Castle, spent nearly 

 a month here in the last year of his reign. We hear little of Corfe during 

 the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I. except as regards its architecture, 

 of which I will speak presently when pointing out the important additions 

 made to the Castle in these two reigns. Edward II., having been 

 captured by the rebellious barons, was moved about as a prisoner from 

 castle to castle, Corfe being one of the places of his detention, till at 

 length he was murdered at Berkeley under circumstances of peculiar 

 atrocity. The secrecy with which his places of confinement were 

 changed led to the popular belief that the King was still alive and 

 imprisoned in Corfe Castle. His brother, the Earl of Kent, being 

 persuaded of the truth of the report, came here and endeavoured to gain 

 permission to see him. This was refused, but the Constable undertook 

 to convey a written communication to his prisoner. The Earl fell into 

 the snare, and a compromising letter which he wrote being produced as 

 evidence against him, he was condemned of high treason and beheaded. 

 About 50 years later we find the inhabitants of Corfe and of the 

 surrounding district rallying round the Constable of the Castle on the 

 news of a threatened invasion by the French. At the present day a 

 gallant little contingent in the town of the great army of citizen soldiers, 

 called into existence by a similar threat across the channel a few decades 

 ago, is a guarantee that the patriotic spirit of our ancestors still breathes 

 in their descendants. After the end of the reign of Richard II. the 

 Castle was given from time to time to royal favourites and relations, 

 and as often reverted to the crown through debt or attainder. It ceased 

 to be a royal possession in the 14th year of Queen Elizabeth, who sold 

 it for the curious sum of 4,761 18s. 7^d. to Sir Christopher Hatton, who 

 afterwards became Lord Chancellor, whose heirs, in 1635, sold it to Sir 

 John Bankes, Lord Chief Justice, ancestor of W. K. Bankes, Esq., of 

 Kingston Lacey, the present owner. The purchase, we may think, would 

 scarcely have been made could the issue have been foreseen of the 

 unhappy contest just then commencing between the King and Farlia- 



