Mr. Tate on Dunstanburgh Castle. 87 



was, it is said, descended from Scotch parents. He was 

 educated at Merton College, Oxford, to which the tithes of 

 Embleton and the patronage of the church belong at the 

 present time. Of that college he became a fellow ; and so 

 proficient was he in logic and school divinity, and so great 

 was his fame, that, when professor in Oxford University, 

 incredible numbers attended his lectures. He was the 

 founder of the sect of Scotists. Few men have been more 

 extragavantly lauded ; he could, it is said, have invented 

 philosophy, if it had not existed before ; his knowledge of the 

 mysteries of religion was rather intuitive certainty than 

 belief; and he was the most ingenious, acute, and subtle of 

 the sons of men. He died on November 8th, 1308 ; and, as 

 it was believed that he had been buried before he died, it was 

 quaintly said : " he rendered all things dubious while he 

 lived, and died in a dubious condition, but death put his case 

 out of doubt." That Dunstan was his birth-place rests on 

 the authority of a note at the end of one of his own manuscripts 

 in the library of Merton college : " Here endeth the lecture 

 of John Duns, called the subtile Doctor in the university of 

 Paris, who was born in a certain hamlet of the parish of 

 Emildon called Dunston in the county of Northumberland, 

 belonging to the house of the scholars of Merton-hall in 

 Oxford."* 



From documents among the public records the date of the 

 building of Dunstanburgh Castle is known to a year ; and 

 this is of some archaeological value ; for as the remains left 

 belong to the original structure, its architectural characters are 

 a key to the determination of the age of some other castles, re- 

 garding which there is not documentary evidence. When the 

 Edwardian portion of Alnwick Castle was about to be re- 

 stored by Algernon duke of Northumberland, the character- 

 istic features of Dunstanburgh were carefully studied and 

 copied. A Compotus,f or an account, was rendered before 

 auditors at Pontefract by William Galun, the bailiff and 

 receiver of Emeldon ; and from this we learn that the build- 

 ing of the castle was commenced in 1313, and was still in 

 progress in the following year. Some of the particulars are 

 of interest and indicate the character of the structure. For 

 making sixteen perches of the foss, of the breadth of eighty 

 feet and depth of eighteen feet, between the site of the 



* Camden Britannia, 4th ed. II. p 213. 



f Printed in Hartshorn's Feudal Castles Appendix, p. cxxxv. 



