210 



Early Annals of Trowbridge. 



built the castle at Trowbridge, for, as it sustained a siege in 1139, the 

 year after his decease, there was no time for his son to have built it. 

 Judging from the few notices that have been left to us of the castle — 

 its " seven great towers/' fragments of which were standing when 

 Leland visited Trowbridge in the middle of the sixteenth century and 

 " its impregnable works by which it was fortified " — it must have 

 been a work of time and of expense. In that castle-building age, when 

 each baron thought it needful, if not for his security at least for his 

 dignity, to erect large fortresses surrounded with strong walls and deep 

 moats, nothing would be more probable than that Humphrey de Bohun 

 II. should thus inaugurate his accession to his estates here, through 

 his marriage with the daughter of the richest land-owner in Wilts. 



A word or two must be said about the siege of the castle by King 

 Stephen. On the decease of King Henry I. in 1135 in Normandy, 

 there followed an interval of anarchy and confusion. A few years 

 previously, King Henry, being without a son who might inherit 

 his throne, sought to perpetuate the succession in his own family by 

 settling the crown on his daughter Matilda, who had married Henry 

 V., Emperor of Germany, and apparently obtained the consent of 

 the prelates and principal nobility to this arrangement. The crown 

 however was seized by Stephen the late King's nephew. Then en- 

 sued civil war ; the cause of Matilda being taken up by her half- 

 brother, Robert Earl of Gloucester, and Milo Earl of Hereford, 

 and, (through the influence probably of the latter whose daughter 

 he had married) by Humphrey de Bohun. Hence in due time King 

 Stephen appeared before Trowbridge with his forces to batter down 

 the castle of the disaffected baron. But though he could say of 

 Trowbridge, " I came, I saw," he was not able to add, " I conquered/-' 

 for, after a vain attempt to take it, he had to beat a retreat. The 

 whole account of the siege is given us in the work called " Acta 

 Stephani. - " The portion which especially relates to the attempt on 

 the castle is as follows : — " Meanwhile the king arriving at Trow- 

 bridge, and finding the place carefully fortified, and the garrison 

 prepared for all extremities, nor likely to surrender without a des- 

 perate struggle, set to work to construct engines with great toil, 

 that he might press the siege with vigour. But his efforts were 



