The Idea of the Castle in Medieval England

185 Pages·2004·1.1 MB·English

by  Abigail Wheatley

THE IDEA OF THE CASTLE IN
MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

Abigail Wheatley
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The Idea of the Castle in
Medieval England
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YORK MEDIEVALPRESS
York Medieval Press is published by the University of York’s Centre for Medieval
Studies in association with Boydell & Brewer Ltd. Our objective is the promotion
of innovative scholarship and fresh criticism on medieval culture. We have a
special commitment to interdisciplinary study, in line with the Centre’s belief that
the future of Medieval Studies lies in those areas in which its major constituent
disciplines at once inform and challenge each other.
Editorial Board (2001–2004):
Professor W. M. Ormrod (Chair; Dept of History)
Professor P. P. A. Biller (Dept of History)
Dr J. W. Binns (Dept of English & Related Literature)
Dr J. Hawkes (Art History)
Dr M. O. Townend (Dept of English & Related Literature)
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Publications of York Medieval Press are listed at the back of this volume.
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The Idea of the Castle in
Medieval England
Abigail Wheatley
YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS
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© Abigail Wheatley 2004
All Rights Reserved.Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
The right of Abigail Wheatley to be identified as
the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published 2004
AYork Medieval Press publication
in association with The Boydell Press
an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9 Woodbridge Suffolk IP12 3DF UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt. Hope Avenue Rochester NY14620 USA
website: www.boydellandbrewer.com
and with the
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York
ISBN 1 903153 14 X
Disclaimer:
Some images in the original version of this book are not
available for inclusion in the eBook.
ACIPcatalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wheatley, Abigail, 1974–
The idea of the castle in medieval England / Abigail Wheatley.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1–903153–14–X (alk. paper)
1. Castles – England. 2. England – Civilization – 1066–1485.
3. England – Social life and customs – 1066–1485. I. Title.
DA660.W525 2004
728.8’1’09420902 – dc22 2004004689
Printed in Great Britain by
St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
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CONTENTS
List of Illustrations vi
Acknowledgements vii
Editorial Note viii
Introduction 1
1 The Idea of the Castle 19
2 The Urban Castle 44
3 The Spiritual Castle 78
4 The Imperial Castle 112
Conclusion 146
Bibliography 151
Index 169
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ILLUSTRATIONS
Black and white plates
1. Civic seal of Colchester 67
2. Civic seal of York 67
3. Seal of the barons of London 67
4. View of London from the Historia regum Britannie 72
5. Second view of London from the Historia regum Britannie 72
Colour plates
placed between pp. 72 and 73
I. The city of Troyes by Matthew Paris
II. Detail of Jerusalem on the Mappa Mundi
III. Plan of London by Matthew Paris
IV. Colchester Castle keep
V. Colchester Castle keep corner tower
VI. The White Tower, Tower of London
VII. London’s Roman city wall at Tower Hill
VIII. French ivory casket depicting the siege of the Castle of Love
IX. Detail of the Castle of Love from the Luttrell Psalter
X. Folio 75v from the Luttrell Psalter
XI. West front, Lincoln Cathedral
XII. The Great Tower, Chepstow Castle
XIII. Caernarfon Castle
XIV. Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
XV. Dover Castle keep
XVI. Dover Castle keep central buttress
XVII. Roman pharosat Dover Castle
Disclaimer:
Some images in the original version of this book are not
available for inclusion in the eBook.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book represents the end product of a Ph.D. dissertation of the same name,
undertaken at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, and
completed in 2001. Both the book and the thesis are about castles, but also
about interdisciplinarity. This project could not have been undertaken without
the rigorous commitment to interdisciplinary research of the Centre for
Medieval Studies and its staff. I hope this study demonstrates that this
approach can produce worthwhile results. I also hope it may encourage others
to undertake, or to support, interdisciplinary projects in the future. Iam most
happy to be able to acknowledge, both below and in the footnotes, help and
advice generously given by many colleagues, but any errors are entirely my
own responsibility.
This study would not have been possible without substantial support. I am
indebted to the Arts and Humanities Research Board for funding my Ph.D.,
and to the British Archaeological Association for a generous Ochs
Scholarship, which assisted materially in the completion of this thesis. I am
also most grateful to the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain
for a Dorothy Stroud Bursary which has contributed towards the cost of the
colour illustrations in this book. Numerous colleagues and friends have also
provided unstinting academic and personal support. I thank especially my
Ph.D. supervisors Jane Grenville, Christopher Norton and Felicity Riddy, who
have all in their different ways contributed greatly to the spirit and substance
of this project. Jeremy Ashbee, Priscilla Bawcutt, Jim Binns, John Clark, Helen
Fulton, John Goodall, Louise Harrison, Nicola McDonald, Linda Monckton,
Mark Ormrod, Caroline Palmer, David Parsons, Robert Liddiard, James
Simpson, David Stocker, Craig Taylor, Matthew Townend and Judith Weiss
have all supplied crucial advice and encouragement, for which I thank them
sincerely. Special thanks are also due to Laura Parker and John Russell for
their generous help in preparing the illustrations. My family, friends and col-
leagues have provided unwavering encouragement in this project. I thank
especially Helen Wheatley and Michael Smith, Bill Wheatley and Margaret
Cole, Ben Wheatley and Victoria Wheatley and George Frankland, my tower
of strength.
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EDITORIALNOTE
In order to make this work accessible to readers from a range of disciplines,
the spelling of various words in both Latin and vernacular languages has
been silently standardized. Translations and photographs are the author’s
own, unless otherwise acknowledged.
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Introduction
The castle had a dominant presence in medieval society, both physically and
ideologically. Controlled by elites, castles towered over medieval villages and
towns and were sites of judgement and administrative control. However, cas-
tles were also depicted over and over again in the medieval arts as heraldic
devices, as pastry or paper table decorations,1on seals (see Plates 1, 2 and 3)
and as large-scale props in pageants.2They featured figuratively in sermons,3
theological treatises4and religious lyrics5and in manuscript marginalia (see
Plate X), as well as in the more familiar contexts of romance and chronicle. To
the modern understanding, there is a wide gap between these ephemeral,
miniature and symbolic castles and the imposing stone-and-mortar fortresses
scattered over medieval Europe and beyond. This book sets out to show that
medieval thinking on these matters was very different.
Numerous studies have demonstrated that medieval ecclesiastical archi-
tecture was fully integrated into the intellectual and aesthetic culture of its
time. Deliberate resonances were created between the soaring spires of the
Gothic cathedral and the miniature pinnacles represented on tombs and reli-
quaries and in paintings and sacred texts inside the church. Indeed, it is rec-
ognized that microarchitecture (as the diminutive, decorative form is known)
was an important adjunct to ecclesiastical architecture, expressing its sym-
bolic properties and associations in a particularly concise way.6It is precisely
1 See ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, lines 1407–12, p. 168; ‘Cleanness’, line 802,
p.238; in The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight, ed. M. Andrew and R. Waldron (Exeter, 1987, repr. 1994); Geoffrey
Chaucer, ‘The Parson’s Tale’, in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. L. D. Benson, 3rd edn
(Oxford, 1987, repr. 1992), line 443, p. 301; R. W. Ackerman, ‘“Pared out of Paper”:
Gawain802 and Purity1408’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology56 (1957), 410–17.
2 Apageant castle is illustrated in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS Français 2813,
fol. 473v. This prop was used to enact the siege of Jerusalem at a banquet given in
Paris by Charles V of France for Emperor Charles VI in 1378.
3 G. R. Owst, Literature and the Pulpit in Medieval England, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1961),
pp.77–85.
4 R. D. Cornelius, The Figurative Castle: AStudy in the Mediaeval Allegory of the Edifice
with Especial Reference to Religious Writings: ADissertation(Bryn Mawr, 1930).
5 See (?) William of Shoreham, ‘ASong to Mary’, in Medieval English Lyrics: ACritical
Anthology, ed. R. T. Davies (London, 1966, repr. 1971), line 57, p. 105.
6 See N. Coldstream, Medieval Architecture(Oxford, 2002), pp. 162–5.
1