CHAPTER XI

NORMAN CASTLES

Castle-building--Description of Norman castle--A Norman household--
Edwardian castles--Border castles--Chepstow--Grosmont--Raglan--Central
feature of feudalism--Fourteenth-century castle--Homes of chivalry--
Schools of arms--The making of a knight--Tournaments--Jousts--Tilting
at a ring--Pageants--"Apollo and Daphne"--Pageants at Sudeley Castle
and Kenilworth--Destruction of castles--Castles during Civil War period.


Many an English village can boast of the possession of the ruins of an
ancient castle, a gaunt rectangular or circular keep or donjon, looking
very stern and threatening even in decay, and mightily convincing of the
power of its first occupants. The new masters did not feel very safe in
the midst of a discontented and enraged people; so they built these huge
fortresses with strong walls and gates and moats. Indeed before the
Conquest the Norman knights, to whom the weak King Edward the Confessor
granted many an English estate, brought with them the fashion of
building castles, and many a strong square tower began to crown the
fortified mounds. Thence they could oppress the people in many ways, and
the writers of the time always speak of the building of castles with a
kind of shudder. After the Conquest, especially during the regency of
William's two lieutenants, Bishop Odo and Earl William Fitz-osbern, the
Norman adventurers who were rewarded for their services by the gift of