Richard's Castle, Herefordshire

 

Richard's Castle - from the base of the Motte

The masonry dates from c.1150

I trace my love of History to the Castle. Many of our family holidays meandered from one fortress to another as we crawled to our destination. Since my teenage years, I have not only visited castle after castle, but collected guidebooks and larger tomes on the topic. I have nearly 50 of the latter and scores of the former. A visit to a castle - whether it be a grass motte or a splendid building (often heavily restored) such as Dover or Warwick - still occasions excitement. On our most recent break-out from this appalling 'lock-down', we drove up a long, minor lane to Richard's Castle, both the name of the present village and its venerable, but now over-grown, fortress. We had to push through banks and rows of stinging nettles, along a very narrow path, to traverse the bailey and then climb some very uneven, oddly-shaped stones to get to the top of the motte. Once there, the view to the South was inspiring, but all around there was vegetative decay. Sic transit gloria mundi. 

The motte and bailey and the nearby church

The castle was one of four built before the Norman Conquest (at least, four that we know about). The others were Robert's Castle at Clavering in Essex - there is  now only rough, rectangular-shaped earthworks, with some remnants of a surrounding ditch; Hereford Castle, built c.1048, which was later superseded by a stone fortress; and Ewyas Harold, where the 50-foot high motte can still be seen.

        Robert's Castle, Clavering     Ewyas Harold Castle, Herefordshire

 

Richard fitz Scrob was granted land around Auretone (now Overton) by Edward the Confessor, and c.1050 founded the castle that takes his name. It is referred to in Domesday Book as castello Avreton. Apparently, castles were also built at nearby Burford and Homme, creating a strong military line, but both became disused and were abandoned.

Part of Richard's Castle bailey

I have always found motte and bailey castles the most romantic, even if they have had later stonework thrust upon and around them. Those that stick in my mind of the latter include Carisbrooke, Berkhamsted, Tamworth and the double mottes at Lewes and Lincoln. Those that have minimal, if any, stonework existing I have visited include massive Thetford, Marlborough, Leicester and Wallingford; and tiny ones such as at Seckington and Abinger,  When excavations were carried out at Richard's Castle in 1962-4, the motte which was famous for its height proved to contain, in its upper five metres, the basement and part of the first floor of a buried octagonal tower, the original mound being of fairly standard size. The tower closest to the motte was found to include an inserted dovecote.

Looking down from the motte

There are exposed fragments of curtain wall and towers around the north and east sides of the bailey. Both the motte and the bailey are encircled by a huge dry ditch averaging 6m in depth. Around the remaining north, north west and west sides of the bailey is a well-defined outer rampart. There is an original causewayed entrance crossing the bailey ditch; fragmentary walling flanking the causeway represents the remains of a stone gatehouse. To the east of the bailey, joined onto its outer rampart, are the remains of an extensive outer enclosure designed to protect the church and the small borough.

What it might have looked like in its heyday!

Terry Wardle has a useful Appendix in his book on the possible first castle in England, where he comments on pre-Conquest castles. He includes Burghill, near Hereford; Brinsop, near Hereford; Hereford itself; Richard's Castle; Ewyas Harold; and Clavering. His thesis is that Burghill is England's first castle, being mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which says that in early September 1051 the French had built a castle. All that remains are traces of the bailey ditch and bank and the moat around the site of the motte. The very experienced Herefordshire castle studies expert, Ron Shoesmith, is not convinced by Wardle's arguments.

Useful Source material:

Ella S. Armitage - The Early Norman Castles of the British Isles (John Murray, 1912)

Derek Renn - Norman Castles in Britain (John Baker, Humanities Press, 2nd ed. 1973

M. W. Thompson - The Rise of the Castle (Cambridge University Press, 1991)

Terry Wardle - England's First Castle ( The History Press, 2009)

Philip Hume - The Welsh Marcher Lordships. I: Central & North (Logaston Press, 2021)

Scott's 'Quentin Durward' 1823

   

First edition 1823

 

Apparently, with the aid of a map of Touraine, a French gazeteer, a copy of Philippe de Commynes' Memoires and his memories of a visit to France in 1815, Scott embarked on the first novel he was to place outside of Britain. Quentin Durward (set in 1468) has had a much better ride than Peveril of the Peak with the reviewers, both contemporary and subsequently. This is deserved as it has a much tighter construction, a sense of steady pace throughout and some engaging characters, not least that of Louis XI, the Universal Spider.

Quentin meets 'Maitre Pierre' and henchman

From the first meeting of Quentin with Maitre Pierre (Louis in disguise), Scott builds up a compelling creation: the expression of this man's countenance was partly attractive, and partly forbidding. His strong features, sunk cheeks, and hollow eyes, had, nevertheless, an expression of shrewdness and humour congenial to the character of the young adventurer. But then, those same sunken eyes, from under the shroud of thick black eyebrows, had something that was at once commanding and sinister...

Scott had already given the reader a pretty (historically) accurate picture of the monarch: brave enough for every useful and political purpose, Louis had not a spark of that romantic valour, or of the pride connected with, and arising out of it, which fought on for the point of honour, when the point of utility had been long gained. Calm, crafty, and profoundly attentive to his own interest, he made every sacrifice, both of pride and passion, which could interfere with it... Scott's Louis is 'all of a piece' throughout the tale - vindictive, cruel, deceitful, avaricious, excessively superstitious and disposed to low pleasures - the reader understands exactly why the king behaves as he does, without condoning it.

As for the 19-20 year-old Quentin - although his form had not yet attained its full strength, he was tall and active...his complexion was fair, in spite of a general shade of darker hue, which the foreign sun...had, in some degree, embrowned it. His features, without being quite regular, were frank, open, and pleasing...his teeth were well set, and as pure as ivory; whilst his bright blue eye [expressed] good humour, lightness of heart, and determined resolution.  No wonder the young Countess of Croye, the Lady Isabelle, fell for him.

Quentin Durward on a book cover

The beautiful Countess is first introduced to Quentin, and the reader, disguised as a maidservant, Jacqueline, rather above than under fifteen years old...a quantity of long black tresses...formed a veil around a countenance, which... in its regular features, dark eyes, and pensive expression, resembled that of Melpomene, though there was a faint glow on the cheek, and an intelligence on the lips and in the eye... (not Rebecca again?!) And, later, beautiful shape...regular features, brilliant complexion, and dazzling eyes, an air of conscious nobleness, that enhanced their beauty. Well, we know how story will end already - lucky Quentin.

Scott's descriptions of places - the Castle of Plessis-les Tours, the Bishop of Liege's palace of Schonwaldt, Charles of Burgundy's fortress of Peronne; of other characters - Ludovic Leslie with the Scar, La Balafré, who was Quentin's uncle; Oliver Dain, the king's barber, known as Oliver Mauvais or Oliver le Diable; the king's ruffian henchmen, Trois-Eschelles and Petit-André; Lord Crawford (one of the last reliques of the gallant band of Scottish lords and knights who had so long and so truly served Charles VI); the Count de Dunois and Louis, Duke of Orleans; Cardinal and Prelate, John of Balue, who is subject to the ribaldry of king and all, when his horse suddenly bolts during the Chase; the Duke of Burgundy's envoy, the Count of Crevecoeur, a renowned and undaunted warrior; the maverick Countess Hameline de Croye; the treacherous Hayraddin Maugrabin, the Zingaro, the Bohemian, the Egyptian... - are all brought to life to add to the rich pageant.  His portrait of the unfortunate Princess Joan, daughter of Louis is stark: she was pale, thin and sickly in her complexion, her shape visibly bent to one side, and her gait so unequal that she might be called lame... 

Charles the Bold/Rash of Burgundy is another excellent portrayal - relying heavily on Philippe de Commynes, Scott gives a faithful picture of that unruly and headstrong noble. The chapters where he is pitched against Louis (his overlord) are excellent. Of course, Scott has to have one character versed in the mysterious arts - here we meet Galeotti Martivalle, a tall, bulky, yet stately man, considerably past his prime...his features, though rather overgrown, were dignified and noble. His influence with Louis, allows Scott to give full rein to his contempt for the beliefs in the  Hermetical Philosophy. Astrologers, Roman Catholics and Jews rarely get a good press with the author.

John Buchan's summary is percipient: the book is a fairy tale, with all the merits of those airy legends which the folk-mind of Europe invented to give colour to drab lives...Quentin, from the Glen of the Midges, is the eternal younger son who goes out to seek his fortune, as Louis is the treacherous step-mother...[the novel] is Scott's main achievement in the vein in which Dumas excelled...it is a better performance, I think, than Ivanhoe, for it swings to its triumphant close without a single hitch or extravagance...one masterly scene follows another...Quentin himself is the best of Scott's young heroes, because he is content to make him only young, chivalrous and heroic, and over-weights him with no moralities.

Quentin Durward is certainly in my top five of the Waverley novels I have [re] read so far. There may be anachronisms; there may be occasional periods of longueur, but they are very few. These are but rare flies in a rich ointment. The hero thinks and acts for himself; the heroine is gorgeous; the characters of Louis XI and Charles of Burgundy dominate their scenes; the Butcher of Ardennes, if only actually met at his demise, is an evil spectre.  Scenes follow swiftly on from each other, with little side-tracking.

Sam Bourne's 'To Kill A Man'

 

First Quercus paperback edition - 2021

I think I can explain this novel (and my reaction to it) in five words - He works for the Guardian. Sam Bourne is the pseudonym of Jonathan Friedland and the novel is the seventh under this name. Whereas the previous books have, mostly, been pretty straightforward thrillers, this is more polemic than fiction. This is more or less admitted in his Acknowledgements at the end. This is a novel, but it is rooted in a bleak set of facts. The extracts from the reviews of the hardback publication further highlight the book's (only?) purpose: Sam Bourne puts female anger, vengeance and power at the centre of his latest and most exciting novel; this, then, is a topical #MeToo novel; a compulsive, zeitgeisty tale of gender politics and social media manipulation. The perfect post-#MeToo thriller. Fair enough; I should have read these comments before purchasing. If I had wanted to read about the (obviously staggering and disgusting) incidents of rape around the world, I would have bought a non-fiction book or read about it online. Moreover, Friedland's obvious 'Guardian' politics regularly rears its head. One reviewer accurately pinpoints this: a pacey, intelligent thriller set in the treacherous world of Trump-era politics...

I find the Clintons equally treacherous and corrupt; moreover, what did Obama actually achieve? Trump was undoubtedly a boor, and an egotistical unpleasant piece of work. To Friedland, the 'facts' are black and white: Trump and Obama are never mentioned, but it is obvious who he means, referring to the havoc and ruin of the last few years. Maggie Costello had been summoned to Washington a decade or so earlier - summoned by a man who insisted that idealism and realism were not incompatible foes, but allies just waiting to be fused together... but, since then, politics had been desperate for so long, one awful outcome after another...the good guys on a losing streak and all the wrong people in control... This is Friedland/Bourne's problem - there is no acceptance of the 'other side's' point of view or actions; they are simply wrong, The Guardian's world viewpoint is right. And, at present, the author is swimming with the tide; the tide of the 'elite' at any rate.

Senator Tom Harrison is the caricature of a male, pale and stale sleazeball - if Washington was a jungle, and by God it felt sweaty and foetid enough at times, this was that precious moment when the alpha gorilla (Harrison) dips his head in your direction. Naturally, Harrison has to give the famous, (and, again typically, southern Irish) trouble-shooter, Maggie Costello, a squeeze that made her jump; it's on her shoulder, but Maggie stayed immobilized for what felt like hours. She stirred only when she became aware of the damp on her shirt, where he had left his mark on her... Personal space invaded? - yes; but...  Harrison's political staff are nearly all men, with few positive attributes. Maggie's first job was working with an NGO in Africa - the aid world was crawling with posh Brits. Crawling? Yet when David Cameron dared to talk about a tsunami of immigration, he was immediately shot down! 

Natasha Winthrop is the #MeToo, highly intelligent and successful lawyer who might well run for the Presidency. Her official back story is brilliant; everything a Guardian reader would lap up. I want the world to be kind. For us to shout at each other a little less and to smile a little more... viz, a genuine, female, good egg. The Chief of Police, Carol Ward Tucker, is also on the right side of Bourne's viewpoint: her voice the firm, no nonsense timbre of a school principal, one that carried an unspoken warning: Don't even think of messing with me. I worked twice as hard as any white woman to get here and four times as hard as any white man. Of course she did; but that was before affirmative action. Her assistant, a pale male, has to have the nickname Ratface.

Natasha Winthrop had an appalling foster-childhood, being repeatedly raped by her 'brother'. With commendable spirit and determination she gets away and climbs the academic and legal ladder to national success and fame. However, she is living a lie. She is masquerading under another identity and she does 'murder' the perpetrator of the rapes.  Bourne does have some compelling chapters on the gradual search for truth by Costello. But the end is a cop-out. Harrison (linked with a Russian-backed firm Imperial Analytica - too obviously a reference to the real-life Cambridge Analytica and its involvement with UK/USA shenanigans) has to suspend his campaign. Winthrop, on the other hand, gets out of gaol, admits only partially her background and sisterhood carrying-on, and may well still stand as a candidate. Should Maggie keep her secret, or expose it? Fair-minded people know the answer; but Friedland/Bourne leaves it in the air.

 When a work of fiction becomes simply a device for polemical writing, then you may be praised by half your audience but, undoubtedly, scorned by the other half. Friedland's left-wing journalism trumped his (natural) ability to write a good thriller. I shall read the reviews/comments about his next work before I decide to purchase it. 

Scott's 'Peveril of the Peak' 1822

 

First edition - published January 1823

Right at the end of Volume IV, on page 319 (of 320), Scott sums up the 1200 pages odd as well as anyone. Charles II remarks: Here is a plot without a drop of blood; and all the elements of a romance, without its conclusion. Here we have had a wandering island princess (I pray my Lady of Derby's pardon,) a dwarf, a Moorish sorceress, an impenitent rogue, and a repentant man of rank, and yet all ends without a hanging or marriage. Well, he was wrong on one count. On the last page Julian Peveril and Alice Bridgenorth do marry. In fact, the last volume seemed rather like one of Sir John Vanbrugh's Restoration Comedies, notwithstanding the occasional talk of violence.

Scott, apparently, found writing Peveril heavy-going. It is certainly too long and should not have stretched beyond the usual three volumes. Lockhart thought the plot clumsy and perplexed. John Buchan pointed out that Scott chose a period of history in which he was not perfectly at home, and had to read too quickly through contemporary  documents. Buchan is more critical than usual: the opening is laboured and the narrative drags, the ravelled skein of the plot is never properly wound up, and the ending is huddled; the fatigue of its composition is reflected in the style, which sinks often to abysses of verbiage. A good example is Scott's rambling about the new species of 'armour' worn by some Protestants, called silk armour, and too many verbose meanderings by the dwarf.

I am not so severe about the early part of the book, as I found it quite interesting! Admittedly, it quickens once Julian Peveril leaves the Isle of Man for London. The attack on Chiffinch and his French cook Chaubert by Julian and Lance - to retrieve the Countess of Derby's letters -  is well written..

Julian Peveril points his pistol at Chiffinch

Lance Outram stands above Chaubert

There are one or two typical Scott cameos: Whitaker, Lady Peveril's steward, is a good example. His mistress suggests he should shew your joy on such occasions, by drinking and swearing a little less...he replies, if I am not to drink and swear after my degree, how are men to know Peveril of the Peak's steward...I say, how is an old cavalier like me to be known from those cuckoldy Round-heads that do nothing but fast and pray, if we are not to drink and swear according to our degree? Then there is the ejected Episcopal Vicar, Honest Doctor Dummerar, who had served Sir Geoffrey Peveril and was in high favour, not merely on account of his sound orthodoxy and deep learning, but his exquisite skill in playing at bowls, and his facetious conversation over a pipe and tankard of October. Others, like the servant Deborah Debbitch, the young Earl of Derby, Lance Outram, who accompanies Julian to London, are little more than walk-on parts

The Duke of Buckingham and Zarah

Fenella/Zarah is barely credible - Buchan says the plot hinges on her; however, she is grotesque but not impressive. We first meet her as the Countess of Derby's train-bearer at the Castle of Holm-Peel in the Isle of Man. This little creature, for she was of the least and slightest of womankind, was exquisitely well formed in all her limbs...her face was darker than the usual hue of Europeans; and the profusion of long and silken hair, which, when she undid the braids in which she commonly wore it, fell down almost to her ancles, was also rather a foreign attribute. Her countenance resembled a most beautiful miniature... But, alas she was a deaf mute...or, was she?!

Sir Geoffrey Peveril is a competent portrayal of a typical Cavalier - he bids farewell to his son Julian: God bless thee, my boy, and keep true to Church and King, whatever wind brings foul weather. Edward Christian (aka Master Ganlesse) and Ralph Bridgenorth (Alice's father) are quite well sketched - one a calculating rogue, the other an increasingly Puritanical fanatic (always a Scott bête noire); while the Merry Monarch, Old Rowley, Charles II is very like the figure portrayed in history books. As for the Duke of Buckingham, it appears that Scott's portrait is near the mark. It is said that the distinguishing features of his life were incompleteness, imperfection, insignificance, neglected talent and wasted opportunity. Not a list to be proud of. Scott was correct when he wrote that Buckingham lived in an age when what was called gallantry warranted the most atrocious actions of deceit and violence.

Once again, I did well to read Scott's Prefatory Letter, as (probably due to yet more criticism of his methods) he expounds his modus operandi: a poor fellow, like myself, weary with ransacking his own barren and bounded imagination, looks out for some general subject in the huge and boundless field of history, which holds forth examples of every kind - lights on some personage, or some combination of circumstances, or some striking trait of manners, which he thinks may be advantageously used as the basis of a fictitious narrative - bedizens it with such colouring as his skill suggests...and in reply to the sober charge of falsehood, against a narrative announced positively to be fictitious, one can only reply, by Prior's exclamation, "Odzooks, must one swear to the truth of a song?"

Mariani and Hawkswood Return

 

Published by Avon and  Allison & Busby in 2021

Breaking out - at last - for a few days' holiday in Salisbury, Wiltshire, I decided on a change from early 19th century Scottish novelists. Two paperbacks had waited for me for over a month, both by authors whose series I have collected . The Pandemic Plot is Scott Mariani's 23rd in his Ben Hope saga and Blood Runs Thicker is Sarah Hawkswood's 8th in her Bradcote and Catchpoll Medieval Mysteries. Both authors have further books due out in the Autumn.

Mariani's tale was very up to date, dealing with the effects of a pandemic virus in the hands of nasty people. Although it starts with the millions killed at the end of the Great War by the so-called 'flu, and seems to be repeating itself through the aegis of an evil descendant in modern times, the meat (purpose?) of the book occurs a few pages from the end and is worth quoting in full.

Ben thought about all the awful shit that was already cooked up and lurking in thousands of labs around the world, ready for use. Most people had no idea of the extent of it...think of the power something like that would give to an evil maniac secret ruler of the world, over nations, over economics, over everything. Even if the virus wasn't half as lethal as Achlys-14. Even if it killed one percent as many people. Imagine the fear it would cause today, what with social media and all the ways information spreads around the world in the blink of an eye nowadays. I mean, apeshit panic. Everyone afraid of each other, people terrified to go outside in case they get it and drop down dead. Whoever had that sort of power could shut the entire system down and make slaves out of the lot of us, force whole populations to do whatever they wanted...

Welcome to the 2020-2021 world! Welcome to the evil regime that rules China. Covid-19 either escaped from a Wuhan Laboratory by accident or on purpose - incompetence or power-mad evil.

This is the second successive Mariani book based entirely in the U.K. Perhaps, once restrictions are lifted he will be able to go on his travels again and return to more exotic settings.

As for Sarah Hawkswood's novel, the reader is getting more attached to the three mainstays of the series: Hugh Bradecote, the under sheriff of Worcestershire, Sergeant Catchpole and the young assistant Walkelin. The interchanges between the three of them and lifelike and pleasantly amusing. The story itself is slight but well-written and is a relaxing break from the early 19th century wordsmiths I have been reading since January. Hawkswood has not yet run out of interesting plots but must not fall into the trap of, say, Susanna Gregory, whose Matthew Bartholomew series is really now past its sell-by date.