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YORK

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undoubtedly an earthen bank. At present the keep occupies the whole top of the motte except a small chemin de ronde, but the fact so frequently alluded to in the writs, that a stockade ran round the keep, proves that a small courtyard existed there formerly, as was usually the case with important keeps. Another writ of Edward II.'s reign shows that the motte was liable to injury from the floods of the River Fosse, and probably its size has thus been reduced.

The present bailey of York Castle does not follow the lines of the original one, but is an enlargement made in 1825. A plan made in 1750, and reproduced here, shows that the motte was surrounded by its own ditch, which is now filled up, and that the bailey, around which a branch of the Fosse was carried, was of the very common bean-shaped form; it was about 3 acres in extent. The motte and bailey were both considerably outside what is believed to have been the Anglo-Saxon rampart of York, but the motte was so placed as to overlook the city.

The value of the city of York, in spite of the sieges and sacks which it had undergone, and in spite of there being 540 houses "so empty that they pay nothing at all," had risen at the date of the Survey from 534. in King Edward's time to 100l. in King William's. This extraordinary rise in value can only be attributed to

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1 Order to expend up to 6 marks in repairing the wooden peel about the keep of York Castle, which peel is now fallen down. Cal. of Close Rolls, 17 Edward II., 25.

2 Cal. of Close Rolls, 1313-1318, 262. Mota is wrongly translated moat. 3 See Mr Cooper's York: The Story of its Walls and Castles. During Messrs Benson and Platnauer's excavations, a prehistoric crouching burial was found in the ground below the motte, 4 feet 6 inches under the present level. This raises the question whether William utilised an existing prehistoric barrow for the nucleus of his motte,

4 D. B., i., 298a.

increased trade and increased exactions, the former being promoted by the greater security given to the roads by the castles, the latter due to the tolls on the high-roads and waterways, which belonged to the king, and the various "customs" belonging to the castles, which, though new, were henceforth equally part of his rights.

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THE BAILE HILL, York (Fig. 39). -There can be no doubt whatever that this still existing motte was the site of one of William's castles at York, and it is even probable that it was the older of the two, as Mr Cooper conjectures from its position on the south side of the river. The castle bore the name of the Old Baile at least as early as the 14th century, perhaps even in the 12th. In 1326 a dispute arose between the citizens of York and Archbishop William de Melton as to which of them ought to repair the wall around the Old Baile. The mayor alleged that the district was under the express jurisdiction of the archbishop, exempt from that of the city; the archbishop pleaded that it stood within the ditches of the city. The meaning of this dispute can only be understood in the light of facts which have recently been unearthed by the industry and observation of Mr T. P. Cooper, of York. The Old Baile, like so many of William's castles, originally stood outside the ramparts of the city. The original Roman walls of York (it is believed) enclosed only a small space on the eastern shore of the Ouse, and before the Norman

York: The Story of its Walls and Castles, by T. P. Cooper, p. 222. 2 See the passage from Hoveden already quoted, ante, p. 245. 3 Drake's Eboracum, App. xliv.

4 See Mr Cooper's York: The Story of its Walls and Castles, which contains a mass of new material from documentary sources, and sheds quite unexpected light on the history of the York fortifications. I am indebted to Mr Cooper's courtesy for some of the extracts cited above relating to York Castle.

YORK: THE BAILE HILL

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Conquest the city had far outgrown these bounds, and therefore had been enlarged in Anglo-Saxon times. It appears that the Micklegate suburb was then for the first time enclosed with a wall, and as this district is spoken of in Domesday Book as "the shire of the archbishop," it was evidently under his jurisdiction. At a later period this wall was buried in an earthen bank, which probably carried a palisade on top, until the palisade was replaced by stone walls in the reign of Henry III.1

The evidence of the actual remains renders it more than probable that this rampart turned towards the river at a point 500 feet short of its present angle, so that the Old Baile, when first built, was quite outside the city walls. This is exactly how we should expect to find a castle of William the Norman's in relation to one of the most turbulent cities of the realm; and, as we have seen, the other castle at York was similarly placed. By the time of Archbishop Melton the south-western suburb was already enclosed in the new stone walls built in the 13th century, and these walls had been carried along the west and south banks of the Old Baile, so as to enclose that castle within the city. This was the archbishop's pretext for trying to lay upon the citizens the duty of maintaining the Old Baile. But probably on account of his ancient authority in this part of the city, the cause went against him; though he stipulated that whatever he did in the way of fortification was of his own option, and was not to be accounted a precedent. A contemporary chronicler says that he enclosed the Old Baile first with stout planks 18 feet long, afterwards with a stone wall :1 an interesting proof that wooden fortifications were still used in the reign of Edward III.

1 Cooper's York, chapters ii. and iv. 100l. was spent by the sheriff in fortifying the walls of York in the sixth year of Henry III. After this there are repeated grants for murage in the same and the following reign. There are some Early English buttresses in the walls, but the majority are later. No part of the walls contains Norman work.

• The details of this evidence, which consist mainly in (1) a structural difference in the extended rampart; (2) a subsidence in the ground marking the old line of the city ditch, will be found in Mr Cooper's work, p. 224.

Though the base court of the Old Baile is now built over, its area and ditches were visible in Leland's time, and can still be guessed at by the indications Mr Cooper has noted. The area of the bailey must have been nearly 3 acres, and its shape nearly square. This measurement includes the motte, which was placed in the south-west corner on the line of the banks; it thus overlooked the river as well as the city.

1 "Locum in Eboraco qui dicitur Vetus Ballium, primo spissis et longis 18 pedum tabulis, secundo lapideo muro fortiter includebat." T. Stubbs, in Raine's Historians of the Church of York, ii., 417, R. S.

2 "The plotte of this castelle is now caullid the Olde Baile, and the area and diches of it do manifestley appere." Itin., i., 60. 3 See the plan in Mr Cooper's York, p. 217.

CHAPTER VIII

MOTTE-CASTLES IN NORTH WALES

MOTTE-CASTLES are as common in Wales as they are in England, and in certain districts much more common. It is now our task to show how they got there. They were certainly not built (in the first instance at any rate) by the native inhabitants, for they do not correspond to what we know to have been the state of society in Wales during the Anglo-Saxon period. The Welsh were then in the tribal condition, a condition, as we have shown, inconsistent with the existence of the private castle. The residence of the king or chieftain, as we know from the Welsh Laws, was a great hall, such as seems to have been the type of chieftains' residence among all the northern nations at that time. "It was adapted for the joint occupation of a number of tribesmen living together." 2

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Pennant describes the residence of Ednowen, a Welsh chieftain of the 12th century, as follows: "The remains are about 30 yards square; the entrance about 7 feet wide, with a large upright stone on each side for a doorcase; the walls were formed of large stones uncemented by any mortar; in short the structure shows

1 "In the Wales of the Laws, the social system is tribal." Owen Edwards, Wales, p. 39.

2 Vinogradoff, Growth of the Manor, pp. 15-16.

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