2

le Roux, a son of Eudo, Count

son of Eudo, Count of Penthièvre in Brittany, contained “ within its castellry" 199 manors, aggregating

” 1,153 carucates of land. This vast stretch of country, which extended from the river Wiske westwards to the borders of Westmorland and the West Riding, and from the Tees southwards to the Yore, had been, T.R.E., the property of the English earl, Edwin, whose aula or manor house had been at Gilling. 4 In the vast extent, and more especially in the compactness of this great Honour, we get an admirable illustration of the policy of the astute Conqueror-a policy also seen in the Welsh marches-of granting a large and unbroken territory to an energetic and capable warrior for purposes of national defence. It served as an excellent barrier against the Scots, covering as it did the approach from the north by way of Wensleydale, Swaledale, Teesdale, and the county of Durham.

It is obvious that a strong fortress would be an absolute necessity for Alan le Roux in the midst of a hostile and hardy population. No sentimental objections would weigh for a moment with the foreign count in favour of retaining the old English capital of Gilling, when near at hand was a site apparently created by nature for the erection upon it of a great and formidable castle. No one who has visited this picturesquely situated fortress can fail to grasp not only the supreme excellence of the site--this is obvious at a glance--but more especially its vast strategic importance as the caput of the Honour.

On the large triangular plateau rising almost perpendicularly above the northern bank of the Swale, Count Alan le Roux, in or about 1071, commenced the erection of his seigneural

a

1 Alan le Roux is styled Alanus comes Orientalium Anglorum in the Conqueror's charter of 1081 to Bury St. Edmund's (Dugdale's Mon. Angl., iii,

1410);

* D.B. Summary, fo. 381, which informs us that he had within his castellry" 199 manors, of which 108 were described as “ waste.” Of these 199 his vassals held 133. In addition to the 199 manors in the castellry, Alan held, outside its limits, 43 manors, aggregating 161 carucates, and containing land for 170$ ploughs. At the time of the Survey he held, besides this vast north country property, no fewer than

manors in Lincolnshire, 81 in Norfolk, 63 in Cambridgeshire, 12 in Herefordshire, etc., as a perusal of the Domesday Survey shows.

of the North Riding (V.C.H. of Yorks., vol. ii, p. 136) gives an excellent idea of the proportion of the North Riding belonging to the Honour of Richmond.

Edwin's aula would certainly not be built for defensive purposes; private or individual fortresses were unknown to the English, indced under the English rule they could have no raison d'être. Edwin's residence would be merely a tiinber house fenced in by alight palisade, but Alan may have strengthened it and utilised it whilst Richmond Castle

being constructed. About the beginning of the last century there was in existence on what is still known

“ Castle Hill,” in the parish of Gilling, an oval earthwork of which a plan is given in Mr. McLaughlan's paper, Arch. Journal, vol. vi, but it had no inotte.

was

as

fortress, which he is said to have named Richmond.1 But he was not content with the ordinary earth-and-timber castle usually thrown up by a Norman baron. Alan le Roux was no ordinary baron ; as the holder of the great Honour of Richmond he was almost a prince, for his vast property was, as it were, within a ring fence, forming one huge unbroken tract of country, a shire in itself, in which his power and influence was absolute and paramount. As a general rule the possessions of a great tenant-in-capite were much scattered, so that he was compelled to erect a number of castles, one to defend each considerable portion of his property. As we have already seen, under our notice of Foss Castle, Nigel Fossard, or his immediate successor, would appear to have erected no fewer than five castles on the Fossard estates, and yet those estates covered but little more than a third as much land as was contained in the "castellry" of Richmond. Owing to the strategic importance of the site selected, only one great castle was needed by Count Alan, and consequently he was in a position to lavish upon that one structure all the labour and material which another baron, of equal but scattered estates, would have to spend on the erection of ten or a dozen castles. Thus it comes about, owing to the unusual circumstances of the case, that we have at Richmond a great stone fortress of the last quarter of the eleventh century, a castle of unrivalled interest in the wonderful preservation of its eleventh century hall.

As this article is practically devoted to those Norman castles of the North Riding which never developed works in masonry, or where no masonry now exists, a history and description of Richmond is deferred until we come to deal with it among the rectangular keep castles of the Riding. 2

SCARBOROUGH. During the intestinal warfare of the time of Stephen, William le Gros, Earl of Albemarle, one of the most powerful of the Yorkshire barons, erected a stone castle on the huge rocky promontory on which Henry II's keep now stands. The Meaux chronicler tells us that “William, surnamed Le Gros, Earl of Albemarle and Holderness, observing this place to be admirably situated for the erection of a castle, increased the great natural strength of it by a very costly work, having enclosed all the plain upon the rock by a wall, and built a tower at the entrance. But this being decayed and fallen, King Henry II commanded a great and strong castle to be built upon the same

spot."

Early in 1155, Henry II advanced to York with a large army, and William le Gros, realising that resistance would be useless, surrendered his castle of Scarborough at the king's command.3 Doubtless Henry's first intention was to destroy the fortress, as he destroyed so many of the castles run up in the time of Stephen, but apparently struck by the superlative excellence of the site, he decided to complete the structure, and between 1158 and 1174 erected the still partially existing keep.

A description and history of this great castle will be given in that portion of this work dealing with the rectangular keep castles. All that we need now

SHERIFF HUTTON (fig. 6). History.--At the time of the Survey, Nigel Fossard (see Foss Castle), one of the two great Yorkshire feudatories of Robert, Earl of Mortain and of Cornwall, was the principal landowner in Sheriff Hutton. Very soon after the Survey, certainly before 1100, Nigel gave this manor, with other property in the district, to Aschetil de Bulmer, whose name (probably in his capacity as the chief Fossard feudatory) appears as the second witness to Nigel's important charter to St. Mary's, York, between that of Robert, Nigel's eldest son and heir, and that of Stephen, his second son. Aschetil de Bulmer was also an important landowner in the adjoining county of Durham, but the pedigree of the family would never appear to have been properly worked out. Camden tells us that Bertram de Bulmer, 8 the son of Aschetil, erected a castle at Sheriff Hutton in 1140, and this may be the true history of the foundation of the castle, although it is quite possible that it may really owe its origin to Aschetil c. 1100. Bertram de Bulmer was one of the few North Riding adherents of the Empress against Stephen—it will be remembered that his neighbour, Eustace Fitz-John of Malton, was also an opponent of Stephen--and his castle was besieged and captured by Alan, Count of Richmond. Bulmer's principal interests apparently lay in the county of Durham, and in August, 1144, he captured the church of Merrington, some nine miles south of Durham, which Cumin, the usurper of the see of Durham, had fortified to hold his lines of communication with his ally, Alan of Richmond.4 On the death of Bertram the manor of Sheriff Hutton passed by the marriage of his daughter and heiress, Emma, to Geoffrey de Neville,5 who died in 11946

II

1 D.B., fo. 300b, col. 1; fo. 306a, col. 1; fo. 373, col. 1. The first entry informs us that in Hotune (Sheriff Hutton) the king held 4 carucates; the second that Nigel Fossard held carucates under the Earl of Mortain ; the third that Nigel had seized the lands of Turulf, Turchil, and Turstan, which they held under the king-an action thoroughly characteristic of Nigel.

founded the monastic house of Tupholme, C. 1168. The Nevilles, who derived their name from Neuville-sur-Toque, settled in Lincolnshire at an early date. By his wife, Emma de Bulmer, Geoffrey had issue a son, Henry, and two daughters, Avice and Isabella. Henry, who died s.p., confirmed the grant made by his grandfather, Bertram de Bulmer, to the Priory of Marton (Dugdale, Mon. Angl., vi, 199, No. ii), and gave it additional property. Avice also died s.p. Isabella married