ments,' was completely levelled in 1848; it was then found out that it had been thrown up over some previous buildings, which were believed to be Roman, though this seems doubtful.2 The value of Worcester had risen since the Conquest.❜ YORK (Fig. 39).-William the Conqueror built two castles at York, and the mottes of both these castles remain, one underneath Clifford's Tower, the keep of York Castle, the other, on the south side of the Ouse, still bearing the name of the Baile Hill, or the Old Baile. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle implies, though it does not directly state, that both these castles were built in 1068, on the occasion of William's first visit to York. The more detailed narrative of Ordericus shows that one was built in 1068, and the other at the beginning of 1069, on William's second visit. Both were destroyed in September 1069, when the English and Danes captured York, and both were rebuilt before Christmas of the same year, when William held his triumphant Christmas feast at York. This speedy erection, destruction, and re-erection is enough to prove that the castles of William in York were, like most other Norman castles, hills of earth with buildings and stockades of wood, especially as we find these hills of earth still remaining on the known sites of 1 See the documents cited by Mr Round in his Geoffrey de Mandeville, Appendix O, and the Pipe Rolls of 1173. "In reparatione Mote et Gaiole de Wirecestra, £35, 13s. 8d." 2 Gentleman's Magazine, i., 36, 1834. See Haverfield, "Romano-British Worcester," Victoria County History of Worcestershire, vol. i. 3 D. B., i., 172. It is needless to remark that baile is the Norman word for an enclosure or courtyard; Low Latin ballia; sometimes believed to be derived from baculus, a stick. Ordericus, ii., 188 (edition Prévost). the castles. And we may be quite sure that the Norman masonry, which Mr Freeman pictures as so eagerly destroyed by the English, never existed.' But the obstinate tendency of the human mind to make things out older than they are has led to these earthen hills being assigned to Britons, Romans, Saxons, Danes, anybody rather than Normans. A single passage of William of Malmesbury, in which he refers to the castrum which the Danes had built at York in the reign of Athelstan, is the sole vestige of basis for the theory that the motte of Clifford's Tower is of Danish origin. The other theories have absolutely no foundation but conjecture. If Malmesbury was quoting from some older source which is now lost, it is extremely probable that the word castrum which he copied, did not mean a castle in our sense of the word at all, but was a translation of the word burh, which almost certainly referred to a vallum or wall constructed round the Danish suburb outside the walls of York. Such a suburb there was, for there in 1055 stood the Danish church of St Olave, in which Earl Siward was buried, and the suburb was long known as the Earlsburgh or Earl's Burh, probably because it contained the residence of the Danish earls of Northumbria. This suburb 1 Norman Conquest, iv., 270. Mr Freeman has worked out the course of events connected with the building and destruction of the castles with his usual lucidity. But he never grasped the real significance of mottes, though he emphatically maintained that the native English did not build castles. 2 "Ethelstanus castrum quod olim Dani in Eboraco obfirmaverant ad solum diruit, ne esset quo se tutari perfidia posset." Gesta Regum, ii., 134. 3 Widdrington, Analecta Eboracensia, p. 120. It was this suburb which Alan, Earl of Richmond gave to the Abbey of St Mary at York, which he had founded. "Ecclesiam sancti Olavii in quâ capud abbatiæ in honorem sanctæ Mariæ melius constitutum est, et burgum in quo ecclesia sita est." Mon. Ang., iii., 547. For the addition of new boroughs to old ones see ante, p. 174, under Norwich. Although Athelstan destroyed the fortifications was not anywhere near Clifford's Tower, but in quite a different part of the city. To prove that both the mottes were on entirely new sites, we have the assurance of Domesday Book that out of the seven shires or wards into which the city was divided, one was laid waste for the castles; so that there was clearly a great destruction of houses to make room for the new castles.1 3 What has been assumed above receives striking confirmation from excavations made recently (1903) in the motte of Clifford's Tower. At the depth of 13 feet were found remains of a wooden structure, surmounted by a quantity of charred wood. Now the accounts of the destruction of the castles in 1069 do not tell us that they were burned, but thrown down and broken to pieces. But the keep which was restored by William, and on the repair of which Henry II. spent 15 in 1172,* was burnt down in the frightful massacre of the Jews at York Castle in 1190.5 The excavations disclosed the interesting fact that this castle stood on a lower motte than the present one, and that when the burnt keep was replaced by a new one the motte was raised to its present height, "an outer crust of firmer and more clayey material being made round the older of this borough, they were evidently renewed when the Danish earls took up their residence there, for when Earl Alan persuaded the monks from Whitby to settle there one inducement which he offered was the fortification of the site, "loci munitionem." Mon. Ang., iii., 545. 1 In Eboraco civitate T. R. E. præter scyram archiepiscopi fuerunt 6 scyræ; una ex his est wasta in castellis. D. B., i., 298. 2 Notes on Clifford's Tower, by George Benson and H. Platnauer, published by the York Philosophical Society. 3 "Thone castel tobræcon and towurpan." A.-S. C. See Freeman, N. C., iv., 270. "In operatione turris de Euerwick, 157. 7s. 3d." Pipe Roll, 19 Henry II., vol. xix., 2. We assume that William's second keep lasted till Henry II.'s reign. 5 Benedict of Peterborough, ii., 107. |