Richmond
The site of Richmond castle seems to have had a long history, but
this is more civil than military. The county of
‘Richmondshire', of which the castle was the caput, may have
begun with the Norman Conquest, but the name first seems to occur with
the war of 1173-74 when itinerant justices were sent to
Richmondshire. Around the turn of that century Gervase of
Canterbury placed this shire between Yorkshire and Durham the
penultimate entry in his list of the 34 counties of England. To
him Richmondshire included the abbeys of Holme Cultram, Richmond,
Coverham and Egglestone as well as 10 priories which covered the area
from Carlisle to Lancaster and Egremont
to Richmond. However the basis of the ‘shire' was the
honour of Richmond or sometimes the honour of Brittany as it was
sometimes known due to its Breton lords.
From the first, the honour, which later became an earldom and briefly a
shire, was bound up with Breton lords who came over to England with the
Norman Conquest. This means that to a certain degree, the
unravelling of the history of the castle involves delving into Breton
politics. This has been undertaken in a parallel essay.
Another interesting source for the castle history is the Richmond
Register written possibly early in the fifteenth century and describing
the honour in some detail.
It is unknown when Richmond castle was founded, but it is generally
thought to have been established by the first ‘Norman' Count Alan
(d.1094), who was in fact a Breton. According to Gaimar, writing
early in the reign of King Stephen (1135-54), the story began at Hastings where:
Count Alan of Brittany
Struck well with his company.
He struck like a baron.
Right well the Bretons did.
With the king he came to this land
To help him in his war.
He was his noble cousin, of his lineage,
A nobleman of high descent.
Much he served and loved the king,
And he right well rewarded him.
Richmond he gave him in the North,
a good castle fair and strong.
In many places in England
The king gave him land.
Long he held it and then came to his end.
At St Edmund's he was buried.
Although written only 70-80 years after the event, it is noticeable that the Conqueror
gave the earl the castle, apparently as an already functional
fortress. Was this known for fact at the time, or was it
guesswork? There is probably no answer to this, although a survey
of Count Alan's many holdings - 589 manors in chief and lord of 312
other manors in fee - in the counties of Cambridge, Dorset, Essex,
Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire,
Nottinghamshire, Suffolk and Yorkshire, might suggest pattens.
These lands were worth £1,067 in 1086. These lands are
stated in the fifteenth century Richmond Register to have belonged to
Earl Edwin of Mercia (d.1071) and were granted to Alan at the siege of York. However, no siege of York is known to have been made by the Conqueror
and in any case Earl Edwin was in honourable captivity at the time so
his lands probably should not have been handed out at random.
Further, the Domesday evidence does not bear the claim out with Edwin's
lands being spread amongst several lords. The Domesday survey
states that Count Alan had within the jurisdiction of his castle 199
manors of which 108 were waste and 133 had been sub infeudated to his
men. In total his lands contained 1,153 geldable carucates of
land and was valued at £80. There were also beyond the
jurisdiction of the castle, 43 vills of which 4 were waste. Of
this 161 carucates and 5 bovates were geldable while there was land for
170½ ploughs. Of these vills his men held 10 and the total
was valued at £110 11s 8d. The existence of a castlery
shows that Richmond castle was in existence by 1086 and lands had been
set up to support this castle which was then a, if not the, major post
on the Anglo-Scottish frontier. The find of a William I
(1066-87) silver penny during excavations in 2021 shows that such
currency circulated in the castle, although the date at which it was
lost is impossible to judge. With this said, it should be borne
in mind that theoretically all coins of a previous ruler were withdrawn
and reminted by the new king. This would suggest that the coin
was lost in the eleventh century.
Richmond, a French name, was not recorded until after 1086. Then
the land consisted of 2 vills. The first bore the name Hindrelas
and consisted of 5 geldable hides and 3 carucates of land, with 1
plough team belonging to the lord and 3 to 6 villains and 2
bordars. There was also a church and priest as well as a wood, 1
league by a half a league in size, the whole manor being 1½
leagues long and half a league wide. The manor was held of Count
Alan by Enisant Musard, but in 1066 had been held by Thor, who had held
some 58 manors before the Conquest, but retained only 4 in 1086.
Between these times Hindrelas had increased in value from 10s to 16s. The other manor was called Hindrelaghe
and had a single geldable hide and a carucate of land together with a
fishery and although it was also held by Thor in 1066 it was now held
solely by Count Alan as waste. Its value had dropped from 10s in
1066 to 1s 4d. The latter was obviously the site of the castle
alongside the river with its fishery, while the former the town at Hindrelas
contained the old centre with its church. Richmond church lies
some 1,000' northeast of the castle keep which again emphasises this
distinction made before 1066. The implication of the 2 surveys
which occur some 50 manors apart in the survey, that the whole was held
by Thor pre 1066 and that Count Alan had divided the 2 when he had set
up his castlery.
These descriptions of the 2 lands offer some interesting figures.
A hide was generally reckoned at some 120 acres although more likely it
was actually a description for the economic potential of the land and
therefore could vary in physical size dramatically. It is usually
accepted that a carucate, or ploughland, was roughly the same size, but
formed under the Danelaw. Broadly this suggests that Hindrelas was 7 times larger (economically rather than physically) than Hindrelaghe.
Enisan Musard, who held Hindrelas of Count Alan in 1086, held a further
26 manors of him in Yorkshire and was constable of Richmond
castle. His alleged daughter, Garsiena Musard, apparently married
Roald the son of Harsculf St James (d.bef.1130). Roald then seems
to have taken the surname Constable as well as the constableship of the
castle, possibly after the death of Constable Scolland in 1146.
Most of what can be realistically said of the first Count Alan is that
he was a popular witness for the king's charters. Of the 41
examples listed in the Regesta Regum Anlgo-Normannorum, at least 12 are
spurious and a few undated ones under William Rufus
(1087-1100) may relate to his brother, Alan Niger (d.1098).
Obviously forgers were well aware of Count Alan's power and acted
accordingly. Indeed, there is even a spurious charter of Alan
being granted ‘all the vills and lands which were once held by
Earl Edwin in Yorkshire'. Clearly Domesday shows that this was
not the case and Edwin's lands were also held by other lords.
Further, the style of this charter is obviously anachronistic and so it
has no value as an original historical document. The first sure
evidence of the count in England occurs on 4 February 1070, when he
appeared with his fellow Bretons, Baderon Monmouth (d.) and his brother
Wethenoc (d.), before King William I
at Salisbury concerning a grant in Monmouth to St Florent, Saumur,
Anjou. As a witness ‘Count Alan' is often to the fore in
the lists, but only twice, on 31 January 1080 and possibly in 1086,
does he appear as plain Alan Rufus and twice in the early 1080s as
Count Alan Rufus. In a spurious charter of 31 May 1081 he is
referred to as Earl Alan to which someone has later added ‘of the
East Angles' (Orientalium Anglorum). The only apparently true grant that exists of lands being granted to Count Alan by William I
is St Olave in Marygate, York, and the adjacent manor of Clifton as
some point after 1070 when Thomas became archbishop of York and 1086
when it appears in Domesday. Thirstino
is obviously a wrongly expanded contraction for Thomas (1070-1100), if
the record is genuine. The only time that Alan is mentioned as
count of Brittany is in a Durham forgery. Mostly Alan seems to
have been described as Count Alan and in the only extant copy of one of
his charters he is described as Count Alan Rufus. The titles of
his descendants will also be noted in this paper with Alan Niger
(d.1146) being the first man noted as actually earl (comes) of Richmond. Similarly before Duke Conan in 1156, no count was more than a count of part of Brittany.
That Alan was a count from Brittany means that the history of Richmond
is bound to some extent with that distant duchy. It is therefore
necessary to delve quite deeply into the history of that area of France
to understand what a count of Brittany and earl of Richmond was likely
to be doing at his northern English stronghold. To briefly
summarise the complex history of the duchy and set the later earls of
Richmond in their context, Duke Geoffrey of Brittany (d.1008) had at
least 2 sons, Duke Alan III of Brittany (d.1040) and a younger son,
Count Eudes of Penthiévre (d.1079). Count Eudes had
multiple sons, some 3 of whom may have been illegitimate. One of
these sons, Ribald (d.1121+) founded the barony of Middleham. The
eldest of Eudes' legitimate sons was Count Geoffrey Boterel of Brittany
who was killed at the battle of Dol on 24 August 1093. Eudes'
next eldest legitimate son was Alan Rufus - Alan the Red
(d.1093). This nickname was given him to differentiate him from
Eudes' other son of the same name Alan Niger - Alan the Black.
Presumably as they both had the name Alan and only one son of Eudes
named Alan witnessed any of this charters, the latter, Alan the Black,
was illegitimate or at least from a second marriage.
Traditionally Alan Rufus commanded the Norman right wing at the battle
of Hastings in 1066. However, an account of doings of the earls
of Richmond written no earlier than 1214 recorded that he came into
England with Duke William, who after becoming king and with the help of
his wife, gave:
the honour and earldom of Earl Edwin in Yorkshire
which is locally called Richmondshire... Initially he began to
build a castle and garrison near his main manor of Gilling, for the
protection of his people against the invasion of the English, who were
then, like the Danes, disinherited everywhere; and he named the said
castle Richemont, in his French idiom, which sounds in Latin like rich
mountain; this was situated in a more prosperous and strong place
within his territory; but he died without an heir of his body and was
buried at St Edmunds.
The grant of Richmondshire is alleged by the fifteenth century Register
of Richmond, without any contemporary evidence, to have been made
during one of the times the king was besieging York in 1068 or
1069. Regardless of the fact that there is no recorded siege of
York by the king, Yorkshire was only really secured by the invaders
when King William carried out his 'harrying of the North' in the winter
of 1069/70. This would have made Richmond a front line castle
with the areas of Cumberland and Westmorland beyond the northwestern
horizon left in hands who did not recognise King William I
(1066-87). The castles which supported this ‘frontier'
during the Conqueror's reign are discussed under Kirkby Lonsdale.
Meanwhile in 1086, Domesday Book showed that the bulk of Alan's other
estates were in the east of England and were all north of London, with
clusters of vills in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincolnshire and
then around York. Finally, there was a dense mass of vills in
Richmondshire, the then border with Scotland. His most northerly
vill was Lonton about 8 miles north of Bowes. It was only with
the foundation of Carlisle castle in 1092 that Richmond ceased to be a
front line castle. Despite this, Richmond may have appeared
secure by 1083 when Alan was found defending Sainte-Suzanne castle in
Normandy, where he remained until about 1085.
It was probably during this period, 1070-83, that castle guard was
initiated at Richmond. Surprisingly there are several early lists
of the ward owed at Richmond in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. This is most unusual and marks Richmond out as a
special castle. It also shows that the fortress began its Breton
life as very much a frontier castle. As such the guard was
probably established when the castle was first constructed or acquired
by Count Alan Rufus (d.1094) around 1070. There is a list of
187¼ fees which owed ward at the castle. This appears to
have been compiled in the late twelfth century, but is based upon the
setup at the start
of that century. This showed that guard at the fortress was
divided into 2 month periods with different knights owing service at
different times. This meant that some 30 knights would have been
serving sequentially each year at the fortress. Quite clearly
such a setup is unique in England and suggests that Richmond was
intended to be the main military centre of the northern frontier.
That this setup was established before 1098 is indicated by the facts
that the 2 sublordships that Count Alan's successor, Count Stephen
(d.1136), created were exempt from guard at Richmond castle.
These lordships were Masham held by Nigel Aubigny (d.1129) and 4 fees
in Swaledale given as dower by Stephen to his daughter, Matilda, when
she married Walter Gant (d.1139) before 1120.
In Domesday book Count Alan was recorded as the fifth richest baron in
the country. He had built St Mary's abbey at York before 1086,
but King William Rufus (1087-1100) refounded it around Lent 1088,
apparently in Count Alan's presence according to Abbot Stephen's own
account. This Stephen was abbot from about 1080 until his death
on 9 August 1112. Many Northern magnates made grants to this
house and these have to be used when looking at the early history of
such castles as Appleby, Brough and Kendal. In the spring
rebellion of 1088, Count Alan was one of the few Norman magnates who
stood with William II (1087-1100). In the September of 1088 he
had been tasked with Roger Poitou (d.1123) and Count Eudes of Champagne
(d.1115/18) to bring the recalcitrant Bishop William St Calais of
Durham (bef.1087-1096) to Rufus' court from Northumberland.
Earlier Count Alan had fought for Rufus at the sieges of Rochester and
Pevensey. During his tenure of power, Count Alan is recorded as
having made gifts to St Mary's of York. The lands granted when
King William II ‘founded' the abbey were Lestingham, the church of
St Botolph in Boston (Hoylanda), land in Skirbeck (Skyrbeck,
Lincolnshire), the mill and church of Catterick (Catricii) and the
church of Richmond with the castle chapel as well as the tithes of his
castlery in Yorkshire, besides those that belonged to the church and a
third part of the tithes of his men of those lands which they held
under him in the aforesaid castlery. Catterick, together with
Gilling, remained the 2 major manors of the honour of Richmond during
the barony's existence.
Considering the count's holdings in Brittany it is to be expected that
he was often abroad. Consequently Richmondshire seems to have
been mainly administered by his steward or dapifer. Indeed one of
these, Scolland, has latterly given his name to Scolland's Hall.
However, he was not the first steward of Richmond. This was
probably Wymark, of whom little is known other than his granting of the
chapel of St Martin of Richmond to St Mary's of York as Wymarus
dapifer. The grant included land in Edlingthorp, Thornton, the
Forest (Forcett?) and Scruton (Scottona) with all the tithes of his lordship of Wicra.
Presumably this grant was made in the eleventh century when St Mary's
was a prime site for religious grants. It is also presumed that
on Wymark's death he was followed as dapifer by Scolland, who is first
mentioned as a witness in 1097 and died on 6 January 1146.
Assuming he was around 20 when he first witnessed he would have been
about 65 at the time of his death. This makes it virtually
impossible for him to have been steward of Count Alan Rufus (d.1094)
when the castle was apparently founded in the 1070s. Scolland's
son Brian (d.1171) was certainly born before 1125 which again suggests
that Scolland was a young man in the late 1090s. Brian's son,
Alan Fitz Brian (d.1188), gave his name to their descendants, the
Bedale Fitz Alans. Scolland was apparently succeeded by Roald
(d.1158), the founder of nearby Easby abbey in 1152. Under Roald
the stewardship of Richmond became hereditary and he and his successors
took on the surname Constable, after their office in Richmond
castle. This brief survey of the Stewards of Richmond of course
ignores Enisan Musard (d.1089+), the constable of Richmond, who is said
to have passed this office onto his supposed son in law, Roald
Constable (d.1158).
Despite all the Domesday evidence, little is known about Count Alan
Rufus, although the dating of one of his grants at Rochester, adds
weight to the suggestion that he took part in the siege of that
fortress in 1088. His Rochester charter was witnessed by several
of his men, namely Wymark the dapifer, Odo the camerarius, Harsculf St
James (the father of Roald Constable, d.1158), Oger Fitz Guidomar,
Guidomar a monk of Swavesey, Hamo Dol [possibly a son of Rivallon Dol
(d.bef.1066)] and Anschitil Furneaux (Asquitells Furnellis).
Presumably this little group was fighting for Rufus (1087-1100).
Count Alan probably died on 4 August 1093, even though the thirteenth
century Margam annals place his death in 1089 alongside that of
Archbishop Lanfranc (d.28 May 1089). According to the St Edmund's
Memorials, after founding St Mary's abbey outside the walls of York, he
was buried at that abbey's mother house, Bury St Edmunds, by Abbot
Baldwin near the south door. However, he was later moved at the
prayer of the monks from York. Has tomb was engraved with the
epitaph:
A star falls in the kingdom; Count Alan's flesh withers:
England is disturbed; the flower of the kingdom-protectors is turned to ashes.
Truly the flower of the kings of Brittany, merely to decay is the order of things.
By the command of laws, the blood of kings rises and shines.
The most honourable, second only to the king;
Seeing this and weep; Rest in peace, God! Pray
He came from the noble race of the Britons.
This should be compared with the epitaph to Gundreda Thouars, the wife
of William Warenne (c.1035-88), which was equally long and carved into
an ornate tombstone.
Count Alan was probably still in his forties at the time of his death,
but left no heir of his body. He was succeeded by his possibly
illegitimate and therefore half brother, Alan Niger (d.1098), who also
inherited his brother's mistress, Gunhilda, the daughter of King Harold
II (d.1066). His control of his brother's barony is affirmed by
King Henry II (1154-89) confirming Alan's earlier grant of Gilling
[just north of Richmond] to St Mary's of York as well as his tithes of
Bassingbourn (Basyngburgh, Cambridgeshire), Haslingfield (Heselyngfeld,
Cambridgeshire) and land in Skelton (Skeltona, 5 miles west of
Richmond). Quite possibly he was the Count Alan who witnessed a
charter in favour of Saumur with Ivo Taillebois (d.1094/8), although
the charter itself has been misdated to 12 March 1100, by which time
both men were dead. In any case, Alan Niger did not long survive
his legitimate brother, Alan Rufus, dying, possibly also on 4 August,
in 1098 and being succeeded by another brother, Stephen (d.1136).
It has been suggested that Stephen immediately inherited Richmond in
1094 to the detriment of his elder brother, Alan Rufus (d.1098).
However, judging by the above confirmation of Henry II and the fact
that on 30 October 1107, Count Stephen confirmed the grants of his
brothers (fratres, plural) in England while he was at Lamballe in
Brittany, this is most likely wrong.
Unlike his other brothers and half brothers, Stephen lived a long life,
apparently becoming count of Penthievre in Brittany in 1094 and then
lord of Richmond in 1098. At some point he made a confirmation as
count of Brittany (comes Britannie). He supported King Henry I
(1100-35) at the abortive battle of Alton on 3 September 1101 and he
pledged for him in the subsequent treaty. Also, unlike his
brothers, Stephen had a large family who were of age before 1123, when
Geoffrey (d.1148) was already a count and Alan was apparently running
his father's English estates. Count Stephen of Brittany, as he
was styled in the charter, was certainly active as a lord of Richmond
as he confirmed the gift of the church or churches of Richmond,
Richmond castle chapel, the cell of St Martin and the churches of
Catterick, Bolton upon Swale, Gilling, Forcett and the chapels of South
Cowton and Eryholme, Ravensworth, Croft, Great Smeaton, Patrick
Brompton, Thornton Steward, Hauxwell and land in Scotton, Little Danby,
Langthorne, Finghall and Ruswick as well as the churches of Burneston,
Hornby and Middleton Tyas. He also granted the tithes of his
demesnes and of his men in Richmond castlery, Holland, Boston church
and land in Skirbeck in Lincolnshire; land in Haslingfield and tithes
in Bassingbourn, Little Abington, Great Linton and Wicken in
Cambridgeshire and finally the tithe of Lyng in Norfolk. This
grant was made at York in the period between 1125 and 1135. The
pipe roll of Michaelmas 1130 also lists a variety of lords who owed
money this year as the men of Count Stephen of Brittany, namely:
|
Lord |
Owed |
|
Scolland |
50m (£33 6s 8d) |
|
(Walter de la Mare) |
(5m (£3 6s 8d) cancelled) |
|
Richard Rullos |
15m (£10) |
|
Ralph Fitz Ribald |
15m (£10) |
|
Roger Fitz Wimar (Wihomar) |
5m (£3 6s 8d) |
|
Roger Lascelles |
10m (£6 13s 4d) |
|
Acharis [Fitz Ernebrand] |
5m (£3 6s 8d) |
|
Hasculf Fitz Ridiou |
10m (£6 13s 4d) |
|
Robert Chamberlain |
10m (£6 13s 4d) |
|
Wigan Fitz Landric |
5m (£3 6s 8d) |
|
Robert Furneaux |
10m (£6 13s 4d) |
|
Osbert Fitz Colegrim |
1m (13s 4d) |
|
Alan Fitz Eudo |
3m (£2) |
|
Demesne manors |
20m (£13 6s 8d) |
|
Total |
139m (£92 13s 4d) |
Of the account rendered, which was not totalled but came to 139m
(£92 13s 4d) a full 100m (£66 13s 4d) was paid into the
treasury and the king pardoned Count Stephen the remaining 59m
(£39 6s 8d) - totalling £106 exactly. This pardon,
although 20m (£13 6s 8d) more than that apparently owed, made the
account quit. A few entries later there were a list of pardons
granted by the king. The first entry in this has Count Stephen
pardoned 5m (£3 6s 8d) owed by William Lamara. Several
entries later comes a further pardon granted by the king. Under
this the count of Brittany was pardoned 22m (£14 13s 4d) for his
lesser men, after which Ralph Fitz Ribald of Middleham (d.1168+) was
pardoned 5m (£3 6s 8d) and then various other men various amounts.
Count Stephen founded 2 abbeys, Holy Cross at Guingamp about 1110 and
Begard in 1130. This suggests that his main sphere of operations
was in Brittany, rather than Richmond. Simmilarly he apparently
left most of his progeny in France, but his second or third son
inherited the honour of Richmond in 1136 as Alan Niger (d.1146).
Alan had possibly been administering Stephen's English estates from
before 1123 when he was noted as being in England, unlike Count Stephen
and the rest of his family. According to the family abbey of St
Mary's at York, Count Stephen and his wife, Hawise, had their obits
celebrated on 21 April. However, the Genealogy of the Earls of
Richmond dates his death to 30 March 1164. MCLXVI is quite a
mistake from MCXXXVI, but obviously possible. Whatever the case,
the count seems to have died in the spring of 1136.
Alan Niger was twice recorded as earl of Richmond in royal charters at
Westminster between mid May 1136 and 25 March 1137. He remained
loyal to King Stephen (1135-54) throughout his life. As was
standard policy for the time, his elder brother, Count Geoffrey Boterel
(d.1148), supported the other side and was recorded as the brother of
Earl Alan of Richmond when he fought for the Empress at Winchester in
1141. Meanwhile Earl Stephen was one cause of the arrest of the
bishops at Oxford on 24 June 1139 where his unnamed nephew was
killed. The next year he was made earl of Cornwall, apparently as
heir to his uncle, Brian (d.1084+), who was mentioned in the charter
and had been an earl in England under the Conqueror. During 1139
Earl Alan was fighting in Yorkshire according to one chronicler.
In the same year Earl Henry [of Huntingdon, d.1152]
went with his wife to the king of England. Earl Ranulf of
Chester, rose up in enmity against him on account of Carlisle and
Cumberland which he wished restored to him by right of patrimony and so
he intended to engage him on his return [from the king] by the armed
hand. However, the king, warned by the entreaties of the queen,
protected him from the intended danger, and so restored him to his
father and his country, and thus the indignation [of Ranulf] was
transposed into a plot against the king's safety, for Earl Ranulf took
possession of all the garrisons of Lincoln. Earl Alan, climbing
by stealth at night over the wall, broke into the castle of Helmsley
(Galclint,
probably Gelling nearby) with his men, and took possession
of the castle itself with abundant treasure, driving out William
Aubigny with his men. The same Earl Alan of Richmond, fortified
the castle at Hutton Conyers (Hotun, 2 miles northeast of Ripon on the
River Ure), that is in the land of the bishop of Durham, and his hand
was heavy upon Ripon and the people of that place. For he and
other powerful men took whatever things in the barns and other things
which Archbishop Thurstan had reserved for his successor, as each of
them was a neighbour to the archbishopric's lands.
A single charter of Alan survives to Mont St Michael in Cornwall. This is dated 1140 at Bodmin (Bomne) and began:
By the grace of God, Count Alan of Brittany and
Cornwall and Richmond, to all his faithful men and the sons of the holy
church established in Cornwall.
It concerned his grant of a fair at Marazion (Merdresem) and was
witnessed by amongst others, Roger Vautort of Trematon (Racorus de
Valle Torta). However, Alan was soon displaced in Cornwall by the
Empress Matilda's half brother, Reginald Dunstanville (d.1175),
possibly soon after he had fled the battle of Lincoln at the first
enemy charge. At least one contemporary blamed his flight for the
spread of disorganisation throughout the royalist troops. Before
the battle, Earl Robert of Gloucester (d.1147) is said to have made a
speech in which he laid into his enemies. The first of these was:
Count Alan of Brittany, in arms against us, nay
against God himself; a man so execrable, so polluted with every sort of
wickedness, that his equal in crime cannot be found; who never lost an
opportunity of doing evil and who would think it his deepest disgrace
if anyone else could be put in comparison with him for cruelty.
According to the Durham chronicler, Symeon, as soon as the king led his men into battle;
Earl Alan of Richmond and his troops, before the
fighting had even begun, renounced both the king and the battle.
Alan, however, apparently remained true to his king, unlike many
others. After Stephen had been transferred to his prison at
Bristol, the earl of Richmond sought to capture Earl Ranulf of Chester
(d.1153/4). Unfortunately his ambush went awry and it was Alan,
‘a man of great ferocity and guile' who was captured in the
skirmish. He was then incarcerated in ‘a filthy prison'
while his earldom of Cornwall was overrun. He only gained his
freedom on paying homage to the earl of Chester and placing all his
fortresses, which would have included Richmond, at Ranulf's
service. Symeon saw this somewhat differently and stated:
Earl Alan of Richmond summoned a conference where he
was seized by Earl Ranulf who, after being starved and inflicted by
other tortures was himself forced to surrender the castle of Galdint
(ie. Helmsley) and the treasure found within it.
Both versions obviously related to the same event and as a result of
his capture Alan seems to have lost control of many of his lands and
possibly even Richmond castle, although he seems to have remained its
master as a man of the earl of Chester. It would also appear that
he lost control of Devenis, his Dorset manor, to the earl of Gloucester
at this time. Despite these setbacks, Alan was free by Christmas
1141 when a recently released King Stephen made a grant witnessed by
the following barons, presumably in order of their rank, viz, Earl
William Warenne, Earl Gilbert of Pembroke, Earl Gilbert of Hertford,
Earl William of Aumale, Earl Simon, Earl William of Sussex, Earl Alan
and Earl Robert Ferrers. That said, in the summer of 1140 at
Norwich, the earls had been listed as, Earl Alan, Earl William Warenne,
Earl Simon and Earl William Aubigny, so perhaps the order doesn't imply
that much. Similarly in the period 1141-43, the earls in another
charter were listed as Count Alan of Brittany, Earl William Warenne and
Earl William of Lincoln. Count Alan was obviously of a warlike
nature for soon after Easter 1142 the king thought it necessary to
prohibit a tournament that Alan and Earl William of Aumale were
planning to hold at York.
After Easter, King Stephen, accompanied by his
queen, Matilda, came to York, and paid off the soldiers who had been
hired by Earl William of York and Earl Alan of Richmond, who were to
fight against each other for the nine day holiday; for he hoped to
avenge his former injuries and to restore the kingdom to its ancient
dignity and integrity, however, being anxious about the weakness of the
knights he had recruited, he sent them back home.
Alan was still in England in 1143 when he and his armed men burst into
Ripon church and abused Archbishop William of York and irreverently
dishonoured the body of Saint Wilfrid. An epitaph of sorts was
written for him in the Brittany Chronicle. This read:
Earl Alan died, who had been most active in England
and Brittany, whose intention was to restore the dignity of the kingdom
of Brittany. As a juvenile he was indeed a most cruel and
predatory man, but when he became a man he was a father to his country
and a most watchful lover of the church.
The terms of the chronicle are vague, but they imply that Alan's
attitude matured when he married. Charter evidence shows that
this occurred before 1135, but his actions at Ripon hardly suggest that
he loved the church in 1143. Therefore the comments about his
change of attitude should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt.
That he left England for Brittany in 1145 seems likely, which suggests
that campaigning might have brought him low in 1146. Certainly
his early death preshadows that of his grandson in 1171. During
the early years of the Anarchy it seems possible that Alan was also
operating a royalist mint at Richmond castle. He also used an
unusual form in some of his charters, mainly Alanus comes Britannie et
Anglie - Count Alan of Brittany and England. Perhaps this form
indicates his priorities in life with Brittany being utmost in his mind.
It must have been shortly before his death, which was also recorded as
having occurred on 15 September rather than 30 March 1146, that Count
Alan made at least 2 grants to Jervaulx abbey. In these he was
recorded as Count Alan of Brittany and England, while the second was
addressed to his seneschal and constable of Richmond as well as all his
barons and liegemen, French, Breton and English. At a later date
Roger Mowbray testified:
that before I went to Jerusalem on my pilgrimage the
first time which was 4 years before Walter Bury had the land in
Mashamshire, I gave it to the abbey which was then called Carita, and
is now called Jervaulx....
In this charter he further stated:
Not long after the donation, Count Alan crossed over
to his own lands in Brittany. When he arrived at Savigny, he
informed the abbot and the congregation that Brother Peter and other
monks who were associated with them, had started an abbey in their
domain not far from his castle of Richmond in England [Jervaulx is some
10 miles south of Richmond]. And the same count at once gave that
abbey, whatever it might have been at that time, to the abbot of
Savigny himself, who received it, but as if reluctantly and
unwillingly, and he held it well and in peace, but for how long it is
not established.
During 1146 at St Albans, King Stephen made a grant to Earl Ranulf of
Chester of all the lands which had belonged to Ernisius Burun except
for that which he had given to Earl Alan in Yorkshire. The
linking of the 2 earls together may be a throwback to the homage Earl
Ranulf forced from Earl Alan in 1141, although it is likely that King
Stephen disallowed this humbling of his loyal baron. Whatever the
case, Earl Alan died young in Brittany, possibly on 30 March 1146 when
he was probably not much over 46. Likely soon after he heard of
Earl Alan's death, Pope Eugene III (1145-53) confirmed the cell of St
Martin with its appurtenances and the church of Catterick on 11 August
1146 to St Mary's of York. Apparently at the same time he
conformed Richmond church, the castle chapel and everything else in the
castlery. The record of this confirmation was later found in the
tower of St Mary's York. If this was done in response to the
count's death then this must have occurred in March rather than
September 1146.
Earl Alan (d.1146) left at least one son who was apparently
underage. Alan's widow went on to marry Eudes la Zouche of
Porhoet (d.1185) in or before 1148. He then assumed rulership
over the duchy in her name, after the death of her father, Duke Conan,
that year. In 1149 Eudes founded the abbey of Notredame de
Lantenac. In this he was acting as duke in right of his
wife. However by the period 1152-56, Eudes witnessed a document
of Ralph Montfort as Duke Eudes of Brittany. This rather suggests
that his power had grown in the intervening years. Meanwhile back
in England according to the fourteenth century genealogy of the family
translated at the end of this page:
Count Conan Fitz Alan of Brittany and Richmond,
succeeded to the honour of Richmond and married Margaret, the sister of
King William of Scots, by whom he had a daughter and heiress named
Constance who Geoffrey the brother of King Richard married. This
Conan built the great tower within Richmond castle (turrim magnam infra
Castellum Richemundiæ) and died in Brittany being buried at
Begard in 1170.
Unfortunately this precis is rather condensed and gives no idea as to
when Richmond keep was said to have been built other than during
Conan's active lifetime (1146-71). The piece itself may have been originally compiled as early as the reign of Richard I (1189-99) considering that
Geoffrey (d.1186) is described as King Richard's brother, rather than
the brother of the Young King Henry III (d.1183) or King John(1199-1216).
However, the passage is found in a document that cannot predate 1341.
Regardless of the value of this statement, it is necessary to
study what is known of Conan's life history to help in
suggesting when Richmond keep may have been built. Further,
unravelling the history
of Brittany is certainly necessary to have an idea of the type of man
who
ruled at Richmond.
It is uncertain how old Conan was in 1146, but he may have been
underage, apparently initially being known as Conan Fitz Bertha, the
son of Alan Niger. Certainly his mother described herself as
‘Bertha, by the Grace of God Countess of all Brittany' and
associated her son Conan with her in a grant. This indicates that
Conan was underage at the time of Earl Alan's death and that his
mother was the main power in the family, although this surely should
not have happened before 17 September 1148 when her father, Duke Conan,
died. The witness list is also
interesting as Conan appeared as the first witness as Conano consule,
he was followed by Bishop Solomon of Leon and then Count Eudes, who
presumably was not yet Bertha's husband, their marriage occurring in or
just before 1148. The charter was probably made in 1146 as a
codicil was added ‘22 years later' by Bertha and her son Count
Conan. Such a codicil could not have been made after August 1167
as Bertha was dead by then, her husband Eudes having remarried a
daughter of Hervey Leon. This means that the very latest the
original charter should have been made in was 1146, 21 years
previously! Obviously there is a trouble with dates here.
Le Baud, writing over 300 years later, considered that Eudes had denied
Conan his inheritance and that the 2 were mortal enemies from the first
and that after a battle Conan was expelled to England in the late
1140s. If Le Baud was using a now lost source, no trace of it now
seems to remain. The dangers of using sources like Le Baud are
again emphasied when he places the 1146 death of Count Stephen as
taking place from leprosy in 1164. In this he is undoubtedly
partially following, or creating, the error in the Richmond Genealogy. Yet Le Baud
should have known that by 1164 Stephen would have been well over 100
years old.
The sum of this evidence would therefore tend to suggest that Conan was
underage in 1146 and that any early battle against Duke Eudes never
took place, though Conan would appear to have been in England prior to
1156 and certainly made a charter at Richmond as duke of Brittany and
earl of Richmond before the death of Roald Constable in 1158. He
also seems to have been with King Henry II (1154-89) witnessing one of
his charters at Worcester, probably in 1155 as Earl Conan of
Richmond. This charter was made probably between July and
September 1155 in the aftermath of the campaign against Hugh Mortimer
of Wigmore (d.1181). Another charter suggests the king was either
in Worcester or Winchester around 30 September 1155. This
probably makes Conan a royal supporter during the Mortimer rebellion.
By 1156 Conan was certainly old enough to undertake a campaign in
Brittany which would suggest that he was born some time before 1135,
his father having been born before 1100. Certainly when Henry II
came to the throne in 1154, Conan would seem to have been already
accepted as earl of Richmond, no doubt protecting the border with
Scotland which probably lay between the Scottish held site of Brough
castle, only 25 miles to the northwest. Roughly half way between
the 2 lay Conan's own castle of Bowes, guarding one of the main passes
between what was then England and Scotland. There is a singular
statement in the 1156 pipe roll that Earl Conan had received £9
10s that year in Suffolk as the third penny of Ipswich (Camit').
This third penny of the pleas of Ipswich had been granted to Count Alan
Rufus (d.1094) by William I (1066-87) and is mentioned in
Domesday. Ranulf Glanville (d.1190) again rendered account for this sum in
1172, after Count Conan's death in 1171.
The history of Conan's tenure of Richmond castle can be gleaned in
outline from the various chronicles that record the history of Brittany
in this period. However, they appear to be all later compilations
and suffer contradictions in their chronology with several events being
recorded a year or two out and some being placed in a wrong
order. The following is a reasonable interpretation of the
evidence.
From about 1148 Brittany had been ruled through Eudes Porhoet, who had
married Earl Conan's mother, Bertha, before that date. They were
opposed at this time by Bertha's brother, Hoel (d.1156), who held power
at
Nantes and described himself as the son of Count Conan (d.1148) and
duke of
Brittany. In one of his charters he states that the grant he was
making was with the consent of his sister, Countess Bertha.
Eudes, with his wife, Bertha,
seems to have held the north of the duchy at this time based upon
Rennes, while Hoel held the south based upon Nantes. The
political relationship between Conan and his mother is not recorded at
this time, but as they both sealed a grant to St
George's abbey, Rennes, it would suggest that they had at least been
reconciled by the end of Bertha's life. Certainly Conan and
Bertha's husband, Eudes, were political enemies in the late
1150s. The contemporary Robert Torigny made 2 entries about this
war, sandwiched between his account of the storms and floods of July
and
August 1156. This suggests that Conan's attack on Rennes happened
around that time and that Eudes was captured after August.
According to Du Paz writing in 1619, a chronicle of St George of Rennes
stated that Earl Conan crossed to Brittany in September 1156.
Against this Torigny states:
Earl Conan of Richmond came from England to Lesser
Brittany and laid siege to and took Rennes city, putting to flight his
father in law, Viscount Eudes.
Following this:
Ralph Fougeres (d.1194) captured Eudes, the viscount of
Porroet, in battle. Consequently most of the Bretons accepted
Conan as duke, with the exception of Jean Dol (d.1162), who still
manfully held out against Conan and his adherents.
Conan's invasion would appear to have happened soon after King Henry II's
brother, Geoffrey (d.1158), had been installed in Nantes at the will of
King Henry II (1154-89) and the citizens of Nantes. One chronicle
states that Count Eudes somehow escaped Brittany to Paris that same
year and then fought for King Louis at Lyons. However, this is
probably a misdating of events in 1171 which are related below.
This leaves the question as to was Conan acting under the orders of
Henry II (1154-89) during this first Breton campaign or was he acting
independently? In January 1156, the king had left Dover for
Witsand in the Low Countries and then moved on to Rouen by 2
February. During this time he made some half dozen charters which
have survived. None of these are witnessed by Earl Conan, so it
is reasonable to assume that he did not accompany the royal court at
this time, nor did he take part in the sieges of Chinon and Mirebeau
that Spring, nor was he at Chinon in July for the peace made between
King Henry and his brother, Geoffrey (d.1158). The king then
progressed through Anjou and into the Limoges by October. This
suggests that he showed little concern for earl Conan making himself
duke of Brittany - leastways for his attack upon Count Eudes and
Rennes. All that can be said of Henry II and Richmond in
Yorkshire is that the king made a charter there at some point in his
reign which was witnessed by Hugh Murdach, Ranulf Glanville (d.1190),
Michael Belet (d.bef.1205) and William Bending (d.1191). The
lives of the witnesses would suggest that King Henry visited the
fortress after the death of Duke Conan in 1171.
In any event, after the subversion of Nantes and Conan's subsequent
occupation of Rennes, Conan and Geoffrey seem to have divided the
province between themselves just as Eudes and Hoel had earlier divided
it. The only difference was that both conquerors now owed
allegiance to King Henry II (1154-89). Certainly at some point
between 1156 and 1171, Conan made several charters as duke of Brittany
and earl of Richmond. The most interesting of these concerning
the honour of Richmond is his confirmation of lands to Easby abbey -
this included Richmond castle bridge which had been granted by Robert,
Duke Alan's usher (hostiario). Other grants were made at Richmond
itself.
As there is no contemporary title recorded by Count Geoffrey (d.1158)
it is to be presumed that he held Nantes and Lower Brittany of Duke
Conan, although he may also have been holding it directly of his
brother, King Henry II. According to a Breton chronicle,
undoubtedly written in retrospect, at some point in 1156, after
Geoffrey, the younger brother of Henry II (1154-89), was received in
Nantes as duke:
Conan Fitz Bertha, was received by the Bretons as
leader and prince; but King Henry of the English, though it was not his
due, desired to have the city of Nantes with its dependencies.
This leaves the actual status of Nantes uncertain in this period and
opens up the possibility that the third penny of Ipswich was
no longer paid to Conan after this date as he was now duke of Brittany,
possibly without King Henry's permission. It is possible that the king visited Rennes at this time. Certainly during that
winter of 1156/57 he attacked Thouars and appeared in Normandy at Caen,
Mortain, Rouen and Valognes before returning to England through
Barfleur around March 1157. There is no evidence that he met
‘duke' Conan in this time.
During July 1157, King Henry extended his northern frontier of England
from the district around Duke Conan's castle of Bowes up to Carlisle
after his meeting with King Malcolm IV of Scotland at Peak
castle. This meant that Richmond was no longer a front line
castle and this change would have redefined Duke Conan's political
relationships with both kings, Henry and Malcolm.
The next mention of Conan occurred on 22 April 1158, when he was
recorded as Duke Conan of all Brittany and earl of Richmond. This
charter was made to St Melaine abbey, Rennes, while he was staying in
the city. The same year Conan made another charter at
Fougeres. Probably this was when he was visiting his cousin Ralph
Fougeres (d.1194), or his father, Henry (d.1162). Around the same
time the duke made a confirmation charter to Fountains abbey which had
been agreed before the duke and his barons at Richmond castle.
Events at this time came hard and fast. On 26 July 1158, Count
Geoffrey of Nantes suddenly died, aged only 24. This surprise
caused Conan to promptly seize the lower half of Brittany to the
consternation of Henry II who at the time was progressing around the
southwest of England before campaigning in Deheubarth against Prince
Rhys ap Gruffydd (d.1197). On hearing the news Henry rushed south
and crossed the Channel to Normandy on 14 August 1158.
The events of these years in Brittany were recorded in retrospect by
William Newburgh writing around 1196. He stated that after the
rebellion of Geoffrey (d.1158) in Anjou, during the early part of 1156,
Henry II (1154-89) besieged Chinon castle and took it with Loudun and
Mirebeau castles [Spring 1156], then:
He allowed his brother to come humiliated and
supplicant to him, while the fortresses were stripped from him, in
order to prevent his future ambition, he conceded him some level land
which would provide for him. And then he [Geoffrey] would be
filled with sorrow, and then the anger at his brother, now groaning in
envy at fickle fortune; he was suddenly exhilarated by a happy
event. It happened that the citizens of the illustrious city of
Nantes did not have a certain master in whom they were pleased; having
seen the industry and energy [of Henry II], they invited him to choose
a true and certain master for them and having secured the city,
surrendered it with the adjacent province to him [Geoffrey]. But
not long after this happy event he [Geoffrey] was taken away by an
untimely death, and soon the earl of Richmond, who at that time
presided over a great part of Transmarine Brittany, entered the same
city as the true possessor. On hearing this, the king, having
ordered the finances of the county of Richmond to be applied to the
treasury, immediately crossed from England to Normandy, and demanded
the city of Nantes by right of fraternal succession; thus the same
count, startled by the terror of his [the king's] preparations, was
overthrown and broken, so that, scarcely tepidly endeavouring to
struggle, he instantly resigned the city to placate [the king].
As ever, this ‘historical' summary made with hindsight, is not
quite right. On Conan seizing Nantes, presumably in August 1158,
King Henry's first port of call was the Vexin to meet with King Louis
VII (1137-80). Here Louis made Henry seneschal of France and bade
him to go and pacify the troublesome Bretons. Henry then
called for an army to be formed at Avranches at Michaelmas to bring
Conan to heel. On the allotted day, not only had his knight
service formed, but
Count Conan of Rennes, accompanied by his Bretons,
came to Avranches and there he surrendered to the king the city of
Nantes with the whole county of de la Mee (the district around Nantes),
valued it is said at 60,000s Angevin [approximately £750, an
Angevin shilling being a quarter the value of an English one].
It is clear from this that Conan attempted no resistence to Henry,
there being little time between Geoffrey's death on 26 July and Conan's
submission on 29 September for major hostilities to have
occurred. Indeed, Duke Conan made a charter at Rennes on 22
September 1158, just a week before he met King Henry II at
Avranches. It is also clear that Conan remained duke of a semi
independent Brittany after this event, there being no mention of him
granting away the rest of the duchy at this time. Presumably the
earl of Richmond then accompanied the king as he reviewed the Brittany
frontier visiting and making charters at Mont St Michael, St Jacques and Pontorson. However, Conan never witnessed a
surviving grant of King Henry in France. This may say something of their
relationship. Presumably the grant of Nantes to Henry is the one
referred to in the Meler chronicle, which misdates the event to 1159.
1159, Geoffrey Martel died [26 Jul 1158]. In
the same year Count Conan of Richmond recovered the city of Nantes: but
he only held it for a few days, releasing it to King Henry of England
about 3 October (the festival of S. Dyonis) in the same year.
Similarly, another compilation chronicle misdates the affair to 1157. This has:
After the death of Count Geoffrey of Nantes, the
brother of King Henry of England, in July, King Henry crossed over into
Normandy in August, and spoke with King Louis of the Franks on the
River Epte, about making peace and a marriage between his son, Henry
and Margaret, the daughter of the King of the Franks. Then they
went to Avranches (Abrincas), on 29 September (the feast of St.
Michael), where Duke Conan of Brittany restored the city of Nantes to
the king which he had invaded...
A second passage in the same chronicle, obviously compiled from another source, probably from Mont St Michael, has:
On the feast of St Michael [29 September], Count
Conan of Rennes and his Britons came with him to Avranches and restored
to the king the city of Nantes, with the whole county, valued at 40,000
Angevin shillings [£500]. From there the king came to Mont
St Michael...
Once again the trouble with hearsay chronicle evidence can be seen,
with the value of the county of de la Mee dropping by a full £250
as well as dates changing. Once again it has to be stressed that
the contents of any chronicle was only as good as its sources and the
ability of its compiler.
With good relations restored between duke and king at Michaelmas 1158,
there is little doubt that Richmond castle was also returned to Conan,
if it was ever taken away from him. Certainly there is no
evidence of the revenue of Richmondshire being used by the
Exchequer. Meanwhile King Henry, after taking Thouars castle,
roughly equidistant from Nantes to Poitiers, in a 3 day siege during
October, took King Louis on a tour of Normandy and then England.
Some disruption to the Richmond fee must have occurred this year for
the 1158 pipe roll does suggest that the vill of Great Abington (Abinton) was taken from Conan this year, for the sheriff of Cambridge accounted
for 20s paid from there to the Exchequer. Presumably this land
had been seized into the sheriff's hands, which then adds the question
as to why the other lands of Conan were not similarly mentioned?
In 1159 came the odd statement that the sheriff of Hertfordshire was
pardoned various sums by the king's writ. The last of these was
the debt of 30s 3d which remained in the land of the count of Brittany
and the earl of Warwick. The next year, 1160, the sheriff of
Norfolk and Suffolk was noted as owing 7s paid for mercy in Sudbourne
which remained in the land of the Count of Brittany. The same
year there was an unusual expense of 104s 2d for conveying wine to
Brittany. Was this a present to the duke? Quite clearly
these isolated references suggest some royal intervention in Conan's
lands, but do not necessarily represent hostility and similar entries
are to be found in the rolls concerning many other barons.
In 1160, King Malcolm of Scotland gave his sister Margaret to Duke
Conan of Brittany. Considering Conan's position as earl of
Richmond, this might be seen as a hostile act to Henry II, because as
recently as 1157 the Scottish border had been adjacent to Conan's lands
and Conan had presumably been responsible for maintaining his portion
of the Anglo-Scottish border. The marriage would also suggest
that Conan was in Scotland, or at least Richmond this year, as
presumably Conan came to Scotland to collect his royal bride, Conan
having a lesser political standing than King Malcolm. Meanwhile
King Henry spent all this year in France and went nowhere near Brittany
as far as can be ascertained. During this period Conan made
several grants to his English barons in Guingamp in Brittany that were
witnessed by his wife, Margaret. This may suggest that his
Richmond barons had supported him in his continental campaigns.
Margaret also made one grant at Guingamp in her own right, but
confirmed by her husband. This happened before 2 August 1167,
when Bishop Bernard of Quimper died. A charter of Conan's
supposedly witnessed by her at Quimper in 1160 is almost certainly a
forgery.
Duke Conan did not appear much in the pipe rolls, but in 1162 he was
fined and paid 4m (£2 13s 4d) scutage under Cambridge. The
same year on 2 February 1163, Conan was at Rennes when he made grants
to Savigny and the Templars in Brittany. In these he described
himself as duke of Brittany and earl of Richmond, a title he seemed to
use on many occasions. Another such undated charter was made at
Richemundiam and was witnessed by Ralph Fitz Ribald (d.1168+,
Middleham) and Alan the Constable (d.1201).
King Henry II (1154-89) returned to England in January 1163 after
Christmassing at Cherbourg. He remained progressing around
England and dealing with the escalating Thomas Becket crisis until
February 1165. A chronicle confirms that Conan was definitely in
Brittany during 1163:
Count Hervey of Leon, a most valiant soldier [he had
been earl of Wiltshire for King Stephen until disgraced in 1141], who
had fought many illustrious wars in England and in other places, and
had thereby lost an eye, was taken by treachery together with Guidomar
his son, and they were thrown back into prison at Castelnoec (Nini
castle); but Bishop Haymo of Leon, together with the soldiers and his
people, having taken arms, besieged the castle; to whom Duke Conan
Junior of Brittany, gave assistance and attended in person. The
castle was therefore attacked and taken by force, Count Hervey and his
son being freed from thence. But the Viscount of Fagi, together
with his brother and his son, who had perpetrated that trick, were
imprisoned at Donges (Donglas - a region between Nantes and Vannes),
and forced to perish by hunger and thirst. In the same year there
was a great famine in the same country.
Duke Conan was still in royal favour and was third witness of the
constitutions of Clarendon of January 1164 as Count Conan of
Brittany. This was the only time he witnessed a royal act.
Around the same time Duke Conan of Brittany and earl of Richmond made a
charter at Wilton, some 5 miles west of Clarendon, with several of his
colleagues from Clarendon, namely Earl Reginald of Cornwall (d.1175),
Earl Robert of Leicester (d.1168) and Bishop Bartholomew Bohun of
Exeter (d.1184).
In 1165 Count Eudes, Duke Conan's step father, was obviously also in
royal favour for he made a new fine, probably scutage for the Welsh
army, as he owed and paid 45s 9d this year under Devon as Count Eudes
of Brittany. Again this points to some form of power sharing in
Brittany. The same year in Yorkshire, Count Conan was recorded as
owing £227 10s, of which he paid £52 6s 8d, leaving a debt
of £175 3s 4d. Two years later in 1167 the king pardoned
the remainder. The same year his sokemen in Lincolnshire were
assessed for 100m (£66 13s 4d) as a gift of which they paid 50m
(£33 6s 8d) immediately and the remainder in 1166.
Conan would seem to have been in Brittany at this time, for that year a
royal army of Normans and Bretons under King Henry's constable, Richard
Hommet, at the king's bidding, took Combourg castle from Ralph Fougeres
(d.1194), who was holding it after the death of John Dol
(d.1162). The next year in 1165, it had been reported to the king
that the nobles of Brittany and Maine had been disparaging to Queen
Eleanor while the king campaigned in Wales during the summer.
Consequently in June 1166:
because... the nobles of the county of Maine and the
region of Brittany had obeyed the queen's commands less than they
should, and, as it is said, had bound themselves by an oath to defend
themselves in common if any of them should be injured, the king dealt
with them and their castles at his pleasure; and having collected
troops from almost all his power on this side of the sea, the king
besieged Fougeres castle, took it and destroyed it to the ground.
After this, Count Conan of Brittany and Richmond, granted the king the
marriage of his daughter Constance for the king's son, Geoffrey, with
the whole duchy of Brittany except for the county of Guingamp which had
come to him through his grandfather, Count Stephen. The king
received the homage of nearly all the barons of Brittany at
Thouars. Afterwards he came to Rennes and by taking possession of
that city, the capital of Brittany, he had seisin of the whole duchy.
And, as he had never yet seen either Combourg or Dol
he paid them a passing visit after they come into his hands.
This passage seems conclusive that Duke Conan granted Brittany away in
1166. However, the crucial word in this is that the grant
happened ‘after' the siege of Fougeres. The key is
therefore how long after, as again the passage has obviously been
written in retrospect. Possibly the answer lies in the Annales of
Mont St Michel which states:
King Henry contracted a marriage between Geoffrey
his son and Constance the daughter of Count Conan of Brittany.
Further, we know that Duke Conan was at Rennes this year with his
cousin, Ralph Fougeres (d.1194), the enemy of King Henry II
(1154-89). That year he confirmed the grant of Long Bennington,
Lincolnshire, to Savigny abbey in a charter which informed ‘all
his barons, sheriffs, mayors, justices, ministers, bailiffs and all his
faithful French and English men throughout England of the fact'.
This act was drawn up in the inner chamber next to the keep at Rennes
castle (in thalamo juxta turrim). That Ralph and Conan were
together during this year would suggest that Conan was in opposition to
King Henry. That Duke Conan became the man of Henry II in
Brittany is stated in his charter taking Begard abbey under his
protection as this was done at the petition of his lord and king and
his men. That king must be Henry II.
At September 1166, Count Conan was pardoned 25m (£16 13s 4d) in
Lincolnshire and paid nothing against his Yorkshire debt of £175
3s 4d. He also this year failed to hand in a carta for most of
his lands, although cartae may have been produced for his lands in
Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. Certainly in 1166 and 1168
the sheriffs of these counties entered returns for these knights.
Probably early in the reign of King John (1199-1216), possibly before
the death of Duchess Constance in 1201, a replacement carta was drawn
up. This was titled:
The Knights' fees in Richmondshire for which
scutage must be paid, both of the new and the old feoffment according
to the pipe rolls in the King's Exchequer.
This listed the
following fees, sometimes with where they were based.
|
Old Fees |
|
Lord |
Vill |
Fees |
|
Ralph Fitz Ralph (d.1177+) |
Middleham |
6 |
| Roald Constable (d.1158/1247) |
|
6½ |
|
Rollos who held of him |
|
6½ |
|
Alan Fitz Brian (d.1188) |
Bedale |
4 and a sixth |
|
Ralph Montchensey (d.bef.1185) |
the 2 Cowtons [North and East] |
1 |
|
Ralph Fitz Henry (d.1243) |
Ravensworth |
3 and a sixth |
|
Robert Musters (bef.1189) |
Kirklington/Kilvington (Kittelington) |
3 |
|
Conan Fitz Ellis (d.1218) |
Magna Cowton |
1 |
|
Conan Fitz Ellis (d.1218) |
Ainderby Myers & Holtby |
2 |
|
Conan Fitz Ellis (d.1218) |
Hutton Hang and East [Patrick] Brompton |
½ |
| camerarii |
Kilwardby, Askham, Appleby and Fencote |
2½ |
|
Hugh Fitz Gernagan (d.bef.1203) |
West Tanfield |
2½ |
| Steward |
Thornton |
2 |
|
Torphin Fitz Robert |
Manfield |
1 |
|
Picot Lascelles (d.1179) |
Scruton |
2½ |
|
Pincernae's |
Barden and in Cambridgeshire |
1 |
|
Thomas Burgh (d.1199) |
Appleton [Wiske?] and Hackforth |
2 |
|
Mowbray fee |
Masham (Massamschine) |
1 |
|
Henry Sutton |
Warlaby |
1 |
|
Robert Fitz Tenay |
Eryom |
1 |
|
fee of Munby |
Wycliffe |
1 |
|
William de la Mare |
Yafforth |
1 |
| Hervey |
Coverham and Ainderby |
1 |
| Charles |
Brignall |
1 |
|
Conan Aske |
Aske Hall and Marrick |
1 |
|
Alexander Fitz Nigel |
Wensley |
1 |
|
Alan Fitz Emeri |
Ainderby Viconte, Sutton [Grange or Howgrave?] and Sinderby |
2/3 |
|
Robert Tattershall |
West Witton |
½ |
|
Joklewini Neirford |
Newton Morell |
1 |
| Theobald Valoignes (d.1209) |
Rokewik |
½ |
|
Geoffrey Scales (Scalariis) |
Berford, Carlton and Stapleton |
¾ |
|
Pain Orbelynger |
Kerkan [Kirkham?] |
¾ |
| Gerneby |
Rousshotton |
4 parts of a fee |
|
Alan Ducis |
Tyngale |
4 parts of a fee |
|
Roger Mateham |
Eggleston |
6 parts of a fee |
|
Alexander Breton |
Colburn |
4 parts of a fee |
| fee of Hoton Longvillers |
|
4 parts of a fee |
|
Gilbert Gant (d.1242) |
Swaledale on both sides of the river |
4 |
|
Total Old Fees |
|
66 |
|
New Fees |
|
William Percy |
Milby and Easby |
½ |
|
Reginald Boterell |
East Witton |
1/3 |
|
Wigan Fitz Cades |
Hartforth |
¼ |
|
Thomas Fitz William |
Middleton |
1/3 |
|
Osbert Fitz Fulk and Odard |
Gilling West |
a sixth |
| Fee of Barningham (Bernyngham) |
|
¼ |
| Fee of Scargill |
|
¼ |
|
Geoffrey Hengham |
Multon [Malton?] |
1/8 |
|
Total New Fees |
|
2½+ |
|
Total Fees |
|
68½+ |
It was also recorded that castle guard was accounted for in money on
the basis of ½m (6s 8d) per fee. The totals there were
given for each 2 month period of service and totalled £20 6s
3¾d. Sixty eight and a half fees multiplied by half a mark
equalled £22 13s 4d against £20 for just 60 fees, so
something had been misrecorded in the table, or there was a dispute
about service owed.
This table was followed by a second return which recorded the castle
guard due from outside Richmondshire. This itself was divided
into 2 with the first portion relating to the area that lay between
‘the Well Stream (Wellestre) and the Norman Sea' and covered
Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Hertfordshire and Essex. The
second portion covered Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and parts of
Yorkshire and both were again divided into 2 monthly sections.
|
During April and May |
| Lord |
Vill |
Fees |
|
Earl Aubrey (d.1194 or 1214) |
Caenby and Aythorpe Roding (Roenges) |
3 |
|
Alan Bassingbourn |
Wimpole, Cambridgeshire of Earl Aubrey |
1 |
|
Theobald Valoignes (d.1209) |
Ditton [Green], Cambridgeshire |
3 |
|
John Fitz William |
Stanton |
1 |
|
Robert Novill |
Toftes or near |
1 |
| Simon |
Brunne or near |
1 |
|
Bertram Verdun (d.1192 or 1217+) |
in Hertfordshire |
½ divided as below |
|
[John Bassingbourne |
Hoddesdon |
a third of the half fee] |
|
[Peter Hormade |
Hormead |
a third of the half fee] |
|
[Walter Fitz Bonde |
Reed |
a third of the half fee] |
|
June and July from Norfolk |
| Ralph Fitz Robert (Middleham, d.1252) |
Hethersett (Hedersete) |
6 |
|
Robert Fitz Roger |
Lins [Lyng?] |
1 |
|
Geoffrey Nerford |
Narford |
½ |
|
Robert Holm |
Mileham and Swaffham |
1 |
|
William Pincerna held of Robert Fitz Robert |
Rougham (Ruhham) |
|
|
William Montchesney |
Foxley and Claie [Cley next the Sea?] |
2 |
|
Robert Tattersall for which Hamo Fitz Burd answers |
Horningtoft |
1 |
|
Ralph Lenham |
Redhalle and Fring (Rninges) |
4 fees less 20d |
|
August and September in Cambridgeshire |
|
Robert Hastings of Earl Aubrey |
Lenwade (Lanwad) |
1 |
|
Ralph Rameis |
Burwell |
1 |
|
Gunnar Fitz Warner |
Wiere |
1 |
| Thomas Bure |
Bury |
2 |
|
Roger Fitz Richard |
Weston |
¼ |
|
Theobald Valoignes (d.1209) in Norfolk |
Harling (Hielinge) |
1 |
|
October and November in Essex |
|
Richard Ispania of Earl Aubrey |
Finchingfield and appurtenances |
3 less 2s |
|
Robert Furnels |
Bereham and Harling in Cambridgeshire |
7 |
|
The Chamberlain's Fee |
|
6 as divided below |
|
Robert Vavasour |
Melketon |
1 |
|
Hugh Craweden |
Swaffham |
1 |
|
Everard Francis |
Ballingham and Swaffham |
2 |
|
William Fitz Aliz |
Oxecroft |
1 |
|
Luke Banes |
[one fee divided as] |
¼ |
|
[Fulk Fitz Theobald |
|
18d] |
|
[Henry Fitz Hervey |
|
18d] |
|
[Roger Sleeveless |
|
18d] |
|
[Lady Avice |
|
18d] |
|
[Walter Cormeilles |
Great Wilbraham (Wilburham) and Wendy |
18d] |
|
Lady Agnes Blund |
Whaddon |
½ |
|
All Saints Term (1 November) |
|
Philip Cheshunt |
Cheshunt |
¼ |
|
St Andrew's Term (30 November) in Suffolk |
|
Earl Roger |
Saham ad stagnum |
2 |
|
Geoffrey Bromfield |
[Bramford?] Bromfield and appurtenances |
5 |
|
Geoffrey Bromfield |
Nettlestead (Netlestede) |
2 |
|
Robert Quaremel |
Bures (Bure) and Blakenham |
1 |
|
Norman Pesehale |
Westerfield |
¼ |
|
Simon Tunderle of Earl Aubrey |
Dodnash (Dodenes), Hintlesham (Hintesham) and Duston |
1 |
|
Theobald Valoignes (d.1209) |
Parham and appurtenances |
5½ |
|
William Gikel of Earl Aubrey |
Norton [Heath?] in Essex |
1 |
| of fee of Earl Aubrey in Cambridgeshire |
Wickam Market |
3 |
|
[Walter de la Hay |
Wicham |
1½] |
|
[Walter Russel |
Wicham |
1½] |
|
Simon le Bret and John Lanvalein |
Great Abington |
1 |
|
Purification Term (2 February) |
|
Godwin Nerford |
Narford, Chediston (Sidesterne) and Westerfield |
1½ |
|
Alan Benington |
of Chamberlain in Holland |
1 |
| Ralph Fitz Stephen |
Skeffling (Scefning) in Holland |
½ |
|
Brain Fitz Alan (in June) |
Bicker (Bicre) in Holland |
1 |
|
Roger Lascelles in October and November |
Fulstow,
Aylesby and Swallow in Lincolnshire |
2½ |
|
Osbern Fitz Neal |
Fulbeck, Leadenham, Stokes and Herkerby and appurtenances in Lincolnshire |
3 |
|
Robert Sutton |
Sutton and appurtenances in Nottinghamshire |
3 |
|
Hugh Wigetoft as heir of Grip |
Wigtoft, Reddie and Kirkton |
3 |
| William Grenesbi |
5 parts in Grainsby and the rest in
Little Hutton in Wycliffe (Ruhoton) in Richmondshire |
1 |
|
Roger Trehanton |
Lee and Burton by Trent |
2 |
|
Simon Horbelinge |
Horbling |
¾ |
|
February and March |
|
Conan Fitz Ellis |
Holbeach, Welton le Wold (Welleton) and Rilvingholm |
2½ |
|
Eudo Mumby |
Mumby and soke |
4 |
|
Ralph Lamara |
Cadney (Kadeneia) and Kelsey (Kelleseia) |
3 |
|
Joscelin Noville |
Rigsby (Riggesbi) |
1 |
|
Rolleston |
1 |
|
April and May |
|
Thomas Muleton |
Skirbeck (Scirebec) |
1 |
|
Simon Chanci |
Swinhope (Suinhop) |
1 |
| Alan Creun, the son of Grimketel, the son of Sired and the son of
Toli |
Benington and Birk...., Broughton House
(Brochton) and Gelston (Geveleston) by Leadenham in
Holland |
2 |
|
Lisiard Musters |
Chinston |
1 |
|
Wr.... |
|
1 |
|
Catebi |
1 |
It is odd that Duke Conan is not mentioned at all in 1167 when Henry II
campaigned through Brittany at the end of August to attack Viscount
Hervey of Leon (d.1168) and his son Guidomar, who were causing problems
during the war between King Henry and King Louis. After Hervey's
death, his son, Guidomar, soon joined the rebels fighting against Henry
II. Duke Eudes, Conan's step father, was also back in the field
with Roland Dinan (d.1186) in opposition to the king. Peace was
subsequently made around the beginning of October 1167 with Henry
retaining half of Dinan and Roland the other half. Noticeably
missing from the short list of combatants in these campaigns is Earl
Conan of Richmond. All that is recorded of him this year is that at Michaelmas 1167, the
sheriff of Yorkshire accounted for ½m (6s 8d) paid from Count
Conan's vill of Donington, Lincolnshire.
Diceto dates the following event to 1168:
Since kings ceased to preside over Brittany, 2
counts began to rule in their places. But since 'all impatient
power' will always be 'consorted', they often afflicted themselves with
various dissensions. Conan at last obtained both the counties by
hereditary right, and, as fate would grant, he left an heiress by the
sister of the king of the Scots. Then the king of the English
gave her to his son Geoffrey to wed, and being anxious to establish
peace here and there throughout Brittany, he won over the clergy of
that land and the people.
Diceto was a contemporary of events he recorded, so we must presume
that this is what happened. However, once more this precis is
obviously written in hindsight and covered many years, not just the
year 1168. As Conan had a legitimate son, William, this agreement
seems less than honest on the part of the king and was obviously an act
of political power. Certainly many nobles accused Henry II of
coveting their properties.
Duke Conan was with Henry II on 24 March 1168 when he witnessed a royal
charter at Angers as Count Conan of Brittany. Soon after this,
probably in May 1168, King Henry marched all the way through Brittany
taking Josselin and Auray (Abrahi) castles north of Vannes.
Before the truce [with King Louis] was given, the
king of the English had admonished Viscount Eudes of Porhoet, who had
hitherto been called by the name of the northern count and to whom he
had contributed so much in goods that he should come to his service and
assistance which he himself refused, while certain others of the
Bretons confederated with him, namely Oliver, the son of Oliver Dinan
and Roland, his cousin. And so the king, having not undeservedly
attacked them in anger, beginning at the head, that is, with Eudes,
ravaged and burned their land, first of all destroying the castle of
Josselin (Lucenni), which was the most important he had. He [the
king] also seized the county of Baud (Boareth), the capital of which is
the city of the Vannes (Venetians), which the king took into his own
hand, and whose port Julius Caesar praises with wonderful emphasis in
the book he wrote about the Gallic war. He also took half of
Gernew/Cornouaille (Cornubiae) from him. He also besieged the
castle of Auray (Abrai), took it and fortified it. Eudon's
country having been laid waste and reduced to his will, [the king]
approaching the land of the Dinans, fortified the castle of Hede
(Heeda), which had been restored to him by Geoffrey Montfort, and
sacked Tinteniac (Turrinia). Then Becherel, the strongest
garrison of Roland Dinan, he besieged for several days with machines,
capturing and fortifying it. This truly was the castle in which
Roland most trusted, because it was by nature and [man] the most
fortified... After having delivered up the land of Roland to
plundering and burning about the River Rance (Rece), he did the same to
the further ones. For, passing by the river, descending through
Behum, and having some difficulty, he spared the monks of Lehon
(Leumense), but going round Dinan, he destroyed some things, and left
others untouched. He did the same in the country of Alesten.
Quite clearly the king invaded Brittany from the southeast via Nantes
and marched along the southern side of the peninsula, possibly as far
as Quimper, before returning and devastating the northeast of the
duchy, north of Rennes. Torigny notes this war in much less
detail, having King Henry making war on Eudes together with Oliver and
Roland Dinan by storming their castles at Becherel (Becherelli) on 24
June 1168, as well as the castles of Tinteniac (Tintiniac/Tintigny),
Hede (Hedde) and Josselin and finally taking Lehon on 25 June.
It seems possible that some of Duke Conan's lands may have been in
royal hands during 1168. In the pipe roll of that year the
sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk rendered and paid £6 9s 1d from
the knights of Count Conan who remained in his bail. Further, the
sheriff of Yorkshire accounted for the fees of the barons and knights
who held their fees of the king in chief by their charters of tenement
which had been sent to the king. He therefore accounted for the
payments made from various fees, namely 20m (£13 6s 8d) from the
earl of Aumale, 50m (£33 6s 8d) from Count Conan, 2m (£1 6s
8d) from the fee of Adam Bruce which he held from the earl of Chester
and 25m (£16 13s 4d) for his fees held directly from the Crown,
10m (£6 13s 4d) from William Trussbut, 5m (£3 6s 8d) from
Robert Bruce, 5½m (£3 13s 4d) from Joscelin Luvain and 1m
(13s 4d) from William Filger. Finally, in Cambridgeshire Count
Conan's knights in the sheriff's bail were charged and paid £11
6s 1d as an aid for the marriage of Matilda, the king's daughter.
The next year, in the general peace of 1169, the young Duke Geoffrey
(d.1186) paid his homage to his elder brother, Henry Fitz Henry
(d.1183), for the duchy of Brittany at the urging of their father,
Henry II. Then the Young Henry paid homage to the king of France
for the earldom of Anjou and the duchy of Brittany. Later in May
1169 the barons of the duchy, presumably including Count Conan of
Guingamp and Richmond, paid homage to Geoffrey. This strongly
indicates that Count Conan was no longer a force to be reckoned with,
nor was he apparently duke any more. Further, King Louis agreed
to return the hostages he had taken from Brittany and Poitou who had
been sent to him to confirm their allegiance. Possibly Conan was
one who sent hostages and this explains Henry's treatment of him.
Around the same time a retrospective account states that:
[King Henry] took the only daughter and young
heiress of the same Duke Conan and married her to Geoffrey (d.1186),
his infant son. This Geoffrey then became duke and prince of
Brittany in right of Constance after the death of Conan Fitz Bertha
[his death occurred in February 1171]... This Conan, when he had
been accepted as duke in Brittany, as he was of great nobility and
power, invaded the viscounty of Leon under Guidomar as he was against
him in rebellion [1168]; but after he had captured and slain a great
many Leonians and also [captured] Guidomar, Conan obtained the victory
and retained the greater part of that inheritance for himself and his
successors as dukes of Brittany and so he united them with his duchy;
which union, however, was only completed after some interval of time
and then between the successors of the aforesaid Duke Conan and
Viscount Guidomar.
Another retrospective account states simply that King Henry then:
assigned his portion of Brittany, together with the
Lady Constance, the only daughter and heiress of Duke Conan, to
Geoffrey his son, for him and his heirs as dukes of Brittany.
A further retrospective chronicle has the following entry under 1169;
Conan the younger, earl of Brittany, the son of Earl
Alan, and whose mother Bertha, was the countess: he [Earl Alan or
Conan?] died in Brittany, she in England. Whereupon King Henry of
England subdued the whole of Brittany and gave it to his son Geoffrey
to govern, by the instruction of William Fitz Hamon.
This follows on the report of the death of Thomas Becket on 28 November
1169 - 4th calends of December 1169. The actual date of Bekcet's
death was 29 December 1170, viz. 4th calends January 1170/1. In
the chronicle this entry is followed by the coronation of King Henry
III on 14 June 1170 which is dated to the Sunday before the feast of St
John the Baptist [24 June], viz. 22 June 1169. If the correct
year had been given the day and month would have been correct.
Quite obviously the dating of this compilation is totally haywire and
cannot be used with any certainty for Conan's relinquishing of power in
Brittany. It is therefore best to use Torigny's account which
places Conan's removal from the duchy of Brittany, other than Guingamp,
in 1166. That said there is a charter that was possibly made
after 1166 when Conan confirmed the gifts of Pluhihan and Plougasnon to
St George's abbey at Guingamp. In this he styled himself duke of
Brittany and earl of Richmond. Amongst the witnesses to this were
his wife, Countess Margaret (d.1201) and her sister, Constance, as well
as William Fitz Hamon. Before his appointment to Brittany William
had been a curial of Queen Eleanor (d.1203). He had also been
appointed supervisor of Nantes by King Henry II around 1166.
Despite all this rather circumstantial evidence, Conan seems to have
been still recognised as duke of Brittany and to have thought of
himself as such. Certainly in 1170 he made a confirmation of a
predecessor's gift of Treverner to Mont St Michael as Duke Conan of
Brittany and earl of Richmond. He also made a grant with the same
titles conceding the tithe of his mills in Richmond to the priory
there. For some reason this grant is titled that Conan granted
the tithes of his mills ‘of the castle' (castelli). However
the text of the charter does not mention Richmond or any other castle
and later evidence shows that the mills were the church mill and the
castle mill, both set in the River Swale. The matter of Conan's
title towards the end of his life is apparently confirmed by a charter
he made as Duke Conan of Brittany and earl of Richmond when he founded
the abbey of St Maurice, Clohars-Carnoet in the period 1167-71.
This abbey lay in Finistere, some 6 miles northwest of Loirient, in an
area that would have been without Conan's control if he merely held
Guingamp. As such Conan appears to have been exercising his
authority throughout Brittany, even if he now recognised Henry II as
his king in the duchy. Another charter of 1170 confirmed the gift
of Treguier (Trevener) to Mont St Michael. This has been regarded
as spurious as it was made by the duke as a duke when he had
‘resigned' his duchy in 1166. Obviously this view does not
seem to hold water.
As has been noticed, Duke Conan is not mentioned in Henry II' s
successful Nantes campaign against Count Eudes after Christmas 1169
which forced his surrender early in 1170. However, one chronicle
puts this campaign down to Conan, stating:
The men of Leon were driven into flight and captured in their thousands by Conan.
While the next year is the simple statement:
Duke Conan of Brittany and earl of Richmond died on 20 February 1171.
The implication of this is that Conan died of a campaign related wound
or disease - a not uncommon occurrence in the Middle Ages.
Certainly when he died on 20 February 1171, he was recorded in one
chronicle as Conanus Dux Britanniæ et Comes Richemundiæ,
while Torginy calls him Conanus dux Brittanniae and goes on to say:
that all Brittany with the county of Ipswich
(Gippewis) and the honour of Richmond with the daughter of Count Conan,
who had married Geoffrey the king's son, were transferred to him under
the lordship of King Henry.
Further a charter copied in 1317 was made by Duke Conan of Brittany and
earl of Richmond at York to St Marys. Unfortunately this is
undated but it was made in an extensive form. In this it was
claimed that it confirmed the previous gifts to St Mary's of earls Alan
Rufus and Alan Niger who were uncles of Conan's father, Alan and
brothers of his grandfather, Count Stephen. These gifts consisted
of the church of Richmond with the castle chapel, the cell of St
Martin, the churches of Catterick (Cateriz), Bolton-on-Swale (Boletona), Gilling and
Forest with the chapels of Cutuma and Argum, then the churches of
Ravensworth, Crofth, Patrick Brompton (Patrichbruntuna), Torentiana and Hauxwell (Hocheswella) as well
as land in Stoctuna, Danby, Langthorne (Langhetorn), Finghall (Finagala), Risewyth,
Brimmingstona with its church, the churches of Hornby and Middeltona
besides the tithes of his lordship or his men of his castlery of
Richmond except for a part of the churches. In Holland he gave
his church of St Botulph and land in Skirbeck with the cemetery.
He also gave land in Cambridgeshire at Haslingfield (Heselingafeld) and his tithes of
Bassingbourn, Great Abington (Abbittona), Linton and Wicre, while in Norfolk he gave the
tithes of King's Lyn (lins) and the cell of Romburgh which his father
had given. This charter nicely lays out the scope of this lands
and again shows that at some point he claimed to be and was probably
accepted by many as the duke of Brittany.
It therefore seems quite clear that Conan was allowed to keep his
title, duke of Brittany, until his death and that it was only then
that, as it is put in the chronicle of Ruyensis Coenobii:
King Henry of the English subjugated Brittany to his lordship.
Meanwhile, Conan's death, not unnaturally led to war.
[sa.1170] The whole of Brittany was subdued by King
Henry of the English: the castle of Josselin was burned by the
aforesaid king, sacked and utterly thrown down, with its inhabitants
going into exile; and Duke Eudes of Brittany had his leadership removed
and was utterly defeated.
King Henry seems not to have played any part in this campaign, although
he was in Normandy to confer with Becket and the French king. In
its aftermath he was recorded as spending Christmas at Nantes with his
son, Geoffrey and apparently remained there until he moved to Normandy
by 2 February. About a fortnight later Duke Conan died on 20
February.
Meanwhile, Count Eudes managed to survive a while in the duchy for it
was only recorded in 1172 that he was forced into exile in France by
Henry II. This all suggests that Duke Conan had retained the
duchy and not just Guingamp in 1166 and the bulk of the accounts which
mention Conan's surrender that year are simply written in retrospect
and are dating what happened after Conan's death in 1171 to 1166.
They knew that Geoffrey was to inherit Brittany and so simply
kaleidoscoped the story of many years into a bold statement of
retrospective fact. Perhaps the entire story is best summed up by
another Breton chronicle. This records pretty much the whole
story and so is printed in abstract here.
1148, Duke Conan of Brittany died; at which Hoel,
who Conan had denied to be his own son, occupied the land with the
support of the people, resisting and defeating Viscount Eudes of
Porhoet, who was wed to Hoel's sister, Bertha and had succeeded to the
name of count, but did nothing good.
1154, On the night of 17 December (St Lazarus),
Count Hoel came sailing into the Rance (Reseium) with his
knights, where his knights, namely Oliver Fitz Pain, Engressus and
Borrigan were killed or captured.
1156, Forced by the inaction of Hoel, the people of
Nantes received as their count Geoffrey, the son of the count of Anjou,
a clever and active young man, brother of King Henry of England.
1156/7, The death of Alan Dinan, who was
killed. Count Hoel lost his land around the feast of the epiphany
[6 Jan]. In the same year before Lent [bef.20 Feb 1157], Count
Geoffrey Martel was received by the people of Nantes and he became
their count.
1158, Count Geoffrey died [26 Jul 1158] and Conan
Fitz Bertha was accepted as count, but King Henry of England wanted to
have the citizenship of Nantes. Afterwards he took Conan's own
little daughter as wife for his infant brother [son] Geoffrey, with the
whole county of Brittany.
1168, King Henry of England took Becherel castle on
the day of the birth of the blessed John the Baptist [24 June], and on
the following day burned the cemetery of Lehon with the churches and
houses of the monks, but at the request of William Fitz Hamon, [the
monks] were dismissed in peace.
1169, The castle of Leon was stormed. An
agreement was made between the king of England and Roland Dinan.
Count Hervey of Leon (d.1168), gave to St Matthew an island called
Beniguer...
1170, Conan met Guidomar in Leon. The host of
Leon was captured or slain with Conan obtaining the victory. King
Henry of England laid down his crown, and gave it to his son Henry [14
June 1170]...
Another version of the chronicle has:
Conan Fitz Bertha, when he had been accepted as duke
by the Bretons, met with Viscount Guidomar of the Leonians, who had
rebelled against him in Leon; but Duke Conan killed and captured a
great multitude of the Leonians, and also the aforesaid Guidomar,
obtaining the victory, and so he retained the greater part of the
inheritance of the same count.
1171, Archbishop Thomas of Canterbury was killed by
order of the king [29 December 1170], while Bishop Haimo of Leon was killed
by his relatives. Duke Conan Junior of Brittany died [20 February
1171]. In this year the whole of Brittany was subdued by King
Henry of the English. Josselin castle was burned and the
inhabitants made exiles. And Duke Eudes of Brittany was forced
from the duchy and was driven completely into exile in France.
1172, An agreement had been made that Geoffrey, who
was still a boy.... would have Constance as his wife, together with the
county of Nantes and the whole duchy, on the death of Conan her father
and Eudes, her grandfather. But nevertheless, after the death of
Conan the younger, he [Henry] expelled Eudes the elder, and in place of
his son, Henry assigned to himself the duchy.
1174, Duke Eudes of Brittany returned from exile and
began to reconquer his land; and for two consecutive years there was
famine in Brittany and mortality throughout the country.
This chronicle tells a credible story. Namely that after 1166,
King Henry II and Duke Conan were acting in unity in Brittany and that
the agreement made between them was that Conan's daughter would inherit
Brittany after the death of Conan himself AND his step father, Count
Eudes. Further there was a precedent to this as Conan's mother
had inherited Brittany in place of and in opposition to her brother,
Count Hoel. However, King Henry broke that agreement on Conan's
death when Count Eudes rebelled, probably against the agreement that
Conan and Henry had made. Therefore Conan's campaigning in
Brittany during 1170 was almost certainly made with Henry II's backing
and Conan's death after it was probably a shock to all, Henry II moving
to secure ‘his' inheritance for his young son. It should
also be noted that Henry's rule was not objected to by many of the
Bretons. A charter from 1172 states:
The sound of the calamity and misery with which
Brittany had long been afflicted and oppressed by tyrants, was heard
throughout all the land, which at last the compassionate and merciful
Lord, in the time of Henry the most pious king of the English, through
the same audience and council, visited his province most
graciously. Among the other good things which he brought to the
people of Brittany, he decreed that the Church of St Maria de Aquilone
(de Loc-Maria)... should be totally free and quiet from all
oppression. This act was made at Le Mans in 1172.
The unexpected death of Conan and Henry II's absorption of Brittany
was, however, not universally popular. Conan's widow may not to
have agreed with the loss of the duchy and may have tried to oppose
King Henry, for in 1174 it was recorded under Hampshire that it cost
£4 7s to rent 2 boats to carry the countess of Brittany and royal
prisoners across the sea to Portchester. She subsequently
married Humphrey Bohun around 1175 and after bearing him 3 children
married William Lindsay (d.c.1200) after Humphrey's death in
1182. She died in 1201 in Scotland. Count Eudes and other
barons also opposed Henry II as the wars subsequent to Conan's death
prove, but they were ineffective in stopping the absorption of Brittany
into the king's domains.
The fact of Count Conan's death duly appeared in the pipe roll for
September 1171 after the Cambridgeshire roll. Here it was noted
that the honour of Count Conan was now in the hands of Ranulf Glanville
(d.1190) and that by the view of the said Reiner his serjeant,
£62 4s 5d had been raised from the lordship, but that nothing had
been rendered to the Exchequer from his account. Ranulf proceeded
to administer the honour until 1183. At Michaelmas 1172, he
entered his first account for £6 8s 2d from the old farm of the
honour for last year. He then gets down to the main business of
the honour, accounting for £430 11s 2d for the year for the farm
of those manors owing Drengeld and the third penny of Ipswich, paying
£329 12s 9d of this into the Exchequer. The rest of the
money had been spent on expenses, namely alms for Richmond hospital for
the infirm consisting of 10s for 5 loads of grain and 4s for the nuns
of Richmond. Tithes for the monks of Begard amounted to £4
11s 4d from the tithes of Carrucar' of the lord, while York (Euerwic)
monastery had received 20s through the tithes of Richmond mill.
The archbishop of Canterbury paid 100s for his fee in the third penny
of Ipswich and was quit by the king's writ. Countess
Margaret of Brittany accounted for £30 9s 10d for the money which
had been taken from her dower. Interestingly the local winemaker
had been paid 105s, while the work on the houses of Richmond and the
tower had cost £51 11s 3d by the king's writ and the view of
Osbert, William Fitz Eddred, Aldulf Fitz Peter, Madiou and Peter Fitz
Ailrick. There then followed the rest of the account for the
shire, the scutage of the knights of the honour for the Irish army
coming to £176 12s 1d [presumably for 176 and 3 fifths of a
knight's fee], but this had not been returned in the account, because
the sheriff had not yet been able to find the number of the knights in
the same honour. It was presumably at this time the fees owing
ward at Richmond were recorded for Henry II.
In 1173 war came to the north of England during the Young King's War of
1173-74. Consequently the clerks of the Exchequer entered into
their Yorkshire roll under the title:
The Honour of Count Conan, due to the war Ranulf
Glanville does not make a return this year for the farm of this honour
nor the fair of Holland nor the prerequisites.
On 22 July 1174, the battle of Alnwick was fought which resulted in the
capture of King William I of Scotland (1165-1214). After his
capture he was taken south to Newcastle and then to Richmond where he
was kept in chains.
The value of the honour of Richmond is really brought home in 1174 when
Ranulf Granville (d.1190) accounted for an income of £865 6s 1d
for the farm of the manors and the service of Drengeld and the third
penny of Ipswich for this year and last. However by the time he
had paid for the running of the honour during the Young King's War he
was only able to send £187 13s 4d to the treasury. Among
the costs was £44 16s 6d spent on repairing Bowes castle and
£30 given to Alan Rohan (d.1195) in Swavesey (Suauesheda,
Cambridgeshire) by the king. Alan was the brother in law of Duke
Conan (d.1171) and had witnessed one of the duke's charters. The
farm of Cheshunt similarly had been granted to Earl William Mandeville
(d.1189).
The subsequent years when the honour was in the king's hands were
rather similar, with Ranulf Glanville giving the returns. In 1175
he made a payment to the Jews of Norwich for £31 17s 4d for the
manor of Costessy (Costiseia, Norfolk) which appears to have been
mortgaged to them for the debts of Countess Bertha. He also spent
£30 6s on the works of the castle and houses of Richmond.
There then followed a long list of payments made for the honour,
including £918 10s 1d spent on soldiers and serjeants, knights
and foot at numerous times during the war. Interestingly, there
was also a stud at Richmond, for which Ranulf accounted for £6
17s 1d for the 28 colts sold from there. Normal accounts were
submitted in 1176 and 1177, but in 1178 the king began utilising the
honour to pay for various projects of his which involved timbers being
sent southwards and money spent on such projects are work on the Tower
of London and in 1180 various churches and Bowes castle.
In the meantime, the young Duke Geoffrey (d.1186) and others concerned
with Richmond castle, had been active in Brittany after 1179.
During the Young King's war of 1173-74, Earl Hugh of Chester (d.1181),
had espoused the cause of the younger Henry and had bound himself to
Ralph Fougeres (d.1194). However, their rebellion was rapidly
crushed, the rebels surrendering at Dol on 26 August 1173. As a
consequence, King Henry regained possession of all the rebels had
taken, namely Vannes, Ploermel, Auray and the moiety of Cornouaile, as
well as Dol and the surrounding lands in the northeast of the
duchy. At the age of 19 in 1177, the young Duke Geoffrey (d.1186)
was granted the revenue of £44 from the Richmond manor of
Cheshunt in Hertfordshire. He seems to have begun the running of
the duchy when he was 21 in 1179. Certainly at some point in the
period 1173-80, he intervened as Duke Geoffrey of Brittany and earl of
Richmond in a dispute concerning the abbey of Pont-Pilard in
Brittany. Richmond, however, remained administered by Ranulf
Glanville until 1183, when Geoffrey would have been 24.
Entered in an Occitanian chronicle under the year 1181 comes an odd
summary of events in Brittany discussing the antagonism between Count
Richard of Poitou (d.1199) and his mother, Queen Eleanor (d.1203),
whereby their family enmity:
turned into a kind of friendship. The king
[Henry II] gave to Geoffrey his son (d.1186), Constance (d.1201), the
only daughter of Conan (d.1171); she was born from Margaret (d.1201),
the sister of the king of Scotland [William the Lion, 1165-1214]. Another sister of Conan [Constance] married Alan
Rohan (Helenus de Roem). Their daughter [Margaret] was married to
Hervey Leon (d.1203), the son of Guidomar.
This is followed by an odd series of statements relevant to what went
before and obviously written in retrospect. The chronicler states:
This Alan Fitz Stephen (Helenus filius Stephani)
disinherited his 4 elder brothers. He acquired the earldom of
Richmond (Clarismont) in England by his vigorous probity. He
perished by the wickedness of his wife Bertha, whom Count Eudes
(Conanus) of Rennes espoused.
Firstly Alan Fitz Stephen (d.1146) had not been mentioned in this chroncile before and he
is not known to have had 4 elder brothers. His one elder brother,
Geoffrey Boterel (d.1148), did rule in Penthievre. He also had a
younger brother Henry Boterel (d.1183) and at least 3 sisters.
This is further the only source that suggests that his wife murdered
him, as surely it is Bertha (d.bef.1167), the daughter of Duke Conan of
Brittany (d.1148), who later married Count Eudes of Porhoel who is
named his wife and not an otherwise known Conan.
Despite Duke Geoffrey coming of age in 1179, for the next few years
Ranulf Glanville continued to administer ‘The Honour of Conan'
and helped repair various churches and castles for the Crown by sending
money to these various places. In 1182 he also began accounting
for £28 6s 8d allowed to the countess of Brittany in Moulton and
in the forest for her dower. Ranulf also spent another £31
12s 4d in repairing Richmond castle. The next financial year,
1183-84, an extent was recorded of when Conan Aske held the court of
the Wapentakes of Gilling, Halikeld and Hang.
Count Geoffrey of Brittany and his brother, Count Richard of Poitou
(d.1199), landed back in England at Southampton on 2 April 1176 and
then moved to meet their father at Winchester on 3 April.
Geoffrey then witnessed a royal confirmation as Count Geoffrey Fitz Roy
of Brittany. He next appears on Christmas day 1178 at Winchester
when he witnessed his father's charter as the first of the lay
witnesses as ‘Geoffrey my son'. He was last seen in England
a year later in April 1179 and in the pipe roll that September the
custodian of Dover charged the county with 114s for the passage
overseas of Geoffrey the king's son at the king's writ'. In
September 1179 it was also recorded that Geoffrey the king's son had
had £44 from Chesthunt as part of the honour of Conan. It
would seem that Geoffrey then administered Brittany in his own right,
but it was not until 1184 that Ranulf Glanville (d.1190) stepped down
from his post in Richmondshire and the revenues of that honour finally
passed to the 26 year old Duke Geoffrey. This same year there is
a reference to the sea crossing of the nuncios of Count Geoffrey of
Brittany and Stephen Turon and the mayor of Loches and their men
together with some of the king's birds at a cost of 15s. During
the short period of his rule, Geoffrey issued a charter to Easby abbey
as Geoffrey, the son of King Henry, duke of Brittany and earl of
Richmond.
The subsequent history of Richmond and therefore Brittany is succinctly
told by the Latin text of the Genealogy of the Earls of Richmond.
Constance, the daughter of Conan, held the aforesaid
honour, and by Geoffrey, the king's brother [son], had a son named
Arthur, whom King John of England caused to be slain, and Eleanor, who
was imprisoned at Corfe after the death of her brother Arthur.
Afterwards Earl Ranulf of Chester, married her [Constance], who, having
been divorced from him for her adultery and having produced no
children, married a certain Guy Thouars, from whom she had a daughter
named Adelicia, who, after the death of her parents, remained in the
custody of the king of France, which king [Louis IX] gave in marriage
to Sir Peter Mauclerc, his knight, with Brittany. And she
[Constance] died in Brittany, being buried at Begar in 1201.
Meanwhile in 1182, King Henry II had sent his army into Brittany and
stormed Rennes keep, burned it and then rebuilt it. Afterwards
‘the count of Brittany' burned Rennes as well as the abbey and
Becherel castle, the latter being held by Roger Dinan. It was probably
around this time that Duke Geoffrey of Brittany and earl of Richmond
strengthened the walls and ditches of Nantes with the consent of his
wife, Constance. Around the same time Duchess Constance of
Brittany and countess of Richmond, confirmed a grant in memory of the
Young King made by her husband, Duke Geoffrey of Brittany and earl of
Richmond.
At some point, Duke Geoffrey borrowed at least 345m (£230) from
Aaron the Jew in Yorkshire. This debt was still owing in
1199. At the same time it was noted that Countess Bertha, who had
been dead for at least 32 years, also still owed £10. It
was also noted that Countess Constance owed £4 20d for a
scutage taken during 1196 in Yorkshire, which therefore meant that
Richmondshire was under her control in that year. The first
scutage of summer 1199 was also accounted under Yorkshire at 2m
(£1 6s 8d) per fee. This found that the countess owed 280m
(£186 13s 4d) for the 140 knights which Thomas Burc, the onetime
seneschal of Constance, recognised as pertaining to the honour of the
county of Brittany in England. Oddly the sheriff of
Cambridgeshire was also said to be owing 32m (£1 6s 8d) presumably
for 16 knights' fees in Cambridgeshire that September. Possibly
then, these latter fees of Brittany had been seized by the Crown due to
political developments in France. The same year Richard Sutton
paid the king 35m (£23 6s 8d) for having the lands of the
countess of Brittany in Nottinghamshire whose 3 fees were valued at 65s
8d pa.
Duke Geoffrey died, aged just 27, on 19 August 1186. His seal
carried 2 titles. On the obverse was ‘Geoffrey, the son of
King Henry, duke of Brittany' and on the obverse, ‘Geoffrey, the
son of King Henry, earl of Richmond'. On his death King Henry
took control of his lands. Consequently at Michaelmas 1186, the
sheriff of Yorkshire accounted for £13 spent by the view of
Reimund Asketill on work on the king's houses in Richmond castle.
Work continued the next year, when the Yorkshire sheriff accounted for
a further £11 11s spent by the view of Simon Richmond and Odulf
Fitz Reineri on repairing the king's houses in Richmond castle.
The same year the king's men were also mining lead in
Richmondshire. However, no sheriff seems to have been set up
which would suggest that the duchy was held by Constance in dower, even
though the king appears to have controlled some aspects of the honour
through his sheriff of Yorkshire. It was probably around now that
the honour of Richmond was reconstituted under the king's
command. Certainly the return of knight service recorded in the
Red Book of the Exchequer as the honour of Richmond or Brittany (Richemundi vel Britannie) seems to date to this period and not 1211-12
as the compilers' thought.
|
Lord |
Fees |
|
Robert Fitz Ralph (d.1185) |
6 |
|
Alan Constable (d.1201) |
6½ |
|
Richard Rollos (d.1195) |
6½ and a sixth |
|
Alan Fitz Brian (d.1188) |
5 and a sixth |
|
Richard Fitz Hervey |
3 |
|
Lisois Musters (d.1228) |
3 |
|
The heirs of Robert Camera |
2½ |
|
Roger Lascelles |
2½ |
|
Conan Fitz Helias |
2½ |
|
Hugh Fitz Gernagan |
2½ |
|
Wimar Fitz Ralph |
2½ |
|
Torph Fitz Robert |
2 |
|
Thomas Burgh (d.1199) |
2 |
|
Alan Pincerna |
2 |
|
Mossaham of the fee of William Mowbray (d.1224) |
1 and a sixth |
|
Geoffrey Furneaux (Fornellis) |
1 |
|
William de la Mare (d.bef.1199) |
1 |
|
Waslakeby of the fee of Hervey Sutton |
1 |
|
Argu of the fee of Ralph Fitz Teyngi |
1 |
|
Eudes Munby |
1 |
|
The heirs of Hervey Fitz Morin |
1 and a twentieth |
|
Ranulf Fitz Robert Goberton (Gosberescherche) |
1 |
|
Conan Aske |
1 |
|
Wendeslawe of the fee Nigel Fitz Alexander (d.bef.1202) |
1 |
|
Endreby, Sutton and half Senderby of the fee of Alan Fitz Aimery |
2/3 |
|
Neutone Morel of fee of Geudwin Nerford |
½ |
|
Theobald (Tyband) Valognes (d.1209) in Rockwich |
½ |
|
Geoffrey Scalariis in Carleton and Bereford |
½ |
|
Kercham of fee of Pain Horbelinge |
1/3 |
| Stapleton of the fee of Geoffrey Scales |
¼ |
|
Riulf Hotun of the fee of Eudo Grenesby |
¼ |
|
Finegal of the fee of Alan Dulcis |
¼ |
|
Collebrun of the fee of Alexander Briton |
¼ |
|
Eglestone of the fee of Roger Macham |
1/6 |
|
TOTAL |
63 and a sixth and a twentieth |
Certainly some of those mentioned in the returns had died during the
time at the end of the reign of Henry II (1154-89), viz. Robert Fitz
Ralph of Middleham (d.1185), Richard Rollos (d.1195) and Alan Fitz
Brian (d.1188). This surely is a more accurate guide to its age
than 1212. The new survey found that nearly 66 knights held of
the honour of Richmond, but that only 50 knights owed service to the
king. In 1210-12 it was just 50 fees that Earl Ranulf of Chester
(d.1232) and his constable owed when they held the honour between them.
The year after Duke Geoffrey's death, Constance the daughter of Conan,
duchess of Brittany and countess of Richmond, made a confirmation
charter in her own right to St Gildas de Ruis abbey. At the end
of the same year, 1187, King Henry II married Constance to his earl of
Chester, Ranulf (d.1232). The marriage probably took place at
Caen. Presumably Earl Ranulf then held Richmond and Brittany by
right of marriage. A later Chester compilation states the
marriage actually took place in early 1188. This ran:
1188: In the course of the previous year, Earl
Ranulf of Chester was knighted by King Henry of England on 1 January
1188 (the day of the Circumcision of the Lord) at [Caen]. King
Henry of England granted him as wife Constance the widow of [Geoffrey]
his son, the countess of Brittany and daughter of Count Alan [Conan] of
Brittany with all the county of Richmond who Earl Ranulf of Chester
married on the feast of St Werburg the Virgin, that is 3 February,
at....
The marriage did not become a happy one and it is noticeable that in
May 1189, although a married woman, her next charter to St Gildas de
Ruis is made by Constance with the same titles as before and no mention
of her current husband, Ranulf. Instead the grant was made for
the souls of her father, Conan, her husband, Geoffrey and a daughter,
Matilda. Meanwhile, back in England, the king had sold the
custody of Richmond castle with its constableship to Alan Fitz Roald
for the sum of 200m (£133 6s 8d). In the meantime, during
1192, Constance, the daughter of Count Conan, made a grant in Brittany
with the assent and good will of her son, Arthur (d.1203), without any
reference to her current husband, Earl Ranulf (d.1232). In this
she described herself as not only duchess of Brittany, but also
countess of Richmond. The same holds true of her other charters
from 1193 and 1198. It is noticeable that Earl Ranulf acted
similarly, describing himself as duke of Brittany and earl of Chester
and Richmond in his charters, but not mentioning his wife.
In 1190 it was recorded that the daughter of the count of Brittany had
been allocated 9m (£6) for 3 palfreys when she crossed the sea
with the queen. Further, 69s 8d was accounted for the expenses of
William the son of the duke of Saxony and the daughter of Count
Geoffrey of Brittany during the latter part of January 1190, apparently
in Winchester. This does not sound like Countess Constance had
much in the way of liberty at this time. The way she is described
also suggests that there was no love lost between her and her husband,
Earl Ranulf. Some of her estates were certainly in the hands of
Warin Bassingburn at this time, namely Washingborough (Wassingburn),
Fulbeck, Boston (St Botulf), the soke of Holland, Costessy
(Costeseie, Norfolk), Nettlestead (Netlested, Suffolk), the soke of
Ipswich and Cheshunt (Hertfordshire). In Yorkshire the estates of
the countess of Brittany were accounted for £25 scutage which was
partially handed over by the sheriff, while the sheriff of
Cambridgeshire paid all the scutage of the countess in his
county. Similarly it was stated under Lincolnshire that scutage
was paid on the honour of the countess of Brittany by the sheriff as
the lands were in his bail. Quite clearly the honour of Richmond
was in the king's hands at this time.
In 1194 Countess Constance was called to warrant by a tenant who
claimed to have received his land from Count Geoffrey (d.1186) and her
predecessors in Lincolnshire. At the time the honour of Countess
Constance of Brittany was assessed as a massive 140 knights' fees under
Yorkshire. It was similarly assessed under Yorkshire in
1199. Presumably the missing 35 fees were still held by
enfoeffees from the time when King Henry II and the government of King
Richard I were holding the honour. Certainly the sheriffs of
Essex, Hertfordshire and Nottinghamshire were holding some parts of the
honour in 1196. During the latter part of the reign of King John
(namely in 1208, 1209 and 1211), assessments suggest that only 50 of
these fees were within Richmondshire, with Earl Ranulf (d.1232)
recorded as holding 40½, Constable Roald Fitz Alan 6½ and
Henry Fitz Harvey 3 or 3¼.
Sometime between 1196 and 1199, Earl Ranulf of Chester (d.1232)
divorced his wife for adultery. This was after, possibly in the
March of:
the same year [1196] with [?], the countess of
Brittany, Arthur's mother, came by the order of King Richard into
Normandy to speak with him, but Earl Ranulf of Chester, her husband,
came to meet her at Pontorson and took her and shut her up in his
castle at St James of Beuvron; but, when her son Arthur was unable to
release her, he adhered to the king of France and burned the lands of
his uncle the king; so the king of England entered hostilely into
Brittany with a large assembled army and ravaged it.
It would appear to be in April that the king made his demand for the 10
year old Arthur to be placed in his lordship. The Bretons refused
this and Bishop Guenehoc of Vannes took him to King Philip
(1180-1223). Richard's campaign in Brittany had begun by 13 April
and was over by 19 April when the Bretons surrendered. By the
time of Richard's death, Countess Constance's court was fully
operational in Lincolnshire. Presumably this was also true in
Richmondshire, although by Michaelmas 1199 the knights of Richmond
honour in Wiltshire were under royal control. More likely
politics were involved in this as King Richard at this time made peace
with his nephew, Arthur, the son of Constance of Geoffrey (d.1186) and
made him his heir. Presumably Arthur was also given Brittany as
his patrimony. A later compilation noticed:
This Earl Geoffrey had married Constance, the only
daughter of Count Conan, and by her he was count of Brittany. By
her he had a young son, Arthur and one daughter, Eleanor. The
same Constance was afterwards married to Guy, the brother of the
Vicount of Thouars and had one daughter named Mabel, to whom the
inheritance finally returned. And the aforesaid Count Conan was
of the race of the Alans, and the same Alan was of the race of the
ancient kings of Brittany and of the race of the ancient Arthur.
The events were summed up by Matthew Paris some 70+ years later.
At the same time Count Conan Junior of Brittany, as
fate would have it, by the sister of the king of the Scots, left a
daughter by the name of Constance, an heiress; when King Henry of the
English being anxious to establish peace throughout Britain, gave her
as wife to his son Geoffrey and won over to himself the clergy and
people of that land.
The local Chester chronicler commented that in 1199:
Earl Ranulf of Chester was betrothed to wed the
daughter of Ralph Fourgeres, who was named Clementia, forsaking the
countess of Brittany called Constancia.
Similarly Hoveden notes that Guy Thouars married Constance, the mother
of Arthur and relict of Earl Ranulf of Chester (d.1232), as they flew
from King John who had reoccupied Chinon castle in October 1199.
Peace was made a few months later.
23 May 1200. John and Philip meet at Vernon
and Duke Arthur of Brittany came there, and became the man of King John
of England, his uncle, for Brittany and his other lands, with the
consent and will of the king of France; but Arthur, traditionally
belonging to the king of England, remained in the custody of the king
of France.
The implication from this is that Arthur's other lands, ie. Richmond,
were also tacitly agreed by John to belong to him, although in 1200 the
archbishop of Canterbury appeared to be holding 19 fees belonging to
the earldom of Richmond, while the rest of the honour had been in the
hands of King John since September 1199.
Constance did not enjoy her marriage to Guy for long, dying on 2 or 3
September 1201, after founding, as duchess of Brittany and countess of
Richmond, Vileneuve abbey. Presumably Guy then looked after
Brittany for his stepson, Duke Arthur. ‘Constance, the
daughter of Count Conan, duchess of Brittan and countess of Richmond'
made a final charter in 1201 to Villeneuve abbey just south of Nantes,
presumably immediately before her death. She had founded the
abbey the previous year.
In June 1199, Arthur described himself as duke of Brittany and count of
Anjou and Richmond when he made a grant with the consent of his mother,
Constance. The status of Brittany at this time is
uncertain. Between 1199 and 1201, Duke Guy Thouars of Brittany
and earl of Richmond with his Duchess Constance of Brittany and
countess of Richmond, made a grant to Merlai abbey with the assent and
will of the Lord Arthur at Nantes on 5 February. Duke Guy of
Brittany probably made a grant for Constance's soul on her death on 2
or 3 September 1201. On 27 December 1201, King John confirmed Guy
in the farms of the lands of the honour of Richmond from
Argenten. The same year it was recorded that in Richmond in
Yorkshire, Roald Fitz Alan (d.1247) gave £32 10s relief for his
land which he held of the king in chief and that he held 6½
knights fees of the honour of Brittany and not more as it was
said. That King John was taking this fine would show that the honour
was currently in the king's hands. Presumably this fine was made
between the countess' death in September and John granting the farm
over to Guy in December. Certainly at Michaelmas 1202, Roald paid
2 fines to the Crown, the remaining £16 10s relief for the lands
he held of the king in Richmond and £106 1m (13s 4d) for the fine
his father had made for having custody of Richmond castle as contained
in the last pipe roll. In 1206 he was described as Constable
Roald of Richmond castle.
On 27 March 1202, King John summoned the 15 year old Duke Arthur to pay
him liege homage at Argenten during Easter [14 April 1202].
Around this time the ‘count' of Brittany was granted a quittance
of scutage in Yorkshire for 50 knights. Possibly this
‘count' (comes) was Guy Thouars as in 1202 he was allowed to sell his
wood at Richmond on condition that the king received half the
proceeds. Interestingly in the pipe roll this agreement was
recorded as with ‘Guy Thouars, the former count of
Brittany'. Certainly Guy made an agreement with King John
immediately before Arthur's death when the king announced on:
2 April 1203, Know that we have agreed upon a fine
with which our beloved Guy Thouars, formerly count of Brittany, will
deliver from year to year for the honour of Richmond. We have
granted that all the reasonable fines which he will make concerning
marriages, reliefs, homage and wards will be firmly fixed.
Soon after this Duke Arthur, who had been captured by King John's men at Mirebeau
in 1202, disappeared in April 1203, presumed murdered, and Guy rebelled
in consequence. This resulted in Richmondshire being seized by
King John. Certainly on 11 September 1203, the manor of Swaffham
in Norfolk, which used to belong the count of Brittany, was handed over
to the bishop of Norwich. The same day Bowes castle was handed
over to Robert Vipont (d.1228) of Westmorland. On 19 September 1203, the king
gave to Earl Robert of Leicester (d.1204) all the land of Richmondshire
just as the counts of Brittany had it with the forest and knights' fees
except for those that have been committed to Robert Vipont, namely
Richmond castle and that which pertained to the custody of the castle
as well as Bowes castle. However, the earl died on 20 October
1204 and Richmondshire reverted to the Crown, the king ordering Peter
Leon to take custody of the honour of Richmond. The next Spring
on 6 March 1205, King John informed all the knights and tenants of the
honour of Richmond and Richmondshire that he have given to Earl Ranulf
of Chester all the lands and fees with all purtenances and liberties of
the honour of Richmond, just as Count G of Brittany had held in
Richmondshire except for 9½ knights' fees, of which Roald the
constable of Richmond holds 6½ fees and the land which Henry
Fitz Hervey holds... Further, the king would retain in his own
hand all the lands and fees which Count G of Brittany had held of the
honour in England outside of Richmondshire. The Count G of this
statement would appear to be the rebellious Count Guy Thouars (d.1213),
rather than John's brother, Count Geoffrey (d.1186). This command
appears to have divided the honour of Brittany and the honour of
Richmondshire into separate holdings, with the king administering the
honour of Brittany and Earl Ranulf the honour of Richmond. Thus
Peter Leon was still holding a fee of the honour of Richmond for the
king in Hampshire on 6 December 1205 and in Norfolk and Cambridgeshire
in 1208. Similarly the king was still holding Hunmanby near
Scarborough which pertained to the honour of Richmond on 18 June 1215.
By 1205 at the latest, Earl Ranulf of Chester was holding court at
Richmond itself when one of his Yorkshire tenants paid the king to stop
Ranulf's court of Richmond in hearing a case against him. In 1206
the part of the honour of Richmond which lay in Nottinghamshire and was
held by Earl Ranulf of Chester, was recording as owing the sixth
scutage, although the amount of the fine was not specified.
However, the Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire parts of the honour paid
the fifth scutage direct to the sheriff, which indicates that this part
of the barony was in the king's hands. Ralph Fitz Robert
(d.1252), the lord of Middleham castle, in 1209 noted that the honour
of Brittany was now claimed by heirs, who obviously weren't in
possession. That Earl Ranulf was in possession during this period
is confirmed by him treating the lordship as his own and making
confirmation grants, like his one to Fountains abbey before 1212, by
which time one of the witnesses, Henry Fitz Hervey of Ravensworth was
dead.
With Richmond and the English lands of the honour of Brittany held by
the Crown and its dependents in England, Guy Thouars remained a
claimant to these lost lands. In 1205 Guy was at Nantes, where,
as count of Brittany in his own right, he made a grant to Villeneuve
abbey which was witnessed by King Philip of France (1180-1223).
From now on Guy only appeared as count of Brittany, not duke or even
earl of Richmond, which was obviously now beyond his grasp, although at
some point before 1207 he had still described himself as duke of
Brittany and earl of Richmond. By and certainly after 1207, he
seems merely to have been described as count of Brittany and a vassal
of King Philip (d.1223).
Richmond castle, under Earl Ranulf of Chester (d.1232), remained in the
direct hands of its constable, Roald Fitz Alan (d.1247). In 1207
he was recorded as owing 200m (£133 6s 8d) and 4 palfreys:
for being quit of the amercement because he refused
to swear in 13 [as a jury?] and for having Richmond castle, from which
he was disseisined on the same occasion, and for having the king's open
letters about giving justice to the knights who should guard Richmond
castle to make them do the guarding.
In 1209 it was recorded that he owed £44 1m (13s 4d) for the
sixth scutage in Yorkshire, no doubt for his holding of Richmond castle
and its fees. Under the same heading it was also recorded that
Earl Ranulf of Chester owed £17½m (6s 8d), but paid
nothing and that consists of 6½ fees which were given to the
constable of Richmond as in roll 7, worth 13m (£8 13s 4d) and in
3 fees which were given to Henry Fitz Harvey worth 6m (£4).
Further, he owed 7m (£4 13s 4d) for which Robert Vipont (d.1228)
responded for the fee of Hugh Gernagan. Robert was lord of
Appleby and Brough and was constable of Bowes castle from 1203 until
his death in 1228. During this period King John stayed at the
castle on 15 February 1207, 29 April 1209 and again in 1212.
Meanwhile in France the duchy of Brittany was passed by Guy Thouars
(d.1213) to his daughter Alix and her husband, Peter Dreux (d.1250), a
cousin of King Philip Augustus (1180-1223). As early as 1 May
1213, Peter described himself as duke of Brittany and earl of
Richmond. However, he can have held no rights in England as can
be seen by the above references to King John and the earl of Chester.
In 1215 England began to slip into civil war. On 21 June 1215,
Robert Vipont and Philip Oldcoats and all the knights and free tenants
of the honour were ordered to give the custody of Richmond castle to
Roald Constable of Richmond. The order was probably disobeyed as
on 8 July 1215, it had to be repeated. The castle was now passed
over to Roald, who apparently soon rebelled. Accordingly, during
the general pacification of the North, which involved the surrender of
Kendal to the king, the earl of Chester negotiated Roald's return to
the king's peace on 6 January 1216. On this day Roald was ordered by the king to
do what Earl Ranulf told him concerning Richmond castle. Three
days later on 9 January 1216, the king ordered his constable of
Richmond castle that all the men of Roald Fitz Alan and your knights
and others who were prisoners in Richmond castle were to be released
and allowed to leave in peace. With civil war continuing in
England, Earl Ranulf of Chester was ordered by the king on 5 June 1216,
to destroy and utterly prostrate Richmond castle if he felt that he
could not successfully hold it against the rebels. The earl
obviously felt confident for the castle survived the war.
On 12 August 1215, King John wrote to Count Peter Dreux of Brittany
(d.1250) telling him that he would return the honour of Richmond to him
that pertained to his county of Brittany if he came to England.
He therefore command him to come to England with horses and arms in all
haste, bringing with you as many soldiers as you can, well trained to
do our service, and to do us the same homage for the honour and other
things that you ought to do to us, so that you come into our service so
that we can honour and comfort you. It appears from subsequent
evidence that Earl Ranulf kept Richmondshire and split the Lincolnshire
holdings with Peter, while King John shared the rest of the honour
outside Yorkshire with Peter, the king keeping some 30 fees in his own
hands. However, by the time Peter landed in 1217, King John was
dead and so the duke came to support his erstwhile opponent, Prince
Louis (d.1226).
In these days Peter, his cousin, the count of
Brittany, came to him with a strong hand, to whom he himself granted in
full all that pertained to his wife by right of inheritance, for he had
married the daughter of the Countess of Brittany, the sister of the
late Arthur, on his mother's side.
Obviously all the honour of Brittany in England was much more
attractive than barely half of it without either of the castles of
Richmond and Bowes. However, with Louis' defeat the count fell
back on the old partition which the regency government was no doubt
happy to accept. Consequently on 2 October 1217, Faulkes Breaute
was informed that the government had granted Cheshunt (Hertfordshire) to the count of Brittany in right of his wife. A
month later on 4 November 1217, the king informed all the knights,
freeholders and all others of the honour of Brittany in the counties of
Lincoln, Cambridge, Norfolk, and Suffolk that they were to be intendant
upon Earl Ranulf of Chester (d.1232) in all things that pertained to
the honour of Brittany. It would appear from this that the
original partition of King John (d.1216) was operational again.
On 25 January 1218, the government informed the sheriff of Lincolnshire
that Earl Ranulf of Chester and Jolland [Neville], the seneschal of the
count of Brittany, had been given all that lordship with purtenances in
their bail ‘except for the fees of the same honour'. These
fees were those that went towards guarding Richmond castle. On 30
March 1218, the king ordered the sheriff of Lincoln to give Geoffrey
Sauzusemar without delay full seisin of the land which pertains to
Geitun ‘in spite of our writ to seize the lordship of the count
of Brittany into our hands, as that land does not belong to the
lordship of the count himself'. A few days later the king had
ordered his sheriff of Cambridgeshire on 5 April 1218, to return to
John Fitz Henry the land in Hinton which Henry his father held at the
beginning of the war and was in the lordship of the count of
Brittany. The seizing of the lordship appears to be related to an
argument on what terms the honour of Brittany was to be held in
England, which caused Count Peter of Brittany to acknowledge that he
would claim no further lands of the honour of Brittany south of the
Humber by his letters patent on 6 May 1218. The same day the king
ordered his sheriffs of Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, Derbyshire
and Cambridgeshire to make an inquisition into the knights' fees of the
honour of Brittany. This must have confirmed the previous
division of the lordship and on 23 June 1218, the custodians of the
fair of St Botulph (Boston, Lincolnshire) were ordered:
to cause our beloved and faithful Earl Ranulf of
Chester and Lincoln, or the bearer of these letters to be sure, to have
£23 from the issues of the fairs of St Botulph... in compensation
for the guards of the soldiers for the honour of Richmond on this side
of the Humber and belonging to the knight guard of Richmond castle,
which the earl had returned to the earl of Brittany by our order.
Again on 22 July 1218, it was recorded that Boston was held by
‘the bailiff of the count of Brittany. Then, on 9 November
1218, the sheriffs of Norfolk and Suffolk, Lincolnshire, Essex and
Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Nottinghamshire were ordered:
to distrain all those in their bailiwicks who hold
of the count of Brittany by the service of performing ward in Richmond
castle, to render to the count without delay their arrears of the
aforesaid ward, which they owe him from the day upon which peace was
made between King Henry and Louis [11 September 1217]. The king
ought to have the third part of the foregoing to the same count.
The same day the itinerant justices of Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire
and Derbyshire were ordered to diligently inquire which knights' fees
were held in chief of the honour of Brittany in the aforesaid
counties. They were then to retain 30 of those fees in the king's
hand to his benefit as seems most expeditious to them, while the rest
of the fees were to remain with the count of Brittany.
The next year on 16 January 1219, the government wrote to the sheriff
of Lincolnshire informing him that the agreement between them and Count
Peter of Brittany, by which he received from us the lands and tenements
of the honour of Richmond in right of his wife, Alice, while all the
knights' fees of the honour remained to the king to the extent of 30
fees on this side of the Humber, with the residue going to the count,
viz. Thomas Multon 1 fee; Robert Turribus and partners 2½ fees;
William Welles 3 parts of a fee; the heirs of Ralph Mara 3 fees; the
heirs of Henry Bertram ½ fee; John Marshall a quarter fee; Ralph
Fitz Stephen ½ fee; Ralph Trehampton 2 fees; Roger Lasceles and
his heirs 2½ fees; Lesiard Musters 1 fee and John Neville 1
fee. These fees were to remain in government hands while the
count was to be given full seisin of the remaining fees of the
honour. Next the king informed the sheriff of Cambridgeshire
similarly, except in this case the fees were those of Hamo Peche at 1
fee; Warin Saham for a fee and Michael Furneaus for 7 fees. In
Norfolk and Suffolk it was Robert Meysy for 5 fees; in Nottinghamshire
John Neville for a fee, but no fees in Hertfordshire. During the
same year of 1219, it was recorded under Lincolnshire that the fee of
the honour of Richmond, which King John (d.1216) had retained in his
hand when a partition was made of the same honour between Count Peter
Dreux of Brittany (d.1250) and Earl Ranulf of Chester (d.1232) by the
king's command was to remain valid. Within this partition Thomas
Multon owed 2m (£1 6s 8d) for 1 fee of the honour; Robert le Tus
and his partners 5m (£3 6s 8d) for 2½ fees, William Welles
20s for 3 parts of a fee; Ralph de la Mare 6m (£4) for 3 fees,
the heirs of Henry Bertram 1m (13s 4d) for half a fee; John Marshall
half a mark (6s 8d) for a quarter of a fee; Ralph Fitz Stephen 1m (13s
4d) for half a fee; Ralph Trihamton 4m (£2 13s 4d) for 2 fees;
Lisiard Monasteriis 2m (£1 6s 8d) for a fee and a Jolland Neville
2m (£1 6s 8d) for a fee. At the same time Jolland Neville
(d.1208), the brother in law of Roald Fitz Alan (d.1247), was the
custodian of the honour of Richmond. Through his clerk, Bernard,
he owed and paid £37 for the misdeeds of the men and vills of the
honour as was contained in the last roll. It was also recorded
that Constable Roald Fitz Alan of Richmond owed 200m (£133 6s 8d)
for having the goodwill of King John as well as for his peace and for
those of his men captured in Richmond castle, plus another 200m
(£133 6s 8d) already recorded to be paid off at 100m (£66
13s 4d) at Easter and Michaelmas in 17 and 18 John (1215-16), but
obviously this had not been done. At the end of the year on 2
December 1219, the sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk was ordered to take
into their hands all the lordship of the honour of Brittany, with the
exception of those lands which were held by the charters of King John
(1199-1216), or the charter of the count of Brittany, concerning the
fees pertaining to the honour.
Further news of the affairs of Richmond castle were recorded in the
Memoranda Roll for the Christmas and New Year period in Yorkshire
during 1218-19. This states that:
John Thornton was going about through the country
with 15 horsemen and is received in Richmond castle as peacefully as
any honest man in his house. Further, he came to Richmond about
Christmas time with 100m (£66 13s 4d) of cloth in value and
clothed his men therewith as if he was a baron or an earl, and he goes
through the whole county and robs everywhere he can. Nicholas
Stapleton admitted that he was in the castle on one occasion before
Christmas and left immediately [on John's arrival].
Quite who this John was is uncertain, for there are 10 Thorntons in
Yorkshire alone. However, it is clear that he was a man of
substance, if not legality. He was also reasonably welcome in
Earl Ranulf's castle of Richmond. He was probably still operating
in the region as late as 10 January 1227 when it was recorded that
Martin Pateshull (d.1229) was ordered to inquire into the death of a
king's man, killed by John Thornton and what was to be done about it,
although in the meantime his lands were not to be seized and he was
allowed to be at peace until the king had been informed of the
findings. If this is the same man, then his activities at
Richmond had obviously done him little harm. Martin Pateshull had
been farming Washingborough from the count of Brittany since before
1224.
Meantime the division of the honour which included Richmond castle, had
obviously been accepted by all 3 parties. In relation to this, on
11 March 1221, the earl of Chester was granted £25 of land in
compensation for what he had lost when the honour of the count of
Brittany was partitioned in England. Two years later on 22
October 1223, the count's lands were returned to him in Lincolnshire,
Norfolk, Suffolk, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire after their having
been confiscated from him for his not performing his military service
in Wales during the royal campaign. Concerning this on 31 October
1224, the king wrote to the sheriffs of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire,
Norfolk and Suffolk, and Essex and Hertfordshire, concerning the lands,
stock, corn, rents and chattels of the count of Brittany which were
delivered to Thomas Multon, so that he answers therefor etc.
On 3 November 1224, the king ordered all the knights, free tenants and
others of the honour of Brittany to be intendant on Thomas Multon
(d.1240) to whom the king had given custody of the lordship at
will. This was upon the count joining the French king in
attacking King Henry III's possessions in Poitou and Gascony. On 8
March 1225 the count received a safe conduct to come to England and
then on April 1225 he was asked to make amends for his occupying the
castle of Theobald Crespin (Chateauceaux) and doing homage to King
Louis VIII (1223-26) of France. He would appear to have done this
for on 5 May 1225, the king ordered all his estates restored to him in
Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.
Much later on 19 October 1226, the king went even further and made the
following agreement:
We wish it to be known that we have sworn, with our
own hand, while touching the most sacred relics, that we will marry
Yolande (Jolenta, d.1272), the daughter of Duke Peter of Brittany and
count of Richmond, as soon as we can obtain a dispensation from the
lord pope, and that we will use our legal power to obtain that
dispensation. We also granted to the same Duke Peter of Brittany,
under the aforesaid oath, that if we would marry the aforesaid Jolenta,
daughter of the duke himself, that we will be the adviser and helper of
the same duke, with our power, to defend and uphold his rights, and
that we will not make peace with our enemies or those of the duke
himself, in the parts beyond the seas, or make truces with them without
the assent of the duke himself. We have also promised for our
brother, Count Richard of Poitou, that he will make peace with none of
our enemies or those of the duke himself, in the parts beyond the seas,
or make truces without the assent of the duke himself; and that the
same Richard, our brother, will be advising and assisting him, in good
faith, to defend and uphold his rights.
We agreed also, under the aforesaid oath, that when
the said confederation was made, as aforesaid, if the said duke should
lose his land which he has in France, on the occasion of the said
confederation, we would give him all the honour of Richmond in England,
whoever currently held those lands. We have also granted to the
same duke, under the aforesaid oath, that if we marry the aforesaid
Yolande, we commit ourselves in good faith to the faithful counsel of
the duke himself, both as regards our bodies, as well as our lands and
our money.
We have also granted to the same duke, under the
aforesaid oath, that if the aforesaid Jolenta should survive her
brother John (d.1285), after we have married her, the same duke, during
his whole life, shall by no means possess all the land and inheritance
which must descend everywhere to the said Yolande, so that they come to
us and our heirs, coming from Yolande herself, after the death of the
duke himself.
Also when we came together with the same duke, under
the aforesaid oath, that to all the Bretons and their subjects, who had
come with him, or through him, to our service, and had helped us in
good faith to seek our rights, we would return to them their
inheritances, by their faithful counsel we will work with the
duke. We have also granted the same duke, under the aforesaid
oath, that we will hold to him in good faith the agreement which we and
the count of the March had made some time ago, before he retired from
us to the service of the king of France. We have also granted to
the same duke that, under the aforesaid oath, as soon as the same duke
sees a suitable time and place, we will cross over to him according to
his plan.
This agreement did not last long. King Louis IX (1226-70)
campaigned against Henry III's holdings in France during the winter and
in March 1227 Duke Peter came to terms with the French king at
Vendome. Yoland then married Duke John of Anjou (d.1232) on 27
March 1227, King Louis' brother, and the spurned Henry III seized back
all Duke Peter's lands in England on 20 April 1227. Consequently
on 18 May 1227, the king confirmed Earl Ranulf of Chester (d.1232) in
his possession of Richmondshire in the following terms.
The lord king has conceded to Earl Ranulf of Chester
and Lincoln all that part of the honour of Richmond with appurtenances
which he formerly had and held of the bail of King John, the father of
the lord king, with all the escheats that may fall from thence, to have
and to hold for the whole of his life only; namely, that the lord the
king will not admit to his peace the count of Brittany, to whom this
aforesaid part of that honour belongs, so that he may restore that part
to him, unless the aforesaid earl of Chester and Lincoln can find peace
with the king of the Franks, so that he recovers his land in Normandy
which he lost in the service of the aforesaid King John, father of the
king.
On 27 May 1227, the king told the sheriff of Lincolnshire that
notwithstanding the fact that the king had taken the lands of the count
of Brittany into his own hand, he was giving the Knights of the Temple
in England 100s from the vill of Washingborough.
Then on 6 June 1227, the king committed all the lands of fees of Count
Peter with the manor of Cheshunt, to the count's steward, Jolland
Balu. Mention was made later that year of the king holding
Peter's lands of Swaffham, Wissett, Hinton, Wuka and Frampton. On
23 July the manor of Cheshunt was transferred to the keeping of Bishop
Walter of Carlisle (1223-46), ‘until it could be returned to
Count Peter of Brittany by our will or by peace being restored'.
It is sometimes claimed that at this point the king gave the honour of
Richmond to Count Richard of Poitou (d.1272) to patch up a quarrel
between them. This is based on the statement of Matthew Paris who
in this instance was copying Roger Wendover. Both he and his
source were in error. Wendover stated that:
he gave to his brother, Count Richard, the whole
dower of his mother, adding to them all the lands which belonged to the
right of the count of Brittany in England, together with all the lands
which had belonged to the count of Boulogne (Bononia), who had lately
died; and so they all retired peacefully to their own places.
Paris changed this slightly to:
he gave to his brother, Count Richard, the whole
dower of his mother, adding to them all the lands which belonged to the
right of the counts of Brittany in England, together with all his
lands, which had belonged to the counts of Boulogne (Bononia), who had
lately died; and thus they retired peacefully to their own places.
In fact Wendover was in error and on 20 August 1227 the king in fact
granted Count Richard his mother's dower in England. This was
followed by a similar grant to Richard of the lands of count of Dreux
in the same manner to sustain himself in the king's service.
Count Robert of Dreux (d.1234) was Duke Peter of Brittany's brother,
which perhaps accounts for Wendover's confusion. Further, no
count of Boulogne had recently died in 1227. Count Renaud had
died in 1216 and his successor, Count Philip was not to die until 1235,
so again Wendover is in error. The matter was wound up by the
king on 4 February 1231 when he enrolled his grant to his brother, who
was then known as Earl Richard of Cornwall:
of all the lands which Queen Isabella, the king's
mother, held in England as dower as well as all the lands formerly held
by Count Robert Dreux (d.1234) and those of the duke of Lorraine in
England... to hold until the king restores them to his mother, the
count or the duke of his free will or by making peace, whereupon he
shall make a reasonable exchange with Richard.
Richmondshire would seem to have remained in the hands of Earl Ranulf
of Chester (d.1232) during this period and on 8 September 1227, the
king added the manor of Washingborough, Lincolnshire, ‘that used
to belong to the count of Brittany' to this. Lands and rents in
Hoyland, Wissett and Swaffham were also distributed to other lords on
11 and 13 October 1227.
In the spring of 1230 King Henry launched an invasion of France.
This Brittany campaign proved a disaster for the aristocracy of
England. The army left Portsmouth around 29 April and landed at
St Malo in Brittany on 2 May, from where it advanced to first Nantes
and then Poitou and Gascony. By September the campaign had all
but fizzled out due to royal temerity. According to Roger
Wendover, as the knights were not allowed to engage in battle they;
gave entertainments to one another, as was the
custom of the English, and devoted themselves to eating and drinking by
turns, as though they were keeping Christmas, and those amongst them
who were poor disposed of their horses and arms, so that for the moment
they led an unhappy life.
However, one result of the campaign was the rapprochement of King Henry
with Duke Peter, to whom the king now restored the earldom of
Richmond. It was recorded in England on 16 June 1230:
The king has returned the honour of Richmond with
all its appurtenances to Count Peter of Brittany. So the sheriff
of York is ordered to cause the same earl to have full seizure without
delay of all the lands and tenements belonging to the aforesaid honour
in his bailiwicks, both in lordships and services and other things.
Presumably this restoration had happened much earlier and it had taken
some time for this information to filter back to Staffordshire.
As the campaigning season ended the king returned to England leaving
Earl William Marshall (d.1231) and Earl Ranulf of Chester (d.1232), the
previous lord of Richmondshire, in command of the remains of the
English army in Brittany. This force consisted of 500 knights and
1,000 mercenaries according to one contemporary and as ‘only a
few men' to another. Another side effect of the unhappy campaign
would appear to have been unsanitary conditions, and this brought down
some of the greatest in the land. Gilbert Lacy, Earl Gilbert
Clare of Gloucester and the young Earl William Marshall all appear to
have succumbed to disease, the Marshall being the last to die the next
spring. Just possibly Earl Ranulf was another victim, dying on 26
October 1232 at the age of 62.
On 11 January 1233, Duke Peter of Brittany and earl of Richmond was
asked to lend the king £200 which was to be delivered to Philip
Augbigny (d.1239) for the business asked of him by the king and Amaury
St Amand (d.1241), the king promising to repay the amount to him or his
messenger. On 4 February 1233, the king ordered John Vipont
(d.1241, of Appleby etc) and the sheriff of Yorkshire to give seisin of
Bowes manor and castle to Duke Peter of Brittany. On 8 May 1234,
the king made a truce with King Louis IX of France (1226-70) to last
until 24 June. A week later on 15 May 1234 at Gloucester, the
king ordered 27 of his barons to sail from Portsmouth to aid the duke
in Brittany on the resumption of war. Later on 1 June 1234, the
king ordered:
Henry Turberville (d.1239) to be at Portsmouth with
4 other knights promptly on 1 June 1234 to depart fully equipped with
horses and arms to cross the sea to the aid of the count of Brittany
and then be ready to remain in our service as the count may more fully
instruct you...
The war did not go well and another truce was made. On 2
September 1234, King Henry requested Duke Peter of Brittany, earl of
Richmond:
as he has made a truce with the king of France and
so has now fewer matters to attend to, and is better able than during
the war to succour the king's people engaged in the defence of St James
on the River Beuvron (Sanctum Jacobum super Beveronem) with the money
for which the king at another time asked him, he is to let Amaury St
Amand (d.1241) and Hubert Hoes and others in garrison there have 500
marks (£333 6s 8d) of prest money for their liveries; and the
king will repay the money in England to his messenger bearing letters
testimonial of the said Amaury and Hubert. The king would have
provided the money himself and sent it from England but for the perils
of the roads.
While on 22 November 1234, the king sent negotiators to amend the truce
with King Louis. Finally on 25 February 1235, King Henry wrote to
the Pope complaining of the actions of Count Peter of Brittany.
To the Lord Pope, greetings and due and devoted reverence in all things.
In order that your holiness may be more fully
acquainted with the manner in which Count Peter of Brittany behaved
towards us, we inform your fatherhood that, when we had sent our
beloved brother, Earl Richard of Cornwall and Poitou, to the parts of
Gascony for the defence of those parts, and having a conversation
between the count of Brittany himself and our aforesaid brother, he
signified to us that he was ready to come to our service and to hold of
us in chief. We, therefore, still bearing this in mind, through
our faithful Savary Mauleon (d.1231), who was then surviving, and
finally through our beloved and faithful Philip Aubigny (d.1236), he
urged us urgently upon the same course. When, therefore, having
received their warnings, we had assembled the army of the whole kingdom
at Portsmouth, intending to cross over into Brittany, in order to
search for our hereditary rights in the parts beyond the seas, the
aforesaid earl, joining [us] there at the same time, in the presence of
all the magnates of our land, did us homage for his land of Brittany,
and he gave us the sacrament of faithful service; and then we restored
to him the honour of Richmond, in which he claimed the right; and many
other fees, and we gave him not a small amount of land. And the
same earl returning to his parts, and for us, by his counsel, then
remaining in our country, when, in the following summer [1230], the
king of France had assembled his whole force, to invade the land of the
aforesaid earl; with all our forces at his command, we crossed over
into Brittany to his rescue, not without great cost to our bodies, and
the irreparable loss of the magnates and other men of ours, whom we
lost there. When, therefore, by our arrival, he had been defended
and secured from the attacks of the said king of France, and the king
himself [Louis] returned to his own parts without achieving the desire
of his purpose [the taking of Brittany], we wished to return to our own
land in the same way, so it was agreed between us that knights and
sergeants should remain with him, and we would give him a certain sum
of money during the year in time of the war, and another sum of money,
if the King of France himself should come, and we then sought to enter
into a truce, as was done; which indeed we have fully accomplished
without any failure. I knew, indeed, that when, at the immediate
end of the truce between the king himself [Louis IX] and us, we were
required by the count himself to send knights and serjeants to his aid,
and to defend our castle of Saint Jacob above the River Beueron, which
was in his hand from our bailiwick and in return for which, when we
came to Britain, we gave him 2,000m (£1,333 6s 8d), we gratefully
consented to his request, deputing to him our beloved and faithful
Amaury St Amand (d.1241), our seneschal, with the number of knights and
sergeants whom the count himself had requested. Which, after he
had retained these according to his agreement, he sent them back to us,
under the pretense of sparing our expenses, informing us that he would
keep the aforesaid castle safe for our use. Moreover, at his
mandate, we sent to him the noble man Henry Turbeville, our seneschal
of Gascony, with a multitude of armed men, who vigorously and
powerfully acted in his defence; in the presence of whom he also swore,
on the true body of Christ, that he had neither made peace with the
king of France, nor even had a treaty with him. Although the
count himself, as we have said, did not find any defect in us, indeed,
according to the agreement made between us, and beyond that, we have
always satisfy him by the agreement we made with him, every time he
came to us or sent to us for this reason, and the same is still the
same and we would be ready to do so again with our own strength.
Nevertheless, with all his injuries, the contempt of his faith, his
religion, and the sacrament of faithful service he rendered to us,
without trusting us or asking us anything, he withdrew from us and
adhered to the king of France, doing homage to him, and rendering to
him, of our inheritance, the aforesaid castle of St James, and Celsus
castle, which Theobald Crespyn held of us from the count of Anjou and
the castle of Maroyl, which belongs to our count of Poitou.
Lest, therefore, the truth of the matter should be
hidden from you on the premises, or lest, through the suggestion of
anyone less truthful, you should believe that the said earl has
withdrawn from us to some extent through our failure; we earnestly
appeal to your holiness, beseeching the count himself more
conscientiously, that he may return to our service and our faith, and
that he may satisfy us over the money received from us, and of the said
castles, given to the king of France himself, this to be enforced by
ecclesiastical censure.
Later on 7 March 1235, the king appointed Alexander Bacon during
pleasure to the custody of all the lands and castles late of Duke Peter
of Brittany and earl of Richmond in England and ordered Warner Engaine
to deliver them to him with all their goods and stock. While on
22 August 1236, the king committed at pleasure all the lands late of
the count of Brittany in England, except for Hinton which he had
granted to Alan Neville, to William, the bishop elect of Valance.
Alexander Bacon was therefore ordered to hand him seisin. The
bishop died during 1239 and on 20 April 1240, the king granted the
honour of Richmond to Peter Savoy (d.1268). This grant was
enhanced on 6 May 1241 in the following terms:
Gift to the king's uncle, Peter Sabaudia, for his
homage and service, the towns of Richmond and Bowes, with their castles
and wapentakes and the manors of Catterick (Cheteriz), Moulton
(Moleton), Gilling and Forest in Yorkshire; the soke of Kirton (Geitun)
and Boston soke with its markets and the manors of Frampton, Wykes in
Donington (Wikes) and Washingborough (Walsingburg) in Lincolnshire;
Swaffham and the soke of Costessy in Norfolk; Wischet manor and soke,
Kettleburgh (Ketelberge) manor and soke with the manors of Nettlestead
and Wikes under Ipswich (Gippeswic) in Suffolk; Bassingbourn and Cherry Hinton (Hynton) in Cambridgeshire and Cheshunt in Herfordshire. This was to be held by Peter and
his heirs or by any of his brothers or kinsmen, to whom he may assign
it... by the service of 5 knights' fees. Further the king was not
to disseise Peter or his heirs until he had made a reasonable exchange.
When in 1236 a truce was made between King Henry and King Louis, Duke
Peter of Brittany was noted as a vassal of the French king. This
may have upset Peter's tenure of Richmond for on 6 May 1241, the king
granted the honour of Richmond to Peter Savoy ‘to hold to him
and his heirs, or to any one of his brothers or cousins to whom he
should choose to assign it', while on 23 May 1241, the king noted that
he had given the honour of Richmond to his uncle, Peter Savoy.
Nearly a year later, on 16 February 1242, the knights, freemen and
tenants of the honour of Richmond were told, when requested by the
bailiff of Peter Savoy... to take oath for an inquisition into the
rights belonging to Peter from the said honour being in his
hands. That this grant was to the detriment of Duke Peter of
Brittany (d.1250) was confirmed on 10 November 1242 when the king sent
greetings to Peter's son, Duke John of Brittany and earl of Richmond
(d.1285) confirming that the abbot of Saint Gildas had come to the king
bringing John's letter of faith, and asking:
for the earldom of Richmond upon your right, for
which we should have your faith... but although we greatly appreciate
your service and homage, we have not at the present thought of
returning to you that land which you ask for, because the abbot did not
have the power to certify the same as to what to us, by whom your
condition would be improved, what benefit would increase to us if we
would hear your prayers. And therefore we signify to you that we
would like to have a treaty with the noble man, formerly Duke Peter of
Brittany, your father, for such assistance, and in which we may have
access through you to recover our rights, if we accept your request.
With this the matter was allowed to drop with Richmond remaining in
Peter Savoy's hands. Then on 17 June 1245, King Henry informed
everyone that he had:
granted to our beloved son John, £1,200 for
the extent and value of the county of Richmond and 200m (£133 6s
8d) of our gift; so that in the universe he will receive for our state
2,000 m (£1,333 6s 8d) per year... until the aforesaid extent is
fully accomplished, as is contained in the agreement between us and the
aforesaid duke.
This grant did not last long and on 12 July 1245, the king informed the
archbishop of York, the bishop of Carlisle and William Cantilupe that
he had:
received the complaints of many of his nobility that
the count of Brittany, not regarding to the truce entered into between
us and the king of France, inflicts whatever harm he can on our people
passing by sea, by taking their ships and robbing them of their goods
and merchandise and moreover killing them. On top of that, we are
greatly disturbed, and it is not fitting that we should go through such
an concealed injury. And therefore we command you that you cause
all those of the Cinq Ports who owe us service from their ships, to
assemble on a certain day and place, as soon as possible, with their
ships well munitioned and ready, to go into our service to damage the
aforesaid count when I order them, if the same count refused to pay us
for the injuries and damages aforesaid.
In the meantime unspecified works were occurring at Richmond
castle. On 22 January 1250, the king ordered that 50 oaks for
timber were to be sent to Peter Savoy for his works at the
fortress. On 15 April, up to 50 oaks for timber were ordered to
be sent to Peter for his works at the castle to make up the number that
had not been sent to him in January. Presumably these timbers
were to repair the roofs or floors of the castle.
So matters remained with the honour until 1258 when Duke John (d.1285)
proposed a treaty of perpetual amity and a marriage between King
Henry's daughter Beatrice and John's eldest son, John (d.1305).
However, the king replied that he had given he earldom of Richmond to
his uncle, Peter Savoy (d.1268) and therefore could do nothing about
Duke John's proposal without Peter's agreement. However, as the
royal family, including Beatrice, would be in Paris shortly with Peter
Savoy, he suggested that if Peter's consent was obtained the king
would grant John the earldom of Richmond, according to the form agreed
upon before the queen of France, but if Peter refused such consent he
would award John lands of equal value to Richmond and in either case
the king agreed to John's marriage proposal. Peter subsequently
refused to yield Richmond, having bequeathed it in his will to his
niece, Queen Eleanor. Despite this the marriage was arranged in
the May of 1259 and on 18 October 1259, the king replied to Duke
John of Brittany that if Peter Savoy could be induced to hand the
earldom of Richmond over to John this would be done, otherwise the king
offered him other lands in England. The marriage seems to have
occurred in January 1260. However, Peter would not relinquish the
earldom and consequently on 17 June 1261, the king offered John
£1,200 for the extent and valuation of the earldom and 200m
(£133 6s 8d) as a gift and then 2,000m (£1,333 6s 8d) per
annum with any adjustments made to bring this into line with the money
offered. Further on 25 March 1262, the king confirmed his charter
to Peter Savoy granting him the honour of Richmond. Then on 8
June 1262, Peter swapped Redenhall in Norfolk and Wissett, Kettleburgh,
Nettlestead and Wikes under Ipswich in Suffolk together with £4
18s rents in Ipswich, all being part of the honour of Richmond with
Prince Edward (d.1307) in exchange for the honour, castle and rape of
Hastings and the lands late of Walter Scotney. Within a day or 2
of this the earl wrote to the king asking if:
Your highness is not ignorant, as I believe, that by
your concession I have hitherto held the honour of Richmond from you
for the service of 5 knights. But lately, of your will, there has
been a certain exchange of certain things pertaining to the honour
itself, and of certain things which your dearest son Lord Edward had in
Sussex, with the knights' fees being exchanged there; and although the
aforesaid honour of Richmond has accordingly been reduced by several
knights' fees, it is still charged with the remainder of the aforesaid
service of 5 knights; and the service for the knights' fees existing in
the said land delivered to me from the aforesaid exchange, I similarly
charge by your charter. Therefore, if it pleases you to grant me
what remains of the aforesaid honour as well as what was delivered to
me by the aforesaid exchange for the aforesaid service, that would be
very acceptable to me.
May my lord live well and long.
Usually the service owed for baronies was cut to a tenth or thirteenth
of the sum owed in the twelfth century. This would suggest that
Peter was holding only the Richmondshire part of the honour, that which
had been held for 50 fees during the reign of King John (1199-1216).
In the ensuing troubles of the Barons' War (1263-67), Peter Savoy
seems to have lost control of Richmond and its castles.
Consequently on 12 January 1264, King Henry III
ordered Wyehard
Charrau, ‘to whom the king had lately committed all the lands of
Peter Savoy in the honour of Richmond during pleasure, to let Peter
or his attorney have the issues thereof at once'. Possibly Peter
had been stripped of these possessions in light of the dispossession
of the aliens by the barons in 1258, though in which case why he had
not been reinstated after the Mise of Amiens is unlikely.
Whatever the case, it was probably Peter's men who were holding the
castle on 23 April 1265 when the king, under Simon Montfort's control,
ordered John Deiville (d.1291) and William Bocehall, the sheriffs of
Yorkshire:
Since Guiscardus Chanun has lately disdained to come
to us at our command to restore the castle of Richmond to us, because
of which we have ordered you that, taking with you the whole force of
the aforesaid county, you will expediently storm the aforesaid castle
as you see fit; so we send to you, on the advice of the magnates, who
are of our council, firmly enjoining you to take with you all the
aforesaid power, by all the means of which you know best and with great
prudence, so you are able to attack that castle and to besiege it so
manfully and powerfully, that our rebels existing in the garrison of
the castle should not be able to leave it to do any harm to our
faithful subjects in those parts. Also if you are able to
intercept any of them outside that castle, cause them to be arrested
and kept safe until we have informed you otherwise. And with
regard to the said storming, as well as the preservation of our peace
against the disturbers of the same for the protection of those parts,
you will behave so prudently and faithfully that we can justly commend
your integrity and probity.
No attack is recorded as taking place, but the threat seems to have
achieved its purpose and by 10 September 1265, Peter Savoy had been
dispossessed of Richmond once again, as on this day the king ordered
the restitution of his estates consisting of the honours of Hastings,
Laigle and Richmond. Then on 6 May 1266, Peter made an exchange
of the earldom and honour of Richmond with the king so Henry could pass
it on to Duke John of Brittany (d.1285) on 10 June. Two years
later on 15 May 1268, Peter died and the king restored Richmond to Duke
John on 6 July of the same year, despite Peter having bequeathed the
honour to Queen Eleanor which caused the king to compensate her for her
loss.
In turn Duke John conveyed the honour of Richmond to his son, who
became Duke John of Brittany (d.1305) on the death of his father in
1285. In 1275, Beatrice, the wife of John (d.1305) and daughter
of Henry III (1216-72), died. Three years later on 18 June 1278,
land worth £25 was given to support 6 chaplains to pray in
Richmond castle chapel for the souls of Earl John of Richmond and
Beatrice his deceased wife, according to an agreement made with
Egglestone abbey at Pentecost 1275.
On 12 October 1285, it was recorded that Richmond consisted of the
castle and honour held in chief with free tenants rendering £16
2½d for guard. Richmond itself was held by the burgesses
with the free borough with its markets and fairs, 24 bovates of land
and the whole pasture of Whitcliffe (Wyteclyf) with the moors and
pastures, held of the earl in fee farm by charter, rendering £32
6s 8d and £4 yearly from Thomas Fitz Geoffrey Richmond. The
various lands consisted of Forsette, the New Forest: Swintenhow, Hoppe,
Arkengarth (Arkelgarht), Langthwaite (Langthwaytte), Eskerlite
(Eskerlyht), Le Kuawhe, Faggergill Moss (Faggardgile), Sterthwaytte,
Walter Gille, Kydelahowe, Gilling, Scargill (Skaregile), Sadberge
(Saddeberge), Middleton Tyas (Midelton), East Bolton
(Estboleton), Bolton (Boleton), Danby Wiske (Deneby), Moulton (Multon),
Catterick (Caterik), Bowes and Bolleron including Bowes castle and the
keepership of the New Forest, Hope and Arkengarth. Other lands
were Aldeburh, Baynbregge, Baynbregge Forest including Birtresatte,
Beredale, Moursette, Stalunbusc, Cuntelsatte, Snaysum, Sleddalgayle,
Welpesattehowe, Appeltresate, Mosedale, Sandicrokes and meadows called
Le Parke and Le Munkeholme. All these lands were held of the king in
chief by the service of 4 knights although there were 63 knights'
fees in the honour. John's heir was said to be his son Arthur,
aged 21 years and more. The duke also claimed the right of
infangentheof [the right to take thieves in your estate] throughout
Richmondshire and had gallows at Richmond and Bowes. By the mid
fourteenth century the dukes also claimed outfangentheof [the right to
seize thieves wherever they were apprehended].
After this time, the dukes of Brittany being earls of Richmond and firm
vassals of the English kings lasted only until the Anglo-French war of
1293 when Duke John (d.1305) adhered to the French king and had
Richmond confiscated before 28 November 1295 and probably before 18
August when 10 hostages were sent to Richmond castle from Wales.
During that year repair work was undertaken at the castle with the
drawbridge being replanked and the keep and gateway masonry being
repaired. Interestingly on 5 October 1296, the duke was merely
referred to as John Brittany the elder of Wensleydale, although on 21
November he was mentioned as Duke John of Brittany when the king
presented to Swaffham church ‘by reason of the lands of Duke John
of Brittany being in his hands'. The safety of the castle was
obviously under consideration on 6 November 1297, as that day the king
ordered the constable of Richmond castle to have the fortress repaired
where necessary and have it kept safely ‘so that no peril shall
arise to the king or to the castle for lack of custody'. It was
probably around this time that Richard Boulton of St Agatha's
Premonstratensian abbey in Yorkshire was forced to take refuge in
Richmond castle and give battle to the Scotch rebels. This event
caused King Edward (1272-1307) to ask for a dispensation for his
actions from the bishop of Albano.
On 1 April 1298, Duke John's lands and Richmond castle were returned to
him, but only ‘during the truce with the king of France'.
Later on 7 October 1298, he was allowed, after requesting the king, to
collect the arrears due to him before he adhered to the king of France
in the late war. Duke John was still in control of Richmond
castle on 3 July 1300, when the king announced that he was well content
with John Brittany (d.1334) serving the king in his campaign against
the Scots, rather than his father, Duke John (d.1305).
Richmond castle was probably seized again in late 1300 on the renewal
of war with France and it was not until 1 May 1304 that the king
informed his subjects of the:
Restitution, in accordance with the form of the
truce made with King Philip of France, the king's kinsman, to Duke John
of Brittany and earl of Richmond, who was on the side of the king of
France, of Richmond castle and all of his lands in England which were
taken into the king's hands by reason of that war.
This was almost a year after the treaty of perpetual peace sealed
between England and France on 20 May 1303. The next year on 14
November 1305, Duke John was crushed to death by a falling wall at the
coronation of Pope Clement V. Richmond was then seized by the
king before 15 December 1305, when the lands of Earl John of Richmond,
were recorded as being in the king's hands. They were still in
the king's hand on 26 May 1306. Then around August 1306, Duke
Arthur of Brittany (d.1311) came to England and petitioned Edward I for
the return of Richmondshire. Instead the king gave him ‘a
light answer' and passed the honour over to his younger brother, John
Britannia (d.1334) on 15 October 1306, as the earldom of Richmond with
its castles of Richmond and Bowes, taken into the king's hands on the
death of Duke John.
On 2 August 1310, Earl John Britannia of Richmond was given permission
by King Edward II (1307-27) ‘to grant to his brother Duke Arthur
of Brittany and his heirs, the castles of Richmond and Bowes and all
his lands in England...'. Now as a vassal of both King Edward II
and Duke Arthur, Earl John of Richmond then set off to Gascony with a
small army in the king's service. Duke Arthur died in 1311 and
his duchy passed to his son, Duke John (d.1341). He received
permission on 25 February 1313, to use money made by taxing all wares
brought to the town for sale for the next 5 years as a murage
grant. This has often been taken as meaning that the walls were
only built now, however, murage could be used to repair pre-existing
walls as well as build new ones. Such walls were probably needed
for in the aftermath of the battle of Bannockburn on 24 June 1314, the
Scottish army marched as far south as Richmond, burning all in its
path. The town walls were said to be in bad repair in 1337 with
the result that Edward III (1327-77) granted the bailiffs and men of
Richmond a further 5 year's murage to repair them on 25 March
1337. A similar grant was made by Henry IV (1399-1413) on 14 May
1400 for 3 years under the auspices of Earl Ralph Neville of
Westmorland (d.1425). Oddly, the town wall was repaired again in
1658, although the castle and town seems to have played no part in the
civil war. Now, merely 2 of at least 4 gates survive of the walls
and they are much rebuilt. The wall at the Friar's Wynd postern
is the best preserved section.
By 1322 the sailors of Duke John of Brittany (d.1341) and those of
England were at war, however, before 27 October of that year, Earl John
Britannia of Richmond (d.1334) had been captured by his Scottish
enemies at the debacle at Byland. The Lanercost chronicle records:
However, Earl John Britannia of Richmond, was sent
with his men by the king to reconnoitre the army of the Scots from a
certain mountain between the abbeys of Byland and Rievaulx who suddenly
met them coming up unexpectedly. He attempted with his men to
hinder their ascent by throwing stones on them at a certain narrow and
steep road in the mountain; but the Scots advanced on them fiercely and
courageously; many English escaped by flight and many were captured
with the aforesaid earl. It was indeed right that this slaughter
came upon him, because he himself had prevented a form of concord
between the kingdoms. When the king of England became acquainted
with this, he was then in Rievaulx abbey, he, who had always been
fearful of heart and unlucky in wars, and who had fled from them in
fear in Scotland, was now taking to flight in England, leaving behind
him in the monastery in his haste his vessels of silver and great
treasure, but succeeding with his people as reaching as far as
York. But the Scots, coming soon afterwards, took all these
things away and plundered the monastery, and afterwards, then set out
taking the earl with them as far as Le Wald, and they destroyed that
country as far as the town of Beverley, which was ransomed lest it
should be burned by them, as other towns had been laid waste.
At this unfortunate time, the king, as a boon, granted that he was
allowed to retain with him up to 7 people of his household for his
recreation and service. It was only on 1 September 1323 that the
king agreed the ransom for the earl, but even then parliament refused
his supplication to raise the earl's ransom during Lent 1324.
After his return from imprisonment, the king sent Earl John to France
to negotiate over Gascony. While there he went over to the cause
of Queen Isabella (d.1364) and Roger Mortimer of Wigmore
(d.1330). On 13 March 1326, the king wrote in apparent horror
that the earl had, when mandated to report back to the king in person:
despised our orders as well as his faith and fealty,
that he had hitherto not cared to come to us, or to inform us by his
messenger, with disobedience of us and manifest contempt of our
aforesaid orders and contrary to his aforesaid faith and fealty.
On 18 July 1326, the king wrote to the pope of Earl John's treason and
that consequently he had been forced to seize his county of
Richmond. Before 22 July 1326, the lands of Earl John Britannia
of Richmond were recorded as being in the king's hands. Why then,
had Earl John committed such treason against the king. Possibly
the answer comes from the much later chronicle of Walsingham, which
does rely on the compilation of older chronicles for this early section
of his work. This reads:
In the meantime, with the growing hatred between the
king of England and the queen, the king of France and the king of
England and indeed both kingdoms, many evils were done. Among
these, the king of England, as is said, procured the death of his wife
and of his son Edward. Which crime was to have been executed by
Earl John Britannia of Richmond, who was familiar with the queen; but
God forbidding, that scheme was completely hindered.
The Capgrave chronicle also seems to have heard of this plot. If
accurate it would seem that Earl John revolted against his orders and
consequently went over to the queen's party, rather than murdering her
as it is alleged he had been asked. Whatever the truth of the
matter, that autumn the rebels invaded the kingdom and overthrew King
Edward II (1307-27). As a result on 25 December 1326, ‘the
king' under the control of the queen and Mortimer, restored the earl to
his lands. The earl seems to have then left England, if he had
ever returned, and was allowed on 12 July 1327 to hold his lands while
he was overseas in the king's service, even though he had not paid
homage to Edward III. This boon was last granted on 28 October
1332. It is possible that the Scots had attacked Richmond around
this time for on 8 March 1327, the men of Richmondshire and North
Riding in Yorkshire were granted respite from their debts for 2 years
‘in consideration of the damage sustained by them by the frequent
comings of the Scots into those parts'.
On 22 November 1333, King Edward III (1327-77) entered into an
agreement with John's niece, Countess Mary St Pol of Pembroke (d.1377),
in which he confirmed to her the castles of Richmond and Bowes together
with the earldom of Richmond, she paying the current earl, John
Britannia (d.1334), £1,800 pa for the rest of his life.
Soon afterwards John died before 13 February 1334. His inquest
post mortem recorded that in Lincolnshire he held land in Wykes,
Frampton, Leadenham and Fulbeck, Washingborough (Quassingburgh), Mumby
Soke (held for 25s yearly rent from the free tenants for the custody of
guarding the battlements of Richmond castle), Gayton Soke and
Boston. In Sussex he held Hastings barony with his holdings
amounting to 52 knights' fees. Finally in Middlesex, he held
Tottenham. The jurors concluded their inquest with stating that
John's heir was unknown because the earl was born in foreign parts and
was never married. Consequently, concerning the collateral heirs
born in foreign parts, the jury could not be certain. By 7 April
1334, the king had appointed John Lonthre as keeper of the castles,
manors and lands which had belonged to Earl John Britannia of Richmond.
The history of Richmond at this point was still intricately bound up
with the duchy of Brittany. On 24 May 1334, John Britannia's
nephew, Duke John of Brittany (d.1341), the son of Duke Arthur
(d.1311), paid a relief for Richmond and was granted the barony on 4
July. The value of the honour at this time was probably not great
and the king recorded on 10 November 1336 that the archdeaconry of
Richmond, among many adjoining places ‘were so wasted by the war
of Scotland that they were not' capable of paying taxation. There
is no evidence that Richmond was ever confiscated from Duke John
(d.1341) although Froissart states that he stood with King Philip VI of
France (1328-50) in 1339. On 30 July 1340, Ralph Neville (d.1367,
of Raby) and others were ordered to enquire on the complaint of Duke
John of Brittany and earl of Richmond, that John Wychard, John
Garcedale, William Latoun and Peter his son, with others had assembled
a large multitude and besieged Richmond castle and for 3 days
continuously assaulted the men and servants within the fortress
guarding it so that he wounded them and the duke lost their services
for a great while. Sadly nothing else is known of this
event. It was only with Duke John's premature death on 30 April
1341 that Richmond was again taken into royal hands for a short
while. During that summer of 1341 an inquisition was undertaken
that found that ‘on the day he died' Duke John held the castle
and honour of Richmond with the castle of Bowes and 3 other manors in
Richmondshire, all of which pertained to the Crown for the service of
2½ knights' fees. They also found that near Richmond was a
certain castle worth nothing per annum within the walls or in the ditch
and further that the houses and walls of the castle needed much
repair. The pigeon house was decayed, unproductive and worth
nothing, while rents which formerly came to £18 per annum from
the houses adjoining the walls and ditches were reduced to nothing,
while some houses had been demolished as the duke had destroyed them to
allow for the construction of a wall. However, the payment of
castleward still came to £14 15s 4d pa. It is possible that
the poor state of the castle was due to the siege of the previous year
and the castle's possible fall and destruction.
On 24 September 1341, the king granted the earldom of Richmond to John
Montfort (d.1345), the half brother of the recently deceased Duke
John. He was also recognised as duke of Brittany and count of
Montfort in opposition to King Philip IV's candidate, John's half niece
and wife of Charles Blois (d.1364), Jeanne (d.1384). The grant
proved a failure for in December 1341 John Montfort was captured at
Nantes and before 22 July 1342, King Edward III had resumed possession
of the honour. Although Montfort escaped to England, King Edward
granted the earldom of Richmond to his own son, John of Gaunt (d.1399)
on 20 September 1342. This was after an abortive grant to him on
21 January 1342, which was vacated at the king's writ. This was
probably because on 20 February 1342, the king again gave the county of
Richmond to Duke John (d.1345), until he should gain lands in France to
the same value. Meanwhile, after 20 September 1342, Queen
Philippa held Richmond in custody for her young son, John of
Gaunt. Gaunt was holding the earldom and castles by 3 May 1357
and on 19 January 1360, Duke John Montfort of Brittany (d.1399)
surrendered all his claim on Richmond. However, on 20 July 1372,
the king persuaded his son to exchange Richmond for Tickhill so that he
could return the earldom to the duke of Brittany. In 1379 his
rights in the earldom included freedom from payment of toll, as well as
pontage, murage, pavage, passage, lastage, quayage and picage.
Recent excavation uncovered a French jeton of roughly 1350 in the
centre of the ward roughly half way between the Fallen Tower and the
West Postern. In this period jetons were used as trade counters
or tokens on a counting board. This possibly means that some form
of accounting was going on within the castle at this period. The
dig inside the East Gate also turned up pottery from France and the Low
Countries, which again probably links the site to the dukes of Brittany.
In 1378 Duke John of Brittany (d.1399) handed Brest castle over to King
Richard II (1377-99) with the result that King Charles V of France
(1364-80) confiscated Brittany. This resulted in John paying
homage to Charles in 1381 and receiving his duchy back, which caused
Richard II to resume possession of the earldom of Richmond by November
1381. After further diplomatic exchanges parliament in 1384
declared Richmond forfeit due to the duke's adherence to the French king
and the honour was then granted to Queen Anne (1382-94) for life.
Despite this, the earldom, castle, town and honour of Richmond were
again granted to Duke John of Brittany on 1 March 1386. However,
a month later he was recorded as an enemy and the queen was obviously
still in possession in 1388 and probably 10 December 1389. Yet 3
years later in December 1391, the honour was again granted to Duke John
with Queen Anne being promised compensation elsewhere. However,
the treaty of Tours between the duke and king of France on 26 January
1392, resulted in the honour being yet again returned to Queen
Anne. On the queen's death in 1394 the castle and honour were
granted to 3 nobles, who in turn leased the castles of Richmond and
Bowes with Richmondshire to Ralph Neville of Raby for 12 years.
Despite this, the honour was given in 1398 to Joan, the sister of Duke
John of Brittany (d.1399), although he himself was stated to be earl of
Richmond in June 1399 when he made a grant with his sister and her 2
parceners, Anthony Ricz and Nicholas Alderwych. Possibly Duke
John was overlord of the other 3 as on 12 August these 3 appointed
William Newesom, esquire, as their constable of Richmond castle... with
the nomination under him of a castle porter and various foresters.
Duke John died on 2 November 1399, but even before this on 20 October
1399, King Richard II's replacement, King Henry IV (1399-1413), finally
split the earldom of Richmond from the duchy of Brittany by granting
the honour, but not the title of earl, to his brother in law, Earl
Ralph Neville of Westmorland (d.1425). This was despite the duke
of Brittany claiming the earldom in the October parliament immediately
before this grant. The dukes of Brittany continued to claim the
earldom and in 1415, at the battle of Agincourt, one of the French
combatants was a man claiming to be Earl Arthur of Richmond.
Arthur was the brother and eventual successor of Duke John of Brittany
(d.1442) and was still using the title of Richmond, in 1423, although
he became count of Goelo the previous year and duke of Touraine in
1450. In 1443, King Henry VI (1422-61, 1470-71) again rejected
the duke's claim to Richmond.
Having disposed of the claim of the dukes of Brittany, the later
history of Richmond castle can be passed over quite quickly. In
1414 King Henry V (1413-22) granted it to his brother, Duke John of
Bedford (d.1435), with Wensleydale remaining to Westmorland until his
death in 1425. On Bedford's death on 14 September 1435, King
Henry VI (1422-71) was declared to be his heir, the castle therefore
passing to the Crown, although a third of it remained to Duchess
Jacquetta (d.1472), the widow of John (d.1435). The other 2
thirds of the castle with all the houses and the site thereof, with 2
thirds of the mill and of the bailiwicks of Gilling East, Gilling West,
Hang East (Hangest) and Hallikeld in Richmondshire with all homages,
rents called Castelwarde and all other rents and services and advowsons
pertaining to the honour or lordship of Richmond and all the knights'
fees to a yearly value of £19 14s 4½d as well as the dye
works within the liberty called ‘le litferme' to the value of 53s
4d pa, were given in tail male to Earl Richard of Salisbury (d.1460) on
3 April 1449, with the reversion of Jacquetta's part on her death.
In 1455, Henry VI, by an act of Resumption, reserved the castle and town
of Richmond to himself after the death of Earl Richard and his son,
Earl Richard of Warwick (d.1471). The reason for this is that
King Henry had already made his half brothers, Edmund Hadham and Jasper
Hatfield, earls of Richmond and Pembroke. Earl Edmund of Richmond
died on 1 November 1456, leaving his 2 thirds of Richmond and the title
to his posthumously born son, who was later to become King Henry VII
(1485-1509). Due to them being Lancastrians in the Wars of the
Roses (1452-1495), the Yorkist King Edward IV (1461-83) seized Richmond
and gave it to his brothers, briefly Richard (d.1485) on 12 August 1462
and subsequently Duke George of Clarence (d.1478) on 20 September
1462. The duke seems to have retained Richmond despite his
rebellion in 1470, as it was not mentioned when a list of various lands
were granted to him for life only on 23 March 1471, the grant itself
running from Michaelmas 1470. Possibly this grant was in return
for Clarence returning to Edward IV's fealty, though the downgrading of
it to a life grant is odd. In any case Richmond was certainly in
Clarence's possession on 5 August 1472, when George received the
other third of the honour which had been the dower of the duchess of
Bedford. On 13 July 1474, the king made yet another grant to Duke
George, this time including his heirs male and listing all his
possessions which included:
the county, castle, town and honour of Richmond and
the fee farm of the same town, all manors, lands, rents, services and
possessions parcel of the same county and honour in the counties of
Nottingham, Derby, Stafford and Leicester...
Yet on 23 February 1475, King Edward IV recorded that his brother, Duke
Richard of Gloucester (d.1485), held ‘the castle, lordship and
honour of Richmond' as the escheat of Earl Richard of Warwick (d.1471),
no mention being made of Duke George, its supposed holder. In any
case, after the odd execution of Duke George on 18 February 1478, the
king, on 5 March, granted Richmond castle, the fee farm of the town and
the manors of Harome (Harum) and Carlton and an enclosure called
‘le Cowhous' in Yorkshire to his brother, Duke Richard of
Gloucester. Immediately before this, on 2 March 1478, King Edward
had hived off Somerton castle and the Lincolnshire fees off the honour
of Richmond ‘by prextext of an act in the last parliament'.
Despite the grant to Duke Richard, Edward IV (1461-83) appears to have
kept control of much of the honour ‘late of Duke George of
Clarence' and continued to appoint officers and grant issues or
annuities from it throughout the rest of his reign, probably as the
guardian of Clarence's underage son, Earl Edward of Warwick
(d.1499). Richard III (1483-85) and then Henry VII (1485-1509)
continued this trait.
Certainly with Warwick's execution in 1499, Richmond castle remained
firmly in the king's hands, although the fortress appears to have been
allowed to go to ruin as in Leland's time it was described as being at:
the top of the hill, where the best of the town
called the Bailey and the Castle [was]. Some think that the place
where the Bailey was once extima area castelli and since built upon
with houses; walled it was, but the wall is now decayed. The
names and parts of 4 or 5 gates yet remain.
There is a chapel in Richmond town with strong
figures in the walls of it. The people there dream that it was
[once a temple of] idols.
Leland went on to say:
Richmond is paved. Richmond town is walled and
the castle on the river side of Swale is as the knot of the compass of
the wall. In the wall are 3 gates. Frenchgate in the north
part of the town, is the most occupied gate of the town; [it] Finkel
Street gate and Bargate are all 3 down; vestiges yet remain. In
the market place is a large chapel of the Trinity, the compass of the
ruinous walls is not half a mile about. So that the town wall
compasses little but the market place, the houses about it and gardens
behind them.... The castle is near and as much in compass as the
circuit of the town wall. But now it is in mere ruin.
On 13 April 1537, orders were given to repair and furnish the border
fortresses of the North. These consisted of Alnwick, Bamburgh,
Berwick, Bewcastle, Carlisle, Harbottle, Newcastle on Tyne, Scarborough
and Wark, as well as ‘some other fortress in Tynedale'. The
castles of Barnard Castle, Knaresborough, Middleham, Pontefract, Sandal
and Sheriff Hutton were to be repaired, fit to receive the king in
person, while Cockermouth, Conisborough, Dunstanburgh, Penrith,
Pickering, Prudhoe, Richmond, Tickhill, Warkworth, Wilton and Wrestle
were to be repaired . As a result of this order, on 25 March
1538, Richmond and Middleham castles were surveyed by Lord John Scrope
of Bolton, together with Lord Charles Conyers. They found that
masonry, timber, and iron were needed to repair the Port Lodge, the
inner gatehouse, the sware house, the mantle wall and five turrets, the
great donjon, 2 wells, the hall, pantry, buttery, kitchen, and other
offices, the privy chamber, a little tower for draughtea,
the great
chamber and a chapel next it and the chapel in the castle garth,
etc. The circuit of the mantle wall was reckoned to be 2,000',
while it was found that there were no guns or artillery. An
estimate was to be made for replacement of the masonry work and
walling, corbels, spouts, timber, and other decayed materials.
However, there seems to be no evidence that any work was actually
undertaken, although the glass used in the chapel within the Robin Hood
Tower is thought to be sixteenth century and therefore shows that this
part of the castle was at least refurnished about this time.
The castle seems to have played no part in the civil war being granted
to Earl James Stuart of Lennox in 1641. As early as 1623 it had
been described as merely the site of a castle. In 1672 the castle
again reverted to the Crown on the death of Duke Charles of Richmond
without issue. In 1675 Charles II gave it to his illegitimate
son, Charles Lennox, whom he created duke of Richmond. It was
then described as the site of the castle and its walls, the pond or
moat, and all the land and tenements within the walls and the whole
bank from the castle to the Swale, except castle-ward rents and suit at
the court and liberties and services of the said castle concerning
houses between the town and castle and the castle and the Swale.
In 1732 excavations in the barbican found the moat and drawbridge,
while in 1761-64 some £350 was spent on repairs to the
masonry. This work included replacing the missing facing of the
lower storey of the Keep and restoring the battlements and parapets on
it. The walls of the Cockpit were rebuilt in places from the
ground up, while the mortar was mixed with soot to make it better blend
in with the old work.
During the Victorian era the castle was used by the War Office for
military purposes, viz a long barracks for non-commissioned officers
was built on the west side of the castle yard in 1857, while the Keep
was refurbished as a storehouse for militia uniforms and weapons.
The spoil from this was piled against the east curtain which was
already in a collapsing condition, while the Cockpit was divided into
allotments and the eastern outer ward was utilised for chicken runs,
pigsties and rubbish heaps. The Victorian barracks were
demolished in 1931.
Description
Richmond castle stands some 50 miles northwest of York, the city that
was the Roman centre for the defence of the north of England. As
has been seen, the history of Richmond castle is mostly tenurial and
there is a good reason for that. When Earl Alan (d.1094) built
the castle, if he didn't have it given to him by William I (1066-87),
it was positioned in a good tactical position for local defence, but
way away from the main lines of communication. These ran north
and east of the castle. Some 3 miles to the east of Richmond lay
Roman Catterick (Cataractonium) on the Great North Road. While
some 4 miles to the north, was that Roman artery over the moors that
ran from the Great North Road to Penrith and the main Roman Road that
ran northwards east of the Pennines. Set on this were the Roman
forts of Greta Bridge, Bowes and Brough. In short, Richmond
castle was several miles from any strategic route and was therefore
left in rather a military cul de sac that few armies bothered to
navigate. This also quickly shows that after the thirteenth
century at the latest, little attempt was made to keep the castle in
good repair. Other than being the caput of an earldom, which was
usually playing at best a very second fiddle to the lord's main title
of Brittany, the castle was an irrelevance and an out of the way one at
that, especially when the Scottish border was pushed to Carlisle and
Norham.
It is argued that Earl Alan had the first castle built on the plateau
just north of the River Swale. Richmond itself stands on a
sloping ground that varies from 400-500' above sea level and is
overlooked by hills up to 1,000' high. The castle site is
irregular, but broadly triangular, being about 450' east to west and
275' deep internally and covering nearly 4 acres. It is generally
accepted that the main curtain wall was initially built for Earl Alan,
but the changes in thickness and style shows that this has been much
rebuilt and this ‘fact' that it was built by the earl is far from
certain. The south side of the enclosure is made up of the cliff
overhanging the river. Possibly there was originally a curtain
here, but it has long gone, possibly due to the collapse of the cliff
face. Now, a later, narrow curtain overlies much of an earlier
wall. The rocky promontory on which the castle stands falls away
relatively steeply to the east. On top of this slope, the
foundations of the east curtain were not taken down to bedrock.
Under the surface soil is a 9' thick bed of brown clay resting on 5' of
blue clay which itself lies on top of 8' of gravel which overlies more
brown clay. The natural flow of water down this slope has carried
the eastern curtain wall eastwards with slippage. North of the
north wall of the Cockpit, which has acted as a buttress to southern
portion of the inner ward wall, the early curtain has bulged outwards
in a great curve which tilts forward. As a result the apparently
contemporary tower at this point has cracked away from the wall and
largely collapsed - its base having slid some 6' down the slope from
its initial building position. It is currently known as the
Fallen Tower. The tower was still standing in 1538 as were 2
other towers in the Cockpit and one on the south side of the great
court. All traces of these towers have now gone, unless one of
the Cockpit towers was the now mostly collapsed northern rectangular
gatetower.
What is definitely missing from the castle site is any trace of
ditching. The first castle seems simply to have been built on
virgin ground which sloped to the north, east and west and was
protected by the cliff above the River Swale to the south. All
the masonry for the castle must therefore have been quarried offsite
with there being no ditches to mine for stone. This again is most
unusual. The only known ditching appears to be that excavated
north of the barbican and this featured the only drawbridge at the
site, the east and west gates and the alleged northern gates into the
ward not being equipped with such features. Indeed the other
gates appear not to have even had portcullises. Therefore the
only real defensive portion of the entrances to the castles were set in
the barbican at some date after the Keep was built. All of this
therefore compares rather unfavourably with the supposedly eleventh
century remains of Ludlow castle which has real defensive capabilities.
The Early Curtain Wall
Starting at the southwest corner of the enceinte the curtain begins
with a small tower about 10' square, projecting as much internally as
externally from the enceinte. This itself is some 15' north from
the cliff face. From the tower the wall runs some 55' northeast
to a small, much rebuilt postern. On the interior side of this
was the destroyed great chapel and later the Victorian barracks.
As the wall continues northeast there are 2 external pilaster
buttresses before a greatly ruined section some 110' across.
After this damage a single angle takes the wall to the great
Keep. Within the Keep wall the curtain makes another turn to an
east to west running northern curtain of the enceinte. Set within
the Keep is what appears to be an original gateway into the first
castle enclosure. Next to the Keep on its east side is a small
Victorian gatehouse on the site of the later medieval gateway.
From here the curtain angles twice and then runs southeast for some
290' to another angle where it makes another shallow turn to the Gold
Hole Tower. This straight section of wall, heading southeast,
contains firstly a large fourteenth century buttress, then a gateway,
the Robin Hood Tower, the Fallen Tower, and finally a much destroyed
original pilaster buttress similar to those to the west. After
the Gold Hole Tower there is a solid block of masonry which ends in
another large ‘rectangular tower', which forms part of a
gatehouse allowing access from the outer ward known as the
Cockpit. West of the gatehouse stands the so-called Scolland's
Hall. For clarity's sake this early enceinte will now be examined
in detail following the same anticlockwise direction as related above.
Southwest Tower
The Southwest Tower is really little more than a turret, but it
contains several interesting features. Firstly, it is incredibly
small, smaller even than Athelstan's Tower at Exeter. Secondly,
its makeup shows that it has been extensively altered over the
centuries and thirdly it appears to have marked the end of the original
curtain wall, 12' short of the cliff face. On the inner side, the
tower stands some 12' from the cliff edge above the River Swale and
occupies steeply sloping ground. South of the tower is a later
section of curtain which makes a right angled turn to follow the very
top of the cliff. This portion of curtain is made of larger,
better coursed blocks of stone than the Southwest Tower and the rest of
the west curtain and clearly butts against the tower. At a later
date a rectangular chamber, of which only the western and southern
walls remain, has been built on top of the angle. A large,
partially blocked windows survives of this room facing west and one
side of a second window facing south.
The base of the Southwest Tower consists of low, slabs of honey
coloured sandstone, often roughly coursed and with the odd snecker
stone. On the southeast corner at the base is some quoining, one
stone being exceptionally large, while the northeast corner consists of
slightly larger stones, coursed with the flat slabs making up the main
masonry of the tower face. However, some 10' up the tower normal
quoining begins at this angle, while on the southeast corner the
quoining briefly disappears, being replaced by normal, vaguely coursed
stonework like that to the base of the northeastern angle.
About 15' up the tower good quoining returns to the southeast angle,
while the main facing has much larger stones in it, these being much
better coursed. At the current curtain wallwalk level is a single
course of poorly laid ‘ashlar' around this face of the tower,
before the masonry returns to more like that below, set with reasonable
quoining flanking well laid, low slabs between. The tower is also
corbelled out to the north at this level where there is a rectangular
doorway giving access to the current curtain wallwalk. The tower
appears solid below this level, while the small wallwalk level chamber
has only loops facing south and west. Both these loops and
possibly the room itself, are probably eighteenth century
additions. Under the south loop is the ghost of an earlier
opening, to which the ashlar of the current, most peculiar, half loop
does not conform. The west loop is of a more normal size, but has
an odd basal oillet that looks nothing like medieval forms, while the
quoining on the tower at this level to the southwest bears every
indication of having been made in the eighteenth century. It is
also peculiarly embossed unlike all the other quoins on the site.
The remains of the ‘battlements' above this are also, therefore,
most likely modern. There appears to be no comparable
‘Norman' structure in the country to compare this odd tower, only
the probably Saxon Athelstan's Tower at Exeter.
West Curtain and Postern
The curtain running northeast from the Southwest Tower consists of many
large snecker stones interspaced with smaller, flatter slabs which have
been roughly coursed. Internally this wall stood about 15' high
and is topped with a later heightening of the wall, made in smaller
stones. This level also seems to mark a change in the stonework
of the Southwest Tower. There was a postern some 50' northwest of
the tower. Only the lowest 3 ashlar courses of this remain of a
4' wide passageway through the curtain. Above this all appears
remade with some eighteenth century or later herringbone repair
work. The great ‘doorway' above could well be the remains
of the west window of the great chapel which is thought to have stood
here. Again this has been much rebuilt and its original form is
questionable. Beyond the postern the wall continues towards the
Keep, although it has been much rebuilt and a large section of it has
disappeared down to internal ground level. A singular external
pilaster buttress survives near the Keep junction. This junction
of the wall with the Keep is most odd and has obviously been much
rebuilt.
Externally it is difficult to examine the west curtain due to the scarp
having been occupied by houses and gardens. The pilaster
buttresses only rise half way up the external faces of the wall, no
doubt to the height of the original wall before it was later
heightened. By the Keep the wall seems to stand externally upon a
stepped plinth and is a good 10' below the inner ward height. On
the summit of parts of the curtain heightening are the remnants of a
wallwalk and traces of battlements. Access to the battlements
appears impossible from the Keep although there is a doorway external
to the curtain! The western wallwalk must therefore have been
reached via stairs against the internal face of the wall, possibly
similar to those still seen at Kendal. There are no traces of
mural steps of which 3 exist in the eastern wall.
The North Curtain
The north curtain of the enceinte, containing the original north gate,
was built over by the Keep. Therefore the north curtain must
predate this. However, the curtain wall on the northern section
of the enceinte is thicker than anywhere else, being some 8' thick
against the more standard 6' of the east and west walls. The
junction between the north and west curtains is most peculiar.
The west curtain ends in a series of quoins some 8' high. At the
summit of these the wall shears back in a ruined irregular line,
suggesting that the original west curtain may have been ruined at this
point when the thicker north curtain was built. The later Keep
lies directly on top of the north curtain and the west curtain
junction, while the additional upper portion of the west curtain wall
butts against the Keep wall. The north curtain also has a
different makeup to the west curtain, consisting of larger, well
coursed sandstones. The 4 construction phases at this junction
therefore appear to have been, first the building of the west curtain
wall, then the north curtain, thirdly the Keep being raised on top of
this, presumably in the period 1146-70, and then finally the west
curtain wall was raised to its current height. Quite certainly
the ‘eleventh century' wall was not a uniform structure and the
north curtain post dates the west curtain.
Set some 6' east of the west curtain junction is a large arch thought
to have been the original great north gate of the fortress. This
consists of an 11' wide Romanesque archway, now allowing access to the
basement of the Keep. Without the Keep it is of 2 orders, each
order being supported on a moulded jamb column. On the column
tops are capitals, that to the outer west side being a plain cushion,
while its inner compatriot has Roman style leaves. The eastern
side has plain cushion capitals and an impost that projects as a string
course for some 3' to the east. Although the inner impost exists
to the west, the outer one appears to have been replaced with a simple
stone slab which does not project along the curtain to the west.
Indeed this suggests that this side of the structure has been repaired
or rebuilt. Further, the masonry above the western third of the
arch appears in a totally different stone from the rest of the original
north curtain. It consists of small slabs, against the much
bigger blocks of the rest of the wall. As such it is possible
that the entire arch is an insertion. Indeed the stones all show
obvious signs of chiselling which can be made out in the ashlar work
elsewhere at the castle. The arch does seem to have much in
common with Anglo Saxon chancel arches. Was this built to imitate
such, or was it stripped from an older structure? Much further
work would be needed to hazard a guess. For comparison, the only
other gateway like this in a castle exists at Exeter and is a much more
elaborate structure. Perhaps also the entrance to the shell keep
at Berkeley should be mentioned here.
The ‘gate' arch within the Keep is again of 2 orders with the
eastern side mirroring the western outer arch in its decoration,
although here the impost and string course survives. Similarly
the western pair of columns are topped only by plain cushion capitals,
although the impost and string course survives for some 2' west of the
arch. Internally the gate passage walls are made in ashlar, but
the arch ceiling is rubble. There is finally the door stop just
within the inner pillars. There was obviously once a door or
doors here that opened inwards towards the ward. The remains of
one hinge still exists. It should also be noted that the east
jambs appear lower than the western ones. This again points to
this gate being an insertion. A final point about this gateway is
the apparent lack of a fortified gate. There is a shallow
projection in the exterior end of the passageway about 6" deep which
reaches up to the arch and was obviously intended as a door stop.
The west side of this barely exists with only projecting blocks to the
top and bottom with the intervening section appearing to have been
removed judging by the near perfect ashlar work where the jambs should
have been. There also does not appear to be a drawbar slot to
lock the gate - a striking omission, although it should be noted that a
singular square 8" block has been inserted in the ashlar where such a
slot would be expected. However, there is no corresponding slot
on the east side and the inserted modern block cuts across 2 courses of
ashlar. This suggests that the original hole is a later
insertion. A sketch of the castle made in 1831 shows the Keep in
its current condition except for this arch. Here only the outer
arch is visible due to this orifice having been walled up.
Centrally a hole has been punched through this filling to allow access
to the basement. The odd junction between the west curtain and
the north curtain is also clearly shown, although the junction appears
rough and without the current quoins.
East of the Keep the north curtain is much mutilated by the insertion
of a later gateway and the building of Victorian cells.
Externally the new gateway is pretty obviously Victorian and mimics
(rather poorly) the gateway under the Keep. Astride the North
Gate the possibly original curtain rises some 10' to the imposts of the
new gateway. This wall consists of larger blocks of stone,
roughly coursed, although the facing between the North Gate and the
Keep is obviously repair work. Above the imposts the wall is
obviously modern and consists of small blocks of stone, reasonably well
coursed. The sketch of 1831 shows the inner area from the Robin
Hood Tower to the Keep clearly. This shows that the north curtain
here was again a multi phase structure. The main section of wall
underneath the Keep is roughly symmetrical with the ‘chancel
arch' gate central in this. It simply ends to the east, roughly
in the middle of the main first floor doorway into the Keep. Set
some 3' north of this the north curtain begins as a separate wall
apparently beginning under the southeast corner of the Keep. This
junction, if correctly drawn, shows no platform or wallwalk before the
main doorway into the Keep. Obviously something is missing here,
but it seems unlikely that there was a flight of wooden steps
here. The north curtain, beginning at the Keep corner, only runs
some 5' before it ends in a ragged gap. After some 10' it
restarts and a ragged section of much damaged wall continues to the
shattered East Gatehouse. Within the first fragment of this
curtain are the remnants of what appears to have been a tall, narrow
doorway, approximately 3' wide. Was this the original entrance to
the ‘barbican' and the large 10' gap between it and the Keep
simply a hole smashed through the enceinte to allow easy access?
Certainly the construction of the Victorian works here has done no
favours to understanding the castle.
From the external traces of the north curtain a shallow angle joins it
to the east curtain. This is marked by a column of quoins, some
of which would appear to be modern, or relaid. The east curtain
is much more like the west curtain in composition. Therefore it
seems valid to postulate that the east and west curtains predate the
north curtain which in turn predates the Keep.
The East Curtain and Gate
The east curtain only ran some 20' from the north curtain before making
a gentle, quoined angle. Half the height of this wall is
Victorian, the lower half being a less coursed mess and being capped by
a single chamfered course of stone. As has been noted, this
section of curtain suffered heavily from slippage and is consequently
heavily buttressed. Some 90' after the angle was a small gateway
which was subsequently blocked. Internally the surviving
springers of a later arch remain to the south as do a few quoins which
mark the rear of the gatehouse. That these butt against the
curtain shows that these date from a secondary phase. Other than
this the structure is mainly gone. It is difficult to judge what
form this tower took it has been so heavily destroyed, but externally
to the north was a small buttress. Another may be engulfed by the
Robin Hood Tower, which would mean that this post dated the gate.
Maybe excavation would shed more light on the layout here.
Robin Hood Tower
Attached to the East Gate is the small rectangular Robin Hood Tower
which projects some 10' from the curtain at the base and was about 18'
across. It has a heavy, twin angled plinth rising some 15' to the
east, which, like the rest of the tower, has fine quoins. The
bulk of the tower is built of coursed blocks, reasonably well laid and
with the odd snecker stone. The plinth is pretty certainly a
later addition, but it has been well meshed to the main structure.
The second floor of the tower is corbelled out to the north and has a
crossbow loop to the east, set in a Romanesque embrasure. There
is also an external loop to the north. The chamber was probably
entered from the wallwalk to the north and has a further, single loop
at the south end of the west wall in a mural chamber. There is
also a corbelled out small chamber to the south which passes into the
mural chamber in the raised section of the curtain south of the
tower. This level of the tower is quite obviously an addition to
the original structure, which in turn seems to postdate the curtain it
butts against. Internally the wallwalk was carried around the
tower on a corbel table. A definite change in the masonry style
of the curtain can be seen some 3' beneath this table where the stones
are smaller and better coursed. Above the wallwalk the stone work
is larger and more regular.
The summit of the tower was probably once crowned with battlements and
began after the beam holes of a flat roof, just above which was a
projecting string course. Of the battlements only the lower part
of a crossbow loop seems to remain to the east. Most of the
eastern portion of the tower at the upper levels has collapsed. A
flight of steps still runs up to the battlements from the wallwalk to
the south. The main curtain wall runs onwards from this here to
the Fallen Tower. Along its course there are various internal
mural stairways and garderobes which all have Romanesque doorways and
ceilings. Such passageways are totally lacking in the west
curtain.
Fallen Tower
The Fallen Tower, as its name suggests, is totally ruined. Those
fragments that remain show that it had also been heavily buttressed to
the east and this buttressing is clearly seen as secondary to the main
bulk of the structure. The upper storey of the tower was reached
via a mural stair in the curtain to the north of the tower.
Access might also have been gained to the upper floors from demolished
buildings to the east which lay against the curtain. The curtain
between this tower and the Gold Hole Tower is again plainly of 2
phases, with the upper section being clearly set back some distance
above the other where it joins the latter tower. Within the
enceinte are 3 gutted buildings, running from north to south, the
Chapel Chamber with a large pointed window, the Chapel, with its
piscina in the south wall, and finally the Great Chamber which had a
fireplace in the remaining fragment to the west. The Chapel must
have been entirely lit from the west, rather like the chapel at Harlech
castle which is of similar dimensions.
Gold Hole Tower
Some distance south of the Fallen Tower, the east curtain makes another
quoined angle and arrives at the Gold Hole Tower. Although this
is of a similar size to the northern 2 towers in the wall, it is
clearly a later structure, butting obviously against the earlier
curtain wall. The basement of the tower is blind, the wall being
made of small slabs of stones with the odd snecker stone and fine
ashlar quoins. At internal ground level there are a course or 2
of herringbone masonry, followed by 3, low storeys set between more
standard quoining. The lower 2 floors have rectangular, non
defensive windows to the east, while the topmost window has a
monolithic triangular arch. At the tower summit are battlements
that look similar to those found on top of the eleventh century
rectangular towers at Ludlow. To the south the tower has a
trefoil light at second floor level, while just above it there is a
corbel table allowing for the expansion of the floor above in this
direction.
The tower shows several interesting features on its northern
front. Firstly the basement ends with a partial single line of
herringbone masonry. Above this the interior ground floor is lit
by 2 loops, the eastern one being smaller and crude in the
extreme. As this floor begins at the top of the early east
curtain, the junction between the tower and the later top of the
curtain wall is unusual, having some poor quality quoin work on the
tower to mark the interface. The first floor appears blind on
this face, but the second, or top floor, has a lancet window and a
projecting ashlar garderobe which is tight against the curtain and
built into the remnant of a merlon. This level was accessed from
the wallwalk to the west via a shoulder headed doorway that looks
modern. At the southeast corner, the north wall of Scolland's
Hall Chamber forms the south wall of the tower up to second floor
level. Here the top storey of the tower sits uncomfortably and
slightly off alignment with the chamber wall below. The corbelled
out section of the wall is also recessed to the proper line of the
wall, which was continued westwards as the Scolland's Hall Chamber
north wall as the surviving teeth marks clearly show.
Southeast Gatehouse
The Southeast Gatehouse is a most peculiar affair. It is simply a
hole in the wall structure, having a fine Romanesque arch to the
exterior. After a short recess probably came a gate. Ten
feet of masonry later the gate passageway exited through a similar
Romanesque arch. The exterior of the gateway is set in a fine
ashlar wall which ends at first floor level, 3 courses above the top of
the gate arch. The chamber above the gate has the remains of a
trefoil window and a doorway that led to a probable platform over the
gate passageway which ran all the way to the Gold Hole Tower judging by
the beam holes in the wall. The upper chamber wall is made of
coursed slabs and has a large buttress south of the doorway against the
cliff face over the River Swale.
To the south of the gate passageway is a guard chamber. This is
entered from the west via a shoulder headed doorway and has a
Romanesque window loop to the east. To the south the guard
chamber projects partially down the cliff face and covers the south
wall of Scolland's Hall from any attempt at infiltration from the
Cockpit. As a gatehouse the whole has little military value for
defence other than the single gate in the passageway. Behind the
gateway is the basement of Scolland's Hall.
Scolland's Hall
The hall is named after Scolland (d.1146), the steward of Richmond
castle. What is known of him and his predecessor has been
remarked upon under the history above on Earl Alan Rufus
(d.1094). Probably his name has only been attached to the hall by
reputation and he had nothing to do with its building.
The hall runs for 80' from the guard chamber, revetting the top of the
cliff to the south with a long, slightly sloping plinth.
Externally, at internal ground level above the cliff face, is a row of
some 23 putlog holes stretching the entire length of the wall and set
in 2 courses of ashlar masonry. Possibly these holes were to
support a platform, though how it was accessed is another matter.
Maybe it was an aid for whitewashing this face of the castle.
Above this are 7 rectangular windows set in areas of ashlar which
defines them from the surrounding coursed rubble masonry.
Internally the embrasures are rectangular and again made and set in
ashlar work. They have splayed bases. On the floor above
these are 4 twin light Romanesque windows with a singular, much large
window at the east end of the sequence. None of the twin lights
appear to have had lintels though each had a recessed monolithic head
supported on recessed jambs and a central pillar with a cushion capital
under an impost. These should be compared with the early windows
at Christchurch hall, Goodrich and Hay on Wye keeps. Internally
the embrasures are Romanesque, while the lights themselves are recessed
as if to hold wooden shutters.
The north front of Scolland's Hall, some 25' feet from the southern
wall, had no lights at ground floor level, but 2 entrance doorways, the
western one of which is probably an insertion as it's arch cuts through
the beam hole line of the floor above. This is a large Romanesque
arch with massive imposts set upon rough and ready large jambs.
Above the jambs is a much better carved arch. Presumably the arch
is original and the imposts and jambs have been replaced at a later
date. The eastern arch was cruder and led into a small chamber
occupying the eastern portion of the block and giving access to the
Southeast Gate and its guard chamber.
The first floor occupied the entire block apart from the area over the
Southeast Gate which is now described as Scolland's Hall Chamber.
This rectangular room was entered from Scolland's Hall at the southern
end of its west wall and from the Great Chamber and Gold Hole Tower to
the north. The latter also housed the latrines, which again
points to a civil use for this chamber. There was also a doorway
out to the platform over the Southeast Gate and a window also facing
east. Between these 2 features was a fireplace. Presumably
this was a solar for the earl.
The first floor Scolland's Hall had 3 entrances to the north.
Running from the east, the first came from the Great Chamber, the
second doorway came from a building that presumably lay west of the
Great Chamber. This door had been cut through the fourth twin
light Romanesque window embrasure. The entrance was followed by
the 3 remaining Romanesque twin light windows similar to those in the
south wall, although flanked by greater amounts of ashlar on both sides
of the wall. Finally came the main ceremonial entrance to the
hall. This was reached via a 20' by 15' platform at the top of a
flight of external stairs from the main ward. The entrance was a
fine Romanesque archway which sadly has been heavily damaged. The
arch probably originally had 2 orders, but only the plain outer one now
remains. This was set upon reverse chamfered imposts which
in turn lay upon capitals of which only the eastern one remains with
worn stiff leaf moulding. Both outer pillars and their bases have
gone. However, the lower portions of both inner pillars survive,
while that to the east still has a cushion base. As the doorway
is encased in ashlar up to the imposts it seems likely that the small
slabs of masonry and the surviving arch above are both eighteenth
century rebuilds. Along the summit of the interior south wall are
the remains of a cornice - each Romanesque arch being monolithic and
resting upon a carved, decorative corbel table. These carvings
are all geometric and varied in style. There is no trace of any
chimney in the walls, so heating, unlike in the attached chamber, must
have been via a brazier.
The Ancillary Buildings
To the west, at first floor level, a Romanesque doorway led from
Scolland's Hall to the buttery and pantry, while in the northwest
corner stood a fine ashlar clad spiral stairway which presumably led to
the roof as it does not go down to the basement. Around the base
of the buttery doorway are several courses of herringbone
masonry. Presumably this is post medieval patchwork.
Externally the southwest corner of Scolland's Hall consists of fine
quoins set in ashlar work. Joined to this is the buttery and
pantry wall which is made predominantly of thin sandstone slabs lying
on top of 2 or 3 courses of ashlar, which itself lies upon the
revetment of the cliff face. This chamber is a little under 25'
square. West of the buttery and pantry lay the kitchen. The
southern front of the ancillary buildings is strengthened by 4 pilaster
buttresses made of ashlar. These are set with 2 at either extreme
and then 2 much closer together in the centre of the structure.
The western side of the wall has collapsed down the cliff face.
Further buildings lay along the western portion of the south curtain as
is evidenced by the jumbled foundations and remains of windows in the
enceinte. Excavation about 100' east of the Southwest Tower found
a fine quality floor within one of these buildings. A section of
curtain wall revetting the cliff face just east of the dig site appears
to be of a different age to the rest and has 3 narrow buttresses.
The final later stretch of curtain wall brings the tour of the enceinte
back to the western curtain, completing the circuit.
Cockpit
Lying east of the southern portion of the east curtain lies the curious
ward known as the Cockpit, possibly from cock fighting having occurred
there in the eighteenth century. The ward was roughly eye shaped
and lay alongside the cliff face above the River Swale. It is
about 230' east to west by 180' deep. The ward enceinte is mainly
destroyed, with the north wall being the best preserved, though there
are some traces of the southwest wall. Another fragment exists
joining to the south east corner of the Southeast Gate. These
walls butt against the eastern enceinte of the main ward. The
Cockpit north wall consists of laid rubble masonry and shows evidence
of at least 2 rebuildings. The section with the
‘battlements' is undoubtedly a late rebuild. Within this
wall, some 25' from the main ward stands a large Romanesque gate arch
of 2 orders. This gate is set in a few rows of ashlar
masonry. It is also recessed from the early wall to the east, but
not from the rebuilt section of the wall higher up. The gate
passageway is also ashlar as far as it survives. The remains
suggest that this would have been an internally projecting gatehouse of
early design. This little ward is most odd and unique. It
serves little military purpose, unless this was the original way into
the castle, which itself is odd as there seems to have been 4 entrances
into the main ward.
A royal survey of around 1280 mentions a garden ‘pertaining to
the castle', while the fifteenth century illustration in the Register
of Richmond shows the Cockpit as filled with fruit trees.
Possibly this is what the ward always was, a garden, perhaps dating
back to the times of Count Alan (d.1094) in the eleventh century.
Certainly it serves no purpose as a defensive structure, unless this
was the original main entrance to the castle - which seems
unlikely. Presumably it was always just an enclosed or fortified
pleasance.
Barbican
The Barbican has been virtually destroyed, but it consisted of a
polygonal enclosure encircling the Keep and main gate to the
north. To the east are traces of a back wall to a tower which was
presumably rectangular or D shaped. Beyond this nothing can be
ventured of the structure or its construction date. An old
drawing shows the outer gate with the flanking turrets although there
are now no traces of these.
The Keep
A description of the great Keep has been left to last as it is such an
odd structure. It is massive and tall, being 45' deep by 54' wide
and has walls some 11' feet thick at the base. In its current
form it stands over 100' high. The base of its south wall is made
up of the secondary portion of the early curtain wall, which is pierced
by the odd ‘chancel arch' gateway. There are also narrow
lighting loops to east and west, while the interior has been roofed by
a stone vault with central pillar that contains the well shaft.
This somewhat mimics the layout in Rochester keep. This insertion
would appear to be thirteenth century, although the unique spiral stair
added in the southwest corner would appear to be later, possibly much
later.
Externally the Keep stands on a great plinth topped by a single sloping
course on all sides but the south where the early curtain takes the
place of the plinth. However, a plinth on this face does top the
wall. From the plinths a series of pilaster buttresses rise up to
the battlements, 2 on each front to north and south plus those which
encase the corners. On the east face one of the buttresses is
only a single block of ashlar wide, while the other is only a block
away from the corner buttress. On the west face there is only
one, central, narrow buttress between the 2 corner ones. The
masonry is ashlar of a type often stated to be made of old Roman stone.
Entrance to the Keep, before the addition of the spiral stair, was from
the wallwalk to the east. Here an inset in the south wall of the
Keep allowed for a south facing Romanesque doorway. The door
itself is recessed, but its pillars have gone, leaving only the cushion
capitals and imposts above. The arch above is of 2 orders with
the upper one having a toothed pattern. Within is a dog legged
passageway and a straight flight of mural steps leading up the south
wall to the second floor. The first floor chamber within is
rectangular with mural chambers in the east and west walls, the western
one having a Romanesque doorway with external label which probably gave
access to the wallwalk, although today it is oddly set without the line
of the battlements. To the north are 3 great Romanesque windows,
while in the centre is an ashlar stone pillar holding up the wooden
floor above. This is again an unique feature. The 3 windows
are set in Romanesque embrasures. The 2 flanking windows have
moulded pillars and arches with capitals and imposts, while externally
is another Romanesque arch covered by a label. The central window
is similar except for having a lintel and an ashlar tympanum in place
of the inner arch. Again such large windows are unique,
especially as they are facing the fighting side of the castle where
crossbow loops would be more natural.
The stairs to the second floor are lit by small Romanesque lights, the
upper one being set in a large external recess with a label.
Again this is a strikingly odd feature. There is also a sloping
inset of one course at the base of this loop that extends around the
tower. The second floor has a chamber similar to the one below,
but with no lights at this level. At the mezzanine level there
are 2 windows to the east, but only one to the west. There are
also 2 chambers in each of these walls, with the one in the southeast
corner leading to another mural stair doglegging up to the
battlements. The battlements themselves are probably eighteenth
century and therefore don't need describing, although they probably
follow something approaching the original layout with watchtowers at
the corners judging from the few stones that look worn and therefore
probably original.
It is noticeable that in the whole structure there are remains of
neither fireplace nor garderobe, although the many mural chambers could
have accommodated the latter. Further all the sketches of the
keep from the eighteenth century onwards shows the keep in a good state
of repair, including its battlements.
Sketches of the Castle
Richmond castle is lucky in having many early sketches made of the
site. The first was made sometime in the fifteenth century
Register of the Honour of Richmond and is currently preserved in the
Bodleian Library as Ms. Lyell 22. This shows a surprising view of
the castle in which the great Keep hardly features. In front of
the rather insignificant turreted Keep is a battlemented North
Barbican. This has a round gatetower with what looks like a
bridge before it and is flanked at a short distance by 2 further round
turrets which only slightly project above the curtain
battlements. Next to the keep is a large Romanesque gateway
without any trace of a gatetower, but apparently containing a
portcullis. East of this is the Robin Hood Tower which is given a
low conical roof, but no battlements. South of this is a
representation of the roofless Fallen Tower and then the curtain of the
Cockpit. This has no north gate in this representation.
The southern curtain commences at the east end with the Gold Hole
Tower. This is shown as an apparently round ashlar tower with a
French style, curved conical roof. Then in the southeast corner
of the ward Scolland's Hall is portrayed. This is rendered as a 2
storeyed rectangular structure with a gabled roof projecting above the
battlements of its north wall. A flight of steps is shown running
up to the first floor Romanesque entrance, just as excavation has
uncovered. The building is also shown as being of 2
storeys. West of this the buttery and pantry seem to be portrayed
as a roofless round tower, while the kitchen has a steeply pointed
roof, making it look somewhat similar to the vast, elaborate kitchen at
Fontevraud abbey in Anjou. Another small roofed building seems to
lie north of it. To the west are 2 further roofed rectangular
buildings and then what appears to be a chapel with 3 long lancet
windows with 3 oculi above in the east end and a bell tower to the
west. Next to this is shown a large round tower, apparently in
the southwest corner with a steep conical roof and a cross on
top. Possibly one or both of these represent the lost St Nicholas
church. The west curtain is then shown as featureless as it runs
back to the keep.
An interesting feature of the sketch are the 7 coats of arms that
decorate the castle. These probably represent the knights who
were to defend or repair various parts of the castle. Apparently
over the castle gatehouse is a shield of 4 bars indented gules and or
with a chief argent. The arms of Brian Fitz Alan in 1306 were or, 3
bars gules. Next to this, apparently set on the keep, adjacent to
the portcullised North Gate is the argent saltire on a sable field,
possibly representing Neville, but their arms were an argent saltire on
a field gules as was worn by Earl Ralph Neville of Westmorland
(d.1425). It would seem unlikely that such a heraldic mistake
would be made here, so perhaps this represented another knight, John
Aston using such a device in the thirteenth century. Going
clockwise around the castle a vexilation flag which appears to be a
dancetty azure per fess over argent. The junction between the
south wall of the Cockpit and Gold Hole Tower has a shield argent with
an engrailed sable. Mohun of Dunster used such a device, but on a
field or, not argent. Over Scolland's Hall is a spear with a
vexillation flag with 3 bars gules and or/argent, possibly wavy.
This possibly represents the later arms of the Constable family.
In the thirteenth century they used barry or and azure as well as
gules, 2 gimel bars and a chief argent. However, the Multons of
Egremont used argent 3 bars gules at this time, so this possibly
represents them. Next to this over the pantry/buttery is a
flagpole with argent azure lozengy with a chief argent. The arms
of Henry Fitz Hugh (d.1352) were azure frety or with a chief or, but
the much earlier arms of the Bardolfs appear to match this coat.
Possibly this is near enough to mark the arms of a descendant.
Over the 2 ancillary buildings in the western half of the south curtain
is a vexillation flag on a spear. This appears to represent
Clifford, checky or and azure a fess gules, but is probably meant to be
Marmion, vair or and azure, a fess gules. Finally towards the
south end of the west curtain is an argent shield with a sable fess
with 3 argent roundels in line upon it. The arms of Burgh of
Hornby appear to have been argent, a fess sable with 3 roundels or in
line.
Underneath the sketch in Latin is the following:
The place of Ralph Fitz Robert in Richmond castle at the chapel of St Nicholas
The place of the constable in the enclosure and tower [Barbican and Keep?]
The place of Brian Fitz Alan in the great hall of Scotland (magna aula de Scottlandi)
The place of Torfin Fitz Robert of Manfield between the kitchen and the brewery
The place of Ralph Fitz Henry from the west side of Scolland Hall
The place of Conan Fitz Helias next to the closed tower on the eastern side outside the wall [Gold Hole Tower? and Cockpit]
The place of the chamberlain from the east side of Scolland Hall by the oven
The place of Thomas Burgh from the western side of the greater chapel
to the canons in the walls.
A print of the castle from 1674 shows the castle in slightly better
state than it is today. This shows the rear of the Cockpit
gatetower still standing, but ruined, well inside the Cockpit curtain
wall. It also shows 2 or possibly even 3 small rectangular
turrets, possibly similar in size to the Southwest Tower of the main
ward, at the eastern end of the Cockpit. The north Barbican is
also clearly shown, with one section of its wall to the east still
standing some 30' high, blocking the view of the base of the
keep. The curtain also appears intact from the Keep to the
Cockpit. The possibly chapel west window in the west curtain is
also plainly visible in pretty much the same condition as it appears
now.
Buck's print of 1721 shows the castle pretty much as it is now,
although something has gone wrong with his junction of the east curtain
with the keep as he shows a doorway at the junction. An odd
sketch of 1812 appears to show the east gate arch as still standing
next to the Robin Hood Tower.
Unfortunately the sketch of the castle in Dugdale's England and Wales
Delineated of the 1850s is totally fanciful and although based upon a
superficial similarity to the castle cannot be used as evidence as it
has many obvious inaccuracies. There are other late nineteenth
century photographs of the site, which sadly add nothing to what
remains today, other than glimpses of the Victorian barracks and the
fact that the ‘chancel arch' under the keep had been cleared out
by 1890 and the quoins added to the east curtain junction just west of
it.
Summary
As it stands, Richmond castle is an enigma. It is correctly
stated to be one of the earliest masonry castles in the country.
However, it is clearly misunderstood and the dating of the hall and
enceinte to the eleventh century is by no means secure. The
herringbone masonry occasionally claimed as evidence of early work
would appear to be eighteenth century patchwork, while the defensive
capacity of the castle would appear to consist solely of the height and
thickness of its walls, there being no portcullis or, apart from the
later one to the north Barbican, drawbridge and ditching. The
early enceinte would appear to have had one gate in the west wall and 2
in the east. However, any evidence for the north gates seems
lacking until the barbican was built, possibly as early as the
thirteenth century. The grand arch under the keep seems a most
odd main entrance, which begs the question as to when it dates
from. Was it just a grand opening to the barely lit Keep
basement? Such seems absurd, but not as absurd as having an 11'
wide hole in the northern enceinte which post dates the east and west
curtains and would seem to be barely defensible. Obviously this
blocked arch was of some antiquity in 1831 as it allowed the only
access into the Keep at that time. Perhaps it might have been
inserted in the eighteenth century renovations, but then why was it
blocked and where did the arch come from? It's lopsided nature
strongly suggests that it was been reconstructed and its religious
nature suggests it was taken from elsewhere after the dissolution of
the monasteries in the 1530s. Could it have been inserted with
the odd spiral stair in the basement which then gave access to the
upper floors of the keep? Such access had otherwise been lost
since the collapse of the north curtain and the presumed removal of any
flight of steps up to the door? There is also the total lack of
defensive crossbow loops other than from the battlements and the rather
bizarre layout of the surviving towers which are all on the east side
of the castle.
Quite clearly Richmond castle lacked most necessities for a successful
military defensive structure. For instance a look at it's
defensible gateways showed that they were little more than a gate near
a weak tower or turret. Compare the gatehouses in the east and
west curtains at Richmond with the those of other early northern
castles like Barnard Castle, Brough, Buckton, Carlisle, Conisbrough,
Egremont, Harbottle, Helmsley south gate, Norham, Pickering, Prudhoe,
Scarborough or Tickhill. They simply do not compare, totally
lacking drawbridge, portcullus, height, defence in depth and crossbow
loops. Clearly military defence was not paramount at Richmond,
despite the fact that the history of the owning family states that it
was built for defence against roaming Englishmen. However, as a
retreat against ragamuffins the walls would suffice; as a defence
against a serious invasion backed by siege artillery the castle is a
joke. Even after the construction of the great Keep in the mid
twelfth century, the defences were not brought up to a defensive
military standard. No crossbow loops cover the curtain bases from
the towers, no twin towered gatehouses protect the many entrances, no
ditches are dug - consider the rocky Welsh castles refurbished for
Edward I (1272-1307) at Criccieth and Harlech which were set on great
rocks like Richmond. There seems no attempt to bring the defences
of Richmond into the twelfth century, let alone the thirteenth.
Even the Keep was militarily and civilly a bit of a joke by 1170.
Henry II's great keep at Dover allowed a self contained community to
exist within it, with all that was necessary for them to live for
months of siege if it had been properly stocked. The 2 usable
rooms at Richmond Keep were hardly big enough for a family party, let
alone living in. The Keep looks impressive from the outside, but
internally it offered no comfort and little protection - Scolland's
Hall and the associated chambers and ancillary buildings were obviously
where the earl and his family would live when in residence. Add
to this the Cockpit which was early used as a garden and we have a
pleasure palace built off the strategic routeways in the wastes of
Yorkshire, a centre of a great economic barony of a mostly absent lord,
but there is no trace of a great defensive fortress.
The Possible Chronology of the Masonry
As has been stressed many times, it is virtually impossible to
date any masonry structure accurately. All that is really
possible is to make educated guesses based upon the history,
archaeology (if any has been undertaken) and the structural
remains. The history of the owning families of Richmond castle, as related
above, indicates that the east and west curtains of the enceinte were
probably built first. The little that is known of the Saxon and
Danish occupation of the site would suggest that it was unlikely that
the castle was begun then, although this possibility, considering the
unusual style of the site, cannot be ruled out totally. It is
possible that William the Conqueror or his lieutenant, William Fitz
Osbern (d.1071), began this site as his border with Scotland.
After Fitz Osbern's loss of York in 1069 it is probable that Richmond
was granted to Count Alan Rufus (d.1094) and that he constructed the
bulk of the fortress before 1083 when he spent some 2 years at
Sainte-Suzanne in Maine. The later career of Count Alan Rufus and
that of his 2 brothers, Count Alan Niger (d.1098) and Count Stephen
(d.1136), suggests a period of tranquillity at Richmond, especially
after the Scottish border was moved northwards to Carlisle in
1092. It would therefore seem that Richmond became something of a
military backwater after 1092, although it remained the seat of an
earldom with its administration apparently being given to Count
Stephen's younger son, Alan Niger before 1123. As such it was
still a seat of power. It remained the main seat of Earl Alan
until his death in 1146 after which it became increasingly merely an
appendage of the count of Rennes, especially after 1156/58 when they became dukes of
Brittany. It was in the period 1146-70 that the great keep was
alleged to have been built by an account written down after 1341 and
probably before 1372. These dates are arrived at as the genealogy
included the death of Duke John in 1341, but not the death of his
successors, his half brother and half nephew, more Duke Johns, in 1345
and 1399. Duke John the nephew (d.1399) was effectively
dispossessed of Richmond in 1372 as is discussed in the history
above. Therefore the question is left, can a source written at
least 170 years after the event be taken as more than hearsay?
One surviving fact suggests that we can - the survival of record
of a payment of £51 11s 3d spent on the tower and houses of
Richmond castle in 1172. This sum could well have been spent on
the completion of the keep and the rooms (houses) within it.
If we have little documentary proof as to the dating of the tower, we are
left with archaeology and structural analysis to ascertain the dates of
the masonry. Unfortunately, although excavations have occurred
recently, they shed little light on the date of the fortress and
structural analysis can only give a rough sequence of building and not
the date of the structures. Added to these problems are the major
refurbishments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which were
rightly pointed out with alarm during the recent excavations. In
the description of the masonry above, the probable development of the
castle has been exhaustively examined. Unfortunately this cannot
accurately date the structures. They are certainly early and it
is possible that the castle was complete, pretty much in its present
form by the 1170s. Certainly the £51 11s 3d spent on it by Ranulf
Glanville (d.1190) in 1172 would suggest that it was complete
before 1171 when it came into his hands. After that date it was
generally the caput of an absentee earl, so great building works after
the 1170s seems unlikely.
Appendix - The late fourteenth century:
Genealogy of the Earls of Richmond after the English Conquest
Count Eudes of Brittany (d.1079), before the conquest of England, the
son of Duke Geoffrey (d.1008), begat 3 sons successively, who, after
his death, presiding over the county of Brittany, that is to say Alan
Rufus (d.1094) or Forgaunt [this nickname would appear to be an error
for his cousin, Duke Alan Fergant, d.1119], who first came to England
with Duke William the bastard of Normandy, to whom the same William,
after he had been crowned king of England by conquest, with the help of
Matilda his queen, gave the honour and county of Earl Edwin (d.1071) in
Yorkshire, which is also called Richmondshire, and which until then
existed geldable, but was afterwards changed into a liberty by the
privilege of the kings. This Alan first began to build a castle
and garrison (munitionem) near his caput of Gilling, for the protection
of his people against the invasion of the English and the Danes, who
were then infesting everywhere and he named the said castle Richmond
after his French idiom, which sounds in Latin like a rich mountain,
situated in an elevated position in a strong part of his
territory. And he died without issue of his body and was buried
at Saint Edmund's. Alan Niger (d.1098), his brother, succeeded to
the same honour of Richmond. In whose sixteenth year of
government [he was only lord for 4 years] a certain knight named
Acharias Fitz Bardolf founded a monastery of the Cistercian order at
Fors in Wensleydale [founded 1145?], which was afterwards transferred
as far as the territory of Witton, and called Jervaulx (Jorevallis), by
Stephen, afterwards earl of Richmond. And he [Alan Niger] died
without children. Stephen (d.1136), the brother of the said Alan,
succeeded him in the aforesaid honour and transferred the abbey from
Fors to the place which is now called Jervaulx and begat a
son named Alan (d.1146), and he died on the first of April, in the year
of grace 1144 [d.21 April 1146], and was buried at Begard, yet he
ordered his heart to be buried in the monastery of St Mary at York,
which he himself had previously built and endowed with very large
possessions in the year of grace 1087 during the reign of William II
Rufus. Alan, the son of Stephen, succeeded the same count, who
died in Brittany on 30 March (the third calends of April), in the year
of grace 1166 [He probably died 30 March 1146]. Count Conan Fitz
Alan of Brittany and Richmond succeeded to the honour of Richmond and
married Margaret, the sister of King William of Scotland, by whom he
had an only daughter and heiress named Constance, whom Geoffrey
(d.1186), the brother of King Richard of England (1189-99),
married. This Conan built a great tower within Richmond castle
and he died in Brittany and was buried at Begard in the year of grace
1170 [He died 20 February 1170/71]. Constance, the daughter of
Conan, held the aforesaid honour, and by Geoffrey (d.1186), the king's
brother, she had a son named Arthur, whom King John of England, caused
to be put to death [1203], and Eleanor (d.1241) was imprisoned at Corfe
after the death of her brother Arthur. Afterwards, Earl Ranulf of
Chester (d.1232) married her, who, after she had been divorced from him
for adultery and had no children, married a certain Guy Thouars
(d.1213). From them came a daughter named Adelicia (d.1221), who
after the death of her parents remained in the custody of the king of
France, whom the king gave in marriage with Brittany to Lord Peter
Mauclerc [Peter Dreux, d.1250], his knight. And she [Constance]
died in Brittany and was buried at Begard in the year 1201.
Adelicia died in Brittany and was buried at Ploermel (Plonarmel) in the
year of Grace 1221. John Fitz Adelicia, died in Brittany in the
year 1223 [actually 1285] and was never earl of Richmond [his inquest
post mortem shows he was]. Earl John Fitz John of Richmond
married Beatrice, the daughter of King Henry of England (1216-72), by
whom he begat Arthur, Peter, and John. He was slain at Lyons at
the coronation of the Lord Clement the Pope in the year 1305, and was
buried there. His son, Duke Arthur, who was never earl of
Richmond, died in Brittany and was buried at Ploermel in
1311. John, brother of Count Arthur, died in Brittany and was
buried at Vannes (Vanys) in 1330 [actually 17 Jan 1334]. Earl
John Fitz Arthur died in Brittany and was buried at Ploermel in the year of grace 1341.
Why not join me here and at other Northern
English castles this year? Please see the information on this and
similar tours at Scholarly Sojourns.
Copyright©2020
Paul Martin Remfry