Lecture: Raglan Castle
This was given as one of the Mynydd Gwyn "Learned Discourses" in August 2021... it tied in with "Raglisn't Fair", the event which replaced the usual Raglan Fair, impossible to arrange in the COVID situation applying at the time.
Raglan Castle has a special place in the hearts of many in Insulae Draconis and beyond as a venue for our activities, but it is also site of particular historical interest. So absorbed are we by our tourneys, camping and classes, that we may perhaps have failed to pick up on that history. Or maybe not… in which case you probably don’t need to listen to this talk.
Perhaps the first thing that makes Raglan unusual is that it is a Welsh castle. For proof, see this picture!
“What?”, say you, “Castles in Wales are two-a-penny.” And you would be right. Wales had about 400 to 600 castles (depending which source you believe), of which about 100 are still standing today, albeit in various states of ruination. It is the highest concentration of castles in a comparable area anywhere in the world. But very few of them are Welsh castles. Nearly all of them are English castles established in Wales to control the Welsh. Raglan is not unique in having been built by a Welshman, but it is rare. Llewellyn the Great and Llewellyn ap Gryffydd had built a number of castles, but these were relatively primitive affairs, which could certainly not be said of Raglan. In fact, due to the date of its construction, which was almost the end of the true castle-building era, Raglan is one of the most sophisticated castles in Britain. The era of its construction coincided with the beginning of the age of gunpowder… it was not long before castles were to become old technology. Raglan was its last flowering.
Perhaps to get an idea of what Raglan manor looked like, then, we might think of this other SCA favourite site, Tretower. This is also a Welsh manor house with an old motte-and-bailey castle in its grounds. The manor at Raglan had for some generations been the property of a Welsh family called the Bloets, whose male line was now ended, so that the manor came into the possession of Elizabeth Bloet, which made her worth marrying. James Berkeley did the deed... as a younger son, he was not due to inherit Berkeley castle, which went to his brother Thomas, but by his marriage to Elizabeth he became Lord of Raglan in 1399. This in turn meant that when he died in 1406, their son, another James Berkeley, inherited the manor. However, his mother remained in residence and when she remarried her new husband, Gwilym (or William) ap Thomas, moved in. Elizabeth herself died in 1420, but Gwyllim remained at Raglan, where he was joined by his next wife, Gwladys.
Gwilym was from a fairly minor Welsh gentry family, but was able to make his way up the social ladder through acquiring a reputation as an efficient administrator and office-holder and by marrying well. He may also have caught the eye of King Henry V through his actions at Agincourt, though evidence for this is contradictory. Gwladys was a renowned beauty and the daughter of Davy Gam, an almost legendary figure who was the main Welsh opponent of Owain Glendower. Together they had a son, another William, to whom we shall turn later.
James Berkeley, the rightful owner of Raglan, was in the meantime happy to lease it to his stepfather as a tenant. He was more interested in Berkeley Castle (see below:)
which he eventually inherited from his uncle after a legal battle, so when in 1432 Gwyllim asked to buy Raglan Manor from him, he was happy to sell. Gwyllim then set to demolishing the manor and building a castle on the site.
The heart of this new castle was the Great Tower, an impressive hexagonal structure of great height and surrounded by a moat.
It could be accessed only by a bridge set high up, linking it to the rest of the castle. That in turn was accessed by what is now the South Gate (the one accessed by the bridge beneath which Thomas and Edith’s kitchen traditionally resides!), which was then the main gate.
This tower and gate are the main survivors from his era.
The old manor house probably stood where the great hall and chapel are now, and was perhaps incorporated into this early castle.
Both the great tower and the south gate incorporated primitive gun-loops from which artillery could be fired… though apparently some of these may have been more for show than anything else, since architectural features on the inside of the tower would have made it impossible to fire a gun from them!
In 1445, Gwyllim died, his castle incomplete, and his son by Gwladys, William, succeeded him as Lord of Raglan. Whilst his father may have risen from relative obscurity, William was by now one of the most significant of all Welshmfn. Welsh he was… both his parents were of soundly Welsh lineage. Welsh poets sang his praises as being the hope for a national deliverer who would deliver Wales from the English. But poets will say anything, and there is little to justify this claim, which must have been rather embarrassing to William, who seems rather to have been trying to cement his place as a favourite of the King of England and a part of the English establishment.
For starters, whereas his mother and father had both used very Welsh names, Gwyllim ap Thomas and Gwladys ferch Davydd Gam, he declined to call himself Gwyllim ap Gwyllim… or even William ap William. Instead, in English style, he took a surname, one that he would pass on to his descendants. It was Herbert. This was not a random choice. He was claiming (on the basis of very dubious evidence) to be a descendent of Herbert ap Godwin, who was an illegitimate son of the English King Henry I. In fact, if he wanted a royal pedigree, he was genuinely descended from the royal families of both Gwent and Brycheiniog, but he chose not to stress this… clearly English royalty, even illegitimate royalty, had more street-cred in his mind than Welsh.
When Richard of York had first stated his claim to the English throne, Gwyllim had supported him, but was himself something of a minor player in the early power-struggles between Yorkists and Lancastrians.
However, William Herbert continued his father’s allegiance to the Yorkist cause, and became a very key supporter to the future Edward IV… the most prominent Yorkist in Wales. Meanwhile, the Earl of Pembroke, Jasper Tudor, half-brother to Henry VI, was the most prominent Welsh Lancastrian. The two clashed at Mortimer’s Cross and the sieges of Camarthen and Aberystwyth, where in each case William had the upper hand thus making him a favourite of Edward’s, who created him Baron Herbert of Raglan and knight of the garter. Jasper fled the country, and his ward and nephew, a certain Henry Tudor, was placed in the care of William, presumably for re-education in the rightness of the Yorkist cause. (That went well, then!) William became a Knight of the Garter and in 1468 was made Earl of Pembroke in place of the disgraced Jasper Tudor. This made him the first true Welshman to be granted peerage by an English King (since Jasper Tudor’s mother, Catherine of Valois, was French and the widow of English King Henry V).
This rise in fortune meant William Herbert was able to continue his father’s castle-building in grand style. The old southern courtyard (now the “Fountain Court”) was developed by placing a grand suite of guest apartments against the exterior walls and a chapel alongside the Great Hall. The walls of these are now largely gone, but when we sit on what seem to be raised stone platforms to watch tourneys or attend courts in the fountain court, we are sitting on their floors.
On the other side of the great hall he built a new courtyard, the pitched stone courtyard. This was the more functional side of the castle, with the kitchen (in a tower in one corner) and various store-rooms and administrative rooms around the courtyard.
An impressive new gatehouse gave access into this courtyard, becoming now the main entrance in place of the old south gatehouse.
A suite of private apartments stretched from the South gatehouse to the new main gatehouse, including a grand upper gallery behind the new gatehouse towers, and incorporating the bridge to the Great Tower. This is the range behind Mary in the picture above, much now demolished.
Of course, the trouble with rising to power by allegiance to one side or the other in the wars of the Roses, was that you could fall just as fast. When Earl of Warwick defected to the Lancastrian cause and brought back Henry VI, William Herbert and his younger brother Richard, who had been captured at the Battle of Edgecote, were summarily executed at Warwick’s orders. William was buried at Tintern Abbey.
By now he had a son, by his wife Anne Devereux, yet another William. When he reached his majority, he inherited Raglan Castle and the Earldom of Pembroke. He married well… his wife was Mary Woodville, sister to Elizabeth Woodville, herself married to Edward IV, now king once again. Unfortunately, Edward and Elizabeth now had a son and wanted to make him Earl of Pembroke, so William was prevailed on to surrender the title in favour of the rather less prestigious one of Earl of Huntingdon. Like his father, he was buried in Tintern Abbey.
The execution of his father had left the castle-building project in limbo, and the fall in the family fortunes meant that when building resumed it was less impressive. This is thought a likely reason for the way the fine stonework in one corner of the pitched stone tower ceases abruptly, to be continued in poorer quality stone.
When William, Earl of Huntingdon died, he had no male heir. Raglan Castle passed to his younger brother, Walter, though the title of Earl of Huntingdon passed down the female line by his daughter, Elizabeth. Though Walter had, like the rest of his family, supported the Yorkists, he threw in his lot with Henry Tudor’s claim to the throne.
Henry’s wife, Elizabeth of York, thus visited Walter at Raglan as an honoured guest in 1502, Of course, she had family connections to the castle as her aunt, Mary Woodville, had previously been lady of the castle, and her husband had spent part of his childhood there.
Walter died childless, and after a brief spell in the hands of his widow, Raglan passed to the current Earl of Huntingdon, Charles, an illegitimate son of the Duke of Somerset a member of the Beaufort family.
As the Earldom had passed through the female line, the family name from now on was now Somerset, though it could claim direct descent from the Herberts and so Charles Somerset was created “Baron Herbert of Raglan, Chepstow and Gower”. The Beaufort family were descended from John of Gaunt, and so from Edward III. Charles Somerset in time became first Earl of Worcester.
His son, Charles the second Earl, was memorable mostly for profiting from the dissolution of the monasteries by pinching the lead from Tintern Abbey to roof Raglan Castle… despite the fact that his predecessors were buried there!
His son William Somerset, third Earl of Worcester, inherited the castle in 1549, remodelling it as a fine Tudor home. The ground plan remained largely unchanged, but fine features such as the Oriel Window that looks out over the Pitched Stone Court from the Great Hall are down to him, as well as the creation of a long gallery and a new storey in the Gatehouse range.
His son, Edward, had the task of Park-keeper to Nonsuch Palace, the sadly lost palace which in its day was renowned for its fine gardens. So it is not surprising that when he succeeded to the Earldom of Worcester and ownership of Raglan Castle, his major contribution was to the gardens.
A fountain was installed in one of the courtyards, which is still known as Fountain Court. (The platform on which Isabel is standing is all that remains to show where it stood.)
Raglan, built as a defensive castle, was by now very much a pleasure palace. But not for long. We will move now to Henry Somerset, 5th Earl of Worcester, who became Lord of Raglan in 1628. He was brought up a protestant but converted to Catholicism. His father, despite being a favourite of Elizabeth I, had also been a Catholic, so this is not as radical as it sounds. English Catholics had a mixed relationship with the Stuart dynasty, including of course the gunpowder plot, but when Civil War loomed, Henry Somerset like many other English Catholics threw in his lot with the Royalists, having even less sympathy with the puritanism that tended to align with the parliamentary cause. The family’s Catholicism in fact proved an advantage when Henry’s son Edward was sent by Charles I to try and rally support from the Irish Catholics against the rebellious Scottish and English parliaments. This support was bought by offering religious concessions to the Irish nobility and there were some suspicions that Somerset made more generous concessions than were necessary because of his sympathy to their cause. Nevertheless, his efforts in raising troops and his financial contributions to the Royalist cause put the Somersets in good standing with Charles, who in 1643 made Henry the 1st Marquess of Worcester… a “promotion” from his existing title of Earl of Worcester, and Edward Baron Beaufort of Caldecote.
The problem with being in good standing with Charles was, of course, that his was the losing side. After the Battle of Naseby the royalists were essentially defeated, with only isolated pockets of resistance holding out. Almost the last of these to surrender was Raglan… only Harlech held out longer. (Just as a matter of interest, Harlech had also been the last Lancastrian stronghold to fall to Edward IV in the wars of the Roses… when it was captured by none other than William Herbert, Lord of Raglan!)
As has been mentioned, even when it was first built Raglan Castle was almost obsolete, as the age of castles was giving way to the age of the artillery fort. Thus to defend Raglan, more modern defences had to be constructed, bastions for mounting cannon. One is just by the car-park entrance, in the adjoining field, the other just beyond the farm where the café now is. The main gun bastion used by the besiegers was on the hill beyond the farm.
According to one source, the garrison of Raglan consisted of 800 men, a very sizeable force for a garrison of the time, and this does not include civilians holed up in the castle. The castle had its own powder mill and capacity to cast cannon balls, which also helped in its long defence. The Parliamentarian force under Colonel Thomas Morgan and later under the direct command of Thomas Fairfax himself, the leading Parliamentary general, had to resort to extreme measures such as building a huge mortar known as Roaring Meg to batter the castle’s defences. Roaring Meg still survives, and can be seen at Goodrich Castle.
On 16th August Henry Somerset surrendered. He was taken prisoner and died three years later in captivity. The castle was already heavily battered, and was now “slighted”… that is, its defences were demolished to the extent that it was no longer usable. The Great Tower had withstood the siege remarkably well, so it now had to be blown up… the great rent in its wall is thus not battle damage, but demolition. The family lost their title to Raglan, which as part of the Lordship of Chepstow, in fact became the personal property of Oliver Cromwell himself, though he had no particular interest in it, and even before the commonwealth was over it was back in the hands of the Somerset family. But it was in such a state that there was no enthusiasm to rebuild it. After the restoration of the monarchy, the family focussed on other of their estates, particular building a new house at Badminton.
This, one of England’s grandest stately homes, is the seat of the Dukes of Beaufort, descendants of the Edward Somerset, first Baron Beaufort.
But before we quite end the story of Raglan castle, here is one of its most fascinating tales. Edward Somerset was not only a soldier and politician in the Royalist cause, he was also a keen scientist and engineer. For his support of the royalist cause he was banished, and when he returned illegally was arrested. He was, however, kept under a fairly lenient house-arrest which permitted him to pursue his scientific studies, writing a book which detailed 100 inventions. One of these, the “water commanding machine” was something he had himself installed in Raglan Castle. It seems to have been a pump used to power a fountain (perhaps the one that gives Fountain Court its name, though this is not clear… it may have been in the moat). The important thing about it is that it was powered by steam, using a converted cannon barrel as a boiler. This makes it one of the first known steam engines since the time of the ancient Greeks. It was probably housed in the great tower. Sadly, little more is known about it. I think that is pretty amazing, it is what inspired me to want to do this talk, and it is where I shall now close.
Comments
Post a Comment