Tag: Bedford

Commemorating Bedford Castle on the 800th anniversary of the great siege of 1224

On Saturday, 24 August, the Higgins Museum in Bedford hosts an event to mark eight centuries since the town’s castle was subject to an 8-week long siege by the army of the teenage King Henry III (booking details at the end). Dr Peter Purton, FSA, outlines what happened in the siege.

Not much remains now of Bedford Castle – just a degraded and much altered mound near the river Great Ouse in the town centre and a few excavated fragments of stone buildings, making it hard to visualise that it was once a large stone-built fortress with a moat, barbican, two wards and a stone tower on top of the motte which marked the original castle built after the Norman Conquest. A display board nearby reconstructs its possible appearance in 1224.

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Image of display board showing how Bedford might have looked in 1224

 In that year, Henry III was assembling an army which was to be transported to France in an attempt to recover Poitou, part of the once extensive Angevin empire. This plan unravelled with the rebellion of Fawkes de Breauté. Fawkes had been one of the captains of King John, Henry’s father, and had become rich and powerful. He had been granted Bedford castle and we are told that he had strengthened the fortifications to make it “impregnable”. Rebelling against the crown, he prudently left the country while leaving Bedford in the hands of his brother, who in arresting the justices sent there by the king made it inevitable that he would face royal retribution: this was a direct insult to royal authority and following years of civil war and rebellion following John’s reign, there was no possibility that it could be ignored. The royal army, assembling conveniently nearby at Northampton, was diverted to Bedford. What happened next was recorded in several contemporary chronicles while royal expenditure was detailed in surviving accounts, a combination of evidence which is rare enough and which allows an unusually detailed reconstruction of the siege.

The royal army deployed seven stone-throwing engines (mangonels and petraries) and built two siege towers but the garrison resisted stoutly and inflicted heavy casualties on the attackers. Eventually the barbican and outer ward were breached and captured by royal soldiers then miners, summoned from the Forest of Dean, brought down the wall of the inner bailey and did the same with the tower on the motte, to which the defenders had withdrawn. The prisoners were set free and the entire garrison was hanged as punishment for their rebellion. The castle was then demolished.  A period of instability in England was thereby ended, but so too was English rule in Poitou, the French capturing La Rochelle at the same time as Bedford was being besieged.

These events were therefore of international as well as national significance, and through archaeology, it is possible to now know much more about Bedford castle. All these themes will be discussed at the conference on 24 August, the speakers are Professor David Carpenter, expert and author specialising in this period, Dr James Petre who has written about Bedford, Ben Murtagh who has been exploring Bedford Castle, Jeremy Oetgen (Albion Archaeology) who will update us on a long history of archaeology on the site, and the author of this blog who will place the siege in the context of contemporary siege warfare.

Anyone interested in attending can find all the details and book a ticket at the museum website: www.thehigginsbedford.org.uk. Tickets cost £15 and advance booking is encouraged.

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What happens to your castle when you upset the king?

Slighting is the destruction of a high-status building, and in the Middle Ages it was all about power: damaging property meant exercising power over its owner. Castles were statements of the owners’ strength and status, so damaging one said a lot about how that status had changed, or their strength undermined. One especially interesting example comes from Bedford Castle.

During King John’s war with the barons in 1215–16 one of his captains was Falkes de Breauté. Falkes seized control of Bedford Castle from William de Beauchamp who had joined the rebellion against John.  John died in 1216 and was succeeded by his son, Henry III; Falkes was a key figure at the battle of Lincoln in 1217 which ended the rebellion against royal power and secured Henry’s reign.

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A model at Bedford Museum, showing how the castle may have appeared before the siege of 1224. Photo by Simon Speed (public domain).

After the war ended, Falkes made himself at home in Bedford, expanding the castle and even tearing down two churches in the process. At the same time, William de Beauchamp was trying to persuade the young Henry III to give him back Bedford Castle. Falkes was a powerful man in the royal court, despite making enemies. He clashed with Hubert de Burgh, who was Henry III’s justiciar, and in November 1223 Falkes nearly sparked a new civil war by attempting to seize the Tower of London alongside the earls of Chester and Gloucester and the count of Aumale.

Falkes lost a lot of power and influence because of this failed gambit and in 1224, he was instructed to give up Bedford Castle (along with some other properties). Falkes refused and things came to a head in June when Falkes’ brother, William de Bréauté, imprisoned a royal official at Bedford Castle.

William had been left in charge of Bedford Castle, and Falkes supported his brother’s refusal to release the royal official and surrender the castle to the king. Henry quickly diverted the army he was gathering for an expedition to Poitou to undertake a full blown siege of Bedford Castle. Falkes might have hoped he would get some support from his allies, including the earl of Chester but he was left isolated. An eight-week siege followed, with four attacks on the castle and more than 200 deaths on the side of the royalists. William led the defence of the castle while Falkes fled to safety. Bedford Castle’s garrison surrendered on 14 August and all of them, including William, were swiftly executed.

A drawing from Matthew Paris’ Chronica Majora showing the execution of Bedford Castle’s garrison. Chronica Majora, II, fol. 60 (public domain).

With Falkes asking Henry III for forgiveness, the king had all the power to decide what to do next. He could give Bedford Castle to William de Beauchamp, the previous owner who had been seeking its return for years. He could keep it under direct royal control, or he could slight it – unmaking the castle expanded by Falkes. Henry III chose the destructive option: royal records show that the tower was levelled, the ditches filled, buildings in the outer bailey demolished, and the walls of the lesser bailey lowered. This amount of detail in the historical record is unusual, and where we do have details of castle slighting they are often much more brief and may just cover how much was spent.

Excavations between 1969 and 1972 found evidence of the castle’s destruction, with plenty of rubble strewn across the site. They also showed that the motte was lowered, which wasn’t mentioned in the royal records. The slighting of the castle was an especially destructive event. There are many other castles which were slighted where the destruction was less extensive, or the castle later repaired and rebuilt. At Bedford, that was never an option.

With no allies left, a wife seeking divorce, and having turned over all his lands to royal control, Falkes went into exile. Henry III did eventually grant the castle to William de Beauchamp on the condition that only an unfortified house could be built on the castle.

The destruction of Bedford Castle was a high-profile way for Henry III to reassert his authority after having been challenged by Falkes de Breauté. In the Middle Ages, not every slighted castle was the result of a royal order, but they were the majority. Visiting Bedford Castle today, there isn’t much to see, but in the early 13th century it was a strong stone-built fortress. Its destruction emphatically marked Falkes’ fall from power.

For many slighted castles we often only have archaeological or documentary evidence; at Bedford we are lucky enough that they coincide so we can confirm the documented events took place and give context to the evidence of destruction on the ground.

For more on slighting generally, you can read Richard’s paper in The Archaeological Journal.

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Defending Bedfordshire – a late starter

In the latest in is “Defending…” series looking at the fortifications in particular counties, Mike Osborne looks at Bedfordshire.

When I wrote Defending Lincolnshire: a military history from the Conquest to the Cold War (The History Press, 2010), I had no idea that ten years on, the series would have grown to cover ten counties with an eleventh almost completed. What I have discovered along the way is that while there exist clear cultural similarities, counties are patently different in so many regards. Some of these differences are obvious: the landscape factors which affect settlement patterns; the geology which dictates building materials and factors such as moated sites; the county’s relationship to important routes and its density of urban or rural settlements; its central or remote position within the nation; its relative vulnerability to invasion; and, above all, its recorded history. Other differences are more subtle and may be governed by local conditions and circumstances: the dominance of particular families or factions; the power struggles of kings, nobles or bishops; the economic effects of trade or farming; fashion and technology; continuity and re-use of defensive locations and the impact of localised, country-wide or international conflict. Taking the wider context of these studies which embrace all forms of fortification and military activity from Iron Age forts to nuclear bunkers, then such differences will only be magnified. 


The motte at Cainhoe (copyright Mike Osborne

Bedfordshire is unusual in that whilst there were Romano-British settlements and an established network of Roman roads: Watling Street, Ermine Street and the Icknield Way, there were, apparently, no Roman forts. Bedford became established only in Saxon/Danish times, owing to its strategic position astride the Great Ouse, and Clapham’s church-tower, on the border of Wessex and the Danelaw may well have served a defensive function. Sadly, despite the public promotion of Danes Camp at Willington and Tempsford as Viking river-side fortresses, they have both been found to be medieval moated sites. Luton only developed after the Norman Conquest becoming the location for two earthwork castles. A ‘royal’ castle was established at Bedford, soon to evolve into a masonry fortress, but the county’s numerous motte castles, notably Cainhoe, Yielden, Risinghoe and Totternhoe, and its fewer ringworks, whilst remaining as structures of earth and timber throughout, nevertheless often occupied dominant sites. Historical factors around conflict saw Bedford erased as a fortification early in its career having undergone two sieges, and most of the other castles would be superseded by more comfortable accommodation. The county was split into an unusually large number of small manors which may account for the over twenty earthwork castles and the 300+ homestead moats- the greatest density of any English county- benefiting from the underlying clay. Bedfordshire’s later medieval castles, Wrest Park, Bletsoe and Ampthill, have disappeared, but remnants of Someries survive to the background sound, in normal times, of Easyjet. Whilst largely insulated against external threats, the county still experienced the effects of conflict during the civil war between Stephen and the Empress and the Wars of the Roses, whilst suffering its share of the universal effects of famine, plague and social disorder. Probably the best-known castle-related event was the siege of Bedford by Henry III in 1224 which resulted in the destruction of the castle but not, in all likelihood, the draconian penalties reputedly enacted against the garrison.

Someries Castle: the gate-house/chapel range of the mid-fifteenth-century brick strong-house of Sir John Wenlock (copyright Mike Osborne)

Were anyone to ask me which of these counties had been the most interesting, given their differences, I should be pushed to answer. From the perspective of fortification, some will share similarities: Essex, Norfolk, and Hampshire as targets for invasion; the Midland counties of Nottinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire/Rutland controlling lines of communication from urban centres; Bedfordshire, Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire sharing elements of landscape; whilst London has a bit of everything as, I am currently discovering, has Gloucestershire and Bristol. All of them have interesting facets either shared or individual, common or unique. Rob Liddiard, amongst others, has confirmed to me the value of the local focus alongside other approaches, and it is certainly something I will continue to explore.

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Defending Bedfordshire: the military landscape from pre-history to the present (Fonthill Media, 2021) is now available along with other counties.

Captions

Featured image: A model of how Bedford Castle may have appeared around the time of the siege of 1224