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Historic byways and highways of Old England
Historic byways and highways of Old England Author:William Andrews Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Castle Suiting. " Hang out our banners on the outward walls, The cry is still They come ; our castle's strength Will laugh a siege to scorn." —Macbeth, Ac... more »t V., Scene 5. NEARLY all our most important English castles, in some form or other, date from a period of remote antiquity; their associations were indeed of slow growth, and have become deeply rooted in many centuries of our great national history. Most of the castles were in the first instance the centres of estates, and were established for the protection of such estates in a period when "might was right," and only the strongest could hold their own. The great characteristic of an old castle is the mighty earthwork. This earthwork was the most important factor of defence in the early days of military architecture, and, doubtless, the castles erected thereon in the Roman period were of a very rude character, and insignificant to those which supplanted them, often on the same site, after the Norman Conquest. It is probable that the Saxons adapted the Roman castles to a certain extent to their modesof defence. One very frequent change consisted in raising a mound of earth on one side of the walls, on which the keep or citadel was erected. In other ways, too, the Roman castles were altered to the requirements of the age, but none of these buildings, except small fragments of walls, are now existing, and our present military architecture may be said to date from the Norman Conquest. It has often been asserted that the rapidity of William's Conquest was due in a great measure to the absence of strong places in England. There is, however, ground for believing that England was in this respect quite as well provided as Normandy. The plan there at this period seems to have been practically the same as in this country, a...« less