THE STATELY HOMES OF ENGLAND: ALNWICK.

Otago Witness, Issue 2528, 27 August 1902, Page 65

THE STATELY HOMES OF ENGLAND : ALNWICK.

Alnwick is perhaps the bert example in England of a feudal castle adaptod to the needs of modern life. To look at its" frowning bastions, its curtain of stonework, its drawbridge, portcullis, and outflanking towers, is to see a mediaeval fortress that would match exactly with mail-clad knights and lovely ladies living in rush-strewn "bowers." For the stately castle of the Percys is in its outline and e^ tent very much to-day whan it was when the Norman, Eustace FitzJohn, married the Saxon lady, Beatrix, the heiress of the lands stretching from Aydon Forest to the rea. He it was who built the "heavy quadrangular keep and the upper and lower wards.

It was in his son's time that the Scottish King, Malcolm Canmore, laid siege to the place ; and, strong as it was, it was on, the point of surrender owing to -famine when one of the garrison saved the situa* tion by a rnse which seems scarcely so creditable to us as it appeared to the Norman knights. A soldier, Mowbray by uaine, rode out to the Scottish camp, completely armed, with the keys of the castle tied to the point of his spear, and demanded to see King Malcolm. The Scots King came to the door of his pavilion, imagining the castle was surrendering at l^ist ; whereupon Mowbray pierced hhn to the heai-t, and, wheeling his horse, turned and fled. The nvei was in flood, and the knight made good his escape.

So far the Ancient chronicle seems true enough ; but later writers add that the soldier received the name of Pierce-eye, because by Iris thrust he killed the King of Scots. -But this is a palpable invention, for Malcolm was slain in the year 1093, and the Percys had no connection with Ala-wick until 200 years after, when -the domains were left by will to ihe "fighting Eishop" of Durham, Anthony Bee, who granted them to Henry Percy, the descendant of a Norman, knigat hailing from Percy, a village in Lower Normandy. The first Percy who came to England was the admiral of the Conqueror's fleet, and a great favourite with Duke William.