FAMED IN HISTORY

Waikato Independent, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 3429, 15 March 1938, Page 7

FAMED IN HISTORY

KENILWORTH CASTLE

NOW OWNED BY ’THE NATION

It is announced from England that Kenilworth Castle, the scene of one of Scott’s most famous novels, is no longer to remain in private hands, writes P. S. Burnell in the .Sydney Morning Herald. Thanks to the generosity of Lord Sideley, who purchased the castle from the trustees of the late Earl of Clarendon, it has been handed over to the Office of Works, and will henceforth be the property of the nation.

With perhaps one or two exceptions —Windsor, for example—there is no castle in England whose name is so widely known as that of Kenilworth. For thousands who have never seen it, it is a synonym of everything that 'the word “castle” . suggests—splendour, romance, chivalry, gallant caval■cades, and knightly tournaments. In point of fact, Kenilworth at first sight is apt to be somewhat -disappointing. Unfortunately, in 1648 Cromwell presented it to a number of his officers who not only N cut up the land into farms, font carted away the materials to build themselves houses, leaving the castle a mere shell. It was an end all the more inglorious 5m that the castle had played no active part in the war, and had neither been battered by the Parliamentary artillery nor subsequently “slighted' 8 iby the Parliamentary engineers. Norman Keep. The oldest and most striking portion of the ruins is the Norman Ikeep, known as Caasar’s Tower, despite the fact that 'fine side of it has been almost totally (demolished, and that the original Norman windows, small and round-headed, were mostly replaced in the sixteenth century by large oblong apertures with stone mullaons. It was ihere, no -doubt, that the great Earl, Simon de Montfort, the earliest champion of English liberties, imprisoned ibis adversaries, Henry 111. and his soa, Prince Edward, whom he had defeated and captured at the Battle of Lewes:; -within its huge walls, 13 feet thick, Simon’s son later defended himself for-six months against the utmost efforts off the Royal army before he was ifimally forced to surrender; and here, hop, the second Edward was confined Irjy ’his cousin, Henry of Lancaster,, 'before his removal to Berkeley and Ms murder.

The cold grim tower overshadows what was once the inner courtyard. Nowadays there is merely a tranquil sward <cif ’.velvety green turf, and the atmosphere of the age of Chancer and WycM, ‘the age of the Black .Death, and of the Peasants’ Revolt, for the builder was no other than “Old John of Gararit, time-honoured Lancaster,” the patron of Chaucer’s wife, Philippa, and the builder of numerous additions to the offifle.

Terminating the court are the remains of what must formerly have been one <of the finest mediaeval halls in Englamfl—9o feet long by 45 ifeet wide. The -oaken roof has gone, the floor, too, has long since disappeared, but the beautiful oriel windows -on either side of the dais still display something isjf the graceful tracery with which they were once filled. Even in its ruinous condition, the Great Hall still seems to breathe the atmosphere of the past even though the great activity which once filled it with noisy life was represented, when I visited the castle, solely by a handful of grazing sheep, one of which trotted up to me to.thrust a confiding nose into my hand. But the greatest builder at Kenilworth was undoubtedly Elizabeth’s favourite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. The Queen bestowed the castle on him in 1562, and the cost of his additions and alterations is said to have run into some £600,000, a sum which then represented far more even than it does to-day. Elizabeth paid him no fewer than four visits to Kenilworth, and it is to her fourth and last visit, in 1572, that the castle’s most familiar associations—thanks to Sir Walter Scott —belong. The Queen arrived at the gates wearied by a long day’s hunting, and the castle clocks, by Leicester’s orders, were promptly stopped, by way of flattery, that no heed should be taken of the length of her stay. For 17 days pageants, tournaments, masques, and every kind of entertainment, all characterised by the utmost extravagance and elaboration, followed one another in unbroken succession. “The cost and expense,” writes the contemporary chronicler, Dugdale, '“may be guessed at by the quantity of beer then drunk, which amounted to 320 hogsheads of the ordinary sort, as I have credibly heard.”

For the accommodation of the Queen and her attendants, the earl had erected a splendid block of apartments overlooking the inner court, and their gaunt ruins, roofless and floorless, are now the sole surviving memorial of “The Princely Pleasures at Kenilworth.