Windsor Castle by William Harrison Ainsworth
BOOK III — THE HISTORY OF THE CASTLE
CHAPTER II
Comprising the Third Great Epoch in the History of the Castle—
And
showing how the Most Noble Order of the Garter was instituted.
Strongly attached to the place of his birth, Edward the
Third, by his letters patent dated from Westminster, in the twenty-second
year of his reign, now founded the ancient chapel established by Henry the
First, and dedicated it to the Virgin, Saint George of Cappadocia, and Saint
Edward the Confessor; ordaining that to the eight canons appointed by his
predecessor there should be added one custos, fifteen more canons, and
twenty-four alms-knights; the whole to be maintained out of the revenues with
which the chapel was to be endowed. The institution was confirmed by Pope
Clement the Sixth, by a bull issued at Avignon the 13th of November 1351.
In 1349, before the foundation of the college had been confirmed, as above
related, Edward instituted the Order of the Garter. The origin of this
illustrious Order has been much disputed. By some writers it has been
ascribed to Richard Coeur de Lion, who is said to have girded a leathern band
round the legs of his bravest knights in. Palestine. By others it has been
asserted that it arose from the word "garter" having been used as a watchword
by Edward at the battle of Cressy. Others again have stoutly maintained that
its ringlike form bore mysterious reference to the Round Table. But the
popular legend, to which, despite the doubts thrown upon it, credence still
attaches, declares its origin to be as follows: Joan, Countess of Salisbury,
a beautiful dame, of whom Edward was enamoured, while dancing at a high
festival accidentally slipped her garter, of blue embroidered velvet. It was
picked up by her royal partner, who, noticing the significant looks of his
courtiers on the occasion, used the words to them which afterwards. became
the motto of the Order—"Honi soit qui mal y pense;" adding that "in a
short time they should see that garter advanced to so high honour and
estimation as to account themselves happy to wear it."
But whatever may have originated the Order, it unquestionably owes its
establishment to motives of policy. Wise as valiant, and bent upon
prosecuting his claim to the crown of France, Edward, as a means of
accomplishing his object, resolved to collect beneath his standard the best
knights in Europe, and to lend a colour to the design, he gave forth that he
intended a restoration of King Arthur's Round Table, and accordingly
commenced constructing within the castle a large circular building of two
hundred feet in diameter, in which he placed a round table. On the completion
of the work, he issued proclamations throughout England, Scotland, France,
Burgundy, Flanders, Brabant, and the Empire, inviting all knights desirous of
approving their valour to a solemn feast and jousts to be holden within the
castle of Windsor on Saint George's Day, 1345. The scheme was completely
successful. The flower of the chivalry of Europe—excepting that of
Philip the Sixth of France, who, seeing through the design, interdicted the
attendance of his knights-were present at the tournament, which was graced by
Edward and his chief nobles, together with his queen and three hundred of her
fairest dames, "adorned with all imaginable gallantry." At this chivalrous
convocation the institution of the Order of the Garter was arranged; but
before its final establishment Edward assembled his principal barons and
knights, to determine upon the regulations, when it was decided that the
number should be limited to twenty-six.
The first installation took place on the anniversary of Saint George, the
patron of the Order, 1349, when the king, accompanied by the twenty- five
knights'-companions, attired in gowns of russet, with mantles of fine blue
woollen cloth, powdered with garters, and hearing the other insignia of the
Order, marched bareheaded in solemn procession to the chapel of Saint George,
then recently rebuilt, where mass was performed by William Edington, Bishop
of Winchester, after which they partook of a magnificent banquet. The
festivities were continued for several days. At the jousts held on this
occasion, David, King of Scotland, the Lord Charles of Blois, and Ralph, Earl
of Eu and Guisnes, and Constable of France, to whom the chief prize of the
day was adjudged, with others, then prisoners, attended. The harness of the
King of Scotland, embroidered with a pale of red velvet, and beneath it a red
rose, was provided at Edward's own charge. This suit of armour was, until a
few years back, preserved in the Round Tower, where the royal prisoner was
confined. Edward's device was a white swan, gorged, or, with the "daring and
inviting" motto—
Hay hay the wythe swan
By God's soul I am thy man.
The insignia of the Order in the days of its founder were the garter,
mantle, surcoat, and hood, the George and collar being added by Henry the
Eighth. The mantle, as before intimated, was originally of fine blue woollen
cloth; but velvet, lined with taffeta, was substituted by Henry the Sixth,
the left shoulder being adorned with the arms of Saint George, embroidered
within a garter. Little is known of the materials of which the early garter
was composed; but it is supposed to have been adorned with gold, and fastened
with a buckle of the same metal. The modern garter is of blue velvet,
bordered with gold wire, and embroidered with the motto, "Honi soit qui mal y
pense." It is worn on the left leg, a little below the knee. The most
magnificent garter that ever graced a sovereign was that presented to Charles
the First by Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, each letter in the motto of
which was composed of diamonds. The collar is formed of pieces of gold
fashioned like garters, with a blue enamelled ground. The letters of the
motto are in gold, with a rose enamelled red in the centre of each garter.
From the collar hangs the George, an ornament enriched with precious stones,
and displaying the figure of the saint encountering the dragon.
The officers of the Order are the prelate, represented by the Bishop of
Winchester; the Chancellor, by the Bishop of Oxford; the registrar, dean,
garter king-at-arms, and the usher of the black rod. Among the foreign
potentates who have been invested with the Order are eight emperors of
Germany, two of Russia, five kings of France, three of Spain, one of Arragon,
seven of Portugal, one of Poland, two of Sweden, six of Denmark, two of
Naples, one of Sicily and Jerusalem, one of Bohemia, two of Scotland, seven
princes of Orange, and many of the most illustrious personages of different
ages in Europe.
Truly hath the learned Selden written, "that the Order of the Garter hath
not only precedency of antiquity before the eldest rank of honour of that
kind anywhere established, but it exceeds in majesty, honour, and fame all
chivalrous orders in the world." Well also hath glorious Dryden, in the
"Flower and the Leaf," sung the praises of the illustrious
Institution:—
"Behold an order yet of newer date,
Doubling their number, equal in their state;
Our England's ornament, the crown's defence,
In battle brave, protectors of their prince:
Unchanged by fortune, to their sovereign true,
For which their manly legs are bound with blue.
These of the Garter call'd, of faith unstain'd,
In fighting fields the laurel have obtain'd, And well
repaid the laurels which they gained."
In 1357 John, King of France, defeated at the battle of Poitiers by Edward
the Black Prince, was brought captive to Windsor; and on the festival of
Saint George in the following year; 1358, Edward outshone all his former
splendid doings by a tournament which he gave in honour of his royal
prisoner. Proclamation having been made as before, and letters of safe
conduct issued, the nobles and knighthood of Almayne, Gascoigne, Scotland,
and other countries, flocked to attend it, The Queen of Scotland, Edward's
sister, was present at the jousts; and it is said that John, commenting upon
the splendour of the spectacle, shrewdly observed "that he never saw or knew
such royal shows and feastings without some after-reckoning." The same
monarch replied to his kingly captor, who sought to rouse him from dejection,
on another occasion— "Quomodo cantabimus canticum in terra aliena!"
That his works might not be retarded for want of hands, Edward in the
twenty-fourth year of his reign appointed John de Sponlee master of the
stonehewers, with a power not only "to take and keep, as well within the
liberties as without, as many masons and other artificers as were necessary,
and to convey them to Windsor, but to arrest and imprison such as should
disobey or refuse; with a command to all sheriffs, mayors, bailiffs, etc., to
assist him." These powers were fully acted upon at a later period, when some
of the workmen, having left their employment, were thrown into Newgate; while
the place of others, who had been carried off by a pestilence then raging in
the castle, was supplied by impressment.
In 1356 WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM was constituted superintendent of the works,
with the same powers as John de Sponlee, and his appointment marks an
important era in the annals of the castle. Originally secretary to Edward the
Third, this remarkable man became Bishop of Winchester and prelate of the
Garter. When he solicited the bishopric, it is said that Edward told him he
was neither a priest nor a scholar; to which he replied that he would soon be
the one, and in regard to the other, he would make more scholars than all the
bishops of England ever did. He made good his word by founding the collegiate
school at Winchester, and erecting New College at Oxford. When the Winchester
Tower was finished, he caused the words, HOC FECIT WYKEHAM, to be carved upon
it; and the king, offended at his presumption, Wykeham turned away his
displeasure by declaring that the inscription meant that the castle had made
him, and not that he had made the castle. It is a curious coincidence that
this tower, after a lapse of four centuries and a half, should become the
residence of an architect possessing the genius of Wykeham, and who, like
him, had rebuilt the kingly edifice— SIR JEFFRY WYATVILLE.
William of Wykeham retired from office, loaded with honours, in 1362, and
was succeeded by William de Mulso. He was interred in the cathedral at
Winchester. His arms were argent, two chevrons, sable, between three roses,
gules, with the motto—" Manners maketh man."
In 1359 Holinshed relates that the king "set workmen in hand to take down
much old buildings belonging to the castle, and caused divers other fine and
sumptuous works to be set up in and about the same castle, so that almost all
the masons and carpenters that were of any account in the land were sent for
and employed about the same works." The old buildings here referred to were
probably the remains of the palace and keep of Henry the First in the middle
ward.
As the original chapel dedicated to Saint George was demolished by Edward
the Fourth, its position and form cannot be clearly determined, But a
conjecture has been hazarded that it occupied the same ground as the choir of
the present chapel, and extended farther eastward.
"Upon the question of its style," says Mr. Poynter, from whose valuable
account of the castle much information has been derived, "there is the
evidence of two fragments discovered near this site, a corbel and a piscina,
ornamented with foliage strongly characteristic of the Decorated English
Gothic, and indicating, by the remains of colour on their surfaces, that they
belonged to an edifice adorned in the polychromatic style, so elaborately
developed in the chapel already built by Edward the Third at
Westminster."
The royal lodgings, Saint George's Hall, the buildings on the east and
north sides of the upper ward, the Round Tower, the canons' houses in the
lower ward, and the whole circumference of the castle, exclusive of the
towers erected in Henry the Third's reign, were now built. Among the earlier
works in Edward's reign is the Dean's Cloister. The square of the upper ward,
added by this monarch, occupied a space of four hundred and twenty feet, and
encroached somewhat upon the middle ward. Externally the walls presented a
grim, regular appearance, broken only by the buttresses, and offering no
other apertures than the narrow loopholes and gateways. Some traces of the
architecture of the period may still be discerned in the archway and
machecoulis of the principal gateway adjoining the Round Tower; the basement
chamber of the Devil Tower, or Edward the Third's Tower; and in the range of
groined and four-centred vaulting, extending along the north side of the
upper quadrangle, from the kitchen gateway to King John's Tower.
In 1359 Queen Philippa, consort of Edward the Third, breathed her last in
Windsor Castle.
Richard the Second, grandson of Edward the Third, frequently kept his
court at Windsor. Here, in 1382, it was determined by council that war should
be declared against France; and here, sixteen years later, on a scaffold
erected within the castle, the famous appeal for high treason was made by
Henry of Lancaster, Duke of Hereford, against Thomas Mowbray, Duke of
Norfolk, the latter of whom defied his accuser to mortal combat. The duel was
stopped by the king, and the adversaries banished; but the Duke of Lancaster
afterwards returned to depose his banisher. About the same time, the citizens
of London having refused Richard a large loan, he summoned the lord mayor,
sheriffs, aldermen, and twenty-four of the principal citizens, to his
presence, and after rating them soundly, ordered them all into custody,
imprisoning the lord mayor in the castle.
In this reign Geoffrey Chaucer, "the father of English poetry," was
appointed clerk to the works of Saint George's Chapel, at a salary of two
shillings per day (a sum equal to 657 poundsper annum of modern money), with
the same arbitrary power as had been granted to previous surveyors to impress
carpenters and masons. Chaucer did not retain his appointment more than
twenty months, and was succeeded by John Gedney.
It was at Windsor that Henry the Fourth, scarcely assured of the crown he
had seized, received intelligence of a conspiracy against his life from the
traitorous Aumerle, who purchased his own safety at the expense of his
confederates. The timely warning enabled the king to baffle the design. It
was in Windsor also that the children of Mortimer, Earl of March, the
rightful successor to the throne, were detained as hostages for their father.
Liberated by the Countess-dowager of Gloucester, who contrived to open their
prison door with false keys, the youthful captives escaped to the marshes of
Wales, where, however, they were overtaken by the emissaries of Henry, and
brought back to their former place of confinement
A few years later another illustrious prisoner was brought to
Windsor— namely, Prince James, the son of King Robert the Third, and
afterwards James the First of Scotland. This prince remained a captive for
upwards of eighteen years; not being released till 1424, in the second of
Henry the Sixth, by the Duke of Bedford, then regent. James's captivity, and
his love for Jane of Beaufort, daughter of the Duke of Somerset, and
granddaughter to John of Gaunt, to whom he was united, have breathed a charm
over the Round Tower, where he was confined; and his memory, like that of the
chivalrous and poetical Surrey, whom he resembled in character and
accomplishments, will be ever associated with it.
In the "King's Quair," the royal poet has left an exquisite picture of a
garden nook, contrived within the dry moat of the dungeon.
" Now was there made, fast by the tower's wall,
A garden faire, and in the corners set
An arbour green with wandis long and small
Railed about, and so with leaves beset
Was all the place, and hawthorn hedges knet,
That lyf was none, walking there forbye,
That might within scarce any wight espy.
So thick the branches and the leave's green
Beshaded all the alleys that there were.
And midst of every harbour might be seen
The sharpe, green, sweet juniper,
Growing so fair with branches here and there,
That as it seemed to a lyf without
The boughs did spread the arbour all about."
And he thus describes the first appearance of the lovely Jane, and the
effect produced upon him by her charms:
"And therewith cast I down mine eye again,
Where as I saw walking under the tower,
Full secretly, new comyn her to plain,
The fairest and the freshest younge flower
That e'er I saw, methought, before that hour;
For which sudden abate, anon did start
The blood of all my body to my heart."
Henry the Fifth occasionally kept his court at Windsor, and in 1416
entertained with great magnificence the Emperor Sigismund, who brought with
him an invaluable relic—the heart of Saint George—which he
bestowed upon the chapter. The emperor was at the same time invested with the
Order.
In 1421 the unfortunate Henry the Sixth was born within the castle, and in
1484 he was interred within it.