Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the First - The Rise of Castle Blanchefleur - Chapter III

Wherein William Rufus begins work on Norwich Castle.

So … September 1087.

We take leave of the bloated and burst body of William the Bastard, his stone sarcophagus closed and sealed leaving what was left of his corpse to marinate in a nasty soup of reeking intestinal fluids and turn once more to this sons, who gave us the magnificent stone castle we have today.

Eldest son Robert Short-Arse being passed over and compensated with the Dukedom of Normandy, the throne of England now bore the warm bottom of William the Second; William Rufus.

Of William Rufus, we have first the description handed down to us by Geoffrey of Monmouth: he had "a red face, yellow hair, different-coloured eyes, astonishing strength, though not very tall and his belly rather projecting."

Also that "he had a stutter, especially when angry". And he was angry a lot!

The Oxford History of England has this to say of him: "He was a cynical, vain, capricious, ill-tempered man. He was blasphemous and scoffed at religion. The money he extorted from his subjects he squandered on a mercenary army and a licentious court. The effeminate character of his court, the absence of any mention of paramours or bastards, the horror and reticence of the chroniclers regarding his personal conduct make it tolerably certain that he indulged in unnatural vice. From the moral standpoint he was probably the worst king that has occupied the throne of England."

My copy of the Oxford History is the 1951 edition … gay-friendly it is not! I do so enjoy reading successive histories, from primary sources down through the centuries; each generation of historians displaying its unique and wildly varying set of prejudices. Kinda hobby of mine …

So, like the Watchers on the Wall, William Rufus did not marry, nor did he father any offspring.

The mediæval historian Frank Barlow holds that Rufus was "a rumbustious, devil-may-care soldier without natural dignity or social graces, with no cultivated taste and little show of conventional religious piety or morality, addicted to every kind of vice, particularly lust and especially sodomy."

And so began the English aristocracy … plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

In 1094, William Rufus decided to replace the timber castle at Norwich with a stone keep and to make it his royal palace. Our current project is to restore the keep to its original glory.

T. A. Heslop calls it "a megalomaniac project" that "fits well with what we know of the ambitions of King William Rufus."

After Ralph's rebellion and Emma's heroic defence of Norwich Castle, William replaced Ralph with one Roger Bigot, who took over the running of Norwich Castle and the construction of its new keep and proceeded in typical Norman style to lay waste to the surrounding countryside, already depopulated by the depredations of Earl Ralph.

Bigot built himself a palace on Tombland with money extorted from the locals but in 1094 was forced to knock it down as it blocked the western entrance to the new cathedral. Bigot would continue to plague the city during the Great Anarchy and his descendants for many nasty generations more, but for our purposes he now passes out of the story for a bit. Regrettably we shall not see the last of him.

Alas and alack; on the second of August, 1100, with only the basement of the castle keep complete, while out hunting in the New Forest, King William Rufus was shot through the lung with an arrow by one Walter Tirel under … er … not at all suspicious circumstances.

The unfortunately pixellated death of William Rufus - courtesy of the interweb.

As with his father before him, the king's body was abandoned by the nobles and attendants at the place where it fell, even though his younger brother Henri was among the hunting party.

Hmm … curiouser and curiouser, especially as Henri had the most to gain by his brother's death and Tirel had a reputation as a crack bowman and was highly unlikely to have shot his king in the lung by accident.

A peasant later found the corpse of Rufus and a few countrymen carted it to Winchester Cathedral where it was interred, this time in a sufficiently large coffin.

By which time Henri, following his usual behaviour on the death of a family member (see below) had raced to Winchester to secure the royal treasury and thence on to London where he was crowned by the mob before either Archbishop could catch up with him.

William Rufus' death was, to the Bishops, an Act of God; a just end for a wicked king; to the chroniclers it was both fratricide and regicide, so business as usual.

Of Henri's character, the Oxford History of England: 1087 - 1216 records - though not in precisely these words - that back in 1087, on learning of his five-thousand-pound weight of silver inheritance he left his father dying in testicular agony and fled hurriedly back across the Channel to Winchester and to the treasury to make sure and count out every last ounce.

If anyone wonders where George R.R. Martin gets his wonderful characters, they need look no further than the Norman and Plantagenet kings of England: they give us a vertically-challenged drunken hero with father issues, bevies of bastards, backstabbing, bullshit and blame-throwing, heroic levels of alcohol consumption, sex of all varieties, mud, blood and murder - LOTS of murder.

Larks aplenty with Robert and Henri next time and at last the castle walls go up… and then immediately start falling down … er …

Sources:

Francis Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich: 1753 to 1775

The Oxford History of England: 1087-1216: From Domesday Book to Magna Carta: Austin Lane Poole (ed.) 1951

Frank Barlow: The Norman Conquest and Beyond: 1983

T. A. Heslop: Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque Architecture and Social Context: Centre for East Anglian Studies: 1994

Elizabeth Popescu: The Norman Connections - Castles: Part 1; Norwich Castle: 2010

T. A. Heslop: The Shifting Structure of Norwich Castle Keep, 1096 to c.1230: 2011

James F. King: Norwich Castle Keep: Dates and Contexts: British Archæological Association: 2015

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the First - The Rise of Castle Blanchefleur - Chapter II

Anyhoo … in happier times William had bred many more bastards along with three legitimate sons: Robert, William (another one) and Henri.

Robert, being eldest, would have been the obvious choice to rule England after the Bastard's death but alas, he was the Tyrion Lannister of this tale, nicknamed by his father "Robert Curthose" or "short pants" for his short legs, but colloquially and more popularly by the Norman-hating Saxons of England as "Robert Short-Arse."

Like Tyrion, he was eloquent and chivalrous, but also like Tyrion he was dissolute, consorting with fools and harlots. His younger brothers being given precedence over him irked young Robert somewhat, especially when, in his teens, William and Henri contrived to dump a full chamberpot over his head.

When his father broke up the resulting, somewhat fragrant brawl, yet refused to punish his favourite younger sons, Robert went off on one and attempted - unsuccessfully - to storm Rouen Castle (as you would).

Chased out of Normandy by his irate father Robert took refuge in Flanders, from where - after a hairwash - he proceeded to plunder any parts of Normandy he could reach.

William was even more enraged when he discovered that his wife had been secretly sending Robert money.

Ah, families … At a battle in January 1079, Robert succeeded in knocking his dad off his horse and wounding him, only refraining from killing him when he recognised William's voice.

It wasn't until Easter the following year that Queen Matilda managed to get them to grumpily shake hands and make up.

After William the Fat Bastard's reeking demise, in September 1087 the throne of England was gifted to his second son, William Rufus. Robert Short-Arse was given the Duchy of Normandy and Henri Beauclerc was left five-thousand-pounds weight of silver; quite a bundle back then, even though it is reported that all three brothers felt short-changed.

We shall return to their doings presently …

In the meantime let us step back to 1068, when William the Bastard, having declared himself King William the First of England, tasked one Herbert the Ditcher and one Rabel the Engineer with building a motte and bailey timber fort with defensive ditch and palisade at Norwich for the suppression (and of course taxation - that being the whole purpose of the Domesday Book after all) of the local populace.

Herbert the Ditcher picked the highest and most prominent spot he could find, the site of the present castle, inconveniently occupied at the time by Norwich citizens.

The Domesday Book records, "and on that land over which Harold had jurisdiction there are fifteen burgesses and seventeen vacant houses which are in the occupation of the castle. And in the borough are one-hundred-and-ninety empty houses there which were in the jurisdiction of the king and the earl, and eighty-one in the occupation of the castle."

T. E. Heslop states that "The broad implications of this information are clear; that the castle had been set up within a quite densely built part of the town …" resulting in at least ninety-eight homes being demolished within the boundary of Herbert's ditch.

Around the time that Herbert and Rabel were flattening the townsfolk's homes and building their fort, there were - unsurprisingly - not a few local rebellions, including that of Hereward the Wake and Morcar at nearby Ely, which kept William the Bastard and his army busy, bewitched and wet for a bit (see preface).

By 1075 the fort was up and running and William popped back to Normandy to sort out his other kingdom. He left the Breton Earl Ralph in charge of Norwich's timber castle, which was not perhaps the wisest thing to do.

Earl Ralph was to marry Emma, sixteen-year-old daughter of William Fitzosbern and younger sister of Roger of Breteuil. Ralph and Roger, together with Earl Waltheof, conspired at the wedding feast to rebel against the king on his return from abroad.

Archbishop Lanfranc, then tasked with country-sitting for William learned of the plot and wrote to the king assuring him that he could deal with the rebels. He then set siege to the timber castle at Norwich.

The timber castle and bailey at Norwich, 1068 - 1094, courtesy Norfolk Museums Service

Earl Ralph bravely ran away, leaving behind his teenage bride in charge of his Breton soldiers. Emma successfully held the castle for three months, eventually forcing Lanfranc to allow her and her army unmolested right of passage back across the Channel. She left with - in Lanfranc's words - "three-hundred men in armour with armour with them, with crossbowmen and many artificers of machines."

Thanks to Emma, Norwich Castle had withstood its first siege.

Shortly afterwards, William the Bastard and his terminally torn testicles passed away and William Rufus was crowned King William the Second of England.

We shall have more adventures with William, Henri and Robert in the next post and see the rise of the current castle.

Sources:

Francis Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich: 1753 to 1775

The Oxford History of England: 1087-1216: From Domesday Book to Magna Carta: Austin Lane Poole (ed.) 1951

Frank Barlow: The Norman Conquest and Beyond: 1983

T. A. Heslop: Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque Architecture and Social Context: Centre for East Anglian Studies: 1994

James F. King: Norwich Castle Keep: Dates and Contexts: British Archæological Association: 2015

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the First - The Rise of Castle Blanchefleur - Chapter I

Once upon a time …

THE RISE OF CASTLE BLANCHEFLEUR - September, 1066 to Christmas 1121

Being the Tale of the Building of Norwich Castle - with Some Reference to the Doings of William the Bastard and of his Sons: Robert Curthose, William Rufus and Henri Beauclerc.

First up: a bit of background on the characters who gave us our castle. A veritable Game of Thrones it is, too.

I love mediæval names and this tale involves some corkers, though regrettably no Queen Sexburga this time.

Our story starts back around the year 911, when Rollo the Viking persuaded French King Charles the Simple (probably with not too much difficulty) to cede him the lands around Rouen. These lands became known as Normandy, from "North Men," ruled by Rollo's Vikings and their descendants, who became known in their turn as the Normans.

A little later, over on this side of the water, Swein Forkbeard - another Viking - drove Æthelred the Unready out of Northern and Eastern England, ruled for a bit and popped his clogs, leaving the kingdom to his son, Cnut … careful how you spell that one.

That's Cnut on the right, at least that's what the artist of the Kings and Queens of England cigarette cards though he might look like.

Back in Normandy, at Falaise Castle, probably in early 1028, Robert, Duke of Normandy, AKA Robert the Devil, impregnated one of his servant girls, Herleva, daughter of Fulbert the Embalmer (nice) and nine months later she begat William the Bastard.

William the Bastard became known - though not until long after his death - as William the Conqueror, for defeating the exhausted army of Harold, mere days after Harold's men had beaten off a Viking invasion (another Swein) at the other end of the country.

And it was this William who launched a massive campaign of castle building throughout his new realm, which resulted in the creation of our own castle at Norwich, the current stone keep of which was constructed by his younger sons, William Rufus and Henri Beauclerc (later Henry the First).

Ely Cathedral

In 1071, as we learned in our talk on Ely Cathedral, William the Bastard was busy besieging the Isle of Ely, watching the flower of his Norman army sink into a swamp, employing a witch to curse and waggle her wrinkled bottom at Hereward and Morcar and eventually storming the city and confiscating the eyes, hands and feet of the defenders.

A charming man. What else do we know about him?

William the Bastard stood five-feet-eight-inches tall, but that's about all we know of his appearance and we only know that by a re-measuring in 1983 of all that is left of him: a single femur.

We can infer that he was - how shall I put this - burly and robust, especially in later life as the sorry tale of his death relates.

In July, 1087, in the process of invading his Norman neighbours' lands and seizing the town of Mantes, William suffered a gruesome, yet strangely hilarious injury to his 'lower person' from his horse's saddle pommel.

He was taken to the Priory of St.Gervais in Rouen where he passed painfully and infectedly away on the ninth of September and, such was the reverence felt for him that - as soon as he had gasped his last - his attendants looted his belongings and fled, leaving his nekkid carcass athwart his bed.

From there, the corpse was taken by cart to Caen, by which time it must have been pretty ripe.

William's funeral was interrupted by an angry heckler protesting loudly that the Abbey had been built on his father's stolen property and that he had received no compensation.

Much ado and hubbub ensued and it turned out that the allegation was true and he was hastily laden with silver so that the funeral service could continue.

To finish this woeful tale, we must relate that William's bloated corpse proved too fat to fit into his stone sarcophagus and that, when the monks tried to force it in, his distended bowels burst, filling the Abbey with such as stench that all fled save the officiating clergy who inhaled incense to stay conscious.

The man sure knew how to go out in style.

More fun with William's family in the next post …

Sources:

The Oxford History of England: 1087-1216: From Domesday Book to Magna Carta: Austin Lane Poole (ed.) 1951

Gesta Herewardi (later translation)

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Preface

Here beginneth Old Dive's Complete and Utter History of Norwich Castle, taken from a series of lectures I gave to the Castle project team over the past year. 

References to earlier lectures may creep in, as for example my talk on the Lantern of Ely Cathedral involved the splendidly monikered Queen Sexburga, a king called Anna, a local witch employed by William the Bastard to cast spells on Morcar and Hereward and display her naked arse to them, plus the sinking of the Norman army in a swamp; all of which has some bearing on the History.

The witch got burned by-the-bye. It's all in the Gesta Herewardi, a contemporary account by the monks of Ely.

I shall have to chop the lectures up into little pieces as there are eight of them and each is around an hour long. Fæcebookland folk appear to have lost the ability to read more than a sentence at a sitting, the poor dears, so I shall keep each post as brief as I can and include some pretty (and some totally gross) pictures to accompany them.

Watch this space …

What I Did On My Blog-Holiday

So what have I been up to during my extended sabbatical from dear old Blogville?

Well the fools let me loose on the Tudor panelled rooms at Trinity College, Cambridge and then plonked Norwich Castle in my lap.

The Castle project, called Royal Palace Reborn, intends to return the gutted Keep to how it was at Christmas, 1121, when Henry the First and his second wife, Adeliza of Louvain, moved in and threw a big old partay.

So I've been building this here model. It's a little unwieldy, being currently around three-quarters of a terabyte, but it's my baby. All the construction detailing and information is stored in the model so they can build from it. This view shows the new Great Hall with minstrel's gallery and the archæological exhibit below.

Here we see the King's Chamber (with the red curtains) and the Great Hall on the right. The tinkly light things above the archæology are "Ghost Arches"; the original arches having long disappeared, we're putting back ghosts of them with thousands of little LEDs.

We're putting a big viewing platform on the roof so you can see the whole city, and for the first time in 900 years, making the whole thing accessible to all, from dungeons to roof.

So anyhoo, as part of the project, Old Dive, as Architect and historic buildings expert, put together a side project: a series of lectures telling the history of the Castle. As these were for internal company use only, they tended to get a little Dive-ish and in places exceedingly silly and gross. 

In my next post I shall begin posting a potted version as I know Petrea especially loves old history.

Hope you enjoy it. In the meantime, the archæologists are digging furiously away in the basement and there's a massive tower crane looming over the Keep so that we can start work (Covid safely).

This is the view of it from my office, where I'm working on the Castle three days a week and hopefully posting some bloggery in between.

Distend, Then Tighten

So I woke up back in Blogville this morning after a looooong absence and continued trawling through old posts and comments in an attempt to recall what the world was like before Trump and Covid. I feel like Snowman Jimmy wandering the deserted streets in Oryx and Crake.

I've got as far as November, 2007 and found a doozy I had forgotten all about.

In trying to explain why I would never use BabelFish to translate my Japanese homework, I had run a French poem through it, from Nathalie's Avignon blog and the result included the line, "The treasures hidden at the bottom of you, Distend then tighten with the wire of time."

Here's the whole thing for you to treasure. Adopt a poet's stance and declaim it aloud:

"To say what makes me vibrate.
I will take you along.
At the soft hour one will take the accommodation ladder, one will go up on the bridge to breathe the salt of the life.

You feel like the air of the night is made velvet?
Here it is my kingdom.
That where the hearts are untied, where the bodies open, where the large things are achieved.
A rich black and chocolate flux with spangles.

It is the paddle with the fingers of pink which will bring back for us Ground of fire, will-o'-the-wisp, cow's milk, pigs, brooded Which odours will accommodate us, frangipanier, dried fish, gas oil spices spruce?
We will go to the meeting of these funny of others.

There are all these hands which are tightened in this letter box.
The treasures hidden at the bottom of you, Distend then tighten themselves with the wire of time."

Anyhoo; make of that what you will, I'm off to distend and tighten the treasures hidden in my bottom.

The Revenant

Well, bugger me with a splintered gatepost it's like Fallout 4 or The Last of Us in here.

The walk over to Blogville reminded me of Cormac Mc.Carthy's laugh-a-minute "The Road".

I've not visited for a long time, but reduced working days brought on by the planet-wide Choking Death gave me the spare time to go back to the early posts of 2006 and marvel over the wonders of comment-fests a yard long in the crowded and happy streets of Blogville.

Of course, some ex-Blogville residents now live quite contentedly in the trashy trailer park of Fæcebookland and we still keep in touch. Others have simply faded into the ether and their links lead nowhere. At least one has died and gone to Ankh-Morpork (where all good Pratchett fans go).

It's actually almost quaint to go back through what now seem like the good old days and read of our fear and loathing of Dubya and Bliar, as if they were leading us back to 1930s Germany and heralding the resurgence of Zombie-Fascism.

Well, we were right, only we were nowhere near frightened enough. Fascism is back with a bang; racism, homophobia, misogyny and ultra-violence are now government policy both sides of the Pond.

Trump? For fuck's sake! TRUMP? And over here we have Trump-Lite with Johnson and Rees-Mogg and their murderous clique of incompetents, running around like headless chickens, hoping Covid will miraculously go away.

Ah, yes … Our new plague. My mate Adrian's Mum died of it on a Friday and his Dad the following Monday. Happy days.

It's a fucking strange new world. We're all now living inside Margaret Atwood's head. It's Gilead and Oryx and Crake all rolled into one, with Fake-Haired-Fascists running the show.

There's an election coming up over in the Colonies; one can only hope sanity prevails.

Oh, by-the-bye; since last we met, Old Dive has been diagnosed with Asperger's. Yay! Explains my whole fucking life. At least I know now that there's a reason why I am what I am and frankly, it's a blessèd relief.

Anyhoo … I'm back. I've swept all the spiders out of my old Blogville residence, dusted off a chair, cranked up the generator and put the kettle on. I think I'll stay here for a bit and watch the world outside.

Is anybody there? Robyn? Sassy? Sharifa? Shan? Maria? Lynn? Katherine? Speedway? Prudence? Ms.M? Shazza? Vic (now Bruce - huzzah!)? Kate? Utsav? Crazy Ame? Old Knudsen?

Well, at least it's nice and quiet here.

No Business Like Snowbusiness

We've had the overture; the Beast From The East is due to hit us hard tonight.

This was my commute this morning.
I had a choice: take water, food, blankets, shovel, etc.
or take my "Donner Party" kit:
Stihl chainsaw (sweet), boning knife, camping gas stove, butcher's apron.

No contest …

Winter Wonderland My Arse

The view of the Cathedral from my office window (see previous post) this lunchtime.

Apparently "The Beast From The East" is due to arrive tomorrow, bringing the gift of blizzards straight from Siberia via the Baltic and the North Sea.

Hey ho …

Snowstorm Coming In

Office window.

Cathedral.

Rainbow.

Nuff said.