Welsh Journals

ADOLYGIADAU/REVIEWS THE CASTLE IN ENGLAND AND WALES: AN INTERPRETATIVE HISTORY, D.J. Cathcart King. Croom Helm, 1988. 210 pp.; 6 maps; 24 plans; 2 figs; 9 plates. £ 25. David King served with distinction with the Royal Artillery in Syria, Iraq and Italy. In Syria he circumvented military prohibitions to enter and study Krak de Chevaliers and Damascus citadel. After army service he became a schoolmaster, devoting his spare time to the study of castles. From 1947 he published very many learned articles, mostly concerning the castles of Wales and the Marches. His 'Casdes of Cardiganshire' (ante, III, 1956, 50-69) remains the best account of our castles. His greatest work is the two-volume CastellanumAnglicanum (New York, 1983; forCeredigion, Vol. I; 43-52). This 'index and bibliography' furnished classified lists of all castles in England and Wales, arranged under the historic counties and citing documentary references and published descriptions. In 1987 the University of Wales acknowledged his outstanding work by publishing Castles in Wales and the Marches: essays in Honour of D. J. Cathcart King. The book here reviewed was compiled from material intended for Castellarium Anglicanum, but which was with-held to ensure the publication in full of his county lists. It is obviously a work of the highest authority. That said, it is fair to emphasise that it is not a book designed to introduce the subject, or to beguile the layman, but one aimed at serious and informed scholars of castellation-and historians lacking an earthy soldier's appreciation of castles and the men that used them. Only the experienced could conclude a list of factors involved in the outcome of an assault with the observation that 'then, as now, dysentery loved the soldier' (p.29). Similarly, in discussing the vulnerability of those who managed to cross the outer wall of a concentric castle to the narrow lists beneath the towering inner walls, he tells of their 'fatal predicament, like a man on a raft under the broadside of a man-of-war' (p. 113). Equally informed are his observations on bows, siege-engines and early artillery. All too familiar with modern artillery, he has also experimented with scale models of siege-engines and published the carefully calculated capabilities of his trebuchets. The crossbow, 'wickedly effective in siege or defence, was a notoriously mediocre weapon in the field' (p. 10). The implications of this statement emerge in Chapter 9, where radical changes in the design of castles are attributed to this weapon. Persistent myths are dismissed or qualified: the dungeon, beloved of schoolboys, was rare; the newel-stair did not always rise clockwise to deny an assailant the use of his sword; Saxons did not build castles, a discredited theory recently revived; the keep was a permanent residence, not a grim refuge of last resort, and it was not obsolete from the thirteenth century, but continued to be used and built until the fifteenth century; finally, the Crusades exerted negligible direct influence on the development of European castles (8). Fourteen chapters and an appendix are annotated, directing readers to sources and further study. A wide net is cast for parallels, extending to the Continent, the Middle East and even to Japan and the 'Wild West'! Chapters 1-4 deal with general matters: the castle defined, its great range and function; castle-guard; the overall feudal control of castles; and factors influencing castle development. Succeeding chapters discuss origins (5), early earthwork castles (6) and early stone castles (7). Chapter 8 demonstrates the minimal influence exerted by the crusades. 'Scientific fortification' (9) concerned the