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ness, proposed a capitulation advantageous to the garrison, to which Stephen, despairing of winning the castle by arms, readily acceded. Henry II. presented it to his favourite, Fulk Fitz-Warine, or de Dinan, to whom succeeded Joccas de Dinan; between whom and Hugh de Mortimer Lord of Wigmore such dissensions arose, as at length occasioned the seizure of Mortimer, and his confinement in one of the towers of the Castle, which to this day is called Mortimer's Tower; from which he was not liberated till he had paid an immense

ransom.

It was again belonging to the crown in the eighth year of King John, who bestowed it on Philip de Albani, from whom it descended to the Lacies of Ireland, the last of which family, Walter de Lacy, dying without issue male, left the Castle to his grand-daughter Maud, the wife of Peter de Geneva, or Jeneville, a Poictevin of the house of Lorrain, from whose posterity it passed by a daughter to the Mortimers, and from them hereditarily to the crown. In the reign of Henry III.` it was taken by Simon de Montfort Earl of Leicester, the ambitious leader of the confederate

Now inhabited, and used as a fives-court.

barons, who, about the year 1263, are said to have taken possession of all the royal castles and fortresses. Of Ludlow Castle, in almost two succeeding centuries, nothing is recorded.

In the thirteenth year of Henry VI. it was in the possession of Richard Duke of York, who there drew up his declaration of affected allegiance to the king, pretending that the army of ten thousand men, which he had raised in the Marches of Wales, was "for the public weale of the realme." The event of this commotion between the royalists and Yorkists, the defeat of Richard's perfidious attempt, is well known. The Castle of Ludlow, says Hall," was spoyled." The king's troops seized on whatever was valuable in it; and, according to the same chronicler, hither" the King "sent the Duchess of York, with her two younger

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sons, to be kept in ward, with the Duchess of "Buckingham her sister, where she continued a "certain space." The castle was soon afterwards put into the possession of Edward Duke of York, afterwards King Edward IV. who at that time resided in the neighbouring Castle of Wigmore, and who, in order to revenge the death of his father, had collected some troops in the Marches, and had attached the garrison to his cause.

On

his accession to the throne, the Castle was repaired by him, and a few years afterwards was made the court of his son, the Prince of Wales; who was sent hither by him, as Hall relates," for "justice to be doen in the Marches of Wales, to "the end that by the authoritie of his presence, "the wild Welshmenne and evill disposed per"sonnes should refraine from their accustomed "murthers and outrages." Sir Henry Sidney, some years afterwards, observed,e that, since the establishment of the Lord President and Council, the whole country of Wales had been brought from their disobedient and barbarous incivility, to a civil and obedient condition; and the bordering English counties had been freed from those spoils and felonies with which the Welsh, before this

d "As touching the first Councel established in the "Marches of Wales, it is conceived by the best and most "probable opinions among antiquaries, that the same be66 gan in or about 17° Edward IV. when as Prince Edward "his son was sent into the Marches of Wales, under the "tuition of the Lord Rivers, his unckle by the mother's side,. "at what time also John [Alcock] Bishop of Worcester "was appointed Lord President of Wales." Percy Enderbie's Cambria Triumphans, fol. 1661, p. 343.

e See Sidney State Papers, vol. i. p. 1.

institution, had annoyed them. Edward, his eldest son was here

On the death of first proclaimed The young mo

king by the name of Edward V. narch and his brother were, however, soon sent for from the Castle, by their dissembling uncle, the tyrant Richard, who soon removed these innocent obstacles to his ambition, by the most foul and unnatural murder.

In the reign of Henry VII. his eldest son, Arthur Prince of Wales, inhabited the Castle, in which great festivity was observed upon his marriage with Catherine of Arragon; an event that was soon followed, within the same walls, by the untimely and lamented death of that accomplished prince.

f See Speed's Hist. of Great Britaine, p. 884. And compare Shakspeare, Richard III. act ii. scene ii. where Buckingham says,

Me seemeth good, that, with some little train,

Forthwith from Ludlow the young prince be fetch'd
Hither to London, to be crown'd our king.

g See Mr. Warton's second edit. p. 124, who quotes D. Powell's Hist. of Cambria, ed. 1580, 4to. p. 401. SirH. Sidney, however, was made Lord President in the second year of Elizabeth, which was in 1559. See Sidney State Papers, vol. i. Memoirs prefixed, p. 86.

The Castle had now long been the palace of the Prince of Wales, annexed to the principality, and was the habitation appointed for his deputies, the Lords Presidents of Wales, who held in it the Court of the Marches. It would therefore hardly have been supposed, that its, external splendour should have suffered neglect, if Powell, the Welsh historian, had not related, that "Sir Henry Sidney, who was made Lord President in 1564,

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h

repaired the Castle of Ludlowe, which is the "cheefest house within the Marches, being in "great decaie, as the chapell, the court-house, "and a faire fountaine." Sir Henry's 1 munificence to this stately fabric is more particularly recorded by T. Churchyard, in his poem called "The Worthines of Wales,” 4to. Lond. 1578. The chapter is entitled "The Castle of Ludloe," in which it is related, that " Sir Harry built many

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things here worthie praise and memorie." From the same information we learn the following particulars. Over a chimney excellently wrought "in the best chamber, is St. Andrewes Crosse

h See also Sidney State Papers, volume i. page 144, where Sir Henry relates the situation of Ludlow Castle, &c.

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