SearchNo doubt this story cast its spell
In Conisbrough’s great keep,
As Geoffrey, de Warenne’s minstrel,
Sang Lady Maud to sleep.
My harp is not like his!
An echo in the aftertime,
When men have almost done with rhyme,
And history’s almost forgot;
But there’s enough to shape my plot –
So here it is!
The Bridal of Eubulo le Strange, Prologue
When I was a lad I lived in a house in Conisbrough, an industrial township in the West Riding of Yorkshire. There was nothing special about the house – except the view, because right across the valley was one of the best-preserved castles in England. Not surprisingly, I grew up with an interest in the history of the castle. The official Ministry of Works guidebook briefly mentioned that that castle had once been under siege, but no details were given. Recently, I tried to find out more about this siege. My interest had been revived by a recent visit to the castle and the guided tour through the keep which includes an audio dramatisation of the events surrounding the siege. My other inspiration was the poetry of Sir Walter Scott. He wrote stirring narrative poems about Scottish history, and it occurred to me that a similar style would be an interesting way to narrate the story of the siege of Conisbrough. Of course, if I was going to attempt this, I would need much more detail than the English Heritage audio dramatisation provided, and so I set about researching it. Thanks partly to Conisbrough library and partly to the Internet, I was able to piece together a surprisingly detailed account. This account is the basis of my poem: The Bridal of Eubulo le Strange, but for those are more interested in history than poetry, I give below a prose version of my researches – though I couldn’t resist adding a few extracts from the poem.
In November1317, Conisbrough Castle was attacked by Thomas Plantagenet, 2nd Earl of Lancaster. The reason for the attack was that Lancaster’s wife, Alice de Laci, had been abducted from her castle at Canford Magna near Wimborne, Dorset on the orders of John de Warenne, 8th Earl of Surrey. De Warenne held lands throughout England, but the nearest to Lancaster was the lordship of Conisbrough.
Alice de Laci married Lancaster on 28 October 1294 when she was 13. By the terms of their marriage settlement the bulk of her large inheritance was to go to him, but the marriage was not successful, and they lived separate lives. Some accounts say that de Warenne wanted to abduct her because he was in love with her, but closer investigation reveals that she had some kind of relationship with Eubulo le Strange, de Warenne's squire. This account is probably the most accurate because she eventually married Eubulo sometime before 10th November 1324. After the abduction, Alice was taken to de Warenne's castle at Reigate in Surrey under the guard of Richard de St. Martin, a retainer of de Warenne.
The abduction was never really about love, but was part of a much bigger quarrel. De Warenne and Lancaster were involved in the most serious political issue of the time: Edward II’s relationship with his favourite, Piers Gaveston – so brilliantly described by Marlowe in his play ‘Edward II’. Lancaster raised an army against Gaveston and the king, in May 1312, leading to Gaveston’s eventual killing on 19 June on Blacklow Hill. De Warenne was on Lancaster’s side until then, but revolted by the killing of Gaveston, he changed to the king’s side. This is the main reason for the enmity between the two men.
They quarrelled over several other issues, but the last straw was when Lancaster blocked de Warenne’s divorce from Joan de Barr, who was the daughter of Henry Count de Barr, and granddaughter of King Edward I. De Warenne was married to Joan on 25 May,1306 when he was19 years old and she was 10. This was not a happy marriage and there were no children. By 1313 de Warenne was separated from his wife and made a series of efforts to obtain a divorce which were unsuccessful. At last, in 1316, it seemed that the divorce would be allowed, but judgement went against de Warenne because of the intervention of Lancaster.
De Warenne retaliated by arranging for the abduction of Alice de Laci. It is probable that the idea for this way of striking back at Lancaster came when he observed the bond of affection between his squire, Eubolo, and Alice. This was not an uncommon form of relationship as the conventions of ‘amour courtois’ allowed for a squire or knight to love a married lady ‘from afar’ – though sometimes such relationships broke the rules and became adulterous (the classic literary example is the relationship between Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere).
On 17 November 1317, Lancaster retaliated by attacking Conisbrough Castle with a large force of men, gaining entry by scaling the walls. He found only six men inside, one of whom was the miller of Conisbrough. Three of the other men were Thomas, Henry and William Greathead, men at arms. The Conisbrough Court Rolls record that, on 6 December 1317, Lancaster, with his constable John Lasseles, brought the six men to trial and found them guilty of fighting. They were fined sixpence each. However, this account suggests a relatively easy victory which conflicts with the archaeological evidence and the evidence of the Elland feud.
The archaeological evidence suggests that the curtain wall was undermined at the point where the wall is missing today. A common method was to dig tunnels under the walls under the cover of shields, prop the tunnels with timber and then set fire to the props causing the walls to collapse. The attackers would then scramble over the ruins of the walls and fight the defenders on more equal terms.
Trumpets herald the attack:
Men scale the walls and are thrown back
Crashing in armour to the ground
With screams of pain – a dreadful sound!
Then underneath an arrow-storm,
And under shields, the miners swarm
And dig beneath the western wall
Then set their fires and watch it fall!
The Bridal of Eubulo le Strange 3,1,iv
That the ensuing battle was vicious is evidenced by the fact that it gave rise to a long-running feud of which documentary evidence survives. One of Lancaster’s knights, Exley of Exley Hall in Southowram killed the half-nephew of Sir John Elland (The High Steward to de Warenne and High Shire-Reeve of Yorkshire) who was in charge of the castle in de Warenne’s absence. Legal documents show that Exley paid compensation to the Elland family in the form of a piece of land.
Exley and the Steward meet;
And Exley hacks with battle-axe,
And through the basinet it smacks,
The Steward tumbles in defeat –
A moment that imbued
The fatal Elland Feud,
That pitted the House of Lancaster
’Gainst House of de Warenne
Till thirteen hundred and fifty-four
With deaths of many men.
The Bridal of Eubulo le Strange 3,1,vi
Lancaster also laid siege to Sandal Castle which, being mainly of wood, was burnt to the ground. An archaeological excavation revealed a thin layer of black ash beneath a layer of sand and rotted vegetation near the bottom of a barbican garderobe. Maud de Nerford, Warenne's mistress, was among those ejected from the castle. The chronicle also records the devastation of all de Warenne's lands north of the River Trent. At this point King Edward II intervened and an uneasy agreement was reached under which Lancaster retained de Warenne’s Yorkshire castles.
In 1319, during his stewardship of the two castles, we know that Lancaster ordered repair work to be made to the Conisbrough Castle's chapel using timber from the nearby wood, and to the south-east side curtain wall which had been badly damaged during the siege. He also ordered Sandal Castle’s curtain walls to be rebuilt in stone.
In 1321 Lancaster held a two-day banquet in the Conisbrough castle. Total cost was 15 shillings, but he did not hold Conisbrough for much longer, for in 1322 he led a rebellion against the King which ended with the battle of Boroughbridge. The rebellion began when Lancaster attacked Tickhill Castle, which was loyal to the king. Tickhill was one of the strongest castles in the area, consisting of a mighty eleven-sided keep surrounded by a moat and strong curtain walls. The siege lasted for three weeks until the Royal army arrived on 16 February 1322. We know the date because the Prior of Lenton was called on by the King to raise as many men-at-arms and horse and foot-soldiers as he could to march against the rebels of the Lancaster. De Warenne was also fighting with the king.
Lancaster had no choice but to flee from Tickhill. His first plan was to take refuge in his mighty castle at Pontefract, but he was persuaded that it would be safer to go north to Northumberland. By the night of 15 March 1322 the royal forces under Sir Andrew de Harcla had reached Ripon. While at Ripon he received news that Lancaster’s forces were on the march along the Great North Road and would reach Boroughbridge the next day. That night Harcla marched the six miles to Boroughbridge, where the Great North Road crossed the River Ure. Here he set up strong defensive positions on the bridge and at the nearby ford. Apparently unaware of the threat from the north, Lancaster reached Boroughbridge a day later to find that he had been outmanoeuvred.
With the rest of the king’s forces coming up behind him, Lancaster had no choice but to fight and try to force his way through. He mounted a two-pronged attack on the bridge and the ford. But de Harcla’s contingent of Welsh longbowmen won the battle at the ford and when the Earl of Hereford was killed by a Welshman who speared him from beneath the bridge, Lancaster’s men fell back. He made an overnight truce with de Harcla and withdrew to Boroughbridge. But most of his men deserted during the night and those remaining surrendered without further resistance. Lancaster was captured and tried for treason, found guilty, and then executed outside the walls of his own castle at Pontefract.
A fascinating sidelight on the Battle of Boroughbridge is that the Yorkshire historian Hunter stated that a Robertus Hood had lived in Barnsdale forest from April 1322, following defeat at Boroughbridge, to December 1323 when he was pardoned by the King. Could this be the Robin Hood of legend? Despite the rival claims it is too good an opportunity for an author to miss, so I have treated him as such in my poem, though I have put Robert Hood on the king’s side.
Now Hereford and de Clifford
Advance upon the bridge and ford.
But Robert Hood is first to blows
With his men and their longbows.
They shower the enemy with arrows –
Devastating in the narrows
Of the old bridge of stone.
Then step the pikemen to the fore
Advancing like a hedge of war
Till the enemy has flown.
They try to charge the bridge again
But they have lost too many men,
Including Hereford.
The other conflict is the same,
The schiltrons, worthy of their name,
Have held on to the ford.
Then, before the day had ended
Lancaster, hearing that King Edward
Was marching up behind, surrendered.
The Bridal of Eubulo le Strange 4,1,ii
After Lancaster’s defeat at Boroughbridge, Conisbrough Castle was held by Edward II until 1326. The king stayed briefly at Conisbrough in November 1322, and in 1324, ordered the expenditure of 40 marks to repair the towers and walls of the castles at Pontefract and Conisbrough. The repairs to the curtain wall, attempted first by Lancaster, and later by the king, can never have been satisfactorily done, because this is the only section of the curtain wall to have collapsed.
The castle was delivered back to de Warenne in 1326, and by 1332, though still unable to divorce his wife, he had two sons by his mistress, Maud de Nerford.
Eubulo eventually married Alice de Laci at some time before 10th November 1324.
De Warenne died in 1347 at the age of 61, probably of the Black Death, which came to Europe in 1340 and continued its ravages until about 1400. It is ironic that a few years earlier he had founded St. Swithen's Chantry in Wakefield, a chapel for plague victims, so that they could attend devotions there without infecting others. De Warenne died without a legitimate heir, though he tried unsuccessfully to secure the tenure of the manor and castle of Conisbrough for his two sons and Maud after his death. He was thus the last of the de Warenne line, and the lordship of Conisbrough passed to the crown.
Eubolo le Strange died in 1335, and Alice married for a third time before 23rd March 1336 to Hugh de Freyne. Alice died without issue from any of her marriages on the 2nd of October 1348 at her Castle of Old Bolingbroke, Lincolnshire.
Where knights once lived, now sparrows dwell
And trees grow where the donjons fell
At Pontefract, Sandal and Tickhill –
But Conisbrough is mighty still.
It tells us of those ancient times,
In words of solid stone,
A tale more lasting than these rhymes,
That will endure when we are gone.
A tale of love; a tale of war;
A tale of what went on before,
That shows that, despite time and tide
All men are just the same inside;
And bravely wrestle with their fate,
And do strange things for love and hate.
And fight for what they believe in,
And sometimes die and sometimes win.
So reader! when you go
To visit Conisbro’,
Remember Eubulo!
The Bridal of Eubulo le Strange, Epilogue
© Arthur. All rights reserved by the author.
Sources:
An Illustrated Account of Conisbrough, by Robert Allen Marsh, 1997.
Boroughbridge Battle and Campaign, The Battlefields Trust, 2003.
Conisbrough Court Rolls, 1304 – 1347.
South Yorkshire (a history of the Deanery of Doncaster), Volume I, Joseph Hunter, 1828.
Sandal Castle, Wakefield: The History and Archaeology of a Medieval Castle (Wakefield Historical Publications) by L. A. S. Butler,1991.
The History of the Parish and Priory of Lenton, by John Thomas Godfrey FRHS, Bemrose and Sons, London and Derby, 1884.
Yorkshire: An historical and topographical introduction to a knowledge of the ancient state of the wapentake of Strafford and Tickhill; with ample accounts ... and other matters connected therewith by John Wainwright,1829.
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