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obligations for defence. 225 The numerous Suffolk freemen could presumably still be
asked to fulfil their military obligations.
As D. J. Cathcart King states, it is not easy to define what a castle is. It was a
“fortified habitation”, but not all fortified habitations were castles. Walled towns,
villages with defensive earthworks or fortified churches were not castles. A castle
was something more than or different from a fortified manor house. 226 All these the
Anglo-Saxons already had. In spite of the association between continental
immigrants and the early examples of motte and bailey castles, it is possible that the
simple, wooden, motte and bailey castle was a style first adopted in England around
the period of the Norman Conquest and not really a continental import. 227 Simple
castles undoubtedly played an important role in the conquest and subjection of
England in 1066 and shortly after. 228
Besides their military usage, some castles came to have also administrative
and judicial functions, and became the capita of landholders’ honours. Some of the
castles could even contain market places, making the castle a socio-economic and
political centre. 229 Even in the late eleventh century some royal castles and even
baronial castles were being built in stone. 230
225
Green, Aristocracy, pp. 223-5; Golding, Conquest and Colonisation, p. 145; Douglas, William, p.
215.
226
Cathcart King, Castle in England and Wales, pp. 1-3.
227
I owe this suggestion to Dr Julian Bennet, though unfortunately I have been unable to follow up
this idea at this time. There were a few castles built by immigrants in Edward the Confessor’s reign:
Davis, Normans and their Myth, pp. 110-111; Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 562 n. 1.
228
Golding, Conquest and Colonisation, p. 128.
229
Ibid., pp. 129-30.
230
Cathcart King, Castle in England and Wales, p, 62.
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