heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

284 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
ruin or ; peered down into the domed vault, some ten feet deep and
twenty-two feet in diameter, with neither loop-hole nor lateral recess
of any kind, no seats, nor vents, nor sewer, with a well said to be 105
feet deep in the centre !
perhaps the castle store ; perhaps the prison.
Four storeys rise above it, each connected by a staircase in the thickness
of the wall. The first, devoted to provisions the second, furnishing the
;
ordinary room for the constable or lord, and his family and guests. The
men sleeping there, the ladies in the room above, with the beautiful little
oratory opening out of it, thirteen feet by eight feet, fourteen feet high ;
the roof groined in stone, the ribs ornamented with chevron pattern, the
bosses carved with the cross moline or with flowers, the half-shafts of
the pillars against the wall terminating in caps delicately carved, and
becoming more enriched towards the east. On each side a small quatrefoil
window. At the east end, one single narrow round-headed light. Above
it the topmost floor, probably covered once with a high conical corniced
roof, under which was, probably, the kitchen, and the lodging of the small
garrison of some twenty men.*
Who can enter this stately building without wishing to know something
of its antecedents, the hands which reared it, the generations
which dwelt in it, until, roofless and dismantled, it was left to be the
refuge of owls and bats !
Earl William f seems to have been a brave and loyal man, and worthy
of the confidence of the King which allowed him to commence such a
fortress, impregnable in those simple days. He faithfully adhered to his
sovereign, and when King Henry I. lay on his death-bed at Lyons, in
France, he was one of five earls who, with other great men, attended him,
and afterwards accompanied the body of the King to its burial in Reading
Abbey. He was a munificent benefactor to the Church, completing the
chancel at Castle-acre, and giving many grants and tithes to the religious
houses. Amongst others, he gave a church to St. Mary, at Southwark,
attesting his gift by laying his knife on the altar, as is attested in the
deed of gift
: " Unde donavi de manu mea, per quendam cultellum super
" altare ejusdem ecclesise positum."
So Hugh Lupus gave an estate to the abbey of Abingdon, and so,
in those early illiterate days, Dr. Gale tells us, in his Dissertation on the
Ulphus horn in our Minster, conveyances were made " nudo verbo absque
"scripto vel charta," the granter delivering to the grantee some movable
which was known to belong to him. And Earl William, of course, carried
a knife. Chaucer, in his Rcve's tale, illustrating the pre-eminence
of Yorkshire
handicraft even in those ancient days, says
:
"
A Shefild thwitil bare he in his hose."
* Clark. t Mtmoirs of the Ancient Earls of Warren and Stirrq', Rev. John Watson, 1782.