The earliest mention of the fortified stronghold of English power, so often referred to in the Irish State Papers of the Plantagenets as ‘his Majesty's Castle of Dublin,’ is to be found in the records of the reign of King John, and is just seven centuries old. Whether the actual site of the Castle had been occupied by a fortress, and had served as the seat of government prior to the year 1204, it is now impossible to determine. How far the Plantagenet castle can be fairly identified with the earlier stronghold known to have been erected by the Danish sovereigns of Dublin is one of those questions which, since they can never be positively answered, it is profitless to discuss. On this point all that can be affirmed is, that the probabilities of the case favour the supposition that the site of both edifices was the same. That the walls of the mediaeval city were first raised in the Dark Ages by the founders of the Scandinavian kingdom of Dublin, is a point not open to controversy. The physical configuration of the rising ground to the south-east of the city walls, must at all times have suggested that eminence as the most suitable site for the guardian fortress of the city. And all authorities are agreed that a fort was erected by the Danes,1 about the middle of the ninth century, in close proximity to the walls. Thus it may well be that the ‘battlements of the watch tower,’ from which King Sitric followed the varying fortunes of the fight at Clontarf, rose from the self-same spot from which for seven
But if the Danish fortress had once occupied the site, it no longer stood there in 1170, when, at the bidding of Strongbow, Myles De Cogan and his comrades first entered Dublin. It had been destroyed after the Battle of Clontarf, and no new building seems to have replaced the old in the interval that parted the exit of the Dane from the coming of the Norman. The accounts of the taking of Dublin by Strongbow's followers are silent as to any such protracted stand as must have been expected of its defenders, had a fortified citadel barred the eastern entrance to the city against the Norman knights. And there is no mention of any such stronghold in the narrative of the negotiations between Earl Richard and King Roderic O'Conor when, a few months after its capture, the city was blockaded by that monarch and his allies. When, therefore, Henry II., arriving in Dublin in November 1171, built, as Roger de Hoveden tells us, a royal palace roofed with wattles after the fashion of the country’’
Roger de Hoveden's Chronicle. (Rolls Series), ii. p. 32.
in which to spend his Christmas, he occupied in all probability the deserted site of the dismantled Danish stronghold. Henry's palace was situate, according to the chronicler, near the Church of St. Andrew the Apostle, without the city of Dublin.’’ As the old Church of St. Andrew stood close to the eastern corner of the modern Palace Street, hard by the entrance to what is now the Lower Castle Yard, the king must thus have fixed his quarters as nearly as possible on the actual spot on which thirty years later his son caused the Castle to be built.Up to this point the history of the Castle, or rather of its site, rests only upon conjectures which are necessarily inconclusive. The chronicles of the first thirty years of Norman rule add nothing to our knowledge. Richard I. cared little for a country which had become the appanage
Close Roll, 6 John, m. 18. Printed in Historic and Municipal Documents of Ireland. (Rolls Series), p. 61.
The mandate, after permitting the Justiciary to appropriate a sum of three hundred marks, then due to the Crown, to the initial expenditure on the building, directed him to require the citizens, if necessary by force, to strengthen the defences of Dublin. It may be that the establishment of a fair at Donnybrook, sanctioned by the King in the same document, was intended as a set off or compensation for the military outlay thus charged on the city.Meiller Fitz-Henry to whom this document was addressed was at this time the representative of the Crown in Ireland. He was a first cousin in blood to the Sovereign, and had been among the most distinguished of the friends and followers of Strongbow. Indomitus domitor totius gentis Hiberniae’’
Cox's Hibernia Anglicana. , p. 48.
, so ran the concise epitaph in which his career isBut by whichever of King John's representatives the foundation stone was actually laid, it is plain that the building of the Castle was a matter of serious interest and concern to the Sovereign, and that to no one can the title of founder be more properly ascribed than to King John
Of the active part played by this eminent prelate and Viceroy in the construction of the Castle we get not a few glimpses in the records of his government. The State Papers show that Ware does not at all exaggerate in attributing to the Archbishop a principal share in the erection of the building, and they prove that the attention of the Archbishop was not so wholly engrossed with the constitution of the Cathedral Chapter of St. Patrick's as to leave no time to the Viceroy to superintend the building of the King's principal residence. Ware's account is that Henri de Londres caused the Castle of Dublin to be builded, some say at his own proper costs,’’
Ware's Annals (1705) p. 27.
and he elsewhere states that the same year that Henry Londres died, being the year 1228, the Castle of Dublin was builded: I mean the walls four-square or quadrangle-wise, but the four turrets and the other afterwards.’’Ware's Bishops, p. 5.
The State Papers show that, on his appointment to be justiciary in 1213, the Archbishop received a patent for the custody of the King's Castle of Dublin during pleasure.5 Though no details are given ofSweetman's Calendar, 1172-1251, p. 198.
was not made without the recommendation or concurrence of the masterful ruler of the see of Dublin.Whatever the solicitude of the Archbishop in these matters may have owed to the initiative of King John, these latter proofs of it were of course given not in John's reign, but in that of his more ecclesiastically minded successor. Though Henry of Winchester found no time in his long reign for a visit to Ireland, he appears more than once to have contemplated such a journey; and several of the State Papers of his reign prove that he was far from indifferent to the becoming equipment of his only Irish residence. In 1237 the King gave elaborate directions to prepare for his coming into Ireland.9 And in 1243, while in France, where the presence in his army of a very large Irish contingent may have turned his thoughts towards his Irish dominions, King Henry wrote from Bordeaux to his Justiciary and Treasurer in Ireland, directing them that out of the King's profits they cause to be constructed in the Castle of Dublin
Sweetman's Calendar, 1172-1251, p. 389.
They were further directed ‘to cause to be painted beyond the dais’ the King and Queen sitting with their baronage, and to make a ‘great portal’ at the entrance of the hall; the whole to be completed by the King's arrival.But by far the most characteristic memorials of this Sovereign's connection with the Castle are those which are associated with the chapel. The entries under this head supply fresh illustrations of the splendours of Henry's munificence to the Church, and of the sincerity of the devotion to the memory of Edward the Confessor, which marked the pious builder of Westminster Abbey. Not only were directions repeatedly given to the Archbishop of Dublin to make more suitable provision for the Castle chaplain by attaching a benefice to the office, but express instructions were given by the King as to the services to be held.10 The chapel was dedicated to the Confessor, and in 1240 the Feast of St. Edward (January 7) was ordered to be celebrated with eight hundred lighted tapers as well in the Saint's Chapel in the King's Castle of Dublin, as in the Churches of St. Thomas the Martyr and of the Holy Trinity.’’
Ibid. p. 373.
The Castle was ordered to be filled on the same occasion with poor people, who should be fed. Two years later the Treasurer received directions to cause glass windows to be made for the chapel,11 and the King gave orders that Divine Service of St. Edward and of the Blessed Virgin should be daily celebrated. The orders regarding the chapel were perhaps carried out at once, since the piety of the King would probably have enforced them; but the hall was still unfinished in 1246, when Henry peremptorily required its completion in view of an immediate visit. The Mayor of Dublin was called on in the same year, and in view of the same occasion, to supply water to the Castle from the city conduit.12Judged by the proper standards of kingly greatness Henry III. scarcely ranks high in the roll of English monarchs. But no other sovereign has had anything approaching either to his knowledge of architecture or to his love of it. However fortunate for the realm the change from his pious aestheticism to the vigorous authority of the great man of action who succeeded him, the archaeological interest of Dublin Castle certainly owes nothing to Henry's son. The Hammer of the Scots cared little for the sculptor's mallet. And although for at least eighteen years before his accession Edward I. had held the title of Lord of Ireland and absorbed its surplus revenues, he never found time to attend to its affairs. Thus the interest in the royal residence which Henry's care had aroused in his subordinates was naturally not exhibited by the ministers of his son. In what manner the chapel and hall so splendidly designed were ultimately erected it is now impossible to ascertain. But it seems at least clear that they were not completed according to Henry's plan. It was one of the charges brought against Stephen Fulburn, Bishop of Waterford, in 1286, that during his tenure of the office of justiciary he had carried off the pillars of marble from the King's hall in Dublin Castle to enrich Dunbrody Abbey.13 A few years earlier the building had suffered some damage and the gate tower had been burned by Hubert de Burgh, and some others who were confined in the fortress as prisoners; whilst the defences had been altogether neglected. When, therefore, a few years after the accession of Edward II. the troubles of the Bruce invasion made it necessary to look to the defences of the Castle, the building already stood in much need of repair. So imminent was the peril that it was found necessary to take down the belfry of the closely adjacent church of St. Mary le Dame to provide stones for fortifying the Castle, and the citizens of Dublin were called on to find lead for the roof of the towers.14 When the danger was over some care seems to have been taken to
Close Roll, 14 Ed. II., Irish Record Office.
For fifty years from the Bruce invasion the King's Castle of Dublin received little of the attention of its royal owners; and indeed for a full century and a half from the accession of Edward III. it was 'toward Namancos and Bayona's hold' rather than to their realm of Ireland, that the looks of the English sovereigns were chiefly bent. Towards the close of his reign, however, Edward III. was able to spare time from his French enterprises to the necessities of Ireland, and to note how seriously his dominions had been shrinking at home, while he sought to extend them abroad. His son Lionel, Duke of Clarence, entered in 1361 on the viceroyalty which was made memorable by the Statute of Kilkenny. The advent of a prince of the blood royal did something to arrest the rain which was fast overtaking the monuments of Henry III.'s zeal and piety. A considerable expenditure was sanctioned for putting the Castle in order, and for restoring the chapel, and providing it with the equipment adequate to a becoming ritual.15 But the improvements of Lionel were not limited to these restorations. Not only do they seem to have included a number of alterations designed to make the dwelling more commodious, but in the language of King Edward, Clarence caused to be made divers works agreeable to him, for sports and his other pleasures, as well within the Castle of Dublin as elsewhere.’’
Gilbert's History of the Viceroys of Ireland, with Notices of the Castle of Dublin, pp. 219, 544-546.
It is disappointing that the records of the only sovereign prior to Victoria who ever came twice to Ireland as a reigning monarch are silent as to the visits of Richard II. to his Castle of Dublin. Neither the Roll of the Proceedings
The records of the Lancastrian kings are as barren as those of their immediate predecessors. Their all but total silence betokens the neglect which the few stray entries that appear attest. Early in 1427 it was ordered that an ancient silver seal found in the treasury, ‘being cancelled and of no use to the King,’ should be sold, and the money accruing from the sale laid out on the repairs of the ruined windows of the hall of the Castle, and five years later twenty marks were allocated to the same purpose.16 Even so much as this could not be spared in the remainder of this reign, and the dilapidations were rapidly aggravated. Down to the middle of the reign of Henry VI. the Deputy and his Council still met within the
Statute 2 & 3 Ed. IV. cap. 4.
provided that certain moneys out of the profits of the Crown should be delivered yearly to the clerk of the works for the repair of the same. The same Act further directed that all the leads of the isles of the hall of the said Castle be sold by the Treasurer of Ireland to make and repair the said hall.’’ This Act, however, remained inoperative until, twelve years later, a further enactment made better financial provision for the needful works. But it is doubtful whether any restoration had been effected ere, not long afterwards, considerable injury was done the Castle in the course of an insurrection promoted by the followers of the Earl of Kildare. An Act of the Irish Parliament at Trim gives as the last reference to the Castle which the statutes or records of the Plantagenet kings contain. Reciting that James Keating, Prior of Kilmainham, had fortified the Castle, of which he was constable, against the King's Viceroy, Henry Lord Grey, and the better to defend himself had destroyed the drawbridge, it directs the Prior to repair the damage before the ensuing Christmas on pain of forfeiture of his office.18The earliest Tudor reference to Dublin Castle is to be found in the diary of the Voyage of Sir Richard Edgcumbe into Ireland in the year 1488,19 and occurs in connection
For nearly fifty years, from the visit of Sir Richard Edgcumbe in 1488, to the rising of Silken Thomas in 1533, the records are silent as to episodes of interest in the story of Dublin Castle. For the greater part of this period the government was in the hands of the Earls of Kildare, who
It might naturally be supposed that the formal assumption by Henry VIII. of the title of King of Ireland, and his resolution to assert the authority of the English Crown throughout the country, must have led almost of necessity to a renovation of the Castle, and a revival of the tarnished glories of the early Plantagenet age. But this was so far from being the case, that the period immediately succeeding marks perhaps, the nadir of the splendours of the Castle as a royal residence. The Tudor viceroys do not appear at any time to have taken kindly to their quarters. It is obvious from the preceding narrative that upon many occasions in its later mediaeval history the Castle can have been in no fit state to accommodate a royal or viceregal Court. Although at no time in its long annals did the Castle cease to be the centre of authority, and though in theory at least it was always
Whether on account of this summary process of the Archbishop, or because with the final confirmation of the Cathedral in its position by Elizabeth it became difficult
Of the actual outward appearance of the Castle in early times it is difficult to form an accurate conception. Sir John Gilbert justly observes that no precise details have been transmitted to us of its architectural design; nor have any of the older historians or antiquaries given us, otherwise than parenthetically, any glimpse of its interior. To attempt to reconstruct the Castle from the stray references which are to be found scattered through the State Papers and other documentary sources would be an exercise of the historical imagination in which fancy must needs play a larger part than fact.29 There exists, however, one document which defines with some detail the condition of the towers of the Castle, and the accommodation provided within them, in the time of Sir John Perrot's government, or about twenty years after the extensive improvements effected by Sir Henry Sidney. From this paper, which was probably drawn up in connection with the rearrangements which Perrot designed to carry out but did not effect, a good deal may be learned as to the defences of the Castle in the reign of Elizabeth.30
The walls, described by Ware and other authorities as standing foursquare and built very strongly, had in Perrot's time a strong tower at each corner. Besides these there was a fifth, much smaller than the rest, in the middle of the south wall. The entrance gate, which opened into Castle Street, was flanked on each side by a tower less strong than the others, but of considerable proportions. The gateway, defended by a portcullis, opened on to a drawbridge which when drawn up left this building entirely cut off from the adjacent city. A moat, or gripe, which ran by the walls completely surrounded the Castle, following perhaps on the south and west walls the course of the Poddle River. Of the four principal towers, two, the north-east and south-west, seem to have contained five rooms each. The south-east and north-west towers had each three rooms, and in the middle tower on the south side there were a like number. The gate towers contained but two rooms each. The towers do not seem to have been very well lighted. There were several rooms with no windows other than the ‘spicks,’ or loopholes, intended for defensive purposes. The north-east tower in which the Deputy seems to have had his private rooms, was the only room in which the windows were at all numerous. There were at least eight windows among the five rooms in this tower. But in the south-east tower there were no more than two. On the other hand ‘spicks’ were fairly numerous, and the total of the windows and spicks in the whole Castle was at that time above fourscore.31
But Sidney's improvements, though they were evidently considerable, and seem to have provided the actual official accommodation which sufficed for the Viceroys for above a century from his time, do not seem to have remedied the most serious inconveniences of the building. By the end of Elizabeth's reign matters were nearly as bad as they had been before his time. When Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, in an unhappy moment for himself, was designated Viceroy, directions were given to prepare the Castle for the
It has been justly remarked by Walter Harris, in the excellent account of the Castle with which his History of Dublin opens, that the building is to be considered in a threefold aspect: as a fortress erected for the defence of the city; as the royal seat of Government; and as the place where the courts of justice and High Court of Parliament were wont to be held. But this description of the triple function served by the Castle down to Tudor and even Stuart times is far from exhaustive. Within its precincts room was found in addition for the Exchequer and Treasury of Ireland, and for the Mint of Dublin, as well as for the State records of which the Castle so long remained the principal, if not the sole, depository. And it further served the purpose, more easily associated with a feudal fortress, of a prison for offenders against the State.32 However successful Sidney may have been in providing actual house accommodation, he had been unable to make any fundamental alterations in the structure. His work was a restoration in the strict sense of the term. Even in the reign of James I. , forty years after Sidney's improvements, the great exterior walls and towers erected by Henri de Londres still preserved their original appearance. An accurate observer, in that reign noted that ‘the circuit of the Castle was a huge and mighty wall, foursquare and of incredible thickness,’33 which dated from King John's time. In Sidney's day, as we learn from the grimly realistic plates in Derricke's Image of Ireland, the battlements were still garnished with the grinning heads of decapitated chieftains. And the gaol, known as the Grate, was thoroughly insanitary. A prisoner's recollections of his place of confinement are of
Spicilegium Ossoriense, i. p. 49.
After Sidney's time Perrot was authorised, in 1583, to remove both the courts of law and the prison from the Castle, but he seems to have found it impossible to procure the necessary accommodation elsewhere.34 And the same difficulty was experienced in the time of Essex. It is not surprising therefore to find the Castle described in 1607 as ‘somewhat noisome in the summer time by reason of the prison.’35 Constant representations were made by the Deputies as to this unpleasantness, and also as to the danger caused to the courts of law, which had been restored to the Castle under Sidney, by reason of these being situate immediately above the store of ammunition; and a very serious explosion of gunpowder which occurred on the adjacent quay in 1596 caused great and general alarm. In 1610, as appears by the surveyor's accounts at the Irish Record Office, a summer house was built in the gardens and the great hall repaired against a marriage feast, held in January of that year. It was not, however, until 1611 that Sir Arthur Chichester, the vigorous Deputy of James I., procured the erection of an exterior gaol for ordinary criminals, the principal State offenders being still confined in the Castle, but separated from the Deputy's lodging. Through the instrumentality of the same Deputy the courts were removed about the same time. But the Castle still remained the of the meetings of Parliament. In 1613 the HallThe next to take in hand the work of restoration was the Deputy Falkland, father of the gallant Lucius Cary. In 1620 this Viceroy apprised the Council ‘that of late part of the Castle and the roof of the Council Chamber and several lodgings over it’37 had fallen to the ground. Four years later, ‘on May 1, in the morning, a day of great expectation of a universal massacre, one of the two greatest towers of the Castle fell down to the ground, with the ordnance mounted on it,’ and shook to its foundations a great part of the wall. Falkland succeeded in getting authority to carry out repairs, and an expenditure of 1,000£ was sanctioned to restore the tower. His reforms were considerable.38 In a letter to his successor, Strafford, he takes full credit for them, calling on Strafford for ‘the performance of your promise you made me that when you found how much less a prison the Castle was through the benefit of a gallery I built, not more for the King's honour than for your ease and delight, you would acknowledge that you did owe my act commendation and due thanks for the service.’39
Strafford, however, does not seem to have been so much impressed as Falkland expected. In one of his earliest letters from Dublin he described the building as in great decay, and urgently calling for repair. One of the groat towers had to be taken down, lest it should fall, as another had done shortly before Strafford's arrival, while Lord Chancellor Loftus was in residence as a Lord Justice; four or five of whose grandchildren it would have ‘infallibly killed,’ had it fallen either an hour sooner or an hour later. In a vigorous representation to the English Council of the pressing need for repair and improvement Strafford draws for us the most detailed picture we possess of the interior of the Castle precincts at this time:—‘I have bought as much more ground about the Castle as costs one hundred and fifty pounds, out of which I will provide the House of a Garden and out Courts, for fuel and such other necessaries belonging to a family, whereof I am altogether unprovided, the bake house at present being just under the room where I now write, and the wood rack put full before the gallery windows; which I take not to be so courtly nor to suit so well with the dignity of a King's deputy; and thus I trust to make this habitation easeful and pleasant as the place will afford. Whereas now by my faith it is little better than a very prison.’41
Of the alterations made by Strafford no record is known to remain, and for nearly half a century little information is available from English sources. For though Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex, who was Viceroy for several years, seems to have made important alterations, nothing is known of their extent. It is curious that for such contemporary as are extant of the appearance of the Castle from
To continue the history of Dublin Castle beyond the date at which the building ceased to be a castle in any real sense of the term would hardly be found of much interest. Down to the Restoration the Castle had continued to be, as truly as in King John's time, the citadel of a metropolis which still presented many of the characteristics of a mediaeval town. Situate at the south-eastern corner of the walls of Dublin, at
Worthless as a fortress, and undesirable as a residence, the Castle, from the departure of James II., ceased to be of any service save as the seat of the principal public offices. Of the Viceroys of William III. none took the trouble to reside for any time in Ireland, and some never came over to