Kenilworth Castle

by Katherine Ashe

Kenilworth, the name rings with the romance of Tudor England, with images of the great feast and water festival staged by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, for Queen Elizabeth I.

But of course the castle’s history begins long before that. Perhaps in those pre-history times when a castle was a hill or mound, for just such a mound is enclosed within the masonry of the great tower. A favorite retreat of John of Gaunt and Richard III, its courtyard filled in late medieval and renaissance times with elaborate buildings whose stone filigree now reaches roofless to the sky.

And before that, it was the most secure castle in England, withstanding siege, in 1265-6, for eighteen months until the defenders surrendered to what seemed at the time generous terms.

The castle was never taken. So formidable was it that, lest it be used by the royalists, Cromwell had its walls destroyed and its massive tower packed with dynamite. Three walls of the tower still stand, mighty looking even in their dissolution.

It was Simon de Montfort who turned the neglected royal holding into an impregnable fortress. In his autobiography (Montfort Archive, Bibliotheque Nationale.) he complains that the property, as given to him in 1238, was in severe disrepair and cost him much just to make it habitable. By the following summer, having offended King Henry III, Montfort had fled to France and Palestine.

King Henry III found he rather fancied the place and continued the repairs. His accounts record his cutting a large window to give view of the Mere, repainting of chapel and furnishing it with two seats decorated with the royal arms. A pretty boat was added to the Mere, the lake formed by the dammed stream surrounding the castle on three sides. (The fourth side has a channel, completing the waterworks, and the defenses.)

Returned to royal favor, in 1244 Montfort again received Kenilworth. He was married to the king’s sister and was Earl of Leicester, so the gift was no more out of the ordinary than Henry’s bestowing numerous other royal properties upon his relatives.

By 1258 Montfort was one of six baronial leaders demanding a revolutionary reorganization of the government to offset King Henry’s disastrous incompetence. Henry had pledged the Crown of England to the Pope, if he failed to pay in coin for a papal army to seize Sicily for his son Edmund. Henry failed to pay and the Pope was about to claim England as a papal fief, much as he’d claimed Sicily and offered its Crown to Henry.

The meeting the barons summoned to Oxford, a meeting of all England’s lords and high clergy, supposedly was to raise the needed funds. Instead it produced the Provisions of Oxford, the template for Parliament and modern elective government. The lords and clergymen refused to raise a special tax for Sicily, instead demanding that all properties given from the royal holdings be returned to the Crown. Montfort was first to respond, and volunteered Kenilworth. And the castle became again a royal holding. Which is not to say the Montfort family vacated. They did not.

Simon de Montfort was the foremost military strategist in England. When the royalist faction managed to organize themselves and bring an army against the reformers, it was Montfort who was the leader of the baronial side. To provide a refuge, prepared for the worst should the royalists prevail, Montfort used the tax monies raised by the new Parliament to develop Kenilworth along the lines of the crusader castles he had seen in Palestine: castles impregnable, and defendable by just a few knights.

Kenilworth’s bailey wall -- fronting the Mere and separating the tower, its chapel, cook and laundry buildings and immediate gardens from the barns, stables, orchards and paddocks the occupied the rest of the island -- was strengthened. The causeway that crossed the Mere was walled, with barbicans at either end, the furthest one reinforced to protect the sluice that kept the Mere from draining to a little stream trickling through a meadow (as it is today.) And the entire island, bounded by the Mere and channel, was walled and studded with towers.

The decorative banquet halls and ranges made in later times have been destroyed by pilferers, weathering and time. The fortress walls that the Earl Montfort created merited demolition by Cromwell. But three walls of the tower stands to this day, grand with their soaring arches and massive red masonry.

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Katherine Ashe is the author of the acclaimed four volume Montfort series on the life of Simon de Montfort, the founder of England's Parliament in 1258. Montfort is available in soft cover and Kindle e-book format from Amazon. Her animal population, formerly including horses, sheep, goats, geese, peacocks, and of course dogs, in now reduced to just three dogs, three cats and two Koi.

Elizabeth I's Royal Progresses and Kenilworth Castle

Nonsuch Palace

It’s well-known that Queen Elizabeth I moved her court away from her great palaces during the summer months, visiting the homes of various favoured courtiers in turn. This was largely to allow the palaces to be ‘purged’ after several months of residency, especially once the stench of human ordure had become too much to tolerate.

In the Queen’s absence, the royal apartments would be swept and scrubbed clean, with aromatic herbs burnt to dispel bad smells and the palace cesspits dug out. But a very real fear of plague was also behind this mass exodus. It was widely believed that fresh country air was a protection against plague, and that diseases could be caught from the polluted stench of towns and cities. Elizabeth herself always carried or wore a pomander of herbs and spices that she sniffed at constantly when the air was bad.

Elizabeth I, the Rainbow portrait

What is less well-known is the sheer scale of Elizabeth’s removals from court. Not only did the Queen take the bulk of her courtiers with her on these annual ‘Progresses’, as her trips around the country were known, but she was also accompanied by a fleet of her own household servants, including laundresses, seamstresses, cooks and grooms, plus all the usual accoutrements of a court on the move. These included selections of gowns and finery for the Queen and her ladies, hats, shoes, jewellery, goblets and tableware, precious books, even a selection of her palace furniture in case the house she visited was too humble for her taste. All this was transported in a vast convoy of carts laden with great wooden chests and dozens of servants. Sometimes as many as three hundred carts would set off in advance of the Queen's party.

Further servants would be on hand to tend to the courtiers, and in particular those members of the Privy Council who had been ordered to accompany the Queen. A few courtiers were permitted to bring their wives and children, so an array of wetnurses, maids and tutors might be added to the tally. The unfortunate courtier whose home was hosting the Queen’s Progress would be expected to bear the cost of almost every expense incurred by housing, feeding, and entertaining this vast travelling circus. Yet to host the Queen's Progress was considered a great honour, and many courtiers no doubt hoped to recoup their losses by increasing their status at court.

When Elizabeth I descended on Kenilworth Castle in July 1575, she arrived with such a vast entourage that Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, her court favourite and host for the next few weeks, was left nearly bankrupt for the rest of his life. Nonetheless, the stakes he was playing were equally high. For the ambitious Earl had not yet given up hope of persuading Elizabeth to marry him, and had planned every detail of her stay to underpin his final – and most desperate – proposal.

Robert even had the castle clock stopped at the moment of Elizabeth's arrival, a romantic gesture to indicate she had now entered a ‘magical world’ where outside time and reality ceased to matter. The theme of his entertainments rather daringly suggested that Kenilworth had become a kind of Camelot for her visit, with the Earl promoted to the status of King Arthur - and Elizabeth as his Queen.

Kenilworth Castle, Warwickshire: J.D. Forrester

The Earl’s entertainments were among the most lavish and elaborate ever seen in Tudor England, with giants playing trumpets on her arrival, nymphs and a Lady of the Lake on a floating island, outrageously extravagant banquets with goblets made of golden sugar and a gigantic salt cellar in the shape of a silver galleon, plays and mummers offered at every turn, even a staged attack by a Green Man in the forests where she loved to hunt every fine afternoon. Small wonder he was left bankrupt!

And the Queen and her courtiers were not the only ones to benefit from these amazing entertainments. It is widely believed that the young William Shakespeare, then a boy of eleven living in nearby Stratford, may have been brought to Kenilworth to witness one particularly spectacular firework display, since references to it crop up in his plays.

We know the Earl’s proposal was not successful. Something occurred to upset the Virgin Queen during those idyllic weeks at Kenilworth, for Elizabeth cut short her intended stay and remained at the castle only nineteen days before abruptly departing for the north. One tale goes that the Earl sent his friends to ride after the Queen, begging her not to miss the final entertainments that still awaited her, but Elizabeth ignored them and rode on. We can only speculate as to why.

Victoria Lamb’s debut historical novel "The Queen’s Secret" is set entirely at Kenilworth Castle during Elizabeth I’s visit in July 1575. It is available as a hardback and ebook in the UK, and as an ebook in the US.