WARWICK CASTLE AND ITS EARLS.*
ENGLAND stands alone among the countries of Europe in the number, variety, and beauty of the great houses which she possesses, and the study of their history and care for their fabric are subjects well worthy the attention of English people. Lady Warwick has shown her sense of the importance of such matters by the two large volumes which she has written, or rather compiled, to fell the story of the Castle of which she is the present mistress. The book is well got up, with a lavish number of illustrations, and the different periods and families clearly divided into their separate chapters, so that reference • Warwick Castle and its Earls. By the countess of Warwick. 2 rola. London: Hutchinson and Co. [30s.] to them is easy. The reader will only complain, in regard to the exterior of the book, of the extraordinary weight of the volumes, which makes the reading of them somewhat laborious; but that, we suppose, was inevitable if a paper was chosen which would do justice to the pictures.
Warwick Castle stands pre-eminent among such houses for the rare beauty of its position and surroundings, for the number of the years during which it has been con- tinuously inhabited and used as a nobleman's home, for the good preservation in which the ancient parts of the building still stand, and the success with which they have been adapted and enlarged for the uses of modern luxurious life. Brancepeth Castle, near Durham, might compete with Warwick in age and stability ; Greystoke, Derwent, are only slightly more modern; the great Elizabethan houses—Hatfield, Knole, Burghley, Blickling—are quite as stately and beautiful; the later Queen Anne and Georgian specimens have their own beauty of absolute fitness for English social and family life; but for a combination of age, strength, splendour, beauty, historic interest, and comfort we doubt whether any other house can rival Warwick Castle. We could wish that Lady Warwick had devoted more of her pages to the history of the fabric, and less to that of the not always very eminent Earls who were successively its custodians. But she seems oppressed with the fear of boring her readers whenever she leaves the personal history of the Earls of Warwick, and never fails to apologise for dealing at all with the architecture of their great house. We gather, however, a good deal of information from the short chapters into which the " dull " subject of architecture is compressed, and learn how to recognise the fragments of the Norman and Edwardian castles, and to see how they were fitted into the later work, notably that of Sir Fulke Greville, who built and restored on a large scale in the reign of James L, leaving the Castle very much as we see it now in its main outlines. By his time the necessity for preparing every dwelling-house of consider- able size to stand attacks had long departed, and he was able, therefore, to expand his building, keeping indeed to the lines so well laid by his predecessors, but raising stately halls and long successions of dwelling-rooms, with all their accessories of kitchens and pantries and cellars, where before were low walls and frowning battlements and massive watch-towers, all designed for the protection of the comparatively few and small rooms in which the former Earls kept their humbler state. The Castle seems to have been singularly fortunate in resisting attacks without suffering much damage, or at any rate none that was not well repaired. Thus in the siege which it sustained in 1265, when William de Mauduit was Earl, we read that the wall was beaten down "from towers to towers"; but this calamity only gave oppor- tunity for later Earls—of the house of Beauchamp—to rebuild the shattered walls with added strength and greater know- ledge of scientific fortification. Finally, in 1871 the very existence of the whole building was seriously endangered by a fire, which, however, was checked before it had done as much damage as might have been feared, for, with the exception of what is called the Baronial Hall, the portions of the Castle which were destroyed were chiefly modern. The position occupied by these great houses in public estimation was illus- trated by the subscription of 22,000 which was immediately raised to help Lord Warwick in the rebuilding of what was rightly considered a national possession.
The history of the owners of Warwick Castle does not show any long continuity of family descent. At first, in Norman times, the Castle was, like most buildings of its size and importance, held by the King as his own property; so much so that he was responsible for its building and repair, though the Earls occupied and defended it. Later it passed into the family of Beauchamp, who held it for nearly two centuries, the title and property being taken in the year 1449 by Richard Neville, who had married the aunt of the last Henry de Beauchamp. This Richard is known to history as the Sing-maker, and is the most famous of the men who succeeded each other as Earls of Warwick. Lady Warwick gives a clear account of his stormy and not very creditable career, quoting various interesting contemporary letters to describe some of his naval and military achievements. The Nevilles were succeeded by the Dadleys ; they again by the family of Rich ; and so, finally, the honours and state of Warwick Castle passed into the hands of the house of Greville, who held it without the title of Earl for a hundred years, the earldom being added to their other titles in 1760. It is impossible to criticise in detail the accounts given of each of these noble houses. We would call attention to the very carefully weighed discussion of the guilt of Robert Dudley for the death of the unfortunate Amy Robsazt. Lady Warwick, we think, proves conclusively that much of Sir Walter Scott's pathetic story of their relationship has very slight foundation in history, and shows also that however high his ambition and calculating his temper, Robert Dudley need not be convicted of the utter meanness and cruelty of which the great novelist accuses him. Of a very different person, the saintly Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick in the seventeenth century, Lady Warwick writes also with sympathy and insight. It cannot be questioned that this Countess was lacking in some of the common-sense and humour which would have made her piety more acceptable to her somewhat worldly husband; yet "the transparent sincerity of her nature," and "the pure beauty of the holiness that en- compassed her," cannot but shine out and impress all readers as they clearly impressed her latest biographer. It is a blot on Lady Warwick's otherwise sympathetic account of her that she should sum up her character as that of "a religious woman who saw no farther than her nose." Similar lapses into colloquial language unsuited to a serious work such as this history of Warwick Castle are not infrequent throughout its pages, and the book gives a general impression of haste and sketchiness in its preparation. But Lady Warwick has collected a large amount of information about her house and family, and has so arranged it that any one interested in such antiquarian matters can easily find the facts he wishes to know. This is no small benefit for future historians, and a good example to the owners of other such "stately homes" whose history is still unrecorded.
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