two hundred and forty feet deep, of which ninety
feet are filled with water. A solemn donkey in a big wooden wheel works
the treadmill that winds the bucket up. Formerly, every visitor dropped
a pebble into the well to hear the queer sounds it made in falling--"His
head as he fell went knicketty-knock, like a pebble in Carisbrooke
Well," used to be a proverb--but as this amusement threatened to fill up
the well, it has been prohibited. The keep is at the north-eastern angle
of the castle, polygonal in plan and of Norman architecture. Carisbrooke
was held for the empress Maud against Stephen, but the failure of the
old well in the keep, now filled up, caused its surrender. The new one,
which has never been known to give out, was then bored. In the reign of
Charles I. the castle was invested by militia on behalf of the
Parliament, and was surrendered to them by the wife of the governor, the
Countess of Portland. She obtained specially advantageous conditions
from the besiegers by appearing on the walls with a lighted match and
threatening to fire the first cannon unless the conditions were granted.
King Charles I. took refuge here in November, 1647, but soon found he
was practically a prisoner. He remained ten months, twice attempting to
escape. On the first occasion he tried to squeeze himself between the
bars of his window, but stuck fast; on the second his plan was divulged,
and on looking out the window he found a guard ready to entrap him
below. He was taken to Newport and surrendered himself to the
Parliamentary commissioners, but was ultimately returned to Carisbrooke.
Then some army officers removed him suddenly to Hurst Castle on the
mainland, and thence he was taken to Windsor and London for the trial
that ended on the block at Whitehall. Two of his children were
imprisoned in Carisbrooke with him--the young Duke of Gloucester,
afterwards sent to the Continent, and the princess Elizabeth, who died
here in childhood from a fever. She was found dead with her hands
clasped in the attitude of prayer and her face resting on an open Bible,
her father's last gift. She was buried in an unmarked grave in Newport
Church, but the coffin was discovered in 1793, and when the church was
rebuilt in 1856 Queen Victoria erected a handsome monument over the
little princess, the sculptor representing her lying on a mattrass with
her cheek resting on the open Bible, the attitude in which she had been
found. Newport has some ten thous