out their
negotiations, and Lincoln was besieged on the king's behalf, as were
Tickhill, Windsor and Marlborough subsequently, while the siege of
Nottingham had to be completed by Richard himself on his arrival. To
John, in turn, as king, the fall of Chateau Gaillard meant the loss of
Rouen and of Normandy with it, and when he endeavoured to repudiate the
newly-granted Great Charter, his first step was to prepare the royal
castles against attack and make them his centres of resistance. The
barons, who had begun their revolt by besieging that of Northampton, now
assailed that of Oxford as well and seized that of Rochester. The king
recovered Rochester after a severe struggle and captured Tonbridge, but
thenceforth there was a war of sieges between John with his mercenaries
and Louis of France with his Frenchmen and the barons, which was
specially notable for the great defence of Dover Castle by Hubert de
Burgh against Louis. On the final triumph of the royal cause, after
John's death, at the battle of Lincoln, the general pacification was
accompanied by a fresh issue of the Great Charter in the autumn of 1217,
in which the precedent of Stephen's reign was followed and a special
clause inserted that all "adulterine" castles, namely those which had
been constructed or rebuilt since the breaking out of war between John
and the barons, should be immediately destroyed. And special stress was
laid on this in the writs addressed to the sheriffs.

In 1223 Hubert de Burgh, as regent, demanded the surrender to the crown
of all royal castles not in official custody, and though he succeeded in
this, Falkes de Breaute, John's mercenary, burst into revolt next year,
and it cost a great national effort and a siege of nearly two months to
reduce Bedford Castle, which he had held. Towards the close of Henry's
reign castles again asserted, in the Baron's War, their importance. The
Provisions of Oxford included a list of the chief royal castles and of
their appointed castellans with the oath that they were to take; but the
alien favourites refused to make way for them till they were forcibly
ejected. When war broke out it was Rochester Castle that successfully
held Simon de Montfort at bay in 1264, and in Pevensey Castle that the
fugitives from the rout of Lewes were able to defy his power. Finally,
after his fall at Evesham, it was in Kenilworth Castle that the remnant
of his followers made their last stand, holding out nearly five months