be artificial, so velvety smooth and regular are its green sides in
contrast with the pile of ruin on its crown.

King Edgar is credited with the first fortified building; this was
used as a hunting lodge by his second wife Elfrida, who perpetrated
the cruel murder of her stepson Edward while he was drinking a cup of
wine at her door. The horse he was riding, no doubt spurred
involuntarily by the dying king, galloped away, dragging the body
along the ground, until it stopped from exhaustion. The dead monarch
was, as already related, buried at Wareham, but the real ruler of
England, Archbishop Dunstan, had it exhumed and reburied with much
solemn pomp at Shaftesbury Abbey.

During the Conqueror's reign, that great era of castle building, the
keep was first erected; by the reign of Stephen it was so strong that
he failed to take it from Baldwin de Redvers, who held it for Matilda.
John kept the crown jewels here, good evidence of its solidity, also a
few Frenchmen of high rank, of whom twenty-two were starved to death,
or so tradition says. The Princess Eleanor, captive for forty years,
was imprisoned here for a great part of that time by the same "Good
King John" who, as a punishment for prophesying the king's downfall,
had bold Peter, the hermit of Pontefract, incarcerated in the deepest
dungeon and subsequently hanged.

During the de Montfort rebellion the castle was held against the king.
Edward was kept here for a time by Isabella before his murder at
Berkley. The castle then passed through several hands until the time
of Elizabeth, when it was sold to Sir Christopher Hatton. During this
long period, the fabric was added to and improved until little of the
Norman structure remained. All the new buildings seem to have been
constructed with but one purpose, that of making an impregnable
fortress. The widow of Sir Christopher sold the castle to
Attorney-General Sir John Banks, ancestor of the Bankes of Kingston
Lacy, in whose occupation, or rather in that of his wife, it was to
have its invincibility put to the test. Sir John was with the king's
forces at York in 1643 when the army of the Parliament gathered upon
the Knowle and East hills. During six weeks repeated attacks were made
by the forces of Sir Walter Earle, but without success, and eventually
the siege was raised. In 1646 treachery succeeded where honest warfare
failed. Colonel Pitman, an officer of the royal garrison, admitted a
number of Roundheads, who