Oliver Cox, ‘Arundel Castle as a “Palladium of English Liberty”’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xxI, 2013, pp. 123–136
text © the authors 2013 ARUNDEL CASTLE AS A ‘PALLADIUM OF ENGLISH LIBERTY’
OLIVER COX
Arundel Castle is a reminder of the spectacular ntering the great courtyard of Arundel Castle, Victorian finale to the association of castles with EWest Sussex, the well-prepared nineteenth- landed power. C.A. Buckler’s work overshadows all century visitor, confronted with a twenty-foot bas- earlier restorations. Yet at the close of the eighteenth relief crowded with bearded figures and Anglo- century, the eleventh Duke of Norfolk commissioned Saxon text, could turn to his guidebook for help in J.C.F. Rossi to sculpt a striking Coade stone tableau decoding the scene before them (Fig. ): of King Alfred Instituting Trial by Jury on Salisbury ‘The visitor will be riveted with admiration in Plain as part of a series of extensive restorations and reviewing a large basso relievo representation of one of alterations. These changes told the story of English the most important constitutional laws, handed down liberty in stone, inflected with the Duke’s own to posterity, namely, “Trial by Jury”. It is an historical partisan interpretation, to a growing number of representation, founded upon fact, therefore we give the subject subsequent to a description.’ domestic tourists.
Fig. . ‘King Alfred Instituting The Trial By Jury’, in A Visit to Arundel Castle. Profusely Illustrated (Arundel and London, )
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King Alfred, elevated, crowned and robed, holds a define drunkenness as ‘the Duke of Norfolk drinking roll of parchment with the phrase, ‘The man in every common gin with the Royal Sovereign, at her hundred shall find Jury’ written in Saxon lodgings in Strand-lane’. This article, however, characters. The Lord Chief Justice, standing moves beyond mid-Victorian prejudices and uncovers opposite Alfred, reverently inserts this declaration how the eleventh Duke and his successor used into Alfred’s new book of laws; attendants and architecture, sculpture and painting to transform soldiers can be found ‘attentively listening to this Arundel Castle into a three-dimensional narrative of great palladium of English liberties’ as the first twelve English liberty. Historians’ partiality to the convivial, jurymen look on. Charles Wright, the author of one drunken, bumbling duke has obscured Norfolk’s of several competing guidebooks to the castle position as an inheritor of the rich tradition of concluded: ‘This fine representation was executed amateur Gothic architects that had coalesced around by Rossi, in . To render the design more unique influential figures such as Sanderson Miller, Sir it is raised above four beautiful Saxon windows, the Roger Newdigate and Horace Walpole earlier in the architecture of which exactly corresponds with the eighteenth century, as well as his antiquarian learning period of the declaration of Alfred’. Praise was not and his political perspicacity. The hitherto unstudied just contained within the pages of Arundel bas-relief of King Alfred Instituting Trial by Jury on guidebooks; the Edinburgh Annual Register , observed Salisbury Plain offers an opportunity for exploring that the ‘grand sculptural piece, representing King how these three neglected elements of the duke’s Alfred dictating to his chief judge the right of jury’ personality combined to produce a powerful was ‘admirably executed, and has a majestic effect’, political statement. whilst another praised how Rossi’s ‘stone cement’ was ‘equal to the finest sculpture’. However, little over half a century after its completion, the Arundel bas-relief was torn down, a victim of changing ‘ DRUNKEN DUKE ’ OR FRIEND OF fashions which, as early as , had labelled Rossi’s LIBERTY ? POLITICS AND THE work ‘an exceedingly frightful thing in Code’s [ sic ] ELEVENTH DUKE OF NORFOLK stone’. Even Mark Tierney, chaplain and archivist to On Jan at a raucous gathering to celebrate the the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth Dukes could not birthday of Charles James Fox, the Duke of Norfolk bring himself to love it, remarking on the ‘remarkable rose from his chair to propose a toast at the Crown specimen of bad taste in a representation of the and Anchor Tavern. Comparing Fox to George Saxon monarchy instituting Trial by Jury’. Washington, Norfolk offered ‘a direct incitement to Reflecting on the character of Charles, eleventh Rebellion’ by comparing George Washington’s two Duke of Norfolk, from the lofty moral high ground of thousand supporters to those gathered at the tavern Victorian periodical culture, The Leisure Hour: An on the Strand. But the Duke went further, and Illustrated Magazine for Home Reading concluded ‘… observed to the Company, that as they had drunk that his ‘eccentricities have earned him a niche in the the health of a Man dear to the People, he would now temple of notoriety’ and that these moral failings call upon them to drink the health of their Sovereign – were reflected in his architectural works which here a hiccup interrupted His Grace, and a most displayed ‘a sad lack both of taste and knowledge’. violent cry of “no Sovereign! no Sovereign!” resounded through the room, and continued for Succeeding to his father’s title in , Charles several minutes, notwithstanding the earnest entreaties Howard was celebrated for his conviviality. Charles of the Duke to be heard. Order was, however, restored Piggot’s Political Dictionary of went so far as to at length, when His Grace gently chid the Company
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for taking advantage of a slight infirmity of nature, to followed, concluded that ‘the opposition papers impute a design to him which was wholly foreign from relate, that the day was passed with the most rational his heart…He augured well, however, of their order and conviviality; whilst ministerial ones patriotism, and would now afford them an opportunity of repairing the injury they had done him, by giving compare the meeting to a Bear Garden’. What the Toast as he first intended – “The Health of Our could not be questioned, however, was the extent to Sovereign – The Majesty of the People”.’ which the speech, and subsequent dismissal of the Duke of Norfolk, dominated public discussion George III was less than amused. Norfolk was during the first months of . stripped of his Lord Lieutenancy of the West Riding By the time of his Crown and Anchor toast, the of Yorkshire, and of his command of the First Duke had been involved in politics for at least Regiment of the West Yorkshire militia. The Anti- eighteen years. Renouncing his Catholic upbringing, Jacobin celebrated his removal, arguing that he had Howard, under the courtesy title of the Earl of sanctified with his presence, ‘the ceremony of a Surrey, entered the House of Commons for Carlisle formal act of alliance between the remains of the in , against the interest of Sir James Lowther, Parliamentary Opposition of this Country, and the where he ‘laboured to stem the torrent arising from leaders of a faction, French in principle, French in the encreasing influence of the crown’ until the fall inclination, and French in conduct’. Norfolk’s of North’s ministry in . Appointed Lord dismissal was a salutary warning to ‘all sober and Lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire, he also well-disposed people’: ‘It has put to the proof the became a member of the Society for Constitutional spirit of the Government. It may be the pledge of Information and took an active part in promoting safety of the Country’. John Bowdler, in his popular parliamentary reform. Succeeding to his father’s title pamphlet, Sound An Alarm , argued that Norfolk had and seat in the House of Lords in , Norfolk ‘deserted the true fountain of honour, to have paid his continued to espouse ‘the popular cause’. The court to the Majesty of the People’. Such an alliance Duke became public property during the Regency was foolish, for ‘unless this muddy democratic stream Crisis of . Adopting the persona of a country shall possess the quality of purging him from every gentleman who professed political independence, taint of his hereditary dignity, he best knows what will William Coombe launched a character assassination be his sensation, when he feels himself jostled upon on the Duke, suggesting that ‘the dissipation of his the Bench of an upstart Directory’. life, and the renunciation of his religion, will operate Bowdler and The Anti-Jacobin represented one very powerfully against his acquiring any stability of end of the political spectrum. The Morning popular regard’. Sir Nathanial William Wraxall Chronicle , by contrast, felt that ‘the annals of British portrayed Norfolk, when Earl of Surrey, as a man Liberty do not record an instance of so large a lacking in the necessary refinements to succeed at Meeting of its friends’ as occurred at the Crown and court or in the Commons, suggesting that, ‘no man, Anchor Tavern. It was, the newspaper gushed, ‘the of whatever rank, inherited more of the rough spirit Feast of Liberty’ as the ‘Premier Peer of England’ of the barons who forced John to sign the Magna supported by ‘the descendants and representatives of Carta’. The response from the Foxite benches was the illustrious families who established Liberty in equally vociferous, claiming that ‘his patriotic England’ reaffirmed their commitment to the disposition would not suffer him to remain a calm ‘indispensible necessity of Reform, as the only means spectator, whilst the interests of his country were of national salvation’. The Observer , attempting to devoted to ruin, and the sacred barriers of her find a middle ground in the partisan reporting that constitution were wantonly trampled upon’. By far
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Fig. . James Canter, Arundel Castle, Keep and Quadrangle (c. ). ( Image © Bridgeman Education ) the most gushing of dedications, however, came from surveying many of the anc t Seats & other antiquities’. the prominent political balladeer John Freeth: James Milne wrote to Brooke, on the occasion of ‘It is but justice to say, his disinterested conduct as a Howard becoming Deputy Earl Marshall, that, ‘now Senator, and the true British spirit he has shewn as a he will have it in his power to indulge his fondness steady supporter of the Rights of Mankind on many for Heraldry as much as he pleases’. Brooke public occasions, must still render the antient and believed that Howard ‘makes an excellent Earl- much recorded name of Howard, truly respectable to Marshall, as he shews more inclin n to our studies than every lover of his country.’ any who have presided here for a century past’. This interest was not just limited to heraldry or his family. The Duke’s position as hereditary Earl Marshal combined with his own interest in history ‘ FINISHED IN THE TRUE GOTHIC meant that he was a convenient target for scholars STYLE ’: THE ELEVENTH DUKE ’ S looking for support. Edmund Lodge, for example, ALTERATIONS AT ARUNDEL addressed his proposal for publishing his Charles Howard’s reputation as ‘the Drunken Duke’ Illustrations of British History, Biography and has obscured other facets of his character. As Earl of Manners in the Reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Surrey, his correspondence with John Charles Mary, Elizabeth I and James I ( ) to Norfolk, as Brooke, Somerset Herald and later secretary to the did Ralph Bigland’s son, Richard, when publishing Deputy Earl Marshall, suggests a man deeply his father’s Historical, Monumental and Genealogical interested in history and heraldry. Brooke Collections, relative to the County of Gloucester encouraged him to support antiquarian endeavours ( –). The Duke was president of the Toxophilite across the country, consulted him on questions of Society and attracted praise as a patron of the heraldic precedence, accompanied him on tours theatre. Norfolk’s greatest legacy, however, was his across Britain where he had ‘an opportunity of work at Arundel Castle. His letters to Joseph Hinde,
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Fig. . William Daniell, Arundel Castle from the Keep ( ). ( Image © Bridgeman Education ) his steward with responsibility for the Castle and all death in this figure had risen to an estimated the Sussex and Surrey estates demonstrate the level £ , . As J.M. Robinson has observed, the to which he engaged with the architectural minutiae Duke’s restoration of Arundel parallels George III’s of his scheme to refurbish his family’s ancient seat. work at Windsor, along with Beckford’s at Fonthill For most of the eighteenth century Arundel Abbey and that of several other landowners who Castle had been, at best, an occasional residence for turned to castle-building at the close of the the Dukes of Norfolk, at worst a cross between a eighteenth-century. After consulting some of the museum and a jumble store (Fig. ). Elizabeth leading lights of the Gothic Revival – Gough, Carter’s sister, on visiting in , was convinced that Hiorne, Walpole (who recommended Wyatt) – the the castle’s ruined condition had given ‘Mr Walpole Duke resolved, in the words of James Dallaway his the idea of the Castle of Otranto’, and Dr Lort, secretary as Earl Marshal, President of the Society of Antiquaries, on desiring ‘… to form the whole upon his own design, and he to visit Arundel a decade later was advised that ‘the accordingly selected from his own estates at Greystoke Castle has little to recommend it but its situation & in Cumberland [craftsmen] whom he placed under antiq y’. Lort’s visit came just before the eleventh architects and sculptors in London until they were Duke started the large-scale reconstruction of the perfect in their art – viz. Mr J. Teasdale architect, his residential buildings. Alexander Hay, in his brother a sculptor of ornament in marble, and J. Ritson and his son in mahogany.’ guide to Chichester, informed his readers that, ‘His Grace is at this time repairing his castle in the old Dallaway believed this decision offered Norfolk the Gothic stile, which will add to its grandeur, and have freedom to express in architecture, ‘the ideas which a pleasing and venerable effect’. he entertained, of the baronial magnificence in early Hay’s ‘old Gothic stile’ was inflected with the days’. What Dallaway meant by this was, as Duke’s idiosyncrasies, and did not come cheap; by Robinson has pointed out, not a Tory enthusiasm for £ , is said to have been spent, and by his castellar architecture as the embodiment of tradition
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI ARUNDEL CASTLE AS A ‘ PALLADIUM OF ENGLISH LIBERTY ’ and feudal associations. Rather, castellated and the hall to its primary purpose, ‘the reception of Gothic forms offered the Duke a powerful medium numerous guests’. The Baron’s Hall, with its through which to express his decidedly Whiggish dedication to ‘Liberty assured by the Barons in the political beliefs. reign of John’, continued the theme that had been The restoration work was carried out in stages established by the two large Coade stone statues (Fig. ). The park was completed in , the south representing Liberty and Hospitality , which flanked front in , the north front in , the east wing – the entrance to the castle, and was intended to be containing the library and Rossi’s Alfred – in , the apotheosis of the Duke’s scheme. Visiting the west wing with the Barons’ Hall in and the Arundel in May , Lady Ailesbury interpreted new gatehouse in . Working within the old Norfolk as a benign, hospitable, feudal lord: ‘[He] foundations of the castle required compromise, and has old-fashioned notions which I like right well, the interior spaces failed to live up to Classical keeping his family together and keeping them up in notions of symmetry. Dallaway, unsurprisingly, saw this world’. The need to provide for his family found this as a strength, arguing that, ‘the objections raised its corollary, for Lady Ailesbury, in Norfolk’s stylistic by professional architects against their symmetry will choices: ‘The artists at Arundel are all English and not avail much with men of intelligence and candour’ the Duke loves to have his family about him – some who knew that restoration which paid any attention alive and others painted on wood; as he is his own to the ‘proper character’ of castellar architecture architect, I suppose Mr Wyatt will sneer at the ‘would scarcely contain apartments of modern improvements in the castle’. The Barons’ Hall was proportions’. The Duke took a keen interest in the a critical attack on the architectural practice of the design process, as the letters from his steward, period. Dallaway was proud to note that the Duke, Joseph Hinde, illustrate. Writing in July Hinde ‘having long resolved in his own mind the idea of informed him of the ‘forms of Doors that are such a building’ trusted only his ‘ingenious master- Characteristic of Anchients Architecture’; Norfolk mason’ and made sure to consult ‘none of the replied a month later specifying the exact design of modern architects, who have undertaken to revive windows – ‘it shall not be a pointed Gothick’ – and the style and commanding effect of ancient English including ‘a rough plan herewith the better to Castles’. Grounded on a Norman arcade, the explain’; correspondence continued, with Norfolk windows and battlements of the Barons’ Hall were indicating the ornament for architraves, and styled after fourteenth-century Gothic, suggesting procuring stone for the building work himself. the evolution of British liberties. The thirteen Norfolk was always on the lookout for new sources stained glass windows around the hall emphasised of inspiration, as he wrote to Hinde under the the Duke’s lineal descent from the barons who heading ‘Saxon Corbels’: compelled King John to sign the Magna Carta. ‘The elephant & Lions head may be prepared as Such was the Duke’s enthusiasm for Magna Carta sketch’d by M r Teasdale & unless orders to the contrary that he hosted a six hundredth anniversary are sent, may be adapted, let me know how soon they celebration, which for the somewhat biased Dallaway will be ready to be placed as I mean to go to York where realised ‘what constituted the splendour of the possibly may see something I shall like better.’ ancient English nobility’. In designing a grand new Hall, Norfolk took aim at If the Baron’s Hall was the apotheosis, Rossi’s the ‘several modern gothic halls which have been Alfred (Fig. ) ,crucially, was the opening salvo. erected’ which served as ‘merely grand entrances Dominating the east side of the courtyard and facing connected with the staircase’ and sought to return the entrance gateway, Alfred would have been the
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Fig. . Benjamin Brecknall Turner, North [sic] Side of Quadrangle, Arundel Castle ( –). (© Victoria and Albert Museum )
first feature to attract the visitor’s glance. Standing in Paul de Rapin-Thoyras’s History of England , on three solid round, dogtoothed ‘Saxon’ arches, which presented the ninth-century king as one of Rossi’s bas-relief demanded attention. Charles the pioneers of what was to become known as Wright, as we have seen, thought that the rounded Gothic architecture. Alfred, having defeated the ‘Saxon’ – or, as we would now say, Norman or Danish invaders, ‘believed he ought not to be Romanesque – arches corresponded stylistically with forgetful of one thing in itself useful and to the ‘the period of the declaration of Alfred’. Beattie Kingdom very ornamental; and that was to induce praised Rossi’s work as ‘strictly historical’ but felt the the English to build their Houses for the future in a need to assert that ‘this admirable institution did not stronger and more regular manner, than they had originate with Alfred, but that it was only improved been used to’. Alfred, building his palaces with and perfected by him’. Mentions of Alfred in the brick and stone, set a trend for his nobles, which archival material preserved at Arundel Castle are, Rapin laments ‘did not become general till several however, frustratingly scarce. Norfolk wrote to ages after’. This interpretation held true in , Hinde on July including the two word when The European Magazine, and London Review sentence ‘King Alfred’, and again in August provided a more detailed analysis of ninth-century observing that, ‘The Alfred Cross is quite right’. architectural style. The latter refers to the design of the battlements, ‘Though authors have generally divided Gothic which surmounted the east wing, suggesting that architecture into two species, the ancient and the Norfolk wanted his building to be crowned with modern, yet we think it may with great propriety be symbols of Anglo-Saxon liberty. subdivided into that species to which we have already alluded, which clumsy and inartificial, the Saxons To enthrone Alfred above a triad of ‘Saxon’ introduced into this kingdom in the fifth century, and Romanesque arches continued a theme developed that which commenced in the reign of Alfred, which
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may be termed the simply ornamented Gothic. In this legislative history found its scholarly counterpart in species the enormous and clumsy columns were Sir William Jones’ Essay on the Law of Bailments , lightened by the deep grooving of their shafts, so that where the lawyer argued that they resemble several trees bound together with fillets; the arches were heightened; checker work and tracery ‘By the wisdom and patriotism of Alfred the Great, the began to appear; while mouldings and cornices Saxon customs were improved into a system of policy, exhibited some enrichments.’ the remains of which display the just pretensions of that amiable monarch to the grateful memory of Englishmen. The eleventh Duke’s fusion of ‘Saxon’ Romanesque The institutions of Alfred were impregnated with those genuine principles of legislation which assist and expand and Perpendicular Gothic – so offensive to the with the progressive improvements of a state, and a Rickman inspired critics of the mid nineteenth subsequent age might have seen the free model of the century – was intended to suggest the origins and Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, adorned with the cultivated subsequent codification of ancient liberties. Arundel reason of the civil law. It was, however, the fate of our provided a narrative in stone to rival that of Rapin, country, that its political liberties should be surrendered to the shackles of the feudal system.’ the eighteenth century’s most popular historian. They shared the same narrative framework. The The s saw the most sustained period of political mixed constitution of King and Parliament, as invocations of the Anglo-Saxon king seen during the created by the Glorious Revolution, was not a recent eighteenth century. Just as the Duke of Norfolk was invention, but was a Teutonic creation brought over thrust to centre stage by the Regency Crisis, so Philip by the Saxons from Northern Europe. Ancient Withers used Alfred to criticise the suppression of a liberties, including trial by jury, frequent parliaments pamphlet Structures on the Declaration of Horne and common law, were codified by King Alfred but Tooke . Withers turned the debate stereo, adding came under threat from the ‘Norman Yoke’. Liberty another voice through his Nemesis or A Letter to could only be maintained through the even balance Alfred ( ), which then occasioned Alfred’s Appeal. between the ‘prerogatives’ of the sovereign and the Containing his address to the Court of King’s Bench, ‘privileges’ of the people. Accordingly, the signing of on the subject of the marriage of Mary Anne Magna Carta was crucial as both an affirmation of Fitzherbert, and her intrigue with Count Bellois common law over feudal law, and the privileges of the ( ), followed by Alfred’s Apology ( ), Alfred to people over the prerogatives of kings. Arundel Castle the Bishop of London ( ), and a reply from other dramatised this struggle in stone, sculpture and authors, Alfred Unmasked: Or the new Cataline. stained glass. Intended as a Pair of Spectacles for the Short-Sighted Politicians of ( ) and A Letter to the Author of Alfred… ( ). Sir James Bland Burges, by contrast, writing under the pseudonym Alfred, took ‘ THE WORTHIEST PRINCE THAT it upon himself to praise ‘the auspicious guidance’ of 61 EVER SWAYED A SCEPTRE ’: Pitt’s ministry. Alfred was invoked once more WHY ALFRED ? during the Shrewsbury borough election of in a Reviewing a new pamphlet life of Alfred in , The pamphlet, To Alfred, alias Fidelis and in a series Monthly Review asked its readers to recognise ‘How of letters addressed to Thomas Erskine and Charles superior does his conduct, both as a Man and a James Fox from the author ‘Ghost of Alfred’. Magistrate, appear to that dishonest artifice and As a figure available for Whigs, Tories and chicanery which often pass on the world as political Radicals throughout the s Alfred appeared in wisdom!’ Norfolk’s particular take on English pamphlets and other forms of political literature as a
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Fig. . Temple of British Worthies, Stowe, Buckinghamshire. (Photo: author’s own ) powerful source of historical legitimacy at a time The Duke’s library collections make clear his when the very structure of British politics and interest in the Anglo-Saxon king, containing both government was being questioned. Whilst the editions of the first ‘modern’ biography of King eleventh Duke may have been unusual in rendering Alfred, written by Sir John Spelman: Obadiah Alfred’s achievements in stone, he was not alone in Walker’s Alfredi Magni Vita and Thomas Hearne’s dramatising Alfred’s reign. In , the same year as Life of Alfred the Great . Furthermore, as the vast the Duke commissioned Rossi, a Sketch of Alfred the majority of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Great: Or the Danish Invasion. A Grand Historical accounts of Arundel Castle emphasise, the earliest Ballet of Action was performed at Sadler’s Wells. record of Arundel occurs in ‘the will of the Great Later in the year John Penn’s The Battle of Eddington, Alfred, in which he bequeathed it, along with other or British Liberty was performed at the Haymarket lordships, to his brother’s son Athelm’. Whilst local and celebrated ‘Alfred as the Legislator of England’. history may have played a role, it is also possible to The play, dedicated to Pitt, was ‘professly written find possible sources of architectural inspiration for with a political view’ with Alfred ‘supposed to be not the eleventh Duke’s enthusiasm for Alfred across the only engaged in resisting the Danes, but the plots of country. The historian can, for example, look to the his subjects’. ‘We are told’, the Critical Review Patriot Opposition to Sir Robert Walpole, where the explained, ‘of the necessary inconvenience of juries Anglo-Saxon king looked out from Cobham’s and free laws’. The previous year, however, John Temple of British Worthies at Stowe (Fig. ), Prince O’Keefe’s Alfred, or the Magic Banner , had Frederick’s Octagon at Carlton House and later to concluded with a triumphant representation on stage Cliveden, where ‘Rule, Britannia’ was first performed of Alfred the Great instituting trial by jury. as the finale to Alfred: A Masque ; or, most importantly,
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI ARUNDEL CASTLE AS A ‘ PALLADIUM OF ENGLISH LIBERTY ’ to a hitherto neglected political monument on the Edwin Lascelles, Alfred’s Castle would have acted as outskirts of Leeds erected by the Yorkshire merchant a prompt to the polite classes on their way to pay Jeremiah Dixon in . homage to one of Yorkshire’s most important In response to the petitioning movement of the political personages to remember the ancient origins summer of , Jeremiah Dixon of Gledhow Hall of the English constitution. The ruined outline of constructed a Gothic folly known as King Alfred’s Alfred’s Castle suggested that long cherished Castle (Fig. ). Completed in a deliberately ruined traditions were in danger and scolded Yorkshire’s elite state, the mock-ruin of Alfred’s Castle recalls the for their limited engagement with the petitioning Temple of Modern Virtue at Stowe, and made an movement. equally potent political comment. The decision to The Duke of Norfolk, at the time of expel John Wilkes from the House of Commons commissioning Rossi, was engaged in a similar resulted in a well-documented howl of protest in political battle. Throughout and response to the perceived threat to the right of the Christopher Wyvill, guiding light of the Yorkshire English freeholder to choose his own parliamentary Association, and inheritor of the political movement representative. Dixon wrote to Lord Rockingham that Dixon was so involved with, wrote to Norfolk’s of the need not to submit to ‘the deprivation of one friend Charles James Fox, urging him to persuade the of our dearest privileges as Englishmen’, and made Duke to take an active part in the Association’s a leap into the type of aspirational political agitation for parliamentary reform. Wyvill went so far architecture reserved only for landed magnates. as to suggest that thanks to Norfolk’s ‘reserve’ the Dixon chose his site carefully. Adjacent to the main ‘continued timourousness [ sic. ] of many well-wishers road heading out to Harewood House, the home of in the West of Yorkshire may be imputed’. By , Wyvill, observing that ‘the power and influence of the crown are greatly increased, beyond what they were in the year ’ lamented to Fox that without Norfolk’s ‘strenuous assistance, I should be inclined to doubt whether we should be strong enough’. Moreover, Norfolk, during the sixteen years in his position as Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire had come to know Jeremiah Dixon’s son and heir, John, inviting the Dixons to visit him at Greystoke Castle. For John’s father, Alfred was a reminder to honour ancient liberties. For Norfolk, Alfred was a reminder that not all kings were tyrannical. It must not be forgotten, however, that the Duke had flirted with political architecture for the decade before he began his scheme at Arundel Castle. At his ancestral seat of Greystoke Castle in Cumberland, he named his model farms after prominent locations or characters of the American Revolutionary Wars: Fort Putnam, Bunker Hill, Jefferson. Ten years previous Fig. . Alfred’s Castle, Tunnel How Hill, Leeds, West to his work at Arundel, he also invoked the Anglo- Yorkshire. (© Leeds Library & Information Services ) Saxon past on his Cumberland estates. William
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Fig. . Arundel Castle quadrangle (October ). (Photo: author’s own )
Thomson, on a tour of the Lake District in , be one of the noblest mansions in this kingdom’. recorded a visit to the ‘very whimsical’ Lyulph’s The ‘true Gothic style’ had rendered the castle Tower, ‘quite in the stile of an old castle’. The folly ‘equally convenient and elegant’. The laconic John ‘in memory of some Saxon hero’ served as a sporting Dickinson noted how he ‘viewed the Duke of retreat for the Duke and his companions. One visitor Norfolk’s castle and gardens; approved of his was impressed by the Duke of Norfolk’s anachronism, alterations’. Wright was more effusive in his praise, ‘when here, he never uses chairs, but wooden forms, declaring Norfolk ‘the founder of [a] new style of and has a long hospitable board for a table’, and the building, which justly deserves the designation of the Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe relished the tower’s Arundelian Order of Architecture’. However, by setting ‘in one of the finest situations of a park, , Arundel Castle had fallen out of fashion. New abounding with views of the grand and the sublime’. histories of Gothic architecture prevented the kind of storytelling in stone practised by the eleventh Duke`: ‘The Castle has undergone modern alterations in bad taste; the details are of that description of the ‘ AN EXCEEDINGLY FRIGHTFUL ornamental gothic, which appear to me to throw THING IN CODE ’ S STONE ’: severe criticisms on the abilities of the architect’. THE END OF ALFRED . Queen Victoria was equally disparaging, remarking in The eleventh Duke’s alterations initially received her journal on December that ‘Unfortunately positive press. The European Magazine and London the Castle has not been restored in a good style, by Review included an engraving of the south-east view Duke Charles, the last but one, and Saxon and Gothic of Arundel Castle in September , following up architecture are mixed’. One of the more discerning with an engraving of the new entrance gateway in critics, Mark Tierney, concluded that, although the . The magazine observed that ‘The Present restorations were ‘the effort of a mind strongly imbued Duke of Norfolk is repairing it at a most considerable with admiration of the ancient models’, the edifice expense; and, by keeping up the ancient stile of unfortunately ‘loses more from the indiscriminate architecture, gives it a grand majestic appearance’ attachment of its founder to whatever bears the concluding that, when completed, it would ‘certainly appearance of antiquity, than it can possibly gain from
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI ARUNDEL CASTLE AS A ‘ PALLADIUM OF ENGLISH LIBERTY ’ his knowledge of the various styles he adopts’. Even C. Pigott, A Political Dictionary: Explaining the the immortal Alfred – ‘with what hallowed feelings of True Meaning of Words. Illustrated and Exemplified reverence’ wrote a woman of fashion ‘must a locale in the Lives, Morals, Character and Conduct of the Following Most Illustrious Personages …(London, ever be approached which bears the name of that ), p. . During the Regency Crisis of , illustrious monarch’ – could not escape censure, and Norfolk frequently featured in pamphlet literature. was removed to allow windows for the thirteenth In The Funeral Procession of Mrs Regency. To which Duke’s billiard room (Fig. ). is added, the sermon; with the last will and testament (London, ), Mrs Regency, ‘give[s] and bequeath to his Grace the Duke of Norfolk, a fine portrait of ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Hippesley’s Drunken Man’ (p. ). The Anti-Jacobin Or, Weekly Examiner , no. The author would like to thank His Grace the Duke ( Feb. ). of Norfolk for his permission to quote from the Ibid ., no. ( Jan. ). Arundel Castle archives. For a pithy summary of Norfolk’s fall from grace, see: The Chronologist of the Present War; Or, General Historical and Political Register… (Dublin, ), pp. – . NOTES Anti-Jacobin ( Feb. ). C. Wright, The History and Description of Arundel Ibid . Castle, Sussex; The Seat of His Grace the Duke of [J. Bowdler], Sound An Alarm, &c. By Way of Norfolk, with an abstract of the lives of the Earls of Appendix to Reform or Ruin (London, ), pp. –. Arundel, from the Conquest to the Present Time , Morning Chronicle , no. ( Jan. ). nd edn. (London, ), p. . Observer , no. ( Jan. ). Ibid ., p. . For details of Norfolk’s political career, see British Ibid ., p. . Public Characters of (London, ), Edinburgh Annual Register , ( ), p. . For pp. – . further accounts of Rossi’s Alfred, see: A Visit to [W. Combe], A Letter from a Country Gentleman, Arundel Castle. Profusely Illustrated (Arundel and to a Member of Parliament, on the Present State of London, ), pp. – ; Rossi’s work, however, is Public Affairs …th edn (London, ), p. . curiously absent from the most complete account of H.B. Wheatley (ed.), The Historical and the eleventh Duke’s building work: J. Dallaway, The Posthumous Memoirs of Sir Nathanial William Parochial Topography of the Rape of Arundel, in the Wraxall – ( vols., London, ), II, p. . Western Division of the County of Sussex , nd edn An Answer to the Country Gentleman’s Letter to a ( vols., London, ), I., pp. – . Member of Parliament …(London, ), p. . The Bognor Guide, Containing the History of J. Freeth, The Political Songster Or, A Touch on the Bognor, and the History and Antiquities of Several Times, On Various Subjects, and Adapted to Adjoining Parishes, including an account of Common Tunes , th edn (Birmingham, ), p. v. Goodwood, Arundel Castle, &c. &c. and the Roman Bodleian Libraries Oxford (hereafter Bodl.) MS. Remains at Bognor (Petworth, ), p. . Eng. lett. e. – and MS. Eng. lett. c. – . A.E. Stothard, Memoirs, including Original For example, Brooke wrote to Howard regarding Journals, Letters, Papers and Antiquarian Tracts of proposals for a history of Holderness in Yorkshire the late Charles Alfred Stothard, F.S.A…. (London, that he should ‘probably think it proper to ), p. . encourage works of this nature’: Bodl. MS. Eng. lett. M.A. Tierney, The History and Antiquities of The e. , f. r. Castle and Town of Arundel; including the Brooke to Howard (Feb. ): Bodl. MS. Eng. lett. Biography of its Earls from the Conquest to the e. , f. v. Present Time ( vols., London, ), I, p. . Brooke to Lord Dacre (Dec. ): Ibid ., f. v. The Leisure Hour: An Illustrated Magazine for Milne to Brooke ( Jul. ): Bodl. MS. Eng. lett. Home Reading , ( ), p. . c. , f. r.
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Brooke to Marmaduke Tunstall ( May. ): of Portarlington, and other friends and relations Bodl. MS. Eng. lett. e. , f. r–v . ( vols., Edinburgh, – ), III., p. . Names of the Members of the Toxophilite Society ACA DB : [J. Dallaway] ‘An Account of the (London, ), p. ; T. Wilkinson, Memoirs of Festival Held in the Barons’ Hall of Arundel Castle His Own Life by Tate Wilkinson, Patentee of the on the Fifteenth day of June ’, p. . Theatre Royal, York and Hull ( vols., York, ), Others believed the Hall to be ‘in the taste of the I, p. . fifteenth century, when the elaborate Gothic was at Arundel Castle Archives (hereafter, ACA) SHE – its perfection’: Wright, History and Description of Correspondence of eleventh Duke and Joseph Hinde. Arundel Castle , p. . J.M. Robinson, Arundel Castle (Chichester, ), ‘An Account of the Festival held in the Barons’ p. . Hall’, p. . M. Pennington (ed.), A Series of Letters between Mrs Wright, The History and Description of Arundel Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine Talbot from the Castle , p. . Year to : To which are added letters from Beattie, The Castles and Abbeys of England , p. . Mrs Carter to Mrs Vesey between the Years and The date by which Rossi’s work was in situ at ( vols., London, ), III., p. . Arundel remains uncertain. One visitor recorded Bodl. MS. Eng. lett. e. , f. r. how, in , he ‘returned through a large A. Hay, The Chichester Guide: Containing an quadrangular inclosure, where the workmen were Account of the Antient and Present State of the employed in finishing that part of the Castle, which City …(Chichester, ), p. . goes under the denomination of the Library. The T.P. Hudson (ed.), A History of the County of Sussex improvements now making are on such a scale, that, (Oxford, ), V. part i., p. . See also, William years must elapse, e’er they are completed’: J. Evans, Beattie, The Castles and Abbeys of England ( vols, Picture of Worthing: To which is added an Account of London, ), I., p. . Arundel and Shoreham, with other parts of the Robinson, Arundel Castle , p. . surrounding country (London, ), p. . Alfred Dallaway, quoted in ibid . is strangely absent from James Dallaway’s account of E. Cartwright (ed.), The Parochial Topography of the Arundel. Rape of Arundel, in the Western Division of the ACA SHE // : Norfolk to Hinde ( Jul. ). County of Sussex by James Dallway ( vols., London, ACA SHE // : Norfolk to Hinde ( Aug. ). ), I., p. . ‘Buildings. Has M r Teasdale the design for the Ibid . Cross intended to be cut through in the Battlements ACA SHE //: Hinde to Norfolk ( Jul. ). & if not how soon will it be wanted’. ACA SHE ACA SHE // : Norfolk to Hinde ( Aug. ). // : Norfolk to Hinde ( Aug. ). ACA SHE // : Norfolk to Hinde ( Jun. ). On Rapin, see: H. Trevor-Roper, ‘A Huguenot ACA SHE // : Norfolk to Hinde ( Feb. ). Historian – Paul Rapin’, in I. Scouloudi (ed.), ACA SHE // : Norfolk to Hinde ( Jul. ). Huguenots in Britain and their French Background, The Parochial Topography of the Rape of Arundel , – (Basingstoke, ), pp. – ; M.G. p. . Sullivan, ‘Rapin, Hume and the identity of the A correspondent calling himself ‘Sidney’ sent the historian in eighteenth century England’, History of full details of the inscription to The Gentleman’s European Ideas , ( ), pp. – . Magazine , (July ), p. . P. de Rapin-Thoyras, History of England , trans. The figures were made in , perhaps to the N. Tindall, rd edn ( vols., London, ), I., p. . designs of John Bacon the elder: Hudson (ed.), The European Magazine and London Review , History of Sussex , p. . See also, A. Kelly, ‘Coade ( ), p. . Stone in Sussex’, Sussex Archaeological Collections , Anon., Observations on the Life and Character of ( ), pp. –. Alfred the Great (London, ), p. . Lady Ailesbury to Lady Louisa Stuart (Worthing, The Monthly Review, Or Literary Journal , May ): A Clark (ed.), Gleanings from an Old ( ), p. . Portfolio: Containing Some Correspondence Between W. Jones, An Essay on the Law of Bailments , nd edn Lady Louisa Stuart and her sister Caroline, Countess (London, ), pp. – . Jones’ enthusiasm for
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Alfred was inculcated during his time as an in the Manner of Copper-Plates, Being an accurate undergraduate at University College Oxford, believed and comprehensive view of the principal roads in to have been founded by King Alfred, see: O.J.W. Great Britain, Taken from Actual Surveys; Wherein Cox, ‘An Oxford College and the Eighteenth- Century every Object worthy of Notice is pointed out; Illustrated Gothic Revival’, Oxoniensia , ( ), pp. – . by two maps (London, ), p. . P. Withers, Alfred, or a narrative of the daring and Wyvill to Fox ( Jan. ): C. Wyvill, Political illegal measures to suppress a pamphlet intituled, Papers, Chiefly Respecting the Attempt of the County Strictures on the declaration of Horne Tooke, Esq . of York …( vols., York, – ), VI., p. . (London, ). Wyvil to Fox ( Jan. ): ibid ., p. . J. Bland Burges, Alfred’s Letters; or, a review of the Bodl. MS. Eng. lett. e. , f.. r: Brooke to Norfolk political state of Europe, to the end of the summer . ( Jun. ). As Originally Published in The Sun (London, ). Robinson, The Dukes of Norfolk , p. . Letters of the ghost of Alfred, addressed to the Hon. W. Thomson, A Tour in England and Scotland, in Thomas Erskine, and the Hon. Charles James Fox, . By an English Gentleman (London, ), p. . on the occasion of the state trials at the close of the J. Palmer, A Fortnight’s Ramble to the Lakes in year , and the beginning of the year Westmoreland, Lancashire and Cumberland. By a (London, ). Rambler (London, ), p. . The second edition Oracle and Public Advertiser , no. ( Jan. ). ( ) added the following footnote: ‘Probability Critical review, or, Annals of Literature ( ), why it is called Lyulph’s tower. Edmund the first, p. . who cleared his country of robbers, and conquered John Philip Kemble observed that the play, ‘was no Cumberland, was assassinated at a Feast by a daring more endurable than the other attempts to exhibit outlaw of the name of Leolf, (p. ). the great King upon the stage’: J. Boaden, Memoirs Ibid ., nd edn ( ), p. . of the life of John Philip Kemble …( vols., London, A. Radcliffe, A Journey Made in the Summer of ) II, p. . O’Keefe himself agreed that ‘my , through Holland and the Western Frontier of “Alfred” had no great success’: Recollections of the Germany, with a return down the Rhine: To Which Life of John O’Keefe, Written by Himself ( vols., are Added Observations during a Tour to the London, ), p. . Lakes …nd edn ( vols., London, ), II., p. . [O. Walker], Ælfredi Magni Anglorum regis The European Magazine and London Review , invictissimi vita tribus libris comprehensa a clarissimo ( ), p. . dno Johanne Spelman (Oxford, ); T. Hearne, The Ibid ., ( ), p. . Life of Ælfred the Great, by Sir John Spelman Kt Ibid ., ( ), p. . (Oxford, ). Both are listed in the ‘Catalogue of the Ibid ., , p. . Norfolk Library ’: ACA L , pp. , . J. Dickinson, J. Dickinson’s Minutes, taken in a tour Beattie, The Castles and Abbeys of England , p. . from London to Brighton, August (London, The monument was inscribed: To the Memory of/ ), p. . Alfred the Great/ The Wise, the Pious and Wright, History and Description of Arundel Castle , Magnanimous/ The Friend of/ Science, Virtue, Law, p. . and Liberty/ This Monument/ Jeremiah Dixon of The Mirror Monthly Magazine , : ( ), p. . Allerton/ Gledhow caused to be erected./ A.D. ACA Acc. . MDCCLXIX. Tierney, The History and Antiquities of the Castle See, for example, G. Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty and Town of Arundel , p. . (Oxford, ). Ibid ., p. . City of Sheffield Archives, Wentworth Woodhouse Robinson, Arundel Castle , p. . As Robinson Muniments (hereafter WWM) R/ / : Dixon to writes elsewhere, Alfred ‘so embarrassed later Rockingham ( Dec. ). generations with its blatant historical solecism that Alfred’s Castle was used as a navigational tool: T. it was banished to a corner of the park and Pride, The Traveller’s companion; or new itinerary of eventually used as foundations for a cricket England and Wales, with part of Scotland; Arranged pavillion’: The Dukes of Norfolk , p. .
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