CHAPTER VII.

CARISBROOKE CASTLE.

THE PRINCESS ELIZABETH STUART.

OU know where the Isle of Wight is situated in the British Channel, and

the Solent.

that it lies in that part which is named

It is south of Hampshire, and is included in that county. The Romans called it Victus Insula ;' but it does not appear to have been one of their stations.

Henry the Sixth first made it into a separate kingdom in the fourteenth century, and bestowed it on Henry Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, whom later you will hear more about.

Carisbrooke is situated on a small hill overlooking a village of that name.

The Britons are reputed to have built it A.D.

45, in the reign of the Emperor Claudius, and it was repaired later under Roman rule. In 519 a Saxon, named Whitegar, rebuilt it, and called it Whitgarisbourg; hence its name Carisbrooke, a corruption of the last word.

In Henry the First's reign, Richard de Rivers, Earl of Devonshire, again rebuilt the castle on a magnificent scale; and Queen Elizabeth also added to and repaired it, her initials, E. R., being still to be found on an outer gate, though, unfortunately, the date has been erased by time.

The ancient castle is built on a space covering about an acre and a half, its greatest length being from east to west; and you enter its ruined walls— 'A chiefless castle breathing stern farewells

From grey and ivied walls, where ruin greenly dwells,'—

over a small bridge; then passing through the small gate on which are Elizabeth's initials, you find yourself in a passage leading between battlemented walls to a more imposing-looking gate, guarded by two round towers; thence through an old door which opens on to the castle yard.

To the right is a small walled-in chapel, which is also a parish church, that of St. Nicolas, the

castle being the parish; and it is a quiet, pretty little spot, suggesting sad remembrances of those who were imprisoned in Carisbrooke. Opposite the visitor, as he enters the old ruins, are the low buildings where Charles the First was confined, and from one of whose windows he attempted his escape.

At the north-east angle stands the keep, from which the sea is seen to the north, south, and east ; and where a well once existed three hundred feet deep, but which is now filled up with rubbish.

The remains of another tower are called Mountjoy's Tower, and in some places its walls are eighteen feet thick. The outer works and fortifications of this interesting old fortress were erected in the time of Elizabeth, who, at the earnest solicitation of its then constable and captain,' Sir George Carey, at the period of the Spanish Armada's threatened invasion, gave four thousand pounds to have it properly fortified-a sum much larger in those days than it would be in our own.

But I must first go back to an earlier period of English history, after the death of William Fitzosbert, on whom the Conqueror bestowed it after

the Norman conquest of England, when Carisbrooke Castle reverted to the crown on the rebellion of Fitzosbert's son, Count Roger.

Close to the castle, we learn from tradition, William the First met his rebellious brother, the gifted and ambitious Odo of Bayeux, Earl of Kent.

Odo of Bayeux was only half-brother to the Conqueror. Bayeux, as you may remember, is an old town in Normandy, famous for its tapestry, which was a kind of embroidery representing pictures and historical incidents, worked on hangings of wool or silk.

Tapestry coverings for walls were a manufacture known in the East from remote ages, and introduced into Europe by the Flemish and English before and during the crusades. Probably those nations first acquired the art of

making it from

In the fifteenth

the Saracens, who excelled in it. and sixteenth centuries, tapestry was executed with great skill at Arras, in Flanders; and the Gobelin tapestry manufacture, established by Louis the Fourth's minister, Colbert, is still in existence near Paris. The Bayeux tapestry is

supposed to have been worked by Queen Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror, though there are some authorities who maintain that it was her grand-daughter, the Empress Maude, who worked it. The subject of this famous piece of tapestry is the conquest of England in a series of pictures, and the faces are portraits, or at least said to be so.

After the conquest of England by the Normans, it was William the First's policy to advance to places of trust and confidence all his nobles who had followed him out of France, especially such as had assisted him by their valour at the battle of Hastings to secure the English throne.

The very first person promoted by the Conqueror was his half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, to whom he was tenderly attached, and William created him Earl of Kent.

Odo had been present at the battle of Hastings, surrounded by a large body of his clergy and monks, who, an old writer declares, 'by their devout prayers and counsels, afforded much comfort and assistance in that great and signal conflict.' Good and prudent, although but young in years at the time of the Norman invasion, he reciprocated

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