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Chartley Castle in Staffordshire
Location:Chartley, near Hixon, Staffordshire, England, UK
Date of Photograph:18 October 2002
OS Grid Reference:SK010285
Co-ordinates:52.85399°N: 1.98659°W
This is a distant view of the remains of Chartley Castle from the A518 road to the East.
Chartley Castle is strategically sited in a valley controlling passage from the Trent-Dove waterways to the North and East and The Severn Basin to the South-West.
It was started around 900AD as a timber structure, almost certainly to pre-empt Viking excursions to West Mercia. After the Conquest a large motte and bailey were dug into shape and in 1220 Ranulph de Blondeville, 4th Earl of Chester, built a magnificent edifice of mortared stone with a circular keep defended by a curtain wall. This outer work incorporated two half-towers which still stand in a ruinous, but impressive, state. There remain also fragments of the curtain wall, a twin-towered gatehouse and an angled tower. This motte-and-bailey castle, Chartley I, passed by marriage to the Ferrers estate.
Sometime around 1485, Chartley II, a moated manor house was built 300 meters West of Chartley I, and this is the premises thought to have accommodated Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, when she was the prisoner of Shrewsbury. Chartley I was abandoned and Leland described it as a ruin in 1545. Chartley II, a half-timbered house, was burnt down in 1781, and replaced. But the replacement also burnt in 1847.
A much larger unmoated building 500 meters West of Chartley I, was called Chartley Castle Farm, but has recently been re-designated Chartley Castle ( III ), and is a bed-and-breakfast hotel. It contains a chair cover and a set of curtains said to have been made at Chartley II by The Queen of Scots. ( In the days when it was not infra dig to use your hands ).
Chartley is indelibly associated with secret messages, early cryptographic science and Renaissance espionage.
As is of course true of all such affairs the details are unclear and remain controversial. Around the start of 1586 English Government fears of Catholic restoration intensified and new laws were introduced to provide for the execution of anyone who might benefit from, as opposed actively to perpetrate, the placing of Mary Stuart upon the Throne of England. It seems that Elizabeth’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, orchestrated or at least manipulated a plot that would implicate Mary herself, and so pave the way for her personally to be killed.
Local Catholic gentry, principally Anthony Babington, aged 25, an infatuate of Mary, and John Ballard, Jesuit, were suitably framed.
A covert line of communication was developed between Chartley and double-agent Gilbert Gifford. Enciphered letters to and from Mary were smuggled concealed within the bungs of beer barrels.
Intercepted decrypts from Mary adverted to her supporters in France, whilst replies from Babington included treasonable remarks about his non-allegiance to Elizabeth. The mathematics of the coded messages is of some considerable historical interest in itself, involving early use of inferential statistics, including frequency analyses.
In an encrypt sent to Chartley in July 1586, Babington proposed to Mary that Elizabeth be assassinated, that Spain should invade England, and that the Protestant ministers Burghley and Walsingham should be killed.
Walsingham then arrested Babington when Babington applied for a passport to go to Spain. Babington’s six co-conspirators were quickly identified, probably by torture, and they were arrested on 15th August 1586. A total of fourteen men were convicted of treason and sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. This was an obscene and horrific method of slow killing reserved for low-born male traitors. The first group of seven, including Babington and Ballard, were killed on 20th September. It is said that the weeping and screaming of the tortured men was such that Elizabeth ordered that the second batch of seven be allowed to die in the noose before being butchered.
The Queen of Scots was taken to another prison at Fotheringhay. Elizabeth Tudor signed her cousin’s death warrant and on 8th February 1587 Mary Stuart was beheaded there. So inept was the deed that the Scotswoman was alive at the third blow, the second having sliced off the top of her cranium.
It is difficult to associate the romantic and pastoral, if somnolent, Staffordshire dell of today with those lurid and baleful events.
In 1603, Elizabeth died childless; Mary’s son James, “The Wisest Fool in Christendom”, ascended the English Throne, and The United Kingdom of Great Britain was born.
Chartley Castle in Staffordshire
Location:Chartley, near Hixon, Staffordshire, England, UK
Date of Photograph:18 October 2002
OS Grid Reference:SK010285
Co-ordinates:52.85399°N: 1.98659°W
This is a distant view of the remains of Chartley Castle from the A518 road to the East.
Chartley Castle is strategically sited in a valley controlling passage from the Trent-Dove waterways to the North and East and The Severn Basin to the South-West.
It was started around 900AD as a timber structure, almost certainly to pre-empt Viking excursions to West Mercia. After the Conquest a large motte and bailey were dug into shape and in 1220 Ranulph de Blondeville, 4th Earl of Chester, built a magnificent edifice of mortared stone with a circular keep defended by a curtain wall. This outer work incorporated two half-towers which still stand in a ruinous, but impressive, state. There remain also fragments of the curtain wall, a twin-towered gatehouse and an angled tower. This motte-and-bailey castle, Chartley I, passed by marriage to the Ferrers estate.
Sometime around 1485, Chartley II, a moated manor house was built 300 meters West of Chartley I, and this is the premises thought to have accommodated Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, when she was the prisoner of Shrewsbury. Chartley I was abandoned and Leland described it as a ruin in 1545. Chartley II, a half-timbered house, was burnt down in 1781, and replaced. But the replacement also burnt in 1847.
A much larger unmoated building 500 meters West of Chartley I, was called Chartley Castle Farm, but has recently been re-designated Chartley Castle ( III ), and is a bed-and-breakfast hotel. It contains a chair cover and a set of curtains said to have been made at Chartley II by The Queen of Scots. ( In the days when it was not infra dig to use your hands ).
Chartley is indelibly associated with secret messages, early cryptographic science and Renaissance espionage.
As is of course true of all such affairs the details are unclear and remain controversial. Around the start of 1586 English Government fears of Catholic restoration intensified and new laws were introduced to provide for the execution of anyone who might benefit from, as opposed actively to perpetrate, the placing of Mary Stuart upon the Throne of England. It seems that Elizabeth’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, orchestrated or at least manipulated a plot that would implicate Mary herself, and so pave the way for her personally to be killed.
Local Catholic gentry, principally Anthony Babington, aged 25, an infatuate of Mary, and John Ballard, Jesuit, were suitably framed.
A covert line of communication was developed between Chartley and double-agent Gilbert Gifford. Enciphered letters to and from Mary were smuggled concealed within the bungs of beer barrels.
Intercepted decrypts from Mary adverted to her supporters in France, whilst replies from Babington included treasonable remarks about his non-allegiance to Elizabeth. The mathematics of the coded messages is of some considerable historical interest in itself, involving early use of inferential statistics, including frequency analyses.
In an encrypt sent to Chartley in July 1586, Babington proposed to Mary that Elizabeth be assassinated, that Spain should invade England, and that the Protestant ministers Burghley and Walsingham should be killed.
Walsingham then arrested Babington when Babington applied for a passport to go to Spain. Babington’s six co-conspirators were quickly identified, probably by torture, and they were arrested on 15th August 1586. A total of fourteen men were convicted of treason and sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. This was an obscene and horrific method of slow killing reserved for low-born male traitors. The first group of seven, including Babington and Ballard, were killed on 20th September. It is said that the weeping and screaming of the tortured men was such that Elizabeth ordered that the second batch of seven be allowed to die in the noose before being butchered.
The Queen of Scots was taken to another prison at Fotheringhay. Elizabeth Tudor signed her cousin’s death warrant and on 8th February 1587 Mary Stuart was beheaded there. So inept was the deed that the Scotswoman was alive at the third blow, the second having sliced off the top of her cranium.
It is difficult to associate the romantic and pastoral, if somnolent, Staffordshire dell of today with those lurid and baleful events.
In 1603, Elizabeth died childless; Mary’s son James, “The Wisest Fool in Christendom”, ascended the English Throne, and The United Kingdom of Great Britain was born.