Bishop Mew had a double record. He was a soldier as well as a prelate,
and he took part in the last battle fought on English soil. When King
Monmouth's Mendip miners were making their last stand at Sedgmoor, the
end of the fight came with the arrival of King James's artillery. The
heavy cannon might never have been drawn to the ground where the battle
was raging, for the artillery were unprovided with horses, had not the
Bishop offered his coach horses and traces. When they came to Sedgmoor,
he himself directed the fire.
The result of the various fortunes and misfortunes of the castle in war,
and of the different additions and alterations made by successive
Bishops, is naturally rather puzzling. The castle is a medley of the
building of eight centuries. Oldest of all is the ruined keep and the
framework, or foundations, of the castle buildings; the masonry of the
keep is the work of Henry of Blois, and belongs to the twelfth century.
Next come three pillars of the old chapel, now used as a servants' hall.
I saw it when it was set for a meal, and the severe cleanliness of the
white stone above the white tablecloth and glass and cutlery has
remained one of the distinctest of my memories of the castle. Next in
age is the outer gateway--doubtless the scene of Sir William Waller's
explosion--an imposing block of masonry. From each side of the gateway
runs the outer wall of the castle, and between the keep and the outer
wall what was once a ditch has grown into the Bishop's garden, a sloping
stretch of shaven lawn and flower borders, with a fountain and birds
bathing in it. The keep itself, almost from the broken parapet to the
tumbled stones at the base, is a mixture of wall and rock garden, in
which grow all the rock plants worth growing. Perhaps there were
wallflowers when Bishop Mew planted his orchard in the keep; but the
pasque flower and other rarer blossoms which crowd round the base belong
to the gardening of a later day. The level lawn and flower beds of the
inner garden of the keep are as serene and shining as those below, and
the view to the south over Hindhead and the south downs is finer and
freer than from anywhere in the grounds, though there are many fine
views from the castle windows. Fanny Burney, who visited Farnham in
1791, only a month released from the trammels of Court life, would
certainly have been able, as she tells us she wished, to see the hills
above her beloved Norbury. But ladies of the Court were delicate
creatures, and she could not climb to the top. "I was ready to fall
already, from only ascending the slope to reach the castle," she adds
with some humility.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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