The “Registrum Honoris de Richmond,” a very curious Custumary, specifies the precise part in that castle that each tenant was to defend. At Belvoir, Staunton tower, at Berkeley, Thorpe’s tower, are so called because families of those names were responsible for them, and at Dover, Magminot and a score of other towers still bear the names of the chief tenants of that important lordship, and thus preserve the memory of a tenure the substance of which has long been abolished. The connexion between the military tenant and his lord was intimate, and much imbued with the ancient Teutonic equality and independence. The lord held his “aula” for his own safety and that of his tenants; their mutual support gave power to the one and security to the others; no man was degraded by such a tenure. The most powerful barons were almost always also tenants holding fiefs under other lords, often far their inferiors in rank and power. It is this ancient history, this connexion with the earliest works of defence, that gives so great an interest to the older castles. When, in later days, and under extraordinary circumstances, it suited the king or some great baron to erect a castle in a new place, the fabric had no root, no associations. The grand characteristic of an old castle, the mighty earthwork, was wanting, and its place was ill supplied by masses of masonry and a ditch of moderate dimensions. No tenants clustered round the place, to it no manors were attached, no dependents held lands by the tenure of its defence. Thus Bere, Beaumaris, Caernarvon, Diganwy, Conway, Harlech, and Caerphilly, grand structures as were most of them, were mere intrusions upon the soil, and when the need that produced them ceased, as they represented no private estate, and were the residence of no great baron, they were left to fall into decay. Not the less are they of great architectural interest. They are mostly of one date, laid out and constructed upon one plan. Though intended for military purposes, within the palace shares with the fortress. The accommodation afforded is ample, the main apartments are spacious, the ornamentation rich. The inner court, gatehouses, and hall of Caerphilly are grander than anything of the sort in Britain.