Of the condition of the castle at the close of this wardship, nothing is on record; but the wealth of the family was much augmented by the match of Reginald, King John’s ward, with a Briwer co-heiress, and either his son Reginald, the founder, 1246, of Newenham Abbey, who died 41st Henry III., 1256, or his grandson John, who died 7th Edward I., 1278, the last baron by tenure, might have built the curtain and mural towers containing the lower ward, of which the bases remain. The keep was probably left unaltered, and indeed, from the great and inconvenient height at which it stood, could have been but little used. The purely defensive parts of castles, when not inhabited by the owner, were usually but little cared for, and the allowance for a porter and a single watchman shows that in this respect Dunster was no exception. In 1376, John de Mohun, the eighth baron and the tenth in lineal descent from the founder of the family, died, leaving daughters only, and a sale of the castle and the rest of the property was effected by his widow Joan Burghersh. The purchaser was another widow, Elizabeth, daughter of Hugh Courtenay, Earl of Devon, and widow, first, of Sir John de Vere, and afterwards of Sir Andrew Luttrell, of Chilton, a cadet of the barons Luttrell of Irnham. Elizabeth was a lady of high rank, of kin, through the Bohuns, to Edward III., and with the command of great wealth. Her son, Sir Hugh Luttrell, became the new lord of the castle and Honour, and probably built the great gatehouse. The Luttrells were steady Lancastrians, and their representative, Sir James, took knighthood on the field of Wakefield, and fell in the second battle of St. Alban’s, when his estates were confiscated, 1st Edward IV., though only to be restored, 1st Henry VII., in the person of his son, Sir Hugh. Sir Hugh Luttrell stood high in the favour of Henry VII., and seems to have lived at Dunster in great splendour. To a second Sir Hugh, Leland attributes the great gatehouse, and he may have completed or repaired it, and opened its south door leading upon the lower ward. Probably he also inserted the armorial panels over the entrance portal, the last of which, complete, bears his coat impaling that of Margaret Hill, his wife. He also repaired the chapel of St. Stephen. Leland describes the donjon, or keep, as having been “full of goodly buildings,” which, however, had disappeared even before his time. The inhabited part of the castle was then, as now, in the north-east angle of the lower ward. Sir Andrew, Sir Hugh’s son and successor, “built a new piece of the castle wall by the east.”