The castle, build by Edward the First, and the outer walls of which are still entire, is placed upon a freestone rock jutting into the river Dee, in a north-east direction from the town, with which it was originally connected by a drawbridge falling against the barbacan, a fine remain of the Norman style, but now nearly demolished. The first design consisted of a square building, flanked at three corners by massive towers, with a keep or citadel, called the double tower, removed a little distance from the remaining angle of the square. This must have been an inaccessible prison before the invention of gunpowder; it was approached from the castle court by a drawbridge, and was formed by concentric walls six feet in thickness, the intermural gallery being eight feet wide, and encircling a central apartment of about twenty feet in diameter. The foundation of Flint Castle is attributed by all chroniclers to Edward the First, and dated in 1275. About six years after its completion it was surprised, and nearly wrested from Edward, in a sudden insurrection of the Welsh, and was only relieved by the greatest activity and courage on the part of the English king. The reception of Piers Gaveston, in the year 1302, was the next historic event of consequence that occurred here, this was followed by the appointment of the Black Prince as governor, A.D. 1335. In the year 1385 Flint Castle, with some lands of the Lord Audley, were granted, by Richard the Second, to De Vere, Earl of Oxford, whom he farther honoured by creating Earl of Dublin and Lord Chief Justice of Chester. On the attainder of De Vere, Percy, Earl of Northumberland, extorted a grant of this castle from his unsuspecting monarch, where he afterwards basely betrayed him into the hands of his rival Bolingbroke.