The early history of the town of Warwick is involved in the mists of past ages, and carries us back to the period prior to the invasion of Britain by the Romans; if Rous and other old historians of the county be correct, who declare it to have been a British town of considerable importance before that great event. Dugdale says, “as it hath been the chieftest town of these parts, and whereof the whole county, upon its division into shires, took its name, so may it justly glory in its situation beyond any other, standing upon a rocky ascent, from every side, and in a dry and fertile soil, having the benefit of rich and pleasant meadows on the south part, with the lofty groves and spacious thickets of the woodland on the north: wherefore, were there nothing else to argue its great antiquity, these commodities, which so surround it, might easily satisfy us, that the Britons made an early plantation here to participate of them.” The reader will not be expected to place implicit reliance on the statements of Dugdale concerning its foundation by Cymbeline, by whom it was termed Caerleon, and its destruction by the Picts and Scots, “till Caractacus, the famous British Prince, rebuilt it, making a mansion-house therein for himself.” After the defeat of Caractacus in A.D. 50, the Romans, in order to secure their conquests in Britain, erected several fortresses on the banks of the Severn and Avon, and Warwick is said to have been one of these, but this is not very clearly proved. During the Saxon period the town was included in the kingdom of Mercia, and fell under the dominion of Warremund, who rebuilt it and called it Warrewyke, after his own name. Warwick was subsequently destroyed by the Danes, and, according to Dugdale, “so rested until the renowned Lady Ethelfled, daughter to King Alfred, who had the whole Earldom of Mercia given her by her father to the noble Etheldred in marriage, repaired its ruins, and in the year of Christ DCCCCXV, made a strong fortification here, called the doungeon, for resistance of the enemy, upon a hill of earth artificially raised near the river side;” and this forms the most ancient part of the present building. But the most important reparations of the castle were the work of the famous Guy, Earl of Warwick, although Dugdale tells us that the great tower at the north-east corner, called Guy’s Tower, the walls whereof are ten feet thick, was built by Thomas, Earl of Warwick, about the 17th of Richard the Second, on whose banishment the custody of it was granted to John de Clinton, and in a short time after to Thomas Holland, Earl of Kent. In the reign of Henry the Third, the extraordinary strength of this building was alleged as a reason for particularly prohibiting the widowed Countess of Warwick from re-marrying with any other than a person approved by the King; but in the furious contests which occurred in the latter years of this reign, William Mauduit, the then Earl,