MCXXXVIII., Walter, son of Alan, the progenitor of the Royal House of Stuart, left this, his ancestral castle, in the reign of Stephen, King of England, and of David I., King of Scots.’” The more recent history of the Castle may be given in a few words. In the sixth of Henry II., Guy le Strange, Sheriff of Shropshire, accounted in the exchequer for salaries paid out of the king’s revenues to the wardens in the Castle of Blancminster (Oswestry), the inheritance of William Fitz-Alan, then lately deceased. In the fifteenth of John, the nephew (John) of the Earl of Pembroke, guardian of the Marches of Wales, was made Governor of Blancminster. In Henry III., John Fitz-Alan, as heir to Hugh de Albany, Earl of Arundel, had upon the death of that Earl, assigned for his _purpatry_, the Castle of Arundel, and upon paying £1000 fine was admitted to the possession of Oswestry Castle. In the twenty-fourth of Henry III., on the death of John Fitz-Alan, John le Strange had a grant of the custody of the lands of John, his son (then a minor), with an allowance of 300 marks per annum, for guarding Blancminster and other places. In the first of Edward I., John de Oxinden had the custody of the Castle of Blancminster, upon the death of John, Earl of Arundel. In the third of Edward I., Bogo de Knovil was Sheriff of the county, and Keeper of the Castle of Blancminster. In the eighth of Edward I., Isabel, mother of Richard, Earl of Arundel, had the custody of the Castle of Blancminster, and also of the hundred of _Oswaldster_ during the minority of her son; but two years afterwards her brother, Edmund de Mortimer, supplanted her, and got the grant to himself. In the eighteenth of Edward I., Adam de Montgomery died Governor of the Castle. In the twenty-seventh of Edward I., Peter Meuvesine de Berwicke, _juxta Akinton_, died in the same office. In the twenty-seventh of Edward II., after the attainder of Edmund, Earl of Arundel, Roger Mortimer, Lord of Wigmore, had a grant of the Castle. In the twenty-first of Richard II., Richard, Earl of Arundel, being attainted or executed, the king seized upon his lands and manors, and granted them to William Scrope, Earl of Wiltshire. In the seventh of Henry IV., Thomas, son of the attainted Earl, after he was restored in blood, freed the burgesses from many impositions of the Constable of the Castle. Amongst the names of subsequent Governors of the Castle we find those of John Trevor, Vaughan, Jeffrey Kyffyn; and in the twenty-fifth of James I., Thomas, Earl of Suffolk, his wife, Lord Walden, Sir Arnold Herbert, and William Herbert, “grant to the Lady Craven, Sir William Whitmore, George Whitmore, and their heirs, the lordship, manor, and Castle of Oswestry.” The state of the Castle in the Civil Wars has already been described.