Weird Weapons: Defending Newcastle Castle
Scottish “war crimes” depicted in a 14th century English manuscript
In 1298, John de Kirkeby, until recently the Sheriff of Northumberland and Constable of Newcastle Castle, submitted an absolutely massive ‘expenses claim’ for the previous year to his boss – the King of England. Or, more precisely, to the Exchequer, the King’s accountants who controlled the royal treasury. In times of peace, the Sheriff’s job was onerous enough: administering local courts and solving disputes; pursuing criminals and bringing them to trial; organising and training the county’s military forces; and collecting taxes for central government. 1297 though, had not been a time of peace. An English army in Scotland had been comprehensively defeated by the Scots at the Battle of Stirling Bridge, and the whole of the North of England had been convulsed by a counter invasion by the Scots, led by Sir William Wallace. Contemporary chronicles give an idea of the fear that gripped the population:
“For the Northumbrians were petrified with fear, and they evacuated from the countryside their wives and children and all their household goods, sending them with their animals to Newcastle and various other places throughout the provinces.”
Newcastle, particularly its well-fortified Castle, became a place of safety for refugees from across Northumberland and the surrounding regions fleeing the vengeful Scots. John de Kirkeby suddenly found himself responsible for these refugees and for the safety of Newcastle itself. He lost no time in preparing the Castle for serious military action. The expenses claim from the following year for these preparations is a bland list of how much money was spent on various items, but they give us a fascinating insight into the kinds of preparations that needed to be made to get a Castle truly “war ready”.
The first, and most expensive item that was constructed was what is termed a “catapult”, for which they bought around £4 worth of beams, iron, tin, brass, tallow, thread, and hemp. The fact that the text also refers to the making of “bolts” for this catapult clues us into the fact that this is not a stone throwing machine, but a device like the Roman ballista – a machine designed for shooting massive arrows with enormous force and accuracy, presumably with the intention of being able to pick off well armoured enemy knights from a safe distance. The size of this machine can only be guessed at, but they also built a wooden platform for it on one of the towers, perhaps the large multi-angular tower of the Castle Keep – this would give a good ‘field of sight’ for such a machine across the whole front of the Castle and allow it to contribute to the defence of the gates. It is commonly believed by many that the scientific knowledge of the Romans had been lost at the fall of the Empire, but medieval people were capable military engineers who were quite capable of building machines like this, which are sometimes termed “springalds”.
A ‘screw crossbow’ being used to defend Carlisle Castle, from the initial letter of the city’s Royal Charter.
Related to this, there is also talk of a “screw crossbow” being built, and a machine to wind it up. This is basically a massive crossbow, too strong to be drawn by hand, that would also be used for the defence of the Castle walls against armoured attackers. Although ballistas and crossbows look superficially similar, they are very different machines – a ballista is indeed a type of catapult, with two separate wooden arms powered by wound up ropes, whereas a crossbow has only the one ‘bow’ laid across the stock. Both weapons were able to fling powerful bolts over long distances and penetrate even the strongest armour. These were specialist machines, and part of the Sheriff’s expenses claim was for the wages of an engineer to stay in the Castle and operate and maintain these machines, whose pay was 6d per day – three times what an archer was paid.
In addition to dramatic pieces of machinery like this, there were also a lot of smaller jobs to be done to prepare a Castle for a siege. The crenellations on the top of the Castle walls were reinforced with “shield to hang outside the walls at the spaces between the battlements”. This is a complicated way of talking about what is generally called a mantlet, a flat wooden shield mounted onto the crenellations of the Castle that covered the gaps to protect the soldiers, but which could be pivoted out of the way to give them space to shoot their weapons down at the enemy. Some Castles also had complete wooden “hoardings” built on top of the walls to shelter the soldiers. The carpenters were also busy “cutting down trunks and withies in the wood of Chopwell” to form what they call a breastwork, a low wooden barricade in front of the main stone wall of the Castle, designed to impede the enemy’s advance to the Castle walls. This would probably be accompanied by ditches dug in front of the barricades to help prevent large siege engines being dragged up to the walls. Similarly, attackers approaching a Castle would usually make themselves wheeled mantlets to help protect their advancing soldier from archers within the Castle. These kinds of extra wooden defences are often ignored in modern depictions of medieval warfare but were an integral part of the process of defending or attacking a Castle.
Other weapons were stockpiled for the use of the garrison in defence – crossbows with ammunition are mentioned, as are “baldrics” – these are not scruffy servants with cunning plans, and probably not sword belts either (the usual meaning of the word), but belts equipped with large hooks to assist with ‘spanning’ powerful crossbows, which is difficult to do purely by hand. 105 staff slings were also made – these are very simple weapons to make, but allowed defenders to throw rocks over a much longer distance than they could by hand, so were clearly thought to be a valuable addition to the arsenal. Both crossbows and staff slings require very little ‘training’ to use relatively effectively, so they would be handy to have around the Castle for anyone to use – in the siege of Chalons castle in France in 1199, Richard the Lionheart was killed by a kitchen boy armed with a crossbow.
Wooden hoardings on the Castle of Carcassonne in France
Believe it or not, another passing mention in the expenses gives us a glimpse at medieval chemical warfare! 1000 earthenware pots “for casting lime” were stockpiled at the Castle ready for the Scots. Lime, or quicklime, is the common name of calcium oxide, a noxious chemical powder made by cooking ground up limestone. The most common use of this powder in medieval times was to mix it with water to make a viscous plaster that was used to coat wooden houses and the inside of Castle walls. But one thing that medieval people noticed while making this plaster is that when quicklime meets water it emits a massive amount of heat. Even worse, if it got onto the skin or into the eyes of the people working with it, it could leave horrific chemical burns. The military applications were obvious, and quicklime was a common feature of medieval warfare. These earthenware pots would be flung at the enemy and would release highly caustic quicklime when they shattered. Being a powder, this had the advantage of being able to get into the eye slits or breathing holes of helmets, or find its way underneath armour, thus being able to burn even the best protected of enemy troops.
Weapons and defensive architecture are of course only a small part of defending a Castle from attack, especially if its full of panicked refugees – you also need to feed these people, and to be able to store enough food in case of a siege. This seems to have been requisitioned from the countryside with the intention of paying it back when the Sheriff collected his money from the King, although whether the Sheriff ever intended to pay a bunch of peasants back is perhaps doubtful. The food stockpiled ready for siege included 6 tons of wheat, 15 tons of rye, 2 tons of barley, 2 tons of wheat flour, 10 tons of oats, 10 tons of malt, 12 tons of salt, 115 cows (or their carcasses), 168 large fish and 400 gallons of ale, along with peat and coals to be stored for cooking. The salt is there is help preserve the meat and fish, and the peat and coals are there in case during a siege it became impossible to go out and collect firewood. Ultimately, if a Castle fell under siege it was these supplies that would prove more important than all the crossbows and quicklime in the world, as a Castle could not last long with a starving garrison, and would inevitably quickly surrender when the food ran out.
In the event, in 1297 these preparations were never put to the test. William Wallace’s army was largely composed of peasants and had no engineers or siege machinery that would have made storming such a well-supplied Castle feasible. In the event, although there seem to have been skirmishes around Newcastle, Wallace wisely decided to leave the well defended town alone and raid the countryside around Newcastle instead. Nevertheless, this document gives us a fascinating insight into the day to day running of a medieval Castle and some of the weird and wonderful weapons and defences that were used in medieval warfare.