posted 06-29-2000 02:37 PM
The idea of a heavily guarded castle is a bit erroneous. Except in times of war castles were fairly lightly guarded. Dover castle, the largest and strongest castle in England had a standing night guard of 20 wardens and two sergeants. As the castle has over twenty towers this is less than one guard a tower and certainly isn't a lot.Most gatehouses of any size have a porters room at ground level where a porter can meet callers. In his book Dover Castle Jonathan Coad quotea a 13C document about the rules for a porter
The porters at the gate shall not suffer any persons to enter, until they have taken particular notice of them, and if they be strangers they shall not step within the sill of the wicket, but one of the Porters is to call the Constable, and in his absence, his lieutenant; but every person seeking admittance is to receive civil treatment ... The gates are never to be left during the day to the care of any persons but the porters, and they are always to have the wicket secured with bolts. After the bridge is drawn up and the great gates shut, they are not to be opened until the rising of the sun.
This suggest that a casually visitor would not be admitted at night. To emphasis this point even the King would have difficulties entering his own castle at night as the following quote from the same book suggests.
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The peripatetic nature of medieval royal courts too, meant that Dover castle was frequently visited by the monarch. The thirteenth-century Statutes of the castle indicate that sometimes there was little warning of such royal descents:
If the king arrives unexpectedly in the night, the great gates shall not be opened to him, but he shall go to the postern called the King’s Gate [now Fitzwilliam Gate], towards the north and there the Constable and those who accompany him, may admit the king and a certain number of his suite. When the king is admitted he has the command, and in the morning, when it is full day, he may admit the remainder of his company.
So if your horseman arrived at Dover castle and shouted up at a guard he would be told to go away until the morning - the need to remind the porter to be civil suggests that the common practice may not have been that polite. (I've assuming it's a man a lone women might be admited but on the assumption she was a prostitute, known to the guard and there for business reasons. A Lady would not concievable be alone.)
However, the medieval period was a long time, castles were of many sizes owned by many people of different personalities so there was definately no standard practice. I imagine that some quite large castles had a porter who slept in the room by the gatehouse and who was the only guard whilst the lord was not in residence (All big nobles had several homes and castles and they moved around these).
So to your story. Would your visitor be meet by a sentry at the gate? (in one of those nice sentry boxes) - almost certainly not. Would there be guard on the wall to shout down to him? - possibly for a large royal castle or a large baronial castle in unsettled times. More likely he'd have to shout and hope to wake someone but even then he would be likely to told to 'go away' (or words to that effect) and return in the morning. (Medieval people wore good thick clothing, were not used to central heating even the wealthy were used to uncomfortable sleeping so sleeping out at night would not present a problem.) So for your visitor to gain entry to a castle in the middle of the night he had better have a very convincing story. Even if he gains entry he is unlikely to get in through the main gate but will enter by either a small side door (a postern) or a small door in the main gate (a wicket) and his horse would have to remain outside until morning. Since horses are expensive and since the crime rate was high he'd better have a good reason for risking his horse.
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And as I rode by Dalton-Hall Beneath the turrets high, A maiden on the castle-wall Was singing merrily: The Outlaw by Sir Walter Scott
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