Published in Windlesora 09 (1990)
© WLHG
In 1216, after King John had disregarded the promises he was forced to make in Magna Carta, Windsor and district suffered considerable damage during a three month siege of the Castle. Old Windsor Church was also damaged and had to be rebuilt.
After an earlier siege in 1196, when Prince John (in rebellion against his brother) had surrendered after two months to ‘an innumerable multitude of knights and foot soldiers’ (Maurice Bond: The Story of Windsor), much damage had to be repaired. By 1196 the Castle was in good order again. Then in 1199 King Richard I died and was followed on the throne by his youngest brother, John.
In 1216, the last year of King John’s reign, the Castle suffered greater damage when the western walls were partly destroyed. The King had gone from the Castle to Runnymede in 1215 to capitulate to his barons who were in revolt, but peace did not follow. In May 1216 French forces under Prince Louis, landed to help the barons fight against John – only Lincoln, Dover and Windsor fought back. On 24th June the French besieged Dover Castle and, four days later, the barons besieged Windsor Castle, while the King himself was absent. The Castle was defended by the Constable, Engelard de Cygony, with sixty knights and many foot soldiers. During the three month siege, the defenders made many sorties to drive back the attackers and their siege engines from the walls. Suddenly, in September, the besiegers withdrew by night leaving their tents behind.
What was the reason? Some say that they intended to chase King John’s own army into East Anglia – where on 18th October John died at Newark, after a surfeit of peaches and beer. Actually, a fleet of reinforcements approaching Dover from France on 24th August had been opposed from the Cinque ports by Sandwich sailors led by the Constable of Dover Castle, Hubert de Burgh. Lacking guns and ammunition, the sailors threw buckets of quicklime into the air up wind of the French fleet, so that the French sailors were blinded. The Sandwich men boarded and captured their opponents. The reinforcements intended for the sieges of Dover and Windsor thus were defeated by the first use of ‘chemical warfare’ on record.
By 1230 the three drum towers that still stand along the western wall of Windsor Castle had been built, replacing the old rectangular towers which had been vulnerable to sappers’ mining,
Gordon Cullingham
Windsor Local History Group 