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It is rare to find a moment frozen in time, rarer still to find such a crucial moment in English history so frozen. Kirby Muxloe is just such a turning point, a magnificent red-brick castle caught almost at the exact minute that the bricklayers walked off the job when they found out that their boss wasn't paying them. He was dead.
The boss was the parvenu William Lord Hastings who was executed in 1483 by the future King Richard III probably, and I must stress the 'probably', for supporting the two little princes in the Tower, the sons of the recently dead King Edward IV.
Edward's brother, Richard, the Duke of Gloucester, had been quite affable that morning, attending a meeting which included senior English political figures, to discuss the Coronation of the older boy. As the story goes Richard stepped out of the room for a few minutes and then returned with armed guards screaming treason and had three men arrested – the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Lord Stanley and William Lord Hastings.
Hastings was dragged out on to Tower Green and was beheaded without trial. Oddly the other two men were released within a few days and, more oddly, the Hastings family was not attainted by Richard. Attainder, for treason, normally meant the ruin of the family, with all property confiscated by the king. In this case the Hastings family kept their fortune and one might almost suspect that treason was never an issue. Even odder Hastings was still buried in the royal chapel at Windsor Castle next to his old friend Edward IV, something which King Richard could easily have forbidden. Most traitors ended up with their head on a spike, not buried in their accuser's family mausoleum! Do we think that the 'conventionally pious' Richard had a pang of guilt? You bet!
Lord Hastings had been an old drinking and whoring pal of Edward IV. They fought alongside each other, went into exile together – when fortune turned against Edward – and they shared mistress Jane Shore, among others. Of all the people likely to have opposed Richard in taking the crown from the boys, Hastings is likely to have put up the greatest objection. It appears Hastings had been passing information to Richard about the hated Rivers family (Edward's equally parvenu in-laws) who stood to lose much if their nephew did not gain the throne. It also appears that Richard may have confided his true plan to Hastings, hoping for support. It appears Hastings recoiled from the plan and had to be silenced by Richard who was still playing the 'reluctant monarch' and would continue to do so for several days.
In short… Hastings was probably the one honest man in the room and that was one too many for Richard. He had to go but Richard still looked after the dead man's family and treated him with honour.
Hastings already owned other castles, such as Ashby-de-la-Zouch, where he also spent heavily on building. But Kirby Muxloe appears to have been his pet project, a castle or defended manor house with a picturesque wet moat and gun ports for cannons to fire across the moat or cross-fire the entrance. It had a drawbridge, a portcullis and gates of a traditional medieval castle but the gun ports were 'bang' up to date – if you will pardon the pun. The red brick was fashionable but – in the style of the used car dealer who moves into the Stockbroker Belt and puts white-washed lions at his gate – William had his initials 'WH' and the family shield set into the brickwork in darker bricks. It was almost bad taste. "I've made it to the big league" etc etc.
The site today retains the almost complete brick-lined moat, the footings for all the walls and the almost complete west tower and a partially complete gatehouse. The gatehouse might have been planned to be around 100 feet high which, if complete, would have rivalled the earlier red-brick Tattershall Castle. You can see courses of bricks which were part-laid and then abandoned on the east tower foundations while the west tower and gatehouse show how high the curtain walls would have been. Both still retain the 'steps' where the brick walls would have been seamlessly integrated brick by brick later.
One mistake, in the level of the moat, put the first set of proposed gun ports underwater and these were only found when the moat was drained during restoration. At its heart there was an earlier stone medieval manor house and it is likely that this would have been retained at the centre 'for the time being' as the castle was built around it. Think of this as 'living in a caravan on-site' like in an episode of TV's Grand Designs.
The castle is also the biggest memorial to the two little princes in the Tower, Edward and Richard, and the only memorial they had until bones (thought to be theirs) were discovered in the Tower in the 17th century and later transferred to Westminster Abbey.
Ultimately it is a memorial to a loyal man who lived in the period of Machiavellian politics and paid for this loyalty with his life.
My full Kirby Muxloe set is here: link
Tattershall Castle can be viewed here: link