When talking about womenfolk asserting themselves, and in particular the lady heroines of Dorset, the mind immediately switches to Lady Mary Bankes, who held besieged Corfe Castle, one of the impregnable fortresses of the kingdom for hundreds of years, for several months during the Civil Wars.
It was a remarkable achievement, and one showing great valour. The Bankes family were Royalists and Sir John Bankes, Chief Justice of England, was with King Charles II at his Oxford headquarters during the conflict.
Lady Mary, who came of Norman stock, had with her her six children when the fortress, the only one in the county not taken by the Parliamentarians, was surrounded. With a few retainers, never more than 40, she kept it secure. Hot coals were dropped on the heads of Cromwell’s men as they tried to scale the walls.
Sir John returned, but in a second attempt in 1644 the postern gate was traitorously opened from within the castle complex and it fell to its attackers.
A bronze figure of Lady Mary stands by the marble staircase at Kingston Lacy at Wimborne Minster, one of the great houses of Dorset, which was built on the site of another which had once belonged to the Crown and had come by marriage to a son of John Lacy, Earl of Lincoln.
The keys of the castle were kept and were hung up in the library, and many old pictures were saved too by Lady Mary. As for the castle, it was looted and partially destroyed. King Charles II was to restore the ruins to Sir Ralph Bankes, the heir, and today they make up one of the most striking landmarks in the south of England.
The Princess of Wales planted a rare Liquidambar tree when she visited the castle and had lobster tea at the Bankes Arms in 1908.
Corfe Castle saw the suppression of the Anglo-Saxon dynasty, murder, assassination, and attacks of the Danes in its long life. Standing on a steep mound within the Purbeck Hills, it was the scene of a murder as early as 978 AD by Elfrida of Devon, who had inherited it from King Edgar, her husband.
She had a son who was not hers stabbed in the back. And 22 French knights were starved to death in the dungeons during the reign of bad King John, who today lies in Worcester Cathedral. Edward II was a prisoner in the castle before being taken to Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire to die in brutal fashion before being buried in Gloucester Cathedral, in an ornate tomb.
George Duke of Clarence, who was drowned in a barrel of malmsey wine in the Tower of London, as Shakespeare tells, was an owner of the castle. A resident at one time was Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. Another was Sir Christopher Hatton, who was granted Corfe Castle by Queen Elizabeth I.
In the same period the town of Corfe Castle at the foot of the mount was granted the right of returning two members of Parliament, and cannon were mounted on the walls as a defence against the Spanish Armada in 1588.
From the time of the Norman Conquest the building was held as a royal castle, a castle of such strength and in such a superb defensive position that only the invention of gunpowder was to undermine its prestige. It was in this part of the southwest that the Lancastrian lords assembled an army.
Much later, Parliament captured Dorchester, Lyme Regis, Melcombe, Weymouth, Wareham and Poole. On May Day 1643,the rebels from Dorchester attempted to take the castle during the annual stag-hunt. Later, guns were brought into it from all over the island, to defend it. Threatening letters were delivered to Lady Mary.
At that time the castle had become almost the only place of strength between Exeter and London, holding out for the royal cause.
When Lord Chief Justice Bankes died in 1644 all his property was forfeited because of his loyalty to the King. After nearly three years of residence his brave lady had been dispossessed of her previously redoubtable fortress, which was left to the plunderers.
Many mansions in Dorset have been constructed out of its stone and timber. And it may be that the whole of the family plate lies at the bottom of a deep well within the castle boundary.
