in with strict regard to the
rules of mediaeval military architecture. When it was the great Border
stronghold its governor commanded a force of no less than two thousand
men, who were employed in a complicated system of day and night watching
to guard against forays by the Scots. The day watchers began at
daylight, and blew a horn on the approach of the foe, when all men were
bound on pain of death to respond for the general defence. The great
feature of the restored castle is the Prudhoe Tower, built about
twenty-five years ago. After entering the barbican, which admits to the
outer ward, the visitor passes between the Abbot's Tower on the left and
the Corner Tower and Auditor's Tower on the right. Earl Hugh's turreted
tower also rises boldly from the battlements. Passing through the middle
gatehouse, the keep, constructed in the form of a polygon around a
court, is seen on the right hand, and in the gateway-wall is Percy's
famous draw-well, with a statue of St. James above blessing the waters.
Opposite this draw-well is a covered drive which leads to the entrance
of Prudhoe Tower. This tower is a magnificent structure, containing the
family and state-apartments, built and decorated in the Italian style,
and approached by a staircase twelve feet wide. It was built at enormous
cost, and alongside is a vaulted kitchen of ample proportions,
constructed in the baronial style, where there are sufficient facilities
to prepare dinner for six hundred persons at one time, while the
subterranean regions contain bins for three hundred tons of coal. Such
is this great baronial Border stronghold, replete with memories of the
warlike Percies. From here Hotspur sallied forth to encounter the
marauding Scottish force which under Douglas had laid waste England as
far as the gates of York, and almost within the sight of the castle is
the bloody field of Otterbourn, where Douglas fell by Hotspur's own
hand, though the English lost the day and Hotspur himself was captured.
Again, as war's fortunes change, just north of Alnwick is Humbleton
Hill, where the Scots had to fly before England's "deadly arrow-hail,"
leaving their leader, Douglas, with five wounds and only one eye, a
prisoner in the hands of the Percies. It was from Alnwick's battlements
that the countess watched "the stout Earl of Northumberland" set forth,
"his pleasure in the Scottish woods three summer days to take"--an
expedition from which he never returned. Such was the his