On this day (20 May) in 1217 the Siege of Lincoln ended. Lincoln Castle had been defended throughout by a noblewoman, Nicola de la Haye. And she was far from the only medieval woman to have defended her home against military force…

The popular image of sieges, as of any medieval warfare, is populated by men. Knights in chainmail, on horseback, wielding swords or maces; male engineers shooting trebuchets and springalds; grunt footmen pushing rams into doorways or falling from castle walls. And it would be disingenuous to deny that this was generally the experience of war. However, we should not let it completely overshadow the known involvement of certain medieval women in sieges, and the trust placed in them as fortress custodians by their male allies.

Nicola de la Haye is a name that deserves to be better known. As hereditary castellan of Lincoln Castle, she withstood sieges of her home on three separate occasions. During the first, in 1191, she defended the castle against Richard I’s ally, William Longchamp while her husband was away fighting for the cause of Prince John. A year after her husband’s death, in the summer of 1216 she faced off an invasion by the French. And finally, having been appointed Sheriff of Lincolnshire in her own right by King John, she held the castle against the Dauphin of France and his siege machinery in spring 1217. The castle was bombarded throughout March, April and May while Nicola and her second-in-command, Sir Geoffrey de Serland led the defence. On 20 May 1217, an English army arrived to relieve Lincoln and the castle was liberated after fierce fighting in the nearby city. The French were driven away. Lincoln Castle – and Nicola herself – had played a crucial role in preventing the Dauphin’s cause from triumphing.

There are a number of examples of medieval women holding custodial power over fortresses, even extending to defensive authority in times of war. In 1331 Alice, heiress-daughter of Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln, was granted full hereditary custody of Lincoln castle by Edward III, just as her father had held the right. This was for both her and her new husband, the magnificently monikered, Ebulo Lestrange. Evidence of female custody of fortresses is also provided by the licences they were granted to further fortify their castles. In 1283, Lady Matilda de Mortimer obtained murage (the power to improve the wall, gate and ditch) for Radnor, a dependency of her castle; in 1339 Elizabeth de Burgh did likewise for Callan, in Ulster; and Matilda de Marmion had a licence to crenellate West Tanfield in Yorkshire in 1348 – a reiteration of an earlier request by her late husband. While these improvements to their homes were in some sense aesthetic, they were also a reflection of the power and authority of the castle’s owner.

Female hold on a castle was more than merely symbolic. Joan de Vernon, widow of Richard Vernon, was left in possession of the wardship and castle of Coity, in Wales, despite it being a target for a number of rebellious attacks over the past decade. Sure enough, in 1412 a disputed succession spilled over into further violence when Gilbert Denys and William Gamage ‘with no moderate multitude of armed men’ went to ‘the castle of Coitfy in Wales and besieged it and proposed to expel Joan… from her possession of it.’ The King, Henry IV ordered six commissioners to go and assist Joan in expelling the besiegers. Isabella de Vesci – an ally of Isabella of France, no shrinking violet herself – held Bambugh and Scarborough Castles during the reigns of Edward I and II. These fortresses, perilously perched in Northumberland and Yorkshire, could be instrumental in the ongoing wars between England and Scotland.

In 1365, the major border fortress of Wark on Tweed was put into the custody of Joan, widow of John de Coupland. She was to hold Wark according to terms that show confidence was reposed in her by the castle’s lord, John de Montague. The contract leasing Wark to her said she was responsible for ‘guarding, maintaining and defending the premises during the said term against all men, save the King and his eldest son’. A later clause mentions ‘in case the said castle be taken or burnt by enemies’ – clearly, Joan was expected to defend the castle against potential violent attack, and an unhappy outcome was far from unthinkable. Essentially, she had all the responsibility for expelling attacking Scots.

A noblewoman’s status as lone – or chief – defender of her valuable fortified home could also make her the target of personal attack. The Patent Roll of February 1382 records one such case:

‘Commission of oyer and terminer to… (five appointees) on complaint by Lettice, late wife of John de Kiriel, knight, that John Cornwaile, knight, with (nine named companions) and others with ladders scaled by night and entered her castle of Ostrynghangre (Westhanger, near Folkestone, Co. Kent) broke her houses and chambers, searched for her so loosely that she was compelled to hide in some water, narrowly escaping death thereby, carried off 12 horses, value £40, besides other goods, and assaulted her servants.’

Was she hiding in a cistern, or the moat itself? She was clearly the target of this attack on her home and probably rightly feared abduction. One can only presume that her cunning decision to hide ‘in some water’ was the result of forewarning of her imminent danger.

Women were not always, of course, triumphant in such circumstances, and sometimes endured personal tragedy as a result of being in the very middle of war. When the private feud between the Berkeleys and Talbots flared up in Gloucestershire during the Wars of the Roses, Margaret, lady Lisle, found herself captive in the manor of Wotton as it was attacked by the Berkeleys. Her husband had only just been killed by the soldiers besieging her, and Margaret was so terrified she gave birth to a son who was stillborn.

These are only a few instances of female involvement in sieges, but they deserve to be investigated and, perhaps, celebrated just as much as their male counterparts. As Christine de Pizan wrote in the early fifteenth century:

“We’ve never heard

About a marvel quite so great,

For all the heroes who have lived

In history can’t measure up

In bravery against the Maid.”

Further Reading

There is a full account of Nicola de la Haye’s life by Catherine Hanley at Sarah’s History.

The information on Margaret, lady Lisle, was from my Masters thesis. See also J. Smyth (ed. J. Maclean), The Berkeley Manuscripts: The Lives of the Berkeleys, Lords of the Honour, Castle and Manor of Berkeley in the County of Gloucester, from 1066 to 1618, Volume II (Gloucester, 1883).

For the rest, see Charles Coulson’s Castles in Medieval Society, a great example of a historian of this supposedly male arena including women in his work.