Secrets Of Great British Castles - Season 1, Episode 4 Caernarfon Castle
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00:00For me, a great British castle is a fortress, a palace, a home.
00:07And a symbol of power, majesty and fear.
00:13For nearly 1,000 years,
00:16castles have shaped Britain's famous landscape.
00:22These magnificent buildings have been home to some of the greatest heroes
00:27and villains in our national history.
00:30And many of them still stand proudly today,
00:34bursting with incredible stories of warfare, treachery, intrigue and even murder.
00:45Join me, Dan Jones, as I uncover the secrets behind six great British castles.
00:52This time, I'm exploring one of the most stunning castles in the land.
00:57This fortress was built on tyranny and has survived the bloodiest rebellion.
01:03It's a great Welsh castle, where love and sex, birth and death all come together.
01:11And beneath it all is a power struggle that helped create Britain as we know it today.
01:22MUSIC
01:30Today, Caernarfon is a quaint little seaside town,
01:34where busloads of tourists come for day trips.
01:42And the reason it has so many visitors is its castle.
01:52Caernarfon doesn't just look like the perfect medieval castle.
01:56It's a place that's right at the heart of the story of Britain,
02:00a story of myth, legend, rebellion, conquest
02:04and the struggle for the right to call yourself Prince of Wales.
02:08The Grey Fortress was a place of rejoicing on this day.
02:11While the crowds cheered their monarch,
02:13the young prince, with a dignity and assurance...
02:17In the summer of 1969, Charles Windsor, the Queen's eldest son,
02:22was created Prince of Wales.
02:25The ceremony was rich in significance, and so was the place it was held.
02:30A modern prince in a medieval castle, kneeling before the Queen.
02:34To live and die against all manner of folks.
02:37It's no accident that the heir to the throne of England
02:41has been called the Prince of Wales.
02:44And Caernarfon Castle is at the centre of that story.
02:50Today, the title Prince of Wales is largely symbolic,
02:54but in the past, its power has been very real.
02:57The prince has been someone to save Wales, to protect Wales
03:01and to control Wales, and all that real and symbolic power
03:05comes together here at Caernarfon Castle.
03:08The Queen knew it when she invested Prince Charles on this spot.
03:12And the man who built this castle, King Edward I, well, he certainly knew it.
03:25This is a brute of a fortress.
03:28Caernarfon Castle is unashamedly intimidating.
03:33And so was the man who built it at the end of the 13th century.
03:37Wherever Edward I went, he left his mark on the landscape in stone.
03:43Here at Caernarfon, he created one of Britain's most impressive castles
03:47to show off English dominance over Wales.
03:52But before any of that could happen, he had to crush the Welsh.
03:59In 1274, Edward I returned from the Crusades
04:03to be officially crowned King of England.
04:08In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
04:12Amen.
04:14But for Edward, an ambitious warrior king ruling England would never be enough.
04:20In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
04:25Amen.
04:27The new king had set his sights on something that, for 200 years,
04:32no English ruler had ever managed to do.
04:37He wanted to conquer Wales.
04:45And Caernarfon Castle would be at the centre of this conquest.
04:55It was said that the Welsh were very easy to beat in a single battle,
04:59but very difficult to beat in a war.
05:08The Welsh were masters of what we'd now call guerrilla warfare.
05:11They used the terrain and the weather to their advantage
05:14and they specialised in ambush and night attacks.
05:17To the outside world, and particularly the English,
05:20they were noble savages with long hair and bare legs
05:23against whom the normal rules of war didn't apply.
05:29Here in the forests of Snowdonia, just a few miles from Caernarfon,
05:33the powerful native prince of Wales, Llywelyn ap Griffith,
05:37had waged sporadic war against the English for many years.
05:41In 1276, Edward set out to destroy him.
05:46By the summer of 1277,
05:49Edward had raised a massive army of 15,500 men,
05:54ten times as many as he'd taken on Crusade.
05:58Edward's invasions of Wales were real shock and awe affairs.
06:02He literally cut a swathe straight through the forests of north Wales.
06:08As he went, he seized castles.
06:10He took at least seven from the native Welsh princes.
06:18But better than that, he also had a plan,
06:21a radical new weapon for the total conquest of Wales.
06:26That new weapon was stone.
06:29Edward needed to secure his victory and power over the Welsh.
06:34He commanded his engineers to create a ring of castles around north Wales,
06:39reaching from Aberystwyth to Conwy.
06:42In each castle, he could leave a permanent garrison of soldiers.
06:47At the first sniff of Welsh rebellion, they could ride out and crush it.
06:52Edward's troops tore through the countryside,
06:55leaving their marks of conquest on the landscape
06:58like the blows of a great stone hammer.
07:02And nowhere did that hammer fall harder or sink deeper
07:07than here at Caernarfon.
07:18Stuart, here we are on the edge of Snowdonia, next to the water.
07:21Why is Caernarfon Castle here?
07:24It's part of a chain of castles, the Ring of Iron.
07:28OK, so the last bastion of Welsh resistance to the English
07:33was essentially centred in north Wales around Snowdonia.
07:37It was the rebel base, if you like.
07:39And so Edward needed to find a way to suppress
07:43that kind of continual rebellion.
07:46So what he did was he constructed a chain of fortresses
07:50around Snowdonia, a whole series of them.
07:53This is one of those castles.
07:55So essentially, you've got a continual reminder, if you like,
07:59that your land has been taken and it can be held against you.
08:03So this castle is all about Edward I stamping English power in a ring
08:08right round Snowdonia, right in the heart of rebellious Wales.
08:11You've got it in one, and if you build in stone, you're there to stay.
08:23Edward was determined that Caernarfon would be a fortress
08:26like nothing the Welsh had ever seen before.
08:30Work on the castle started in 1283.
08:36To oversee construction,
08:38Edward hired one of Europe's greatest military architects,
08:42Master James of St George, from Savoy in eastern France.
08:47Over the next 12 years,
08:49Master James would design six of Edward's castles.
08:53Caernarfon shows us the very best of his skill and experience.
08:59Now, Master James didn't build Caernarfon Castle all on his own.
09:03He was a sort of master foreman
09:05who specialised in putting up castles in double quick time,
09:09four to eight years in most cases.
09:11And, of course, that took a lot of manpower.
09:14In 1285, there were 1,000 men working on Caernarfon Castle alone.
09:22He used cutting-edge technology to create a siege-proof castle,
09:27and nowhere was that more evident than at Caernarfon's main entrance.
09:31The King's Gate was the most fearsome threshold of any British castle.
09:36So, Stuart, this is the nice tourist entrance way to the castle at the moment,
09:40but actually this would have been one of the most dangerous bits of the castle to be in, wouldn't it?
09:44Basically, this was a gateway like none other.
09:47It's complete overkill.
09:50This thing ran all the way past you and right round the corner,
09:54so it was a big kind of, you know, angled structure, right-angled structure,
09:59and within that structure, five gates.
10:02One after the other, just in sequence like that?
10:04Up above, you've got the classic murder holes
10:07where the hot sand is being poured through, goes in all the chinks of the armour, burns you alive,
10:12and then either side of you, you've actually got arrow slits.
10:16It is a statement as well about power, obviously,
10:19but, I mean, it does make this gateway absolutely indestructible.
10:23The Welsh trembled in the shadow of Caernarfon Castle and its warlord, Edward I,
10:29but what they didn't know was that one woman had a huge influence over the King,
10:35the castle and the future of Wales.
10:38She was Edward's queen, Eleanor of Castile.
10:42The conquest of Wales was driven by one of the greatest love stories of the Middle Ages.
10:53To secure his conquest of Wales, the great English warrior king, Edward I,
10:59built a massive ring of stone castles to scare the natives into total submission.
11:05Caernarfon was the bedrock of this conquest.
11:10If you want to subjugate an entire land and its people, this is how you do it.
11:15Caernarfon wasn't just supposed to be a great fortress.
11:19It was also intended to be a magnificent royal palace.
11:24He needed a palace because, when he wasn't fighting,
11:28Edward was building a large royal family.
11:31He did it with the support of his beloved wife, Eleanor.
11:35She was a powerful and intriguing woman from northern Spain.
11:40Edward loved his queen deeply, which, for arranged royal marriages, was pretty rare.
11:46To bring Wales under the rule of the English crown,
11:51Edward and Eleanor came up with a brilliant political plan.
11:55How much of a political influence do you think Eleanor was on Edward?
11:59I think she was a huge political influence because she came from a family
12:03which thought very deeply about what the role of a king should be
12:07and also what the role of a conquering king should be in pacifying a conquered nation.
12:12So she had all the theory behind her,
12:15which the English kings frankly lacked in the recent years in terms of conquest.
12:20And so she was very much able to advise him in terms of military approaches and administration.
12:31There has been this idea that she was the kind of perfect medieval submissive queen,
12:36whereas the real woman was very dynamic, very intellectual, very hard in some ways.
12:45A very successful businesswoman who built up a massive property empire
12:49which kept the queens of England solvent for centuries.
12:52Sara, history remembers Master James of St George for physically building the castles
12:58and Edward for having the political vision.
13:00But are we overlooking Eleanor's role?
13:03Well, I think when you look at the design elements of the castle,
13:08I see an influence from her in the very shape of the Eagle Tower,
13:13which does have a resonance of the Castilian seal,
13:18which was a polygonal tower with three turrets, just like the Eagle Tower.
13:23So the Eagle Tower, which we see here with its three turrets in this polygonal shape,
13:27is a symbol of Castile?
13:29A polygonal tower with three turrets was the symbol of Castile.
13:36For the ambitious King Edward, military rule alone wasn't enough.
13:43To make his power permanent, he had to seal his conquest in blood.
13:52Edward had his defensive ring of castles, with Carnarvon as the jewel in the crown.
13:57Now, could Eleanor give him the one thing he needed to solidify political power?
14:02A prince.
14:04By the time construction on the castle had started in 1283,
14:09Eleanor and Edward had had 15 children.
14:13Their eldest son, Alfonso, was heir to the throne,
14:16but many of the others had died young.
14:19For insurance, Edward was desperate for another male child.
14:24So Eleanor, like all aristocratic mothers-to-be,
14:28turned to the latest and weirdest medical advice to help her conceive another boy.
14:35After all, the future of the dynasty depended on it.
14:42So, Lydia, how did people think about conception in the Middle Ages?
14:46They did come up with different remedies.
14:49So, for example, if a woman wanted to not conceive,
14:52they would say to take body parts of animals and to put them around her neck
14:56and wear those during sexual intercourse to stop her from having a conception.
15:00So literally a necklace with different parts of...
15:02Literally around her neck, yeah.
15:04And, as we know, politically in the Middle Ages,
15:07it's better to have a son than a daughter, alas.
15:10How did people in medieval times try and make sure
15:14they conceived a son instead of a daughter?
15:16Well, there's lots of little things that they tend to go about doing
15:19during the act of sexual intercourse.
15:21So, for example, if a woman glitches her fist during intercourse,
15:24that's said to conceive a male.
15:26If the male has strong virulent thoughts during sexual intercourse,
15:30then he should be then able to conceive a male.
15:33If he looks towards the direction of the sun,
15:35then hopefully he will be able to conceive a male child as well.
15:38So there's different combinations of almost a folkloric and a medical tradition
15:43that tend to find their way into medieval medical manuals.
15:45So, presumably, if you put them all together,
15:47clench your fist, look at the sun...
15:49I can't remember, then your chances are going to be tripled.
15:52One would hope, but I'm pretty sure it didn't actually have that much of an effect.
15:56Very much a placebo effect, possibly.
16:04HE DRUMS
16:12Edward and Eleanor arrived here in Caernarfon in July 1283,
16:16just after building work started on the castle.
16:19And straightaway, Eleanor conceived her next child.
16:22So you have to ask, was that an act of passion
16:25brought on by the romantic Welsh countryside?
16:27Well, far more likely, it was an act of hard-nosed politics.
16:31But this would only pay off if she had a son.
16:40Nine months later, Edward asked the heavily pregnant Eleanor
16:44to make a long journey from the east of England to north-west Wales.
16:49Edward's queen was to give birth to a prince,
16:53and she was going to do it in Caernarfon Castle.
16:57Was it more dangerous, in some ways, to give birth as a queen
17:00than as, say, a farmer's wife?
17:03I would say yes, mostly because there was a lot more pressure as well
17:06that came with the birth, so that obviously would put a lot more stress
17:09on the woman herself.
17:11If you combine that with someone like Eleanor, who's constantly on the road,
17:14she's constantly being jostled around, the roads are not smooth,
17:17they're very bumpy, and if you're quite pregnant at this time,
17:20already dealing with the stress of having lost so many children
17:23and lost so many heirs and wanting to produce a son,
17:26that would have caused a much more dangerous situation for her.
17:35By all accounts, the medieval birthing chamber would have been
17:38a very terrible place.
17:40They would have closed the windows, shut the woman in.
17:43They thought the air coming in would have been bad for the child,
17:46so it would have been a very hot, miserable, damp place
17:49to have to deliver a baby.
17:54And obviously, but if you're a woman like Eleanor of Castile,
17:57it's a little more difficult if you're in the middle of so much
18:00political disarray, obviously with Edward's Wars going on
18:03and having to be in an unfinished building and everything else.
18:06It wouldn't have been the most comfortable place to be.
18:09So it's quite unusual for a queen to ever really have
18:13a nice, calm, safe pregnancy.
18:15They always seem to be jostled about or on the road somehow.
18:18Poor Eleanor, and she went through this, what, 16, 18 times?
18:22Over the course of about a part of two decades, yes.
18:25On 25th April 1284, Eleanor gave birth to her 16th child.
18:32Since the castle was still under construction,
18:35the child was probably born in a temporary outbuilding.
18:39But all the danger and discomfort was worth it.
18:43Eleanor had a son.
18:45They named him Edward, after his father,
18:48an English prince born in Wales.
18:55Edward had huge political intelligence.
18:58He was a master of what we'd now call propaganda, or PR.
19:04Edward was determined to win over the Welsh, and legend has it
19:08one of the tricks he pulled was to promise he'd name
19:11one of their own as Prince of Wales,
19:13only to present them with his own infant son,
19:17saying he gave them a prince born in Wales
19:20who did not speak a word of English.
19:25The new prince arrived in a nick of time.
19:28Just four months after Edward was born,
19:31his older brother, Alfonso, died.
19:34The new baby was heir to the throne,
19:37and from now on, Prince of Wales would be an English title,
19:42forever linked to Caernarfon Castle.
19:45But let's not forget about the child's mother.
19:48Eleanor was 42 when Prince Edward was born.
19:51She'd bear 16 children, at least for the king,
19:54as one every 18 months.
19:56Between the perils of childbirth,
19:58her loyalty to her husband and her desire to travel,
20:01she'd eventually work herself to death at the age of 49.
20:10Eleanor died from fever in 1290.
20:13Her death brought one chapter of Caernarfon's history to a close,
20:17and it left Edward almost inconsolable.
20:25To honour her memory,
20:27Edward ordered the building of 12 great memorial crosses
20:31along the route of her funeral procession,
20:34all the way from Lincoln to London.
20:37The last of these was at the village of Charing,
20:40now called Charing Cross.
20:44In December 1290,
20:46Eleanor was interred here at Westminster Abbey.
20:50Her tomb lies near her husband Edward's,
20:53now close in death as they were in life.
21:02Queen Eleanor had died helping bring Wales under English control.
21:08But the conquest of its resilient and defiant people
21:12was far from complete.
21:18Edward had land, he had his castle, he had a prince,
21:21but he still didn't have complete political control,
21:24because outside these walls, there was still serious unrest.
21:28And Caernarfon would be at the centre of a new Welsh rebellion.
21:33Caernarfon Castle was a powerful symbol
21:36of Edward I's conquest of Wales.
21:40It was also the birthplace of his son,
21:43the next in line to the English throne.
21:47But the Welsh weren't about to take this lying down.
21:51Rebellion was coming.
21:54Edward and his army of builders
21:56didn't just put up this magnificent castle,
21:59they also created a bustling town,
22:02protected by steep town walls,
22:04which they filled with English settlers
22:07and made it very clear that the Welsh were not welcome.
22:13The natives were treated as second-class citizens.
22:17They were treated as slaves,
22:20The natives were treated as second-class citizens
22:23with limited status and rights.
22:26They were banned from the fortified town at night
22:29and only allowed in on market days.
22:32It was a form of legal apartheid
22:34in which the English were the masters
22:36and the Welsh were an underclass.
22:42The Welsh resented Edward's taxes,
22:44they resented being made to pay him homage,
22:47and they resented not having the same rights
22:49as their English conquerors.
22:51But the final straw came when Edward tried to raise Welsh troops
22:54for a campaign in Gascony.
23:06Under a new rebel leader, Madagascar,
23:09Wales would rise up and threaten to destroy
23:12everything that Edward had established.
23:16In 1294, they seized their chance.
23:19Madag had raised an army
23:21and across Wales, English strongholds were besieged
23:24and towns burned.
23:26Edward's ring of stone was being destroyed.
23:29But all of this would mean nothing
23:31if the Welsh didn't take Caernarfon.
23:35Caernarfon was supposed to be the impregnable fortress.
23:39After all, thousands of men had worked for 11 years on building it.
23:43With its amazing design and its military and symbolic might,
23:46there was one problem.
23:48These massive northern walls weren't finished,
23:51in part because on this side,
23:53the castle was protected by the town walls,
23:55but not on market day.
23:57That was the one day of the week
23:59that locals could come freely in and out of town,
24:01and that's exactly what the rebels did.
24:03They just marched into the most heavily fortified place in the land
24:07and burned whatever they could.
24:09You can imagine how Edward felt about that.
24:14The king was furious.
24:16In December 1294, Edward marched into north Wales
24:21at the head of an army of 37,000 men.
24:30Within eight months, despite fierce resistance from the Welsh,
24:34the rebellion was crushed.
24:43Madog was imprisoned in London,
24:45where he'd spend the rest of his days.
24:48Edward had learned a lesson,
24:50and he put all his effort and money into rebuilding the castle.
24:56But he would never see it finished.
24:59Edward I died in 1307 while waging war against Scotland.
25:06He was one of the most powerful and intimidating monarchs
25:10ever to wear the English crown.
25:14By the time Edward I died,
25:16Caernarfon Castle was militarily intact and reinforced,
25:20looming over the town around it.
25:22But behind the walls, it was unfinished.
25:25Apart from Prince Edward's birth, there'd been no royal residence,
25:29and it didn't have an active military function either.
25:32All the same, what remained was a magical fairy-tale castle
25:37just waiting for its next King Arthur.
25:44For the next 100 years, a succession of English kings
25:48would keep their boots on the throats of the native Welsh.
25:55But the Madog Rebellion had planted the seeds of independence,
25:59and at the start of the 15th century,
26:02during the reign of Henry IV,
26:04a new leader rose up to take his place as King Arthur.
26:09His name was Owen Glyndwr.
26:25Owen Glyndwr was the first Welsh king to be crowned
26:28in the 16th century.
26:30He was the first Welsh king to be crowned in the 16th century.
26:35Owen Glyndwr was an educated man.
26:38He was a lawyer and a landowner.
26:40He'd been in the service of English kings,
26:42but he also really understood his own native mythology.
26:46And that's why, when he raised his flag of rebellion
26:49here on Tut Hill, above Caernarfon,
26:51it was the flag of Uthupendragon, King Arthur's legendary father.
26:55Pretty much every culture has its version of the Arthurian myth,
26:59the native hero hiding in a cave, waiting to rise again.
27:03Today we think of King Arthur as an English hero,
27:06but it's the Welsh who have always regarded themselves
27:09as the native Britons,
27:11and the Saxons and the Normans as the native English.
27:14And that's why, when King Arthur was crowned,
27:17it was the first Welsh king to be crowned in the 16th century.
27:21Today we think of King Arthur as an English hero,
27:24but it's the Welsh who have always regarded themselves
27:26as the native Britons,
27:28and the Saxons and the Normans as the foreign oppressors.
27:31So Arthur is a Welsh hero, a Welsh saviour and a Welsh king.
27:38Owen was appealing to the prophecy
27:40that a great man would rise again to lead the British,
27:43or in this case the Welsh, against the foreign oppressor,
27:46and that's exactly what happened.
27:49And he, more than anyone else, would put Caernarfon Castle to the test.
27:57The rebellion began in 1400.
28:00Owen's goal was not just to take Wales back,
28:03but to reclaim the title of Prince of Wales.
28:12Lindau went back to the tried and tested methods of guerrilla warfare.
28:16He was supported by friends, cousins and local lords,
28:20but what scared Henry the most
28:22was the thought that the Welsh were protected by magic, myth and even King Arthur.
28:27And it looked like Henry was right.
28:30As the war intensified, even the weather seemed to conspire against him.
28:35Heavy rain caused flooding and broke up his armies.
28:39The very elements appeared to have sided with Owen and the Welsh.
28:47And as if that wasn't enough, in February 1402,
28:51a great comet appeared in the heavens, hung around for three months,
28:55and for eight days it was bright enough to see even in broad daylight.
28:59That sort of thing was enough to scare the life
29:02out of even the toughest medieval mind.
29:06The comet's described in a poem, which says,
29:10The comet in the sky, see ye that blazing star,
29:14The heavens look down on freedom's war.
29:20And light her torch on high, bright upon the dragon's crest,
29:25It tells that glory to the king of Wales,
29:29And light her torch on high, bright upon the dragon's crest,
29:34It tells that glory's wings will rest when warriors meet to die.
29:43But to make matters worse for the English,
29:46Glendower had a new and powerful supporter, the King of France.
29:53If Glendower could take Caernarfon,
29:55he would achieve more than just a military victory.
29:58It would symbolise the end of more than a century of English rule in Wales.
30:04It's one thing having God on your side,
30:06but it's even better to have the French.
30:08They came to support Glendower in December 1403.
30:12They blockaded the Celtic and the Irish seas,
30:15and they brought the latest military technology to help take the castle.
30:19Siege engines, belfries and battering rams.
30:24But Caernarfon was no ordinary castle.
30:27The heavy gates were built to resist battering rams.
30:31The high walls, peppered with murder holes and narrow windows, were unscalable.
30:37Against the combined might of the Welsh and French forces,
30:42Caernarfon's garrison comprised just 28 soldiers.
30:46Astonishingly, that's all the English needed.
30:57So, Stuart, it's 1403.
30:59This castle's surrounded by own Glendower's men, all his French allies.
31:03But it was defended, the records say, by 28 men.
31:08How on earth could 28 men defend this castle?
31:11If we go up to the tower, I'll show you.
31:13You'll notice that there are no big windows in this castle.
31:17It's all arrow slits, arrow loops.
31:19All these tiny little...
31:21You've got these amazing passages which you can move from place to place
31:25within the castle, unseen, from tower to tower,
31:28from upper ward to lower ward, completely enclosed and defended,
31:33without the enemy seeing your movements.
31:35So they've got no idea when they approach this castle
31:38how many men are defending it.
31:41They've got no clue.
31:43This is one of the towers that projects out
31:45through the main sort of wall of the castle.
31:48And as you can see, what's really unique about this tower,
31:51and in fact the polygonal towers here in general,
31:54is the fact that you've got three really large arrow slits, right?
31:58Right.
31:59And basically, the guys outside, because of the sunlight
32:02and the light outside and the difference of the darkness inside,
32:05they can't see us.
32:06So we're totally invisible.
32:07We're invisible, basically.
32:08We've almost got sort of...
32:10Well, it's a 180-degree kind of range of fire.
32:12That's right.
32:13So you can defend this whole side
32:15just from these three little arrow slits.
32:17Basically, imagine that you've got your attacking force out there.
32:20Right.
32:21And I can give you a demonstration of that.
32:23Obviously, we can't use longbows, right, as much as I'd love to.
32:26But unfortunately, we're surrounded by members of the public now, right?
32:30But I do have an alternative for you.
32:32Well, come on, then.
32:33So here's the challenge.
32:35OK.
32:36So this is the modern longbow.
32:37There is, unbeknownst to you,
32:39an enemy gathering outside your castle.
32:41Right.
32:42There are men actually out there gathering.
32:45You are about to be attacked.
32:46Yeah.
32:47OK.
32:48And as the 28 men did in the past,
32:50we have to defend this castle.
32:52Well, you better grab yours as well.
32:54Right.
32:55Well, where do we hit first?
32:56We've got three options.
32:57Shall I take that one and you take this one?
32:58OK.
32:59No, I'll take that one and you take that one.
33:00OK, go for it.
33:03See him?
33:04See him?
33:05Yeah, and I think I've got one as well.
33:07So every time you hit them...
33:08Yeah.
33:09OK, one of the sensors on their head...
33:13..will actually flash red.
33:15Oh, yeah.
33:16Oh, I've got one.
33:17I think that was just a passing lady, actually.
33:19So, in fact, it only takes the two of us, really.
33:22Well, to defend this bit of the castle, it does indeed.
33:25Get away.
33:27OK, don't forget at the front of this castle,
33:29you've got water-filled ditches.
33:32Yeah.
33:33You've also got things like the murder holes in the gateways
33:36which you can pour red hot sand through.
33:40Well, we could clear this place out pretty quickly, I think.
33:44But, Stuart, in 1403,
33:47the attackers outside weren't just on foot,
33:49they had sows and belfries as well.
33:51What would that have been like?
33:52The walls in this place are so thick
33:55that it's just not going to work.
33:57So, actually, this place is virtually...unbreakable.
34:01The only thing that would have brought this place low,
34:04all right, is a massive trebuchet.
34:07Up here!
34:13Which the records tell us they didn't have.
34:16So, had they bought a trebuchet,
34:18they could gradually have pounded their way through the wall.
34:22But apart from that, it was a lost cause.
34:24So, that explains, then, 28 men, actually...
34:27It's impregnable.
34:28We could have done it with two.
34:29We could.
34:30Well, it would have been a lot of running around,
34:32but, yeah, we absolutely could.
34:33Let's go and finish them off, then. Come on.
34:35Let's do it.
34:40Twice the Welsh tried to take the castle.
34:43Twice they failed.
34:45Caernarfon really was siege-proof.
34:51Over the next 10 years,
34:53the Crown's forces clawed back the territory they'd lost.
34:57By 1415, Wales was back in England's hands.
35:02The leading rebels were dead or imprisoned.
35:08Oenglindar refused all offers of pardon.
35:12He was never captured and eventually disappeared without a trace.
35:17Today, he's a hero of Welsh nationalism,
35:20on a par with King Arthur himself.
35:23Oenglindar was eventually cleared as a traitor,
35:26but not until 1948, more than 500 years after his rebellion.
35:31But it didn't matter, because by that time,
35:34the Welsh dragon found its way onto the English throne.
35:43MUSIC PLAYS
35:49For 200 years, Caernarfon Castle in north Wales
35:53had been the symbol of conquest and the target of rebellion.
35:57Now it would bear witness to the greatest sucker punch
36:01in British history.
36:05A Welshman was about to seize the throne of England.
36:13Here, just outside the village of Penmynydd,
36:16on the island of Anglesey, 15 minutes away from Caernarfon Castle,
36:20we can find the origins of Britain's most famous royal dynasty,
36:24the Tudors.
36:27The Tudors of Penmynydd were three brothers,
36:30Rhys, Meredith and Gwilym.
36:32They were cousins and close allies of Oenglindar,
36:35and they lived right here in the house behind me.
36:43I guess most people, when they hear the name Tudor,
36:46think of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I and the royal court in London,
36:50but not many people know the dynasty started right here in this house,
36:54do they?
36:56No, I think that to come to have such a great dynasty
36:59founded from Oen Tudor, who lived here, born in 1400 here,
37:05but the house here actually predates even Caernarfon Castle,
37:10because we know there was a house here in about 890,
37:14and it's even mentioned in a deed in 1221.
37:17And so the connection with Caernarfon Castle here,
37:20the three Tudor brothers that were connected with Oenglindar,
37:24they lived in this house as well?
37:26They lived here, they were his cousins, first cousins,
37:30and many people think that they were more instrumental
37:35in actually raising a rebellion than Oenglindar.
37:40So we know for certain that in 1406,
37:43every single person on Anglesey who was a householder
37:47was fined for supporting the brothers who lived here.
37:50And that was sort of their ruin for a little while, wasn't it?
37:53The family fell out of favour.
37:55It was their ruin for a number of years, yes.
38:00The Tudors had picked the wrong side in Glindar's rebellion,
38:03but Meredithap Tudor survived, and he had a son, Owen Tudor,
38:07who made his way to the English court
38:09and began an astonishing upswing in the family fortunes.
38:13Owen's grandson was Henry Tudor,
38:15and that meant that within three generations,
38:18the Tudors had gone from guerrilla warriors
38:21to contenders for the English crown.
38:25The destiny of the Tudors was secured
38:28in one of the most divisive and bloody wars ever seen in Britain.
38:39This 30-year conflict, the Wars of the Roses,
38:43would end with a great battle at Bosworth
38:46between Richard III of York and Henry Tudor,
38:49the last hope of the Lancastrians.
38:53On August 7th, 1485,
38:55Henry Tudor landed on the south-west tip of Wales
38:58and marched across the countryside
39:00on his way to a date with destiny at the Battle of Bosworth.
39:04He marched below the flag with the sign of the dragon,
39:07casting himself once again as the son of prophecy,
39:11the heir of King Arthur, back to save the native Britons.
39:18Henry's Welshness was a really important part
39:20of his coming back to claim the crown of England.
39:23It wasn't just him saying that he was the heir of the House of Lancaster.
39:27He was claiming this ancient prophecy made by Merlin
39:30that said that one day this great new king would arrive
39:33and fulfil the destiny of the Britons.
39:38And sure enough, when Henry Tudor was crowned King Henry VII,
39:43he adopted the Welsh dragon into his royal coat of arms.
39:48From the Tudor years onwards,
39:50Carnarvon's military significance began to fade.
39:53Eventually, the castle became more interesting to tourists and historians
39:58than to soldiers and invaders.
40:03But the symbolic power of this magnificent fortress
40:07would not be forgotten.
40:12In the 20th century, politicians once again began to explore
40:16Carnarvon's ancient links to the crown.
40:19This army meant a great idea.
40:22Now, here's another thing I want to say.
40:25I'm a free man now and can say what I like.
40:31David Lloyd George was the first and only Welshman
40:34to be Prime Minister of Great Britain,
40:36and it was Lloyd George who was responsible
40:39for thrusting Carnarvon Castle back into the spotlight
40:42after centuries of obscurity,
40:44because it was here in July 1911
40:47that Lloyd George's fifth son, Edward, was invested as Prince of Wales
40:51in a mock medieval ceremony that was petitioned for by Lloyd George.
40:56And in July 1969,
40:59the investiture of Charles as Prince of Wales
41:02again invoked the royal symbolism of Carnarvon Castle.
41:13The gold rod.
41:18And the mantle.
41:20In giving to the prince these insignias of office,
41:24the Queen could not conceal the gentle touch of a mother,
41:27despite the formal text of the letters patent
41:30which proclaimed that Charles Philip Arthur George
41:34may have the name, style, title, state, dignity and honour
41:38of the Principality of Wales and Earldom of Chester.
41:48I think this castle still does exactly what it was supposed to.
41:52More than 700 years on,
41:54it's a physical sign of the relationship between these two nations,
41:58the fierce independent Welsh dragon
42:01and the imperious medieval English crown.
42:08At some point, there'll be a new Prince of Wales,
42:11invested, we presume, here at Carnarvon,
42:14and that ancient relationship will continue.
42:17Another great British moment played out in a magnificent Welsh castle.
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