Lincoln Castle

I mean, I think the one thing with the anarchy is that there's really only one battle, one set piece battle in the whole of the anarchy, and that's Lincoln in 1141.

But in season three, you get this problem that the Hightowers have encamped themselves within the walls of a town where there are innocent people and they're putting themselves in the households of all of these people to kind of... negate the ability to use a dragon just to burn the whole place and destroy them because it's such an imprecise weapon and the only battle that we get in the whole of the anarchy is the battle of lincoln in 1141 in which we get a battle kind of just outside the city walls but that that revolves around um The Earl of Chester seizing Lincoln Castle.

Stephen turns up there and lays siege to Lincoln Castle.

And then Robert of Gloucester turns up with an army so that Stephen is sort of caught between the castle garrison and this army that's coming to get him.

And I guess it asks similar questions about, you know, what does it mean to have a fight in a city? It's an unusual thing.

So these were apotropaic and these were protective and they were actually marked into buildings.

I think there are some in Lincoln, but I know at Lincoln Castle of a similar theme.

They've actually got like witch bottles.

And these, again, were like for the same purpose.

And this was because cats and horses were seen to have a sick sense.

So if there was like a evil spirit or a witch nearby, they would kind of know about it and you would know.

But in Lincoln itself, at Lincoln Castle, there's a witch ball from the 1800s that they have there.

And a witch ball, again, was the same kind of thing as like the witch marks to ward off a witch and you'd hang it in your house or your garden there.

Matilda dwelt first at Bristol, then at Gloucester, while Earl Robert took the field against King Stephen and was joined by Rafe, Earl of Chester, with whom the king had quarreled.

Stephen was besieging Lincoln Castle early in 1141 when the two earls attacked him.

A great flood had overflowed the banks of the old Foss Dyke and the little river Witham, and the city was protected by the fordless stream.

But the army of the disinherited lords, whom Stephen had driven from their lands to bestow them on his own men, under the bold leadership of Earl Robert, plunged into the stream and swam across.

It was this chaotic situation, combined with the violence and the breakdown of royal government, which partly led to the civil war becoming known as the Anarchy.

One of the most critical episodes in the entire war began in the first days of 1141, when Stephen and his followers laid siege to Lincoln Castle, where Ranulf of Chester and some of his closest supporters were lodging.

Stephen hoped to win this key stronghold lying between East Anglia and York in the north.

At first, Ranulf seemed to be caught unprepared, but the move soon turned against Stephen when, at the start of February 1141, Robert of Gloucester arrived to Lincoln to relieve the siege and to try to strike a decisive blow against Stephen's cause.

[laughs]

"Dear Russell and J-Man, what- one hot summer's day I went to, uh, uh, the picturesque Victorian pub in the shadow of Lincoln Castle for a beer."

Oh.

"The Sealed Knot.

I'm not lying when I say I've long been a fan of the city of Lincoln.

When I was researching a one-off show about Magna Carta many years ago, I found out there's an original copy of Magna Carta in which iconic Lincoln building? Castle.

Castle.

Good answer.

You didn't fall for it.