Lancaster was an ancient Roman station, as is shown by its name--Lune or Lone Castrum, the castle or camp on the Lune or Lone, the little river which washes its plain. For what saith Spencer in the Faery Queen:
"----After came the strong shallow Lone That to old Lancaster its name doth lend."
The memory of man goeth not back to the time when the first castle was built. Indeed it is of little consequence now, for it was almost entirely razed by the Scots in the fourteenth century.
The present noble structure, or rather the older part of it, is the work of John O'Gaunt, that son of a king who was almost a king himself, and who became the father of kings. To him is due the magnificent Gateway Tower, flanked by two octagonal turrets sixty-six feet high, surrounded by watch-towers. Around the towers and across the curtain, perforated by the gate, which connects them, are overhanging battlements with vertical openings for pouring down molten metal or hot water on the heads of assailants. In a niche in front is a full-length statue of John O'Gaunt in the costume of his day, placed there in 1822. The sole remaining turret of the Lungess Tower, eighty-eight feet high, is called John O'Gaunt's Chair. It commands a view of great extent, comprising the hills of Cumberland and Westmoreland and nearly the whole extent of the valley of the Lune, with the Irish Sea in the distance.
Some moralists, who believe that men and times are degenerate, may lament that this grand old castle--the ancient residence of nobles--should now be the abode of criminals; but, while equally desirous that its architectural wonders may be preserved, I am not inclined to admit that the thieves and cutthroats who now have their homes within its walls through the puissance of the law are any worse morally than were many of the noble barons who robbed and ravished in the good old times when the question of might versus right was always settled in favor of the plaintiff. Some of them indeed more richly merited a halter than the comfortable seclusion from the outer world accorded to their modern representatives. Even good old John O'Gaunt himself was not so virtuous that he could shy moral stones at his neighbors.