The “castled steep” is still crowned by a massive fragment of the old fortress that has braved, in its time, so many days of storm and stress.  A good deal of the curtain wall, too, is standing, and the natural defences of the castle are admirable, for a deep ravine on the east and the river with its steep banks on the south made it practically unassailable at these points.  It was built in 1121, as we have seen, by Bishop Flambard of Durham, as a defence for the northern portions of his diocese.  The necessity for its presence there was soon made apparent, for it was attacked by the Scots again and again; and by the time thirty years had passed.  Bishop Pudsey found it necessary to strengthen it greatly.  When Edward I. was called to arbitrate between the claimants to the Scottish throne, he came to Norham and met the rival nobles, who, with their followers, were quartered at Ladykirk, on the opposite side of the Tweed.  It was known as Upsettlington then, however; the name of Ladykirk was bestowed upon it long afterwards, when James IV. built the little chapel there, in gratitude for an escape from drowning in the Tweed.  Edward held his interview with the Scottish nobles in Norham church, and announced that he had come there in the character of lord paramount, and as such was prepared to make choice of one among them.  Edward did not by any means make up his mind quickly, and the various places in which the successive acts in the affair took place are widely scattered, for he met the nobles at Norham, some time afterwards delivered his decision at Berwick, and finally received the homage of John Balliol at Newcastle.

Norham, like Wark, has also its romantic episode—­or rather, an episode more conspicuously so in a series of them to which the name might with justice be applied.  It occurred during the time that Sir Thomas Gray was holding the castle against a determined blockade of it by the Scots in 1318.  A certain fair lady of Lincolnshire sent one of her maidens to a knight whom she loved, Sir William Marmion (whose name probably suggested to Sir Walter Scott the name for the hero of his tale of Norham and Flodden).  Sir William was at a banquet when the maiden came before him bearing a helmet with a golden crest, together with a letter from his lady bidding him go “into the daungerust place in England, and there to let the heaulme be seene and knowen as famose.”  Evidently it was well known where “the daungerust place in England” was to be found, for the story laconically says “So he went to Norham.”  He had not been there more than a day or two when a band of nearly two hundred Scots, bold and expert horsemen, led by Philip de Mowbray, made an attack on the castle, rousing Sir Thomas and his garrison from their dinner.  They quickly mounted, and were about to sally forth when Sir Thomas caught sight of Marmion, in rich armour, and on his head the helmet with the golden crest; and halting his men, he cried out, “Sir knight,