The Young Castellan | George Manville Fenn

A Castellan is a person in charge of a castle, and that is what young Roy Royland has become in The Young Castellan, while his father, Sir Granby, is away defending his king. For the time is about 1640, and there is a move afoot in the country of England to do away with the monarchy. In the castle most of its old defences have not been used for many years, perhaps centuries, and old Ben Martlet sets about restoring them, cleaning up the armour, teaching young Roy the arts of self-defence, by putting him through a course of fencing, by restoring the portcullis and drawbridge, and by training the men from the neighbouring farms to be soldiers.

But eventually in The Young Castellan, through treachery, the Roundheads, as those who oppose the monarchy, are called, manage to take the castle, and to make Roy and his mother, along with old Ben Martlet and the other defenders, prisoner.