[5] He inserted a large two-lighted Tudor window and placed a tablet bearing his own arms, supported by angels, above it and the Royal Coat of King Henry VII below.

Bishop Langton inserted Tudor windows but all of them, save two in the north front, have been replaced by seventeenth or eighteenth century substitutes.

Taunton had been captured by the Parliamentarian army under the Earl of Essex in June 1644 making it the only Parliamentary enclave in the South West of the country.

After Essex's army was forced to surrender at Lostwithiel in Cornwall in September, the Royalists maintained a Siege of Taunton.

[5] Of more than 500 supporters of James Monmouth brought before the court on 18 and 19 September, 144 were hanged and their remains displayed around the county to ensure people understood the fate of those who rebelled against the king.

[13] By 1780, many parts of the castle had fallen into a bad condition and were repaired in a Georgian style by Sir Benjamin Hammet, a banker of Lombard Street, London, and the Member of Parliament for Taunton.

But the great gate, opening into the enclosure, where they stand, is in part a genuine antique, having the arches of an "Early Decorated " gate-house of about the time of Edward I, though the superstructure is a restoration of 1816.

[2] In 1873 it was bought by the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society and between 1899 and 1900 the Great Hall was repaired and refitted as their chief museum space.