Details from Mike Salter's "The Castles & Moated Mansions of Warwickshire".
When Edmund Odingseles died shortly after his father William in 1295 Maxstoke passed to his eldest sister Ida who married John de Clinton, (who died in 1310). In the 1330s the manor was effectively divided in two when their younger son William, Earl of Huntingdon, built the Augustinian priory in the southern part. Subsequently he erected the castle in the northern part as a residence for his heir John, his elder brother's son. According to Dugdale, Earl William, (who died in 1354), obtained a licence to crenellate the castle from Edward III in 1346.
John, Lord Clinton and Say, exchanged Maxstoke with Humphrey, sixth Earl of Stafford for two manors in Northamptonshire. Humphrey, created Duke of Buckingham in 1444, remodelled the apartments at the castle. He was killed in 1459 at the battle of Northampton, his grandson and heir Henry, second Duke, was executed by Richard III in 1483, and Henry's son Edward, restored to the honours and title as third Duke by Henry VII in 1485, was executed and attainted for treason by Henry VIII in 1521. The estates were then surveyed and it was reported that although Maxstoke Castle was decayed the sum of £100 would have seen it repaired as a fit place for the King and Queen to stay in when progressing around the country.
However, towards the end of 1521, Henry VIII granted Maxstoke to Sir William Compton. His grandson Henry, born after his father's death in 1544, was created Lord Compton. In 1597 William, second Lord Compton, conveyed Maxstoke to Sir Thomas Egerton, from whom in 1599 the castle passed to Thomas Dilke. It continued to descend in the male line of the Dilke family until the last of them died in 1918, when his nephew assumed the Dilke name, arms, and honours.
Lord Brooke installed a garrison of fifty men in the castle in February 1643 and they continued to hold it for Parliament until November 1648. Although the Council of State then considered having the fortifications slighted they have remained intact until the present day. In 1745 part of the Duke of Cumberland's army was billetted in barns and outbuildings of the castle when he was on his way north towards Derby to fight Bonny Prince Charlie.
The castle has a single rectangular court 51m by 46m with a curtain wall about 2m thick beyond which is a wet moat. At each corner is an octagonal tower 9m in diameter and 13m high to the top of the parapet, which like that on the curtain has no shooting slits. Three of the towers contain three storeys of lodgings for retainers with latrines, tiny fireplaces, and windows of one or two ogee headed lights. The thinner walled north-west tower contains three upper storeys which probably opened off the original lord's suite, and a vaulted basement which served as a strongroom. In the middle of the east side is a boldly projecting gatehouse with octagonal turrets facing the field. The main block has two upper rooms over a passage with a two bay tierceron vault with large bosses. The doors have remains of iron sheeting with a honeysuckle pattern and the Stafford badge. A shield on the east parapet has the Clinton arms.
The castle originally has an 11m wide range containing a great hall on the west side, and 9m wide north and south ranges. There is no evidence of an east range although there are two latrines south of the gatehouse in the curtain wall. The north and south ranges did not last long although fireplaces and windows serving the rooms remain in the curtain walls. The ranges vanished before or during a remodelling of the west range in the late 15th century when a new hall was created in the north-west corner. The tall hall windows and the huge six-light chapel window piercing the west curtain wall seem to belong to an earlier remodelling, probably of the 1390s. The eastern wall of the original hall remains but this chamber, and the chapel, both set over basements, have been subdivided and much remodelled at various periods, particularly in the 1820s when a new projection containing the entrance and stair was added. East of the later hall is a narrow three storey early 16th century half timbered range. On the second storey is a large chamber with two large windows through the curtain wall. Between is a fireplace with an oak overmantle of circa 1600 with the arms of Sir Thomas Dilke and his wife Anne Fisher.