The earldom of Cambridge and Huntingdon has been almost invariably held by a member of the Royal Family. The first steps, indeed, towards municipal independence on the part of the borough were taken when the burgesses demanded the privilege of making their customary payments direct to the King, and ridding themselves of this part, at any rate, of the authority of the sheriff. Certainly, there was much complaint made to the Domesday Commissioners concerning the first Norman sheriff of Cambridgeshire, one Roger Picot, because of his hard treatment of the burgesses. Among other things, it was said that he had "required the loan of their ploughs nine times in the year, whereas in the reign of the Confessor they lent their ploughs only thrice in the year and found neither cattle nor carts," and also that he had built himself three mills upon the river to the destruction of many dwelling-houses and the confiscation of much common pasture. Reading of these things one is almost tempted to wonder, whether the old stone Norman house still standing, styled, by a tradition now lost, "the School of Pythagoras," in close proximity as it is to the river, the ford, and the castle, may not have been the residence of this sheriff or of one of his immediate successors. The house cannot, certainly, be of a later date than the latter part of the twelfth century. Originally, it appears to have consisted of a single range of building of two storeys, the lower one formerly vaulted, the upper one serving as a hall. How it came by its present name of "Pythagoras School" we do not know, and certainly there is no reason to suppose that it was at any time a school. The Norman occupier, however, of this stone house, with his servants and retainers, could hardly have been other than a leading personage in the community, and must have contributed in no slight degree to its importance. Possibly it may have been owing to the destruction of houses caused by the clearing of the sites for both this mansion and for the Castle, that the dispossessed population sought habitation for themselves on the low lying ground across the ford, on the east bank of the river. Whether this was the cause or not, certainly the town on the west bank--"the borough," as the castle end of Cambridge was still called in the memory of persons still living[7]--overflowed at an early period to the other side of the river, and gradually extending itself along the line of the Via Devana, eventually coalesced with what had before been a distinct village clustering round the ancient pre-Norman church of S. Benedict. This church, or rather its tower, is the oldest building in Cambridge and one of the most interesting. It is thus described by Mr. Atkinson.[8] [Illustration: The School of Pythagoras.]