Many an English village can boast of the possession of the ruins of an ancient castle, a gaunt rectangular or circular keep or donjon, looking very stern and threatening even in decay, and mightily convincing of the power of its first occupants. The new masters did not feel very safe in the midst of a discontented and enraged people; so they built these huge fortresses with strong walls and gates and moats. Indeed before the Conquest the Norman knights, to whom the weak King Edward the Confessor granted many an English estate, brought with them the fashion of building castles, and many a strong square tower began to crown the fortified mounds. Thence they could oppress the people in many ways, and the writers of the time always speak of the building of castles with a kind of shudder. After the Conquest, especially during the regency of William's two lieutenants, Bishop Odo and Earl William Fitz-osbern, the Norman adventurers who were rewarded for their services by the gift of many an English manor, built castles everywhere. The wretched men of the land were cruelly oppressed by forced labour in erecting these strongholds, which were filled "with devils and evil men." Over a thousand castles were built in nineteen years, and in his own castle each earl or lord reigned as a small king, coining his own money, making his own laws, having power of life and death over his dependants, and often using his power most violently and oppressively. [Illustration: OLD SARUM] The original Norman castle consisted of a keep, "four-square to every wind that blew," standing in a bailey court. It was a mighty place with walls of great thickness about one hundred and fifty feet high. It contained several rooms, one above the other. A deep well supplied the inhabitants with water. Spiral stone steps laid in the thickness of the wall led to the first floor where the soldiers of the garrison resided. Above this was the hall, with a chimney and fireplace, where the lord of the castle and his guests had their meals, and in the thickness of the wall there were numerous chambers used as sleeping-apartments and garderobes, and the existence of a piscina in one of these shows that it was a small chapel or oratory. The upper story was divided by wooden partitions into small sleeping-rooms; and unlike our modern houses, the kitchen was at the top of the keep, and opened on the roof.