In this retreat the bishop with his numerous and reverend retinue, after having confirmed a vast crowd of people both in the church and its court, by laying on of hands and the unction of the sacred chrism, returned to his lodging that he might change his vestments, because he had resolved to consecrate a cemetery for the burial of the bodies of believers. When, in again descending from his lodging, in order to effect the proposed work, he halted for some reason about the middle of the bridge, which had there a height of thirty-five feet or more, the people pressing behind and before, and on each side, straightway, the malice of the old enemy so contriving, the bridge yielded to the weight and fell shattered; and the crowd with the bishop fell to the bottom with a great crash of joists, beams, and planks, with great force and noise, while a thick dust at once enveloped the ruin so that scarce any one could see what had happened. • • • • • The following is also curious:— (Ludovicus Grossus, A.D. 1109.) “Puteolum regreditur antiquam antecessorum suorum destitutam _Motam_ castro jactu lapidis propinquam, occupat. Castrum fundibalariorum, balistariorum, saggitariorum, emissa pericula sustinentes; etc.” CHAPTER III. OF THE CASTLES OF ENGLAND AT THE CONQUEST AND UNDER THE CONQUEROR. It has usually been assumed that the rapidity of William’s conquest was due to the absence of strong places in England. There is, however, ground for believing that England, in this respect, was exceedingly well provided,—quite as well provided as Normandy; and that, with the possible exception of a very few recently-constructed strongholds, the works in the two countries were very similar in character. The older sites of the castles of the barons in Normandy are nearly all ascertained, and are for the most part distinguished by a moated mound with an appended court or courts also moated. This simple and very effective form of defence has been shown to have been in use among the Northern nations, invaders both of England and the Continent, and in the ninth and tenth centuries was as common on the banks of the Thames, the Humber, and the Severn, as on those of the Seine and the Orne. It was in the eleventh century, and chiefly during the troubles attendant upon the accession and minority of Duke William, that the Normans seem to have adopted a new and more permanent description of fortress, and the old-fashioned structure of timber began to be replaced by walls and towers in masonry, and especially by keeps of that material. Of these the best-known, because the most durable, form was the rectangular, of which not above half a dozen examples can be shown with certainty to have been constructed in Normandy before the latter part of the eleventh century, and but very few, if any, before