The general result of Henry’s domestic policy was undoubtedly successful, and his latter years were untroubled by any serious outbreak. In 1177, he returned to Normandy; but both there, and during his subsequent visits to England, he paid great attention to the castles of each country, visiting many of them, appointing and changing the castellans, and causing the defences to be kept in proper order. In February, 1187, he visited the very singular castle of Chilham by Canterbury. He died in the castle of Chinon, July, 1189. CHAPTER VI. THE CASTLES OF ENGLAND AND WALES AT THE LATTER PART OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY. However numerous may have been the castles destroyed under the Convention of Wallingford, or during the subsequent reign of Henry II., they seem to have been almost entirely fortresses of recent date, in private hands, and of little importance as regarded the general defence or the orderly administration of the kingdom. Among those that played at all an important part in the internal wars of the sons or grandsons of Henry, there are missing but very few known to have been built or restored by his predecessors or by himself; and the names that occur in the chronicles of the period, or are entered from time to time in the records of the realm, show that the country continued to be amply provided with castles, and that almost all of the first class were occasionally repaired at the cost of the Crown, and were governed by castellans holding office during the king’s pleasure, whom moreover it was the custom frequently to change. It is here proposed, at some length, to enumerate the fortresses of England and in the Marches of Wales, as they stood at the close of the reign of Henry II., so far at least as their names and positions or any account of them can be recovered.