The history of such castles as are connected with public events is seldom difficult to trace. They are mentioned by the ancient chroniclers, and their repairs and various particulars concerning them are often entered on the Pipe rolls, and in other of the records of the realm. About a score, such as Arundel, Bamborough, Taunton, Wigmore, and Hereford, are named in the Saxon annals, and in charters of the eighth and following centuries; and others, though unnamed in these authorities, may from their general similarity safely be attributed to the same people and period. The castles on the Welsh Marches, as Ludlow, Montgomery, Chester, Rhuddlan, Cardiff, Chepstow, and Pembroke, had their special jurisdictions; their courts of law and of record; their chancellor, chancery, and official seal; the lord’s “Vicecomes” exercised powers of pit and gallows, and his court passed fines and recoveries, and other early instruments for the conveyance of land. In the northern Marches such castles as Norham, Prudhoe, Cockermouth, Alnwick, Naworth, Caerlaverock, and Home, constructed for the defence of an exposed frontier or a debatable district, the home of those who lived by “snaffle, spur, and spear,” are commemorated in the records of either country. Others were originally royal castles, as Dover, Canterbury, Winchester, London, Nottingham, and York; or, as Kenilworth, Bridgenorth, and Rochester, fell by escheat or forfeiture into the hands of the crown, and so were maintained at the public expense, and the cost of their repairs charged in the sheriffs’ accounts of each county.