Transcription: _This Castle, was built by Baldwin de Bronys, & was at first call’d Ochementon; it descended to Rich. de Rivers or Riparus, & from him to his Sister Adeliza, who marrying one of the Courtenays, it came into that Noble family, & so continued til K.E.IV. seized it, for their adherence to the Hous^e of Lancaster. K.H. VII. restord it to the Courtenays, but K.H.VIII. again alienated it & dismantled the Castle & Park, yet Ed. Courtenay in Q. Marys Reign obtain’d a Restoration, but he dying without Issue Male, it came by a female into the Mohuns Barons of Mohun & Oakhampton, & by the like failure of y^e male it came by marriage to Christopher Harris of Heynes Esq^r._ _S. & N. Buck, delinm et Sculp. 1734._ From this castle, situated on a hill in the rich and wooded country which stretches over that district anciently called L’Isle de France, the descendants of Athos took their title. The name of his wife, the mother of the race, is nowhere recorded, although Bouchet, the historian of the French branch of the Courtenay family, states that she was “une dame de condition”; and the truth of this statement is verified by the fact that in those days, when the prerogatives of birth were universally acknowledged, her progeny were considered fitting mates for the noblest in the kingdom. Jocelyn de Courtenay, the son of Athos and his unnamed wife, married twice: first, in the year 1060, Hildegarde, daughter of Geoffrey de Ferole, Comte de Gastinois; second, Elizabeth, daughter of Guy, Seigneur de Montlehery, by whom he had three sons—Milo, Jocelyn, and Geoffry. At this period of history, the countries of Europe were undergoing one of those strange religious convulsions which frequently occurred in the Middle Ages. The passionate pilgrimage of Peter the Hermit drew motley crowds of so-called Christians to the Holy Land. Wherever the small, mean monk of Picardy, seated on his ass, “pusillus, persona contemptibilis et sponte fluens ei non deerat eloquium,” as William of Tyre describes him, preached the holiness of the Cause and the shame to Christendom that the Sepulchre of the Saviour should remain in infidel hands, his earnestness and enthusiasm, if not his eloquence, made thousands of fervid converts. In those days of lawlessness and violence, few men of rank but had the stain of blood-guiltiness upon their souls. The richer hoped to buy salvation and release from their wrongdoings by founding abbeys and bestowing, out of their abundance, generous grants of land to maintain the same; the poorer went pilgrimages, and purchased the promise of as much future happiness as their possessions would afford.