Among the knights who fought at Hastings in the train of William the Conqueror were two brothers, Sir Robert[3] and Sir William Bertram. “Robert Bertram ki estoit tort” (crooked) was Lord of Briquebec, near Valognes, a barony consisting of forty knights’ fees, which is said to have taken its name from Brico, a Norwegian Viking, who was the ancestor of the Bertram family.[4] It was the well-known policy of the Conqueror to pacify England and consolidate his power by promoting or even making up marriages between his followers and the Saxons whom they had conquered—especially did this judicious match-making seem to be desirable where there was an heiress to be won. At the time of the Conquest, Sir John de Mitford, who owned the Castle and Barony of Mitford, had no son. His only daughter, Sibella, was his heiress, and between her and Sir Robert Bertram a marriage was arranged and carried into effect. [Illustration: THE RUINS OF MITFORD CASTLE, NEAR MORPETH, NORTHUMBERLAND. _From a drawing, dated August, 1769, by J. Mitford (Lord Redesdale), d. August, 1769._] I wonder what sort of a home it made, this union between the Saxon girl, of whom I like to believe that she was as beautiful as the Lady Rowena, and the Norman warrior? Was it altogether a _mariage de convenance_? Was Sibella forced into it, or might he have lighted just the least little spark of love in her breast?—and when once they were married, did she live happily with her crooked knight? These crook-backed men are apt to have very insinuating ways; we all know how Richard the Third, when he made love to Lady Anne, so flattered and coaxed that her woman’s heart Grossly grew captive to his honey words, and in my early diplomatic days, I had a colleague at a certain Embassy, who, though crooked as Pope himself, was declared by all women to be irresistible. How grateful, by the bye, we ought to be for that one and only record “qui estoit tort,” just three words which give to the old story of Sibella a touch perfectly human and real, such as a hundred blazing tales of deeds of derring-do, sung by minstrels or recorded by chroniclers, could never have conveyed. The crook must have been true, it could hardly have been invented. Since walls have ears, what a pity it is that stones have not tongues: these old ruins could teach us so much about the lives that they harboured, lessons which one does so long to learn.