The domestic, apart from the military, character of the building, is emphasised in the story which follows the description. John of Warneton, the sainted bishop of Thérouanne (_d._ 1130), was entertained here, when he came to hold a confirmation in Merchem church. After the confirmation was over, he went back to the castle to change his vestments before proceeding to bless the churchyard. As he returned across the sloping bridge, which at its middle point was about 35 feet above the ditch, the press of the people who crowded to see the holy man was so great, and the old enemy, says the chronicler, so alive to the opportunity, that the bridge broke, and the bishop and his admirers, amid a terrible noise of falling joists, boards, and spars, were thrown to the bottom of the ditch. The castle was, in fact, the private residence of a man who, if he could indulge in the peaceful pleasure of entertaining his bishop, could not afford to live in an unfortified house. Private warfare with his neighbours was the business of his life, and he had to make himself as comfortable as he could within his palisade. Jean de Colmieu does not tell us whether the castle stronghold at Merchem took the shape of a tower or not; but Lambert of Ardres has left a description of the great wooden tower of three stories which the carpenter Louis de Bourbourg constructed about 1099 for Arnould, lord of Ardres. The elaborateness of its design and plan is remarkable, and the _motte_ which bore it must have been of considerable size. The ground-floor contained cellars, store-rooms, and granaries. The first floor contained the chief living-rooms—the common hall, the pantry and buttery, the great chamber where Arnould and his wife slept, with two other rooms, one the sleeping-place of the body-servants. Out of the great chamber opened a room or recess with a fire-place, where the folk of the castle were bled, the servants warmed themselves, or the children were taken in cold weather to be warmed. One may assume that the great chamber was at the end of the hall opposite to the pantry and buttery. The kitchen was probably reached, as in the larger dwelling-houses of later days, by a passage between these offices: it was on the same floor as the hall, but occupied a two-storied extension of the donjon on one side.[58] Below the kitchen were the pig-sty, fowl-house, and other like offices. The third stage of the donjon contained the bed-chambers of the daughters of the house: the sons also could sleep on this floor, if they chose, and here slept the guard of the castle, who relieved one another at intervals in the work of keeping watch. On the eastern side of the first floor was a projecting building, called the _logium_ or parlour, and above this on the top floor was the chapel of the house, “made like in carving and painting to the tabernacle (_sic_) of Solomon.” Lambert speaks of the stairways and passages of the donjon, but his description of the