No doubt, even in the time of Edward and Eleanor, Windsor was rather a gloomy building for a palace, according to modern ideas, and utterly unlike the regal pile which now occupies the ground--recalling the shadowy past, with a host of memories gratifying to the national pride. For it carries the mind, through five eventful centuries, to that era of English chivalry which could boast of the Black Prince, and which was marked by the institution of the Order of the Garter, and rendered glorious not only by Cressy, and Poictiers, and Navaretta, but by great naval victories over France and Spain, which, even at that early period, made England mistress of the sea. Still, before the reign of John, Windsor, originally founded by the Conqueror as a hunting seat, had witnessed right royal marriages and high feudal ceremonies--especially the marriage of Henry Beauclerc to his second wife, Adelicia of Louvaine, and the homage of the King of Scots and of the Norman barons to the Empress Maude--and had been so enlarged by succeeding kings, that, among the royal fortresses, it was regarded as second in importance only to the Tower of London when the Plantagenets began to rule England, and was determinedly fought for by the various personages--whether prelates or princes--whose quarrels disturbed England during the crusade and captivity of Cœur-de-Lion--Prince John among the number. Imagine an old Norman stronghold on the brow of the hill, with towers, and turrets, and battlements, grey walls, penetrated by loopholes to admit the light, gloomy halls, with huge chimneys and oaken rafters, long, straggling chambers, a garden and a vineyard, a chapel dedicated to Edward the Confessor, and parks stretching away into the forest abounding with wild cattle and beasts of game, and you will have a notion of what Windsor was when King John removed thither from the great metropolitan stronghold before meeting the Anglo-Norman barons at Runnymede, with the intention of granting their demands.