Of the monuments of the Counts which illustrate our own history, the noblest, in spite of its name, is the Bishop's Palace to the north of the Cathedral. The residence of the Bishop was undoubtedly at first the residence of the Counts, and the tradition which places its transfer as far back as the days of Ingelger can hardly be traced to any earlier source than the local annalist of the seventeenth century. It is at least probable that the occupation of the Palace by the Bishop did not take place till after the erection of the Castle on the site of the original Evêché in the time of St. Louis; and this is confirmed by the fact that the well-known description of Angers by Ralph de Diceto places the Comitial Palace of the twelfth century in the north-east quarter of the town--on the exact site, that is, of the present episcopal residence. But if this identification be correct, there is no building in the town which can compare with it in historical interest for Englishmen. The chapel beneath, originally perhaps simply the substructure of the building, dates from the close of the eleventh century; the fine hall above, with its grand row of windows looking out upon the court, from the earlier half of the twelfth. It was to the building as it actually stands therefore that Geoffry Plantagenet must have brought home his English bride, Maud the Empress, the daughter of our Henry I., along the narrow streets hung with gorgeous tapestries and filled with long trains of priests and burghers. To Angers that day represented the triumphant close of a hundred years' struggle with Normandy; to England it gave the line of its Plantagenet Kings.