Cambridge Castle, built in 1068 by William the Conqueror to hold Hereward the Saxon and his East Anglian fellow-patriots in check, has entirely disappeared. It never accumulated any legends of sieges or surprises, and of military history it had none whatever. It was, therefore, a castle of the greatest possible success; for, consider, although the first impulse may be to think little of a fortress that can tell no warlike story, the very lack of anything of the kind is the best proof of its strength and fitness. It is not the purpose of a castle to invite attacks, but by its very menace to overawe and terrify. Torquilstone Castle and the story of its siege and downfall, in the pages of _Ivanhoe_, make romantic and exciting reading; but, inasmuch as it fell, it was a failure. That Cambridge Castle not only never fell, but was not even menaced, is the best proof of its power. These great fortresses, with their stone keeps and spreading wards and baileys, dotted here and there over the land, rang the knell of English liberties. "New and strong and cruel in their strength--how the Englishman must have loathed the damp smell of the fresh mortar, and the sight of the heaps of rubble, and the chippings of the stone, and the blurring of the lime upon the greensward; and how hopeless he must have felt when the great gates opened and the wains were drawn in, heavily laden with the salted beeves and the sacks of corn and meal furnished by the royal demesnes, the manors which had belonged to Edward the Confessor, now the spoil of the stranger; and when he looked into the castle court, thronged by the soldiers in bright mail, and heard the carpenters working upon the ordnance--every blow and stroke, even of the hammer or mallet, speaking the language of defiance." William himself occupied his castle of Cambridge on its completion in 1069, and from it he directed the long and weary military operations against Hereward across the fens toward the Isle of Ely, only twelve miles away. From his keep-tower he could see with his own eyes that Isle, rising from the flat, on the skyline, like some Promised Land, but two years were to pass before he and his soldiers were to enter there; admitted even then by treachery. From the Castle Mound the Cam may be seen, winding away through the flats into the distant haze. Immediately below are Parker's Piece, and Midsummer and Stourbridge Commons; this last from time beyond knowledge the annual scene of Stourbridge Fair. "Sturbitch" Fair, as the country-folk call it, existed, like the University itself, before history came to take note of it. When King John reigned it was already an important mark, and so continued until, at the Dissolution of the Monasteries, its rights and privileges were transferred to the Corporation of Cambridge.