The value of the manor of Cleeton, in which Skipsea lies, had fallen at Domesday.[666] STAFFORD (Fig. 32).--The _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ says that Ethelfleda of Mercia built the _burh_ of Stafford; and consequently we find that both in King Edward and King William's time Stafford was a burgus, or fortified town. Florence of Worcester, who is considered to have used a superior copy of the _Chronicle_ as the foundation of his work, says that Ethelfleda built an _arx_ on the north bank of the Sowe in 914. _Arx_, in our earlier chronicles, is often only a bombastic expression for a walled town, as, for example, when Ethelwerd says that Ethelfleda's body was buried in St Peter's porch in the _arx_ of Gloucester.[667] But the statement led many later writers, such as Camden, to imagine that Ethelfleda built a _tower_ in the town of Stafford; and these imaginings have created such a tangled skein of mistake that we must bespeak our readers' patience while we attempt to unravel it. Domesday Book only mentions Stafford Castle under the manor of Chebsey, a possession of Henry de Ferrers. Its words are: "To this manor _belonged_ the land of Stafford, in which the king commanded a castle to be built, which is now destroyed."[668] Ordericus also says that the king placed a castle at Stafford, on his return from his third visit to the north, in 1070.[669] Now the language of Domesday appears to us to say very plainly that in the manorial rearrangement which followed the Conquest some land was taken out of the manor of Chebsey, which lies immediately to the south of the borough of Stafford, to furnish a site for a royal castle.[670] It is exactly in this position that we now find a large oblong motte, similar to the other mottes of the Conquest, and having the usual bailey attached to it. It lies about a mile and a half south-west of the town, near the main road leading into Shropshire. The position was an important one, as the castles of Staffordshire formed a second line of defence against the North Welsh, as well as a check to the great palatinate earls of Shropshire.[671] The motte itself stood on high ground, commanding a view of twenty or thirty miles round, and both Tutbury and Caus castles could be seen from it. Between it and the town lies a stretch of flat ground which has evidently been a swamp formerly, and which explains the distance of the castle from the town; while the fact that it lies to the _south_ of the Sowe shows that it has no connection with Ethelfleda's work. There is no dispute that this motte was the site of the later baronial castle of Stafford, the castle besieged and taken in the Civil War; the point we have to prove is that it was also the castle of Domesday Book.[672] [Illustration: FIG. 32. Stafford. Stanton Holgate, Salop. Tamworth, Staffs. Tickhill, Yorks.]