Seyer very pertinently remarks that Bristol Castle "was erected with a design hostile to the town; for it occupies the peninsula between two rivers, along which was the direct and original communication between the town and the main part of Gloucestershire."[306] It was outside the city, and was not under its jurisdiction till James I. granted this authority by charter.[307] The value T. R. E. is not given in Domesday Book. BUCKINGHAM.--The only mention of this castle as existing in the 11th century is in the _Gesta Herewardi_,[308] an undated work which is certainly in great part a romance, but as it is written by some one who evidently had local knowledge, we may probably trust him for the existence of Buckingham Castle at that date; especially as Buckingham was a county town, and one of the boroughs of the Burghal Hidage, the very place which we should expect to find occupied by a Norman castle. This writer speaks of the castle as belonging to Ivo de Taillebois; this is not inconsistent with the fact shown by Domesday Book, that the borough belonged to the king. That it was a motte-and-bailey castle is indicated by Speed's map of Buckingham in 1611; he speaks of the "high hill," though he only indicates it slightly in his plan, with a shield-shaped bailey. Brayley states that the present church is "proudly exalted on the summit of an artificial mount, anciently occupied by a castle."[309] The castle hill occupies a strong position on the neck of land made by a bend of the river; it extends nearly half-way across it, and commands both town and river. The original earthworks of the castle were destroyed and levelled for the erection of a church in 1777, but the large oval hill remains, having a flat summit about 2 acres in extent, and about 30 feet above the town below. Its sides descend in steep scarps behind the houses on all sides but the north-east. There can be no doubt that the motte has been lowered, and thus enlarged, in order to build the church. The foundations of a stone castle were found in digging a cellar on the slope of the motte.[310] The value of Buckingham had considerably risen at the date of Domesday.[311]