It is difficult to pluck even one greatly outstanding incident from Guildford's history wherewith to enliven these pages, for although Guildford possessed a strong and well-placed castle from Norman times, it cannot be said that the annals of the town are at all distinguished by records of battle, murder, and sudden death, or by military prowess. So much the better for Guildford town, you will say, and the expression may be allowed, for this old borough has ever been eminently peaceful and prosperous in the absence of civil or military commotion. Its very name is earnest of trade and merchandise; and the guilds of Guildford were very powerful bodies of traders who dealt in cloths and wool, at one time the chiefest of local products, or in the minor articles that ministered to the wants of those great staple trades. Meanwhile the guardians of the old Castle, whose keep still dominates Guildford from most points of view, had little enough to do but to keep the place in order for such occasions when the King came a-hunting in the neighbourhood, or progressed past here to some distant part of the realm. King John seems to have been by far the most frequent royal visitor to Guildford Castle, and almost the last, for the cold comforts of Norman keeps went very early out of fashion with kings and queens, and domestic hearths began to replace dungeon-like apartments in chilly towers as soon as social conditions began to settle down into something remotely resembling tranquillity. Guildford Keep stands at this day in gardens belonging to the Corporation, and free to all. It is of the Norman type, familiarized to many by prints of such well-known Norman towers as those of Rochester and of Hedingham Castles, and is at this time a mere shell, open to the sky. Within the thickness of the walls are staircases by which it is possible to climb to the summit and gaze thence down upon the red roofs of the town that cluster so picturesquely beneath. Here, too, is a Norman oratory, whose narrow walls are covered with names and figures scratched deeply into the stone, "probably," says a local guide, "the work of prisoners confined here." But "J. Robinson, 1892," was surely no prisoner within these bounds, although he should have been who thus carved his undistinguished name here. [Illustration: CASTLE ARCH.] [Sidenote: _THE GUILDHALL_]