CASTLE.—In like manner we may doubt whether the kings did not gradually draw into their own hands the right to have fortified houses or castles, which we find them possessing in the Norman times, and which they extended to their adherents and favourites by special licence. In mediæval history, the fortification of their houses by the inhabitants of a city is the very first result of the establishment of a Communa, commune or free municipality; and the destruction of such fortifications the first care of the victorious count, bishop or king upon his triumph over the _outrecuidance_ of the burghers[175]. The clearest instance of the royal licence to a subject is a grant of Æðelræd and Æðelflæd to the bishop of Worcester, about 880, which recites that they built a burh or fortress for him, in his city, probably to defend his cathedral in those stormy days of Danish ravage[176]. In very early times there may have been fortresses belonging to private persons; this may be inferred from names of places such as Sulmonnes burh, _Sulman’s castle_; and under the later Anglosaxon kings, various great nobles may have obtained the privilege of fortifying their own residences, as for example we read of Pentecost’s castle and Rodberht’s castle under Eádweard the Confessor[177], an example very likely to have been followed by the powerful chieftains of Godwine’s, Sigeweard’s and Leófríc’s families; but the cases were probably few. Of course fortresses built and garrisoned by the king for the public defence are quite another matter: these were imperial, and to their construction, maintenance and repair, every estate throughout the land, whether of folcland or bócland, was inevitably bound, not even excepting the demesne lands of the king himself or of the ecclesiastical corporations. Footnote 175: