Within the city rose the ancient Minster Church, built by Ethelwold--ancient even then--where slept the ancient kings, Kennulf, Egbert, and Ethelwulf, the Saxons; and by them the Danes, Canute the Great and Hardicanute his son, and Norman Emma, his wife, and Ethelred’s before him; and the great Earl Godwin, who seemed to Hereward to have died not twenty but two hundred years ago; and it may be an old Saxon hall upon the little isle, whither Edgar had bidden bring the heads of all the wolves in Wessex, where afterwards the bishops built Wolvesey Palace. But nearer to them, on the downs which sloped up to the west, stood an uglier thing, which they saw with curses deep and loud--the keep of the new Norman castle by the west gate. We will not stop to discuss this striking passage; and though Hereward be but a figure imported into our local history, the castle which he saw was, both then and for many years to come, the most noticeable and striking feature in Winchester, as also the leading outward symbol of the Norman presence and power. For centuries it was to hold its place supreme, to see one sovereign after other add and re-add to its palace, to stand siege and battery, to be the residence of kings and queens, to witness the birth of more than one heir to the throne, to gather within its walls councils and parliaments. For 600 years it was to endure till Cromwell laid siege to it, and then razed it to the ground, all save the great Hall, built in Plantagenet days, by Henry III. which still remains glorious in its associations as in the beauty of its proportions. Yes, Hereward and his companions might utter curses loud and deep, for the rebirth of the nation, which the Norman period heralded, was not accomplished without much labour and travail, both of body and of spirit; but could he have looked forward, as we can look back, upon all that Norman rule has been the stepping-stone to, both in Winchester and elsewhere, he would have found, like the unwilling prophet of old, a blessing on his lips and not a curse, and we too shall be ready to offer up our Te Deum in a spirit of thankfulness, earnest and sincere, though the appropriate accompaniment to it be rather a subdued strain, and in a minor key, than an unbroken outburst of triumphal joy. CHAPTER XI LATER NORMAN DAYS They shot him dead on the Nine-stone Brig Beside the Headless Cross, And they left him lying in his blood Upon the moor and moss. BARTHRAM’S _Dirge_.