Tunbridge and Pevensey. Another great Kentish fortress, that of Tunbridge, was also in rebellion. So in Sussex was Pevensey, the very firstfruits of the Conquest, where Odo's brother Count Robert also held out against the King. These three fortresses now become the busy scene of our immediate story; but the centre of all is the post occupied by the Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent. This part of the war is emphatically the war of Rochester.
Early history of Rochester.
Importance of its position.
The later castle.
The city by the Medway had been a fortress from the
earliest times. We have seen that it had already played
a part both in foreign and in civil wars. In the days
of Æthelred it still kept the Roman walls parts of which
still remain, walls which were then able to withstand
two sieges, one at the hands of the King himself, and
one at those of the Danish invaders.[1] In truth the
position of Rochester, lying on the road from London
to Canterbury, near to the sea on a navigable river,
made it at all times a great military post.[2] The chief
ornament of the city did not yet exist in the days of
Odo. The noble tower raised in the next age by Archbishop
Walter of Corbeuil, the tower which in one
struggle held out against John[3] and in the next held
out for his son,[4] and still remains one of the glories of
- [Footnote: Bigod and Hugh of Grantmesnil. So William of Malmesbury, who here
brings in the story of Lanfranc's share in Odo's imprisonment in 1082, in order to account for Odo's special hatred towards the Archbishop.]*
- ↑ See N. C. vol. i. pp. 267, 296. On the early history of Rochester generally, see Mr. Hartshorne's paper in the Archæological Journal, September, 1863.
- ↑ This is brought out by Orderic, 667 B; "Oppidum igitur Rovecestræ sollicita elegerunt provisione, quoniam, si rex eos non obsedisset in urbe, in medio positi laxis habenis Lundoniam et Cantuariam devastarent, et per mare, quod proximum est, insulasque vicinas, pro auxiliis conducendis nuntios cito dirigerent." The islands must be Sheppey and Thanet.
- ↑ See the siege of Rochester in 1215 and his defence by William of Albini in Roger of Wendover, iii. 333.
- ↑ For the siege of 1264 see W. Rishanger, Chron. p. 25 (Camd. Soc.). On Simon's military engines he remarks that the Earl "exemplum relinquens
