Nature of the site.
The castle occupied by Odo. by the Roman wall; and a large part of its space had now begun to form the monastic precinct of Saint Andrew. The town is said to have been parted from the castle by a ditch which, as at Le Mans and at Lincoln, was overleaped by the enlarged church of the twelfth century;[1] in any case the castle, in all its stages, formed a sheltering citadel to the town at its feet. Neither town nor castle by itself occupies a peninsular site; but a great bend of the river to the south makes the whole ground on which they stand peninsular, with an extent of marshy ground between the town and the river to the north and east. The stronghold of Rochester, no lofty natural peak, no mound of ancient English kings, perhaps as yet gathering round no square keep of the new Norman fashion, but in any case a well-defended circuit with its scarped sides strengthened by all the art of the time, was the chief fortress of the ancient kingdom over which the Bishop of Bayeux now ruled as Earl. It now became, under him, the great centre of the rebellion. Gundulf, renowned as he was for his skill in military architecture, must have been sore let and hindered in the peaceful work of building his church and settling the discipline of his monks,[2] when his brother bishop filled the castle with his men of war, five hundred of his own knights among them.[3] But
- ↑ This ditch is said to have been traced right across the middle of the cathedral, with the twelfth-century nave to the west of it. I can say nothing either way from my own observation; but such an extension of the church to the west would exactly answer to the extension of the churches of Le Mans and Lincoln to the east. In both those cases the Roman wall had to give way.
- ↑ See N. C. vol. iv. p. 367.
- ↑ Ord. Vit. 667 A. "Tunc Odo Bajocensis cum quingentis militibus intra Rofensem urbem se conclusit, ibique Robertum ducem cum suis auxiliaribus secundum statuta quæ pepigerant præstolari proposuit." The last clause of course implies the supposed earlier agreement with Duke Robert, on which see above, p. 25, and Appendix B.
