William of Warren at Lewes. overlooking the river, reared as usual on a vaulted substructure, almost constrain us to see in them the work of no age earlier or later than that of Roger or his successor of his own house.[1] The site is a natural watch-*tower, whence the eye ranges far away to various points of the compass, over the flat land and over the more distant hills, and over the many windings of the tidal river which then made Arundel a place of trade as well as of defence.[2] Less threatening than his vulture's nest at Tre Baldwin,[3] less tempting to an enemy than his fortresses on the peninsula of Shrewsbury and within the walls of Chichester,[4] the stronghold of Arundel seems exactly the place for an experienced observer of men and things like Earl Roger to look out from and bide his time. He had to watch the course of things in the three rebel fortresses; he had further to watch what might come from a nearer spot, another break in the hill ground, where, between his doubtful Arundel and rebellious Pevensey, the twin mounds of loyal Lewes,[5] the home of William and Gundrada, looked up to what was one day to be the battle-ground of English freedom. Its lord, long familiar to us as William of Warren, stood
- ↑ See Tierney's History of Arundel, i. 43.
- ↑ Domesday, 23 "Modo inter burgum et portum aquæ et consuetudinem navium reddit xii. libras et tamen valet xiii. libras. De his habet S Nicolaus xxiiii. solidos." "Clerici sancti Nicolai" are mentioned again in the next column. The church then was secular in 1086; but the clerks must have soon given way to the priory of Saint Nicolas, founded by Earl Roger himself as a cell to his abbey at Seez; in 1386 it gave way to the college of Arundel.
- ↑ See N. C. iv. p. 501.
- ↑ Domesday, 23. "Modo est ipsa civitas in manu comitis Rogerii." Here he had one quarter of a Roman chester, while the Bishop had another; yet there were sixty houses more than there had been T. R. E.
- ↑ See the customs of Lewes and the rights of William of Warren in Domesday, 26. The toll on selling a man was threepence. The two mounds of the castle, the smaller known as Brack Mount, are rare, perhaps unique. The inner gateway seems to be of Earl William's building.
