The castle stormed. mound, bearing the shell-keep, is yoked together in a striking way with one of the noblest gateways of the later form of mediæval military art.[1] The general arrangements of the latter days of the eleventh century cannot have been widely different. The mound, doubtless a work of English hands turned to the uses of the stranger, was the main stronghold to be won. It was held by a body of Bishop Odo's knights, under the command of its own lord Gilbert; to win it for the King and his people was an object only second to that of seizing the traitor prelate himself. The rebel band bade defiance to the King and his army. The castle held out for two days; but the zeal of the English was not to be withstood; no work could be more to their liking than that of attacking a Norman castle on their own soil, even with a Norman King as their leader. The castle was stormed; the native Chronicler, specially recording the act of his countrymen, speaks of it, like the castles of York in the days of Waltheof, as "tobroken."[2] Most likely the buildings on the mound were thus "tobroken;" but some part of the castle enclosure must have been left habitable and defensible. For the garrison, with their chief Gilbert, were admitted to terms; and Gilbert, who had been wounded
- ↑ At Tunbridge the mound and the gateway stand side by side, as indeed they do, though less conspicuously, at Arundel and Lewes. A wall is built from the gateway to the keep on the mound, losing itself, as it were, in the side of the mound. The mound thus stands half within and half without the enclosure formed by the gateway.
- ↑ Chron. Petrib. 1088. "Þa Englisce men ferdon and tobræcon þone castel, and þa men þe þærinne wæron griðodon wið þone cyng," So Simeon of Durham; "Sed viriliter Angli insilientes in illud, destruxerunt totum castrum, et qui intus erant in manus regi dederunt." Florence gives some further details; "Tunebrycgiam cui præerat Gilebertus filius Ricardi, contrarium sibi invenit: obsedit, in biduo expugnavit, vulneratum Gilebertum cum castello ad deditionem coegit." Is it possible that, according to Orderic's second account of the rebellion (765 A, B), we are still only in the Easter week?
