Foundation of the monastery.
The castle.
The abbey. first of his house who bears the surname of Conches as well as that of Toesny, or else his fierce father in some milder moment, had planted on the hill a colony of monks, the house of Saint Peter of Conches or Castellion.[1] The monastery arose on that point of the high ground which is most nearly peninsular, that stretching towards the north. To the south of the abbey presently grew up the town with its church, a town which, in after times at least, was girded by a wall, and which was sheltered or threatened by the castle of its lords at the end furthest from the monastery. To the east, the height on which town and castle stand side by side rises sheer from a low and swampy plain, girt in by hills on every side, lying like the arena of a natural amphitheatre. On the hill-side art has helped nature by escarpments; the mound of the castle, girt by its deep and winding ditch, rises as it rose in the days of Ralph and Isabel; but the round donjon on the mound and the other remaining buildings of the fortress cannot claim an earlier date than the thirteenth century. The donjon and the apse of the parish church, a gem of the latest days of French art, now stand nobly side by side; in Isabel's day they had other and ruder forerunners. But of the abbey, which must have balanced the castle itself in the general view, small traces only now remain; it has become quite
- ↑ On the foundation of the abbey of Conches or Castellion, see Neustria Pia, 567, and the passages from Orderic and William of Jumièges there cited. William (vii. 22) puts it among the monasteries founded in the reign of William the Great, and calls its founder Ralph. But Orderic (460 A) attributes the foundation to a Roger, seemingly the old Roger who came back from Spain. I can hardly accept the suggestion in Neustria Pia that the Roger spoken of is the young Roger of whom we shall presently hear, the son of Ralph and Isabel, and that he was joint-founder with his father Ralph. Orderic twice (493 B, 576 A) distinguishes Ralph of Conches, the husband of Isabel, from his father Roger of Toesny; "Rodulphus de Conchis, Rogerii Toenitis filius," "Radulfus de Conchis, filius Rogerii de Toënia."
