Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/212

 196 Me di CSV a I Military Ai'chitectnre. the great house of Montgomery as an acknowledgment of kinship, and a fitting reward for his distinguished services at Hastings. Three members and two generations of that family held the castle for about thirty-two years. They were followed by Henry I. and his Queen, who held it for half a century, and it has since descended in suc- cession by the lines of D'Albini, Fitz-Alan, and Howard, through seven centuries of inheritance, to its present lord. Though less extensive in area, it is equal to Windsor in antiquity and position, and resembles it closely in type, having an upper and lower ward, and a lofty mound partially interposed between the two, girdled by a deep fosse and crowned by a circular keep. Within its precinct is the Chapel of St. George, and far beyond the walls, but in one direction only, extends its broad demesne. Just beyond the wall of the Norman castle, but probably within the earlier English outwork, stands the fine parish church, a Fitz-xlan gift, and attached to its east end is the chapel of the college founded by Richard, Earl of Arundel, in 1386, and now, by a grant or purchase in the reign of Edward VI., vested in the descendants of its founder, and the private property of the lord of the castle. The buildings of the college are mostly removed, and the chapel contains many tombs of great magnificence and considerable historic interest, beneath which rest the remains of many members of the great house of Fitz-Alan, who loved full well and gave full largely to that church to which their Howard descendant has shown himself a not less liberal benefactor. The Arun, a principal river of the south, has its sources in Surrey. It traverses the whole breadth, here about twenty miles, of the county of Sussex, and in its passage to the sea cleaves the southern ridge of the chalk by a very striking ravine or dell, which, with the river, gives name to the castle and the town, as well as to the Rape of Arundel, within which they stand. The castle is placed upon a bold bluff of chalk, which rises on the right or western bank of the river, here flowing in easy curves across a broad tract of low and level land, which intervenes between the downs and the sea, from which the castle is distant about four miles. Upon and at the foot of the slope has sprung up the town, which for centuries paid allegiance to the castle and received from it protection and support. Six miles westward of the Arun is Bognor, rich in Roman remains, and as far to the east is the mouth of the Adur, where Shoreham contests with Portsmouth the representation of the ancient Portus Adurni. A few miles north of the castle, Staneway marks the line of the old Roman road between Chichester and London. Various villages, the names of which show their English origin, are thickly posted along the lower course of the Arun ; but the name of the river may be British, as are no doubt the hill camps here and there scattered over the downs. The Rape is supposed to be a Jutish division. It includes five Hundreds, and was formerly nearly all forest. The courts were held beneath an oak-tree at Madehurst. The bluff occupied by the castle is the end of a ridge of high ground, which is specially steep towards the east and south, and