Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/453

 Colchester' Castle. 419 entitled from his office " Dapifer," resided, and his possessions there lay in twelve of its twenty hundreds. In Colchester the lordship and demesne of the town were held by the king. Eudo's interest there was but moderate, consisting of five houses, 40 acres of land, and a claim to the fourth of certain lands held " in elemosina Regis." How he maintained his military position we are not told, or why he settled in Colchester. The only Essex castle mentioned in Domes- day is Rageneia or Ralegh. " In hoc manerio fecit Suen suum castellum," nor do any of the old mottes, of which there are several, as Bures, Great Birch, Ongar, Plessy, and Stansted, appear to have belonged to Eudo. His office of Dapifer or Sewer he held under the Conqueror and his two successors, and he so witnessed a charter by William at Honfleur in 1074, and others by Rufus in 1093, and by Henry I. Though described as " Dapifer Domini Regis totius Angliae," he seems to have belonged to the ducal not the royal court, for the sewer of England, according to Spelman, was the brother of Robert Fitz Hamon of Morgan wg, who appears in the Survey in Colchester and elsewhere as " Hamo Dapifer." It is related that in consequence of the high character borne by Eudo the burgesses of Colchester moved William Rufus to place him in charge of their town. That he was so placed appears from a document quoted by Dugdale, and his connexion with the place is shown by the Pipe Roll of 31 Henry I., in which, among other entries relating to Colchester, are items for " the lordship of the king's ploughlands of the land of Eudo Dapifer, 8s. lod.," and from "the farm of his land, paid into the treasury, ^91. 3s. od." This was after Eudo's death, when Hamo de Clare was in charge. As the crown held the lion's share of the town, Eudo's position there must have been supreme. His first step was probably to build a castle, and upon his own land, for when in 1096 he founded St. John's Abbey, one of its endowments, specified in the foundation charter, was " omnes proventus capellae, in castello de Colcestria," which endowment is described in a confirmation by Richard I. (i R. I.) as " capellam castelii Colcestre, cum decimis et obventionibus," explained by Morant to have consisted in tythes of certain lands in and about the town. Eudo's rank, as an Essex and Colchester land owner and the king's representative in the town, might very well induce him to erect a castle there. The position was a good one for a district destitute of any very striking inequalities of surface. It was within the Roman area, and covered on two sides by the Coin. The ancient wall, originally Roman, had been repaired by Edward the Elder, and included the town and the proposed site. A legendary document, quoted in the Monastico7i [i. 724], states that Eudo built the castle on King Cole's foundation ; " in fundo palatii Coelis quondam regis," which may be taken to show that there was an older building on the spot. If so it must have been Roman. Most of the chief towns in England contained a castle constructed long before the arrival of the Conqueror, though not a building of stone, and of