Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/105

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Another great Kentish fortress, that of Tunbridge, was also in rebellion. So in Sussex was Pevensey, the very firstfruits of the Conquest, where Odo's brother Count Robert also held out against the King. These three fortresses now become the busy scene of our immediate story; but the centre of all is the post occupied by the Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent. This part of the war is emphatically the war of Rochester.

The city by the Medway had been a fortress from the earliest times. We have seen that it had already played a part both in foreign and in civil wars. In the days of Æthelred it still kept the Roman walls parts of which still remain, walls which were then able to withstand two sieges, one at the hands of the King himself, and one at those of the Danish invaders. In truth the position of Rochester, lying on the road from London to Canterbury, near to the sea on a navigable river, made it at all times a great military post. The chief ornament of the city did not yet exist in the days of Odo. The noble tower raised in the next age by Archbishop Walter of Corbeuil, the tower which in one struggle held out against John and in the next held out for his son, and still remains one of the glories of

brings in the story of Lanfranc's share in Odo's imprisonment in 1082, in order to account for Odo's special hatred towards the Archbishop.]*
 * [Footnote: Bigod and Hugh of Grantmesnil. So William of Malmesbury, who here