Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/269

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dangerous was the greed and hate of a powerful and unscrupulous neighbour. Nearly north from Saint Cenery, at much the same distance as Alençon is to the east, not far from the foot of the hill of Chaumont which makes so marked a feature in the whole surrounding landscape, on a peninsula formed by a bend of the Sarthon, just within the borders of Maine as Saint Cenery is just within the borders of Normandy, rises the solitary rock which once had been known as Jaugy. There we still trace the ruins of the castle which bore the name of the cruel Countess, the despoiler of the house of Jaugy, the castle of the Rock of Mabel. To the possessor of the Rock of Mabel the mightier rock of Saint Cenery, forming part of the same natural line of defence, could not fail to be an object of covetousness. Arnold died of poison, by the practice of the ruthless wife of Roger of Montgomery. Saint Cenery became part of the possessions of the fierce line of Bellême; and, under its present master, it doubtless deserved the strongest of the names bestowed on it by the monk of Saint Evroul.

At this moment Saint Cenery was held on behalf of Robert of Bellême by a specially valiant captain named Robert Carrel. We have no details of the siege. We are told nothing of the positions occupied by the besiegers, or how they became masters of the seemingly impregnable height. We are told that the resistance was long and fierce; but at last the castle was taken; and, as failure of provisions is spoken of as the cause, we may guess that