Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/325

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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. 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