Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/383

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William of England soon found out that he had not played a wise part for his own interests, or at least for his own plans, in strengthening his elder brother at the expense of the younger. He was now again scheming against Robert; he therefore favoured the growth of the new power on the Cenomannian border. It was with the Red King's full sanction that Domfront became the head-quarters of a warfare which Henry waged against both Roberts, the Duke and the tyrant of Bellême. He made many expeditions, which were largely rewarded with plunder and captives, and in the course of which some picturesque incidents happened which may call for some notice later in our story. For the present we are concerned rather with the re-establishment of Henry's power, of which his possession of Domfront was at once the earnest and the beginning. Favoured by William, helped by his former friends, Henry was soon again a powerful prince, lord of the greater part of his old county of Coutances and Avranches. And this dominion was secured on his southern border by the occupation of another fortress almost as important as Domfront itself, and no less closely connected with the memory of Henry's father.

This was the castle of Saint James, the stronghold which the Conqueror reared to guard the Breton march, which stands close on that dangerous frontier, in the southernmost part of the land of Avranches. That hilly and wooded land puts on at this point a somewhat bolder character. A peninsular hill with steep sides, and with a rushing beck, the Beuvron, between itself and the opposite heights, was a point which the eye of William the Great had marked out as a fitting site for a border-castle. Yet the castle did not occupy the exact spot where one would have looked for it. We should have