Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/88

 with a fringe of ecclesiastical buildings, and then took them within a more extended line of wall. Another in later days has swept away well nigh every trace of the fortress which was so famous both in the twelfth century and in the seventeenth, and has covered the whole range of the neighbouring hills with a new and airy city of modern days.

The castle of Bristol then, though not perched, like so many of its fellows, on any lofty height, was placed on a strong and important site. That site, commanding the lower course of the Avon and the great borough upon it, and guarding the meeting-place, still of two shires, as once of two kingdoms, supplied an admirable centre for the work of those whose object was, not to guard those shires, but to lay them waste. To that end Bristol was occupied and garrisoned by the warrior Bishop of Coutances, Geoffrey of Mowbray. It is not unlikely that he was already in command of the castle. He was not only a land-owner in the two neighbouring shires, a very great land-owner in that of Somerset; but the meagre notice of Bristol in the Great Survey also shows that he stood in some special relation to the borough as the receiver of the King's dues within it. He doubtless added anything that the castle needed in