Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/91

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the way of further defences, and conjecture has attributed to him one of the several lines which the city walls have taken, that which brought the line of defence most closely to the banks of the Frome. But whatever were his works, we have no record of them; we know only that the fierce prelate, at the head of his partisans, turned Bristol Castle into a den of robbers. His chief confederates were William of Eu, of whom we have already spoken, and his own nephew Robert of Mowbray. Among them they harried the land, and brought in the fruits of their harrying to the castle. The central position of Bristol made a division of labour easy. Of Bishop Geoffrey's two younger confederates, Robert undertook the work in Somerset and William in Gloucestershire. Robert marched up the valley of the Avon to the Roman town of Bath, emphatically the "old borough." At the foot of the hills on either side, lying, as wicked wits put it, amid sulphureous vapours, at the gates of hell, the square, small indeed, of the Roman walls sheltered the abbey of Offa's rearing, now widowed by the death of its English abbot Ælfsige. The city had been overthrown by the arms of Ceawlin; it had lain