Among the sorrows which rent the breast of the holy Bishop of Worcester, one may have been to see a man of his own order, one whom he had, somewhat strangely perhaps, honoured with his friendship, acting as a temporal leader in the rebellion against which he had to wield his spiritual arms. It was, it may be remembered, Geoffrey of Mowbray, the lord of the robbers’ hold at Bristol, who had rebuked the lamb-like simplicity of Wulfstan’s garb.[145] The lamb of Severnside had now overthrown alike the wolves of Normandy and the wild cats of the British hills. But, if Wulfstan mourned over the evil deeds of the warlike Bishop of Coutances, he had no such personal cause for grief over either the sins or the sorrows of another bishop who was meanwhile, like himself, besieged in an episcopal city. That bishop however was not, like Wulfstan, defending his own flock with either spiritual or temporal arms; he was doing all the wrong in his power to the flock of another. Movements of Odo in Kent. The source and leader of the whole mischief,[146] Odo, Bishop and Earl, chose his own earldom of Kent for the scene of his ravages. Our notes of time are very imperfect, and we have seen that there were movements in Kent, movements in which Odo seems to have had a share, much earlier in the year.[147] But it would seem that the great outbreak of rebellion in south-eastern England happened about the same time as the great outbreaks more to the west and north. As the Bishop of Coutances had fixed his head-quarters in the castle of Bristol, so the Bishop of Bayeux now fixed his head-quarters in the castle of Rochester, and thence ravaged the lands of the King and the Archbishop.[148] Another great Kentish fortress, that of Tunbridge, was also in rebellion. Tunbridge and Pevensey. So in Sussex was Pevensey, the very firstfruits of the Conquest, where Odo’s brother Count Robert also held out against the King. These three fortresses now become the busy scene of our immediate story; but the centre of all is the post occupied by the Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent. This part of the war is emphatically the war of Rochester.
Edwᵈ. Weller
For the Delegates of the Clarendon Press.
Map illustrating the
KENT AND SUSSEX
CAMPAIGN. A.D. 1088.
Early history of Rochester. The city by the Medway had been a fortress from the earliest times. We have seen that it had already played a part both in foreign and in civil wars. In the days of Æthelred it still kept the Roman walls parts of which still remain, walls which were then able to withstand two sieges, one at the hands of the King himself, and one at those of the Danish invaders.[149] Importance of its position. In truth the position of Rochester, lying on the road from London to Canterbury, near to the sea on a navigable river, made it at all times a great military post.[150] The chief ornament of the city did not yet exist in the days of Odo. The later castle. The noble tower raised in the next age by Archbishop Walter of Corbeuil, the tower which in one struggle held out against John[151] and in the next held out for his son,[152] and still remains one of the glories of Norman military architecture, had perhaps not even a forerunner of its own class.[153] The cathedral church. And the minster of Saint Andrew, which the enlargements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries have still left one of the least among the episcopal churches of England, had then only the lowly forerunner which had risen, which perhaps was still only rising, under the hands of Gundulf.[154] The castle site fortified by the Conqueror. But the steep scarped cliff rising above the broad tidal stream was a stronghold in the Conqueror’s days, as it had doubtless been in days long before his. Whether a stone castle had yet been built is uncertain; the fact that such an one was built for William Rufus by Gundulf later in his reign might almost lead us to think that as yet the site, strong in itself, was defended only by earthworks and defences of timber.[155] The city. Below the castle to the south-east lay the city, doubtless fenced by the Roman wall; and a large part of its space had now begun to form the monastic precinct of Saint Andrew. The town is said to have been parted from the castle by a ditch which, as at Le Mans and at Lincoln, was overleaped by the enlarged church of the twelfth century;[156] in any case the castle, in all its stages, formed a sheltering citadel to the town at its feet. Nature of the site. Neither town nor castle by itself occupies a peninsular site; but a great bend of the river to the south makes the whole ground on which they stand peninsular, with an extent of marshy ground between the town and the river to the north and east. The stronghold of Rochester, no lofty natural peak, no mound of ancient English kings, perhaps as yet gathering round no square keep of the new Norman fashion, but in any case a well-defended circuit with its scarped sides strengthened by all the art of the time, was the chief fortress of the ancient kingdom over which the Bishop of Bayeux now ruled as Earl. The castle occupied by Odo. It now became, under him, the great centre of the rebellion. Gundulf, renowned as he was for his skill in military architecture, must have been sore let and hindered in the peaceful work of building his church and settling the discipline of his monks,[157] when his brother bishop filled the castle with his men of war, five hundred of his own knights among them.[158] But Odo was not satisfied with his garrison. Odo asks Robert to come. He sent beyond sea to Duke Robert for further help. The prince in whose name Rochester was now held was earnestly prayed to come at once at the head of the full power of his duchy, to take possession of the crown and kingdom which were waiting for his coming.[159]
E. Weller
For the Delegates of the Clarendon Press.
ROCHESTER