IV. HOW THE SUMMONER CAME TO THE MANOR HOUSE OF TILFORD


By the date of this chronicle the ascetic sternness of the old
Norman castles had been humanized and refined so that the new
dwellings of the nobility, if less imposing in appearance, were
much more comfortable as places of residence. A gentle race had
built their houses rather for peace than for war. He who compares
the savage bareness of Pevensey or Guildford with the piled
grandeur of Bodmin or Windsor cannot fail to understand the change
in manners which they represent.

The earlier castles had a set purpose, for they were built that
the invaders might hold down the country; but when the Conquest
was once firmly established a castle had lost its meaning save as
a refuge from justice or as a center for civil strife. On the
marches of Wales and of Scotland the castle might continue to be a
bulwark to the kingdom, and there still grew and flourished; but
in all other places they were rather a menace to the King's
majesty, and as such were discouraged and destroyed. By the reign
of the third Edward the greater part of the old fighting castles
had been converted into dwelling-houses or had been ruined in the
civil wars, and left where their grim gray bones are still
littered upon the brows of our hills. The new buildings were
either great country-houses, capable of defense, but mainly
residential, or they were manor-houses with no military
significance at all.