half-Saxon peasantry would have been far less easy.

He had not wished to dominate and overawe the people, but to win them to
true loyalty. He had known exactly what he wanted when he selected the
place for his castle, and a man who knows his own mind can usually find
men to do his work.

A castle in that place and time was a little town in itself, and it must
be able to exist by itself when necessary, without markets or factories or
outside help of any kind. Like most Normans the knight was a born builder,
and had taken care to make his castle as proof against attack, and as
scientifically built, as castle could be. Each landowner had to be his own
architect. Certain general rules were followed, of course. The keep, the
fosse, the inner and outer bailey, the general construction, were much the
same in all fortresses of Normandy or Norman Britain. But no two sites
were alike, and the work had to be planned not only according to the shape
of the hill but with reference to the material to be had, the amount and
quality of labor at hand, and the climate. This castle was on a hill not
high originally, but made some fifty feet higher by heaping up earth and
stone to bring the whole top somewhere near the level of the huge rock on
which the keep was built. On that side the river flowed almost under the
precipitous western face of the mount, so that a stone could be dropped
from the battlements into the water. The young page, Roger, thought he
could fish from his window if he could get a line long enough. The keep
was still the living-place of the family, but the double line of stone
wall encircling the mount was finished, and at exposed points small watch-
towers were placed, known as the mill-tower, the armorer's tower, the
smith's tower or the salt-tower, according to their use. If the castle
should be attacked each one of these outworks would be the post of a small
garrison and stubbornly defended, while the keep could be held almost