“No, by my faith,” replied Oliver; “only I was thinking it somewhat strange that I should come in such an unseemly plight to the place where I was cradled with such feudal pride.”
Ralph Hornmouth uttered an audible “Humph!” and in a few moments more the drawbridge was lowered, and Oliver rode in with his captors to the courtyard; and the great gate closed heavily behind, and he found himself where, a few hours earlier, he had, of all other places, least expected to be for the night--in one of the castles which were his mother’s inheritance, and under the same roof with, and in the power of, the person who, of all others on earth, he most disliked--Hugh de Moreville.
“Whether,” says an old writer, speaking of Windsor, “you regard the wholesomeness of the air, the natural beauty and strength of the situation of the place, the pleasant pastime ministered out of the forest, chases, and parks that are annexed unto it, the good neighbourhood of that noble river which runneth by it, or the respective commodity of that most flourishing city, that is not past half-a-day’s journey removed from it, you will find it comparable to any prince’s palace that is abroad, and far surmounting any that we have at home.” But this was written long after Windsor was rebuilt and extended by William of Wykeham, at the command of the third Edward, when it stood regal in situation and aspect, with the standard of England waving from its battlements--a monument--and no unworthy monument--of the pride of the Plantagenets in peace, and of their prowess in war.
It was a very much less splendid edifice, however--as the reader may suppose--which, at the opening of the thirteenth century, stood on the brow of the hill looking over twelve fair counties, and with the Thames flowing at its feet; and it lacked even such means and appliances for rendering mediæval life comfortable and convenient as had come into fashion when, some sixty years later, Eleanor of Castile kept house almost constantly within its walls, and when the conqueror, of Evesham and Kakhow, in the midst of his grand projects of policy and war, was in the habit, on festive occasions, of making merry in the hall, and, as his people liked well to hear, playing “blindman’s-buff” with his children more readily and as heartily as he played a deeper, but somewhat similar, game with Boniface VIII. and Philip the Fair.