dy
were still foreign and hostile lands is shown by the western doorway of
the church of Tillieres, a piece of plain Romanesque, of late eleventh
or early twelfth century. Meanwhile, it does not appear that the
opposite height was crowned by any French fortress. Tillieres must have
been a standing menace to France, without there being any standing
menace to Normandy back again. Here are our topographical facts, very
clear and simple, quite enough to account for the part which Tillieres
plays in the history of the Norman duchy.

That part may be told in a few sentences, but it is a striking story
none the less. Tillieres, _Tegulense castrum_, bears a name cognate with
the Kerameikos of Athens and with the Tuilleries of Paris. It was first
fortified by Duke Richard the Good, the Duke who would have none but
gentlemen about him, and in whose days the peasants arose against their
masters. He gave his sister Matilda in marriage to Odo, Count of
Chartres; he gave her lands by the Arve as her dowry; but when she died
childless, he held that he had a right to take them back again. To this
doctrine the widower naturally did not agree; disputes arose between the
two princes, and the fortress of Tillieres--one would like to know its
exact shape in those days--arose as a bulwark of Normandy, beneath
whose walls the Count of Chartres underwent a defeat at the hands of
Duke Richard's lieutenants. They were Neal of Coutances and Ralph of
Toesny, speaking names in Norman history. We next hear of Tillieres in
the young days of William the Great, when King Henry could no longer
endure such a standing menace to France as the castle above the Arve. It
is the Norman writers who tell us, and we have no French tale to set
against this, how the King of the French demanded the castle of
Tillieres--how the young duke's guardians found it prudent to yield to
his demand--how its valiant governor, Gilbert Crispin, refused to give
it up--how the united forces of France and Normandy constrained him--how
the border-fortress was burned before all men, while the King swore that
it should not be set again for four years. But they go on to tell us how
the faithless King went on into the land of Exmes, how he burned
Argentan, and came back to fortify Tillieres again as a bulwark of
France against Normandy.[58] Time passed on. King Henry fought with Duke
William at Val-es-dunes, and fled before him at Varaville; and, as a
fruit of the last Norman victory, T