m Normandy to join his mother at
Winchester. He landed in Kent, and was marching with his Normans along
the Way, whether or not with the intention of eventually trying to
recover his father's kingdom is uncertain; at all events, at Guildford
he was seized and put to death. So much is history; legend supplies a
dreadful embellishment. Early in the morning after their capture,
Alfred's followers were led out into the street and condemned to death.
Nine out of every ten men were butchered, until out of six hundred
Normans sixty only were left alive. That was not enough to glut their
captors' fury. The sixty were gone through again, and all but six were
ferociously tortured to death. Alfred himself was given to Harold, who
put out his eyes, loaded him with chains, and threw him into prison,
where he died. Fortunately, nobody need believe the story.

[Illustration: _The Castle Gate, Guildford._]

An environment of meaner modern buildings has spoiled the setting in
which the castle should stand. Seen from certain points, especially from
below, the keep is not a very imposing structure; you cannot get far
enough away from it. Far the best view is to be had from the rising
ground to the south-east, where you can set the castle in outline
against the sky. Then it takes on something of the romance of a Norman
ruin, with its tumbling masses of ivy, its broken battlements, and the
mixed greys and ochres of its masonry. The interior is uninteresting,
except for the sad little carvings left by prisoners on the walls, among
them a crucifix, a hermit, St. Catherine's wheel, and St. Christopher.
If St. Christopher was not exactly the patron saint of prisoners, he was
the kindliest saint to carve on a dungeon wall. If you looked on St.
Christopher you were safe, at least for that day, from sudden death. How
many thousand days of "safety" he must have brought to the Guildford
prisoners!

The castle enceinte is now laid out as a pleasure ground, with all a
public garden's advantages and disadvantages. Public taste demands
"bedding out," even though geraniums and calceolarias fit unhappily
enough with masonry fourteen feet thick and Saxon earthworks. A bowling
green is in its proper place; thorns and old rose-trees have a right to
grow round ruined castles; wallflowers belong to stones and mortar. But
lobelias do not. Still, something even worse than bedding-out might have
befallen the Castle grounds. Dr. G.C. Williamson, in his valuable