sely released Odo,
on his oath to give up Rochester Castle and leave the country.
Rochester was then in the hands of Eustace of Boulogne, sworn friend
of Duke Robert, and when Odo appeared with the King's Guard before the
Castle, demanding its surrender, he, understanding everything,
captured his own lord and the king's guard also and brought them in.
Rufus then turned to his English subjects and demanded their
assistance, for his Barons were then, as they have invariably been
throughout English history, against the Crown, which truly represented
and defended the people. They flocked to the Royal Standard, and after
six weeks' siege, plague and famine ravaging the garrison, Odo
surrendered and was imprisoned at Tonbridge, and later expelled the
kingdom. As this great rascal Bishop came out of Rochester Castle,
the English youths sang out "Rope and Cord! Rope and Cord for the
traitor Bishop." But Odo was too near to the king.

That was the first time we know of in which Rochester stood like the
gage of England; the second was in the Barons' wars. When King John,
in 1215, had taken Rochester and notably discomfited the rascal
Barony, they immediately invited Louis of France to assist them. He
set sail with some seven hundred vessels, landed at Sandwich, and
retook Rochester, which had been so badly damaged that it could not
defend itself. Forty-eight years later, in 1264, Henry III. being
king, Simon de Montfort coming into Kent, burnt the wooden bridge
over the Medway which was too strongly held by the loyal inhabitants
of Rochester for him to capture, took the city by storm, sacked the
Cathedral and the Priory, and laid siege to the Castle. He failed, and
Lewes could not give him what Rochester had denied.

Rochester Castle, which hitherto only famine had been able to open,
was to fall at last to Wat Tyler and his Peasants in 1381, with the
help of the people of the city. After that culminating misery of the
fourteenth century, which was so full of miseries, Rochester plays
little part in history for many years. She appears again to take part
in innumerable pageants, such as that in which Henry VIII. in 1540,
and on New Year's day, first saw Anne of Cleves and was astonished at
her little beauty, or that which greeted Elizabeth in 1573, or that
which greeted Charles I. and his bride after their wedding at
Canterbury, or that which shouted for the Merry Monarch, when Charles
II. rode down the High Street in 1660, after