, the remains of which still stand.

Ten years after the victory at Hastings the memory of the blood of the
sturdy Saxons whom he had hacked down at Battle began so to weigh upon
de Warenne's conscience that he set out with Gundrada upon an expiatory
pilgrimage to Rome. Sheltering on the way in the monastery of St. Per,
at Cluny, they were so hospitably received that on returning to Lewes
William and Gundrada built a Priory, partly as a form of gratitude, and
partly as a safeguard for the life to come. In 1078, it was formally
founded on a magnificent scale. Thus Lewes obtained her castle and her
priory, both now in ruins, in the one of which William de Warenne might
sin with a clear mind, knowing that just below him, on the edge of the
water-brooks, was (in the other) so tangible an expiation.

The date of the formation of the priory spoils the pleasant legend which
tells how Harold, only badly wounded, was carried hither from Battle,
and how, recovering, he lived quietly with the brothers until his
natural death some years later. A variant of the same story takes the
English king to a cell near St. John's-under-the-Castle, also in Lewes,
and establishes him there as an anchorite. But (although, as we shall
see when we come to Battle, the facts were otherwise) all true
Englishmen prefer to think of Harold fighting in the midst of his army,
killed by a chance arrow shot into the zenith, and lying there until the
eyes of Editha of the Swan-neck lighted upon his dear corpse amid the
hundreds of the slain.

[Sidenote: THE CASTLE'S CURIOSITIES]

The de Warennes held Lewes Castle until the fourteenth century; the
Sussex Archaeological Society now have it in their fostering care.
Architecturally it is of no great interest, although it was once unique
in England by the possession of two keeps; nor has it romantic
associations, like Kenilworth or even Carisbrooke. The crumbling masonry
was assisted in its decay by no siege or bombardment; the castle has
been never the scene of human struggle. Visitors, therefore, must take
pleasure chiefly in the curiosities collected in the museum and in the
views from the roof. A few little rooms hold the treasures amassed by
the Archaeological Society; amassed, it may be said, with little
difficulty, for the soil of the district is fertile in relics. From
Ringmer come rusty shield bosses and the mouldering skull of an
Anglo-Saxon; from the old Lewes gaol come a lock and a key strong enoug