judicious arrangements
unnoticed,--albeit our visit to the castle walls may have more to do with
its past than present history.

Tradition assigns the foundation of this castle to Gurguntus, the son of
Belinus, the twenty-fourth king of Britain from Brutus, who, having
observed in the east part of Britain a place well fitted by nature for
the building a fortress on, founded a certain castle of a square form,
and of white stone, on the top of a high hill near a river, which castle
was completed by his successor, Guthulinus, who "encompassed it with a
wall, bank, and double ditches, and made within it subterraneous vaults
of a long and blind or intricate extent." Another early writer ascribes
to Julius Caesar the honour of being its founder, and explains the origin
of certain rents and fissures, perceptible in its sides before its recent
restoration, to the earthquake that shook the earth "when the vail of the
temple was rent in twain;"--he adds, that afterwards Thenatius, Lud's son
by marriage with Blanche, kinswoman of Julius, gave it the name of
"Blancheflower." Others attribute this title to the whiteness of its
walk, and assign to the Normans its appropriation to the edifice they
found existing here.

Without doubt, as the metropolis of the Iceni, it was an important place
prior to the advent of the Saxons, who made it the royal seat of the
kings of East Anglia, and afterwards the residence of governors, called
aldermen, dukes, or earls. During the Danish wars, the castle was often
lost and won again, until Alfred the Great wholly subdued the Danes, and
he is said to have greatly improved its fortifications. The original
structure, however, is said to have fallen a sacrifice to the ravages of
the Danes under Sweyn, and the present edifice is attributed to Canute,
his son, upon his return after his flight upon the accession of Ethelred.
The supposition of its being the work of the Normans after the Conquest
is totally refuted by the events recorded as having transpired within its
precincts, while in the custody of Ralph Guader, who took possession of
it in the seventh year of William's reign. The elevation upon which the
castle and its fortifications were founded, some writers have conjectured
to be originally the work of heathen worshippers, who raised such like
giant temples to the sun; others have suggested the possibility of its
forming a portion of the famous Icknild Way.

This, in common with other milita