bered and added to the worthiest memories of this ancient castle.
The exact time of the erection of this castle is uncertain; but it is supposed to occupy the site of the old Roman fort, which was probably one of those built by Agricola in his westward progress to Scotland, about the year 80. That it was originally of Roman construction is proved by a Roman well which still exists in the north wall of the keep, and which was made of an immense depth, for the purpose of furnishing the garrison with a supply of water which could not be cut off by an assailing enemy. Egfrid the Christian king of Northumbria, and a descendant of Bertha, the wife of Ethelbert, king of Kent, through their daughter Ethelburger, repaired the castle in 680; and six years after we find the Bishop of Lindisfarne at Carlisle to obtain an audience of Queen Ermengard, the wife of Egfrid, who was then on a visit to her sister, the abbess of the nunnery here. Egfrid, it is possible, was at the castle at the same time as the great Bishop is said to have been his guest; but whether or not, the citizens brought St. Cuthbert out to show him their walls and this famous well while he was here; and as we stood in the very place where the holy man had stood so many dim centuries ago, and looked down its morticed sides, a cartoon of the whole scene involuntarily arose upon the imagination–the devout Christ-hearted Cuthbert, and the curious awed train of Volanti "people of the forest," as the inhabitants of these northern counties were then called, which undoubtedly followed him.
Two centuries after this the city was destroyed by
