with the garrison.  Perhaps they were repulsed, and then a shed-like structure would be advanced towards the wall, so as to enable the men to get close enough to dig a hole beneath the walls in order to bring them down.  The besieged would not be inactive, but would cast heavy stones on the roof of the shed.  Molten lead and burning flax were favourite means of defence to alarm and frighten away the enemy, who retaliated by casting heavy stones by means of a catapult into the town.

  [4] The Builder, April 16, 1904.

[Illustration:  Bootham Bar, York]

Amongst the fragments of walls still standing, those at Newcastle are very massive, sooty, and impressive.  Southampton has some grand walls left and a gateway, which show how strongly the town was fortified.  The old Cinque Port, Sandwich, formerly a great and important town, lately decayed, but somewhat renovated by golf, has two gates left, and Rochester and Canterbury have some fragments of their walls standing.  The repair of the walls of towns was sometimes undertaken by guilds.  Generous benefactors, like Sir Richard Whittington, frequently contributed to the cost, and sometimes a tax called murage was levied for the purpose which was collected by officers named muragers.

The city of York has lost many of its treasures, and the City Fathers seem to find it difficult to keep their hands off such relics of antiquity as are left to them.  There are few cities in England more deeply marked with the impress of the storied past than York—­the long and moving story of its gates and walls, of the historical associations of the city through century after century of English history.  About eighty years ago the Corporation destroyed the picturesque old barbicans of the Bootham, Micklegate, and Monk Bars, and only one, Walmgate, was suffered to retain this interesting feature.  It is a wonder they spared those curious stone half-length figures of men, sculptured in a menacing attitude in the act of hurling large stones downwards, which vaunt themselves on the summit of Monk Bar—­probably intended to deceive invaders—­or that interesting stone platform only twenty-two inches wide, which was the only foothold available for the martial burghers who guarded the city wall at Tower Place.  A year or two ago the City Fathers decided, in order to provide work for the unemployed, to interfere with the city moats by laying them out as flower-beds and by planting shrubs and making playgrounds of the banks.  The protest of the Yorks Archaeological Society, we believe, stayed their hands.

The same story can be told of far too many towns and cities.  A few years ago several old houses were demolished in the High Street of the city of Rochester to make room for electric tramways.  Among these was the old White Hart Inn, built in 1396, the sign being a badge of Richard II, where Samuel Pepys stayed.  He found that “the beds were corded, and we had no sheets to our beds, only linen to our mouths” (a narrow strip of linen to prevent the contact of the blanket with the face).  With regard to the disappearance of old inns, we must wait until we arrive at another chapter.