Note 509 — Chapter VIII · THE EARLY YEARS OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.[497] A.D. 1028–1051.

More probably, I think, of the twelfth than of the eleventh. Not that I at all think the building of such a castle to have been impossible in the eleventh century, but because it seems likely that Falaise was one of the castles which were destroyed and rebuilt in the wars of William and his successors. This point is well put by M. Ruprich-Robert, the architect employed by the powers which at present bear rule over Falaise and all Normandy in the “restoration”—that is, of course, the destruction—of this venerable keep. See his “Rapport,” 1864, p. 27.