Historiae Cantebrigiensis Academiae ab urbe condita, liber primus [-secundus]

In the History of the English People, book 4, chapter 17, see chapter 22, so that you may know how credulous that age was.

much more extensive, with the outer parts now removed by age and wars. There were once many signs of antiquity, such as that monument brought to the monastery of Ely for the second burial of Queen Ædilthryda Etheldreda: concerning which Bede writes that when the region of Ely, which is called Elge, was surrounded on all sides by marshes and waters, and did not have larger stones, they came by boat to a certain desolate little city, not far situated from there, which is called Grantecestre in the language of the English. And soon they found near the walls of the city a little chest made most beautifully of white marble, covered most fittingly by a lid of a similar stone. Although the blindness of that age creates wonder in this—that in the reign of Henry the Eighth, recently, that same sepulcher was torn down, and it was made of common stone, not of white marble as Bede narrates. Among the ancient monuments that still exist today, both the most ancient and the most intact is its Castle, ruined and for the most part consumed by age, as is the habit of all things, and also diminished in some part for the building of colleges and the private houses of noblemen, by the generosity of princes. For Edward the Third, for the building of his Royal Hall (which is now contained within the walls of Trinity College), and Henry the Sixth for the construction of his Royal College, and Queen Mary, for rebuilding the private houses of John Huddleston of Sauston, knight, among others, diminished it greatly: the square stone with which it was constructed on the outside was taken away, and the inside was broken off, as we shall propose in its proper place separately, when we come to the building of the Colleges. It is credible that the Castle was placed in the age of the Kings Knoud Canute and Florentius of Cambridge (concerning whom in the first book on Antiquity). For during those times there were many kings in Britain, and each strove for power, and sought to propagate the borders of his own kingdom and to invade and possess those of others. For which reason they placed castles for themselves in the