" But Odo was too near to the king.
That was the first time we know of in which Rochester stood like the
gage of England; the second was in the Barons' wars. When King John,
in 1215, had taken Rochester and notably discomfited the rascal
Barony, they immediately invited Louis of France to assist them. He
set sail with some seven hundred vessels, landed at Sandwich, and
retook Rochester, which had been so badly damaged that it could not
defend itself. Forty-eight years later, in 1264, Henry III. being
king, Simon de Montfort coming into Kent, burnt the wooden bridge
over the Medway which was too strongly held by the loyal inhabitants
of Rochester for him to capture, took the city by storm, sacked the
Cathedral and the Priory, and laid siege to the Castle. He failed, and
Lewes could not give him what Rochester had denied.
Rochester Castle, which hitherto only famine had been able to open,
was to fall at last to Wat Tyler and his Peasants in 1381, with the
help of the people of the city. After that culminating misery of the
fourteenth century, which was so full of miseries, Rochester plays
little part in history for many years.
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