the wall. Finally, on 14 August, the miners attacked the keep itself, lighting a fire under the walls, cracking the stone and filling the building with smoke. The female members of the household, including Falkes' wife, and Henry de Braybrooke were released, the royal standard was raised over the tower, and the next day William and the garrison surrendered. A discussion ensued about the fate of the garrison; near contemporary accounts suggest that the prisoners asked the Archbishop for assistance, but that this was declined. Henry then had all the male members of the garrison hanged, except for three knights who agreed to join the military order of the Knights Templar. Three days after the fall of Bedford Castle, the Pope wrote a letter demanding that Henry cease his campaign against Falkes, but this intervention had occurred far too late to be of use. Alexander de Stavenby, the Bishop of Coventry, convinced Falkes to surrender after the fall of the castle; he handed over his remaining castles at Plympton and Storgursey and was absolved by Langton, going into exile shortly afterwards. Historian R. Brown has noted that the 1224 siege of Bedford Castle was remarkable in that the castle's garrison was able to hold out against "the concentrated military resources of the whole kingdom" for an impressive eight weeks. David Carpenter argues that the fall of Bedford castle "concluded the triumph of central government" over the previously uncontrollable forces of the local barons. Later history (13–19th centuries) After the siege Henry III ordered the castle to be dismantled, and labourers filled in the ditches and halved the height of the stone walls. William de Beauchamp was forbidden to rebuild the castle, and instead built an unfortified house in the inner bailey. St Paul's and St Cuthbert's churches were rebuilt in 1224 using stone from the castle. The sudden availability of cheap stone led to the repaving of many of the town streets in Bedford in 1224. Local tradition suggests that the first stone bridge at Bedford, the Great Bridge, was built using stone from the castle. By 1361 the castle site was described as "a void plot of old enclosed by walls" and seems to have been derelict for most of the medieval period. The antiquarian John Leland visited the site in the 16th century, and noted that the castle was "now clean down". The early 17th-century mapmaker John Speed