<h2><SPAN name="page100"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>CHAPTER VIII.<br/> <span class="GutSmall">THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND.</span><br/> <span class="smcap">December</span> 1066-<span class="smcap">March</span> <span class="GutSmall">1070.</span></h2>
<p><span class="smcap">The</span> coronation of William had its
effect in a moment. It made him really king over part of
England; it put him into a new position with regard to the
rest. As soon as there was a king, men flocked to swear
oaths to him and become his men. They came from shires
where he had no real authority. It was most likely now,
rather than at Berkhampstead, that Edwin and Morkere at last made
up their minds to acknowledge some king. They became
William’s men and received again their lands and earldoms
as his grant. Other chief men from the North also submitted
and received their lands and honours again. But Edwin and
Morkere were not allowed to go back to their earldoms.
William thought it safer to keep them near himself, under the
guise of honour—Edwin was even promised one of his
daughters in marriage—but really half as prisoners, half as
hostages. Of the two other earls, Waltheof son of Siward,
who held the shires of Northampton and Huntingdon, and Oswulf who
held the earldom of Bernicia or modern Northumberland, we hear
nothing at this moment. As for Waltheof, it is strange if
he were not at Senlac; it is strange if he were there and came
away alive. But we only know that he was in William’s
allegiance a few months later. Oswulf must have held out in
some marked way. It was William’s policy to act as
king even where he had no means of carrying out his kingly
orders. He therefore in February 1067 granted the Bernician
earldom to an Englishman named Copsige, who had acted as
Tostig’s lieutenant. This implies the formal
deprivation of Oswulf. But William sent no force with the
new earl, who had to take possession as he could. That is
to say, of two parties in a local quarrel, one hoped to
strengthen itself by making use of William’s name.
And William thought that it would strengthen his position to let
at least his name be heard in every corner of the kingdom.
The rest of the story stands rather aloof from the main
history. Copsige got possession of the earldom for a
moment. He was then killed by Oswulf and his partisans, and
Oswulf himself was killed in the course of the year by a common
robber. At Christmas, 1067, William again granted or sold
the earldom to another of the local chiefs, Gospatric. But
he made no attempt to exercise direct authority in those parts
till the beginning of the year 1069.</p>
<p>All this illustrates William’s general course.
Crowned king over the land, he would first strengthen himself in
that part of the kingdom which he actually held. Of the
passive disobedience of other parts he would take no present
notice. In northern and central England William could
exercise no authority; but those lands were not in arms against
him, nor did they acknowledge any other king. Their earls,
now his earls, were his favoured courtiers. He could afford
to be satisfied with this nominal kingship, till a fit
opportunity came to make it real. He could afford to lend
his name to the local enterprise of Copsige. It would at
least be another count against the men of Bernicia that they had
killed the earl whom King William gave them.</p>
<p>Meanwhile William was taking very practical possession in the
shires where late events had given him real authority. His
policy was to assert his rights in the strongest form, but to
show his mildness and good will by refraining from carrying them
out to the uttermost. By right of conquest William claimed
nothing. He had come to take his crown, and he had
unluckily met with some opposition in taking it. The crown
lands of King Edward passed of course to his successor. As
for the lands of other men, in William’s theory all was
forfeited to the crown. The lawful heir had been driven to
seek his kingdom in arms; no Englishman had helped him; many
Englishmen had fought against him. All then were directly
or indirectly traitors. The King might lawfully deal with
the lands of all as his own. But in the greater part of the
kingdom it was impossible, in no part was it prudent, to carry
out this doctrine in its fulness. A passage in Domesday,
compared with a passage in the English Chronicles, shows that,
soon after William’s coronation, the English as a body,
within the lands already conquered, redeemed their lands.
They bought them back at a price, and held them as a fresh grant
from King William. Some special offenders, living and dead,
were exempted from this favour. The King took to himself
the estates of the house of Godwine, save those of Edith, the
widow of his revered predecessor, whom it was his policy to treat
with all honour. The lands too of those who had died on
Senlac were granted back to their heirs only of special favour,
sometimes under the name of alms. Thus, from the beginning
of his reign, William began to make himself richer than any king
that had been before him in England or than any other Western
king of his day. He could both punish his enemies and
reward his friends. Much of what he took he kept; much he
granted away, mainly to his foreign followers, but sometimes also
to Englishmen who had in any way won his favour. Wiggod of
Wallingford was one of the very few Englishmen who kept and
received estates which put them alongside of the great Norman
landowners. The doctrine that all land was held of the King
was now put into a practical shape. All, Englishmen and
strangers, not only became William’s subjects, but his men
and his grantees. Thus he went on during his whole
reign. There was no sudden change from the old state of
things to the new. After the general redemption of lands,
gradually carried out as William’s power advanced, no
general blow was dealt at Englishmen as such. They were
not, like some conquered nations, formally degraded or put under
any legal incapacities in their own land. William simply
distinguished between his loyal and his disloyal subjects, and
used his opportunities for punishing the disloyal and rewarding
the loyal. Such punishments and rewards naturally took the
shape of confiscations and grants of land. If punishment
was commonly the lot of the Englishman, and reward was the lot of
the stranger, that was only because King William treated all men
as they deserved. Most Englishmen were disloyal; most
strangers were loyal. But disloyal strangers and loyal
Englishmen fared according to their deserts. The final
result of this process, begun now and steadily carried on, was
that, by the end of William’s reign, the foreign king was
surrounded by a body of foreign landowners and office-bearers of
foreign birth. When, in the early days of his conquest, he
gathered round him the great men of his realm, it was still an
English assembly with a sprinkling of strangers. By the end
of his reign it had changed, step by step, into an assembly of
strangers with a sprinkling of Englishmen.</p>
<p>This revolution, which practically transferred the greater
part of the soil of England to the hands of strangers, was great
indeed. But it must not be mistaken for a sudden blow, for
an irregular scramble, for a formal proscription of Englishmen as
such. William, according to his character and practice, was
able to do all this gradually, according to legal forms, and
without drawing any formal distinction between natives and
strangers. All land was held of the King of the English,
according to the law of England. It may seem strange how
such a process of spoliation, veiled under a legal fiction, could
have been carried out without resistance. It was easier
because it was gradual and piecemeal. The whole country was
not touched at once, nor even the whole of any one
district. One man lost his land while his neighbour kept
his, and he who kept his land was not likely to join in the
possible plots of the other. And though the land had never
seen so great a confiscation, or one so largely for the behoof of
foreigners, yet there was nothing new in the thing itself.
Danes had settled under Cnut, and Normans and other Frenchmen
under Edward. Confiscation of land was the everyday
punishment for various public and private crimes. In any
change, such as we should call a change of ministry, as at the
fall and the return of Godwine, outlawry and forfeiture of lands
was the usual doom of the weaker party, a milder doom than the
judicial massacres of later ages. Even a conquest of
England was nothing new, and William at this stage contrasted
favourably with Cnut, whose early days were marked by the death
of not a few. William, at any rate since his crowning, had
shed the blood of no man. Men perhaps thought that things
might have been much worse, and that they were not unlikely to
mend. Anyhow, weakened, cowed, isolated, the people of the
conquered shires submitted humbly to the Conqueror’s
will. It needed a kind of oppression of which William
himself was never guilty to stir them into actual revolt.</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>The provocation was not long in coming. Within three
months after his coronation, William paid a visit to his native
duchy. The ruler of two states could not be always in
either; he owed it to his old subjects to show himself among them
in his new character; and his absence might pass as a sign of the
trust he put in his new subjects. But the means which he
took to secure their obedience brought out his one weak
point. We cannot believe that he really wished to goad the
people into rebellion; yet the choice of his lieutenants might
seem almost like it. He was led astray by partiality for
his brother and for his dearest friend. To Bishop Ode of
Bayeux, and to William Fitz-Osbern, the son of his early
guardian, he gave earldoms, that of Kent to Odo, that of Hereford
to William. The Conqueror was determined before all things
that his kingdom should be united and obedient; England should
not be split up like Gaul and Germany; he would have no man in
England whose formal homage should carry with it as little of
practical obedience as his own homage to the King of the
French. A Norman earl of all Wessex or all Mercia might
strive after such a position. William therefore forsook the
old practice of dividing the whole kingdom into earldoms.
In the peaceful central shires he would himself rule through his
sheriffs and other immediate officers; he would appoint earls
only in dangerous border districts where they were needed as
military commanders. All William’s earls were in fact
<i>marquesses</i>, guardians of a march or frontier. Ode
had to keep Kent against attacks from the continent; William
Fitz-Osbern had to keep Herefordshire against the Welsh and the
independent English. This last shire had its own local
warfare. William’s authority did not yet reach over
all the shires beyond London and Hereford; but Harold had allowed
some of Edward’s Norman favourites to keep power
there. Hereford then and part of its shire formed an
isolated part of William’s dominions, while the lands
around remained unsubdued. William Fitz-Osbern had to guard
this dangerous land as earl. But during the King’s
absence both he and Ode received larger commissions as viceroys
over the whole kingdom. Ode guarded the South and William
the North and North-East. Norwich, a town dangerous from
its easy communication with Denmark, was specially under his
care. The nominal earls of the rest of the land, Edwin,
Morkere, and Waltheof, with Edgar, King of a moment, Archbishop
Stigand, and a number of other chief men, William took with him
to Normandy. Nominally his cherished friends and guests,
they went in truth, as one of the English Chroniclers calls them,
as hostages.</p>
<p>William’s stay in Normandy lasted about six
months. It was chiefly devoted to rejoicings and religious
ceremonies, but partly to Norman legislation. Rich gifts
from the spoils of England were given to the churches of
Normandy; gifts richer still were sent to the Church of Rome
whose favour had wrought so much for William. In exchange
for the banner of Saint Peter, Harold’s standard of the
Fighting-man was sent as an offering to the head of all
churches. While William was in Normandy, Archbishop
Maurilius of Rouen died. The whole duchy named Lanfranc as
his successor; but he declined the post, and was himself sent to
Rome to bring the pallium for the new archbishop John, a kinsman
of the ducal house. Lanfranc doubtless refused the see of
Rouen only because he was designed for a yet greater post in
England; the subtlest diplomatist in Europe was not sent to Rome
merely to ask for the pallium for Archbishop John.</p>
<p>Meanwhile William’s choice of lieutenants bore its fruit
in England. They wrought such oppression as William himself
never wrought. The inferior leaders did as they thought
good, and the two earls restrained them not. The earls
meanwhile were in one point there faithfully carrying out the
policy of their master in the building of castles; a work, which
specially when the work of Ode and William Fitz-Osbern, is always
spoken of by the native writers with marked horror. The
castles were the badges and the instruments of the Conquest, the
special means of holding the land in bondage. Meanwhile
tumults broke forth in various parts. The slaughter of
Copsige, William’s earl in Northumberland, took place about
the time of the King’s sailing for Normandy. In
independent Herefordshire the leading Englishman in those parts,
Eadric, whom the Normans called the <i>Wild</i>, allied himself
with the Welsh, harried the obedient lands, and threatened the
castle of Hereford. Nothing was done on either side beyond
harrying and skirmishes; but Eadric’s corner of the land
remained unsubdued. The men of Kent made a strange foreign
alliance with Eustace of Boulogne, the brother-in-law of Edward,
the man whose deeds had led to the great movement of
Edward’s reign, to the banishment and the return of
Godwine. He had fought against England on Senlac, and was
one of four who had dealt the last blow to the wounded
Harold. But the oppression of Ode made the Kentishmen glad
to seek any help against him. Eustace, now William’s
enemy, came over, and gave help in an unsuccessful attack on
Dover castle. Meanwhile in the obedient shires men were
making ready for revolt; in the unsubdued lands they were making
ready for more active defence. Many went beyond sea to ask
for foreign help, specially in the kindred lands of Denmark and
Northern Germany. Against this threatening movement
William’s strength lay in the incapacity of his enemies for
combined action. The whole land never rose at once, and
Danish help did not come at the times or in the shape when it
could have done most good.</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>The news of these movements brought William back to England in
December. He kept the Midwinter feast and assembly at
Westminster; there the absent Eustace was, by a characteristic
stroke of policy, arraigned as a traitor. He was a foreign
prince against whom the Duke of the Normans might have led a
Norman army. But he had also become an English landowner,
and in that character he was accountable to the King and Witan of
England. He suffered the traitor’s punishment of
confiscation of lands. Afterwards he contrived to win back
William’s favour, and he left great English possessions to
his second wife and his son. Another stroke of policy was
to send an embassy to Denmark, to ward off the hostile purposes
of Swegen, and to choose as ambassador an English prelate who had
been in high favour with both Edward and Harold, Æthelsige,
Abbot of Ramsey. It came perhaps of his mission that Swegen
practically did nothing for two years. The envoy’s
own life was a chequered one. He lost William’s
favour, and sought shelter in Denmark. He again regained
William’s favour—perhaps by some service at the
Danish court—and died in possession of his abbey.</p>
<p>It is instructive to see how in this same assembly William
bestowed several great offices. The earldom of
Northumberland was vacant by the slaughter of two earls, the
bishopric of Dorchester by the peaceful death of its
bishop. William had no real authority in any part of
Northumberland, or in more than a small part of the diocese of
Dorchester. But he dealt with both earldom and bishopric as
in his own power. It was now that he granted Northumberland
to Gospatric. The appointment to the bishopric was the
beginning of a new system. Englishmen were now to give way
step by step to strangers in the highest offices and greatest
estates of the land. He had already made two Norman earls,
but they were to act as military commanders. He now made an
English earl, whose earldom was likely to be either nominal or
fatal. The appointment of Remigius of Fécamp to the
see of Dorchester was of more real importance. It is the
beginning of William’s ecclesiastical reign, the first step
in William’s scheme of making the Church his instrument in
keeping down the conquered. While William lived, no
Englishman was appointed to a bishopric. As bishoprics
became vacant by death, foreigners were nominated, and excuses
were often found for hastening a vacancy by deprivation. At
the end of William’s reign one English bishop only was
left. With abbots, as having less temporal power than
bishops, the rule was less strict. Foreigners were
preferred, but Englishmen were not wholly shut out. And the
general process of confiscation and regrant of lands was
vigorously carried out. The Kentish revolt and the general
movement must have led to many forfeitures and to further grants
to loyal men of either nation. As the English Chronicles
pithily puts it, “the King gave away every man’s
land.”</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>William could soon grant lands in new parts of England.
In February 1068 he for the first time went forth to warfare with
those whom he called his subjects, but who had never submitted to
him. In the course of the year a large part of England was
in arms against him. But there was no concert; the West
rose and the North rose; but the West rose first, and the North
did not rise till the West had been subdued. Western
England threw off the purely passive state which had lasted
through the year 1067. Hitherto each side had left the
other alone. But now the men of the West made ready for a
more direct opposition to the foreign government. If they
could not drive William out of what he had already won, they
would at least keep him from coming any further. Exeter,
the greatest city of the West, was the natural centre of
resistance; the smaller towns, at least of Devonshire and Dorset
entered into a league with the capital. They seem to have
aimed, like Italian cities in the like case, at the formation of
a civic confederation, which might perhaps find it expedient to
acknowledge William as an external lord, but which would maintain
perfect internal independence. Still, as Gytha, widow of
Godwine, mother of Harold, was within the walls of Exeter, the
movement was doubtless also in some sort on behalf of the House
of Godwine. In any case, Exeter and the lands and towns in
its alliance with Exeter strengthened themselves in every way
against attack.</p>
<p>Things were not now as on the day of Senlac, when Englishmen
on their own soil withstood one who, however he might cloke his
enterprise, was to them simply a foreign invader. But
William was not yet, as he was in some later struggles, the <i>de
facto</i> king of the whole land, whom all had acknowledged, and
opposition to whom was in form rebellion. He now held an
intermediate position. He was still an invader; for Exeter
had never submitted to him; but the crowned King of the English,
peacefully ruling over many shires, was hardly a mere invader;
resistance to him would have the air of rebellion in the eyes of
many besides William and his flatterers. And they could not
see, what we plainly see, what William perhaps dimly saw, that it
was in the long run better for Exeter, or any other part of
England, to share, even in conquest, the fate of the whole land,
rather than to keep on a precarious independence to the
aggravation of the common bondage. This we feel throughout;
William, with whatever motive, is fighting for the unity of
England. We therefore cannot seriously regret his
successes. But none the less honour is due to the men whom
the duty of the moment bade to withstand him. They could
not see things as we see them by the light of eight hundred
years.</p>
<p>The movement evidently stirred several shires; but it is only
of Exeter that we hear any details. William never used
force till he had tried negotiation. He sent messengers
demanding that the citizens should take oaths to him and receive
him within their walls. The choice lay now between
unconditional submission and valiant resistance. But the
chief men of the city chose a middle course which could gain
nothing. They answered as an Italian city might have
answered a Swabian Emperor. They would not receive the King
within their walls; they would take no oaths to him; but they
would pay him the tribute which they had paid to earlier
kings. That is, they would not have him as king, but only
as overlord over a commonwealth otherwise independent.
William’s answer was short; “It is not my custom to
take subjects on those conditions.” He set out on his
march; his policy was to overcome the rebellious English by the
arms of the loyal English. He called out the <i>fyrd</i>,
the militia, of all or some of the shires under his
obedience. They answered his call; to disobey it would have
needed greater courage than to wield the axe on Senlac.
This use of English troops became William’s custom in all
his later wars, in England and on the mainland; but of course he
did not trust to English troops only. The plan of the
campaign was that which had won Le Mans and London. The
towns of Dorset were frightfully harried on the march to the
capital of the West. Disunion at once broke out; the
leading men in Exeter sent to offer unconditional submission and
to give hostages. But the commonalty disowned the
agreement; notwithstanding the blinding of one of the hostages
before the walls, they defended the city valiantly for eighteen
days. It was only when the walls began to crumble away
beneath William’s mining-engines that the men of Exeter at
last submitted to his mercy. And William’s mercy
could be trusted. No man was harmed in life, limb, or
goods. But, to hinder further revolts, a castle was at once
begun, and the payments made by the city to the King were largely
raised.</p>
<p>Gytha, when the city yielded, withdrew to the Steep Holm, and
thence to Flanders. Her grandsons fled to Ireland; from
thence, in the course of the same year and the next, they twice
landed in Somerset and Devonshire. The Irish Danes who
followed them could not be kept back from plunder.
Englishmen as well as Normans withstood them, and the hopes of
the House of Godwine came to an end.</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>On the conquest of Exeter followed the submission of the whole
West. All the land south of the Thames was now in
William’s obedience. Gloucestershire seems to have
submitted at the same time; the submission of Worcestershire is
without date. A vast confiscation of lands followed, most
likely by slow degrees. Its most memorable feature is that
nearly all Cornwall was granted to William’s brother Robert
Count of Mortain. His vast estate grew into the famous
Cornish earldom and duchy of later times. Southern England
was now conquered, and, as the North had not stirred during the
stirring of the West, the whole land was outwardly at
peace. William now deemed it safe to bring his wife to
share his new greatness. The Duchess Matilda came over to
England, and was hallowed to Queen at Westminster by Archbishop
Ealdred. We may believe that no part of his success gave
William truer pleasure. But the presence of the Lady was
important in another way. It was doubtless by design that
she gave birth on English soil to her youngest son, afterwards
the renowned King Henry the First. He alone of
William’s children was in any sense an Englishman.
Born on English ground, son of a crowned King and his Lady,
Englishmen looked on him as a countryman. And his father
saw the wisdom of encouraging such a feeling. Henry,
surnamed in after days the Clerk, was brought up with special
care; he was trained in many branches of learning unusual among
the princes of his age, among them in a thorough knowledge of the
tongue of his native land.</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>The campaign of Exeter is of all William’s English
campaigns the richest in political teaching. We see how
near the cities of England came for a moment—as we shall
presently see a chief city of northern Gaul—to running the
same course as the cities of Italy and Provence. Signs of
the same tendency may sometimes be suspected elsewhere, but they
are not so clearly revealed. William’s later
campaigns are of the deepest importance in English history; they
are far richer in recorded personal actors than the siege of
Exeter; but they hardly throw so much light on the character of
William and his statesmanship. William is throughout ever
ready, but never hasty—always willing to wait when waiting
seems the best policy—always ready to accept a nominal
success when there is a chance of turning it into a real one, but
never accepting nominal success as a cover for defeat, never
losing an inch of ground without at once taking measures to
recover it. By this means, he has in the former part of
1068 extended his dominion to the Land’s End; before the
end of the year he extends it to the Tees. In the next year
he has indeed to win it back again; but he does win it back and
more also. Early in 1070 he was at last, in deed as well as
in name, full King over all England.</p>
<p>The North was making ready for war while the war in the West
went on, but one part of England did nothing to help the
other. In the summer the movement in the North took
shape. The nominal earls Edwin, Morkere, and Gospatric,
with the Ætheling Edgar and others, left William’s
court to put themselves at the head of the movement. Edwin
was specially aggrieved, because the king had promised him one of
his daughters in marriage, but had delayed giving her to
him. The English formed alliances with the dependent
princes of Wales and Scotland, and stood ready to withstand any
attack. William set forth; as he had taken Exeter, he took
Warwick, perhaps Leicester. This was enough for Edwin and
Morkere. They submitted, and were again received to
favour. More valiant spirits withdrew northward, ready to
defend Durham as the last shelter of independence, while Edgar
and Gospatric fled to the court of Malcolm of Scotland.
William went on, receiving the submission of Nottingham and York;
thence he turned southward, receiving on his way the submission
of Lincoln, Cambridge, and Huntingdon. Again he deemed it
his policy to establish his power in the lands which he had
already won rather than to jeopard matters by at once pressing
farther. In the conquered towns he built castles, and he
placed permanent garrisons in each district by granting estates
to his Norman and other followers. Different towns and
districts suffered in different degrees, according doubtless to
the measure of resistance met with in each. Lincoln and
Lincolnshire were on the whole favourably treated. An
unusual number of Englishmen kept lands and offices in city and
shire. At Leicester and Northampton, and in their shires,
the wide confiscations and great destruction of houses point to a
stout resistance. And though Durham was still untouched,
and though William had assuredly no present purpose of attacking
Scotland, he found it expedient to receive with all favour a
nominal submission brought from the King of Scots by the hands of
the Bishop of Durham.</p>
<p>If William’s policy ever seems less prudent than usual,
it was at the beginning of the next year, 1069. The extreme
North still stood out. William had twice commissioned
English earls of Northumberland to take possession if they
could. He now risked the dangerous step of sending a
stranger. Robert of Comines was appointed to the earldom
forfeited by the flight of Gospatric. While it was still
winter, he went with his force to Durham. By help of the
Bishop, he was admitted into the city, but he and his whole force
were cut off by the people of Durham and its neighbourhood.
Robert’s expedition in short led only to a revolt of York,
where Edgar was received and siege was laid to the castle.
William marched in person with all speed; he relieved the castle;
he recovered the city and strengthened it by a second castle on
the other side of the river. Still he thought it prudent to
take no present steps against Durham. Soon after this came
the second attempt of Harold’s sons in the West.</p>
<p>Later in this year William’s final warfare for the
kingdom began. In August, 1069 the long-promised help from
Denmark came. Swegen sent his brother Osbeorn and his sons
Harold and Cnut, at the head of the whole strength of Denmark and
of other Northern lands. If the two enterprises of
Harold’s sons had been planned in concert with their Danish
kinsmen, the invaders or deliverers from opposite sides had
failed to act together. Nor are Swegen’s own objects
quite clear. He sought to deliver England from William and
his Normans, but it is not so plain in whose interest he
acted. He would naturally seek the English crown for
himself or for one of his sons; the sons of Harold he would
rather make earls than kings. But he could feel no interest
in the kingship of Edgar. Yet, when the Danish fleet
entered the Humber, and the whole force of the North came to meet
it, the English host had the heir of Cerdic at its head. It
is now that Waltheof the son of Siward, Earl of Northampton and
Huntingdon, first stands out as a leading actor. Gospatric
too was there; but this time not Edwin and Morkere. Danes
and English joined and marched upon York; the city was occupied;
the castles were taken; the Norman commanders were made
prisoners, but not till they had set fire to the city and burned
the greater part of it, along with the metropolitan
minster. It is amazing to read that, after breaking down
the castles, the English host dispersed, and the Danish fleet
withdrew into the Humber.</p>
<p>England was again ruined by lack of concert. The news of
the coming of the Danes led only to isolated movements which were
put down piecemeal. The men of Somerset and Dorset and the
men of Devonshire and Cornwall were put down separately, and the
movement in Somerset was largely put down by English
troops. The citizens of Exeter, as well as the Norman
garrison of the castle, stood a siege on behalf of William.
A rising on the Welsh border under Eadric led only to the burning
of Shrewsbury; a rising in Staffordshire was held by William to
call for his own presence. But he first marched into
Lindesey, and drove the crews of the Danish ships across into
Holderness; there he left two Norman leaders, one of them his
brother Robert of Mortain and Cornwall; he then went westward and
subdued Staffordshire, and marched towards York by way of
Nottingham. A constrained delay by the Aire gave him an
opportunity for negotiation with the Danish leaders.
Osbeorn took bribes to forsake the English cause, and William
reached and entered York without resistance. He restored
the castles and kept his Christmas in the half-burned city.
And now William forsook his usual policy of clemency. The
Northern shires had been too hard to win. To weaken them,
he decreed a merciless harrying of the whole land, the direct
effects of which were seen for many years, and which left its
mark on English history for ages. Till the growth of modern
industry reversed the relative position of Northern and Southern
England, the old Northumbrian kingdom never fully recovered from
the blow dealt by William, and remained the most backward part of
the land. Herein comes one of the most remarkable results
of William’s coming. His greatest work was to make
England a kingdom which no man henceforth thought of
dividing. But the circumstances of his conquest of Northern
England ruled that for several centuries the unity of England
should take the form of a distinct preponderance of Southern
England over Northern. William’s reign strengthened
every tendency that way, chiefly by the fearful blow now dealt to
the physical strength and well-being of the Northern
shires. From one side indeed the Norman Conquest was truly
a Saxon conquest. The King of London and Winchester became
more fully than ever king over the whole land.</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>The Conqueror had now only to gather in what was still left to
conquer. But, as military exploits, none are more memorable
than the winter marches which put William into full possession of
England. The lands beyond Tees still held out; in January
1070 he set forth to subdue them. The Earls Waltheof and
Gospatric made their submission, Waltheof in person, Gospatric by
proxy. William restored both of them to their earldoms, and
received Waltheof to his highest favour, giving him his niece
Judith in marriage. But he systematically wasted the land,
as he had wasted Yorkshire. He then returned to York, and
thence set forth to subdue the last city and shire that held
out. A fearful march led him to the one remaining fragment
of free England, the unconquered land of Chester. We know
not how Chester fell; but the land was not won without fighting,
and a frightful harrying was the punishment. In all this we
see a distinct stage of moral downfall in the character of the
Conqueror. Yet it is thoroughly characteristic. All
is calm, deliberate, politic. William will have no more
revolts, and he will at any cost make the land incapable of
revolt. Yet, as ever, there is no blood shed save in
battle. If men died of hunger, that was not William’s
doing; nay, charitable people like Abbot Æthelwig of
Evesham might do what they could to help the sufferers. But
the lawful king, kept so long out of his kingdom, would, at
whatever price, be king over the whole land. And the great
harrying of the northern shires was the price paid for
William’s kingship over them.</p>
<p>At Chester the work was ended which had begun at
Pevensey. Less than three years and a half, with intervals
of peace, had made the Norman invader king over all
England. He had won the kingdom; he had now to keep
it. He had for seventeen years to deal with revolts on both
sides of the sea, with revolts both of Englishmen and of his own
followers. But in England his power was never shaken; in
England he never knew defeat. His English enemies he had
subdued; the Danes were allowed to remain and in some sort to
help in his work by plundering during the winter. The King
now marched to the Salisbury of that day, the deeply fenced hill
of Old Sarum. The men who had conquered England were
reviewed in the great plain, and received their rewards.
Some among them had by failures of duty during the winter marches
lost their right to reward. Their punishment was to remain
under arms forty days longer than their comrades. William
could trust himself to the very mutineers whom he had picked out
for punishment. He had now to begin his real reign; and the
champion of the Church had before all things to reform the evil
customs of the benighted islanders, and to give them shepherds of
their souls who might guide them in the right way.</p>
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