In the month of February 1069--at which period the city of York was the extreme limit of the Conquest--one Robert de Comyn was sent to reduce Durham and the banks of the Tyne to subjection. As he approached the city, Egelwin the bishop met him, and begged him not to enter or there would be bloodshed; but he disdained the mild request, and, entering, his soldiers behaved with the utmost insolence, and slew a few inoffensive men "pour encourager les autres," to intimidate the rest. The soldiers then encamped in the streets of the town, and the general took up his quarters in the bishop's palace.
When night came on, the gallant countrymen who dwelt on the Tyne lit the beacon fires on all the hills; the country arose, and all hastened to Durham. By daybreak they had forced the gates, which the Normans defended; the soldiers then took refuge from the people they had so cruelly insulted, in the Episcopal palace; thence they had the advantage with their arrows, until the English, unable to storm the place, set it on fire, and burned the dwelling, with Robert de Comyn, who well deserved his fate, and all his men: twelve hundred horse, and a large number of foot soldiers and military attendants, perished, and only two escaped.
A larger body, sent to avenge them, halted between York and Durham, and, seized with an unwonted terror, refused to proceed; the good people said that Saint Cuthbert had struck them motionless by supernatural power to protect his shrine in Durham.
This success stirred up the people of Yorkshire, who, later in the year, besieged William Mallet in York, aided by a Danish force which had landed on the coasts, and took it on the eighth day, when all the garrison was slain--"three thousand men of France," as the Chronicles express it. The Earl Waltheof killed, with his own battle-axe, twenty Normans in their flight, and, chasing a hundred more into the woody marshes, took advantage of the dry season, like our friends at Aescendune, and burned them all with the wood.
All over England the struggle spread. Hereward took the command at the Camp of Refuge, in the Isle of Ely, and crippled the Normans around. Somerset and Dorset rose again; the men of Chester and a body of Welshmen under "Edric the Wild" (sometimes called the Forester), besieged Shrewsbury. The men of Cornwall attacked Exeter, and a large body of insurgents collected at Stafford.
It was in putting down the northern insurrection that William devastated Yorkshire and Northumberland, with such severity that the country did not recover for centuries, while the victims to famine, fire, and sword equalled a hundred thousand. These spasmodic insurrections were only the dying throes of Anglo-Saxon liberty. Everywhere they miscarried, and the Normans prevailed.
[xvii] The readers of Alfgar the Dane will remember that we gave a brief account of this interesting spot in that chronicle. It was the town to which Edmund Ironside and Alfgar first repaired after their escape from the Danes in the Isle of Wight.
[xviii] On one of these islands now stands the mill, on the other the Nag's Head Inn; the site of the old abbey is chiefly occupied by a brewery!
[xix] Monastic Offices.
These were seven in number, besides the night hours. Lauds, before daybreak; Prime, 7 A.M.; Terce, 9 A.M.; Sext, noon; Nones, 3 P.M.; Vespers, 6 P.M.; and Compline, 9 P.M. These were in addition to many daily celebrations of Mass.