14. The Danes at Ely.—Before the two foreign archbishops were consecrated, there was again fighting in England. The Danish fleet, which after all had done so little for England, stayed in the Humber while William was subduing Northumberland. William then gave bribes to the Danish commander Osbeorn, and it was agreed that the Danes should sail back when the winter was over, and that meanwhile they might plunder in England. Thus again was the land harried by friends and foes alike. At last, in May 1070, the Danes sailed to the Fenland, and showed themselves at Ely. The people welcomed them, believing that they would win the land; most likely they were ready to have Swegen for king. Thus the revolts began almost at the moment when the conquest was finished. We now hear for the first time of the famous name of Hereward. All manner of strange and impossible tales are told of him; but very little is known for certain about him, though what we do know is quite enough to set him before us as a stout champion of England. He had held lands in Lincolnshire, and he had fled away from England, but when or why is not known. He would seem to have come back about the time when the Danes came to Ely, and he joined himself with them and with the men of the land who helped them. The abbey of Peterborough was now vacant by the death of its Abbot Brand, and William had given it to a Norman named Turold. He was a very stern man, and came with a body of Norman soldiers to take possession of the abbey. But Hereward was before him. Lest the wealth of the abbey should be turned to help the enemy, he came (June 1, 1070) with the Danes and the men of the land, and plundered the monastery. The Danes now went away, taking with them much of the spoil of Peterborough. But, when they got home, King Swegen banished his brother Earl Osbeorn for having taken bribes from William and having done so little for England.
15. The Defence of Ely.—About this time Eadric the Wild submitted to the King, which marks that all resistance was over on his side of England. But the revolt went on in the Fenland. The monastery of Ely was the centre of resistance, as it stood in a land which then was really an island and which was very easy to defend. The Abbot Thurstan, who had been appointed by King Harold, and his monks, were at first zealous for the patriots. Men flocked to the isle from all parts, and they held out all the winter of 1070 and through the greater part of the next year. In the spring of 1071 the two earls, Edwin and Morkere, at last left William’s court, being, it is said, afraid lest the King should put them in bonds. Edwin tried to get to Scotland, but he was killed on the way, either by his own men or by Normans to whom he was betrayed. But Morkere made his way to Ely and helped in the defence of the isle. Other chief men came also; but it is clear that the soul of the enterprise was Hereward. There are many tales told of his exploits; but this at least is certain. William came and attacked the isle from all points, and there was much fighting for many months, in which William Malet, whom the Danes had released, was killed. At last in October 1071, the isle surrendered. Some say that the monks of Ely, when the King seized their lands outside the isle, turned traitors; others that Morkere and the other chiefs grew fainthearted. Anyhow the war was at an end. The King took possession of the isle; he built a castle at Ely and laid a fine on the abbey, while Morkere and others were kept in prison. Hereward alone did not submit, but sailed out into the sea unconquered. There are several stories of his end. It seems most likely that he was at last received into William’s favour, and even served under him in his wars on the mainland. But some say that he was killed by a party of Normans who set upon him without any orders from the King, and that he died fighting bravely, one man against many.
16. Summary.—Thus we see that, after five years from William’s first landing, he was in full possession of the kingdom and had put down all opposition everywhere. The great battle had given him real possession of south-eastern England only; but it had given him the great advantage of being crowned king before the end of the year. During the year 1067 William made no further conquests; all western and northern England remained unsubdued; but, except in Kent and Herefordshire, there was no fighting in any part of the land which had really submitted. The next two years were the time in which all England was really conquered. The former part of 1068 gave William the West. The latter part of that year gave him central and northern England as far as Yorkshire, the extreme north and north-west being still unsubdued. The attempt to win Durham in the beginning of 1069 led to two revolts at York. Later in the year all the north and west was again in arms, and the Danish fleet came. But the revolts were put down one by one, and the great winter campaign of 1069–1070 conquered the still unsubdued parts, ending with the taking of Chester. Early in 1070 the whole land was for the first time in William’s possession; there was no more fighting, and he was able to give his mind to the more peaceful part of his schemes, what we may call the conquest of the native Church by the appointment of foreign bishops. But in the summer of 1070 began the revolt of the Fenland, and the defence of Ely, which lasted till the autumn of 1071. After that William was full king everywhere without dispute. There was no more national resistance; there was no revolt of any large part of the country. There were still wars within the isle of Britain; but they were wars in which William could give out that he was, as King of the English, fighting for England. And there was one considerable revolt within the kingdom of England; but it was not a revolt of the people. The conquest of the land, as far as fighting goes, was now finished. We have now to see how the land fared under a king who claimed to be king by law, but who had to win his crown by fighting at the head of an invading army. His rule, as we shall see, was neither that of a king who had really succeeded according to law nor yet that of a mere invader who did not even make any pretence to legal right.
CHAPTER XI.
King William’s later Wars.
1. The Affairs of Wales.—William was now king over all England, but he had not yet won that lordship over the whole of Britain which had been held by the old Kings of the English. But it was his full purpose to win this also, as well as the rule of his immediate kingdom. But of course neither the Scots nor the Welsh were inclined to give him any greater submission than they could help, and there was much fighting on both borders. The care of the Welsh marches William put into the hands of his earls. It was only on the borders and on the exposed coasts that he placed earls at all. Besides his brother Odo in Kent and his friend William Fitz-Osbern at Hereford, there was Earl Gospatric in Northumberland to guard the northern border against the Scots, and Earl Ralph in Norfolk to guard the east coast against the Danes. But he did not appoint any earls to succeed Edwin and Morkere. Parts however of Edwin’s earldom were given to two great Norman leaders, Roger of Montgomery who became Earl of Shrewsbury, and Hugh of Avranches who became Earl of Chester. Their duty, along with the Earl of Hereford, was to keep the Welsh march. They received vast estates and special powers, the Earl of Chester especially being more like a vassal prince than an ordinary earl. All these earls had much fighting with the Welsh, and they took much land from them and built many castles. Earl Roger especially built a castle to which he gave the name of his own castle in Normandy, Montgomery, whence a town, and afterwards a shire, took its name. The Welsh princes moreover were always fighting among themselves, and they were often foolish enough to call in the Normans against one another. So the English border advanced. At last in 1081 it is said that King William went on a pilgrimage to Saint David’s, and about the same time he founded the castle at Cardiff. Of the three earls of the border, William, Roger, and Hugh, the last two outlived King William. But Earl William Fitz-Osbern left England in 1071, to marry Richildis Countess of Flanders and to try to win her county. There he was killed, and was succeeded in his earldom by his son Roger, of whom we shall hear presently.
2. The First War with Scotland.—King Malcolm of Scotland had all this while given himself out as a friend of the English. He had at least promised them help, and he had at any rate given all English exiles a welcome shelter in Scotland. But, as if England had become an enemy’s country now that it was conquered by William, in the course of the year 1070 he invaded Northumberland and harried the land most cruelly, destroying whatever little the Normans had left. Yet none the less, when Edgar and his sisters came to seek shelter again, he received them most kindly, and after a little while he married Edgar’s sister Margaret. This marriage was of great importance in the history of Scotland. For Margaret brought English ways into Scotland and made many reforms, and for her goodness she was called a saint. From this time the English part of the dominions of the King of Scots, namely the earldom of Lothian and those parts of Scotland, like Fife, which took to English ways, had altogether the upper hand over the really Scottish part of the land. No doubt this marriage made William look on Malcolm as still more his enemy, but he could not as yet avenge his inroad. The most part of 1071 he was busy at Ely, and in 1072 he was wanted in Normandy, where the affairs of Flanders made things dangerous. But in August 1072 he set out to invade Scotland by sea and land. It is to be noticed that Eadric, the hero of Herefordshire, went with him. For we can well believe that, now that William was really king over the whole land, Englishmen were quite ready to serve him in a war with the Scots, especially after Malcolm’s invasion. But there was no fighting; for Malcolm came and met William at Abernethy and became his man, as, since the days of Edward the Unconquered, the Kings of Scots had ever been to the Kings of the English. Thus had William won, not only the kingdom of all England, but the lordship of all Britain, like the kings who had been before him.
3. Affairs of Ireland.—There is in truth some reason to believe that William sought for a lordship even beyond the isle of Britain, such as the kings who were before him had never had. The English Chronicle says that, if King William had lived two years longer, he would have won all Ireland by his wisdom, without any fighting. We cannot tell how this might have been; but it is certain that, though William never had the rule of any part of Ireland, yet in his day England began to have much more to do with Ireland, both with the Danes who were settled there and with the native Irish. This showed itself in bishops from Ireland coming to England to be consecrated by Lanfranc. This was admitting an English supremacy in spiritual things which was very likely to grow into a supremacy in temporal things also.
4. Affairs of Northumberland.—As William came back from Scotland, it is to be noticed that he confirmed the privileges of the bishopric of Durham. He had just given that see to a new bishop, Walcher from Lower Lorraine. The bishops of Durham came gradually to have great temporal rights, like the earls of Chester. Had all earls and all bishops been like these two, the kingdom of England might have fallen to pieces, as Germany did. King William also took away the earldom of Northumberland from Gospatric, and gave it to Waltheof, who was already Earl of Northampton and Huntingdon. Earl Waltheof and Bishop Walcher were close friends. But Waltheof began his rule by a great crime. This was killing the sons of Carl, though they had been his comrades at the taking of York, because their father Carl, a chief man in the North, had killed Waltheof’s grandfather Ealdred. This was the custom of deadly feud, which was common in Scotland long after. Gospatric went to Scotland, where King Malcolm gave him lands. But he either kept or afterwards received lands in England, and his descendants went on as chief men in the North. One son of his, Dolfin, seems to have received from King Malcolm a small part of Cumberland, namely the land about Carlisle. This was not yet part of the kingdom of England.
5. The War of Maine.—William’s next warfare was on his own side of the sea. The city and land of Maine, which he had won in 1063, now revolted against him. The men of Maine first chose as their count Hugh the son of the Lombard Marquess Azo, because his mother Gersendis was the sister of their last count Herbert. But she and her husband and son did not agree with the citizens of Le Mans; so the people proclaimed a commune. That is, Le Mans should be a free city, as Exeter had striven to be. The whole land of Maine joined the citizens, but they were betrayed by the nobles; so that the story of Le Mans is like the story of Exeter. Then King William in 1073 crossed the sea, taking with him a great host of English, among whom, there is some reason to think, was Hereward himself. One is sorry to think that a man who had fought so well for freedom in his own land should go and fight against freedom in another land; but we may be sure that the English of that day were glad to fight with French-speaking men anywhere. With this army William laid waste the whole land, and at last the city surrendered, and was, as usual with him, well treated. Le Mans lost its new freedom; but it kept all its old rights and customs. Then William made peace with Count Fulk of Anjou, who also had claims over Maine; William’s eldest son Robert was to do homage to Fulk for the county. Thus King William won the land of Maine the second time, ten years after his first conquest.
6. William’s Enemies.—At this time of his reign William had to spend a great part of his time out of England. King Philip of France was his enemy and Count Robert of Flanders. And Count Robert’s daughter was married to Cnut of Denmark, which helped to ally two of his enemies more closely. But the strangest thing is that one German writer says that in 1074 it was fully believed that King William was thinking of an expedition into Germany and of getting himself crowned at Aachen. Another German writer, on the other hand, tells the story quite the other way, and says that King Henry of Germany (who was afterwards Emperor) sent to ask William’s help against his own enemies. Either way such stories show that William was very much in men’s thoughts and mouths everywhere. And King Philip and Count Robert made a very subtle plot for William’s annoyance. This was to plant the Ætheling Edgar at Montreuil, in the land between Normandy and Flanders. He would thus be able to get together English exiles, men from France and Flanders, and volunteers and mercenaries of all kinds, to trouble the Norman frontier. Edgar was now in Scotland with his sister Queen Margaret. He set out to go to France, but was driven back by a storm. And then William saw that it was his best policy to win Edgar over to himself. So he sent for him to Normandy, and he kept him for many years at his court in great honour.