All over England these rebellions were going on. But none was more than partly successful; and for the reason that ‘Englishmen could not agree to act together. One district rose at one time and one at another. Some were for Sweyn, some for Edgar, some for the sons of Harold; Edwin and Morcar were for themselves. So there was no common action against William, and the land was lost bit by bit.’
In the autumn of 1069 it seemed as if there really was to be made in the North of England a united effort to throw off the yoke of the Frenchmen. Sweyn Ulfsson, King of Denmark, sent a large fleet of ships into the Humber under the command of Jarl Asbiorn, his brother. Outside the walls of York the Danish shipmen were joined by Edgar the Aetheling, by Gospatric, the dispossessed successor of Oswulf, and by Jarl Waltheof, Siward’s son.
Then began a second siege of York. The French garrison, under William de Malet and Gilbert of Gaunt, retreated to the two wooden castles which William had caused to be erected, and set fire to the portions of the city surrounding these in order to give themselves greater security. For two days the flames raged, destroying many houses and the Minster of St. Peter. Meanwhile the allies entered the city. Then the Normans attempted a sally from their castles, but unsuccessfully. Their forces were cut to pieces, and William de Malet and Gilbert of Gaunt were taken prisoners.
So far all had gone well with the armies of Jarl Asbiorn and Jarl Waltheof, and had they only held the city when taken and awaited the arrival of King William, they would have had every chance of repeating their success. But a fatal dissension once more broke out, and Asbiorn’s men went back to their ships and sailed first to North Lincolnshire and then to Holderness, while Waltheof withdrew his men to the marshes between the Trent and the Ouse.
For the third time King William marched north to York; and this time he determined on vengeance. ‘Par splendeur Dex,’ he swore that he would utterly root out the Northumbrian people; and in fulfilment of his oath he carried out that ‘Wasting of the North’ which changed the fertile Plain of York into a desolate waste. For sixty miles north of York every town and village was sacked and burnt, every inhabitant slain or driven out, all farming-stock and farming-implements destroyed, and nothing spared save only what belonged to St. John of Beverley. Then, having wreaked his revenge, William caused himself to be re-crowned at York, and there he kept his Christmas feast.
The system followed out by William the Conqueror after his subjugation of a district was everywhere the same. Lands were taken from their English owners and given to the King’s Norman followers, while strong castles were built to afford protection to the Norman lords.
Thus Drogo de Bevrere, a Flemish knight who had married the King’s niece, was rewarded for his services with the Isle of Holderness, and built himself a castle at Skipsea, where the earthworks of a long-dead chieftain were still standing. No remains of Drogo’s castle now exist, nor have we in the East Riding the remains of any Norman castle such as those existing at Knaresborough, Helmsley, Pontefract, Scarborough, York, and elsewhere in the other Ridings of Yorkshire.
With this parcelling out of the land among William’s Norman followers there became fixed two principles on which the whole ‘Feudal System’ was based:—
(1) All land belonged to the King by virtue of his conquest of the country;