Joining policy with force, he made a separate treaty with the Danes, offering them, as the price of their withdrawal into Denmark, permission to plunder and ravage the sea-coasts.
Cospatrick also, despairing of success, paid to the Conqueror a large sum to be received once more into favour; be was afterwards invested with the earldom of Northumberland as the price of his submission. Even Edric, obliged by necessity, submitted to William and was pardoned.
The King of Scotland arrived too late with his succours, and found himself obliged to retire; and all the insurgents, in various parts of the country, either dispersed or laid down their arms, with the exception of the East Anglian noble Hereward, who still kept possession of the island of Ely.
Edgar Atheling, finding himself unsupported, withdrew with his followers and friends once more into Scotland; and the kingdom, without any great battle being fought, once more submitted to the iron yoke of the Normans.
In the crisis in which he found himself suddenly placed, William displayed his usual deceitful policy, and affected a gentleness foreign to his nature. But this seeming clemency towards the English leaders proceeded only from artifice; his heart was hardened against all compassion towards the people; and he scrupled at no measure, however violent or severe, which seemed requisite to support the plans he had adopted. Sensible of the restless disposition of the Northumbrians, he determined to incapacitate them ever after from giving disturbance; and he issued orders for laying entirely waste that fertile country, which for the extent of sixty miles lies between the Humber and the Tees. The houses were reduced to ashes by the merciless Normans; the cattle seized and driven away; the instruments of husbandry destroyed; and the inhabitants, compelled either to seek for subsistence in the southern parts of Scotland, or, if they lingered in England, from a reluctance to abandon their ancient habitations, perished miserably in the woods from cold and hunger. The lives of 100,000 persons are computed to have been sacrificed to this stroke of barbarous policy, which, by seeking a remedy for a temporary evil, thus inflicted a lasting wound on the power and opulence of the nation.
CHAPTER XXIX.
Continuation of the Reign of William the Conqueror—Depreasion of the English—Introduction of the Feudal Laws.
William, finding himself entirely master of a people who had given him such sensible proofs of their impotent rage and animosity, now resolved to proceed to extremities against all the natives of England, and to reduce them to a condition in which they should no longer be formidable. The insurrections and conspiracies in so many parts of the kingdom hid involved the bulk of the landed proprietors, more or less, in the guilt of treason; and the king took advantage of executing against them, with the utmost rigour, the laws of forfeiture and attainder. Their lives were, generally speaking, spared; but their estates were confiscated, and either annexed to the crown or bestowed upon the Norman nobility.
Thus many ancient families were reduced to beggary. and had the mortification of seeing their lands in the possession of strangers, as well as finding themselves excluded from office and employment.
William, as has been observed, was not only the most warlike, but one of the most polite princes of his time. Knowing that power followed property, he took care to establish such institutions in the country as would retain the military power of the kingdom in the hands of those who had assisted him to obtain possession of the throne. With this view the feudal law was introduced into the island. The lands, with the exception of the royal domains, were, with a few exceptions, divided into baronies, which he conferred upon his followers, who held them by military service due to the crown.
The new barons subdivided their lands amongst their knights and vassals, whom they bound to them by the same tenure, paying to their chief in time of peace or war the same species of service which they rendered to their sovereign.
The entire kingdom was thus divided into about 700 fiefs, and upwards of 60,000 knights' fees or holdings.
As none of the English were admitted into the first class, the few who were permitted to retain possession of land were only too glad to be received into the second division, and, under the protection of some favoured Norman noble, hold by the feudal tenure the estates which had descended to them free from their ancestors.
The Conqueror placed the ecclesiastical revenues of the country under the same law; he was no longer under the necessity of wearing a mask with the clergy, whom on his first arrival he found it necessary to court. The bishops and abbots were bound to furnish him during war with a certain number of knights, in proportion to the extent of their possessions, and were rendered liable, in case of failure, to the same penalties as the laity.
It was in vain that the Pope and the Church protested against this innovation. William was now absolute master, and the army devoted to him. He had little to fear from ecclesiastical menaces. The great body of the priesthood were still Saxons, and the polite king knew well the effects which might arise from their opposition to his interests: he therefore expelled them from the principal dignities, and advanced Norman and other prelates in their places.
Amongst the Saxon churchmen was Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, a man who by the greatness of his birth, the extent of his possessions, and the dignity of his office, gave great cause of jealousy to the Conqueror.
Not deeming it safe to violate the respect due to the primate, William waited the arrival of the Bishop of Sion, the legate of the Pope in England, the first who ever appeared in that character in the island. It was not deference to the see of Rome alone which induced William to receive the Papal envoy, but the desire of using him for a political purpose which he had long meditated; and the legate consented to become the supporter of his tyranny.
He summoned, therefore, a council of the prelates and abbots at Winchester; and being assisted by two cardinals, Peter and John, he cited before him Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, to answer for his conduct. The primate was accused of three crimes: the holding of the see of Winchester, together with that of Canterbury; the officiating in the pall of Robert, his predecessor; and the having received his own pall from Benedict IX., who was after-
