POLITICAL HISTORY 



English, Saxons, Poles, Frisians, and heathen Letts for the invasion of England. After a series of 

 feeble attempts to effect a landing on the south-east coast had been repelled with ease they entered 

 the Humber, where they joined hands with the uEtheling, Waltheof Earl of Northampton, son of 

 the great Siward of Northumbria, Cospatric, and the other leaders of the previous unlucky expedition. 

 The allies now advanced on York, recruiting as they went ; but the Norman commanders, secure 

 in the strength of their castles, sent word to King William that they could hold York for a year. 

 To make their position more secure they set fire to some outlying houses the possession of which 

 might have assisted their assailants ; unfortunately the flames spread and destroyed the greater 

 part of the city, including the cathedral, in which Archbishop Ealdred, who had died of grief at the 

 prospect of renewed war, had just been buried.'* The fire had hardly died down when, on 

 21 September, the invaders reached the city. The garrison, either despising the enemy or finding 

 their defences seriously weakened by the fire, sallied out to the attack, but were overwhelmed and 

 massacred, William Malet and his family, Gilbert of Gant, and a very few other survivors being 

 carried off as prisoners. The king was in Gloucestershire, but when the news of this disaster 

 reached him he started at once on a mission of vengeance. At the news of the Conqueror's 

 advance the Danes lost heart and retreated to Lindsey. William detached a force to rout them 

 out of that district, while he himself ravaged Staffordshire and suppressed a rising there. Then 

 resuming his march on York, where the enemy were once more concentrated, he was checked at 

 Pontefract by the swollen waters of the Aire, and it was not until Lisois de Moustiers succeeded in 

 finding a ford that the Normans were able to advance, and even then they had to proceed by 

 narrow byways instead of using the great main road through Tadcaster. The terror of William's 

 name, however, prevented any resistance, and the Danes retreated to their ships, leaving the king to 

 enter his devastated city unopposed. William's first care was to repair his castles, and then he set 

 about rendering further rebellion impossible. His recent experiences, coupled with what he must 

 have known of the past history of Northumbria, had shown him that there was little prospect of 

 reconciling Yorkshire, with its independent traditions, to his rule, and he therefore proceeded 

 systematically to exterminate the population. Under his personal leadership the Norman forces 

 marched through the forests, harrying the land, killing all who came in their way, guilty or inno- 

 cent, destroying the villages, and burning the crops and the implements of husbandry. Yorkshire 

 was left a wilderness, its blackened fields covered with dead bodies which there was none to bury. 

 Famine followed, and for the next few years the scanty survivors who failed to obtain relief at 

 Beverley, which almost alone escaped the devastation,'' at York, risen phoenix-like from its ashes,'' 

 or outside the county,'* were driven to live on horses, dogs and cats, and even, it was rumoured, 

 to resort to cannibalism." Meanwhile, William, having harried the East and North Ridings, 

 returned to York to keep Christmas in state, the regalia having been brought up from Winchester.*" 

 He then dislodged the wretched remnant of the Danes who were clinging to the shore, apparently 

 prevented by adverse winds from returning home, and in January set out to complete the ravaging 

 of the North. Returning to York the Conqueror prepared to carry out similar operations west- 

 wards as far as Chester ; but some of his troops, wearied with these expeditions in bad weather 

 through difficult country yielding little plunder, proved mutinous. William, scornfully bidding 

 the faint-hearted go their way, called on the faithful to follow him, and, sharing their hardships, 

 completed his appalling policy of desolation by destroying the western district, and was at last able 

 to dismiss his army with thanks and rewards,*^ knowing that no rising could occur north of the 

 Humber for many years to come. 



Whether Morkere was still Earl of Yorkshire is not quite clear ; he took no part in the 

 northern rebellion, but in 1 071, when Hereward made his last stand against the Normans, Morkere 

 joined him in the Isle of Ely, and on the collapse of the English defence was committed to a 

 lifelong prison. William kept the county in his own hands, but granted the western half of the 

 North Riding to Alan le Roux of Britanny, practically as Earl of Richmond, while in the south- 

 east of the county Odo of Champagne was in the same way established as virtual Earl of Holder- 

 ness*^ after Dru de Bevrere had forfeited his lands and fled the country for the murder of his wife. 



" Symeon of Durham, Op. Hist. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 187. The fire is not mentioned by Orderic. 



^ Hist. ofCh. of York (Rolls Ser.), ii, 350. 



" The hospital of St. Peter is said to have been enlarged to accommodate the sick and poor lying 

 houseless in the streets ; Assize R. 104.5, ™' 17 d. 



^" Chron. de Evesham (Rolls Ser.), 90. 



^' Symeon of Durham, Op. Hist. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 188. 



" Orderic, loc. cit. " Ibid. 



^ Orderic Vitalis, Hist. Eccl. bk. iv, ch. 7. Strictly speaking, Alan owed his comital title to his relation- 

 ship to the Count of Britanny, the shire of Richmond only becoming an earldom under Alan Fergant about 

 1 144 ; and although Orderic says that the comitatus of Holderness was given to Count Odo, neither he nor 

 his successors, Earls of Albemarle and lords of Holderness, used the title of Earl of Holderness. 



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