swept off more than a hundred thousand victims.
Half a century later indeed the land still lay bare of culture and
deserted of men for sixty miles northward of York. The work of vengeance
once over, William led his army back from the Tees to York, and thence to
Chester and the West. Never had he shown the grandeur of his character so
memorably as in this terrible march. The winter was hard, the roads
choked with snowdrifts or broken by torrents, provisions failed; and his
army, storm-beaten and forced to devour its horses for food, broke out
into mutiny at the order to cross the bleak moorlands that part Yorkshire
from the West. The mercenaries from Anjou and Britanny demanded their
release from service. William granted their prayer with scorn. On foot,
at the head of the troops which still clung to him, he forced his way by
paths inaccessible to horses, often helping the men with his own hands to
clear the road, and as the army descended upon Chester the resistance of
the English died away.

For two years William was able to busy himself in castle-building and in
measures for holding down the conquered land. How effective these were
was seen when the last act of the conquest was reached. All hope of
Danish aid was now gone, but Englishmen still looked for help to Scotland
where Eadgar the AEtheling had again found refuge and where his sister
Margaret had become wife of King Malcolm. It was probably some assurance
of Malcolm's aid which roused the Mercian Earls, Eadwine and Morkere, to
a fresh rising in 1071. But the revolt was at once foiled by the
vigilance of the Conqueror. Eadwine fell in an obscure skirmish, while
Morkere found shelter for a while in the fen country where a desperate
band of patriots gathered round an outlawed leader, Hereward. Nowhere had
William found so stubborn a resistance: but a causeway two miles long was
at last driven across the marshes, and the last hopes of English freedom
died in the surrender of Ely. It was as the unquestioned master of
England that William marched to the North, crossed the Lowlands and the
Forth, and saw Malcolm appear in his camp upon the Tay to swear fealty at
his feet.

BOOK II
ENGLAND UNDER FOREIGN KINGS
1071-1204

AUTHORITIES FOR BOOK II
1071-1204

Among the Norman chroniclers Orderic becomes from this point particularly
valuable and detailed. The Chronicle and Florence of Worcester remain the
primary English authorities, while Simeon of Durham