ish leaders
proceeded only from artifice, or from his esteem of individuals: his
heart was hardened against all compassion towards the people; and he
scrupled no measure, however violent or severe, which seemed requisite
to support his plan of tyrannical administration. Sensible of the
restless disposition of the Northumbrians, he determined to
incapacitate them ever after from giving him 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
[t]. 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 a subsistence in the
southern parts of Scotland, or if they lingered in England, from a
reluctance to abandon their ancient habitations, they perished
miserably in the woods from cold and hunger. The lives of a hundred
thousand persons are computed to have been sacrificed to this stroke
of barbarous policy [u], which, by seeking a remedy for a temporary
evil, thus inflicted a lasting wound on the power and populousness of
the nation.
[FN [t] Chron. Sax. p. 174. Ingulph. p. 79. Malmes. p. 103.
Hoveden, p. 451. Chron. Abb. St. Petri de Burgo, p. 47. M. Paris, p.
5. Sim. Dun. p. 199. Brompton, p. 966. Knyghton, p. 2344. Anglia
Sacra, vol. i. p. 702. [u] Order. Vital. p. 515.]

But 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 to his government. The insurrections and conspiracies in
so many parts of the kingdom had 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 indeed commonly spared;
but their estates were confiscated, and either annexed to the royal
demesnes, or conferred with the most profuse bounty on the Normans and
other foreigners [w]. While the king's declared intention was to
depress, or rather entirely extirpate the English gentry [x], it is
easy to believe that scarcely the form of justice would be observed in
those violent proceedings [y]; and that any suspicions served as t