but is driven back by a storm; Malcolm and Margaret then change their minds, and bid him make his peace with King William.  William gladly accepts his submission; an embassy is sent to bring him with all worship to the King in Normandy.  He abides for several years in William’s court contented and despised, receiving a daily pension and the profits of estates in England of no great extent which the King of a moment held by the grant of a rival who could afford to be magnanimous.

Edgar’s after-life showed that he belonged to that class of men who, as a rule slothful and listless, can yet on occasion act with energy, and who act most creditably on behalf of others.  But William had no need to fear him, and he was easily turned into a friend and a dependant.  Edgar, first of Englishmen by descent, was hardly an Englishman by birth.  William had now to deal with the Englishman who stood next to Edgar in dignity and far above him in personal estimation.  We have reached the great turning-point in William’s reign and character, the black and mysterious tale of the fate of Waltheof.  The Earl of Northumberland, Northampton, and Huntingdon, was not the only earl in England of English birth.  The earldom of the East-Angles was held by a born Englishman who was more hateful than any stranger.  Ralph of Wader was the one Englishman who had fought at William’s side against England.  He often passes for a native of Britanny, and he certainly held lands and castles in that country; but he was Breton only by the mother’s side.  For Domesday and the Chronicles show that he was the son of an elder Earl Ralph, who had been staller or master of the horse in Edward’s days, and who is expressly said to have been born in Norfolk.  The unusual name suggests that the elder Ralph was not of English descent.  He survived the coming of William, and his son fought on Senlac among the countrymen of his mother.  This treason implies an unrecorded banishment in the days of Edward or Harold.  Already earl in 1069, he had in that year acted vigorously for William against the Danes.  But he now conspired against him along with Roger, the younger son of William Fitz-Osbern, who had succeeded his father in the earldom of Hereford, while his Norman estates had passed to his elder brother William.  What grounds of complaint either Ralph or Roger had against William we know not; but that the loyalty of the Earl of Hereford was doubtful throughout the year 1074 appears from several letters of rebuke and counsel sent to him by the Regent Lanfranc.  At last the wielder of both swords took to his spiritual arms, and pronounced the Earl excommunicate, till he should submit to the King’s mercy and make restitution to the King and to all men whom he had wronged.  Roger remained stiff-necked under the Primate’s censure, and presently committed an act of direct disobedience.  The next year, 1075, he gave his sister Emma in marriage to Earl Ralph.  This marriage the King had forbidden, on some unrecorded