For this crime the men of his day saw the punishment in the strange and frightful deaths of his offspring, two sons and a grandson, on the scene of his crime.  One of these himself he saw, the death of his second son Richard, a youth of great promise, whose prolonged life might have saved England from the rule of William Rufus.  He died in the Forest, about the year 1081, to the deep grief of his parents.  And Domesday contains a touching entry, how William gave back his land to a despoiled Englishman as an offering for Richard’s soul.

The forfeiture of three earls, the death of one, threw their honours and estates into the King’s hands.  Another fresh source of wealth came by the death of the Lady Edith, who had kept her royal rank and her great estates, and who died while the proceedings against Waltheof were going on.  It was not now so important for William as it had been in the first years of the Conquest to reward his followers; he could now think of the royal hoard in the first place.  Of the estates which now fell in to the Crown large parts were granted out.  The house of Bigod, afterwards so renowned as Earls of Norfolk, owe their rise to their forefather’s share in the forfeited lands of Earl Ralph.  But William kept the greater part to himself; one lordship in Somerset, part of the lands of the Lady, he gave to the church of Saint Peter at Rome.  Of the three earldoms, those of Hereford and East-Anglia were not filled up; the later earldoms of those lands have no connexion with the earls of William’s day.  Waltheof’s southern earldoms of Northampton and Huntingdon became the dowry of his daughter Matilda; that of Huntingdon passed to his descendants the Kings of Scots.  But Northumberland, close on the Scottish border, still needed an earl; but there is something strange in the choice of Bishop Walcher of Durham.  It is possible that this appointment was a concession to English feeling stirred to wrath at the death of Waltheof.  The days of English earls were over, and a Norman would have been looked on as Waltheof’s murderer.  The Lotharingian bishop was a stranger; but he was not a Norman, and he was no oppressor of Englishmen.  But he was strangely unfit for the place.  Not a fighting bishop like Ode and Geoffrey, he was chiefly devoted to spiritual affairs, specially to the revival of the monastic life, which had died out in Northern England since the Danish invasions.  But his weak trust in unworthy favourites, English and foreign, led him to a fearful and memorable end.  The Bishop was on terms of close friendship with Ligulf, an Englishman of the highest birth and uncle by marriage to Earl Waltheof.  He had kept his estates; but the insolence of his Norman neighbours had caused him to come and live in the city of Durham near his friend the Bishop.  His favour with Walcher roused the envy of some of the Bishop’s favourites, who presently contrived his death.  The Bishop lamented, and rebuked them; but he failed