The king managed his affairs abroad with great address, and covered, all his negotiations for the security of his Norman dominions under the magnificence of continual feasting and unremitted diversion, which, without an appearance of design, displayed his wealth and power, and by that means facilitated his measures.  But whilst he was thus employed, his absence from England gave an opportunity to several humors to break out, which the late change had bred, but which the amazement likewise produced by that violent change, and the presence of their conqueror, wise, vigilant, and severe, had hitherto repressed.  The ancient line of their kings displaced, the only thread on which it hung carried out of the kingdom and ready to be cut off by the jealousy of a merciless usurper, their liberties none by being precarious, and the daily insolencies and rapine of the Normans intolerable,—­these discontents were increased by the tyranny and rapaciousness of the regent, and they were fomented from abroad by Eustace, Count of Boulogne.  But the people, though ready to rise in all parts, were destitute of leaders, and the insurrections actually made were not carried on in concert, nor directed to any determinate object; so that the king, returning speedily, and exerting himself everywhere with great vigor, in a short time dissipated these ill-formed projects.  However, so general a dislike to William’s government had appeared on this occasion, that he became in his turn disgusted with his subjects, and began to change his maxims of rule to a rigor which was more conformable to his advanced age and the sternness of his natural temper.  He resolved, since he could not gain the affections of his subjects, to find such matter for their hatred as might weaken them, and fortify his own authority against the enterprises which that hatred might occasion.  He revived the tribute of Danegelt, so odious from its original cause and that of its revival, which he caused to be strictly levied throughout the kingdom.  He erected castles at Nottingham, at Warwick, and at York, and filled them with Norman garrisons.  He entered into a stricter inquisition for the discovery of the estates forfeited on his coming in; paying no regard to the privileges of the ecclesiastics, he seized upon the treasures which, as in an inviolable asylum, the unfortunate adherents to Harold had deposited in monasteries.  At the same time he entered into a resolution of deposing all the English, bishops, on none of whom he could rely, and filling their places with Normans.  But he mitigated the rigor of these proceedings by the wise choice he made in filling the places of those whom he had deposed, and gave by that means these violent changes the air rather of reformation than oppression.  He began with Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury.  A synod was called, in which, for the first time in England, the Pope’s legate a latere is said to have presided.  In this council, Stigand, for simony and for other crimes, of which it is easy to convict those who are out of favor, was solemnly degraded from his dignity.  The king filled his place with Lanfranc, an Italian.  By his whole conduct he appeared resolved to reduce his subjects of all orders to the most perfect obedience.