[Sidenote:  A.D. 1068.]

The people, loaded with new taxes, the nobility, degraded and threatened, the clergy, deprived of their immunities and influence, joined in one voice of discontent, and stimulated each other to the most desperate resolutions.  The king was not unapprised of these motions, nor negligent of them.  It is thought he meditated to free himself from much of his uneasiness by seizing those men on whom the nation in its distresses used to cast its eyes for relief.  But whilst he digested these measures, Edgar Atheling, Edwin and Morcar, Waltheof, the son of Siward, and several others, eluded his vigilance, and escaped into Scot land, where they were received with open arms by King Malcolm.  The Scottish monarch on this occasion married the sister of Edgar; and this match engaged him more closely to the accomplishment of what his gratitude to the Saxon kings and the rules of good policy had before inclined him.  He entered at last into the cause of his brother-in-law and the distressed English.  He persuaded the King of Denmark to enter into the same measures, who agreed to invade England with a fleet of a thousand ships.  Drone, an Irish king, declared in their favor, and supplied the sons of Earl Godwin with vessels and men, with which they held the English coast in continual alarms.

[Sidenote:  A.D. 1069.]

Whilst the forces of this powerful confederacy were collecting on all sides, and prepared to enter England, equal dangers threatened from within the kingdom.  Edric the Forester, a very brave and popular Saxon, took up arms in the counties of Hereford and Salop, the country of the ancient Silures, and inhabited by the same warlike and untamable race of men.  The Welsh strengthened him with their forces, and Cheshire joined in the revolt.  Hereward le Wake, one of the most brave and indefatigable soldiers of his time, rushed with a numerous band of fugitives and outlaws from the fens of Lincoln and the Isle of Ely, from whence, protected by the situation of the place, he had for some time carried on an irregular war against the Normans.  The sons of Godwin landed with a strong body in the West; the fire of rebellion ran through the kingdom; Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, at once threw off the yoke.  Daily skirmishes were fought in every part of the kingdom, with various success and with great bloodshed.  The Normans retreated to their castles, which the English had rarely skill or patience to master; out of these they sallied from time to time, and asserted their dominion.  The conquered English for a moment resumed their spirit; the forests and morasses, with which this island then, abounded, served them for fortifications, and their hatred to the Normans stood in the place of discipline; each man, exasperated by his own wrongs, avenged them in his own manner.  Everything was full of blood and violence:  murders, burnings, rapine, and confusion overspread the whole kingdom.  During these distractions, several of the Normans quitted the country, and gave up their possessions, which they thought not worth holding in continual horror and danger.