These severities, and affronts more galling than severities, drove the English to another desperate attempt, which was the last convulsive effort of their expiring freedom.  Several nobles, prelates, and others, whose estates had been confiscated, or who were in daily apprehension of their confiscation, fled into the fens of Lincoln and Ely, where Hereward still maintained his ground.  This unadvised step completed the ruin of the little English interest that remained.  William hastened to fill up the sees of the bishops and the estates of the nobles with his Norman favorites.  He pressed the fugitives with equal vivacity; and at once to cut off all the advantage they derived from their situation, he penetrated into the Isle of Ely by a wooden bridge two miles in length; and by the greatness of the design, and rapidity of the execution, as much as by the vigor of his charge, compelled them to surrender at discretion.  Hereward alone escaped, who disdained to surrender, and had cut his way through his enemies, carrying his virtue and his sword, as his passports, wheresoever fortune should conduct him.  He escaped happily into Scotland, where, as usual, the king was making some slow movements for the relief of the English.  William lost no time to oppose him, and had passed with infinite difficulty through a desert of his own making to the frontiers of Scotland.  Here he found the enemy strongly intrenched.  The causes of the war being in a good measure spent by William’s late successes, and neither of the princes choosing to risk a battle in a country where the consequences of a defeat must be so dreadful, they agreed to an accommodation, which included a pardon for Edgar Atheling on a renunciation of his title to the crown.  William on this occasion showed, as he did on all occasions, an honorable and disinterested sense of merit, by receiving Hereward to his friendship, and distinguishing him by particular favors and bounties.  Malcolm, by his whole conduct, never seemed intent upon coming to extremities with William:  he was satisfied with keeping this great warrior in some awe, without bringing things to a decision, that might involve his kingdom in the same calamitous fate that had oppressed England; whilst his wisdom enabled him to reap advantages from the fortunes of the conquered, in drawing so many useful people into his dominions, and from the policy of the Conqueror, in imitating those feudal regulations which he saw his neighbor force upon the English, and which appeared so well calculated for the defence of the kingdom.  He compassed this the more easily, because the feudal policy, being the discipline of all the considerable states in Europe, appeared the masterpiece of government.

[Sidenote:  A.D. 1073.]