a similar rising against Norman oppression in the west.  But as yet the bulk of the land held fairly to the new king.  Dover was saved from Eustace; and the discontented fled over sea to seek refuge in lands as far off as Constantinople, where Englishmen from this time formed great part of the body-guard or Varangians of the Eastern Emperors.  William returned to take his place again as an English king.  It was with an English force that he subdued a rising in the south-west with Exeter at its head, and it was at the head of an English army that he completed his work by marching to the North.  His march brought Eadwine and Morkere again to submission; a fresh rising ended in the occupation of York, and England as far as the Tees lay quietly at William’s feet.

[Sidenote:  The Norman Conquest]

It was in fact only the national revolt of 1068 that transformed the King into a conqueror.  The signal for this revolt came from Swein, king of Denmark, who had for two years past been preparing to dispute England with the Norman, but on the appearance of his fleet in the Humber all northern, all western and south-western England rose as one man.  Eadgar the AEtheling with a band of exiles who had found refuge in Scotland took the head of the Northumbrian revolt; in the south-west the men of Devon, Somerset, and Dorset gathered to the sieges of Exeter and Montacute; while a new Norman castle at Shrewsbury alone bridled a rising in the West.  So ably had the revolt been planned that even William was taken by surprise.  The outbreak was heralded by a storm of York and the slaughter of three thousand Normans who formed its garrison.  The news of this slaughter reached William as he was hunting in the forest of Dean; and in a wild outburst of wrath he swore “by the splendour of God” to avenge himself on the North.  But wrath went hand in hand with the coolest statesmanship.  The centre of resistance lay in the Danish fleet, and pushing rapidly to the Humber with a handful of horsemen William bought at a heavy price its inactivity and withdrawal.  Then turning westward with the troops that gathered round him he swept the Welsh border and relieved Shrewsbury while William Fitz-Osbern broke the rising around Exeter.  His success set the King free to fulfil his oath of vengeance on the North.  After a long delay before the flooded waters of the Aire he entered York and ravaged the whole country as far as the Tees.  Town and village were harried and burned, their inhabitants were slain or driven over the Scottish border.  The coast was especially wasted that no hold might remain for future landings of the Danes.  Crops, cattle, the very implements of husbandry were so mercilessly destroyed that a famine which followed is said to have swept off more than a hundred thousand victims.  Half a century later indeed the land still lay bare of culture and deserted of men for sixty miles northward of York.  The work of vengeance once over, William led his army