back from the Tees to York, and thence to Chester and the West.  Never had he shown the grandeur of his character so memorably as in this terrible march.  The winter was hard, the roads choked with snowdrifts or broken by torrents, provisions failed; and his army, storm-beaten and forced to devour its horses for food, broke out into mutiny at the order to cross the bleak moorlands that part Yorkshire from the West.  The mercenaries from Anjou and Britanny demanded their release from service.  William granted their prayer with scorn.  On foot, at the head of the troops which still clung to him, he forced his way by paths inaccessible to horses, often helping the men with his own hands to clear the road, and as the army descended upon Chester the resistance of the English died away.

For two years William was able to busy himself in castle-building and in measures for holding down the conquered land.  How effective these were was seen when the last act of the conquest was reached.  All hope of Danish aid was now gone, but Englishmen still looked for help to Scotland where Eadgar the AEtheling had again found refuge and where his sister Margaret had become wife of King Malcolm.  It was probably some assurance of Malcolm’s aid which roused the Mercian Earls, Eadwine and Morkere, to a fresh rising in 1071.  But the revolt was at once foiled by the vigilance of the Conqueror.  Eadwine fell in an obscure skirmish, while Morkere found shelter for a while in the fen country where a desperate band of patriots gathered round an outlawed leader, Hereward.  Nowhere had William found so stubborn a resistance:  but a causeway two miles long was at last driven across the marshes, and the last hopes of English freedom died in the surrender of Ely.  It was as the unquestioned master of England that William marched to the North, crossed the Lowlands and the Forth, and saw Malcolm appear in his camp upon the Tay to swear fealty at his feet.

Book II
England under foreign kings
1071-1204

AUTHORITIES FOR BOOK II 1071-1204

Among the Norman chroniclers Orderic becomes from this point particularly valuable and detailed.  The Chronicle and Florence of Worcester remain the primary English authorities, while Simeon of Durham gives much special information on northern matters.  For the reign of William the Red the chief source of information is Eadmer, a monk of Canterbury, in his “Historia Noverum” and “Life of Anselm.”  William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon are both contemporary authorities during that of Henry the First; the latter remains a brief but accurate annalist; the former is the leader of a new historic school, who treat English events as part of the history of the world, and emulate classic models by a more philosophical arrangement of their materials.  To these the opening of Stephen’s reign adds the “Gesta Stephani,” a record in great detail by one of the King’s clerks, and the Hexham Chroniclers.