108.  The Coronation; William returns to Normandy.

On the following Christmas Day (1066) William was anointed and crowned in Westminster Abbey.  His accession to the throne marked the union of England and Normandy (S191). (See map facing p. 54).  He assumed the title of “King of the English,” which had been used by Edward the Confessor and by Harold.  The title “King of England” did not fully and finally come into use until John’s accession, more than a hundred and thirty years later.  William did not remain in London, but made Winchester, in the south of England, his capital.  In the spring (1067) he sailed for Normandy, where he had left his queen, Matilda, to govern in his absence.

While on the Continent he intrusted England to the hands of two regents, one his half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, the other his friend William Fitz-Osbern; the former he had made Earl of Kent, the latter Earl of Hereford.

During the next three years there were outbreaks and uprisings in the lowlands of Cambridgeshire and the moors of Yorkshire, besides incursions of both Danes and Scots.

109.  William quells Rebellion in the North (1068).

The oppresive rule of the regents (S108) soon caused a rebellion, and in December William returned to England to put it down.  He found the task a hard one.  The King of Denmark made it all the harder by sending over a powerful fleet to held the English.  William bribed the Danish commanders and they “sailed away without striking a blow.”  Then, little by little, he brought the land to obedience.  By forced marches in midwinter, by roads cast up through bogs, and by sudden night attacks William accomplished the end he sought.

But (1068) news came of a fresh revolt in the north, accompanied by another invasion of foreign barbarians.  Then William, roused by terrible anger, swore by the “splendor of God” that he would lay waste the land.

He made good his oath.  For a hundred miles beyond the river Humber in Yorkshire he ravaged the country, burning villages, destroying houses, crops, and cattle, and reduced the wretched people to such destitution that many sold themselves for slaves to escape starvation.  Having finished his work in the north, he turned toward the ancient Roman city of Chester, in the west, and captured it. (See map facing p. 38.)

110.  Hereward (1091).

Every part of the land was now in William’s power except an island in the swamps of Ely, in the east of England.  There the Englishman Hereward, with his resolute little band of fellow countrymen, continued to defy the power of the Conqueror. (See map facing p. 38.) “Had there been three more men like him in the island,” said one of William’s own soldiers, “the Normans would never have entered it.”  But as there were not three more, the Conquest was at length completed.

111.  Necessity of William’s Severity.

The work of death had been fearful.  But it was better that England should suffer from these pitiless measures than that it should sink into anarchy, or into subjection to hordes of Northmen (S53).  For those fierce barbarians destroyed not because they desired to build something better, but because they hated civilization and all its works.