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 leaving a force there, crushed the revolt in Staffordshire, and entered York without opposition. He then laid waste all the country between York and Durham, burning crops, cattle, houses, and property of all kinds, so that the whole land was turned into a desert and the people perished with hunger. After keeping Christmas amid the ruins of York, he marched to the Tees in January 1070, received the submission of Waltheof and others, committed further ravages, returned to York, and thence set out for Chester. The winter weather made his march difficult; some of his men deserted and many perished. The fall of Chester ended the revolt in that district, and was followed by ravages in Cheshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, and Derbyshire. The Danish fleet having been bribed to leave the coast after the winter, all resistance was at an end and the conquest of England was complete (ib. pp. 320–22).

At Easter two legates came to England by William's request, and one remained with him for a year. Their coming enabled him to carry out part of his policy with respect to the church. Stigand was deposed and Lanfranc was made archbishop in his place. Three other English bishops, and in time many abbots, were also deposed, and vacancies were filled up by foreign prelates, only two sees being occupied by native bishops by the end of 1070 (, Constitutional History, i. 282). As he had done in Normandy, so also in England, William generally tried to appoint men of learning and good character; he avoided simony, and, though his appointments were not always successful and his abbots were not generally so worthy as his bishops, the prelates that he introduced were, taken together, men of a higher stamp than their predecessors. At the same time, his changes entailed much hardship on English churchmen, and his church appointments were often made as rewards for secular service. All disorder was abhorrent to him. He was masterful in his dealings with the church as in all else, and, though elections were often made in ecclesiastical assemblies, his will was evidently not less obeyed than in cases in which his personal action is more apparent. With Lanfranc he worked in full accord, and his general policy may be described as that of organising the church as a separate department of government under the direction of the archbishop as his vicegerent in ecclesiastical matters, in opposition to the English system by which ecclesiastical and civil affairs were largely administered by the same machinery. This policy worked well in his time, but it was necessary to its success that the throne and the see of Canterbury should be filled by men of like mind and aims to those of William and Lanfranc. William upheld Lanfranc's claim to the obedience of the see of York because it was politically expedient to depress the power of the northern metropolitan. In accordance with his system church councils were held distinct from, though generally at the same time as, the secular councils of the realm. He also separated ecclesiastical from secular jurisdiction, ordering that no bishop or archdeacon should thenceforward hear ecclesiastical pleas in the hundred court, but in courts of their own, and should try them by canon law, obedience being enforced by excommunication, which, if necessary, would be backed up by the civil power (ib. pp. 283–4). Although he brought the church into closer relations with the papacy, from which he had obtained help both in his invasion and his ecclesiastical arrangements, he was far from being subservient to popes. About 1076 a legate came to him from Gregory demanding that he should do fealty to the pope and send Peter's pence. He replied that he would send the money as his predecessors had done, but would not do fealty, for he had never promised it and his predecessors had not done it (, Ep. 10). The pope blamed him for Lanfranc's neglect of his summons to Rome (Monumenta Gregoriana, p. 367). He laid down three rules as necessary to his kingly rights: he would allow no Roman pontiff to be acknowledged in his dominions as apostolic without his command, nor any papal letter to be received that had not been shown to him; no synod might make any enactment that he had not sanctioned and previously ordained; no ecclesiastical censure was to be pronounced against any of his barons or officers without his consent. All things, temporal and spiritual, depended on his will (, Historia Novorum, col. 352).

Extending the license that they had received from William, the Danes had not sailed in May 1070; and their appearance at Ely encouraged a revolt of the fen country. They left England in June, but the revolt continued, and was headed by Hereward [q. v.] In 1071 the rebels held the Isle of Ely, and the revolt, though isolated, became serious. William in person attacked the island with ships and a land force. He reduced it in the course of the year, punished the rebels with mutilation or lifelong imprisonment, fined the monastery of Ely, and caused a castle to be built in its precinct. Early in 1072 he was