Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/308

 keep Christmas in London; and it seems to have been on this occasion that he restored the earldom of Kent to his uncle, Odo, bishop of Bayeux [q. v.], and, according to one account, made him justiciar. The king's chief minister and confidant, however, was William of St. Calais, bishop of Durham [see ]. Within three months Odo was at the head of a plot formed by the Norman barons in England to dethrone William Rufus, whose temper was too stern and masterful to please them, and set his ‘more tractable’ brother, Duke Robert of Normandy, in his place, and the plot was secretly joined by the bishop of Durham. ‘When the king understood these things, and what treason they did towards him, then was he greatly disturbed in his mood. Then he sent after the English men’ (in contradistinction to the Normans) ‘and set forth to them his need, and prayed their help, and promised them the best laws that ever were in this land, and that he would forbid all unjust taxation, and give them back their woods and their hunting.’ A crowd of enthusiastic Englishmen gathered round him in London and followed him to attack the strongholds of the rebels in Kent. Tunbridge Castle was stormed, Pevensey starved into surrender, and Odo forced to promise that his chief fortress, Rochester, should be given up without resistance. Odo, however, was false to his promise [for details see ]. The enraged king then issued a second proclamation, summoning to his aid ‘every man, French and English, who would not be called nithing,’ to an Englishman the most shameful of epithets. Backed by the increase of forces which this appeal brought him, by the archbishop, and by most of the landowners of Kent, whose estates Odo's followers had been ravaging, William laid siege to Rochester (May 1088), won its surrender, and banished Odo from the realm. The English clamoured for Odo's death; but Rufus had promised him and all the Rochester garrison their lives, and would not break his knightly word. On 2 Nov. the bishop of Durham was tried before the king's court at Salisbury. He refused to acknowledge its jurisdiction and appealed to Rome; the king compelled him to give up Durham castle, and then let him follow Odo over sea [for details see ].

Thus secure in England, William laid before a great council at Winchester, at Easter 1090, a proposal for the invasion of Normandy. The council unanimously assented to the project; but before William took the field he secured a foothold in the duchy by other means. ‘By his cunning or by his treasures’ he gained several castles on its eastern side; ‘therein he set his knights, and they did harm upon the land, harrying and burning.’ King Philip of France came to support Duke Robert, but was induced to withdraw, ‘for the love or for the mickle treasure’ of the English king: and Rouen itself would have fallen into the hands of William's soldiers but for the action of his youngest brother Henry [see ]. William himself went to Normandy at Candlemas 1091, fixed his headquarters at Eu, and was speedily joined by such a crowd of adherents that Robert hastened to come to terms. By a treaty made either at Rouen or at Caen it was agreed that so much of Normandy as had already acknowledged William's rule should remain subject to him; that the two brothers should co-operate to recover such of their father's territories as Robert had lost, viz. the Cotentin, which he had sold to Henry, and Maine, which had thrown off the Norman yoke; that these territories, when regained, should belong to Robert, except two fortresses in the Cotentin—Cherbourg and the Mont St. Michel, which William claimed as the price of his help; and that if either Robert or William died childless his dominions should pass to the survivor. King and duke attacked the Cotentin in Lent 1091; in a month they had won it, all but the Mont St. Michel, and even this Henry was forced to surrender after a siege of fifteen days. In August William returned to England, and at once marched against the king of Scots, Malcolm III [q. v.], who had invaded England during his absence. Malcolm was induced to do homage to the English king at the ‘Scot-water’ (the Firth of Forth) by the mediation of Robert, who had come to England with Rufus, and of Edgar the Ætheling [q. v.], who had just been banished from Normandy at Rufus's instigation. Just before Christmas the king and the duke again quarrelled, and the duke returned home.

In 1092 William ‘fared north to Carlisle, and restored the city and built the castle, and drove out Dolfin (who till then held the land), and set the castle with his men; then he turned south again, and sent many churlish folk, with wives and cattle, to dwell in the land and till it.’ This restoration of a deserted city and colonisation of a district which had become practically a no-man's-land is the one good deed done for England by William the Red. His sole merit as a ruler was that he kept his realm in peace with a strong hand, and ‘was terrible to