第22章 ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE FIRST,THE NORMAN(2)

This was scarcely done,when the outlaws in the woods so harassed York,that the Governor sent to the King for help.The King despatched a general and a large force to occupy the town of Durham.The Bishop of that place met the general outside the town,and warned him not to enter,as he would be in danger there.The general cared nothing for the warning,and went in with all his men.That night,on every hill within sight of Durham,signal fires were seen to blaze.When the morning dawned,the English,who had assembled in great strength,forced the gates,rushed into the town,and slew the Normans every one.The English afterwards besought the Danes to come and help them.The Danes came,with two hundred and forty ships.The outlawed nobles joined them;they captured York,and drove the Normans out of that city.Then,William bribed the Danes to go away;and took such vengeance on the English,that all the former fire and sword,smoke and ashes,death and ruin,were nothing compared with it.In melancholy songs,and doleful stories,it was still sung and told by cottage fires on winter evenings,a hundred years afterwards,how,in those dreadful days of the Normans,there was not,from the River Humber to the River Tyne,one inhabited village left,nor one cultivated field-how there was nothing but a dismal ruin,where the human creatures and the beasts lay dead together.

The outlaws had,at this time,what they called a Camp of Refuge,in the midst of the fens of Cambridgeshire.Protected by those marshy grounds which were difficult of approach,they lay among the reeds and rushes,and were hidden by the mists that rose up from the watery earth.Now,there also was,at that time,over the sea in Flanders,an Englishman named HEREWARD,whose father had died in his absence,and whose property had been given to a Norman.When he heard of this wrong that had been done him (from such of the exiled English as chanced to wander into that country),he longed for revenge;and joining the outlaws in their camp of refuge,became their commander.He was so good a soldier,that the Normans supposed him to be aided by enchantment.William,even after he had made a road three miles in length across the Cambridgeshire marshes,on purpose to attack this supposed enchanter,thought it necessary to engage an old lady,who pretended to be a sorceress,to come and do a little enchantment in the royal cause.For this purpose she was pushed on before the troops in a wooden tower;but Hereward very soon disposed of this unfortunate sorceress,by burning her,tower and all.The monks of the convent of Ely near at hand,however,who were fond of good living,and who found it very uncomfortable to have the country blockaded and their supplies of meat and drink cut off,showed the King a secret way of surprising the camp.So Hereward was soon defeated.Whether he afterwards died quietly,or whether he was killed after killing sixteen of the men who attacked him (as some old rhymes relate that he did),I cannot say.His defeat put an end to the Camp of Refuge;and,very soon afterwards,the King,victorious both in Scotland and in England,quelled the last rebellious English noble.

He then surrounded himself with Norman lords,enriched by the property of English nobles;had a great survey made of all the land in England,which was entered as the property of its new owners,on a roll called Doomsday Book;obliged the people to put out their fires and candles at a certain hour every night,on the ringing of a bell which was called The Curfew;introduced the Norman dresses and manners;made the Normans masters everywhere,and the English,servants;turned out the English bishops,and put Normans in their places;and showed himself to be the Conqueror indeed.

But,even with his own Normans,he had a restless life.They were always hungering and thirsting for the riches of the English;and the more he gave,the more they wanted.His priests were as greedy as his soldiers.We know of only one Norman who plainly told his master,the King,that he had come with him to England to do his duty as a faithful servant,and that property taken by force from other men had no charms for him.His name was GUILBERT.We should not forget his name,for it is good to remember and to honour honest men.