Beside,
there were those who coveted Edwin's broad lands; Roger de Montgomery, who
already (it is probable) held part of them as Earl of Shrewsbury, had no
wish to see Edwin the son-in-law of his sovereign. Be the cause what it
may, William faltered, and refused; and Edwin and Morcar left the Court of
Westminster in wrath. Waltheof followed them, having discovered--what he
was weak enough continually to forget again--the treachery of the Norman.
The young earls went off, one midlandward, one northward. The people saw
their wrongs in those of their earls, and the rebellion burst forth at
once, the Welsh under Blethyn, and the Cumbrians under Malcolm and
Donaldbain, giving their help in the struggle.
It was the year 1069. A more evil year for England than even the year of
Hastings.
The rebellion was crushed in a few months. The great general marched
steadily north, taking the boroughs one by one, storming, massacring young
and old, burning, sometimes, whole towns, and leaving, as he went on, a
new portent, a Norman donjon--till then all but unseen in England--as a
place of safety for his garrisons. At Oxford (sacked horribly, and all but
destroyed), at Warwick (destroyed utterly), at Nottingham, at Stafford, at
Shrewsbury, at Cambridge, on the huge barrow which overhangs the fen; and
at York itself, which had opened its gates, trembling, to the great Norman
strategist; at each doomed free borough rose a castle, with its tall
square tower within, its bailey around, and all the appliances of that
ancient Roman science of fortification, of which the Danes, as well as the
Saxons, knew nothing.
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