Gytha, when the city yielded, withdrew to the Steep Holm, and thence to Flanders.Her grandsons fled to Ireland; from thence, in the course of the same year and the next, they twice landed in Somerset and Devonshire.The Irish Danes who followed them could not be kept back from plunder.Englishmen as well as Normans withstood them, and the hopes of the House of Godwine came to an end.
On the conquest of Exeter followed the submission of the whole West.
All the land south of the Thames was now in William's obedience.
Gloucestershire seems to have submitted at the same time; the submission of Worcestershire is without date.A vast confiscation of lands followed, most likely by slow degrees.Its most memorable feature is that nearly all Cornwall was granted to William's brother Robert Count of Mortain.His vast estate grew into the famous Cornish earldom and duchy of later times.Southern England was now conquered, and, as the North had not stirred during the stirring of the West, the whole land was outwardly at peace.William now deemed it safe to bring his wife to share his new greatness.The Duchess Matilda came over to England, and was hallowed to Queen at Westminster by Archbishop Ealdred.We may believe that no part of his success gave William truer pleasure.But the presence of the Lady was important in another way.It was doubtless by design that she gave birth on English soil to her youngest son, afterwards the renowned King Henry the First.He alone of William's children was in any sense an Englishman.Born on English ground, son of a crowned King and his Lady, Englishmen looked on him as a countryman.
And his father saw the wisdom of encouraging such a feeling.Henry, surnamed in after days the Clerk, was brought up with special care;he was trained in many branches of learning unusual among the princes of his age, among them in a thorough knowledge of the tongue of his native land.
The campaign of Exeter is of all William's English campaigns the richest in political teaching.We see how near the cities of England came for a moment--as we shall presently see a chief city of northern Gaul--to running the same course as the cities of Italy and Provence.Signs of the same tendency may sometimes be suspected elsewhere, but they are not so clearly revealed.William's later campaigns are of the deepest importance in English history; they are far richer in recorded personal actors than the siege of Exeter; but they hardly throw so much light on the character of William and his statesmanship.William is throughout ever ready, but never hasty--always willing to wait when waiting seems the best policy--always ready to accept a nominal success when there is a chance of turning it into a real one, but never accepting nominal success as a cover for defeat, never losing an inch of ground without at once taking measures to recover it.By this means, he has in the former part of 1068 extended his dominion to the Land's End; before the end of the year he extends it to the Tees.In the next year he has indeed to win it back again; but he does win it back and more also.Early in 1070 he was at last, in deed as well as in name, full King over all England.
The North was making ready for war while the war in the West went on, but one part of England did nothing to help the other.In the summer the movement in the North took shape.The nominal earls Edwin, Morkere, and Gospatric, with the AEtheling Edgar and others, left William's court to put themselves at the head of the movement.
Edwin was specially aggrieved, because the king had promised him one of his daughters in marriage, but had delayed giving her to him.
The English formed alliances with the dependent princes of Wales and Scotland, and stood ready to withstand any attack.William set forth; as he had taken Exeter, he took Warwick, perhaps Leicester.
This was enough for Edwin and Morkere.They submitted, and were again received to favour.More valiant spirits withdrew northward, ready to defend Durham as the last shelter of independence, while Edgar and Gospatric fled to the court of Malcolm of Scotland.
William went on, receiving the submission of Nottingham and York;thence he turned southward, receiving on his way the submission of Lincoln, Cambridge, and Huntingdon.Again he deemed it his policy to establish his power in the lands which he had already won rather than to jeopard matters by at once pressing farther.In the conquered towns he built castles, and he placed permanent garrisons in each district by granting estates to his Norman and other followers.Different towns and districts suffered in different degrees, according doubtless to the measure of resistance met with in each.Lincoln and Lincolnshire were on the whole favourably treated.An unusual number of Englishmen kept lands and offices in city and shire.At Leicester and Northampton, and in their shires, the wide confiscations and great destruction of houses point to a stout resistance.And though Durham was still untouched, and though William had assuredly no present purpose of attacking Scotland, he found it expedient to receive with all favour a nominal submission brought from the King of Scots by the hands of the Bishop of Durham.
