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Updated: June 15, 2025
This treason implies an unrecorded banishment in the days of Edward or Harold. Already earl in 1069, he had in that year acted vigorously for William against the Danes. But he now conspired against him along with Roger, the younger son of William Fitz-Osbern, who had succeeded his father in the earldom of Hereford, while his Norman estates had passed to his elder brother William.
The years from 1069 to 1080 were evil years for Northumberland, for at the first-named date the Conqueror devastated the North, and left neither village nor farm unscathed; and, as the desolated land was beginning to recover again, Odo of Bayeux and Robert of Normandy relentlessly laid it waste once more, partly in revenge for the murder of Bishop Walcher at Gateshead, and partly to punish Malcolm of Scotland for his invasion of Norman territory.
At Christmas, 1067, William again granted or sold the earldom to another of the local chiefs, Gospatric. But he made no attempt to exercise direct authority in those parts till the beginning of the year 1069. All this illustrates William's general course. Crowned king over the land, he would first strengthen himself in that part of the kingdom which he actually held.
A martyrology of the XI century speaks of a dedication in 1069, but as this ceremony had been preceded by another extensive re-building, and was followed by many other changes, the oldest portions of the present church are to be most accurately ascribed to the XI, XII, and XIV centuries.
He now also made a grant of earldoms, the object of which is less clear than that of most of his actions. It is not easy to say why Gospatric was deprived of his earldom. His former acts of hostility to William had been covered by his pardon and reappointment in 1069; and since then he had acted as a loyal, if perhaps an indiscreet, guardian of the land.
William built a castle in York, at the junction of the Ouse and the Foss, and garrisoned it with Normans. He then returned southwards. So soon as his back was turned, the city revolted again and besieged the castle. But William was soon upon them. He took and plundered the city, and erected another fortress on Beacon Hill. In 1069 occurred the final rebellion.
His march was accompanied by heavy confiscations, and great castles, rising in places of vantage, rendered the Norman power at once visible and secure. In the spring of 1069 a fresh revolt broke out. Robert of Comines, the newly appointed Earl of Northumberland, was slain at Durham; a Danish fleet entered the Humber, and a Danish army, joined by Eadgar and Waltheof, seized and burned York.
Then Eleazar began the Song of the Three Children in the fire, and when they came to the words, "O Thank the Lord, for He is good, And His mercy endureth for ever," their voices were choked, and they ended their days like the Maccabees. On 16th July 1069, Peter the Hermit entered Jerusalem through the same Jaffa Gate before which he had sat as a beggar.
Were they struggling against William at Stafford, or helping Edric the Wild and his Welshmen to besiege Chester? Probably they were aiding the insurrection, if not at these two points, still at some other of their great earldoms of Mercia and Chester. They seemed to triumph for a while: during the autumn of 1069 the greater part of England seemed lost to William.
In 1069 William the Conqueror marched northward to visit with sternest punishment the hardy north-men, who were so long in submitting to his authority; and the monks of Durham fled before the advance of the relentless Norman, carrying with them, as before, the body of St. Cuthbert.
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