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Updated: June 13, 2025
The two chief conspirators persuaded Earl Waltheof to join them, at least for the moment, and their plan was to drive the king out of England and to divide the kingdom between them into three great principalities, "for we wish," the Norman historian Orderic makes them say, "to restore in all respects the kingdom of England as it was formerly in the time of King Edward," a most significant indication of the general opinion about the effect of the Conquest, even if the words are not theirs.
Now what amount of favour did Waltheof give to these schemes? Weighing the accounts, it would seem that, in the excitement of the bride-ale, he consented to the treason, but that he thought better of it the next morning. He went to Lanfranc, at once regent and ghostly father, and confessed to him whatever he had to confess.
His stepfather, the King, would take him to the chase, and tell him to bear his bow; but he often found his bow in the hands of another, and, after a search, discovered Waltheof reading or praying in a secret glade, or under a tree. "Your boy," he said to the Queen, "will either die young, or leave us for the cloister."
In March, 1067, William returned to Normandy, taking with him as hostages the Earls Eadwine, Morkere, and Waltheof. The revolts which broke out in the north and southwest compelled him to return to England in December. Early in 1068 he marched on Exeter, as the centre of the western revolt.
Doubtless the angry and disappointed English raised such accusations against the earl, believing them to be true. But is not the simpler cause of Osbiorn's conduct to be found in this plain fact? He had sailed from Denmark to put Sweyn, his brother, on the throne. He found, on his arrival, that Gospatrick and Waltheof had seized it in the name of Edgar Atheling.
She hath charged the said reverend brothers so to deal with the young woman as may give her a sense of the sin of incontinence, and she commendeth thee to confession and penitence. Signed, Waltheof, by command of an high and mighty Princess"; and so forth. When he had finished, "Excellent excellent!" Ramorny exclaimed. "This unexpected rebuff will drive Charteris mad!
And he determined to flee, ere evil befell him, to his cousin Malcolm Canmore, taking with him Marlesweyn of Lincolnshire, who had fought, it is said, by Harold's side at Hastings, and young Waltheof of York.
The tyranny of Odo of Bayeux and William Fitzosbern, which provoked attempts at rebellion in 1067; the stand made by the house of Godwin in Devonshire in 1068; the attempts of Mercia and Northumbria to shake off the Normans in 1069 and 1070; the last struggle for independence in 1071, in which Edwin and Morcar finally fell; the conspiracy of the Norman earls in 1074, in consequence of which Waltheof perished all tended to the same result.
"That must be Gilbert of Ghent, and Oger the Breton. No! Gilbert is not coming, Sir Ascelin is coming for him. Holland? That is my friend Ivo Taillebois. Well, we shall have the chance of paying off old scores. Northampton? The earl thereof just now is the pious and loyal Waltheof, as he is of Huntingdon and Cambridge.
"And who art thou, who askest so bold who I am?" "I am Waltheof Siwardsson, the Earl, and yon is my army behind me." "And I am Hereward Leofricsson, the outlaw, and yon is my army behind me."
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