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.With him was his brother, Robert of Cornwall,Count of Mortain.The other great baron-bishop of the Con-quest, Geoffrey of Coutances, was also in insurrection, andwith him his nephew, Robert of Earl ofland.Another leading rebel was Roger, Earl of Shrewsbury,with his three sons, the chief of whom, Robert of Bell&me,was sent over from Normandy by Duke Robert, with Eustaceof Boulogne, to aid the insurrection in England until he shouldhimself be able to cross the channel.The treason of one man,William of St.Calais, Bishop of Durham, was regarded by theEnglish writers as particularly heinous, if indeed we are rightin referring their words to him and not to Bishop Odo it is atleast evident from the sequel that the king regarded his con-duct in that light.The reason is not altogether clear, unlessit be that the position of greatest influence in England, whichBishop Odo had desired in vain, had been given him by theking.Other familiar names must be added to these Williamof Eu, Roger of Lacy, Ralph of Mortimer, RogerHugh of Grantmesnil.On the king s side there were fewNorman names to equal these: Hugh of Avranches, Earl ofChester, William of Warenne, and of course the vassals ofthe great Archbishop Lanfranc.But the real strength of theking was not derived from the baronial elements.Thecastles in most of the great towns remained faithful, and sodid nearly all the bishops and the Church as a whole.Butthe weight which turned the scale and gave the decision tothe king was the support of the great mass of the nation,of the English as opposed to the Norman.For so great a show of strength, the insurrection was veryshort-lived, and it was put down with almost no fighting.The refusal of the barons to come to the Easter court, April14, was their first overt act of rebellion, though it had beenevident in March that the rebellion was coming, and beforethe close of the summer confiscation or amnesty had beenmeasured out to the defeated rebels.We are told that thecrown was offered to Robert and accepted by him, and greathopes were entertained of decisive aid which he was to send AND A STRONG KINGTwo sieges, of Pevensey castle and ofCHAP.but nothing it.IVcastle, were the most important military events.was considerable ravaging of the country by thein the west, and some little fighting there.The Bishop ofand his nephew seized Bristol and laid waste the countryabout, but were unsuccessful in their siege of Ilchester.Rogerof others collected a force at Hereford, and advancedto attack Worcester, but were beaten off by the Norman garri-son and the men of Bishop Wulfstan.Minor incidents of thesame kind occurred in Gloucestershire, Leicestershire, Nor-folk, and the north.But the decisive events were in thesouth-east, in the operations of the king against his uncleAt London William called round him his supporters,appealing especially to the English, and promising to grantgood laws, to levy no unjust taxes, and to allow men the free-dom of their woods and of hunting.With an army which didnot seem large, he advanced against Rochester, where theBishop of Bayeux was, to strike the heart of the insurrection.Tunbridge castle, which was held for was first stormed,and on the news of this Odo thought it prudent to him-self to Pevensey, where his brother, Robert of Mortain, was,and where reinforcements from Robert of Normandy wouldbe likely to land.William at once turned from his march toRochester and began the siege of Pevensey.The Normanreinforcements which Robert finally sent were driven back withgreat loss, and after some weeks Pevensey was compelled tosurrender.Bishop Odo agreed to secure the surrender ofRochester, and then to retire from England, only to return ifthe should send for him.But William unwisely senthim on to Rochester with a small advance detachment, tooccupy the castle, while he himself followed more slowly withthe main body.The castle refused to surrender.expres-sion of face made known his real wishes, and was more convinc-ing than his words.A sudden sally of the garrison overpoweredhis guards, and the bishop was carried into the castle to trythe fortune of a siege once more.For this siege the kingagain appealed to the country and called for the help of allunder the old Saxon penalty of the disgraceful name ofnithing. The defenders of the castle suffered greatly fromthe blockade, and were soon compelled to yield upon such OF OF DURHAM108877terms as the king pleased, who was with difficulty persuaded CHAP.IVto give up his first idea of sending them all to the gallows.The monk Orderic who wrote an account of theseevents a generation after they occurred, was struck with onecharacteristic of this insurrection, which the careful observerof any time would hardly fail to notice.He says: Therebels, although they were so many and abundantly furnishedwith arms and supplies, did not dare to join battle with thein his kingdom. It was an age, to be sure, whenwars were decided less by fighting in the open field than bythe siege and of castles and yet the collapse of soformidable an insurrection as this, after no resistance at allin proportion to its apparent fighting strength, is surely asignificant fact.To notice here but one inference from it, itmeans that no one questioned the title of William Rufusto the throne while he was in possession.Though he mightbe a younger son, not elected, but appointed by his father,and put into the kingship by the act of the primate alone,he was, to the rebellious barons as to his own supporters,the rightful king of England till he could be overthrown.The insurrection being put down, a general amnesty seemsto have been extended to the rebels.The Bishop of Bayeuxwas exiled from England some confiscations were made, andsome rewards distributed but almost without exception theleaders escaped punishment.The most notable exception,besides Odo, was William of St.Calais, the Bishop of Durham.For some reason, which does not clearly appear, the kingfound it difficult to pardon him.He was summoned beforethe king s court to answer for his conduct, and the account ofthe trial which followed in November of this year, preservedto us by a writer friendly to the bishop and present at theproceedings, is one of the most interesting and instructivedocuments which we have from this time.William of St.Calais, as the king s vassal for the temporalities of hisbishopric, was summoned before the king s feudal court toanswer for breach of his feudal obligations.William hadshown, in one of the letters which he had sent to the kingshortly before the trial, that he was fully aware of theseobligations and the impossibility of meeting the accusationwas perfectly clear to his mind.With the greatest subtlety AND A STRONGCHAP.and sought to take advantage of his double position,IVand as bishop, and to transfer the whole process toWith equal skill, and with an equally cleardifferent ground.understanding of the principles involved, Lanfranc met everymove which hethe beginning the accused insisted upon the privilegesof his order.He would submit to a canonical trial only.He asked that the bishops should appear in their pontificals,which was a request that they judge him as bishops, and notLanfranc answered him that they could judgeas barons.him well enough clad as they were
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