t and licentious army. Were we not assured of the solidity of
his genius, and the good sense displayed in all other circumstances of
his conduct, we might ascribe this measure to a vain ostentation,
which rendered him impatient to display his pomp and magnificence
among his ancient subjects. It is therefore more natural to believe,
that in so extraordinary a step he was guided by a concealed policy,
and that, though he had thought proper at first to allure the people
to submission by the semblance of a legal administration, he found
that he could neither satisfy his rapacious captains, nor secure his
unstable government without farther exerting the rights of conquest,
and seizing the possessions of the English. In order to have a
pretext for this violence, he endeavoured, without discovering his
intentions, to provoke and allure them into insurrections, which, he
thought, could never prove dangerous, while he detained all the
principal nobility in Normandy, while a great and victorious army was
quartered in England, and while he himself was so near to suppress any
tumult or rebellion. But as no ancient writer has ascribed this
tyrannical purpose to William, it scarcely seems allowable, from
conjecture alone, to throw such an imputation upon him.

[MN Their insurrections.]
But whether we are to account for that measure from the king's vanity
or from his policy, it was the immediate cause of all the calamities
which the English endured during this and the subsequent reigns, and
gave rise to those mutual jealousies and animosities between them and
the Normans, which were never appeased till a long tract of time had
gradually united the two nations, and made them one people. The
inhabitants of Kent, who had first submitted to the conqueror, were
the first that attempted to throw off the yoke; and in confederacy
with Eustace, Count of Boulogne, who had also been disgusted by the
Normans, they made an attempt, though without success, on the garrison
of Dover [w]. Edric the Forester, whose possessions lay on the banks
of the Severn, being provoked at the depredations of some Norman
captains in his neighbourhood, formed an alliance with Blethyn and
Rowallan, two Welsh princes; and endeavoured, with their assistance,
to repel force by force [x]. But though these open hostilities were
not very considerable, the disaffection was general among the English,
who had become sensible, though too late, of their defenceless
condi