an oppression. He began with Stigand,
Archbishop of Canterbury. A synod was called, in which, for the first
time in England, the Pope's legate _a latere_ is said to have presided.
In this council, Stigand, for simony and for other crimes, of which it
is easy to convict those who are out of favor, was solemnly degraded
from his dignity. The king filled his place with Lanfranc, an Italian.
By his whole conduct he appeared resolved to reduce his subjects of all
orders to the most perfect obedience.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1068.]

The people, loaded with new taxes, the nobility, degraded and
threatened, the clergy, deprived of their immunities and influence,
joined in one voice of discontent, and stimulated each other to the most
desperate resolutions. The king was not unapprised of these motions, nor
negligent of them. It is thought he meditated to free himself from much
of his uneasiness by seizing those men on whom the nation in its
distresses used to cast its eyes for relief. But whilst he digested
these measures, Edgar Atheling, Edwin and Morcar, Waltheof, the son of
Siward, and several others, eluded his vigilance, and escaped into Scot
land, where they were received with open arms by King Malcolm. The
Scottish monarch on this occasion married the sister of Edgar; and this
match engaged him more closely to the accomplishment of what his
gratitude to the Saxon kings and the rules of good policy had before
inclined him. He entered at last into the cause of his brother-in-law
and the distressed English. He persuaded the King of Denmark to enter
into the same measures, who agreed to invade England with a fleet of a
thousand ships. Drone, an Irish king, declared in their favor, and
supplied the sons of Earl Godwin with vessels and men, with which they
held the English coast in continual alarms.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1069.]

Whilst the forces of this powerful confederacy were collecting on all
sides, and prepared to enter England, equal dangers threatened from
within the kingdom. Edric the Forester, a very brave and popular Saxon,
took up arms in the counties of Hereford and Salop, the country of the
ancient Silures, and inhabited by the same warlike and untamable race of
men. The Welsh strengthened him with their forces, and Cheshire joined
in the revolt. Hereward le Wake, one of the most brave and indefatigable
soldiers of his time, rushed with a numerous band of fugitives and
outlaws from the fens of Lincoln and the Isle of Ely,