WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. r 343

profiting by these convulsions, had fallen upon chapthe northern counties; but on the approach of IV.William he retired ; and when the king enteredhis country, he was glad to make peace, and topay the usual homage to the English crown.

To complete the king’s prosperity , EdgarAtheling himself, despairing of success , andweary of a fugitive life, submitted to his enemy;and receiving a decent pension for his subsistence ,was permitted to live in England unmolested.

But these acts of generosity towards the leaderswere disgraced, as usual, by William’s rigoragainst the inferior malecontents. He ordered thehands to be lopt off, and the eyes to be putout, of many of the prisoners, whom he hadtaken in the Isle of Ely ; and he dispersed them inthat miserable condition throughout the country,as monuments of his severity.

The province of Maine in France had, by 1073:the will of Hebert, the last count, fallen underthe dominion of William some years before hisconquest of England ; but the inhabitants ,dissatisfied with the Norman government, andinstigated by Fulk count of Anjou, who hadsome pretensions to the succession, now rose inrebellion, and expelled the magistrates, whomthe king had placed over them. The full settle-ment of England afforded him leisure to punishthis insult on his authority ; but being unwillingio remove his Norman forces from this island, hecarried over a considerable army, composed almostentirely of English, and joining them to some

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