Things were not now as on the day of Senlac, when Englishmen on their own soil withstood one who, however he might cloke his enterprise, was to them simply a foreign invader.  But William was not yet, as he was in some later struggles, the de facto king of the whole land, whom all had acknowledged, and opposition to whom was in form rebellion.  He now held an intermediate position.  He was still an invader; for Exeter had never submitted to him; but the crowned King of the English, peacefully ruling over many shires, was hardly a mere invader; resistance to him would have the air of rebellion in the eyes of many besides William and his flatterers.  And they could not see, what we plainly see, what William perhaps dimly saw, that it was in the long run better for Exeter, or any other part of England, to share, even in conquest, the fate of the whole land, rather than to keep on a precarious independence to the aggravation of the common bondage.  This we feel throughout; William, with whatever motive, is fighting for the unity of England.  We therefore cannot seriously regret his successes.  But none the less honour is due to the men whom the duty of the moment bade to withstand him.  They could not see things as we see them by the light of eight hundred years.

The movement evidently stirred several shires; but it is only of Exeter that we hear any details.  William never used force till he had tried negotiation.  He sent messengers demanding that the citizens should take oaths to him and receive him within their walls.  The choice lay now between unconditional submission and valiant resistance.  But the chief men of the city chose a middle course which could gain nothing.  They answered as an Italian city might have answered a Swabian Emperor.  They would not receive the King within their walls; they would take no oaths to him; but they would pay him the tribute which they had paid to earlier kings.  That is, they would not have him as king, but only as overlord over a commonwealth otherwise independent.  William’s answer was short; “It is not my custom to take subjects on those conditions.”  He set out on his march; his policy was to overcome the rebellious English by the arms of the loyal English.  He called out the fyrd, the militia, of all or some of the shires under his obedience.  They answered his call; to disobey it would have needed greater courage than to wield the axe on Senlac.  This use of English troops became William’s custom in all his later wars, in England and on the mainland; but of course he did not trust to English troops only.  The plan of the campaign was that which had won Le Mans and London.  The towns of Dorset were frightfully harried on the march to the capital of the West.  Disunion at once broke out; the leading men in Exeter sent to offer unconditional submission and to give hostages.  But the commonalty disowned the agreement; notwithstanding the blinding of one of the hostages before the walls, they defended the city valiantly for eighteen days.  It was only when the walls began to crumble away beneath William’s mining-engines that the men of Exeter at last submitted to his mercy.  And William’s mercy could be trusted.  No man was harmed in life, limb, or goods.  But, to hinder further revolts, a castle was at once begun, and the payments made by the city to the King were largely raised.