The King alarmed at these many and sudden defections, thought it his best course to begin his defence by securing the good will of the people.  He redressed many grievances, eased them of certain oppressive taxes and tributes, gave liberty to hunt in his forest, with other marks of indulgence, which however forced from him by the necessity of the time, he had the skill or fortune so to order as they neither lost their good grace nor effect; for immediately after he raised great forces both by land and sea, marched into Kent, where the chief body of his enemies was in arms, recovered Tunbridge and Pevensey, in the latter of which Odo himself was taken prisoner, and forced to accompany the King to Rochester.  This city refusing to surrender at the King’s summons, Odo undertook to prevail with the obstinacy of the inhabitants; but being admitted into the town, was there detained, either by a real or seeming force; however, the King provoked at their stubbornness and fraud, soon compelled them to yield, retook his prisoner, and forcing him for ever to abjure England, sent him into Normandy.

By these actions, performed with such great celerity and success, the preparations of Duke Robert were wholly disappointed, himself, by the necessity of his affairs, compelled to a treaty with his brother, upon the terms of a small pension, and a mutual promise of succeeding to each other’s dominions on failure of issue, forced to resign his pretensions, and return with a shattered fleet to Normandy.

About this time died Archbishop Lanfranc; by whose death the King, loosed from that awe and constraint he was under, soon began to discover those irregularities of his nature, which till then he had suppressed and disguised, falling into those acts of oppression and extortion that have made his name and memory infamous.  He kept the see of Canterbury four years vacant, and converted the revenues to his own use, together with those of several other bishoprics and abbeys, and disposed all church preferments to the highest bidder.  Nor were his exactions less upon the laity, from whom he continually extorted exorbitant fines for pretended transgression of certain penal laws, and entertained informers to observe men’s actions and bring him intelligence.

It is here worth observation, that these corrupt proceedings of the prince have, in the opinion of several learned men, given rise to two customs, which are a long time grown to have the force of laws.  For, first the successors of this King, continuing the custom of seizing on the accruing rents in the vacancy of sees and abbeys, it grew in process of time to be exacted as a right, or acknowledgment to the King as founder; whence the revenues of vacant bishoprics belong at this day to the crown.  The second custom had an original not unlike.  Several persons, to avoid the persecutions of the King’s informers, and other instruments of oppression, withdrew themselves and their effects to foreign countries; upon which the King issued a proclamation, forbidding all men to leave the kingdom without his licence; from whence, in the judgment of the same authors, the writ ne exeat regno had its beginning.