[Sidenote:  A.D. 1070.]

In the midst of this scene of disorder, the king alone was present to himself and to his affairs.  He first collected all the forces on whom he could depend within the kingdom, and called powerful succors from Normandy.  Then he sent a strong body to repress the commotions in the West; but he reserved the greatest force and his own presence against the greatest danger, which menaced from the North.  The Scots had penetrated as far as Durham; they had taken the castle, and put the garrison to the sword.  A like fate attended York from the Danes, who had entered the Humber with a formidable fleet.  They put this city into the hands of the English malcontents, and thereby influenced all the northern counties in their favor.  William, when he first perceived the gathering of the storm, endeavored, and with some success, to break the force of the principal blow by a correspondence at the court of Denmark; and now he entirely blunted the weapon by corrupting, with a considerable sum, the Danish general.  It was agreed, to gratify that piratical nation, that they should plunder some part of the coast, and depart without further disturbance.  By this negotiation the king was enabled to march with an undissipated force against the Scots and the principal body of the English.  Everything yielded.  The Scots retired into their own country.  Some of the most obnoxious of the English fled along with them.  One desperate party, under the brave Waltheof, threw themselves into York, and ventured alone to resist his victorious army.  William pressed the siege with vigor, and, notwithstanding the prudent dispositions of Waltheof, and the prodigies of valor he displayed in its defence, standing alone in the breach, and maintaining his ground gallantly and successfully, the place was at last reduced by famine.  The king left his enemies no time to recover this disaster; he followed his blow, and drove all who adhered to Edgar Atheling out of all the countries northward of the Humber.  This tract he resolved entirely to depopulate, influenced by revenge, and by distrust of the inhabitants, and partly with a view of opposing an hideous desert of sixty miles in extent as an impregnable barrier against all attempts of the Scots in favor of his disaffected subjects.  The execution of this barbarous project was attended with all the havoc and desolation that it seemed to threaten.  One hundred thousand are said to have perished by cold, penury, and disease.  The ground lay untilled throughout that whole space for upwards of nine years.  Many of the inhabitants both of this and all other parts of England fled into Scotland; but they were so received by King Malcolm as to forget that they had lost their country.  This wise monarch gladly seized so fair an opportunity, by the exertion of a benevolent policy, to people his dominions, and to improve his native subjects.  He received the English nobility according to their rank, he promoted them to offices according to their merit, and enriched them by considerable estates from his own demesne.  From these noble refugees several considerable families in Scotland are descended.