Meanwhile William marched at mid-winter through the snow-covered heights of the Peakland, from York to Chester, to crush out the last smouldering fires of the insurrection on the North-Welsh border. Cheshire and Shropshire bowed before him, and there was then nothing left of the English hosts, save a few scattered bands of fugitives. Waltheof, the leader of the rebellion, submitted to the king, and, to the surprise of all men, was pardoned and restored to his earldom. The Danes returned to Denmark, bribed by William to depart (1070). But the last remnants of the English gathered themselves together in the Fenland under Hereward the Wake, a Lincolnshire man, the most active and undaunted warrior of his day, Hereward fortified himself in an entrenched camp on the Isle of Ely, in the heart of the Fens, and defied the king to reduce him. For more than a year he held his own, and beat off every attack, though William brought up thousands of men and built vast causeways across the marshes in order to approach Hereward's camp of refuge. [Sidenote: =End of Eadwine and Morcar.--Hereward pardoned.=] It was at this moment, when the Isle of Ely was the only spot in England that was not in William's hands, that the foolish and selfish earls Eadwine and Morcar thought proper to rebel and take arms against the Normans. They had long lost all influence, even among their own followers, and were crushed with ease. Eadwine fell in a skirmish; Morcar escaped almost alone to Hereward's camp. Soon afterwards that stronghold fell, betrayed to William by the monks of Ely (1071). Hereward escaped, but most of his followers were captured. The king blinded or mutilated many of them, and put Morcar in close prison for the rest of his life. But he offered pardon to Hereward, as he had to Waltheof, for he loved an open foe. The "Last of the English" accepted his terms, was given some estates in Warwickshire, and is found serving with William's army in France a year later. The English never rose again; their spirit was crushed; ruined by their own disunion and by the selfishness of their leaders, they felt unable to cope any longer with the stern King William. Any trouble that he met in his later years was not due to native rebellions, but to the turbulence and disloyalty of his own Norman followers. Those of the English who could not bear the yoke patiently, fled to foreign lands, many to the court of Scotland, where Queen Margaret, the sister of the Etheling Eadgar, made them welcome; some even as far as Constantinople, to enlist in the "Varangian guard" of the Eastern emperor. [Sidenote: =The monarchy feudalized.--Villeinage.=]