3. =The Completion of the Conquest. 1070.=--William was never cruel without an object, but there was no cruelty which he would not commit if it would serve his purpose. He resolved to make all further resistance impossible. The Vale of York, a long and wide stretch of fertile ground running northwards from the city to the Tees, was laid waste by William's orders. The men who had joined in the revolt were slain. The stored-up crops, the ploughs, the carts, the oxen and sheep were destroyed by fire. Men, women, and children dropped dead of starvation, and their corpses lay unburied in the wasted fields. Some prolonged life by feeding on the flesh of horses, or even of men. Others sold themselves into slavery, bowing their heads, as was said, in the evil days for meat. "Waste! waste! waste!" was the account given long afterwards of field after field in what had once been one of the most fertile districts in England. William's work of conquest was almost over. Early in =1070= he crossed the hills amidst frost and snow, and descended upon Chester. Chester submitted, and with it the shires on the Welsh border. The whole of England was at last subdued. 4. =Hereward's Revolt and the Homage of Malcolm. 1070--1072.=--Only one serious attempt to revolt was afterwards made, but this was no more than a local rising. The Isle of Ely was in those days a real island in the midst of the waters of the fens. Hereward, with a band of followers, threw himself into the island, and it was only after a year's attack that he was driven out. When the revolt was at its height, Eadwine and Morkere fled from William's court to join the insurgents. Eadwine was murdered by his own attendants. Morkere reached Ely, and when resistance was at an end was banished to Normandy. No man ever deserved less pity than these two brothers. They had never sought any one's advantage but their own, and they had been faithless to every cause which they had pretended to adopt. Before Hereward was overpowered, Malcolm, king of the Scots, ravaged northern England, carrying off with him droves of English slaves. In =1072= William, who had by that time subdued Hereward, marched into Scotland as far as the Tay. Malcolm submitted to him at Abernethy, and acknowledged him to be his lord. Malcolm's acknowledgment was only a repetition of the acknowledgment made by his predecessors the Scottish kings, to Eadward and Cnut (see pp. 63, 84); but William was more powerful than Eadward or Cnut had been, and was likely to construe the obligation more strictly. 5. =How William kept down the English.=--William, having conquered England, had now to govern it. His first object was to keep the English in subjection.