It is, however, large enough to strengthen and throw light upon the statements of the chronicles, that the descendants of the Danes and Norwegians in the country to the north-east of Watlinga-Stræt, especially distinguished themselves by a lively feeling of freedom and independence. From the time of their very first settlement, they desperately resisted every chief who attempted to deprive them of their rights as free and independent men. It was, indeed, but reasonable that they should, with persevering boldness, defend in a foreign land that freedom for the sake of which they had abandoned their Scandinavian homes. Their severest and most perilous struggle for liberty naturally took place after the destruction of the Danish power under Hardicanute (1042): although the extensive Danish tract north of the Humber still retained its Danish jarl, Siward. But on Siward’s death (1055), his son, Valthjof (Waltheof), was too young to govern that important district, which was therefore made over to Toste Godvinsön, who afterwards fell at Stamford Bridge. Toste ruled with despotic power, set aside the laws of Canute the Great, and levied taxes which were contrary to the people’s ancient rights. The Northumbrians therefore deposed him at a _Thing_, and expelled him in 1064. When Toste’s brother, Harald, afterwards endeavoured to effect a reconciliation, on the condition that Toste should be reinstated in the earldom, the Northumbrians unanimously rejected the proposal. “We were born and bred up in freedom,” they exclaimed; “a proud and ambitious chief we will not endure, for we have learnt from our fathers either to live like freemen or to die.” When, two years afterwards, William began to conquer England, and to parcel it out among his warriors, it was chiefly the inhabitants of the old Danish districts who opposed him with all the energy of despair. The successors of the Danes and Norwegians, under ordinary circumstances, would have joined their kinsmen the Normans; especially as they gave out that one of their objects in coming to England was to avenge their Danish and Norwegian relatives, secretly massacred by Ethelred. But the Normans aimed at nothing less than the abolition of the free tenure of estates, and the complete establishment of a feudal constitution; a mode of proceeding which, by depriving the previously independent man of his right to house and land, and transferring it to powerful nobles, shook the very foundation of freedom. The descendants of the Danes turned from them, therefore, with disgust, and now no longer hesitated to enter into an alliance with the equally oppressed Anglo-Saxons; for the common danger made both races forget their ancient animosities. Many of the Anglo-Saxon chiefs and warriors who had been defeated by William in the west and south-west of England, fled towards the north, and prepared, in conjunction with the inhabitants of that district, to venture everything in self-defence.