But again dark days fell upon the North. To say nothing of Scottish encroachments upon the Bishopric, which were sustained in the eleventh century, the worst blow fell when the Norman Conquest took place. In no part of England was a more determined patriotism opposed to William than in Durham. Submission was nominal, and desperate efforts were made to keep Northumbria as a separate kingdom by placing Edgar Atheling upon an English throne in York. When the Conqueror made a Norman called Cumin his Viceroy in these parts, the men of Durham rose and murdered him within their city. It was an act that William never forgave and never forgot. He wrought such a deed of vengeance that the whole of the smiling district from York to Durham was turned into a wilderness. When he came to die he is represented to have said of this ruthless episode: "I fell on the English of the Northern counties like a ravening lion. I commanded their houses and corn, with all their tools and furniture, to be burnt without distinction, and large herds of cattle and beasts of burden to be butchered wherever they were found. It was thus I took revenge on multitudes of both sexes, by subjecting them to the calamity of a cruel famine; and by so doing, alas! became the barbarous murderer of many thousands, both young and old, of that fine race of people." William placed foreigners in most positions of importance. To the See of Durham he appointed Walcher from Lorraine, and the new prelate came from his consecration at Winchester, escorted across the belt of depopulated, ravaged land, until he reached Durham. North of the Wear the Patrimony of St. Cuthbert was as yet largely untouched, but the men of Durham had no love for the foreigner, and no wish to regard him as their lord. Fortunately for him the Earl of Northumbria stood his friend, and built for him in 1072 the Norman castle overlooking [Illustration: Portrait and Signature] the Wear, which was destined to be the Bishop’s fortress for seven and a half centuries. Within that castle Walcher was safe, and, helped by the Earl, he ruled his recalcitrant flock, not always wisely, but with all his power, until an insurrection which he strove to quell cost him his life. He died, however, not as mere Bishop of Durham, but as Earl of Northumbria as well, for when Waltheof the Earl died, William appointed Walcher in his place. Thus in the hands of the first Bishop after the Conquest was held the double authority of Bishop and of Earl. Whatever may have been the powers of the prelate in the Bishopric until this time, it is certain that from this point he claims a double authority within the Patrimony of St. Cuthbert. As for Walcher, stern example was made of what resistance to the Bishop’s lawful authority would mean, when William laid waste the land that had escaped ten years before, and extended his ravages north of the Wear and towards the Tyne.