The rebellion in which he was concerned, and which proved fatal to this ambitious and intriguing prelate, is matter of local history. He was a formidable partisan, a man formed to be the leader of a conspiracy; he had many friends among the most powerful of the barons; and when Duke Robert promised to come over with an army to wrest the sceptre from his brother Rufus, Odo engaged to do the rest. At the Easter festival, Rufus kept his court at Winchester, and there he invited all the great lords to attend him[109]. Odo and his friends were also there, and took that opportunity of arranging his plans. From the festival he departed to raise the standard of Robert in his old earldom of Kent; while Hugh de Grantmesnil, Roger Bigod, Robert de Mowbray, Roger de Montgomery, William Bishop of Durham, and Geoffrey of Coutance, repaired to do the same in their respective fiefs and governments. Thus a sudden and dangerous rising took place in many parts of England. But the insurgents lost time; while the army from Normandy, which Odo was instructed to provide for, was slow in making its appearance[110]. Rufus, in the mean time, on hearing that warlike preparations were going forward in the very heart of his kingdom, permitted his subjects to fit out cruisers, which rendered him very important services; for the Normans calculated that there was no royal navy to oppose them, and that they would be received on landing by their confederates. The followers of Odo and his party began to cross the Channel in small companies, and so many were intercepted and destroyed by the English cruisers, that the attempted invasion was abandoned. The bishop, however, had fortified the castles of Rochester and Pevensey, and, fearful that no assistance might reach him from Normandy, prepared to stand a siege. Rufus now issued the proclamation already quoted--namely, “Let every man who is not a nithing[111] (cipher) in the martial catalogue of his country, quit home and hearth, and hasten to join the standard of his sovereign!” To this appeal thirty thousand men responded,--men of the old Saxon blood, whom the conciliatory measures recently adopted by Rufus had brought over to his cause. With this powerful army he marched against the bishop, who having delegated the command of Rochester Castle to Eustace, Earl of Boulogne, lay in the strong fortress of Pevensey, in expectation that Duke Robert and his Normans might still make good their landing on that part of the coast. After a siege of seven weeks, Odo was obliged to surrender; and on taking an oath that he would place Rochester Castle in the king’s hands, Rufus pardoned this act of rebellion, and dismissed him, with an escort of Norman horse, to Rochester, there to fulfil his engagement[112]. By a preconcerted plan, however, between Eustace and himself, means were taken to evade the performance of his oath; for while reciting the set form of words by which he demanded the surrender