{1070.} But the seeming clemency of William toward the English leaders, proceeded only from artifice, or from his esteem of individuals: his heart, was hardened against all compassion towards the people, and he scrupled no measure, however violent or severe, which seemed requisite to support his plan of tyrannical administration. Sensible of the restless disposition of the Northumbrians, he determined to incapacitate them even after from giving him disturbance; and he issued orders for laying entirely waste that fertile country, which, for the extent of sixty miles, lies between the Humber and the Tees.[*] The houses were reduced to ashes by the merciless Normans; the cattle seized and driven away; the instruments of husbandry destroyed; and the inhabitants compelled either to seek for a subsistence in the southern parts of Scotland, or if they lingered in England, from a reluctance to abandon their ancient habitations, they perished miserably in the woods from cold and hunger. The lives of a hundred thousand persons are computed to have been sacrificed to this stroke of barbarous policy,[**] which, by seeking a remedy for a temporary evil, thus inflicted a lasting wound on the power and populousness of the nation. But William, finding himself entirely master of a people who had given him such sensible proofs of their impotent rage and animosity, now resolved to proceed to extremities against all the natives of England; and to reduce them to a condition in which they should no longer be formidable to his government. The insurrections and conspiracies in so many parts of the kingdom had involved the bulk of the landed proprietors, more or less, in the guilt of treason; and the king took advantage of executing against them, with the utmost rigor, the laws of forfeiture and attainder. Their lives were, indeed, commonly spared; but their estates were confiscated, and either annexed to the royal demesnes, or conferred with the most profuse bounty, on the Normans and other foreigners.[***] While the king’s declared intention was to depress, or rather entirely extirpate, the English gentry,[****] [8] it is easy to believe that scarcely the form of justice would be observed in those violent proceedings;[*****] and that any suspicions served as the most undoubted proofs of guilt against a people thus devoted to destruction. [* Chron. Sax. p. 174. Ingulph. p. 79. W. Malms, p. 103. Hoveden, p. 451. Chron. Abb. St. Petri de Burgo, p. 47. M. Paris, p. 5. Sim. Dunelm. p. 199. Brompton, p. 966. Knyghton, p. 2344. Anglia Sacra, vol. i. p, 702.] [** Order. Vitalis, p. 515.] [*** W. Malms, p. 104.] [**** H. Hunting, p. 370.] [***** H See note H, at the end of the volume.]