Bishop Ethelwin, stirred by victory over a Norman earl and seven hundred men, decided that the time was right to fulfil the will of the English people, who had acclaimed the young Aetheling Edgar king in London on the death of Harold in 1066. After contacting the seventeen-year-old prince, he gathered an army and marched on York, strengthened by the imminent arrival of a promised three hundred Danish longships heading for the Humber estuary. The moment could hardly have been better. There was trouble on the Welsh border, where a rebellious thegn named Eadric had joined forces with the Welsh kings and the men of Chester. In the south-west, the men of Devon and Cornwall were in revolt. Also, across the Channel, William had lost Maine.
Edwy went to his brother’s lodgings and seized him by th
