delayed by illness,¹⁹ and his subsequent march through Kent was accompanied by much plunder and devastation.
   Kent was one of the counties in which William’s confiscations were afterwards most sweeping.²⁰  His half-brother Odo, bishop of Bayeux, who had fought at Hastings with a mace, to avoid bloodshed and thus save his episcopal sanctity, was made Earl of Kent and keeper of Dover Castle,²¹ and received large estates in the county. On his departure to Normandy in 1067 William left Odo in charge of the south-eastern part of the kingdom.²² He was ’generally dreaded by the English people, issuing his orders everywhere like a second king,’²³  and his severity drove the men of Kent to a desperate rising. Their choice of an ally—Count Eustace of Boulogne, whose misconduct had led to such trouble before—gives some measure of their resentment against the new rulers. A joint attempt was made on Dover Castle, but it was repulsed, and Eustace abandoned the undertaking.²⁴ Before this the English had appealed to Swegen of Denmark for help,²⁵  and he sent a fleet in 1069, but his men were beaten off at Dover and Sandwich by the Norman garrisons, and moved away to the north.²⁶
   In 1070 Lanfranc was appointed archbishop of Canterbury, and on his complaint to the king that Odo had seized several lordships belonging to his see, the county was summoned to Penenden Heath to settle the dispute, when a judgment was given in favour of Lanfranc.²⁷  The great ambition of his half-brother roused William’s apprehensions; and when Odo aspired to the papacy and began in 1082 to prepare for an expedition to Italy, William arrested him with his own hands, meeting Odo’s protest with a declaration that he arrested not the bishop but the earl. Odo was kept a prisoner at Rouen till William reluctantly released him on his death-bed.²⁸  Odo then returned to England and his earldom was restored by William Rufus. But he was dissatisfied with his position and soon began to intrigue for the overthrow of William in favour of his brother Robert.²⁹
   The decisive events of the subsequent rebellion took place in Kent, where William’s most valuable supporter was Lanfranc. Early in the spring of 1088, Odo established himself at Rochester, and Eustace of Boulogne and Robert of Belesme came over to join him. After Easter the rebels began to waste all loyal estates, and William’s first steps were directed against Odo. On his way to Rochester he attacked Tonbridge Castle, which was held for Odo by Gilbert de Clare, and took it after a two days’ assault. Odo then withdrew from Rochester to Pevensey, where he was compelled to surrender, and was required to deliver up Rochester and to leave England. To carry out
   ¹⁹ Will, of Poitiers, bc. cit. Guy of Amiens in Monumenta Hist. Brii. 623.
   ²⁰ See the section on Domesday.
   ²¹ Orderic Vitalis, bk. iv, I. For the question of the palatine earldom of Kent see Stubbs, Const. Hist. (ed. 4), i, 294.
   ²² Orderic Vitalis, bc. cit.
   ²³ Ibid. iv. 7.
   ²⁴ Ibid. iv, 3. Will, of Poitiers, op. cit. 1269. Cf. an account of this attack by J. H. Round in Antiquary, xii, 49, 181.
   ²⁵ Orderic Vitalis, loc. cit.
   ²⁶ Ibid. iv, 5.
   ²⁷ Freeman, Norm. Conq. iv, 365.
   ²⁸ Orderic Vitalis, op. cit. vii, 8, 16.
   ²⁹ Orderic says that he came to England with the intention of overthrowing William. But see Freeman, William Rufus, i, 465-9.