The news of these movements brought William back to England in
December. He kept the Midwinter feast and assembly at Westminster;
there the absent Eustace was, by a characteristic stroke of policy,
arraigned as a traitor. He was a foreign prince against whom the
Duke of the Normans might have led a Norman army. But he had also
become an English landowner, and in that character he was
accountable to the King and Witan of England. He suffered the
traitor's punishment of confiscation of lands. Afterwards he
contrived to win back William's favour, and he left great English
possessions to his second wife and his son. Another stroke of
policy was to send an embassy to Denmark, to ward off the hostile
purposes of Swegen, and to choose as ambassador an English prelate
who had been in high favour with both Edward and Harold,
AEthelsige, Abbot of Ramsey. It came perhaps of his mission that
Swegen practically did nothing for two years. The envoy's own life
was a chequered one. He lost William's favour, and sought shelter
in Denmark. He again regained William's favour--perhaps by some
service at the Danish court--and died in possession of his abbey.

It is instructive to see how in this same assembly William bestowed
several great offices. The earldom of Northumberland was vacant by
the slaughter of two earls, the bishopric of Dorchester by the
peaceful death of its bishop. William had no real authority in any
part of Northumberland, or in more than a small part of the diocese
of Dorchester. But he dealt with both earldom and bishopric as in
his own power. It was now that he granted Northumberland to
Gospatric. The appointment to the bishopric was the beginning of a
new system. Englishmen were now to give way step by step to
strangers in the highest offices and greatest estates of the land.