After a long delay before the flooded waters of the Aire he entered York and ravaged the whole country as far as the Tees.

Town and village were harried and burned, their inhabitants were slain or driven over the Scottish border.

The coast was especially wasted that no hold might remain for future landings of the Danes.

Crops, cattle, the very implements of husbandry were so mercilessly destroyed that a famine which followed is said to have swept off more than a hundred thousand victims.
Half a century later indeed the land still lay bare of culture and deserted of men for sixty miles northward of York.

The work of vengeance once over, William led his army back from the Tees to York, and thence to Chester and the West.