Note 62 — PART II HISTORICAL STUDIES

Resuming the narrative, we learn that the thegns—the party of non-resistance from the first—must have seized this opportunity for impressing on their 'concives' the necessity of embracing the offer, whereupon the latter, in the words of the Chronicle, 'gave up the town because the thegns had betrayed them'. It is just possible that the word 'geswicon' may point to some direct treachery, but it seems best and most naturally explained as referring to their unpatriotic advice, which would naturally appear to English eyes a 'betrayal' of the national cause. There can be little doubt, from the admissions of William of Poitiers (through the mouth of Orderic), that the terms of agreement included not only a free pardon for all past offences, and for the city's aggravated resistance, but also security for person and property from plunder by the Norman soldiery. And the witness of 'the great record' implies that 'the Exeter patricians', as Mr Freeman styled them62 —'the civic aristocracy'63 —gained their original selfish aim, and secured an undertaking that they should not pay a penny more than their 'tributum ex consuetudine pristina'.