Norman Conquest

• 1. Introduction

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  The Norman Conquest of England was an 11th-century invasion by thousands of Norman, French, Flemish, and Breton troops. Their commander was William, Duke of Normandy, later styled William the Conqueror. The historian Richard Southern argued that no European country changed so radically in so short a time as England did after 1066. That judgment is still contested by other historians. How could an army of that size overturn an entire kingdom? Why was the English king so far from his own southern coast when the invaders came ashore? And what happened to the English elite, their government and their language in the decades that followed?

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• 2. Rollo's Heirs

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  In 911, the Carolingian French ruler Charles the Simple allowed a band of Vikings under their leader Rollo to settle in Normandy. The arrangement was called the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte. In exchange for the land, Rollo's Norsemen had to guard the coast against further Viking raiders. The settlers became known as the Northmen, and that name gave us Normandy and the Normans. They gave up Norse paganism for Christianity and adopted Old French, mixing in features of Old Norse until it became the Norman language. They married local people and pushed the duchy westward, annexing the Bessin, the Cotentin Peninsula and Avranches.

  In 1002, the English king Æthelred the Unready married Emma of Normandy, the sister of Richard II, Duke of Normandy. Their son Edward the Confessor spent many years in exile in Normandy before taking the English throne in 1042. Once crowned, he leaned heavily on his former hosts. He brought in Norman courtiers, soldiers and clerics and gave them power, especially in the Church. Edward had no children, and he was locked in conflict with Godwin, Earl of Wessex, and Godwin's sons. He may therefore have encouraged the hopes of William of Normandy.

  Edward died at the beginning of 1066 with no clear heir, and several contenders stepped forward. The man who took the crown was Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex, the richest and most powerful of the English aristocrats. The Witenagemot of England elected him, and Ealdred, Archbishop of York, crowned him. Norman propaganda claimed instead that Stigand, the uncanonically elected Archbishop of Canterbury, performed the ceremony.

  Two neighbouring rulers challenged Harold at once. William said that Edward had promised him the throne and that Harold had sworn to accept this. King Harald III of Norway, known as Harald Hardrada, based his claim on a deal between his predecessor Magnus the Good and the earlier English king Harthacnut. Under that deal, whichever of them died without an heir would leave both England and Norway to the other. Both challengers began assembling troops and ships. Harold's own brother Tostig, however, was the first to move.

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• 3. Two Battles in the North

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  Tostig Godwinson raided southeastern England in early 1066 with a fleet he had recruited in Flanders, later joined by ships from Orkney. Harold's fleet threatened him, so he sailed north and raided East Anglia and Lincolnshire. The brothers Edwin, Earl of Mercia, and Morcar, Earl of Northumbria, drove him back to his ships. Most of his followers deserted him, and he withdrew to Scotland to recruit fresh forces over the summer.

  King Harold spent that summer on the south coast with a large army and fleet, waiting for William. Most of his men were militia who needed to bring in their crops. On the 8th of September, Harold dismissed them.

  Hardrada invaded northern England in early September with more than 300 ships carrying perhaps 15,000 men. Tostig threw his support and his forces behind the Norwegian king. On the 20th of September, the Norwegians defeated a northern English army under Edwin and Morcar at the Battle of Fulford. The two earls had rushed to fight before Harold could arrive from the south. Harold had married their sister Ealdgyth, but the earls may have distrusted him. They may also have feared that the king would replace Morcar with Tostig. Their forces were devastated and missed the rest of the 1066 campaigns, though both men survived.

  York surrendered to Hardrada, who took hostages from the leading men of the city. On the 24th of September, the Norwegians moved east to the village of Stamford Bridge. Harold probably learned of the invasion in mid-September and rushed north, gathering troops as he went. His forces probably needed nine days to travel from London to York, averaging almost 25 mi per day. They reached York at dawn on the 25th of September and learned where the Norwegians were. The English marched on them and took them by surprise.

  Harald of Norway and Tostig were both killed. The Norwegian losses were so horrific that only 24 of the original 300 ships were needed to carry the survivors away. The English victory was costly, though. Harold's army was battered and weakened, and it stood far from the English Channel. In just three days, William's ships would reach the Sussex shore.

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• 4. Crossing the Channel

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  William mustered his forces at Saint-Valery-sur-Somme and was ready to cross the Channel by about the 12th of August. He had gathered men from Normandy and from all over France, including large contingents from Brittany and Flanders. Nobody knows the exact numbers. A contemporary document claims that he had 726 ships, but that figure may be inflated. Writers of the time gave army sizes ranging from 14,000 to 150,000 men, which are highly exaggerated. Modern historians have offered estimates such as 7000-8000 men, 10,000-12,000 men, or 7500 men. The army mixed cavalry, infantry, and archers or crossbowmen. Cavalry and archers were about equal in number, and the foot soldiers matched the other two types combined. Later lists of William's companions are padded with extra names, and only about 35 individuals can reliably be placed with him at Hastings.

  The chronicler William of Poitiers says that Pope Alexander II consented to the invasion and sent a papal banner. He adds that other European rulers gave diplomatic support. Historians treat these claims with caution, because no other source reports papal backing beforehand. Alexander did approve the conquest after it succeeded.

  Adverse winds kept the ships in Normandy from early August until late September, even though the army and fleet were ready. Intelligence reports showing that Harold's forces were deployed along the coast probably added to the delay. William would have preferred to wait for an unopposed landing.

  The Normans crossed a few days after Harold's victory at Stamford Bridge, once his naval force had dispersed. They landed at Pevensey in Sussex on the 28th of September and raised a wooden castle at Hastings. From there they raided the surrounding area. That kept the army supplied. It also hurt Harold, whose family held much of the local land, and it made him more likely to attack in order to stop the raiding.

  Harold left much of his force in the north, including Edwin and Morcar, and marched the rest south. It is unclear when he learned of the landing, but probably it was on the road. He stopped in London for about a week. The trip to the capital probably took another week, averaging about 27 mi per day over nearly 200 mi. Harold tried to surprise the Normans, but William's scouts reported his arrival. William led his army out from the castle. Harold took up a defensive position at the top of Senlac Hill, in what is now Battle, East Sussex, about 6 mi from Hastings. How many men stood with him is a question the sources cannot settle.

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• 5. Senlac Hill

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  Two Norman sources put Harold's army at 1.2 million or 400,000 men, figures that contemporary sources cannot reliably support. Recent historians have suggested between 5000 and 13,000, and most agree on 7000-8000. They were a mix of the fyrd, a militia mainly of foot soldiers, and the housecarls, a nobleman's personal troops who also usually fought on foot. The housecarls wore better armour. There were few archers. The most important named Englishmen were Harold's brothers Gyrth and Leofwine, and about 18 others can reasonably be assumed to have fought, including two more relatives.

  The battle began at about 9 am on the 14th of October 1066 and lasted all day. The numbers on each side were probably about equal. William had cavalry, infantry and many archers, while Harold had only foot soldiers and few archers. The English formed a shield wall along the ridge, and at first it worked so well that William's army was thrown back with heavy casualties. Some Breton troops panicked and fled, and some English soldiers chased after them. Norman cavalry then turned on the pursuers and killed them. As the Bretons ran, rumours swept the Norman ranks that William had been killed. He rallied his troops. Twice more the Normans feigned withdrawals, tempting the English to pursue so the cavalry could strike again and again.

  The sources are more confused about the afternoon. The decisive event appears to have been the death of Harold, and the stories differ. William of Jumieges claims that William killed Harold himself. The Bayeux Tapestry has been claimed to show Harold struck by an arrow in the eye. That scene may be a later reworking, made to match 12th-century stories of an arrow wound to the head. Other sources say nobody knew how he died, because the fighting around the king was so tight that no one saw who struck the blow. William of Poitiers gives no details at all.

  The day after the battle, Harold's body was identified, either by his armour or by marks on his body. The English dead included some of Harold's brothers and his housecarls. They were left on the field, although relatives removed some later. Harold's mother Gytha offered William the weight of her son's body in gold for its custody, and he refused. William ordered the body thrown into the sea, but whether that happened is unclear. Another story has Harold buried at the top of a cliff. Waltham Abbey, which Harold had founded, later claimed to have buried him secretly. Later legends said he never died at Hastings at all, but escaped and became a hermit at Chester.

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• 6. Crown and Rebellion

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  William expected the surviving English leaders to submit after Hastings. Instead, the Witenagemot proclaimed Edgar Ætheling king, with the support of Earls Edwin and Morcar, Stigand, and Ealdred. William marched around the coast of Kent toward London. He beat an English force that attacked him at Southwark but could not storm London Bridge. So he took a longer route up the Thames valley and crossed the river at Wallingford, Berkshire, where Stigand submitted to him. He then went north-east along the Chilterns and approached London from the north-west, fighting further engagements against forces from the city. Edgar's leading supporters lost their nerve and surrendered at Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire.

  Ealdred crowned William in Westminster Abbey on the 25th of December 1066. The new king tried to win over the remaining English nobles by confirming Morcar, Edwin, and Waltheof, Earl of Northumbria, in their lands. He also gave some land to Edgar. In March 1067, William returned to Normandy with English prisoners, including Stigand, Morcar, Edwin, Edgar and Waltheof.

  Resistance continued for several years. William left England in the hands of his half-brother Odo and a close supporter, William fitzOsbern. In 1067, rebels in Kent attacked Dover Castle with Eustace II of Boulogne and failed. Eadric the Wild, a Shropshire landowner, allied with the Welsh rulers of Gwynedd and Powys and raised a revolt in western Mercia. These events forced William back to England at the end of 1067. In 1068, he besieged rebels in Exeter, among them Harold's mother Gytha. After heavy losses, he negotiated the town's surrender. In May, his wife Matilda was crowned queen at Westminster.

  Early in 1069, the newly installed Norman Earl of Northumbria, Robert de Comines, was massacred at Durham along with several hundred soldiers. William hurried north, defeated the rebels outside York, and pursued them into the city. There he massacred the inhabitants. In August or September, a large fleet sent by Sweyn II of Denmark arrived and sparked fresh rebellions across the country. Danes and English together defeated the Norman garrison at York and took control of Northumbria. William bought off the Danes. Through the winter of 1069-70, his forces systematically devastated Northumbria in the Harrying of the North. He wore his crown ceremonially at York on Christmas Day 1069.

  At Easter 1070, papal legates re-crowned William, which symbolically reasserted his right to the kingdom. Stigand was deposed from Canterbury, and the legates imposed penances on William and the supporters who had fought at Hastings and afterward. Lanfranc, abbot of William's foundation at Caen, received Canterbury, and Thomas of Bayeux, one of William's chaplains, was installed at York.

  Sweyn II arrived in 1070 to command his fleet in person and sent troops into the Fens to join the rebels of Hereward the Wake on the Isle of Ely. He accepted a payment of danegeld from William and went home. The Fenland rebels stayed at large, protected by the marshes. In 1071, Edwin was betrayed and killed, while Morcar reached Ely. After some costly failures, the Normans built a pontoon to reach the island, defeated the rebels at the bridgehead and stormed it. That was the effective end of English resistance. Morcar was imprisoned for the rest of his life, and Hereward was pardoned and had his lands returned.

  In 1072, William marched north against King Malcolm III of Scotland. The Treaty of Abernethy followed, in which Malcolm expelled Edgar Ætheling and agreed to some degree of subordination. The treaty said only that Malcolm became William's man, so its exact meaning stayed ambiguous.

  Three years later came the Revolt of the Earls. Ralph de Gael, Earl of Norfolk, and Roger de Breteuil, Earl of Hereford, launched it at Ralph's wedding at Exning. Ralph was bottled up in Norwich Castle, which eventually surrendered, and he went into exile. A Danish fleet of 200 ships under Cnut, the brother of Sweyn II, arrived too late. Earl Waltheof, despite being one of William's favourites, had joined the plot, and he was executed in May 1076.

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• 7. Castles and Land

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  Around 8000 Norman landholders, counting those from other parts of France, ruled a country with a far larger native population. William claimed ultimate ownership of the land his armies controlled and asserted the right to dispose of it as he saw fit. From then on, all land was held directly from the king in feudal tenure, in return for military service. A Norman lord typically held scattered properties across England and Normandy, not a single block.

  To find land for his followers, William first confiscated the estates of the English lords who had died fighting beside Harold. The confiscations provoked revolts, and the revolts brought more confiscations. That cycle ran for five years after the Battle of Hastings. To hold down the country, the Normans built castles and fortifications in unprecedented numbers, at first mostly of the motte-and-bailey pattern. Historian Robert Liddiard adds: "to glance at the urban landscape of Norwich, Durham or Lincoln is to be forcibly reminded of the impact of the Norman invasion". William and his barons also took tighter control of inheritance by widows and daughters, often forcing marriages to Normans.

  The measure of William's success is that after 1072 he spent more than 75 per cent of his time in France. He and his successors were largely absentee rulers until the Capetian conquest of Normandy in 1204. Royal administrative structures let him govern England from a distance.

  The Domesday Book, completed by 1086, documents the scale of the transfer of land. It records that only about 5 per cent of the land south of the Tees remained in English hands. That small remainder shrank further in the following decades, most completely in the south. The survey was unique in medieval Europe. It was divided by shire, and it listed each tenant-in-chief's holdings and who had held the land before the conquest.

  The English were removed from high office as well. After 1075, all earldoms were held by Normans, and Englishmen were only occasionally appointed as sheriffs. In the Church, senior English office-holders were expelled or kept in place for life and replaced by foreigners when they died. After the death of Wulfstan in 1095, no bishopric was held by an Englishman.

  Many Anglo-Saxons fled to Scotland, Ireland, or Scandinavia. The largest exodus came in the 1070s, when a fleet of 235 ships sailed for the Byzantine Empire, which needed mercenaries. English soldiers became the predominant element in the Varangian Guard, which until then had been largely Scandinavian. Some migrants were settled on the Black Sea coast, where they founded towns called New London and New York.

  Before the Normans came, English government was more sophisticated than its counterpart in Normandy. The country was divided into shires run by sheriffs, and a justice system of local and regional tribunals secured the rights of free men. England had a permanent treasury at Winchester, a land tax called the geld, and coinage that only the crown could mint. Kings also issued writs, which were either instructions to officials or notices of royal actions. The Normans kept this framework and changed the personnel. By the end of William's reign, most officials of government and the royal household were Normans. Official documents switched from Old English to Latin. The new forest laws set aside large sections of England as royal forest.

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• 8. Language, Class and Memory

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  Anglo-Norman, a northern dialect of Old French with limited Nordic influences, became the language of England's rulers and displaced Old English in that role. French words entered English. Male names such as William, Robert, and Richard soon became common, while female names changed more slowly. Placenames were little affected, since they had already changed greatly after earlier Scandinavian invasions. Trade and basic communication probably made some Normans and English bilingual. William the Conqueror himself never developed a working knowledge of English, and for centuries the nobility understood it poorly.

  Marriages between Norman men and English women are attested before 1100, but they were uncommon. Most Normans married other Normans or continental families. Within a century, intermarriage had become common. By the early 1160s, Ailred of Rievaulx was writing that it was common at every level of society.

  The Domesday Book listed about 28,000 slaves in 1086, fewer than had been counted for 1066. In Essex, the number fell by 20 per cent in 20 years. Slavery had disappeared by the middle of the 12th century. The Church disapproved of it, and unlike serfs, slaves had to be maintained entirely by their owners. The practice was never outlawed, and the Leges Henrici Primi from the reign of Henry I still mention it as legal. Many free peasants appear to have lost status and become indistinguishable from serfs, though the invasion probably only accelerated a process already underway. Earlier historians argued that women lost rights after 1066, but current scholarship has mostly rejected this. Aristocratic women could own land both before and after the conquest.

  Debate over the conquest began almost immediately. At William's death, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle denounced him and the conquest in verse, while the obituary by William of Poitiers, a Frenchman, was full of praise. In the 17th century, the theory of the "Norman yoke" arose, claiming that Anglo-Saxon society had been freer and more equal than what followed. It owes more to its own period than to historical fact, yet it is still used in political and popular thought.

  Modern historians focus less on whether the conquest was right and more on its effects. Against the view of radical change, H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles believe the transformation was less sweeping. Singman called the conquest "the last echo of the national migrations that characterized the early Middle Ages". The answer depends on how change is measured. If Anglo-Saxon England was already moving toward feudalism and castles, the conquest was important but not a radical break. If one measures the loss of the English nobility and of Old English as a literary language, the change was dramatic. Nationalistic arguments have been made on both sides, casting the Normans either as persecutors of the English or as rescuers from a decadent Anglo-Saxon nobility.

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