1. Try to remember how the Norman Conqest took place and what were its principal results for England and its people

2. Read the following extracts and make reports about the reign of King William I, his sons and his grandson Stephen

1)William I (1066- 87)

Pre-reading task: Why did William of Normandy claim the English crown?

The year IO66 saw two coronations in England. Early in January, in the splendid setting of the newly built and consecrated Abbey at Westminster, the last of the Anglo-Saxon kings, Harold Godwine, was crowned. But within 12 months he was dead, and a foreigner ruled his kingdom; for in 1066, the most famous date in English history, William the Conqueror invaded to claim the throne and the monarchy of England passed to the Normans.

The invasion from across the Channel by William, the Duke of Normandy, had been expected throughout King Harold's brief reign. Though Harold was the rightful ruler - elected, according to Anglo-Saxon custom, by the council of elders called the Witenagemot and anointed before God - Duke William claimed that he himself had been promised the throne by the late king, his cousin Edward the Confessor; and this claim the warlike William was determined to enforce.

Throughout the spring and summer of 1066 William prepared his invasion. The masterpiece of contemporary needlework known as the Bayeux Tapestry, recording in exquisite detail the events of the Conquest, shows boats being built and mail-coated soldiers mustering, while overhead Halley's Comet appears, as it did about Easter of that year, as a portent for the English. By the end of August the invasion was ready, and only the lack of a favourable wind prevented Duke William from embarking. The apparent setback of the weather played a crucial part in the Norman Con­quest of England. While William was delayed in Normandy, King Harold's army fought a great battle at Stamford Bridge near York, against a yet more threatening claimant to the English throne, the powerful Harald Hardrada, King of Norway. Though King Harold of England won a resounding victory and the Viking invader was killed, it was a depleted and battle-weary English army which finally faced the Normans under Duke William, on 14 October, near Hastings. By nightfall the luckless Harold lay dead, not with an arrow in the eye but felled by a sword, and, in the words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the French had possession of the place of slaughter.

The second coronation of 1066 took place on Christmas Day, when the Norman Con­queror became King William I of England. He was then about 38 years old, an imposing figure, six feet tall and heavily built. Born out of wedlock, the son of Duke Robert I and a tanner's daughter named Herleva, or Arlette, he had grown up with the nickname of William the Bastard. But despite his illegitimacy, in 1035 he had succeeded to his father's rich and powerful little duchy, while still a child; and in the dangerous years that followed he learned the skills of war and strong government. As King of England he was to rule with ruthless efficiency, taxing his conquered subjects heavily, enforcing law and order, and, in the process, re-shaping Anglo-Saxon society along the lines of feudal Normandy. The great stone keep of the Tower of London, begun by William in 1O78, was an impressive symbol of the power of the Norman conquerors.

In the early years of William I's reign there were scattered risings against the Norman occupation. The most serious came in 1069, when a Danish invasion party sailed up the Humber and joined forces with local inhabitants and English leaders, seizing the city of York. William's response provided a brutal warning to other rebels: he laid waste the north, killing and burning without mercy. Almost the last pocket of English resistance disappeared in 1071, when the Saxon folk-hero Hereward the Wake, who had held out in the Fen country after briefly taking Peterborough, eluded the Normans and passed into history. William confiscated the estates of rebel earls and thanes and gave them out as rewards to his Norman followers, thus strengthening his hold on England. The native ruling class almost vanished from the wooden halls, to be replaced by the new foreign overlords, who built themselves stout castles, first of wood, later of stone; by I085 only two English landowners of any importance were left.

Under the feudal system, each man had a lord directly above him to whom he owed service in return for tenure of land. At the top of the social hierarchy, the king was overlord of all. The Norman barons whom William rewarded with estates enjoyed their lands as tenants of the king; in return, they were bound to provide him with a yearly quota of knights for his military service. Many of these knights found themselves fighting on the Continent in Normandy's wars, which English taxes helped to finance. Even after he became King of England, William I remained entirely Norman, and he spent much of his time out of the kingdom in France, governing his duchy and conducting its constant wars in person.

The changes which came about in England after the Conquest arose William's need to enforce law and order, rather than as a matter of policy. Conqueror was conservative by temperament, and where possible the existing Anglo-Saxon law and institutions were left intact or adapted. Though the former English ruling class disappeared and the native culture was submerged beneath the speech and customs, manners and fashions, art and architecture of the Norman masters, this forcible exposure to Continental influence was eventually to revitalise the society of England, just as the French language enriched the tongue.

The Norman genius for efficient administration was well displayed in the making of the national survey known as the 'Doomsday Book', which William I commissioned in 1085, shortly before his death. To gain precise records of all his subjects' possessions for taxation purposes, King William sent royal commissioners into every part of England, compiling information, until there was 'not an ox, cow or swine that was not set down in the writ'. Though some contemporary chroniclers thought it an example of the king's greed and 'shameful to tell’, the Doomsday Book was a remarkable achievement, and bears lasting witness to the Conqueror's strength of purpose.

Calculating, even brutal, as William I could be,. in private he showed a more sympathetic side to his character. He was almost illiterate, yet he valued learning, and his dearest friend was the great Italian scholar Lanfranc, whom he made his Archbishop of Canterbury in IO70 and who undertook a major reorganisation of the English Church with William's approval. To his wife, Queen Matilda, William I showed a devotion and faithfulness unusual for the time; perhaps in reaction to the circumstances of his own illegitimate birth, he was a highly moral man.

Three of William's four sons - Robert, William and Henry - were to outlive him. In his will, in accordance with Norman custom, the Conqueror left his patrimony, the Duchy of Normandy, to Robert, the eldest son, and the newer possession of England to William. To Henry, the youngest, he left a fortune in silver. Like many great men of history, William the Conqueror had troublesome sons; and although William, his favourite, was at his bedside when he died, Robert had taken up arms against him and was at the court of his enemy, the King of France.

In the summer of I087, while campaigning in France, William I was fatally injured by his horse rearing under him, and on 9 September he died. It was fitting that a King of England who spoke only French, and who was to be described by the English for nine centuries as 'the Conqueror', should have been buried in his native land, at Caen.

(from “Kings and Queens of Great Britain” by Josephine Ross, L. 1982)

Edward the Confessor died on 5 January 1066. The Battle of Hastings took place later that same year, on 14 October. But what happened in that ten-month gap before the Norman Conquest, the last successful invasion of diese islands?

The first point to make is that the Normans weren't French in the way that the term is understood today. Their origins were in Scandinavia. Under a vigorous warrior king, called Rollo, the Vikings had settled in Northern France a century and a half before William the Conqueror was born. During the years before the invasion, Normandy, as Churchill describes, had become a land of ambitious, well-ordered, often uncompromising, peoples.

C+A class of knights and nobles arose who held their lands in return for military service, and sublet to inferior tenants upon the same basis. The Normans, with their craving for legality and logic, framed a general scheme for society, from which there soon emerged an excellent army. Order was strenuously enforced. No one but the Duke might build castles or fortify himself. . . . The Dukes of Normandy created relations with the Church which became a model for mediaeval Europe. Now it may have been a structured society, but it wasn't as far advanced in statehood as England was at that time. Leaders in England were beginning to take quite seriously the business of government by bureaucracy rather than by battle axe.

C+The King lived largely upon his private estates and governed as best he could through his household. The remaining powers of the monarchy were in practice severely restricted by a little group of Anglo-Danish notables. The main basis for support of the English kings had always been this select Council, never more than sixty, who in a vague manner regarded themselves as the representatives of the whole country. But at this time this assembly of ‘wise men' in no way embodied the life of the nation. It tended to fall into the hands of the great families. Feuds and disturbances were rife. The people, too, were hampered not only by the many conflicting petty authorities, but by the deep division of custom between the Saxon and the Danish districts. The England of 1066 wasn’t some peaceful pastoral canvas about to be slashed by a Norman vandal. Nor was it a state able to defend itself against a carefully planned invasion. There was no English fleet other than a few ships which the King could requisition. Also, gathering enough soldiers to reinforce his professional fighters was a complicated task. In general terms, a thegn held his land in return for military service. Peasants also had obligations, but it was often difficult to decide how far obligation went. And unlike the system across the Channel, England didn't have a complex of castles as defensive points in any county or region. The omens were not good for Harold, especially as he faced enemies on two fronts: his half-brother Tostig, who hated him, and William of Normandy who believed the English crown belonged to him.

C+ The successors of Canute in Norway determined to revive their traditions of English sovereignty. Tostig arrived with full accounts of the crisis in the Island and of the weak state of its defences. King Harold Hardrada [the last of the great Viking hero kings] set forth to conquer the English crown. With Tostig he wended towards the north-east coast of England with a large fleet and army in the late summer of 1066. Harold of England heard that a Norwegian fleet had sailed up the Humber, beaten the local levies under Earls Edwin and Morcar, and encamped near York at Stamford Bridge. The news reached him in London. At the head of his Danish household troops he hastened northwards up the Roman road to York, calling out the local levies as he went. His rapidity of movement took the Northern invaders completely by surprise. Within five days of the defeat of Edwin and Morcar, Harold reached York, and the same day marched to confront the Norwegian army ten miles from the city.

Hardrada was determined that the throne of England was rightfully his. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records:

*Earl Edwin and Earl Morcar had gathered as great a force as they could; but a great number of the English were either slain or drowned or driven in flight, and the Norwegians had possession of the place of slaughter. After the battle King Harold of Norway and Earl Tostig entered York and received hostages from the borough and provisions. Then meanwhile came Harold the King of the English on the Sunday to Tadcaster and there drew up his household troops in battle order and on Monday marched through York. Harold King of Norway and Earl Tostig and their force had had gone beyond York to Stamford Bridge. Then Harold, King of the English, came upon them unawares beyond the bridge. And that day no side gave quarter. There were slain Harold the Fairhead [Hardrada], the King of the Norwegians and Earl Tostig and the remaining Norwegians were put to flight until some of them reached their ships, some were drowned, others burned to death and thus perished in various ways so many that there were few to survive. And the English had possession of the place of slaughter.

There were two battles, not one. In the first one, which the Chronicle states took place on the vigil of St Matthew - 20 September - Edwin and Morcar were defeated. In other words, when Harold King of the English arrived he was fighting a much reduced, weakened invader. And so he was in a good position to win, and he did. But Edwin and Morcar were so heavily beaten in the first battle, they were in no position to raise fresh forces and march with Harold to the Battle of Hastings.

Consequently Harold, the last King of the Old English, had now to march south with insufficient troops to repel the armies of William of Normandy. William, Duke of Normandy, had landed on a Sussex beach on the morning of Thursday 28 September, 1066. He had come to claim the throne of England for himself.

It is easy to see why William believed he had a right to the English throne. Emma of Normandy who had been married to King Cnut, and also to Aethelred the Unready by whom she had the son who became Edward the Confessor, was also the sister of Robert Duke of Normandy, William's father. In addition, Harold was not of the royal line, and he had agreed that when Edward died, he would support William's claim to the throne. It is this last part of the royal detective yarn, that is depicted in the famous Bayeux Tapestry.

C+… this story is told with irresistible charm in the tapestry chronicle designed by English artists under the guidance of his [William's] half-brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. It is of course the Norman version, and was for generations proclaimed by their historians as a full justification - and already even in those days aggressors needed justifications - of William's invasion of England. It is probable however that Harold swore a solemn oath to William to renounce all rights or designs upon the English crown, and it is likely that if he had not done so he might never have seen either crown or England again. Nevertheless it cannot be said that the bargain between the two men was unreasonable, and Harold probably at the time saw good prospects in it for himself.

But William was not secure as Duke of Normandy until he was twenty, in 1047. He was the bastard son of Duke Robert of Normandy and Arlette, a tanner’s daughter, and his father died when he was seven. William had to fight for his inheritance and the experience hardened him.

It was also during this period, on the Continent, but not in Britain, that warfare began to change. The chain-mailed knight appeared and more thought was given to fortifications, to cavalry tactics (instead of simply using horses for transportation) and disciplined armies, which in some cases had not been seen since Roman times. William of Normandy emerged as a proper general, not just a general by right. He brought together disparate soldiery, including peasants and mercenaries, and welded them into formidable fighting units.

C+ In no part of the feudal world was the fighting quality of the new organization carried to a higher pitch than among the Normans. William, like his father, was in close touch with the Saxon Court, and had watched every move on the part of the supporters of the Anglo-Danish party, headed by Godwin and his son Harold.

Fate played startlingly into the hands of the Norman Duke. On some visit or inspection, probably in 1064, Harold was driven by the winds onto the French coast. A friendship sprang up between William and Harold. Politics apart, they liked each other well. But the Duke looked forward to his future succession to the English crown. Here indeed was the prize to be won.

And so to the Battle of Hastings. The story is well known, but here are some extracts from Churchill.

C+ Harold and his house-earls [the King's personal guild of fighting men], sadly depleted by the slaughter of Stamford Bridge [marched] night and day to London. They covered the 200 miles in seven days. In London, the King gathered all the forces he could, and marched out towards Pevensey and, in the evening of October 13, took up his position up on the slope of a hill which barred the direct march upon the capital.And so, me night came. The fires were lit. On Senlac Hill in Sussex, Harold II of England waited for the reinforcements which he so desperately needed, but which he must have known would arrive too late, if at all. Eight miles away, the Normans made ready.

C+The cavalry charges of William's mail-clad knights, cumbersome in manoeuvre, beat in vain upon the dense, ordered masses of ihe English. William's left wing of cavalry was thrown into disorder, and retreated rapidly down the hill. On this the troops on Harold's right broke their ranks in eager pursuit. William, in the centre, turned his disciplined squadrons upon them and cut them to pieces. The Normans then re­formed their ranks and began a second series of charges upon the English masses, subjecting them in the intervals to severe archery. Never, it was said, had the Norman knights met foot-soldiers of this stubbornness. They were utterly unable to break through the shield walls and they suffered serious losses from the deft blows of the axe-men. But the arrow showers took a cruel toll. So closely, it was said, were the English wedged that the wounded could not be removed, and the dead scarcely found room in which to sink upon the ground.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle concludes the story of the Battle of Hastings.

*The King fought most resolutely with those men who wished to stand by him and there was great slaughter on both sides. King Harold was slain, and Leofwine, his brother, and Earl Gurth, his brother, and many good men. The French had possession of the place of slaughter, as God granted them because of the nation's sins.

Edward the Confessor's death-bed prophecy had come true. Harold was dead, according to the tapestry, from an arrow through the eye. William, who had three horses killed under him, survived and camped upon the battlefield.

It is said that the Battle of Hastings decided the fate of the English nation. And that's probably true. But on the night of 14 October 1066, when a purple robe was wrapped about King Harold's naked body, and William of Normandy began to count the cost of that day's slaughter, no one knew that for sure.

C+ William was a prime exponent of the doctrine of mass terrorism through the spectacle of bloody and merciless examples. Now, with a compact force of Normans, French, and Bretons, he advanced through Kent upon the capital. The people of Romney had killed a band of Norman knights. Vengeance fell upon them. The news spread through the country, and the folk flocked 'like flies settling on a wound' to make their submission, and avoid a similar fate. When William arrived near London he marched round the city isolating it by a belt of cruel desolation. From Southwark he moved to Wallingford, and thence through the Chilterns to Berkhamsted, where the leading Saxon notables and clergy came meekly to his tent to offer him the Crown.

The English still believed they could hold London and raise another army. But they needed a leader. They chose Edgar the Aethling. He managed to beat off William, probably at London Bridge, and stopped him entering the town. This is why he went onward as Churchill records. (Incidentally, one of those who went to Wallingford to pledge his support was Archbishop Stigand - Stigand the great survivor.) But by now the English were fast waking from their dreams of saving themselves. And so the Earls Morcar and Edwin who had fought for Harold, the Bishop Aeldred who had called for Edgar the Aethling to lead the uprising and Edgar himself, gave in. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle notes that it was a shame they had not done so earlier.

*They submitted from force of circumstance, but only when the plundering and pillaging was complete. It was great folly that they had not done so sooner. They gave him hostages and swore oaths of fealty, and he promised to be a gracious lord to them. But still his army harried everywhere they came. Then on Christmas Day Archbishop Aeldred consecrated him King in Westminster and William gave a pledge on the gospels that he would govern this nation according to the best practice of his predecessors if they would be loyal to him.

A procedural complication arose with nearly catastrophic consequences and not a little black humour. William was there not because he was indisputably next in line for the throne He was a conqueror. The people at the coronation had to show that they freely accepted him as King. But not all spoke English and not all spoke French. So the question was put to them in two languages. The commotion of their responses echoed about the building. Outside, William's guards could only hear roaring and shouting. They thought the crowd inside must have turned upon William. So they panicked and set fire to the surrounding buildings. But when all had calmed, and presumably the fires nad been put out, the ceremony continued and the Crown of England was William's.

The physical legacy of the period is seen in castles and churches, but especially castles One of the first was by the Thames, which was some indication of the importance of London and the fear that towns could be the centre of an uprising. Soon William replaced the castle with his lasting visible monument: the Tower. The castle of London and the taxes William imposed marked the start of his steady conquest of diese islands.

But conquest does not necessarily mean control. It's true that six months after the Battle of Hastings, William felt confident enough to return to Normandy. But it was three years before Chester fell. And he had to make sure he wasn't going to be overthrown while he was away. So, he made Bishop Odo, his half-brother, Earl of Kent, installed him in Dover Castle and left him in charge along with William fitz Osbern who was his most trusted steward. Then, having decided to go, he took to Normandy the very people who might lead an uprising once his back was turned.