1066-1087: The Conquest of England

The year 1066 marked a revolutionary watershed. It was to be more than a dynastic shift, albeit not immediately. Initially it was just another foreign kingship for the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy. This had changed within a few years into the effective dispossession of an elite which persisted in challenging the claims of the incomers. There would eventually be no more compromises between ethnic elites, Dane and Anglo-Saxon, but rather the imposition of a Norman elite and the introduction of a new feudal culture imported from the Continent. This took place through an exceptional ruthlessness in the exercise of centralised power based on superior military technology and administrative skills. William the Conqueror was just very good at what he did - the exercise of power.

The year started with the death of Edward the Confessor which triggered the expectations of William, Duke of Normandy. As far as the English Witengemot is concerned, his claim was of no consequence. Harold Godwinson was immediately chosen as Edward's successor. He was the natural national choice. He had the backing of his people or rather of the aristocracy that dictated terms to the people. That Autumn, the events unfolded that would cost Harold his throne. It started with the invasion of Northumbria in September by Harold's alienated brother Tostig, backed by a Norwegian army led by Harald Hardrada, King of Norway. King Harold defeated the invaders at the Battle of Stamford Bridge but, within days, William of Normandy had landed in Pevensey Bay on the English South Coast to enforce his claim to the throne.

Harold undertook a forced march south and met William near Hastings where his men lost the battle, partly from exhaustion and partly because of tactical errors on the field. Harold was killed and the Witengemot quickly chose Edgar Atheling, grandson of Edmund Ironside, to succeed him. William equally quickly moved around London and approached it from the North long before the Anglo-Saxons could raise a fresh army. Edgar Atheling and representatives of the Witengemot met William at Berkhamsted in October, accepted the reality of their situation in military terms (and, no doubt, fearful of the impending sack of London) and offered him the Crown. William was crowned King in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. The coup had succeeded within barely three months.

The White Tower begun in 1067 as it looks today

William was secure enough in his position by February to leave England for the rest of 1067 although he took care to commission the massive fortress (the White Tower) that would become the basis for the Tower of London complex that still dominates the eastern river side of the merchant City of London. He also commissioned Battle Abbey to commemorate his victory and to seal his side of a pact with the Church.

The only rebellion at this stage was in Kent led by Eustace II, Count of Boulogne. Eustace was not an Anglo-Saxon but a disgruntled leading ally of William, probably the provider of the ships that brought William over the year before and now dissatisfied with his share of the loot. He was able to mobilise the Kentish, with whom he no doubt had trading relationships, against the new regime. His rebellion failed. He forfeited his land grants. Some were later restored in what looks more like the settlement of a business dispute than anything recognisably political.

Up to this point, William had come to a modus vivendi with the local aristocracy but more serious rebellions started to break out in Mercia and Northumbria in 1069 leading to the notorious and genocidal 'harrying' of the North over the winter of 1069-1070. The Danish element in the rebellion was bought off but the Anglo-Saxons, now under Edgar Atheling, decided to fight on. William's response was to starve them out through a brutal scorched earth policy directed at the civilian population. The estimates of the deaths caused are disputed. Some historians believe that the numbers have been accidentally exaggerated but there is no doubt that William used famine tactics deliberately (part of the contemporary armory of warfare). Otherwise sympathetic chroniclers such as Orderic Vitalis considered it as a stain on his reputation. It is also noted as the only occasion when he used such brutal tactics, indicating a degree of desperation in dealing with a major threat to the basis of his power in England.

His relatively tolerant attitude changed in other respects as we will see in our account of his handling of the Church. We can summarise the tale we will tell there by saying that, in the wake of Anglo-Saxon revolt, William effectively cut a deal with Rome, purged the English Church of recalcitrant 'Anglicans' and started a massive programme of patronage in the form of cathedral building. The Conquest of England by the Normans became nothing more nor less than its co-reconquest by Rome from 1070 even if Pope Gregory VII started to push his luck by 1080. Roman interest in the fate of the English North seems to have been minimal even if the chroniclers were to shed their crocodile tears after the event. 1070 is thus a moment when we see a radical Europeanisation of England by means of the sword, enforced famine and terror and the deliberate purge of anyone able to speak for the people through the Church, the latter all with the knowing connivance of Rome.

There is one last significant English revolt - that of Hereward the Wake, presumed to be an Anglo-Saxon noble in the English Fens, based on Ely in 1071/2 which had linked up to another abortive invasion by the Danes who had sought to exploit Northern discontent. William secured his position quite quickly. He then did what every strong southern ruler eventually did: he mounted an attack on Scotland where he defeated Malcolm and achieved his main aim which was the expulsion of Edgar Atheling from the Scottish court and so from a base of operations within the British Isles.

From this point on, William is to have more problems with his own ambitious Norman aristocracy than with the defeated Anglo-Danes. His own son Robert of Normandy rebelled in 1079 in order to force his father to cede the Duchy to him before the latter's death. This family quarrel is patched up after a defeat for the son by his father in the field. This was also the period of the Domesday Book, the 'Great Survey' of the King's assets in England and Wales undertaken in 1085/6. We can take this as a sign that the King was a remarkably forward-thinking political businessman, perhaps giving us the point when we can say that entrepreneurial feudalism was being replaced by managerial feudalism.

The King died in Rouen in September 1087 following a horse-riding accident and was immediately succeeded by his third son William Rufus. In 21 years, the Normans had collectively tamed a very troublesome province of the informal Roman Christian system. They had centralised power to an extent never seen before around an administratively capable and ruthless leader, albeit reliant on an oligarchy of militarised nobility. The Anglo-Norman settlement, based on an imported feudalism, was to prove extremely resilient, sufficient to make England a power that invades rather than is invaded.

1035-1066: The Godwin Ascendency & The Last Years of an English Kingdom

1035 saw two events of significance for the future destiny of England - the death of King Cnut which saw the disintegration of his Empire, much as the deaths of Offa and Brian Borum had seen the disintegration of their achievements, and the accession to the Duchy of Normandy of William. In England, Harold of England, Cnut's illegitimate son by Aelgifu of Northampton, became Anglo-Dane Regent but the country split into its older North-South resentments as Mercia and Northumbria organised against Wessex. The following year, apparently seeking to exploit the situation, Ethelred's sons, Alfred and Edward, returned to England but Alfred was seized by Harold, savagely blinded and died at Ely. Edward understandably returned to the safety of Normandy which he seems to have considered more his natural home than England.

The Witenagemot, a council of the ruling elite, sought to resolve the situation in 1037 by making Harold King of England [Harold I] but Harold died three years later in 1040 to be succeeded by Harthacnut [Cnut II], another son of Cnut (by Emma). In 2014, Cnut II's tax collectors were murdered in Worcester and the Danes burned the local monastery to the ground suggesting tensions that ran deeper than mere squabbles between members of the aristocratic elite. Cnut II himself seems to have pragmatically seen Edward, known as 'The Confessor', as his natural successor so that there seems to have been an implicit policy that the Kingdom was best held together by an 'understanding' between the natural leader of the Danish interest and the natural heir to the English interest. What is clear from subsequent years is that the pious Edward was not holding onto power by the force of his personality. He was not a natural representative of the native English or Danish interest and consistently looked to the Continent for his values. He was legitimate, convenient and circumscribed. Cnut II died in 1042. Edward, 'the 'King's brother', son of Ethelred the Ill-Advised, was crowned in 1043 and married his powerful sponsor's [Earl Godwin] daughter, Edith in 1045.

Godwin made Edward King and expected him to continue to defer to the most powerful noble in the land. Godwin was certainly the power behind the English throne by the 1040s. Earl Godwin had risen under Cnut I as the loyal English fixer for the Danish interest and almost certainly the architect of the merger of Anglo-Danish interests into one national force. However, something went seriously wrong in 1051, when William of Normandy visited England. Edward made a fateful and foolish promise of the English succession to the Duke of Normandy during what appears to have been a court quarrel between the Godwin interest and Edward over the latter's preference for Norman advisers and friends. One senses that Edward, a weak King by most standards, was looking to his old friends from his exile to counter the constraining influence of the Anglo-Danish aristocracy who represented a past of which he had nothing but bad memories, noting that his own brother had been effectively murdered by someone from that interest in 1036. The dynastic is the personal in early medieval England and this ill-understood personal dimension would eventually seal the fate of the English line of Kings.

Godwin is not only exiled but a Norman, Robert Champert de Jumieges, is appointed Archbishop of Canterbury although he lasted only eighteen months. Whatever the religious meaning of this, its political meaning was that Edward was hook, line and sinker committed to the Norman interest as counterplay to the Anglo-Danish interest. The trajectory that leads remorselessly to the seizure of England by the Normans started in earnest in these political struggles of 1051. There is another change of fortune when Early Godwin dies accidentally. Some balance is restored with his son Harold's commitment to the King's cause although we can safely assume that the pragmatic and cynical Harold was far more committed to his own and his family's interest.

Harold is leader of the English army. This represented a considerable force within a polity constantly threatened by invasions at the first sign of weakness and the nation craved order after the experiences before Cnut came to the throne and in the difficult period between his death and the Kingship of Edward. Edward, it would seem, was the creature of his aristocracy and his brief break out in 1051-1052 was clearly unsustainable. The result was a decisive shift against the Norman interest. Archbishop Robert of Canterbury was forced into exile and replaced with Stigand, clearly no Norman.

The power of the Godwin interest expanded when Harold's brother Tostig was appointed Earl of Northumberland on the death of Siward. No doubt the intention was to have the Godwins control Northumbria, the English army and the court in a triple encirclement of a weak King in anticipation of the succession. The systematic extension of Godwin power takes another turn in 1057 when Leofric, Earl of Mercia, dies and his son Aelfgar succeeds at the price of ceding East Anglia to another brother of Harold, Garth (although Aelfgar is succeeded in turn by his young son Edwin in 1062 without incident). Yet another brother, Leofwine, takes an Earldom that covers the counties surrounding London. Looked at from Normandy, these manouevres seemed destined to make Edward's personal promise of the succession to Duke William meaningless without decisive military action by the Duke.

There is another factor in the game - the Norwegians on the other side of the North Sea. Their intervention will eventually prove decisive if not to their benefit. An attempted Norwegian invasion is repulsed in 1058 but they are ever-present as a threat that almost destroyed England in the past and could do so again. But, after a decade of Harold's military victories against Welsh and Norwegians alike, an unfortunate accident brings matters to a head. Harold, still only a military leader and the leading aristocrat answerable to the king he serves, is shipwrecked off the Normandy coast (1064) and falls into the hands of Duke William. Duke William takes the opportunity to make him swear an oath to accept the promise given by Edward during the brief Norman ascendency at the English court in 1051-52. Oath-keeping is important to the Franks and Normans but a more contingent matter to the Anglo-Danes, especially when extracted in a situation where there was little choice in the matter, so, returning to England, Harold has little intention of keeping his promise, especially when his military leadership is no less proven that of William.

What is about to happen now is a perfect storm for Harold. He has alienated the greedy and ambitious Normans, he has had his eye off the ball because of his accidental absence overseas and the Norwegians are lurking on the margins waiting for an opportunity for plunder. At this point, the Northumbrians revolt against the imposed Godwin brother Tostig (1065) who is then forced into exile. The personal is again the dynastic as Tostig becomes enraged at Harold's failure to support him and then, inopportunely, King Edward dies.