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Twin invasions
When Edward the Confessor died in 1066, he left a disputed succession. The throne was seized by his leading aristocrat, Harold Godwinson, who was rapidly crowned.
Almost immediately, Harold faced two invasions - one from the king of Norway, Harald Hardrada, who was supported by Harold Godwinson's brother Tostig, and the other from William, Duke of Normandy.
Harold defeated the Norwegian invasion at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in September 1066, but he was defeated and killed shortly afterwards at the Battle of Hastings, on 14 October in the same year.
At William's death, his lands were divided, with his second son, William Rufus, becoming king of England.
The victorious William, now known as 'the Conqueror', brought a new aristocracy to England from Normandy and some other areas of France. He also strengthened aristocratic lordship and moved towards reform of the church.
At the same time, William was careful to preserve the powerful administrative machinery that had distinguished the regime of the late Anglo-Saxon kings.
At William's death, his lands were divided, with his eldest son Robert taking control of Normandy, and his second son, William Rufus, becoming king of England.
Rufus successfully dealt with rebellions and with the threat of his elder brother (he defeated Robert during an invasion of Normandy), and maintained the powerful kingship of his father.
Following the death of Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury, good relations between king and church broke down, and the new archbishop, Anselm, became involved in quarrels with both Rufus and his successor Henry I.
Disputed succession
Rufus died in a hunting accident in the New Forest in 1100, and his younger brother, Henry, swiftly and successfully moved to seize the throne.
He further strengthened the ties of the Norman regime with the Anglo-Saxon past by marrying Edith (also known as Matilda), the great grand-daughter of Edmund Ironside, King of England.
In 1106, Henry succeeded in wresting control of Normandy from his brother, Robert, whom he thereafter kept imprisoned. While there continued to be conflict in Normandy, England experienced a lengthy peace during Henry's reign.
The powerful royal government that had characterised earlier Norman kingship broke down.
At the same time, royal government continued to develop, notably in the field of royal financial accounting with the emergence of the 'exchequer'.
Henry's only legitimate son drowned in a shipwreck in 1120, and when the king died in 1135 the succession was again uncertain. Henry's nephew, Stephen, count of Boulogne, seized the crown.
Matilda, Henry's daughter, challenged Stephen's position. She and her husband Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, enjoyed quite rapid success in Normandy, but in England an extended civil war developed. The powerful royal government that had characterised earlier Norman kingship broke down.
In 1153 it was agreed that Stephen should enjoy the throne for the rest of his life, but that he should be succeeded by Matilda's son, Henry of Anjou.
The settlement might not have meant to have been observed, but Stephen died late in 1154, and Henry was crowned king. He thus added England to his extensive continental lands, which included Normandy, Anjou, and his wife Eleanor's inheritance of Aquitaine.
Fresh conquests
The Normans also expanded into Scotland and Wales, although in a very different way from the conquest of England.
Scottish kings from the time of Malcolm Canmore (1058 - 1093) looked to introduce Norman personnel and practices into their realm, perhaps out of respect for a perceived cultural superiority, but certainly in order to strengthen their own political position.
Particularly under David I (1124 - 1153), major land grants were made to Frenchmen - for example the grant of Annandale to Robert Bruce, ancestor of the later Scottish king of that name.
In Wales, aggressive Norman expansion was led largely by the aristocracy.
The kings and churchmen also brought the Scottish church more closely into line with that of Christendom further south. Malcolm and his wife Margaret founded the Benedictine monastery of Dunfermline, while David I introduced new monastic orders such the Cistercians and Premonstratensians.
There were significant periods of antagonism between Scottish and English kings, but also periods of peace such as in the time of David I of Scotland and Henry I of England.
Norman expansion into Wales took a different form still. Whereas in England the invasion was led by the duke, and in Scotland Normans were invited in by kings of the native line, in Wales, aggressive Norman expansion was led largely by the aristocracy.
Incursions took place all along the Anglo-Welsh border, but most notably in the north, from the earldom of Chester, and in the south. In the latter region emerged the Marcher lordships such as those of Pembroke and Ceredigion.
The English kings did participate in the process, and Henry I in particular was active in Wales. However, with the accession of Stephen in England there was a major reassertion of independent Welsh power.
Feudalism?
The economy of England had been expanding for at least a century before the Norman conquest, and was characterised by growing markets and sprawling towns.
By the 12th century, one of the ways in which English writers disparaged other peoples, notably the Welsh and Irish, was to depict their economies as primitive, as lacking markets, exchange and towns.
At the same time, kings and lords outside England deliberately sought to stimulate the wealth of their countries, as can be most clearly seen by the introduction of coinage and the establishment of boroughs by David I of Scotland and his successors.
The Domesday Book shows 11 leading members of the aristocracy held a quarter of the realm.
Within such an economy, there was clearly room for men to rise by increasing their wealth. At the same time, it remained a notably hierarchic society, and the process of conquest itself strengthened the role of lordship.
The Domesday Book, the product of William I's great survey of his realm in 1086, shows that the 11 leading members of the aristocracy held about a quarter of the realm. Another quarter was in the hands of fewer than 200 other aristocrats.
These nobles had received their lands by royal grant, and in turn gave some of their lands to their own followers. This form of landholding is often regarded as a key element of a 'feudal' system - a form of social organisation once routinely held to have been introduced by the Normans in 1066.
In recent years there has been considerable debate about the problems arising from the use of the term 'feudal', a debate wittily foreseen by the great Victorian historian, FW Maitland, who said: 'Feudalism is a useful word, and will cover a multitude of ignorances.'
Nevertheless, whatever the wider problems of writing about 'feudalism', the process of Norman conquest and settlement did tie a variety of types of lordship closely together - regarding protection, service, and jurisdiction - and linked them to the bond of land tenure, the holding of what men at the time referred to as a 'feudum' or 'fief'.
The strength of lordship could result in royal weakness and the break-up of large scale political control. This happened in England during the civil war of the reign of Stephen, 1135 - 1154.
Yet it would be wrong to see aristocracy and king, lordship and kingship as necessarily opposed. Kings and lords often regarded one another as natural companions, engaged in a mutually beneficial relationship.
In addition, in England both kings and aristocrats continued to operate in political and judicial arenas other than those defined by lordship. Most notable amongst these were the counties or shires that the Normans inherited from the Anglo-Saxons.
A thousand castles
The Normans had an enormous influence on architectural development in Britain. There had been large-scale fortified settlements, known as burghs, and also fortified houses in Anglo-Saxon England, but the castle was a Norman import.
Numbers are uncertain, but it seems plausible that about 1,000 castles had been built by the reign of Henry I, about four decades after the Norman conquest.
Some were towers on mounds surrounded by larger enclosures, often referred to as 'motte and bailey castles'. Others were immense, most notably the huge palace-castles William I built at Colchester and London.
A lord might display his wealth, power and devotion through a combination of castle and church in close proximity.
These were the largest secular buildings in stone since the time of the Romans, over six centuries earlier. They were a celebration of William's triumph, but also a sign of his need to overawe the conquered.
Churches were also built in great numbers, and in great variety, although usually in the Romanesque style with its characteristic round-topped arches.
The vast cathedrals of the late 11th and early 12th centuries, colossal in scale by European standards, emphasised the power of the Normans as well as their reform of the church in the conquered realm.
Buildings such as Durham cathedral suggest the strength and vibrancy of the builders' culture in rather the same way as the early sky-scrapers of New York.
The Normans also continued the great building of parish churches, which had begun in England in the late Anglo-Saxon period. Such churches appeared too in the rest of the British Isles, and can still be seen, for example at Leuchars in Fife.
A lord might display his wealth, power and devotion through a combination of castle and church in close proximity, again as still spectacularly visible at Durham.
Particularly striking are regional groups of great churches, a characteristic too of 11th-century Normandy. One of the most telling examples is the group of border abbeys in southern Scotland - David I's foundation of Jedburgh, still impressive and crowning its hill; the Premonstratensian house of Dryburgh; the Cistercian house at Melrose; and most spectacular of all in the splendour which even the limited remains indicate, another royal foundation at Kelso.
Background to the Conquest
The history behind the battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest began 50 years before William's army set foot on English soil at Pevensey. It is a story of intrigue, deception and treachery.
Cnut's takeover
When William, Duke of Normandy defeated Harold Godwinson on the field of Hastings, he was conquering a nation of collaborators.
The story of the Norman Conquest does not start in 1066, but 50 years earlier, with another invasion and another group of Norsemen. In 1016, Cnut, King of Denmark, seized the kingdom of England by exploiting the bitter rivalries between king Aethelred Unraed (without counsel), his son Edmund Ironside and his closest advisors. Cnut's takeover had not been unexpected: many English magnates had been aligning themselves for just such an eventuality - most important among them being Eadric, ealdorman of Mercia, whose treachery at the Battle of Ashingdon handed Cnut the throne.
...traitors were never trusted but collaboration paid.
Eadric did not get quite the reward he expected. At the Christmas court of 1017, Cnut stunned the English with the murder of ealdorman Eadric, his supporters and every member of Aethelred's royal family he could get his hands on. Only Edward and his brothers, the younger sons of Aethelred, survived. They fled to Normandy, where they took refuge with Duke Richard II, brother of their mother Emma.
In place of the murdered magnates, Cnut installed his own men, both Danish and English, loyal to himself. The most prominent of these were Earls Leofric and Godwine, who prospered under the new Danish régime. They and their families had learned two valuable lessons from the Danish conquest: traitors were never trusted, but collaboration paid. Cnut also secured his external position by marrying Emma, maintaining a link to the old régime and ensuring that the Duke of Normandy would not come out in favour of the dispossessed Edward.
The Godwines
Edward spent the next 30 years in exile under the protection of his uncle, Duke Richard II and his successors. Whilst there, he made several friends, among them Eustace of Boulogne and the Breton Ralph the Staller. On his return to England in 1042, as Edward the Confessor, he promoted many of these Frenchmen into positions of influence, as a counterbalance to the overweening power of the Godwine family.
...a notorious group called the Frenchmen...
The Godwines had prospered greatly while Edward was away. Under Cnut and his successors, they had amassed so much land that they were second only in power and wealth to that of the King. So when Edward returned after the death of Cnut's son, Harthacnut, he found his position hamstrung by Cnut's old Earls. He tried to offset this by allying himself with Earls Leofric and Siward, the enemies of Godwine, and by promoting his own friends, a notorious group called the 'Frenchmen' who were made up of the Norman and French nobles with whom Edward had shared his young adulthood.
William of Normandy
Meanwhile, Normandy was embroiled in its own succession crisis. Duke Richard II's son, Robert, had died in 1035, leaving an 8-year-old bastard son, William as his heir. William's formative years were immersed in assassination, exile and civil war, from which he emerged in 1047 at the Battle of Val-ès-Dunes as the dominant power in Normandy, with his capital at Rouen, a prosperous trading settlement much like Viking Jorvik (York).
William was a large man, of exceptional strength and appearance. His tomb at St Etienne in Caen was despoiled by Calvinists during the Reformation, but its size and analysis of the one remaining thigh bone show that he was remarkably tall for a medieval man, standing at 5'10". He had inordinate strength: William of Malmesbury describes how he could draw a bow that no other man could draw, whilst spurring on a horse.
He was also ruthlessly efficient, and thanks to his childhood valued personal loyalty and the unbreakable ties of the family above all else. To this end, he promoted his two half-brothers into key positions. Robert became Count of Mortain and Odo became Bishop of Bayeux. In 1050, he married Matilda, daughter of the Count of Flanders in what seems to have been a genuine love-match. He doted on his wife and trusted her judgement enough in later life to leave her as his regent in Normandy.
Edward the Confessor
...he was aware he might never have children...
Edward, by contrast, was already an old man. He had spent his entire adult life waiting for the chance to be King of England, and having achieved it had found his power circumscribed by the over-powerful subjects of his predecessors, so much so that he was forced to marry Edith, daughter of Godwine, in a marriage of dynastic expediency. The chroniclers say that he despised his wife so much that he never consummated the marriage. Instead, he 'found God' throwing himself into pious works, the most enduring of which was the foundation of Westminster Abbey. So by 1051, it is entirely possible that he was aware he might never have children, so long as he remained married to Edith.
In 1051, he acted against the Godwines. The lever he used was a dispute between Eustace of Boulogne and Earl Godwine sparked by an incident at Dover. Eustace, on the orders of the King, tried to take over the town. Godwine resisted, and when he was called to account, chose to flee into exile with his sons rather than face a prejudiced tribunal. Edward immediately put aside Edith, and at the same time, William of Normandy came to visit England.
William gains power
Later Norman chronicles claim that on this visit Edward offered William the crown of England. It is difficult to see why. Edward was in the most powerful position he had achieved since his accession in 1042. He had got rid of the Godwines and his appointees were in all the positions of power. He had also put aside his wife, and no doubt could have found a way round the divorce/annulment problem in one of the many time-honoured traditions.
Yet it can also be argued that knowing whilst he remained married to Edith that he would remain childless, Edward chose to vest the future of the kingdom into the hands of his old friend and protector's family, which had just proven its fecundity with the birth of William's son Robert. We will never know. What is certain is that if Edward did offer William the kingdom at this point, it would not be the last time he gave it away. The promise was essentially worthless (though of course we know that William did not wish to view it that way).
...his former allies teamed up against him...
William himself had rather more pressing things on his mind by 1052. He had become so powerful that his former allies had teamed up against him, forcing him to defend his position. However, by 1060, both Henry I of France and Geoffrey of Anjou had died leaving weak successors, and William was poised to expand again. This expansion had a purpose. William was well aware of the vulnerable position of Normandy, surrounded on three sides by enemies, and his actions from 1062 onwards were designed to ensure that Normandy - and the personal patrimony of its dukes - would remain secure.
...he was invading merely to secure his inheritance.
In 1062, he invaded the neighbouring county of Maine. His justification for this is worth noting, for William claimed that Count Hubert of Maine had agreed to marry one of William's daughters and leave his domain to William if he died without heirs. Hubert is supposed to have named William his heir on his deathbed, and William claimed that he was invading merely to secure his inheritance. This is the first of three times this excuse was used to justify conquest in William's life: the only time it ever seems to be believed is over England.
The increasing personal power of William is demonstrated by the change in terminology on Norman charters at this time. Norman nobles cease being fidelis (faithful) men, and the duke becomes their dominus (lord). The change is significant. William was now exercising control in Normandy through his own personal patronage, favouring his most powerful friends and supporters. Among these were his childhood friends William fitzOsbern and Roger de Montgomery, who had become his closest and most trusted advisors and confidants, alongside his half-brothers Robert de Mortain and Odo of Bayeux.
Harold
Back in England, the Godwines had returned. They were back by 1052, even more powerful than before, and Edward's Frenchmen were forced to flee the kingdom. When Godwine died in 1053, his mantle was taken up by his son Harold Godwinson. In 1055, Earl Siward of Northumbria died whilst his son, Waltheof, was too young to succeed him, and Harold manoeuvred his brother Tostig into the earldom. This further strengthened the hold of the Godwine clan on the kingdom. By 1064, it was obvious to all that Edward was going to die without an heir, and Harold must have been weighing up his chances of becoming king.
Harold's character has been blackened beyond all recognition by the events of 1066. No chronicler could write of him without referring to the role he played in the drama that would lead up to the Norman Conquest. Therefore, he has been portrayed as devious and secretive, an oathbreaker and a chancer. A chancer he undoubtedly was, but then everyone was gambling in 1066.
Harold was clearly courageous, an able warrior and an astute politician. He was able to judge the way the wind was blowing and bend with it, breaking through ancient enmities to form the alliances that were necessary to the realpolitik of his world. He was also handsome and charming, and had an undoubtedly loving relationship with his concubine, Edith Swan-neck. Yet the events during the last two years of his life show that he was also willing to lie and even sacrifice his family on the altar of his ambition.
Harold visits Normandy
Harold visited Normandy in 1064. Why he did this, no-one can be certain. All pro-Norman sources claim that he was sent by Edward to confirm the offer of the crown to William. On the Bayeux Tapestry, he is depicted receiving either orders or a warning from Edward, but since he is undoubtedly being admonished for his 'failure' on his return, this can hardly have been instructions to confirm William as king. English sources hint that he was going to France and was shipwrecked on his way, which was why he ended up in Normandy. Sadly, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is completely silent on the subject. It has also been suggested that he was visiting William in an effort to negotiate the freeing of his brother, Wulfnoth, who was a hostage in William's court.
William clearly wanted to overawe Harold.
All we know for certain is that Harold landed in the Norman province of Ponthieu, where he was arrested by Count Guy of Ponthieu. When William heard of his arrival, he sent messengers ordering Count Guy to hand over his prisoner, which was duly done. At this point, William was embarking upon a campaign into Brittany against the new Duke of Brittany, Conan II, and he took Harold with him. William clearly wanted to overawe Harold. He knew that they were both in the running for the crown of England, and he hoped that by taking him on the Brittany campaign he could impress Harold with the futility of opposing Norman interests. However, the plan backfired spectacularly.
The Bayeux Tapestry, in a masterful piece of propaganda, portrays the campaign as a triumph: Conan flees furtively from the town of Dol and surrenders the keys of Dinan to William. However, other sources portray a completely different picture in which William exhausted himself in a futile chase around Brittany and was finally forced to withdraw after he ran out of supplies. The only person to come out well from the whole affair was Harold, who is portrayed on the Bayeux Tapestry rescuing some of William's men from the quicksands in front of Mont St. Michel. His later actions tend to indicate that he was less than impressed by this demonstration of the inexorable Norman war machine in action.
Oath
The visit ended with Harold swearing his infamous oath to Duke William. This is eloquently described by the Anglo-Norman historian Orderic Vitalis:
'Harold himself had taken an oath of fealty to Duke William at Rouen in the presence of the Norman nobles, and after becoming his man had sworn on the most sacred relics to carry out all that was required of him. After that, the Duke had taken Harold on an expedition against Conan, Count of Brittany, and had given him splendid arms and horses and heaped other tokens upon him and his companions.'
In this passage, Orderic highlights the three great bones of contention about the oath: no-one can agree where it was sworn (Rouen? Bonneville? Bayeux?); no-one can agree when it was sworn (before or after the Brittany campaign?); and no-one can agree why it was sworn. Was Harold simply swearing an oath of fealty as a vassal of William, or was there actually something more to it, as the pro-Norman sources would have us believe? This is important, because as a vassal of William's, Harold was not constrained to hand over the crown of England any more than William, a vassal of the French king, owed the crown to France.
A close examination of the Bayeux Tapestry tends to suggest that Harold was being honoured after heroics on the Brittany campaign, given arms and armour, and in return swearing an oath of fealty. Even the most pro-Norman sources tend to suggest that there was an element of trickery about the whole occasion: Harold is said to have sworn a hollow oath, after which William whipped away the covering on the table, revealing the most holy of relics which bound it. So it seems likely that Harold did not believe he was swearing away the kingdom, and it was only after the fact that William and his apologists were able to dress this up as the great act of perjury that it became.
Consolidation of power
Still, we should not paint Harold in completely innocent colours. Harold was already thinking like a king by 1064. He was undoubtedly considering his own position vis à vis the throne of England, and like any politician of his age, he would undoubtedly have sworn to anything in order to get himself out of the dangerous position in which he found himself.
...Kings made and broke...vows all the time...
Kings made and broke solemn vows all the time, and it was only when someone else had something to gain from it that they were called to account. Harold needed to get back to England and muster the support he would require to make his bid. In order to do that, he would have sworn away his own brother. In a passage laden with hindsight, the chronicler Eadmer has Edward admonishing Harold on his return: 'Did I not tell you that I knew William, and your going might bring untold calamity upon this kingdom?'
The proof of this all came in 1065, when the people of Northumbria rebelled against the harsh rule of their new earl, Harold's brother Tostig. Tostig appealed to Harold and the King for help, but that help was not forthcoming. Edward held no love for Tostig, and Harold had seen a way that he could use his brother's misfortune to win the backing of the other great power in the land, the family of Leofric. Leofric's grandson, Edwin, was now the Earl of Mercia and almost as strong as Harold himself; but his brother, Morcar, was yet to have an earldom.
Harold made a deal: he would support Morcar into Northumbria against his own brother Tostig and also against the rightful heir, Waltheof, if the family of Leofric eschewed its old enmity with the Godwines and supported Harold in his bid for the throne. This act of filial treachery was to have significant consequences. Tostig fled into exile, vowing revenge against his brother, and the scene was set for the tragic events of 1066.
Key Events of the Conquest
By Dr Mike Ibeji
Last updated 2011-02-17
The Battle of Hastings is probably the most famous battle to have been fought on British soil. But why did it ever happen? If it wasn't for a feud between two brothers, William would almost certainly have lost at Battle.
Key events prior to 1066
In 1016, Cnut of Denmark invaded England. He eradicated all opposition in a pogrom in Winter 1017, and ruled thereafter with a combination of Danes and newly promoted English Earls who profited from the Danish Conquest. Edward (the Confessor) fled to his father-in-law in Normandy. He finally regained the throne in 1042.
William's later chroniclers claim (after the fact) that Edward the Confessor offered William the crown and sent Harold to pledge it to him in the Winter of 1064/5. In fact, reading between the lines we can see that Harold was shipwrecked in Normandy whilst trying to visit France, and took advantage of the situation by trying to secure the release of his brother & nephew who were held as hostages in the Norman court.
The events of 1066
...but certainly William sees this as his chance to invade.
The eve of conquest
Hastings
· 14th October 1066: Harold takes up a position blocking the Norman advance to London on Senlac Ridge at the site of Battle with an army of little more than 5,000 weary and footsore men. He intends to fight a purely defensive battle, sitting behind the famous Saxon shield wall and letting the Normans break themselves against it. This works well, beating back repeated waves of Norman infantry followed by cavalry. It works so well in fact that the Breton knights on the Norman left begin to run. Seeing victory in their grasp, the English right charges down the slope after them, exposing themselves to a devastating counter-attack led by William himself.
· However, William is unhorsed and a shout goes up that he is dead. Everything hangs in the balance; but William sweeps off his helmet and rises to rally his troops. Yet the pause had given the English time to regroup, and the Normans batter themselves uselessly against the reformed shield wall. As the day drags on, the numbers began to tell and the English shield wall begins to crack.
· Late in the day, Harold takes an arrow in the eye and as his men mill around him, four Norman knights break through and hack him down. Legend has it that his body was so mutilated that it could not be recognised until it was identified by his devoted mistress, Edith Swan-neck.
· Oct-Dec 1066: A state of war continues until Christmas 1066, when a deal is struck between William and the English magnates in which he guarantees their positions in return for their support. William is crowned King of England on Christmas Day in London by Archbishops Ealdred and Stigand. Edwin, Morcar and Waltheof swear allegiance to him.
Key Players
Edward the Confessor: King of England, married to Harold's sister, Edith. He died in January 1066 without an heir.
King Cnut: King of England 1016-1035. Cnut was the King of Denmark, who exploited the fragmented nature of England to seize the throne in 1016. He ruled with the help of the English Earls Godwine and Leofric.
William of Normandy: Bastard son of Duke Richard II, Edward the Confessor's father-in-law. William had a very shaky claim to the English throne, but what he did have in his favour was a dukedom full of Norman knights, all eager for a share of newly conquered land.
Harold Godwinson: Son of Godwine and Earl of Wessex. Harold was very powerful by 1066. He was possibly richer than the King, and had established alliances with all the major magnates of England. He could claim only a tenuous link by marriage to the family of Cnut, but he was the brother-in-law of King Edward and despite having the weakest claim to the Crown, he was in the strongest position. William claimed that Harold had sworn an oath to deliver the Crown up to William on King Edward's death. This is probably a fiction.
Edwin and Morcar: Grandsons of Leofric, Earls of Mercia and Northumbria. Previously arch enemies of the Godwinsons, they seem to have made a deal with Harold in 1065, who helped Morcar into the Earldom of Northumbria in return for their support when Edward died.
Tostig: Brother of Harold and ex-Earl of Northumbria. Deposed by the Northumbrians in favour of Morcar, Tostig fled to Norway, where he plotted revenge against his brother Harold.
Harald Hardrada: King of Norway. Persuaded to invade Northumbria in 1066 by Tostig. Their victory at Fulford and their defeat and death at Stamford Bridge probably ensured the success of William's invasion at Hastings.
Waltheof: Earl of Huntingdon and rightful Earl of Northumbria. Waltheof was too young to take up the Earldom of Northumbria when his father died in 1055, so it went to Tostig. He was old enough for the Earldom in 1066, but it was given to Morcar. His subsequent actions after the Conquest can be interpreted (to a point) to be attempts at getting his Earldom back.
Edgar the Aetheling: Aetheling means 'throneworthy' and was the title given to the legitimate heir to the Crown. Edgar however, was too young in 1066, and nobody wanted an unstable regency.
Swegn Estrithson: King of Denmark. Arguably the most powerful of the contenders, Swegn could claim direct descent from King Cnut. However, he was distracted by his own kingdom, and it was not until he died that his second son, Cnut the Holy, concentrated on England.
Archbishops Stigand and Ealdred: Archbishops of Canterbury and York. Primates of England.
The Conquest and its Aftermath
The years after the Battle of Hastings and the death of Harold were full of turmoil. Collusion, treachery and rebellion were rife, and that was just the English. Threats from enemies, both foreign and domestic, to William's hard-won Kingdom never left him, yet he was able to complete Domesday Book, Britain's earliest, and still valid, public record.
Collaboration
William intended to make his rule easier as the successor to Edward, with the co-operation of the English. In this, the English magnates readily acquiesced, remembering the lessons learned from the Danish Conquest 50 years before. After all, Edwin and Morcar were the grandsons of one of the most successful collaborators, and Waltheof had nothing to lose by supporting the new régime. We should also note that William did not move immediately against Stigand, despite the disapproval of the Pope. In fact, the two chief prelates of England were perhaps the staunchest supporters of William among the English magnates, once they had accepted William as God's chosen successor to Edward the Confessor.
William returned to Normandy in 1067, taking the three English Earls with him as hostages and leaving Odo of Bayeux and William fitzOsbern in charge of England. During these early stages of the Conquest, he was most concerned with the security of his newly won kingdom. He ensured this security by granting a compact area of land to trusted Norman nobles whose task it was to build a castle and guard it against all comers. These were the castleries. The earliest were the so-called 'rapes' of the south, granted to William's two half-brothers, Odo of Bayeux and Robert of Mortain as well as his two trusted followers the Comte d'Eu and William fitzOsbern.
Odo and the Bayeux Tapestry
Odo was given the Rape of Kent, which included Dover and Canterbury. This greatly irritated Eustace of Boulogne, the one-time vassal of Edward the Confessor, who obviously thought that he had a prior claim on Dover and resented it being given to Odo. He tried to seize the town, but was beaten off by the locals and fled back to Boulogne at the approach of Odo and his men.
...the Bayeux Tapestry was actually made in Canterbury...
We know a great deal about Odo because until his fall from grace in 1082, he acted as regent of England whenever William was out of the country: first in conjunction with William fitzOsbern, then as sole regent after fitzOsbern's death in 1071. It was he who commissioned the Bayeux Tapestry, as a monument to his half-brother's achievement that was intended for display in his new cathedral at Bayeux.
The Bayeux Tapestry was actually made in Canterbury, and the story it tells follows the tradition followed by the chronicles in the Canterbury archive. It not only depicts Odo himself, several times, but also some of his most prominent personal retainers, whose lands can be traced in post-Conquest England. Vitalis of Canterbury, the man who brought news of Harold's approach to Hastings, was a prominent landholder in the Whitstable area north of Canterbury, and was friends with Wadard, depicted organising supplies for the landing on the Bayeux Tapestry. Turold, the man on the Tapestry who brought William's message to Count Guy of Ponthieu, became castellan of Rochester and was one of Odo's most trusted men and powerful tenants.
...this developed into a personal feud...
Odo was arguably the most powerful man in England after the King, with lands throughout England, but his main power base lay in Kent. His position there inevitably put him into conflict with the other great landowner of the area, the Archbishop of Canterbury. This developed into a personal feud between Odo and Lanfranc, the Archbishop after 1070, which was waged largely through the law courts. Great land disputes such as the epic three-day Trial of Penenden Heath saw these two great magnates vying with one another for control of Kentish land. In this trial, Turold is named as one of the agents of Odo most responsible for seizing land on his behalf. Turold ultimately became Constable of Bayeux, but the fortunes of his family were so intimately tied with those of Odo that it fell along with Odo at the end of his career.
Odo's fall was a long and protracted one. It began in 1082, when he attempted to take several Norman barons to Italy with him in a bid to buy the papacy. William could not allow this to happen, and with the help of Lanfranc, tried and imprisoned Odo for sedition. He was never reconciled with his half-brother, and Odo was only released after William's death. He repaid the generosity of the new King, William 'Rufus', by leading a revolt of the barons in favour of Rufus's brother, Robert. Rufus savagely suppressed this revolt and besieged Odo in Rochester Castle. In a fitting end to his career in England, when Odo surrendered he came out of the castle to the jeers of his English subjects demanding the hangman's noose. He was exiled and died on crusade with Robert in 1097.
Orderic Vitalis
Orderic Vitalis: The jeers of the English outside Rochester reflect one attitude to the Conquest, expressed eloquently by Orderic Vitalis:
'And so the English groaned aloud for their lost liberty and plotted ceaselessly to find some way of shaking off a yoke that was so intolerable and unaccustomed. Some sent to Swegn, King of Denmark, and urged him to lay claim to the kingdom of England which his ancestors Swegn and Cnut had won by the sword. Others fled into voluntary exile so that they might either find in banishment freedom from the Normans or secure foreign help and come back to fight a war of vengeance. Some of them who were still in the flower of youth travelled into remote lands and bravely offered their arms to Alexius, Emperor of Constantinople, a man of great wisdom and nobility.'
...All that he says is true...
Undoubtedly all that he says is true, but Orderic exaggerates. He himself was the result of a successful Anglo-Norman liaison: his father, a French clerk from Orleans in the service of Roger de Montgomery, married an English woman and Orderic was born and brought up in England. His own history illustrates just how 'English' the Norman conquerors could become, for despite being a second-generation 'Norman', he grew up thinking of himself as 'English', and when his father sent him off to the monastery of St Evroult in Normandy, he felt as if he was going to a foreign land:
'And so, a boy of ten, I crossed the English Channel and came into Normandy as an exile, unknown to all and knowing no-one. Like Joseph in Egypt, I heard a language which I did not understand... In place of my English name, which sounded harsh to the Normans, the name of Vitalis was given to me.'
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