BIOGRAPHY During the reign of Edward the Confessor, from 1042-1066, England became less and less united within itself. Edward was a monastic sort, not very interested in secular affairs, and had spent most of his childhood in Normandy. The power behind the throne was Godwin, Earl of Wessex, who had persuaded the reluctant Edward to marry his daughter. Edward introduced Normans to church and state offices, setting himself in opposition to his father-in-law. Tom make matters more volatile, he also stubbornly refused to give his wife a child, and England an heir. Godwin, in the year before his death, began to rally popular support against the Norman influence; the power of that cause then transferred to his son Harold, sometimes called Harold Godwinson. In 1027, the boy who would be William the Conqueror was born, the illegitimate son of Duke Robert the Magnificent of Normandy and a tanner's daughter. He became the Duke of Normandy at the age of seven; at a young age he married his second cousin Matilda of Flanders, who was descended on her mother's side from the House of Wessex. William was a second cousin of Edward the Confessor, who allegedly promised him the throne of England in 1051. Later, in 1064, William extorted a similar promise from Harold Godwinson, who had the bad luck to have been shipwrecked in Normandy. Nonetheless, Harold fanned the controversy over Edward's succession and built up a lobby for his own claim. When Edward died in his new palace at Westminster (built alongside his new abbey of the same name), his nearest heir was Edgar Atheling, the grandson of Edmund Ironside [# 2933]. Edgar was only a small boy, though, so the Witan (council of regional leaders) chose Harold as the new king. Harold may have been named successor by Edward on his deathbed. However, Harold's tenuous claim to the throne encouraged both Norway and Normandy to invade England. Harold II of England first fought off the Norwegian invasion, which was led in part by his own brother, Tostig. Four days after the defeat of the Scandinavian force at Stamford Bridge, William of Normandy landed at Pevensey in Sussex. The following is from Eric Delafield's book [IT:Kings & Queens of England & Great Britain:IT]: "Harold and his mounted infantry headed south, reaching London in four days. Rather than wait for the unmounted infantry from the north and a force from the south to join him, Harold decided to give battle at once. Fought seven miles northwest of Hastings, the battle lasted all day and was close-run; only when a feint be the Normans induced the English to abandon their shield-ring and Harold was killed by an arrow through his eye did the invaders gain the upper hand. Harold's defeat ushered in an age that would leave none in doubt that England had become an occupied country. William's triumph over Harold was the decisive event in the conquest of England, but it was only a prelude to the country's subjugation. Even during his coronation at Westminster on Christmas Day 1066, a disturbance outside all but emptied the abbey. It took several years and campaigns of terror to subdue the whole country: after the southwest was brought to heel, two rebellions in the north, led by earls Edwin and Morcar, were successfully defeated. The second revolt, attempted after both earls had been pardoned, provoked a savage response: between York and Durham not a house or human being visible to William's soldiers was spared. When the Domesday survey was carried out seventeen years later, many villages in the area were still without an inhabitant. The last assault on Norman hegemony came from East Anglia where Hereward, a Fenman with an aptitude for guerrilla warfare in that watery landscape, held out for some time on the Isle of Ely. Once England was secure, William turned his attention to Scotland and Wales, invading the former in 1072 and compelling Malcolm III [# 2799] to do homage at Abernethy. Three years later, he visited St. David's, receiving submissions from the Welsh en route. Physical evidence of the conquest soon appeared throughout England: Saxon peasants were forced to build mounds of earth (mottes) on which fortresses of wood and later stone were erected. In London the domination of the White Tower reminded the independent Londoners of the new limitations on their freedom. From these bastions Normans enforced the confiscation of estates and their redistribution amongst those who had supported William's conquest. Feudal baronies were imposed as soon as each part of England was subjugated, resulting in some barons holding lands in different parts of the country. This had the added advantage for the monarch of preventing the consolidation of rival powers. To this end the great earldoms of late Saxon England were broken up and the shire, or county, became the principal unit of administration, superintended by sheriffs and special commissioners. Even the French-speaking barons resented the restrictions imposed on their power by William's system of government, and as early as 1075 took up arms against him: the Norman Earl of Hereford joined Ralph the Breton, Earl of East Anglia, and the Englishman Waltheof. Their rebellion was easily contained, but it was only the first of many. Even William's eldest son, Robert, challenged his father in Normandy in 1079, and William was at war with France in 1087 when his horse stumbled at Mantes, giving him a fatal injury. By his oath to observe the old Saxon laws and his imposition of Continental feudal customs, William effectively prevented the monarchy from exercising unlimited power, laying the groundwork for the development of English laws and liberties. The Church, too, stood between the king and the barons, helping to uphold a balance of power that did not infringe its own interests. Lanfranc, William's new Italian Archbishop, reorganized the English Church, and separate Church courts were established to deal with offenses under canon law, an action which was to cause much trouble for the Plantagenet kings. William the Conqueror, 'that stark man' as his subjects called him, was ruthless and cruel: although only one person was executed in his reign, thousands were mutilated - especially for breaches of the game laws. The 'New Forest' was created by him as a game park. It was said of him that 'he loved the tall, red deer, as if he were their father.' This penchant, however, was to sow the seed of trouble for centuries: in the eleventh century the Crown owned sixty-nine forests, almost a third of the whole acreage of the kingdom. Depriving those who lived in or near the forests of any rights in them caused great resentment, and the severe punishments for infringing forest law, enforced by the Forest Courts, fed through into the draconian Game Laws of later centuries. The Domesday survey, in 1086, was the most comprehensive and detailed record of a country's physical resources produced in Europe during the Middle Ages. William conceived the idea while at Gloucester for Christmas in 1085, though it was not referred to as 'Domesday' until the twelfth century, intended to signify that like the Day of Judgment, there was no appeal. Its primary purpose was to maximize tax revenues; its secondary use was to provide the necessary information for the efficient administration of the feudal system. The task of gathering the data fell to Commissioners using the shire courts and interviewing sworn juries, each made up of the priest, the reeve (the lord's manager), and six villeins. The survey covered the entire county except for Durham, Northumberland, Westmorland, Cumberland, northern Lancashire, London, Winchester and a few other towns. Its scope was exhaustive: as the Saxon chronicler recorded, 'so narrowly did he cause the survey to be made that there was not one single hide nor rood of land, nor - it is shameful to tell but he thought it no shame to do - was there an ox, cow or swine that was not set down in the writ.' The two volumes are kept in the Public Record Office at Kew, London. The [IT:Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:IT] gives a good impression of William's reign: 'He was mild to the good men that loved God, and beyond measure severe to the men that gainsaid his will... It is not to be forgotten that good peace he made in this land so that a man might go over his kingdom with his bosom full of gold... and no man durst slay another.' It is not easy, if possible at all, to isolate and define the heritage of the Norman Conquest. Edward the Confessor himself was more Norman than English. Norman speech, habits and customs were prevalent at his court. But in the century after 1066 the followers and descendants of William the Conqueror diverted the main stream of national development and added a Latin strain to the mongrel blood of Englishmen. Had the conquest never happened, England would probably have become part of the northern Scandinavian world. For all its cruelty, the conquest united England to western Europe and opened the floodgates of European culture and institutions, theology, philosophy, and science. The conquest effected a social revolution in England. The lands of the Saxon aristocracy were divided up amongst the Normans, who by about 1087 composed between 6,000 and 10,000 of a total population of about one and a half million. More important, each landowner had, in return for his land, to make an oath of allegiance to the king, and promise to provide him with mounted, armoured knights when required. This introduction of the 'feudal system,' provided the whole basis for medieval English society. The Saxon machinery of government was, in large measure, retained and immensely reinforced. As well as giving the law a reputation for impartiality, the Normans brought with them their military arts - castle-building and fighting on horseback. They also transmitted large parts of the Saxon heritage - towns and villages, shires, traditions of monarchy, the basic structure of language. They took over much that was indigenous and learned from the conquered. They created a strong monarchy which, in medieval times, was gradually to complete the unification of England and obliterate the distinction between Saxons and conquering Normans, so that only Englishmen remained.

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Record Change November 01, 1999

Burial 1087 Caen, Normandy