The Norman Conquest (0)

The Norman Conquest
William I (the Conqueror) (1066 - 1087)
On October 14, in the fateful Battle of Hastings , William defeated and killed Harold and seized the English throne.
Two months after the Battle of Hastings, William I was crowned king in Westminster Abbey. The service was held on Christmas Day 1066, with all the traditional ceremonies associated with the coronation of English kings since the time of Edgar. William had gained his throne by accepting the English form of coronation, William emphasised his claim to be legitimate successor to Edward the Confessor .
William I was a strong king and a man of immense determination. He was stern to people who opposed his will, but kindly disposed to those who did not.
William saw England as an extension of his French domains. He dispossessed nearly all the Anglo- Saxon nobles of their lands, and put Normans in their places . These men discouraged rebellion by building strong castles throughout the country , especially in Wales .
In return for their land , William’s barons had to perform certain services . They and their bishops had to perform certain services. They and the bishops served as members of William’s Council , which replaced the Anglo-Saxon Witan. The barons also had military obligations to serve as knights ( army commanders) for William.
William organised his English kingdom according to the feudal system which had already begun to develop in England before his arrival, but under the Normans, it became more organised. The word feudalism comes from the French word feu, which the Normans used to refer to land held in return for duty or service to a lord . The basis of feudal society was the holding of land, and its main purpose was economic . All land was divided into manors. Most manors contained a village . A baron was tenant -in-chief and had several manors. He passed on part of his military obligations to his tenants, who held manors from him. The tenants of each manor performed specific regular services for their lord. Under them were the peasants, tied by a strict system of mutual duties and obligations to the local lord, and forbidden to travel without his permission . The peasants were English speaking Saxons . The lords and the barons were French-speaking Normans. There were two basic principles to feudalism: every man had a lord, and every lord had land. The king was connected through this ‘chain’ of people to the lowest man in the country. On the other hand, each lord had responsibilities to his vassals. He had to give them land and protection .
William faced serious resistance in his early years as king. The people of northern England, helped by Danish force, revolted in 1069. William crushed this rising mercilessly. But stories were later written about Hereward the Wake, a heroic Saxon rebel, who resisted the Normans in the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire.
The Normans built many stone churches, including St. Bartholomew-the-Great in London. Norman churches and castles had thick walls, huge columns, and round -headed arches. An early type of Norman castle was a motte and bailey. This type of castle consisted of an artificial mound (the motte) surmounted by a wooden tower and enclosed by moat and stockade (the bailey). Later, the Normans built great stone towers called keeps. The Normans built nearly a hundred castles during William’s reign .
In 1086 , William ordered a land survey for tax purposes . He sent a team of people all through England to make a complete economic survey. This survey was the only one of its kind in Europe . Not surprisingly, it was most unpopular with the people, because they felt they could not escape from its findings. The survey’s results are contained in a document that became known as the Domesday Book, which provided information for William’s tax officers. It so reminded people of the paintings of the Day of Judgement, or ‘doom’, on the walls of their churches that they called it the Domesday Book. The Domesday Book still exists, and gives us an extraordinary amount of information about England at this time. William’s policies cost English many of their liberties, but brought them peace and order .
To understand the idea of kingship and lordship in the early Middle Ages it is important to realise that at this time there was little or no idea of nationalism. William controlled two large areas: Normandy, which he had been given by his father , and England, which he had won in war. Both were personal possessions, and it did not matter to the rulers that the ordinary people of one place were English while those of another were French. To William the important difference between Normandy and England was that as duke of Normandy he had to recognise the king of France as his lord, whereas in England he was king with no lord above him.
The last Norman kings
William II (Rufus) (1087 - 1100)
When William died, in 1087, he left the Duchy of Normandy to his elder son, Robert. He gave England to his second son, William. William II was a short stout man with red face , from which came his nickname of Rufus. He was a strong king and ruled his subjects firmly. In 1095, he crushed with great severity a revolt by some of his barons. He acquired control of Normandy from his older brother Robert, by lending him money to go on a crusade. To raise funds for the war, William taxed his English subjects.
William died in 1100 while hunting in New Forest in southern England. He was killed by an arrow shot by one of his lords, Walter Tirel . Historians are not sure whether Tirel deliberately fired the arrow at William. But some people believe that William’s younger brother, Henry , plotted his death . He had been with William at the time of the accident . He rode to Winchester and took charge of the king’s treasury. He then rode to Westminster, where he was crowned king three days later.
Henry I (1100 - 1135)
Henry I was an ambitious and unscrupulous politician. Early in his reign, he set out to convince his subjects that he would not be as ruthless as his brother had been. He proved himself an effective king. He maintained good order and kept his barons in check.
In 1101 , Duke Robert of Normandy invaded England to claim the throne as the eldest of William the Conqueror’s sons. Henry made terms with him, and Robert renounced his claim in return for a pension . Five years later, Henry invaded Normandy, and captured Robert at the Battle of Tinchebrai. Normandy and England were reunited under one ruler.
Henry had two legitimate children , William and Matilda (also called Maud). William was drowned in 1120 while crossing from Normandy to England in a vessel called the White Ship. Matilda was married at the age of 11 to the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V. Henry V died in 1125 . In 1127, the Empress Matilda, for whom Henry I was struggling to win recognition as his heir, married Geoffrey , Count of Anjou . Henry made all the nobles promise to accept Matilda when he died, but then Henry himself quarrelled publicly with Matilda’s husband and died soon after in 1135.
Stephen (1135 - 1154 )
Two other Claimants to the throne were Henry’s nephews, Theobald and Stephen, Counts of Blois . Their mother , Adela, was William the Conqueror’s daughter. When Stephen heard of his uncle ’s death, he crossed to England from France and was crowned king. Theobald accepted his younger brother’s success , but Matilda did not give up her claim. Also as before, the nobles in England had to choose between Stephen, who was in England, and Matilda, who had quarrelled with her father and who was still in France. Most chose Stephen, who seems to have been good at fighting but little else. He was described at the time as “of outstanding skill in arm, but in other things almost an idiot, except that he was more inclined towards evil.” In 1141 Matilda invaded England. Her fight with Stephen led to a terrible civil war, her supporters defeated Stephen in battle and took him prisoner. A council of noblemen at Winchester deposed Stephen and elected Matilda as ruler of England. But Matilda quickly made herself unpopular. Before the end of the year , the English barons released Stephen and he was again crowned king.
Stephen, who reigned from 1135 to 1154, was an able , brave, and chivalrous king, but he depended heavily on the support of his barons. Matilda left England for good in 1148. Geoffrey of Anjou seized Normandy and ruled it in the name of his and Matilda’s son, Henry of Anjou. A year before his death, Stephen promised that Matilda’s son would become king as Henry II