Dan Snow's History Hit - How and Why History: William the Conqueror

Episode Date: June 30, 2020

On 14 October 1066, Norman invaders led by Duke William of Normandy won a decisive victory over the Anglo-Saxon King Harold Godwinson. But why did William have a claim on the English throne? How did the Battle of Hastings unfold? And how did William the Conqueror change England forever? To answer the big questions about this decisive battle, Rob Weinberg talks to Professor Virginia Davis, of Queen Mary University of London.

Hi everyone, welcome to How and Why History on Dan Snow's History Hit. We've launched an exciting new series of podcasts right here at History Hit. It's called How and Why History. You'll never guess what it does. It takes a big, meaty historical subject and explains how and why. We're exploring those how and whys with the world's best historians, writers and academics, ranging from the ancient world to recent times. It's basically a one-stop overview of history's most famous names and big world-changing events so have a listen to this one on william the conqueror if you like it please search for

how and why history wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe lots of you doing that so thank you very much to all the new subscribers there's a new episode out every tuesday and friday there's fascinating ones up there already on things like operation barbarossa, the Vietnam War, Pearl Harbour, and Attila the Hun. And if you can't get enough How and Why History, there are 20 episodes over at History Hit TV. But in the meantime, let's go back to 1066 and the Battle of Hastings. On the 14th of October 1066, one of the most important battles in English history was fought some seven miles north of Hastings. There, Norman invaders won a decisive victory over the Anglo-Saxon King Harold Godwinson, led by Duke William of Normandy, known to history as William the Conqueror.

Never have I seen a man so fairly armed, nor one who rode so gallantly, or bore his arms so well. Neither anyone who bore his lance so gracefully, or sat his horse and managed him so nobly. There is no such knight under heaven. A fair count he is, and fair king he will be. Let him fight, and he shall overcome. Shame be to the man who shall fail him. But why did William of Normandy make a claim on the English throne? How did the Battle of Hastings unfold? And how did William the Conqueror change England forever? To answer these questions about this decisive battle,

History Hits Rob Weinberg talks to Professor Virginia Davis of Queen Mary University of London. This is How and Why History. Virginia, thanks for joining us. Who was William before he became known as William the Conqueror? known as William the Conqueror? Well William was Duke of Normandy and before he succeeded his father as the ruler of Normandy in 1035 he was known as William the Bastard. So what claim did William Duke of Normandy have on the English throne? Well there was a difference between his claim and the real reason he became King of England. The reality is that his claim of the throne was based on three things. The first was his victory to the throne was based on three things.

The first was his victory over the English at the Battle of Hastings on the 14th of October 1066. Then the subsequent submission of the English aristocracy and the city of London to him. And thirdly, his coronation in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. However, that's not the spin the Normans put on it. Post 1066 Norman writings claim that William had been promised the throne by Edward the Confessor. These pro-Norman chroniclers argued that William's invasion was a legitimate one and that Harold Godwinson had usurped the throne and therefore William was forced to invade. and that Harold Godwinson had usurped the throne, and therefore William was forced to invade.

Is there any evidence to suggest that the childless Edward the Confessor had actually promised William the throne? All the evidence we have actually dates from post-1066. If the Confessor had promised the throne to William, the one moment that could have happened would have been 1051-52 when the powerful Godwinson family from whom Harold came were in exile and Edward's French allies were in the ascendant. What was Harold's claim then on the throne? Harold had no royal blood. He was not related to any of the earlier dynasties. He came however from the most preeminent family of 11th century English earls and had been King Edward's right-hand man for much of his reign. He also commanded the support of the bulk

of the English aristocracy. His key claim to the throne was that Edward the Confessor on his deathbed had committed the kingdom to him. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is our main English account of the events, says, quote, Was the Norman invasion of England made up of only William and his Norman subjects? England made up of only William and his Norman subjects? No, William had put together a whole network of Northern European, primarily Northern French, allies to support him in his invasion. They came from Brittany, Flanders and other parts of Northern France. So William must have been quite a powerful and charismatic leader as Duke of Normandy to gather all of this support. I think he was. The people who knew him personally and who write about him speak very highly of him.

And he was a tremendously successful military leader. And therefore the men who followed him would have had good expectations of getting loot and perhaps lands as a result of their alliance with him. So William invades England via the south coast. Why was Harold in the north of England? Well, the political situation in northern England, in Northumbria, in 1065-66, had been a very complex one. The Earl of Northumbria in 1065 was a man named Tostig, who was in fact Harold's own brother. However, in 1065 the Thanes, the leading aristocracy of the area, rebelled against Tostig, claiming he was very harsh. The country was on the verge of a civil war and as a result Tostig was exiled and another English Earl, Morcar, replaced him. However, although Harold had supported the king

against his brother, his brother blamed him for inciting the rebellion. While Tostig was in exile on continental Europe and while William the Conqueror was building up his invasion fleet in France, Tostig was exploring the possibility of gaining allies in Scandinavia. and described as the last of the great Vikings, Harold Hardrada, King of Norway, Tostig invaded England and Harold was forced to move north to defend the northern part of his kingdom. So did Harold have to leave a significant amount of his army in the north of England to face William in the south? Well, he had marched north to defeat Tostig and Hardrada, which he did very effectively at a major battle at Stamford Bridge on the 25th of September. At that battle, the English forces decisively defeated the Norwegian invaders. So it was a really successful victory for Harold and his army.

army. The news of Duke William's landing at Pevensey on the Sussex coast only three or four days after the Battle of Stamford Bridge presented Harold with a major challenge. He couldn't leave southern England which included the Anglo-Saxon capital city of Winchester and the major English commercial centre of London. He just couldn't leave them undefended. However Northumbria was in turmoil following Tostig's and Hardrada's invasion. The city of York had had to surrender to the invaders, although it was now freed, and Harold couldn't just abandon this significant part of his kingdom either. Effectively, he's fighting a war on two fronts. So he therefore left two of the earls, Edwin and Morcar, in the north to show

leadership there and marched south. However much of the army, the king's army, was composed of locally raised shire forces known as the Frith and he expected to be supported by local shire forces raised from southern England when he moved south. So he's not facing William with a vastly depleted army. And they're probably tired, worn out from marching up to the north and then marching back again. But they're also probably elated because they have won a massive victory over the Norwegians. And the local troops who were raised from the southern shires would have been fresh. So he's not facing William with a vastly depleted army. So how does the Battle of Hastings play out?

We have a lot of detailed accounts of the battle surviving from the post-conquest Norman Chronicles. It was a really hard fought, long battle. For most of the battle, the English shield wall, which is the men standing shoulder to shoulder shield to shield, stood firm as the Norman cavalry charged them, which actually meant the Normans simply could not progress on the road to London. It was also a very long battle. It lasted from about nine in the morning when fighting started until nightfall, about six. That's a long time by the standards of medieval battles. It was a close-run thing and in the end what won it was the Norman soldiers guile.

They kept feigning flights which led eventually the English into breaking their shield wall and then they were able to be dispersed. Otherwise the strong English position on the top of a hill, which meant the Norman army had to ride uphill to charge them, and the effective English defensive battle tactics would have made them unbeatable. Harold's death occurred towards the very end of the battle, we know that from the accounts, and may have been the reason why the English resistance finally collapsed. Loud was now the clamour and the great slaughter. Many a soul then quitted the body it inhabited. The living marched over the heaps of dead, and each side weary of striking. He charged on who could, and he who could no longer strike still pushed forward.

The strong struggled with the strong, some failed, others triumphed. The cowards fell back, the brave pressed on, and sad was his fate who fell in the midst, for he had little chance of rising again, and many in truth fell who never rose at all, being crushed under the throng. And now the Normans had pressed on so far that at last they had reached the standard. There Harold had remained, defending himself to the utmost, but he was sorely wounded in his eye by the arrow, and suffered grievous pain from the blow. An armed man came in the throng of battle, and beat him to the ground, and as he sought to recover himself a knight beat him down again, striking him on the thick of his thigh, down to the bone. striking him on the thick of his thigh, down to the bone.

The standard was beaten down, the gold standard was taken, and Harold and the rest of his friends were slain. But there was so much eagerness and throng of so many around, seeking to kill him, that I know not who it was that slew him. What kind of casualty numbers are we talking about? Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows,

where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. There are new episodes every week. We don't really know how big any of the armies were. William of Poitiers gave a figure of about 60,000 Normans and implied that Harold had many more. gave a figure of about 60,000 Normans and implied that Harold had many more.

But historians are rightly sceptical about the numbers cited by contemporary chroniclers. And most modern historians have concluded that the numbers on both sides were fairly balanced, with about 7,000 to 8,000 in each army. What the Normans had, which the English did not, were the mounted knights, the cavalry. Prisoners were not taken in line with Anglo-Scandinavian practice. Leaders and participants were slaughtered rather than captured and ransomed. And we also know that the deaths of many major landholders at the battle meant that William was in the position of being able to reallocate their land to reward his followers as promised after the battle.

Do we owe much of the knowledge of the battle to the Bayeux Tapestry? The Bayeux Tapestry provides us with wonderful visual images of the events of the Norman Conquest. So we can see the details of the building of the invasion fleet by the Norman Dukes. We can see illustrations of a very early Mott and Bailey castle constructed by the Normans at Pevensey when the fleet landed. We can see the appearance of Halley's Comet early in 1066 as a portent of disaster. This all makes it a really valuable source. However its narrative is based largely on the post-conquest written accounts, so it doesn't add greatly to our understanding of the complexities of the story of the conquest.

So after winning the Battle of Hastings, does William transfer his residence permanently to England? No he doesn't. After the Battle of Hastings and his Christmas coronation in London, William is faced by a very real challenge. He has to rule a cross-channel empire, England and Normandy. He was Duke of Normandy and King of England with responsibilities to each of these areas. So he therefore spent the rest of his reign dividing his time between the two. Whenever he was in one part of his realm he had to leave a regent to act on his behalf in the other. He first went back to Normandy in fact as early as 1067, only a year after the

initial conquest. He was back and forth over the next 20 years and after 1073 in fact he spent most of his time in Normandy where he was having to fight attacks from other northern French rulers and when his death took place in 1087 it was in the Norman city of Rouen. So who was the regent he put in place in England? It varied and the first time he went back it was his half-brother Bishop Odo, Bishop of Bayeux but it tended to be whoever was in favour and could be trusted not to be too over powerful. Were there any attempts during that period to claim back England for the English?

Yes there were substantial attempts because we think of the Battle of Hastings as being hugely decisive. One battle and England is William's. That wasn't the reality. Although he was crowned in late 1066, he was not yet secure on the throne. And over the next five or six years, he faced a series of rebellions led by exiled English leaders, including members of Harold's family who had fled to Ireland after Hastings. So it was not in fact until after a major rebellion in the north of England, which he crushed very savagely, that William could really begin to feel properly secure. The English in rebelling against William had two problems. One is that although rebellions occurred all over the kingdom in these four or five years, they were not joined up.

It really was the case that they were isolated incidents, allowing William to defeat them and then move on and defeat the next one as it broke out. The second problem was there was no single English leader around whom the rebels could coalesce. leader around whom the rebels could coalesce. How did William secure England for his followers? Did he promise them all sorts of land and spoils? He did. He had a series of strategies to do this. Key amongst these was the building of substantial royal castles which dominated important areas. The Tower of London, which we think of as that iconic Norman building, was amongst the earliest of these castles, but a network of castles emerged across England in

Rochester, in Norwich, in Oxford, York, Nottingham and elsewhere. So there was a physical presence in the landscape which also provided secure defensive buildings. But William also gradually replaced the old English aristocracy with Norman and French lords who were loyal to him. Also churchmen, particularly bishops and archbishops, were important in local and national government. And William appointed churchmen such as Lanfranc Archbishop of Canterbury, who formed an important body of royal councillors. So around this time, something very famous appears in English history, which is the Doomsday Book. What was that exactly?

The Doomsday Book was a record of who was Lord of land across the whole of England, which took place at the end of William's reign. At a council, Christmas 1085, he ordered the making of Doomsday Book. And if I can just read you a quote from what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle actually said about this. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle wrote, quote, he sent his men all over England into every shire and had them find out how many hundred hides there were in the shire, what land and cattle the king had in the county and what Jews he ought to have had in 12 months from the shire. He had a record made of how much land his archbishops and bishops and earls and abbots

and what or how much everybody had who was occupying England in land. So it's a sort of giant census of landholders. And for that reason, it's really important for historians. For that reason, it's really important for historians. What changes do you think William introduced to England that wouldn't have happened if Harold had remained king? The big change is the replacement of an English aristocracy with a French-speaking one. This created, I think, a divide in society between the peasantry,

the majority of the rural population, and their lords. And we can even see this reflected in the English language, the ways in which it developed. So the words for the animals who were looked after by English peasants were English words, cow, sheep. While when those same animals appeared as food on the Lord's table they were called by the French terms beef mutton. So what happened to the English aristocracy? They're very largely wiped out. At Hastings where really it's a cliche to say it but the flower of the English aristocracy were killed. Others were killed after they had been involved in

some of the risings against William and some of the less important members of the aristocracy found themselves living under the authority of Norman Lords so their status is downgraded I think. Did William himself ever learn English? No he didn't however he did employ men who could deal with the three languages being used in late 11th century England, English, French and Latin. So he was able to communicate effectively and govern his new subjects. However, French remains the dominant language of the nobility for centuries, in fact, until the late 14th century. In conclusion, why do you think William the Conqueror is such an important figure in our history? Because I think in hindsight he changed the direction and the links that England had with Europe.

For the previous century before 1066, many of England's links had been with Scandinavia and the sort of Viking areas of Europe. Now England was linked closely with France, and I think that just tilted and changed the sort of geopolitical axis of England. Professor Virginia Davis, thank you. Thank you. How and Why History?