To a certain extent the Normans, like their Viking predecessors, were pushing at an open door in their plans to invade Britain. Edward the Confessor became King of England in 1042. He was a grandson of Richard, Duke of Normandy, through his father’s marriage to Richard’s daughter, Emma. His father, Ethelred, had been a disastrous King who failed to protect his people from the predatory Vikings and his marriage to Emma, who brought to his court a train of Norman followers, only increased his unpopularity. After Ethelred died, Canute succeeded him and Edward fled to Normandy, returning to the throne a few years after Canute’s death. By this time he had developed Norman tastes.
Edward the Confessor, as his name implies, was as much a priest as a king, adopting the ideal of chastity even though he was married. His religious activities earned him sainthood, but his political incompetence at a time of national danger prepared the way for the final collapse of Anglo-Saxon England. His enjoyment of Norman ways caused resentment among his Anglo-Saxon subjects, particularly Earl Godwin of Wessex who was at one point driven into exile in Flanders, but returned to secure his place in the kingdom with popular support. By 1066, when Edward the Confessor died, England once again looked like a prize worth taking. It was unsettled – the Anglo-Saxons resented the power and influence that had been given to Norman intruders; it was ungoverned – Edward had not passed any laws or concerned himself unduly with the management of his country; and it had no heir – Edward’s devotion to chastity had seen to that.
There was no precise formula for the succession of a new king in Anglo-Saxon England. The nearest blood relation to Edward was a boy called Edgar the Atheling, but the Witan, the assembly that chose the next monarch, rejected him in favour of Godwin’s son, Harold of Wessex. England’s enemies saw their chance. The King of Norway, Harald Hardrada, declared himself the true successor, and attacked, supported in his claim by Harold of Wessex’s brother, Tostig. William, Duke of Normandy, announced that Edward had promised him the throne and prepared to attack as well. Harold, the last King of Wessex, heir to Anglo-Saxon England’s last brief surge of glory, was trapped. While he waited and watched for William to arrive along the south coast of England he heard news that Harald Hardrada had landed in the north-east and had defeated the northern earls. Turning away from his southern watch he marched north and at the end of September 1066 met his Viking enemy at Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire. The story goes that before the battle Harold rode out to meet his disaffected brother, Tostig, who was now his mortal enemy. He offered him a third of his kingdom and his own life if he would desert the Norwegian king. Tostig asked him if there was anything he was prepared to give to Harald Hardrada. Harold of Wessex replied: ‘Seven feet of ground or as much more as he is taller than other men.’ Tostig then said: ‘We are united in our aim. Either to die with honour, or else conquer England.’ A furious battle then took place. Harald Hardrada fought like a man possessed but was slain. Eventually the whole of his army was destroyed: his men were cut down and killed as they ran for their boats to get home. Harold of Wessex had won a huge victory. As he led his exhausted forces back towards York he heard news that William had arrived off
the south coast.
After a four-day ride, Harold reached London. Much of his army followed him on foot and had not arrived by the time William had landed and begun to carry out raids in the immediate vicinity. Harold rounded up what troops he could to reinforce the exhausted victors of Stamford Bridge and on 14th October took up his position on Senlac Hill in Hastings. Harold and his army fought to the last against the Norman invaders but the Norman cavalry supported by their archers proved too strong for them. Harold was killed and his army scattered. The last Anglo-Saxon King of England had held power for only a few months, but he had held it bravely. His country was lost forever. A band of invaders probably not much more than 10,000 in number had captured the country. The Norman Conquest had begun.
William the Conqueror was shrewd. He made sure that he had papal blessing for his English excursion and he could now proclaim that his victory was ordained by God. He also had other advantages of a rather more practical kind. His principal rival, the King of Norway, had been killed. He had a strong, loyal force of experienced knights and a Church that was well organised and international in its approach. On Christmas Day 1066, he was crowned King of England in London and within two years had brought all of the south under Norman control. The north took a while longer to subdue. Two northern earls, Edwin and Morcar, supported by another Danish invasion, took up arms against the new King but their rebellion was suppressed with fierce savagery. This was a new time in Britain. The confused society that had arisen from the uneasy partnership between Anglo-Saxons and Danes was now ripped away. North and south were united and the country fortified with stone castles: the Normans were great builders.
Towards the end of his reign, in 1085, William ordered a survey of his newly conquered kingdom and by the following year had received its first draft. ‘The Domesday Book’ is an extraordinarily detailed document about all the land lying south of the rivers Ribble and Tees, which at that time formed the border with Scotland. ‘No single hide nor a yard of land, nor indeed one ox nor one cow nor one pig … was left out’, according to one account of its compilation – an indication of what an exacting master William the Conqueror was. Everything he needed to know for the purpose of raising money, or controlling the population, was in there. Landholders, tenants, slaves, freemen, woodlands, rivers, meadows, ploughs, fish, cattle, churches and mills are all meticulously recorded. It is a unique document about the British state at a crucial point in its development: for William it must have represented a very satisfying inventory of conquest.
The battle marked the moment when Britain emerged from the Dark and Early Middle Ages into the Medieval Period.
William died in 1087 before the book was completed, but by that time far-seeing changes to the way the country was run had taken place. He confiscated land from its previous owners and redistributed it among his loyal aristocratic followers. Poaching deer was forbidden and punishable by mutilation and, later, death. The new landowners could now keep the poor at bay and under their control. The grant of land came with the obligation to raise soldiers for the King whenever necessary: the lord gave some of his property to knights who in return had to supply forty days of military service as required. William also carried out Church reforms, separating Church and lay courts and enforcing celibacy on the priesthood. These great changes created a feudal structure that would remain at the heart of British society throughout the Middle Ages. The country’s language changed too. The Normans spoke French and this began to permeate existing Anglo-Saxon.
Human beings tend to adapt. History is as much about evolution as it is about sudden, transforming events. The Battle of Hastings was a single episode of momentous significance. Without doubt it marked the moment when Britain emerged from the Dark and Early Middle Ages into the Medieval Period. The country was united and its systems of government and administration integrated into a single machine. But William the Conqueror used what he found: he retained, for instance, many features of the Anglo-Saxon legal system, albeit converted to suit Norman purposes. Like the Romans a thousand years before, or the German tribes who flooded across Britain in the wake of their departure; like the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes who fought each other and lived side by side in the centuries that followed, the Normans made sure that Britain gave to them at the same time as they gave to it. The success of the Norman Conquest lay in its flexibility as much as in its rigour.
The population of England in 1066 was about 1.5 million. The whole country collapsed before a Norman force of a few thousand men. For a thousand years it had suffered conquest and intrusion, an island which was as much a prison as a fortress. After 1066 things began to change. The people became increasingly integrated. They began to look outwards. Their island became their greatest protection and, unaware of the significance of what they were doing, they began to put together the first tiny pieces