The Norman Legacy in England

1. Introduction:

     In the previous lecture we have gone through a short overview of Britain’s original inhabitants and the number of people who conquered and controlled the British Isles; mainly the Romans, the Anglo Saxons, and the Vikings. We have also discussed the coming of different versions of Christianity, how the ruling system was working and how they choose the next king. The Witan, as we said in the previous lecture, are the ones who would choose who is going to rule after the death of the King. As a consequence, after the death of Ethelred, the Saxon king, The Danish king Canute took the throne because the Witan believed that having him as a king is better than the anarchy that would burst without a king. One may ask, how did the Duke of Normandy finish as the King of England? And how did this conquest affect the British and European History?

2. From the Duke of Normandy to the King of England:

King Canute died in 1035, his son died shortly after in 1040 leaving the throne in the hands of the Witan who chose Edward, the Son of the Saxon Ethelred, to be King of England. He was named Edward the Confessor. He was known for his religious zeal, since by the time of his death each town had its own church. However Edward the Confessor was the king of England, he lived most of his life in Normandy because His mother Emma was Norman. Among the counselors of the witan the Earls Godwin of Kent and Leofric of Mercia, the former had a son named Harold who was the advisor of Edward. The Witan, on the very same day of Edward’s death, named Harold king of England on January 5, 1066.

On the other side of the sea, on the Northern part of France the Duchy of Normandy was located where another potential heir claimed the throne of England. William of Normandy the son of the Duke of Normandy was the cousin of Edward the Confessor who had a previous meeting with William to name him as his heir by giving him his sword and royal ring as a proof. When William of Normandy heard of the coronation of Harold of Godwin, according to historians, he captured him on the Channel and obliged him to abdicate the throne that is rightly William’s. Harold accepted this deal and even confessed that he already knew about Edward’s promise to William.

After being released, Harold denied all what he confessed to William of Normandy and claimed that he did that under pressure. Consequently, Harold prepared himself to fight William who was known for his strength and violence. What Harold didn’t expect is a second invasion from the north by Harald the king of the Danes supported by Harold’s brother. Here, Harold had two battles to handle with a weak army visibly outnumbered by the Normans.

The Normans were decedents of the invading Vikings in France attached themselves to the national element, even in the second generation they had given up their language; they discovered at the same time a form which reconciled the membership in the kingdom, and the recognition of the common faith, with provincial freedom. Because of intermarriages between the Normans and different kingdoms, new dynasties submerged like the Anglo-Norman.  “Chivalrous life and hierarchic institutions, dialectic and poetry, continual war at home and ceaseless aspirations abroad, were here fused into a living whole” (p29).

Europe, at that period, was ruled by the papacy of Rome (ecclesiastic laws) and had a problem with the new Archbishop of Canterbury who was more aligned with the Saxon church. Obviously, the Papacy supported William as the righteous heir to the throne of England in order to support the Roman Church to flourish again in England. William had to beat his Feudal lord in battlefield to liberate his duchy and win a fortress on the frontier. He vanquished his rebellious vassals in arms, deprived them from their possessions and eliminated, with the Pope’s consent, an archbishop that was allied with them. He became master of Maine in 1062 and made the count of Anjou one of his Vassals and became his heir. As a man of war, William knew that if he wouldn’t be king of England, the future king of England will present a danger to the Duchy, since he would certainly want to expend his power beyond the Channel. After being sent the Banner of church by Alexander II, the Duke of Normandy became King of England in the service of the Church.

When William declared war against Harold, all his allies supported him with arms, ships and warriors. He was well known for being:

 William is depicted as a man of vast bodily strength, which none could surpass or weary out, with a strong hardy frame, a cool head, an expression in his features which exactly intimated the violence with which he followed up his enemies, destroyed their states, and burnt their houses. Yet all was not passionate desire in him. He honoured his mother, he was true to his wife. Never did he undertake a quarrel without giving fair notice, and certainly never without having well prepared for it beforehand. He knew how to keep up a warlike spirit in his vassals: there were seen with him only splendid men and able leaders; he kept strict discipline. (p32)

Harold, on the other hand, was alone to encounter the Norman drift. Besides, it was in the Anglo-Saxon’s nature to be directed more to peace.

         The Anglo-Saxons and the Normans encountered at Hastings. William with 10000 soldiers well equipped and trained vanquished Harold at the beginning of the fight. He expected to be accepted as righteous king of England; instead, the chiefs brought Edgar the Atheling grandson of Edmund Ironsides although he was just a boy at that time. William didn’t give up, so he under sieged the city and convinced the embassy who was sent to meet him to surrender and recognize his as King “they had to recognize the Conqueror, who claimed by inheritance, as their King whether they would or not” (p 35); however, others were still against him and set fire to the House of London where the coronation took place At Christmas in London in 1066. Consequently, once being King, William punished severely those who revolted against him. While his supporters were endowed by hundreds of fiefs, those who didn’t fight him were not deprived of their properties. William wanted to be accepted as the righteous successor of the Anglo Saxon kings and to be abiding by their laws only adding new Norman laws.

3. What did the Norman bring to England?

The consequences of the Norman Conquest were many and varied. Further, some effects were much longer-lasting than others. Still, the following list which summarizes what most historians agree on as some of the most important changes the Norman Conquest brought in England:

• Norman landlords took place of the majority of Anglo-Saxon landowning elite.
• Power and wealth were held by a minority.
• Even bishops were replaced with Norman ones and many archdioceses’ headquarters were relocated to other cities.
• The Feudal system was introduced to England and developed as William gave out lands in return for military service (either in person or a force of knights paid for by the landowner).
• The rise of Manors and Manorialism
• William took control of North England by force leading to severe damages circa 1069-70 CE.
• The reduction of Domesday Book which was” a detailed and systematic catalogue of the land and wealth in England was compiled in 1086-7 CE”.
• Foreign affairs and trade between England and Europe greatly increased.
• France and England became historically intertwined, initially due to the crossover of land ownership, i.e. “Norman nobles holding lands in both countries” Fiefs and families.
• The French language was used as a prestigious court language which led to a significant change in the syntax and vocabulary of the Anglo-Saxon Germanic language.
• They built Abbeys and Cathedrals. It is thanks to the Normans that the Architecture of castles had developed.

4. Conclusion

The struggle did not come to an end as a matter of a fact. After William’s death, his sons raced for power and fought each other to win both the throne of England and the Dukedom of Normandy. These wars led to years of discontent and instability that ended mainly with the rise of the House of Plantagenet with Matilda of Normandy and Geoffrey of Anjou. The Anarchy period and the division of the kingdom will be explained in the next lectures.

For further reading:

1-    HUME, D. (1983), The History of England: from the Invasion of Julius Cesar to the Revolution in 1688. The Libertyclassic: N.Y.

2-    Morris, M. (2017). The Norman Conquest. Pegasus.

3-    Nicolle, D. (1987). The Normans. Osprey Publishing.

4-    Pounds, N.J.G. (1993). The Medieval Castle in England and Wales. Cambridge University Press.