William in Power

It is important to emphasise that William’s victory at the Battle of Hastings was by no means a foregone conclusion.   William needed to secure his position in order to prevent a revolt against him.  Following his success at Hastings, William’s troops rode around London to Berkhamsted in a campaign intended to terrorise the English, forcing them into submission and accepting him as the new King.

William’s coronation on 25^th December 1066 at Westminster Abbey, however, proved to be somewhat of a fiasco.  The ceremony was conducted in both French and English, and after having sworn the oath, the crowd were asked if they would accept William as their King.  The French soldiers mistook their shouts of acceptance for the beginnings of a riot and by consequence burnt down some of the houses which surrounded the Abbey.  Nonetheless, ‘trembling from head to foot’ William finished the ceremony.  With the majority of the congregation having already left in panic, this event illustrates the ease with which the tense relations between the French and English were able to easily escalate: William’s position as King as by no means secure.

Despite this, William returned to Normandy in March 1067, leaving Bishop Odo of Bayeux his half-brother, acting as Regent and the Earl of Kent.  Alongside William fitzOsbern, Odo erected numerous Motte and Bailey Castles so as to emphasise the Norman presence within the landscape.   Many Norman soldiers stayed in England following the invasion and began to take the places of the English nobility, further reinforcing the strength of William’s new regime.  The BBC website gives detailed examples of Anglo-Saxon land owners whose daughters married Norman nobles so in the hope of preventing the seizure of their lands, suggesting acceptance of the Norman elite within English society.

For the first three years of William’s rule, uprisings were confined to small local areas.  In 1068 Earl Edwin and Earl Morkere attempted to rise up against William, but were forced to surrender at Nottingham and similarly, Edgar of Æthling who was Edward the Confessor’s nephew and around whom much rebellious talk arose, fled to Scotland and stayed there under the protection of Malcolm III.  

The Harrying of the North (1069)

It was not until 1069 in Northumbria that the first wide scale uprising against the Norman regime was witnessed.  The Northumbrians attacked Durham Castle, murdering Earl Robert.  Joined by Earl Gospatric and Edgar of Æthling, who had returned from Scotland  and was proclaimed to be their rightful King, they continued on to York.  William met them there and temporarily quelled the revolt, building castles at Nottingham and Warwick on the journey.  Yet on September 20^th with support from King Swein of Denmark, who held his own ambitions for the English throne, York was recaptured by the Northumbrian rebels.  William’s response was to terrorise the lands surrounding York and Durham, burning crops and homes which caused mass famine and death.  Even in the Domesday Book which was produced some eighteen years later, the area was described as wasta meaning that it was uninhabited.  This Norman brutality became known as the Harrying of the North and illustrates the extent to which violence aided William’s consolidation of power.

Peterborough and Ely (1070)

The next major opposition to William came the following year from the Fenlands in East Anglia where the monasteries of Peterborough and Ely were held as centres of Anglo-Saxon strength.  Hereward, a thegn, had returned to England to find that his brother and father had been murdered.  Wanting revenge, he joined forces with the Danish and sacked the monastery at Peterborough so as to prevent the Norman Abbot Thorold from possessing the treasures there.

Hereward then travelled to Ely where he was joined by Earl Morkere in one ‘last ditch attempt’ at resistance against William.  The Normans blockaded Ely, however, entering the Abbey through a secret cause way, and ultimately proved successful in the conflict.  Whilst Morkere was imprisoned, Hereward was appeased, having his lands returned to him.

Scotland and the Church

William then met with Malcolm III of Scotland, agreeing in the ‘Peace of Abernethy’ that Scotland would no longer provide protection for those who opposed William.  This helped to strengthening his position as it illuminated the possibility of enemies harbouring together north of the border and planning further attacks. 

The replacement of a third of the English Bishops with Normans (Lanfranc of Bec replacing Stigand as the Archbishop of Canterbury and Thomas of Bayeux being appointed the Bishop of York) further helped William to secure his position.  Starkey argues that the erection of new Norman Churches throughout the land acted as a form of architectural propaganda – their immense size providing ‘visible proof that God was on William’s side’.

Evidently, William’s conquest of England was by no means the easy transition which many scholars assume and was certainly not ensured simply by his victory at the Battle of Hastings.  It was rather the result of numerous efforts of consolidation, encompassing religion, culture and customs which ensured William’s place as one of the most famous Kings of England.

I think that this would be quite a complex topic to teach as the names of the different battles and rivals to William are quite numerous.  One possible solution would perhaps to set the class to write an account, either in support of or in opposition to William, in which they could include their plans for each battle; for example, charting plans to challenge William from Hereward’s point of view.