William The Conqueror
The year 1066 was a very important one in history of British. In that year two English kings died and
an invader captured the throne. 'By the splendour of God I have taken possession of my realm;
the earth of England is in my two hands.' With those words William leapt ashore as he
invaded Anglo Saxon England in September
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1066. His forces
met the English army led by King Harold at the Battle of Hastings.
After a gruelling fight, King Harold was killed and William
became the first Norman King Of England. Harold had been king for only ten months.
What right had William, who did not even speak English, to be England's king? He was ambitious and being a king
was more important than being a duke.
He claimed that the previous English king,
Edward the Confessor (r.1042-66), who had grown up in Normandy, had promised that
William would be the next king. But, when Edward died in January 1066, it was
Earl Harold of Wessex, a powerful and popular Anglo Saxon noble, who was crowned as the new king.
So William invaded England and settled the matter by force.
Conquering the land
Following his coronation on Christmas Day 1066, at Westminster Abbey, William sent his Norman
soldiers to every part of the kingdom. Their task was to establish strongholds by building castles
and dealing with anyone who would not accept William as king. At first, William tried to rule
with the cooperation of the Anglo Saxons, but the greed of his Norman nobles for land soon caused bitter resistance. Although William was a religious man and fair to his friends, he was brutal towards his enemies. When English rebels burnt down a Norman castle at York in 1069, William was furious. He ordered his soldiers to destroy every village, to burn the crops and to kill all the animals over a wide area. This was called the 'harrying of the north' and led to a terrible famine in which many people died from starvation. This is how a monk, Simeon of Durham, described the event:
'It was horrific to see human bodies rotting in the houses and the roads, and there was a terrible smell and a great silence
fell over the land.'
Feudalism and homage
William rewarded his Norman supporters by giving them land that he had seized from the English.
This helped ensure that they stayed loyal. They shared out some of their land to other Norman soldiers
in a system known as feudalism. In return for this land everyone had to promise loyalty and service to
the king. This was called homage.
The Conqueror dies
Even as one of the England Kings, William still gave a great deal of attention to his lands in France. In 1087 he attacked a French town whose soldiers had raided his land. He ordered his men to burn down the entire town.
As he rode through the burning ruins a hot cinder made his horse stumble. William was thrown off and
seriously hurt. He knew he was dying. As he remembered his many cruel deeds, we are told, he became
frightened of facing God. On his death bed he is supposed to have said:
‘ I persecuted the native inhabitants of England beyond all reason, I am stained with the rivers of
blood that I have shed.'
Extract from “Medieval Britain, Medieval Monarchs”, written by Nigel Smith. East Sussex:
Wayland Ltd, 1996.
Amazon eBAy:
davis’ attribution of the diploma to william i was rejected in 1920 by charles
wendell david, on the grounds that one of the
signa
is bishop odo of bayeux, who
was imprisoned by the conqueror in late 1082 or early 1083, and could not therefore
have subscribed a diploma of king william i which includes a dating-clause of 1084
.
for this reason he preferred to assign the diploma to william ii, and suggested that
it could perhaps be dated to the year 1091 when the three brothers william rufus,
robert curthose and the future henry i, all of whom david believed to be among
the
signa
, were in western normandy after the first two had besieged henry in le
mont saint-michel. this line of reasoning, appealing as it is, presents well-high insuperable
problems which will be discussed later; in particular, at least one, and
probably several, of the
signa
must date from earlier than 1091. it is also difficult
to accept that william ii should be the most prominent
signum
to a norman diploma
concerned entirely with norman matters before the start of his protectorate of the
duchy in 1096. in addition, although william the conqueror’s sons are known on
occasion to confirm grants to religious houses in each other’s territories, in all known
cases this was done by twin confirmations, rather than all of them attesting a single
document
. for these reasons alone, the text needs to be reconsidered and, given
what we know of its form, assessed in the light of modern diplomatic criteria appropriate
to a document written in typical
pancarte
form. the text is likely to be an
edited compilation of a series of grants and the
signa
may well have been assembled
over a period of time, or even merged from more than one earlier document
.
there are two basic possible ways in which the surviving
pancarte
might have
been compiled, within which several further variables are possible. the first possibility
is that the diploma may have been an original to which
signa
, perhaps with autograph
crosses, were added at the moment of the document’s first confirmation in
1084, with other
signa
, including bishop odo’s, added later. in this case, the notices
would have been additions made at different times in space in the middle of
the parchment above the colophon which must date from before abbot roger’s
death in 1094
; the confirmation by william de baudreville’s son geoffrey, which
took place in 1128, provides a
terminus
for its insertion, and in all likelihood for
that of the other notices as well. the second is that the whole document was written
by a single scribe after the confirmation of william de baudreville’s grant. in this
case we are dealing with a single sheet, all of which was written after 1128, and
which contained copies of all the documents
8
. the most plausible variable to these
two basic possibilities is that the copy of the diploma was not written in 1084 but
later after all the
signa
had been added, and that the lost single sheet contained
distinct copies of five documents all made at different times before 1128. the loss
of the crucial single sheet in 1944 makes it impossible now to decide between these
possibilities. whatever the case, however, it is of crucial significance that the abbey
of lessay is known from other evidence to have compiled documents in
pancarte
form and to have added
signa
to existing texts. the lengthy record of the earliest
grants to the abbey accumulated its
signa
over a period of approximately half a
century
.
the
signa
to the diploma contain several individuals either of primarily local
significance or of wider significance, but with a power-base in the cotentin. this is
true of roger d’aubigny himself, nigel
vicomte
of the cotentin, herbert d’agneaux,
richard bloet, richard de mary, geoffrey de say and in all probability of the otherwise
unknown odo bardol, gervase, aubrey the chamberlain, william de grimouville
and geoffrey carbonel
. roger d’aubigny and his son rualoc also appear as witnesses
to the settlement of a plea held at cherbourg on 27 december 1080
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