Rebellion In Norman England

On Christmas Day 1066, William The Conqueror was crowned king of England at Westminster Abbey. His coronation seemed to be going off smoothly until the time came for the Anglo Saxons to pay homage to their new king by bellowing out an enormous war cry. William’s guards outside the abbey were unaware that this was going to take place, took it to mean that William had come to some harm and so went on the rampage, burning nearby buildings. William was furious at this breakdown in communication but what this incident shows is how tense things were in England at the time. The Normans expected rebellion and they were right to be fearful.

As king, William developed an obsessive thirst for money as the chronicler William of Malmesbury describes ;”For, through dread of his enemies, the king used to drain the country of money through which he might repel their attacks.” Shortly after becoming king, William imposed heavy taxes on the English people and employed heavy handed tactics to enforce his authority. He marched on Exeter and besieged the town. The local population not only resisted William stubbornly but they also struck down scores of William’s soldiers. One young man William would have to keep a particularly close eye on would be Edgar Atheling, a claimant to the throne who, as a grandson of Edmund Ironside, had strong ties to the English crown. William was very aware of the threat posed to him by Edgar and he took the Aetheling with him during a brief return trip to Normandy. However, Edgar would not remain in William’s custody for long and in the years to come he would join in rebellions against the Norman king.

The taxes William imposed went on a remarkably vast programme of castle building, the ruins of which can still be seen far and wide across England today. The ASC says;”Shortly after Easter 1067, William went to Nottingham and built a castle there, so from there to York and there built two castles, also in Lincoln and elsewhere in those parts.” William was obviously a man ill at ease, desperate to establish his total authority over his new kingdom and much of his focus would be in the north. He was finally joined in England by his queen, Matilda, who would be crowned in May 1068, shortly having given birth to her and William’s final child, the future Henry I. Henry was the only of the royal couple’s children to be born in England, at Selby in Yorkshire. The slightly random birthplace for a Norman prince is a clue as to where William’s priorities were at that particular time.

William had enemies coming out of his ears. In York, he had to put down a rebellion led by Edgar and which was supported by King Sweyn II of Denmark. Sweyn was born in England and was a grandson of Sweyn Forkbeard who had briefly been king of England between late 1013 and early 1014. Having bribed Sweyn to abandon the campaign, William marched north and drove Edgar back into Scotland where he had been taking refuge. According to The ASC, the rebellion had caused the death of hundreds of Normans and William’s revenge was terrible. He ravaged the land, massacring all those who stood in his way. This became known as the Harrying of The North. Many died quickly at the hands of the Norman swords, others met a slower, more miserable death as access to food was denied to them by the killing of animals and the burning of crops. Dead bodies lay strewn everywhere and disease spread.

Just prior to this horrible massacre, William had other unwelcome guests in his kingdom. Three men named Edmund, Godwin and Magnus had arrived in England, having sailed over from Ireland. They were sons of the man William had defeated at Hastings, Harold Godwinson.

Godwinson’s sons raided across the south west and took their plunder back to Ireland. They were not finished and they returned with a large force, landing in Devon. One of William’s loyal magnates, named by the ASC as Earl Brian, marched westwards to meet this latest threat. The Normans defeated Harold’s sons at the Battle of Northam in 1069 and put an end to this particular danger and it’s possible that Magnus died in the battle with his two brothers not surviving him much longer. A more famous rebellion was led by Hereward The Wake. Born in Lincolnshire, Hereward was a troublesome youth who eventually angered his father to the extent that he was banished from the family home. After a career of travelling far and wide, a more mature Hereward returned home to find a gruesome sight.

As he approached his family’s house, a decapitated head could be seen hanging over the doorway. The head belonged to Hereward’s brother. Hereward had returned too late to save his sibling but in time to gain revenge for his grief stricken family. He found the murdering Norman knights, celebrating nearby, completely intoxicated. Hereward drew his sword and cut his brother’s killers to pieces. He gave his brother a dignified burial before replacing the heads of the Norman knights over the doorway. These knights had earned king William a very dangerous and Hereward would lead revolts across the country but most notably in Ely. His defiance supposedly earned him the praise of William who allegedly called Hereward “that fine knight” although whether the king would refer to an outlaw in such terms is dubious.

In 1075, although he was now sitting more securely on the throne, William still faced dangerous opposition. Two earls named Ralph and Roger formed a plot “to drive their royal lord from his kingdom.” This is known as the Revolt of the Earls. They gathered men from Brittany to join the plot and sailed to Denmark to seek support from Sweyn who Ralph and Roger knew they could entice to support them as Sweyn had his own, albeit weak, claim to the English throne. The rebellion however soon fell flat. An earl named Waltheof was beheaded, some of Ralph’s Bretons were blinded or exiled and the rebellion was duly crushed.

The first decade of William’s reign had been dogged by rebellions. The English had resisted the Norman Conquest determinedly but, gradually, William had overpowered them with his own forceful nature and his systematic methods of castle building and brute force. But, for William, the rebellions weren’t only limited to England. He had internal problems in his own family. He fell out with his eldest son, Robert Curthose, who proved to be a very dangerous threat to William and who even had the chance of killing his father before Robert lost his nerve.

William was accused of tyranny both in England and in Normandy. He was blamed for the poisoning of a Norman count as well as disinheriting other nobles including a nephew of Edward The Confessor, evidently looking to eliminate any potential threat to his power. Orderic Vitalus says that as William lay dying in 1087, he expressed remorse for the Harrying of the North although the modern historian Robert Bartlett believes that is Orderic writing what he feels the king ought to have said. Although William did become “the conqueror”, people at the time felt that the troubles that this Norman king had endured were brought on by God’s disapproval of him. William was, after all, a bastard and, in the view of some, he was unfit to be king. As a result, he endured numerous, divinely approved, revolts.