History Sunday: William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy (III)

Welcome to the third and final post about William the Conqueror, the first Norman King of England.  So you don't get confused here is part I, and part II.

Before I go into many, many paragraphs about William's battle prowess and his take-over of England I want to talk about his appearance.  We're actually very lucky in that there were a few contemporary descriptions of him, and the only bone of his not to be lost to the ravages of time, his femur, has been examined using modern techniques.  Another side note here the first King of England to actually sit for a portrait was the infamous Richard II who I've briefly mentioned in my John of Gaunt posts.  His reign was during the 14th century, so during our period in the 11th it just wasn't the done thing.  The only images to survive of people during this time, kings and queens usually, are coins, seals or illuminated manuscripts.  I'm actually surprised I haven't had room to mention the Bayeux tapestry in this series of posts because in my mind you can't think about William I without it.  Unfortunately seals, coins and the tapestry aren't likenesses of a historic figure, usually just a generic one.

From contemporary sources it is said that William was well-built, strong, and had a guttural voice.  From his femur his height is estimated to be about 5 feet 10 inches.  According to a source this was tall for the time but I respectfully disagree with this.  It is a common misconception that our ancestors ere smaller than us, but studies that I've read and other sources I've browsed show that there isn't actually much of  difference between the average height in previous centuries and now.  I think women have grown an inch perhaps, and men are close to that.  It is above average height, regardless.  Unfortunately there is no colour descriptions, his eyes or his hair, but I think it's most probable, given his northern European lineage, that he had dark hair and possibly light-ish eyes, I'm not going to venture a colour.

Now the Bayeux tapestry.

No one knows who comissioned this, there's debate about where it was even created.  I think Odo of Bayeux, and William's wife Matilda are the most popular contenders for the comissioners; I've heard somewhere that it may not have been made in Bayeux at all but in England because English women were famed for their needle skill.  Because it was found in Bayeux I think people will naturally assume that Odo of Bayeux, William's half-brother and the Bishop of Bayeux, was the one who ordered it to be made; unfortunately it's a mystery.  To see a video of the Bayeux tapestry click here.

To understand why William wanted or rather stole, the crown of England we first have to look firstly at the validity of his claim, and secondly the precarious situation in England at the time.

Edward the Confessor

William's great-grandfather, Richard I of Normandy, had two children; Richard II and Emma.  Emma married Aethelred the Unready, King of England and had Edward the Confessor.  England at that time was not the England we know today, half of it was England, the other half now known as the Danelaw where the viking settlers remained.  Cnut, the King of the Danelaw, managed to conquer England and this sent Edward the Confessor, and his younger brother, into exile in Normandy.  Things happened in England that I'm not all that knowledgeable on the details but eventually, as we know, Edward claimed back his throne and became King of England.
Edward never married, and is the only English King to become a Saint.  I don't understand why he never married, especially when during later periods so much focus was placed on producing an heir.  Perhaps it was because of his struggles with the Godwin family, the powerful Earls of Wessex, I'll never know.  No one knows what he intended about the succession because there were many candidates.

William claimed that he had been promised the throne of England by Edward himself, and that he was always supposed to be his heir, but there has never been any proof of this found in any sources.  I don't know if it's true or not, but from what we've seen of William's ferocity and ambition I think he saw an opportunity and took it.  Edward the Confessor died sometime in January 1066, and so started the events that would change English history.

Harold Godwinson claiming the throne

There are a lot of details surrounding the Norman invasion, ones I have tried to read during research for a series of short stories of mine set in England in 1072.  I'm not going to recount them here, only in brief.  After Edward's death Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex, claimed the throne for himself.  This apparently enraged William who thought he was the rightful heir.

Having fought all of his life to win control over Normandy, William gathered a great force and set sail for England after a delay crossing the channel due to bad weather.

Eventually he landed in Pevensey in September of 1066 with an army and a determination that no man could withstand.  By October of the same year he had defeated Harold at the never to be forgotten Battle of Hastings and claimed England for himself, becoming one of the most powerful men in 11th century Europe.

Oh dear, if only it were that easy.  People usually leave this story at the Battle of Hastings but wars are rarely one during one battle.  This is the thing, it's in the name, the Norman conquest of England.  Anglo-Saxons were the inhabitants of England during this time, they spoke a variant of old english, Normans spoke Norman French.  This would literally be like French people coming over to England now and taking over,; your boss is French, he demands and expects you to be fluent in French as well, he's going to change the way things work, the law, to the French laws.  That's not particularly true in this case, Anglo-Saxon law was well developed, even better than the Norman one, and so for the most part William changed nothing like that.  What he did do was pull down prominent Anglo-Saxon magnates and nobles and replaced them with his Norman followers.  This enraged the populace and for many years following Williams coronation he had to fight remnants of the Anglo-Saxon nobility.

The most pungent of these events, for me, was the harrying of the north.  This was literally destruction on a mass scale, ethnic cleansing if you will.  William marched an army to York and then ravaged everything north of that point, burning villages, towns, killing people; it certainly sent a very loud message to the rest of England but it was brutality on an awful scale.  Although I admire William I loathe him for this; mass punishment for only a few perpetrators is illogical and barbaric.

Unfortunately even up until the end of William's life he faced opposition from the Anglo-Saxons. It didn't help any that he commissioned the Domesday book in 1085/1086 that recorded everything he owned in England, every property, every village, town, home, castle, etc.  Although it was despised at the time it has now become an invaluable resource about the geography of England, and the history of the largest cities and towns.

William died in 1087 probably from a fall from his horse although it's a bit unclear what actually happened.  He wasn't a very respected king because as soon as his last breath had left him everyone scurried away to prepare for the aftermath his death would bring, and when his body was eventually found most of the things in his residence were stolen by servants and his body was lying naked on the floor.  I act shocked about things like these but it also happened to Henry II as well.

Slowly after his death the great empire he had clawed and scraped together disintegrated until roughly 1100 when Henry I managed to regain most of it.  He left England to his son William Rufus, and Normandy to his eldest son, and possibly most disliked, Robert.  Over the remaining decades until Henry I's reign the brothers bickered terribly for control over the other's domain, until eventually the youngest son, Henry, became eventual heir to William's empire.

Queen Elizabeth II, the current monarch, is descended from William, as are many other people around the world.  He brought Norman French, which merged over hundreds of years with Anglo-Saxon to give our modern day English.  Beef is actually a Norman word, cow is Anglo-Saxon.  He brought many things to England, even Scotland, Wales and Ireland, although indirectly.  I personally think the Norman Invasion is a definitive pivotal point in English history, not the most important, but definitely in the top 5.