Chapter 7
In This Chapter
● Providing a who’s who of the claimants to the throne after Edward the Confessor’s death
● Battling it out at Hastings: King Harold and William Duke of Normandy
● Considering how the Norman Conquest changed England, Scotland, and Wales, and how Ireland escaped - for now
● Understanding how the fighting between King Stephen and Empress Matilda threw England into anarchy
The year? 1066. The event? The Battle of Hastings. The most famous date and the most famous battle in English history. The year that William Duke of Normandy crossed the Channel and King Harold got an arrow in his eye. The English sometimes need to be reminded that William conquered only England: The Battle of Hastings didn’t put him on the throne of Scotland or Ireland or Wales. But if the people of Scotland or Ireland or Wales thought that what happened at Hastings was just an English affair, they were in for a very nasty shock. The Norman Conquest changed everything, for everyone.
The King is Dead, Long Live - er
Saxon England didn’t have any firm rules about who should be king. Basically, when the old king died, the crown passed to whoever could (a) show that they had some sort of blood claim, and (b) grab the crown before anyone else got it.
By the time Edward the Confessor died on 5 January 1066, the king’s council - the Witan (or Witenagemot, if you like showing off), a sort of Saxon Supreme Court - had the job of finally saying who was to be the next king. They had four candidates to choose from:
● Harold Godwinsson: Everyone’s favourite, he was popular, a gifted soldier, and had a good head for politics. Ideal.
● William Duke of Normandy: No blood link, but William claimed that Edward promised him the throne.
Part II: Everyone Else Is Coming! The Invaders
● Edgar the Aetheling: Although he was only 14 years old, he had the best bloodline claim to the throne. In 1066, he was too young, but give him time.
● Harald Hardrada, King of Norway: He had a tenuous claim, and no support in England. But he also had a strong nuisance value. He needed watching.
King Harold: One in a Million, One in the Eye
The Witan chose Harold Godwinsson to succeed Edward the Confessor, and it had no doubts about its selection. Harold was the man on the spot, and he also said that Edward’s dying wish had been that he, Harold, should have the crown. (No, there were no actual witnesses to this event, but the claim was good enough for the Witan.) So Harold went to Westminster Abbey, where the Archbishop of York (not Canterbury, a point that becomes important when William arrives on the scene) put the crown on his head.
Trouble on the not-too-distant horizon
Harold’s coronation went fine, but two little problems were already on their way back to haunt him.
Tostig, Harold's brother and soon-to-be ex-Earl of Northumbria
Harold’s brother, Tostig, had been a very harsh Earl of Northumbria, and in 1065, his thegns got together to get rid of him. Harold took the thegns’ side against his brother, forced Tostig to go into exile, and gave the earldom of Northumbria to a useful potential ally called Morcar. Tostig got sore (wouldn’t you?) and headed straight off to Norway to have a quiet word with King Harald Hardrada.
Harold's earlier trip to Normandy and the oath he swore there
In 1064, two years before he was crowned king, Harold had gone to Normandy. We still don’t really know why. Some historians think Harold went over to talk with William about the succession; Harold’s story was that he was shipwrecked, though what he was doing so close to the Norman shore he doesn’t say.
However he ended up in Normandy, William made Harold an honoured guest for a while, but then William turned nasty. When Harold wanted to head home, William forced him to put his hand on a box and swear an oath to help William become King of England when Edward died. After Harold had sworn the oath, William told Harold to open the box. And guess what was in it? Holy relics.
Harold had a serious problem on his hands. Swearing an oath on holy relics, even if you didn’t know you’d done it, was the most solemn type of oath there was. As soon as Harold got home, every churchman he asked, from his local vicar to the Archbishop of Canterbury, said that an oath taken under false pretences or duress doesn’t count (it still doesn’t), but you could bet your bottom dollar William wouldn’t see it like that.
The fightin' fyrd
A genius wasn’t necessary to work out that William was probably going to cross the Channel and fight, so Harold called up the fyrd and stood guard along the south coast of England.
The fyrd was Anglo-Saxon England’s secret weapon: An instant army. Every free man trained in how to fight, and when the local lord or the king needed men quickly, he only had to summon the fyrd and - presto! - he had an army behind him. Of course, when the fyrd marched off, no one was left to do any of the work around the farm, but hey, that’s progress.
But when the invasion came, it didn’t come along the south coast. It came up in Yorkshire.
When Harry met Harry
William wasn’t the invader; it was Harald Hardrada. And guess who was with him? Tostig. Tostig, and Harald Hardrada landed with a massive army, took York (a good Viking city, see Chapter 6), and declared Harald Hardrada King of England.
Then King Harold (the Saxon one) did an amazing thing. He and the fyrd raced up north. Napoleon always said that speed was his greatest weapon, and Napoleon would’ve been impressed with Harold. Just when Harald Hardrada and Tostig were sitting back, thinking it would be weeks before Harold even knew they were there, Harold arrived with the Anglo-Saxon fyrd at his back. And boy, was he in a fighting mood. ‘So this Norwegian wants England, does he?’ said Harold. ‘I’ll give him a bit of England. Six feet of it.’ The two armies met at Stamford Bridge, just outside York. The Saxons crushed the invaders.
The Battle of Stamford Bridge was one of the most impressive victories any Saxon king ever won. The Vikings - the Vikings - didn’t know what hit them. Harold’s men killed Harald Hardrada and Tostig. This battle puts Harold right up there with Alfred, Athelstan, and all the other Kings of Wessex who’d made their names by standing up to the Vikings (refer to Chapter 6 for a rundown of the impressive Kings of Wessex). And Harold hadn’t finished yet.
Come on William, if you're hard enough!
While Harold was defeating Harald Hardrada and Tostig, William had been sitting around at the mouth of the Seine waiting for the wind to change. He’d gathered a huge army and, according to the Bayeux Tapestry, his men had been chopping down trees and building boats big enough to take William’s men and their horses across the Channel and into England. By the time the wind changed and the Normans set sail, no one was left along the English coast to stop them. Everyone had gone north to fight the Battle of Stamford Bridge.
William was lucky. Or you could say, he knew how to make his own luck.
● A heavenly sign: Just before the Normans set sail, a shooting star flew overhead. The Normans were really scared that the star was a sign of bad luck. William told them, yes, it was a sign of bad luck - for Harold.
● Blessing from the Pope: The Pope said William was the rightful king of England, based on the fact that Harold had supposedly sworn an oath - on holy relics, no less - swearing William was the rightful king. In addition, Harold had been crowned by the Archbishop of York, not Canterbury (if you want to know why this even mattered, see the sidebar ‘Who crowned whom and why it was important’). The Pope gave William a special papal banner to fly so he could show everyone God was on his side. Useful.
● Slip sliding away: As the Normans were coming ashore, William slipped and fell. When they saw their Duke come a purler the moment he set foot on English soil, the Normans were bound to think, ‘Uh-oh, is that a bad sign?’ But one of William’s quicker-thinking barons saved the day. He called out, ‘Looks like you’ve already grabbed England with your bare hands, sir!’ and William quickly grabbed a handful of sand and held it up triumphantly. Everyone cheered.
Norman mods and Saxon rockers:
Battle at Hastings
As soon as Harold had dealt with the Vikings up north (see the earlier section ‘When Harry met Harry’ for info about the Battle of Stamford Bridge), he and the fyrd had to about turn and head back down south to deal with William. In double-quick time. Harold and his men must have been shattered, but you would never know it from the battle that followed. When the Normans woke up, they found the entire Saxon fyrd occupying Senlac Hill.
Who crowned whom and why it was important
Harold was crowned by the Archbishop of York, not the Archbishop of Canterbury, and here's why. Years earlier, back in King Edward's time, Harold's dad, Earl Godwin, had led a sort of anti-Norman purge. He got rid of a lot of Norman bishops - including the Archbishop of Canterbury - and lots of Saxon bishops, all loyal to the Godwin family, took over. One of these bishops was Stigand, who became the new Archbishop of Canterbury.
The Pope wasn't happy at all about all these changes. In particular, he said that Stigand had no right to be archbishop while the previous Norman archbishop (whose name was Robert, if you're interested) was still around. The English told the Pope to go and boil his head.
When it came time for Harold to be crowned, he didn't want to take any chances. Because there was no dispute about the Archbishop of York, Harold made sure that he was the one who did the coronation.
So when William got in touch with the Pope about going to England to overthrow Harold, he promised the Pope that if he won, he would get rid of Archbishop Stigand. The Pope was delighted, and said that God was clearly on William's side. Official.
Basically, in an eleventh-century battle, if you were on top of a hill, you had all the aces. The other side had to run up at you, while you could hurl whatever you wanted down at them. All the Saxons had to do was keep their shield wall firm and hack at anything that managed to struggle to the top. The Normans charged again and again, but they couldn’t break through the Saxon shield wall and had to ride back down.
Then the Saxons made their fatal mistake. Some of them broke out of the shield wall and ran after the Normans. Which was very silly because, once they got to the bottom, the Normans simply turned round and cut them to pieces.
Then William brought in his archers, and Harold’s luck ran out. The arrows didn’t break the Saxon line, but if the Bayeux Tapestry (head to the sidebar ‘The Bayeux Tapestry - embroidering the truth?’ for an explanation of that) is to be believed, one of them hit Harold in the eye. Then, if the tapestry has got the events right, the Normans charged with their cavalry, and Harold got cut down.
Of course, how the battle ended doesn’t really matter; what mattered was that Harold was dead. And in a battle about who was to be king, that fact was all that mattered.
The Bayeux Tapestry - embroidering the truth?
Strictly speaking, of course, the Bayeux Tapestry isn't really a tapestry: It's a very long (70- metre) piece of embroidered linen. The tapestry is also a very long piece of propaganda; it tells the story of the Battle of Hastings from the Norman perspective. William's brother, Odo, bishop of Bayeux, was probably the one who had the tapestry made, and it probably hung on the wall in his palace (maybe it covered a particularly nasty 70-metre stain).
The tapestry tells the story of William's invasion of England and the Battle of Hastings in great detail. Harold comes out very much as the bad guy: The tapestry portrays him as an oath-breaker, shows that both Edward and Harold had promised William that he should be king, and makes it look as if Harold was crowned by Stigand, the 'wrong' archbishop - which he wasn't. (See the sidebar 'Who crowned whom and why it was important' for the truth about Harold's coronation and why the Normans would have deliberately portrayed it wrongly.)
The Bayeux Tapestry is such an extraordinary piece of art and such wonderful source material that historians sometimes have to remind themselves that it's not exactly objective. Kings in those days were no strangers to spin and propaganda - look at King Alfred and his carefully crafted Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (see Chapter 6) -but it took the Normans to turn it into an art form.
William Duke of Normandy, King of England
When King Harold died at the Battle of Hastings, William became King of England. The fact that Harold was killed was really handy for William. That Harold’s brothers (his heirs) were killed too made things even better. The Saxons might not like having William on the throne, but for the moment, there wasn’t anyone else around that they could put up instead. So William made his way cautiously to London and announced he would be crowned on Christmas Day in Westminster Abbey.
Coronation chaos
We like to call William the Conqueror, but that wasn’t the message he wanted to send. In William’s view, Harold was the conqueror, the one who had seized the crown illegally; he himself was the rightful monarch being restored to his throne. So William chose Westminster Abbey (which was new, don’t forget) quite deliberately.
Westminster Abbey was Edward’s abbey. By having his coronation take place there, William was showing that he was Edward’s heir, not Harold’s. William also made sure that, like Harold, he was crowned by the Archbishop of York and not by Stigand the ‘illegal’ Archbishop of Canterbury.
No one knew how the people of London might react to William’s coronation, so William posted guards on the abbey doors. When the people inside the abbey let out a shout, probably something like ‘God save the King!’ or ‘Yessss!’, the guards thought William was in trouble. Instead of running in to rescue him, however, they set fire to all the nearby houses. The abbey filled with smoke, everyone ran out to see what on earth was happening, and William, according to the one detailed account we have, was left shaking with fear as the archbishop finally put the crown on his head. Not a good start.
Under new management
As the English (and the Welsh and the Scots) were about to learn, William was a tough customer. No sooner was he crowned than his men set to work building the Tower of London, a massive fortress meant to warn the Londoners against trying anything on: The Normans, the Tower said, were here to stay. Soon the whole country was getting used to the sight of these Norman castles. Because if you thought Hastings was the end of the war, think again: The fighting had only just started.
Trouble in Kent and Exeter
First there was trouble in Kent. Then there was trouble in Exeter, down in Devon. Because Exeter was always causing trouble, William marched down in person with a big army and dealt with it. Then Harold’s sons landed with an Irish army. Sure, William was able to deal with all these threats, but it meant that already other people were claiming the throne. And a much more dangerous claimant than Harold’s family had just thrown his hat in the ring: Edgar the Aetheling.
It's grim up north
Edgar the Aetheling was of the Royal House of Wessex and a direct descendant of Alfred the Great. A lot of important people were very interested in Edgar the Aetheling:
Edwin and Morcar (or Morkere, if you prefer): Edwin of Mercia and Morcar of Northumbria were the two most important English thegns still left alive after Hastings. They defied William and backed anyone who opposed him.
Malcolm Canmore III, King of Scots: The English had sheltered Malcolm and helped him get his throne back (see Chapter 6 for details) so naturally
Malcolm felt very kindly towards them. When the Normans conquered England, Malcolm decided to help the English fight back.
● King Svein of Denmark: It wasn’t that long since the Danes had ruled England, and they were still very interested in it. If there was a chance of helping put Edgar on the throne, then you could count Svein in.
So William had to spend two years, 1068 and 1069, fighting Edgar the Aetheling and his allies. A lot of blood was spilt, especially in York where the Saxons massacred 3,000 Normans. But William won. Edwin and Morcar had to give in, the Danes had to go home, and Edgar the Aetheling had to flee to Scotland. That was when William decided he was going to teach the North a lesson it would never forget.
It was called ‘Harrying the North’. William led his army through the north of England destroying everything - a total scorched earth policy. As if that wasn’t enough, King Malcolm invaded the north the next year and virtually destroyed the city of Durham. Thousands of English were shipped off to Scotland as slaves. But William wasn’t having that either, so he headed back up north again, invaded Scotland and forced Malcolm to acknowledge him not just as King of England, but as overlord of Scotland, too.
In HereWard’s Wake
One little bit of England still held out against the Norman invader - the Isle of Ely. Nowadays, the isle’s got a magnificent cathedral on it, but in those days, it was marshland, ideal for a hideout. The man hiding out was Hereward the Wake. Hereward (that’s Herra-ward) was a Saxon thegn who had always been a bit of a troublemaker, and now he made himself even more of one. He joined up with King Svein’s men to attack the city of Peterborough, and then he teamed up with Earl Morcar in a sort of guerrilla campaign from the Ely marshes.
An Englishman's home is his castles
The Normans knew just how to leave their mark on the land: They built castles. Not nice, romantic, fairy tale castles: These things were big and ugly and built to strike fear into everyone. First, the Normans forced all the locals to dig a huge great earthwork like a vast upside-down pudding bowl and called a matte. Then they built the main fort on the top. We're talking a 1 in 1 gradient here, so you wouldn't be able just to run up the side of it. Then, down at the bottom, they built a smaller mound for all the horses and
cattle and people who weren't going to be based in the fortress itself. They put a strong wooden fence round that and called it a bailey. Motte and bailey castles sprang up all over England and along the frontier with Wales. When you remember that most people had never seen a building higher than a barn, you can see why these castles really made their point: The Normans were in charge now, and don't you forget it.
Extremely interesting linguistic point
Modern English has got bits of Norman French and bits of Anglo-Saxon, and you can use it to see the relationship between the two groups. Animals had Saxon names, like cow or sheep or swine, while they were alive and Saxon peasants had to look after them, but as soon as they got served up on a plate to a Norman lord and his lady, they got French names like beef or mutton or pork. The peasants who had to carry the heavy plates knew some other Anglo-Saxon words, too, and used to mutter them under their breath.
Hereward became such a folk hero (Wake means watchful), ambushing Norman patrols and going into their camp in disguise, that the Normans just had to deal with him. And that meant bringing in ships and engineers and virtually draining the marshes. The Normans managed to capture Morcar and take over Ely Abbey, which had been supplying Hereward and his merry men with food and shelter, and they caught some of Hereward’s men, but they didn’t catch Hereward.
Mine, all mine! The feudal system
William had promised his barons land in England, but he had to be sure that a baron wouldn’t use his land and wealth to get above himself and try and take the throne. William hit on a very simple solution: He created the feudal system in England.
How the system Worked
First, William declared that all the land in England belonged to him. Then he appointed several of his trusted barons as tenants-in-chief (William tactfully used the old Saxon title Earl instead of the Norman French Count), but they had to pay William rent, just like any other tenant. That obligation could be in money; it could also be in loyalty. Tenants-in-chief were supposed to provide the king with a lot of men in time of war.
Down at the bottom of the feudal system were the peasants, or villeins, who had to work the land and pay rent - and who were always Saxons. The word villein gives us villain, which gives you a pretty good idea of what the Normans thought of them. If the feudal system sounds a bit confusing, take a look at Figure 7-1 to help you along.
Figure 7-1: The feudal system
The Domesday Book
The Normans quickly worked out that Knowledge is Power. William wanted to get taxes in from his kingdom, and he didn’t want anyone to escape paying.
So he sent his men out to conduct the first doorstep survey in history. They went to every single village in England and wrote down exactly who owned what and how much.
Ever get that feeling that Big Brother is watching you? The Normans started it. They wrote their findings up in a vast book known as the Domesday Book, so-called, according to Richard FitzGerald, Treasurer of England, ‘because it is not permissible to contradict its decisions, any more than it will be those of the Last Judgement’. And they weren’t far wrong: the Domesday Book was last used in settling a legal dispute in 1982!
Scotland turns English
Scotland’s king, Malcolm III (who got rid of Macbeth; see Chapter 6), was a remarkable man. Although he had a Gaelic title, Canmore, which means
‘Chieftain’, Malcolm was a moderniser at heart. He had spent a long time in England and on the continent, and he could see that Scotland had no future if she kept to her old tribal customs.
Malcolm gave his children English names, and he moved his capital away from the Highlands into the Lowlands, where there were still plenty of people descended from the Angles. He even built a proper Norman-style castle at Edinburgh. So the fact that pro-English Malcolm was killed in an English ambush, fighting to keep hold of his English lands, is ironic.
Malcolm's wife: A saint for Scotland - made in England
King Malcolm Ill’s wife was Edgar the Aetheling’s sister, Margaret. Margaret was highly intelligent and a very devout Christian. She stopped the Celtic habit of holding markets and festivals on Sundays, and she invited English monks of St Benedict to come over and set up their first monastery in Scotland, at Dunfermline. Her chapel in Edinburgh Castle is still there today. She set up the Queen’s Ferry on the River Forth so that pilgrims could cross over to visit the shrine of St Andrew. She even held big dinners for the poor in the royal hall. No doubt exists that Margaret was a much-loved figure, and after her death they made her into a saint: She is a patron saint of Scotland to this day. After all, she did actually live in Scotland, which is more than you can say for St Andrew, Scotland’s other patron saint.
Old McDonald came to harm...
A lot of Scots didn’t like what Malcolm III had been doing, including his brother, Donald Bane. After Malcolm’s death, Donald Bane wanted to take Scotland back to the old ways so he got all the Celtic Scots behind him, seized Edinburgh Castle, and declared himself king.
Malcolm’s sons were having none of this succession, and a right old battle broke out between King Donald and his nephews, with the crown going back and forth between them. Donald even had one of his nephews, Duncan II, put to death, or ‘mrrrdrrrd’ as they say in Glasgow. But in the end, King Donald was no match for our old friend Edgar the Aetheling. Edgar (who was having much more success in Scotland than he had had in England) led an Anglo-Norman army into Scotland, sent Donald Bane packing, and put his nephew - and Malcolm’s son - Edgar on the throne. In fact four of Malcolm’s sons ruled Scotland, and they all helped to make Scotland a more modern country, more like England.
And Wales follows suit
To the Normans, the Welsh border was Injun country. William stationed some of his best barons along it and built some of his strongest castles there - nearly
five hundred of them, some in stone. The Normans weren’t content to sit around on the border, however, so they crossed the frontier and started to take over. The fact that the Welsh were fighting each other helped the Norman incursion, so much so that, by the time William died, the Normans had taken over North Wales and were moving into the south. Then they took over the south and went right through to Pembroke on the west coast. This action was the Norman Conquest of Wales.
But Ireland has a breather
The Normans didn’t try to invade Ireland. Well, not in this chapter. While England, Scotland, and Wales were slogging it out with the Normans, the Irish were having something of a golden age. Brian Boru’s dynasty was on the throne, and the Danes had given up fighting and settled down into respectable careers in the import-export business. The Irish Church was beginning to do things the Roman way, building beautiful Romanesque chapels like Cormac’s Chapel at Cashel, while Irish monks produced illustrated books of the great Irish sagas. The situation looked as though Ireland might turn into a strong feudal state, like England. It didn’t, because disaster struck, but you’ll have to have a look in Chapter 8 to find out what befell them.
The Church gets cross
William kept his promise to the Pope, who had backed his invasion of England: He started sacking Saxon bishops and replacing them with Normans. His choice of Archbishop of Canterbury was inspired: An Italian called Lanfranc. Lanfranc firmly reminded the Archbishop of York who was in charge, told the Irish Church to clean up its act, and told priests in England they had to remain celibate - not a popular message when most priests had live-in partners. Lanfranc enjoyed full backing from William, but trouble was brewing between Church and Crown: the Investiture Contest.
The trouble was about who should appoint bishops. The Pope said only he could do it, but William - like just about every other king in Europe - said it was a matter for the Crown. Things got worse when William’s son, William Rufus, and then Henry I, came to the throne (see the next section). The new archbishop, Anselm, was staunchly pro-Pope, and he had to be sent into exile until eventually a compromise was reached: The Pope would appoint bishops, but the bishops would pay homage to the king. The arrangement was never likely to last, and it didn’t.
William Dies and Things Go Downhill
William died in 1087. If I tell you he was away fighting his own son, you’ll have an idea of how things had deteriorated in the William household. They were about to get a whole lot worse.
Who Wants to be a William heir?
William had three sons, and they all wanted to be king:
● Robert Curthose: The name Curthose means shorty. Robert was the eldest son, always arguing with his father. He got Normandy when William died, but wasn’t quick enough off the mark to get England.
● William Rufus: Rufus meant red-faced. The artist of the family, he liked music and poetry. His enemies said he was gay, which may be true. He was certainly a tough and cruel soldier. As soon as his father died, William Rufus crossed over to England, took possession, and blew a raspberry at Robert.
● Henry Beauclerc: The clever one, which is more or less what Beauclerc means. Henry was the third son. As such, he didn’t stand to get anything when his father died. But don’t count him out. This was a man who once threw one of William Rufus’s supporters from the top of a tower. Utterly ruthless.
Robert, as you may expect, felt pretty sore at not getting England, but he felt even sorer when his brother William Rufus invaded Normandy and made Robert mortgage it to him. (Robert wanted to go off on crusade and needed the money.)
William Rufus as king
William Rufus (1087-1100) was a pretty bad king - one historian called him the worst king England ever had - and he had a minister called Ranulph Flambard who was even worse. But, not to worry: William Rufus wasn’t king for long because one day, while he was out hunting in the New Forest, a French knight called Walter Tyrrel shot him with an arrow.
Accident or contract killing? Tyrrel didn’t hang around to say. Robert had a motive, but he also had an alibi because he was on crusade in Jerusalem.
Prince Henry, however, was close by, and he immediately seized the treasury and got himself crowned king before Robert could claim the throne himself. Poor old Robert. Henry beat him at the Battle of Tinchebrai, took Normandy from him, and then locked him up. (Henry also captured our old friend Edgar the Aetheling (see earlier in this chapter), but you’ll be pleased to hear that Henry let him go.)
Henry Beauclerc (a.k.a. Henry I) as king
Henry I did a lot of good work with the legal system, laying down that everyone was entitled to be protected by the law. He also sorted out the Investiture Contest with Archbishop Anselm (see the earlier section, ‘The Church gets cross’). But his real concern was the succession. Too many examples existed of kingdoms falling apart because the succession wasn’t clear - England, for one - so Henry gave the issue a lot of thought. Ironically his legacy was one of the worst succession crises in English history.
Henry married Edgar the Aetheling’s niece, Edith (which is why, incidentally, the present royal family can claim, by a very, very windy route, to be descended from the Royal House of Wessex). Edith (also called Matilda, but don’t ask me why, this story has enough Matildas in it as it is) had three children: Two boys, William and Richard, and a girl called, er, Matilda.
The two princes grew into handsome young pin-ups, and the future looked promising, until one terrible day in 1120 when Henry and his sons set out from Normandy to England in a couple of ships. Henry’s ship crossed safely, but the White Ship, with both princes on board, hit a rock and sank - with no survivors. So Henry had to turn to his daughter, Matilda, to be the heir to his throne.
Anarchy in the UK
Matilda was a widow: She’d been married to the Holy Roman Emperor, which is why she was known as the Empress Matilda. She remarried, to Count Geoffrey of Anjou, and had two sons.
Henry got all his barons together to swear loyalty to Matilda. But he knew that they didn’t like the idea of having a queen, and they knew that he knew. And the situation wasn’t helped by Henry quarrelling with Matilda’s husband, Geoffrey, and specifically saying he was not to inherit the throne.
So when Henry finally died in 1135, lots of those barons who had sworn loyally to support Empress Matilda through thick and thin suddenly decided they preferred her cousin, Stephen. So Stephen, along with his wife, who was called - really sorry about this - Matilda, crossed over to London and got himself crowned.
But no daughter of Henry I and granddaughter of William the Conqueror was going to take that lying down. Had William given up just because Harold got himself crowned? Well, quite. And so (deep breath):
Empress Matilda’s husband Geoffrey of Anjou invades Normandy and Queen Matilda (Stephen’s wife) attacks Empress Matilda’s supporter Robert of Gloucester at Dover while King David of Scotland, who supports Empress Matilda, invades England to get some of his father Malcolm Ill’s lands back, but David gets beaten at the Battle of the Standard; then Stephen attacks Empress Matilda and Geoffrey of Anjou at Arundel, but they escape, and the Earl of Chester takes Lincoln, and Stephen has to go and besiege it, but he gets captured, and the barons have to accept Geoffrey of Anjou as king until Geoffrey swaps Stephen for Robert of Gloucester, after which Geoffrey goes off to get Normandy and won’t come back to help Empress Matilda, so their son Henry comes to lend her a hand, which is just as well since she’s been thrown out of London and has had to take refuge in Oxford, but Stephen comes and besieges Oxford, and Empress Matilda has to escape down the walls over the river which - luckily for her - was frozen over, during which time the Welsh take the opportunity to chuck the Normans out, and King David of Scotland takes over a huge area of northern England - from Cumbria to Northumbria - and people say God and his angels slept, and Stephen is exhausted, and Matilda is exhausted, too, so exhausted, in fact, that she gives up her claim and goes to live in France, but her son Henry vows to jolly well make sure he is next in line when Stephen dies and WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU STOPPED READING THIS AGES AGO?!
Well, you can see why they called this period the Anarchy. Things didn’t really calm down until Stephen died in 1154 and handed over to Empress Matilda’s boy, Henry Plantagenet. But that’s another story . . .