6
It was with great satisfaction that William marched into London in December 1066, ready to be crowned and anointed king of the English. Since disaster at Hastings, the English army had all but vanished – and with it, English resistance. Still, the road to London had not been entirely smooth. After his victory, William had initially waited at Hastings, expecting the English to submit. Only when this didn’t transpire, did he set about further ravaging the Home Counties and planning a march on the capital.
In London, rival plans were being made. Harold and his brothers may have fallen, but the earls Edwin and Morcar – who’d been mopping up in the North during the Hastings campaign – remained alive and well. Along with Archbishops Stigand and Ealdred, they now put forward Edgar the Ætheling as king. What Edgar lacked in age, he more than made up for in legitimacy. That some – perhaps many – anticipated Edgar going on to enjoy a long and fruitful reign is revealed by the actions of the monks of Peterborough, who’d recently lost their abbot. They now elected one of their own, a certain Brand, and sought the Ætheling’s assent for the appointment, which the newly elected king readily gave (an act William would not forget).
Yet even if Edgar’s prospects did not appear too bad at the time, there could have been no doubt that he faced an uphill fight. The English had just suffered a major defeat and remained on the back foot. What was needed was swift and decisive action. The wider William ravaged, the more the local English magnates started weighing up their options. Most would have preferred Edgar; but backing the wrong horse was a dangerous game, and pragmatism trumped idealism. Edgar’s youth and inexperience did little to help the matter. There may also have been divisions within the English camp, for William of Malmesbury reports that Edwin and Morcar had designs of their own on the throne.1
With the Conqueror edging ever closer, such divisions sealed England’s fate. Only William offered realistic prospects of stability – a stability for which many yearned. Once William crossed the Thames at Wallingford and encircled London, most of the English agreed to submit at Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire.2 This was not quite a ‘national’ submission, for the simple reason that the English lacked clear leadership. But it included almost all of those who’d backed Edgar in the intervening weeks: Edwin and Morcar; Archbishop Ealdred of York; Bishops Wulfstan of Worcester and Walter of Hereford; the men of London; and Edgar himself. Resistance would rumble on in some regions. But the heart of the realm was now William’s.
One significant absence is worth registering: Archbishop Stigand. Stigand had been appointed following the flight of Robert of Jumièges in 1052. At the time, this represented a major victory for the Godwin clan. However, it created an almighty uproar in Rome. It was against Church regulations to remove a bishop from his post without papal approval and due procedure. King Edward was hardly going to go out of his way to help the man who’d replaced his dear friend. And so the situation remained unresolved at the time of Edward’s death in 1066, with Stigand de facto archbishop, still unacknowledged by the pope. The English were well aware of the problems. And this lingering stain is presumably why Harold chose to be consecrated by Ealdred of York.3 Typically, it would have been the archbishop of Canterbury who anointed a new ruler. But a new king, whose own dynastic credentials were open to question, could ill afford to take a risk here.
Mindful of these blemishes, Stigand had submitted to William a few weeks earlier at Wallingford. But William was not one to be fooled. He knew full well the nature of the archbishop’s appointment; he also knew that Stigand had been Harold’s creature. William’s supporters were probably already spreading rumours that Stigand – and not the unimpeachable Ealdred – had overseen Harold’s coronation. Here was one usurper, illegally anointed by another. This is the version of events recorded c.1070 by the Conqueror’s chaplain, William of Poitiers, and it almost certainly goes back to the duke’s own attempts to secure papal support in early 1066. By associating Harold’s accession with this earlier act of usurpation, William and his sympathisers ensured a sympathetic hearing in Rome. They presented Alexander II with a simple solution to a thorny problem: Duke William should replace Harold and bring order to the English Church.4
As such rhetorical gymnastics reveal, William’s central problem after Hastings was how to present an opportunistic land-grab as an act of rightful succession. And if Stigand’s appointment offered part of the solution, another was presented by the Confessor’s prior promises. Again, William of Poitiers offers the most direct insights into thinking at and around the ducal court. He reports that in 1051/2 Edward held an important assembly, at which the king promised the throne to William in absentia, then made all the leading English magnates swear oaths to uphold the duke’s rights. We have no evidence of earlier English kings designating heirs in this fashion. And indeed, the details of the ceremony conform suspiciously to the practices of Norman ducal succession, as recorded by Dudo of Saint-Quentin and William of Jumièges. But what matters is less the deception than that such deception was deemed necessary. Both before and after Hastings, William and his advisers worked hard to justify the Conquest.5
In case the point might be missed, William of Poitiers – never knowingly subtle – returns to the subject of Edward’s promises in the context of Harold’s visit to William c.1064. According to his version of events, the English king wanted to strengthen his earlier commitments by binding Harold to them. He therefore sent the earl of Wessex to Normandy to swear a solemn oath to uphold William’s right to the kingdom.6 Again, what matters is less the inaccuracy of the tale – Edward was in no position to be ordering Harold around in the 1060s – than that it was spread around at all. For a duke seeking to raise an army, such stories were a powerful recruiting tool. Harold became an anti-king, an inversion of all that was right and proper. Those who helped replace him could therefore expect to benefit not only in the here and now, but also in the hereafter. For any doubters within the Norman camp, victory at Hastings proved once and for all that God was indeed on William’s side.
Further insights into William’s claims emerge from the so-called Penitential Ordinance, issued upon his return to Normandy in 1067. This was composed by the local Norman bishops and promulgated with the approval of the papal legate (i.e. representative) Ermenfrid of Sion. The text details the penances due from those who’d served William in England. It does not exonerate them entirely from guilt – killing was a sin, even in a just cause – and we remain a few steps away from the kind of thinking that would inspire the First Crusade a few decades later. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt as to the fundamental justice of William’s cause. All those who served the duke in good faith are offered reduced penances for killing; and only those who acted out of avarice, or committed violence after William’s consecration on Christmas Day 1066, are to be treated as run-of-the-mill murderers. This is a powerful affirmation of papal support for the Conquest. It is also significant that the period of just war is conceived as lasting from Harold’s usurpation in January 1066 to William’s consecration at the end of the year. Between these dates, the English were effectively in revolt against their rightful lord (i.e. William) and thus fair game.7
As the Penitential Ordinance reveals, the need to justify William’s claim did not pass with the Conquest. If anything, it became more pressing. As Cnut had discovered, it was one thing to win a realm; it was another to hold onto it. A first step was to place loyal men in positions of power and influence. But lasting rule rested on legitimacy; and here there was much work to be done. It’s no coincidence that William of Poitiers wrote his history in these years, furnishing something close to an ‘official’ version of events. It was also around this time that William of Jumièges updated his imposing History of the Dukes of Normandy in the light of the Conqueror’s stunning successes.
The most important and enduring records of William’s efforts to legitimise his new regime come from England, however. The first of these is a document (or writ) issued for the people of London, shortly after William’s coronation. This assures the citizens of their rights and commits to upholding the laws of the realm as they were ‘in King Edward’s day’. This may all seem rather unspectacular. Cnut had committed to upholding the laws of Edgar in 1018, and the Confessor himself had promised to maintain Cnut’s laws when he landed in 1041. Now William was simply doing the same. Yet what’s significant here is the omission of Harold. The implication, soon to be articulated more fully, is that Harold was never a true king, and that William succeeded directly from Edward.8
But try as William might, Harold remained the elephant in the room. Everyone knew Harold had been king; and in the eyes of most, he’d been a perfectly legitimate one. If there was a usurper, it was William. Yet it was precisely this disjunction between political reality and legal theory that led William and his supporters to assert their case so stridently. Harold may have been king for the better part of a year, but there was now a concerted effort to ignore this. Harold is almost never mentioned in William’s official documents; and only under exceptional circumstances are his acts confirmed. Indeed, of all the many hundreds of documents Harold must have issued, only one survives: a writ for the Francophone (Lotharingian) Bishop Giso of Wells, who went on to enjoy the Conqueror’s favour.9 For churches seeking to secure their rights in the years after 1066, charters in Harold’s name were worse than useless – they were actively detrimental.
The greatest monument to William’s claims, however, is the Domesday Survey: a massive compendium of information about the king’s new realm, drawn up swiftly between Christmas 1085 and 1086. As those who have dipped into its pages will know, the survey is anything but a riveting read. Often simply called ‘Domesday Book’, it actually compromises two separate volumes: Little Domesday, covering Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex; and the larger Great Domesday for the rest of England south of the Tees. The two are clearly companion pieces; and one scribe has been responsible for the entire text, which runs to over 2 million words, across 832 large manuscript pages or folios, each covered on both sides in a small but clearly legible hand. Since the conversion of the English in the late sixth century, only bibles had ever been produced on this scale – and then rarely. In part, the survey’s size was a necessity if the material was all to be included. But it’s also clear that Great Domesday was meant to impress.10 And impress it did. In later years, it was known as ‘the great book’. And eventually, it became ‘the book of the Day of Judgement’ – or Domesday Book, for short.
A typical Domesday entry lists the estates held by a particular lord in a given region ‘at the time of King William’ (i.e. in 1086; tempore regis Willhelmi, given as ‘TRW’ for short), typically grouped and listed within the region by who held them at the time of Edward’s death (i.e. on 5 January 1066, or ‘TRE’ – tempore regis Edwardi). To take a random example, royal holdings in Tiverton in Devon (where the king was the main landholder), read as follows (listed under the lands once held by Countess Gytha, Harold Godwinson’s mother): ‘TIVERTON. TRE paid geld for 3.5 hides. There is land for 36 ploughs. There are 35 villeins and 24 bordars and 19 slaves with 30 ploughs. There are 3 swineherds paying 10 pigs. There are 2 mills paying 66d.’11 Read at any length, the survey soon becomes an insomniac’s dream remedy. But behind such dry, dusty figures lie fascinating insights into local life and society. In Tiverton’s case, it reveals a bustling town of local significance, with two mills and a population in the hundreds. Such records have much to tell us about pre-Conquest England, the nature of William’s regime and the transformations between 1066 and 1086. William’s motives in commissioning the survey remain a matter of debate, but a deep concern for landholding, lordship and dues owed to the king is clear throughout.12 Together, Little and Great Domesday furnish the most comprehensive surviving survey of any pre-industrial society – a veritable treasure trove for the modern historian.
From our standpoint, the survey’s interest lies in its presentation of the Conquest. Though the actual process of conquest and colonisation is never described in any detail, it pervades the material. In the majority of cases, the holder TRW was not the same as that TRE – hence the need for the survey. And even where this was so, as in the case of many royal and ecclesiastical estates, the caesura of Conquest is clear. Yet as with William’s other official documents, the Domesday Survey carefully avoids acknowledging the reality of Harold’s reign or the events of the Conquest, maintaining the pretence that William directly succeeded Edward. For example, when touching on two estates of Regenbald, who served Edward, Harold and William successively (perhaps as chancellor), Great Domesday comments elliptically that ‘two men held [these] as two manors in the time of King Edward; Earl Harold joined them into one.’ Clearly it was Harold who, as king, united the estates and granted them to Regenbald. But the unwitting reader would be forgiven for thinking that Harold simply acted as earl of Wessex.13 Only occasionally does Homer nod: in over 1,600 sides of meticulously copied text, just twice does our scribe acknowledge the reality of Harold’s reign (and even then, Harold is called usurper).
The most fundamental effort to write Harold out, however, is reflected in the survey’s framing. The points of reference throughout are Edward’s death and the present (TRE and TRW), creating the impression that William’s reign began when Edward’s ended. It was not simply William’s claim to the throne which was at stake here. The premise for confiscating the lands of the English was that they had been oath-breakers – they’d treasonously accepted Harold as king over William. This is why William of Poitiers is so insistent that the English consented to Edward’s offer of the succession to William in 1051/2; it’s also why the Penitential Ordinance treated them as rebels up to the point of William’s coronation.
If from the vantage point of almost a millennium the tendentious nature of William’s claims is clear, it must have been even more so at the time. The point, however, was not to persuade, but to assert. And once asserted firmly enough, political lies slowly became legal fact. Long before the advent of modern propaganda, William understood that if you’re going to tell a lie, you might as well tell a big one. The problem was, once you started embroidering history, you were unlikely to stop.