PART 3
11
In the winter of 1065, Edward the Confessor fell ill and the Witan, the Anglo-Saxon body that elected kings when there was no direct heir or (as was the case here) the obvious heir was too young for the role, hurriedly met to await his death. They didn’t have to wait long. In January 1066, Edward was dead and the Witan hurriedly voted in Harold Godwinson, the son of the powerful Godwin and erstwhile raider of the south-west coastline, as the new King of England.
Of course, this relatively simple chain of events was powerfully disruptive to all of north-west Europe, eventually resulting in the deaths of two kings and England coming under the rulership of William the Bastard of Normandy, who also got a somewhat more pleasant suffix to his name in the process.
The Norman conquest of England was also the death knell for the Anglo-Saxon ruling class who had arrived in the post-Roman world of the fifth century and had, over the course of centuries, created the large, powerful and, most importantly, rich country of England that so many rulers in 1066 desired to hold. For the Saxons, peasant and noble alike, this was a singly disruptive event. Those at the top, or at least those who survived the slaughter on Senlac Ridge, were largely stripped of their lands, while those at the bottom swapped the longstanding legal protections and reciprocal relations with their lords for the much more restrictive form of feudalism.
However, it is interesting to note that there doesn’t seem to be the same level of severe disruption in Cornwall. In actual fact, the post-Norman period can be seen as a high point, at least as far as the production of Cornish writing and materials is concerned.
To understand how the situation may have benefited Cornwall, we need to look at a number of factors: the impact of 1066 on Cornwall itself, the longstanding Cornish relations with the Bretons, and what the Domesday Book can tell us about the continuing existence of a separate Cornish identity.
Stepping back to 1066 in the first instance, Harold knew as he was crowned that his position was not a safe one. As such he drew up the Fyrd, the reserve army of Anglo-Saxon England, as well as the various thanes and lords from around the realm who would have brought their own professional retainers or warbands with them. The Chronicle describes the build-up of forces:
And king Harold, his brother, gathered so great a ship-force, and also a land-force, as no king here in the land had before done; because it was made known to him that William the bastard would come hither and win this land; all as it afterwards happened.
As we have seen, military service to the crown was by now an established obligation held by the Cornish nobility in exchange for their lands and titles being recognised within the English state. As such it is inconceivable that forces from Cornwall and the wider West Country were not part of this huge gathering, the largest known at the time. Unlike the northern earls, Edwin and Morcar, who seem to have kept their forces in the north and will eventually engage Harald Hardrada in an unsuccessful battle at Fulford Gate, there was no lurking enemy likely to attack Cornwall or Devon. Hardrada, in comparison, was a known threat who Harold would also have been aware of.
While it is true that there could be an argument for keeping the westernmost forces in place, in case of an attack elsewhere on the south coast, Harold knew that William was likely to muster his forces in Normandy, close to his own centre of power, rather than in lands controlled by one of his allied vassals such as the Bretons or William of Poitiers. As such, his shortest route to cross the Channel would have put him on the south coast near to Hastings.
Another consideration he no doubt had to contend with were that many of the Godwins’ traditional lands were in that region of England. If Harold left them unprotected he would be seen to specifically have failed in the most crucial role of an Early Medieval lord – being the protector of his people. While Harold’s elevated station meant this could apply to anywhere in England, to lose his own personal property would be seen as an unacceptable loss of face.
Still, as we have discussed, lordship in Early Medieval Britain was not one-sided and indeed relied on reciprocal duties. As the months wore on and William, who was having problems both marshalling his forces and contending with the weather, failed to appear, Harold was eventually forced to send his gathered forces back home to their farms so that they could attend to the harvest. This is recorded in the ‘C’ version of the Chronicle, although it is curiously absent in other versions:
When it was the Nativity of St. Mary, then were the men’s provisions gone, and no man could any longer keep them there. Then were the men allowed to go home, and the king rode up, and the ships were despatched to London; and many perished before they came thither. When the ships had reached home, then came king Harold from Norway, north into Tyne, and unawares, with a very large ship-force, and no small one; that might be, or more. And Tosty the earl came to him with all that he had gotten, all as they had before agreed; and then they went both, with all the fleet, along the Ouse, up towards York. Then was it made known to king Harold in the south, as he was come from on shipboard, that Harold king of Norway and Tosty the earl were landed near York.
The Nativity of St Mary is 8 September, in other words it effectively marks the end of summer which would be the traditional campaigning season. The army that had been assembled would therefore have met their obligations to Harold and he would have had to release them back to their normal lives. More than this, while the image of a plucky peasant Fyrd has more basis in Victorian fantasy than in reality, the members of the Fyrd would still have been farm owners and landholders, the sorts of people needed to oversee the harvest and ensure proper storage for winter. If Harold held them away from their work for too long, it could risk famine and starvation over the cold months ahead.
Of course, it ended up being terrible timing for Harold, and he was forced to gather what forces he could on the forced march northwards to confront Hardrada. Given the location in the far north-east it is very unlikely that the forces he assembled included any of the western Fyrd or many of the lords from that region. Indeed, as we shall discuss in a moment, it would appear that at least some of these forces remained at a strength that could have helped challenge the various invaders.
What is notable is that the western forces don’t seem to have rejoined Harold when he returned from the north to face William at Hastings (given their later presence at Exeter). It is possible that they had dispersed too far into the West Country to make the return trip in time; after all, Harold’s journey is famously swift, and there are certainly those historians who now argue he should have pursued a more cautious course and waited for the men he had sent away to rejoin him. It should be noted however that William, upon arriving in England, immediately set about harrying the lands around Hastings where the Normans had constructed a castle.
As previously noted, these were Harold’s own ancestral lands that were being burnt and it’s impossible that this was anything other than a conscious decision on William’s part. He would have heard about Harold’s absence very soon after he landed and, further, would have wanted to bring him to battle as soon as possible. By burning and harrying Harold’s lands (as depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry), he was directly challenging his authority and, more than that, shaming him as a lord. Harold could not afford to delay his return if he hoped to retain the loyalty of his forces, some of which may already have been suspect.
For example, the western lords, having already been seen to do their duty in the summer, may have lingered intentionally. It was only fifteen years since Harold had despoiled Devon, Somerset and possibly parts of Cornwall, and had killed at least some of the leading men of those regions.
As such, it is possible that they would have been less inclined to rush back to his aid, king or not. After all, the swiftness of the resulting Norman takeover and success against the various uprisings that opposed it are almost as stunning as William’s victory at Hastings itself. For a population that was, particularly by the eleventh century, somewhat used to warfare with various invaders where, nevertheless, a certain amount of status quo remained in place, it is not inconceivable that they would have left Harold hanging, particularly given the excuse that their obedience in the summer provided, secure in the belief that even if he fell in battle there would be another Anglo-Saxon king to replace him.
Nor would they have been alone in this hesitancy. Lawson [2002] suggests that Harold may have declined to bring the northern earls, Edwin and Morcar, and their forces with him because he did not have faith in their loyalty. They were another set of powerful nobles the Godwinsons had stepped on during their long ascent towards power. Specifically, they had frequently clashed with Harold’s brother Tostig in the years before he was exiled from the family.
Given the western lords’ similar reasons to dislike Harold, it is not unreasonable to suggest that their loyalty would be equally in question.
Whatever the reason for their absence, it meant that the western Fyrd and lords missed out on the slaughter at Senlac Ridge, and Marren [2004] estimates the English casualties to be as high as 4,000 dead. This figure could be as high as 50 per cent of the English on the field that day and, while the Fyrd no doubt bore the brunt, this would have included a large portion of the elite of England’s nobility who seem to have formed around the body of Harold and been slain in large numbers.
This left the West Country, including Cornwall, better off than many areas who were suddenly both lordless and missing significant portions of their menfolk. It is perhaps unsurprising then that Gytha, Harold’s mother, with her grandchildren, sought shelter in Exeter following the loss at Hastings. Hoskins [2004] suggests that she is the cause, or at least the rallying point, for a rebellion in the city in 1067. As the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records:
The king this year imposed a heavy tax on the unfortunate people; but, notwithstanding, he let his men plunder all the country which they passed through: after which he marched to Devonshire and besieged Exeter eighteen days. Many of his army were slain there: but he had promised them well and performed ill: the citizens surrendered the city, because the Thanes had betrayed them. This summer the child Edgar, with his mother Agatha, his sisters Margaret and Christina, Merlesweyne and several good men, went to Scotland under the protection of king Malcolm, who received them all …
This year Harold’s mother, Githa, and the wives of many good men with her, went to the Steep Holmes, and there abode some time; and afterwards went from thence over sea to St. Omer’s.
The fact that Gytha flees Exeter after the events of the siege does seem to lend some weight to her involvement in it. The Chronicle seems to indicate the siege was a fiercely contested one, which we might expect given Exeter’s Roman defences, including the ancient city wall that had been reinforced during the time of Alfred and the Viking invasions. It is interesting to note, though, that there is no mention of the defenders other than, we would assume, the people of Exeter themselves and presumably the retinues of the local nobility.
As we have noted, Harold and his father had done little to inspire loyalty in the West Country. It’s also notable that, other than William burning his way through Dorset on the way to Exeter (which would likely have deterred all but the most die-hard loyalists), the campaign seems to be entirely focused on the city. This seems to drive home that the rest of the countryside did not join Gytha and her followers.
William’s later campaigns, particularly the infamous Harrying of the North, make clear that he was more than happy to forcibly put down any resistance to his rule, so the fact that his revenge, in this case at least, is so focused suggests that this was a very limited uprising, possibly reinforcing Gytha’s proposed role in it.
It is also worth considering the way in which the siege ended, when the citizens surrendered ‘because the Thanes had betrayed them’. This suggests that even the population of Exeter (and potentially the Fyrd elements from Devon) were not willing to continue fighting for Godwin’s line. A siege is, after all, a brutal affair of frequent tedium and deprivation pockmarked by chaos and battle. The fact that the Normans seem unable to break the defences in their assaults suggests that, had the morale of the citizens been higher, they may have been able to stretch out the battle for many more weeks.
Of course, the nature of the betrayal is not immediately clear. It may equally be that Gytha and her immediate supporters, finding less support than they expected from the surrounding countryside, slipped out of the city and left the inhabitants to fend for themselves.
Whatever the truth of the events, it certainly seems that the Cornish, at least, took no part in the rebellion despite its relative proximity (no more than a day or two’s march) to their domains. As we have seen, the Chronicle identifies the Cornish separately as late as the 1050s, and even earlier in the same passage the Welsh are brought up as the Britons: ‘Child Edric and the Britons were unsettled this year, and fought with the men of the castle at Hereford, to whom they did much harm.’
This would seem to rule out any Cornish participants being lumped into the citizens of Exeter. Additionally, William ends his campaign at Exeter as we have noted. There is no mention of a further expedition into Cornwall, as we might expect had it joined in the rebellion.
Another account of the Siege of Exeter comes from the Historia Ecclesiastica, a near-contemporary chronicle of events written in the twelfth century. It was written by a Norman monk, Orderic Vitalis, who was actually born in Shropshire to an English mother. Orderic actually borrows heavily from another, even closer, chronicler: William of Poitiers. However, William was an unabashedly biased source when it came to the Duke of Normandy. His Gesta Guillelmi was a praise poem, and had a tendency to brush over any rough spots in the Norman conquest.
To see this in action, we can compare two passages, both to do with the year following the Norman Conquest.
In William’s version:
Meanwhile Odo, bishop of Bayeux, and William fitz Osbern were administering their prefectures in the kingdom, each praiseworthy in his own, working sometimes together, sometimes separately; if ever necessity demanded it, one gave speedy help to the other. Their wise vigilance was made all the more effective by the friendly willingness with which they genuinely agreed. They loved each other and the king equally; they burned with a common desire to keep the Christian people in peace, and deferred readily to each other’s advice. They paid the greatest respect to justice, as the king had admonished, so that fierce men and enemies might be corrected and brought into friendship. The lesser officials were equally zealous in the castles where each had been placed. But neither benefits nor fear could sufficiently force the English to prefer peace and quiet to changes and revolts.
(II, 46)
While Orderic, who was still working in Normandy so shouldn’t be entirely considered to be on the English side, describes the same period thus:
the English were groaning under the Norman yoke, and suffering oppressions from the proud lords who ignored the king’s injunctions. The petty lords who were guarding the castles oppressed all the native inhabitants of high and low degree, and heaped shameful burdens on them. For Bishop Odo and William fitz Osbern, the king’s viceregents, were so swollen with pride that they would not deign to hear the reasonable plea of the English or give them impartial judgement. When their men-at-arms were guilty of plunder and rape they protected them by force, and wreaked their wrath all the more violently upon those who complained of the cruel wrongs they suffered. And so the English groaned aloud for their lost liberty and plotted ceaselessly to find some way of shaking off a yoke that was so intolerable and unaccustomed.
(HE IV: ii, 171–2)
Orderic is supported in this view by the writers of the Chronicle, although, as with William, we should expect a certain amount of bias in this regard:
Nevertheless, he laid a tribute on the people, very heavy; and then went, during Lent, over sea to Normandy, and took with him archbishop Stigand, and Aylnoth, abbat of Glastonbury, and child Edgar, and Edwin the earl, and Morkar the earl, and Waltheof the earl, and many other good men of land. And bishop Odo and William the earl remained here behind, and they built castles wide throughout the nation, and poor people distressed; and ever after it greatly grew in evil. May the end be good when God will!
Of the three, Orderic’s account seems the most balanced, so it is this that we will rely upon going forward.
Returning to the Siege of Exeter, Orderic’s account opens with an interesting passage:
Every city and district which he (William) had visited in person or occupied with his garrisons obeyed his will. But in the marches of his kingdom, to the west and north, the inhabitants were still barbarous, and had only obeyed the English king in the time of King Edward and his predecessors when it suited their ends. Exeter was the first town to fight for liberty … It is a wealthy and ancient city built in a plain, strongly fortified … A great force of citizens held it, young and old seething with anger against every inhabitant of Gaul. Further, they had repeatedly sent for allies from the neighbouring districts, had detained foreign merchants with any aptitude for war, and had built or restored their towers and battlements as they judged necessary. They sent envoys urging other cities to combine with them in similar measures, and prepared to fight with all their strength against the foreign king, with whom they had had no dealings before that time.
(HE IV: ii, 178–9)
The identification of the inhabitants as ‘barbarous’ is an interesting one, although given the context it here seems largely to indicate the northern and western Saxons, as well as possibly the Cymry in Wales. There is a possibility that the Cornish are included in this measure, and certainly the idea of a loyalty to the English crown only so far as it served them in turn is a fair description of what we have seen prior to the Norman invasion.
Despite this, it seems clear from the actions of the rebels in this passage that they make desperate attempts to rally additional support and, so far as we are told, none seem to be successful. This further supports a general lack of enthusiasm for the rebellion in both Devon and Cornwall, making it much clearer cut than the Saxon sources alone.
However, Orderic added another interesting detail during William’s march west: ‘he marched on them in force, and for the first time called out Englishmen in his army’ (HE IV: ii, 180).
This is a fairly unequivocal endorsement that some former vassals of the English state had relatively quickly adjusted to the new status quo. This is actually a continuation of something he notes in an earlier passage: ‘At that time too some of the most able citizens of the towns, some native knights of wealth and good name, and many of the common people rose unequivocally on the Norman side against their fellow countrymen’ (HE IV: ii, 176–7).
As we shall soon see, there is good reason to suspect that many of the Cornish elites who retained their rank would have been among this number. The wider acknowledgement of loyal vassals among the former English elite also seems to reinforce the possibility that, western or not, the Cornish were not among the ‘barbarous people’ Orderic previously identified.
As regards the actual battle, both the Chronicle and Orderic seem to be in agreement about the difficulties the attackers faced: ‘for many days he fought relentlessly to drive the citizens from the ramparts and undermine the walls. Finally the citizens were compelled by the unremitting attacks of the enemy to take wiser counsel and humbly plead for pardon’ (HE IV: ii, 180).
For Orderic, the people turn on the rebellion because they ‘take wiser counsel’, which could well mean that the people turned on the rebel leaders as we suggested earlier. Orderic is also, of course, at pains to stress how magnanimous in victory William is. As noted, there doesn’t seem to be any looting or burning of Exeter, although the construction of Rougemont Castle does follow fairly swiftly after the rebellion. Of course, the lack of reprisal may represent a negotiated end to the siege. William promised to leave the people alone (possibly as the ringleaders had already fled) and in turn they opened the gates and spared him the loss of any more men.
While the people of the south-west may have indicated their desire to be done with Godwin and his line, it would appear that they were not yet done with the south-west. Later in 1067, a large fleet led by the sons of Harold Godwinson sailed from Ireland, where they had taken shelter after 1066, and landed in the Severn Estuary and advanced on Bristol.
There is some confusion about how many of his sons took part in this sudden invasion; however, a number of sources all agree that it took place. It would seem, based on their initial actions at least, that the brothers had hoped to meet friendly support when they landed in much the same way that the rebellion in Exeter had desperately lobbied for support from the surrounding countryside. However, when they reached Bristol, the town shut its gates to them and resisted their attempts at entry. As the Chronicle puts it:
During these things one of Harold’s sons [the singular has been identified as a copyist error by Plummer, 1899] came with a fleet from Ireland unexpectedly into the mouth of the river Avon, and soon plundered all that neighbourhood. They went to Bristol, and would have stormed the town, but the inhabitants opposed them bravely. Seeing they could get nothing from the town, they went to their ships with the booty they had got by plundering, and went to Somersetshire, where they went up the country. Ednoth, master of the horse, fought with them, but he was slain there, and many good men on both sides; and those who were left departed thence.
Again, plunder seems to be the order of the day once a successful rebellion is unlikely to emerge. The lord who eventually opposed them, whose title would more closely be translated as ‘Eadnoth the Staller’, is himself a holdover from the pre-Norman aristocracy, having held his position as Staller, or Horse Master, for King Edward, as made clear by a charter from Edward to Ednoth [S1129]. This confrontation, although fatal for Ednoth, drives home just how isolated Harold’s family truly were in the new order. Far from being the native favourites struggling against a new and foreign oppressor, they seem to become something of a nuisance, particularly in the south-west.
According to a separate chronicle, that of Florence of Worcester, the sons: ‘having gained the victory, and carried away a considerable spoil from Devon and Cornwall, returned to Ireland’.
Further raiding in Devon and Cornwall isn’t recorded elsewhere. However, the Exon book records, in a note scribbled into a margin on Folio 323r, that: ‘These 9 estates just mentioned have been ruined by men from Ireland.’
All nine estates are in south Devon, suggesting that the brothers may have raided their way around Land’s End in the manner of their father before them. If the nine burnt estates are linked to Harold’s sons, then it would have been yet another mark against them in the local psyche and so perhaps it is no surprise that when the brothers chose to raid the south-west again, landing in north Devon this time, there was not only a lack of local support but they were actually met and defeated by Brian of Brittany, the local earl, and forces drawn from the surrounding countryside:
After this came Harold’s sons from Ireland, about Midsummer, with sixty-four ships and entered the mouth of the Taff [the Taw], where they incautiously landed. Earl Brian came upon them unawares with a large army, and slew all their bravest men: the others escaped to their ships, and Harold’s sons went back again to Ireland.
A fuller account of the battle is given by William of Jumieres in his Gesta Normannorum Ducum, or ‘The Deeds of the Norman Dukes’, written, again, nearly contemporary to events:
Meanwhile two sons of King Harold had separated themselves from the company of these rebels and accompanied by their father’s household troops went to the king of the Irish, called Dermot, to ask his support. After a short but favourable stay in Ireland, where they gathered a large army, they returned to England with sixty-six ships to a site which they considered most strategic, for an attack, where, like most dangerous pirates, they laid waste by robbery and fire to the country’s population. Forthwith Brian, son of Odo, count of the Bretons, came up against them and in the course of two battles fought in one day he defeated them.
One thousand and seven hundred warriors, some of whom were magnates of the realm, perished, others fled from the battlefield and somehow escaped death by fleeing with their ships. With deep mourning they reported the loss of their dear brothers to the Irish. It is even said that if night had not put an end to the battle, all would have been cut down by death’s razor.
The battle site for this clash has been identified relatively recently by Nick Arnold as Northam, a small North Devon town near Appledore. While estimating the size of Early Medieval battles can be extremely difficult, we can imagine the battle must have been a significant clash.
One of the ships at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Skuldelev 2, is identified as a warship crafted in the 1040s in Dublin [Skipmuseet]; as such, it seems a reasonable building block for estimating the brothers’ fleet. The Skuldelev 2 could hold somewhere between sixty-five and seventy men, the majority of whom would also be warriors. This means that, if all the ships were fully crewed and of a similar size, the brothers may have led a force of over 4,000 men.
To oppose this effectively Brian must have led a force of similar size, which must have required relying on local forces from Devon, Cornwall and Somerset. This is doubly the case as, during this same year, William was busy subduing a revolt in the north alongside a large force of his Norman knights. Therefore there could have been little hope of reinforcement from that quarter. As the earlier raid showed, the local forces of the south-west would not hesitate to fight on the Norman side of this conflict, so assuming their active support seems safe.
The swiftness of Brian’s advance, alongside the potential detail of there being two separate battles in a single day – which would suggest that the brothers’ forces may have broken and withdrawn, then been reengaged on the way to their ships – also suggests that Brian’s force made significant use of cavalry. For the Breton/Norman forces this would perhaps be expected, but it would also fit the previously described style of warfare practised by the Cornish.
While we can’t be sure if a predilection for mounted warfare had survived the centuries since active conflict with Wessex, it seems likely that, mounted or not, the Cornish would have been able to integrate closely with Brian and his Breton vassals, as we’ll see shortly. However, there was a final uprising in the south-west during these momentous early years of Norman occupation.
In 1069, a year after Harold’s sons had been driven off for the final time, King Swein of Denmark sent a fleet to attack England, apparently at the urging of the English thanes who preferred their former enemies and one time overlords, the Danes, to their new rulers from Normandy. The arrival of the Danish fleet caused an outbreak of unrest across the country as rebellions old and new resumed with some force, including in the West Country. As Orderic has it:
The same thing was done at Exeter by the people of Devonshire, and a host of men assembled from Cornwall. It is the extreme point of the west of England towards Ireland, from whence it derives its name of Cornu Britannica, the Horn of Britain, or Cornwall. The citizens of Exeter took the king’s side, for they had not forgotten the sufferings they had formerly endured. The king receiving this intelligence lost no time in giving orders to two earls, William and Brian, to march to the relief of the two places which were attacked. But before they reached Shrewsbury, the enemy had burnt the town and retired. The garrison of Exeter made a sudden sally, and charging the besieger with impetuosity, put them to the rout. William and Brian, meeting the fugitives, punished their rash enterprise with a great slaughter.
(HE IV: v)
This third western uprising isn’t mentioned in the Chronicle, although the arrival of Swein’s fleet and the larger uprising, led by the Atheling Edgar, is covered in some detail. It’s also notable that the two locations mentioned here, Shrewsbury and Exeter, are vast distances apart. It does somewhat raise questions as to why Brian and his forces would be sent all the way north to Shrewsbury if there was a simultaneous uprising in Devon and Cornwall.
Given the sequence of events as described, we can perhaps assume that the Shrewsbury uprising happened first, the latest front in Eadric the Wild’s ongoing resistance to Norman rule. William, who would have seen the lack of enthusiasm we have discussed in the West Country for the Godwinson rebellions, may have felt it safe to send Brian and his forces north to assist on that front.
However, with word of the Danish fleet’s arrival and the uprising around York no doubt spreading rapidly, and the bulk of Norman forces in the region moving northwards, it would perhaps seem an ideal time for disaffected thanes, and Cornish lords, to attempt to seize the country.
The specific and highly detailed mention of Cornwall in this instance can leave little doubt that at least some of the Cornish elite took part in this rising, while also reaffirming their apathy towards the previous revolts. It is also difficult to see a reason for this change of heart other than a personal dislike or vendetta against Harold and his heirs.
Personal loyalty and feuds are right at the heart of Early Medieval politics, and the uprising in 1069 seems to seal the case for a resentment towards Harold and his heirs in the West Country which perhaps undermined their own attempts at regaining power.
As for the change of heart, it is possible that many in the West Country retained loyalty towards Cnut and his heirs. Even if the oft-repeated story of Cnut granting Cornwall its independence is not true, we can certainly see a significant number of Anglo-Danish finds in the archaeological record from around the time of his rule (for example CORN-FB5995, a stirrup with an early depiction of a lion upon it). We have also seen the evidence for a not insignificant amount of Hiberno-Norse settlement in Cornwall and it’s possible these groups would look favourably on a renewed Scandinavian kingship. Therefore, there could have been a number of lords or landowners willing to rebel in support of the Danes, but who were apathetic, or even openly hostile, to the efforts of Harold’s family.
Of course, from Orderic’s description at least, it would appear that it was the rebels’ turn to feel the consequences of past actions as the citizens of Exeter, perhaps motivated more by the pleas for assistance that had been ignored by their neighbours than by any loyalty to William or his past generosity, used the same defences that had frustrated William to stop the forces attacking them.
The fact that the garrison was eventually able to sally to drive over the besiegers does, however, call into question how many rebels there actually were. Norman garrisons were, in general terms, relatively small, which is one of the reasons they relied upon castle building to such a large degree. With a castle in place, even a relatively small detachment could hold off a much larger force until help eventually arrived or, as was the case at Shrewsbury, didn’t arrive.
Given that the garrison, according to Orderic, acts alone and drives out the invaders, it seems likely that it was a relatively small force of rebels, and certainly not the entire strength of Devon and Cornwall. Even if the citizens of Exeter supported the garrison in their sally, it would be expected that a larger force would have been able to overwhelm them in relatively short order.
It’s also notable that, following this rebellion, there again does not seem to be any severe backlash in the West Country. There is no western equivalent of the Harrying of the North, for example, despite it, at this point, having had a history of repeated trouble.
Probably the mixed nature of the rebellions, and the fact that so few had seen any widespread support, would have stayed William and Brian’s hand. Smaller-scale retribution would be much harder to see; for example, the loss of estates from rebellious lords would probably go somewhat unremarked by the historical record when compared to the slaughter occurring in the north.
This would seem to suggest, despite at least some Cornish involvement in the final rebellion, that it remained a relatively small-scale action. This does, then, bring us back to the question of why the people of the south-west generally, and Cornwall in particular, seemed to be reluctant to rebel against their new overlords despite having ample opportunity in the years following 1066.
At least some of that hesitance is likely the result of who was now in power in the West Country, and the historic links they shared with Cornwall.