EIGHT
William of Poitiers wrote: ‘once he had completed his victory, the duke rode back to the battlefield to survey the dead. It was impossible to contemplate them without being moved to pity … the flower of English youth and nobility littered the ground far and wide.’ As darkness drew on and night fell upon the battlefield, William could begin to appreciate what had happened on that day. The English king and two of his brothers had died. With Harold Hardrada killed at Stamford Bridge, the throne now awaited him.
William was a shrewd and generally cautious man and the invasion of England was the riskiest project he ever undertook. He knew that all was not over. The English had been beaten, but many had escaped. A lengthy pursuit was not wise, William needed his troops to stay close at hand, and he called them back. There were others of significance in the kingdom who had not been at Hastings, and whose attitude to him was not yet clear, including Edgar the Aetheling, who was the obvious figurehead for rebellion with the best claim to the throne by descent, and the northern earls, Edwin and Morcar. William of Poitiers says he proceeded with moderation.1
On first arriving, William had not rushed inland against a major town, and he was prepared to take his time again. His strategy soon emerged, with two main objectives: first, he wanted to secure his base on the coast; second, he wanted to take London. But before any of that, there was a certain amount of clearing up to be done. William camped for the night on the battlefield, the traditional manner of demonstrating victory. On the morrow, he returned to base at Hastings.
Scavengers and relatives came to search among the dead. No doubt some of the Normans joined in. The Tapestry shows men ripping off armour, which was clearly of tunic design rather than trousered, and good weapons would be searched for.2 Relatives would seek the bodies of their loved ones for burial, though there must also have been a mass burial – possibly at the Malfosse. William arranged for the burial of his own dead, and left the English to see to theirs. Poitiers says their bodies were left to the vultures and the wolves, though William allowed the English to bury whom they wished.3
The main question for William in this was how to deal with the body of his rival. There is the story of identifying the body. It was said that Harold was so disfigured that he could not be recognised. Only by bringing his mistress, Edith, to the field, could the body be known. She identified him by certain hidden marks that only she (and perhaps his wife) could know. William of Poitiers gives some credence to this tale: ‘Harold was recognised not by any insignia which he wore and certainly not from his features, but by certain distinguishing marks’, but he says nothing of Edith Swanneck.4
We can assume from what we know that William had no wish to make much of Harold’s burial or his burial-place, and that he feared some sort of cult in support. He refused Harold’s family possession of the body, even when offered payment by the dead king’s mother. This story may be accepted as it is in William of Poitiers. Orderic, who says she offered her son’s body weight in gold for the corpse, bemoans that poor lady’s position, with five of her seven sons now dead.5
It was said that William gave orders for Harold to be buried secretly by the shore. Poitiers tells us that William Malet was given the task to complete: ‘and they said jokingly that his body should be placed there to guard the sea-shore and the sea, which in his fury he had formerly blockaded with arms’. We probably need not imagine him being buried on the beach, but at some point near to Hastings.6
Later, there grew up a tradition at Harold’s own foundation of Waltham Abbey, that his body had been returned there for final interment, and possibly this occurred. It was a tradition recorded by a monk in 1177, based on hearsay from the 1120s. But we may be more sceptical of the stories of Harold’s survival after Hastings, like a second Arthur to fan the hopes of Old English recovery. One Waltham story was that Harold had been thrown to the ground among the dead, but was stunned and not killed. He was found, still breathing, by certain women, who bound his wounds and carried him off to a nearby cottage. He was taken to Winchester and hidden in a cellar for two years before recovering and going to Germany.7
THE CAMPAIGN AFTER HASTINGS
Again, we may best follow William of Poitiers for the Conqueror’s movements in 1066 in the immediate aftermath of the battle. There is little reason to dispute them, and less reason to augment them than some historians have believed. Let us follow the verified movements first and then consider the unwarranted augmentations.
William placed Humphrey de Tilleul over the garrison which remained at Hastings, and set out eastwards to Romney, where a Norman advance guard had been attacked by the locals. Orderic says the Normans had landed there in error and were slaughtered. William showed the ruthless, merciless spirit with which his conquest would continue. The residents were punished harshly for their attack.
Then he marched on to Dover, often seen as the gateway to England. William had appreciated its significance before the invasion, as shown by his demands from Harold in Normandy. He showed his recognition of its importance now, by making it secure. There seems to have been some fortification on the site. Poitiers says that a crowd had collected but melted away at the Conqueror’s approach. Orderic explains that local people had taken refuge there.
A fire was started by Normans seeking booty, but this may have been the town rather than the castle (if there was one), since the Conqueror agreed to pay for repairs and rebuilding of houses. Orderic’s account sounds as if the Norman troops ignored offers to surrender before starting the fires.8 Poitiers describes the fortress on its rock by the sea, which was now enlarged and improved since, according to him, its defences were inadequate, and Dover Castle emerged as the great guardian of the south-east shore.
At this point, Poitiers says that the Normans suffered from dysentery, from eating freshly slaughtered meat and drinking the water, and that some died. Orderic says some suffered from the effects for the rest of their lives.9 A number of the sick had to be left behind in the garrison at Dover as William progressed to Canterbury. This was the religious centre of England, and vital for him to hold. It would settle his grip on Kent and the south-east. The citizens of Canterbury were more ready to compromise and came out to meet him, swearing fidelity and giving hostages.
William made camp at what Poitiers calls the Broken Tower, whose identity is unknown.10 Here the duke himself took ill, and his close attendants feared for his life. What would have happened had he died in 1066? The Norman Conquest, despite Hastings, was a frail thing still and would surely not have survived such a blow. But he was tough and refused even to give way to his illness.
Stigand, the controversially appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, no doubt fearing for his future under William, was involved in some attempt to form a party to oppose the victor. Others who toyed with opposition were the northern earls, Edwin and Morcar. Poitiers says that they held a meeting near London and proclaimed Edgar the Aetheling as their king.
London also at first took a hostile stance to the Conqueror. He sent a troop of 500 knights, according to Poitiers, and a force emerged from London to oppose them. The Normans beat them off, and the English retreated back inside the city walls. Orderic says there was mourning in the city for the many killed, as if the London force had been a large one.11 The invaders set fire to the city on the southern side, and then withdrew. William himself moved on to the Thames, but not yet to London. He crossed by ford and bridge, coming to the borough of Wallingford. Archbishop Stigand thought better now of his opposition, probably hoping to make terms. He came to William at Wallingford and submitted, swearing fidelity and doing homage. He abandoned the cause of the Aetheling. Finally, William turned and headed for London.
Like Stigand, the Londoners had been given time to consider their actions, and like the archbishop they moved from opposition to submission, coming out to meet William and handing over hostages. The writer of the D version of the Anglo-Saxon Chroniclethought ‘it was a great piece of folly that they had not done it earlier’.12 They met him at Berkhamsted, together with Archbishop Eadred of York and other bishops, with Edgar the Aetheling and the earls Edwin and Morcar.
Poitiers says that they asked William to take the crown and be their king. Edgar the Aetheling also submitted. According to Orderic: ‘since he was a boy who was noble and honourable and a kinsman of the great King Edward, for he was his nephew’s son, the duke received him with affection, and treated him as long as he lived like one of his own sons’.13 Orderic does not say which son. Edgar did not remain unswervingly loyal to the Conqueror, but then neither did all of William’s sons.
This then is the account of William’s movements up to his coronation at Christmas 1066 in Westminster Abbey. It is time to deal with what was referred to above as an unwarranted account of William’s movements in 1066 after the battle. Many historians have been involved in this process, so it seems unfair to light upon one in particular. However, to do so will make the point more firmly, so we shall use the account of this same period, from October to December 1066, as retailed by Beeler in Warfare in England, 1066–1189. It is the full-blown version of an idea first developed at the end of the nineteenth century.14
According to Beeler, William went to Romney and then ‘via Burmarsh to Folkestone’, and to Dover. He went on through Patrixbourne and Bekesbourne towards Canterbury. Meanwhile, raiding parties went via Littlebourne, Preston, Sturry and Chislet. The main army then concentrated at Lenham where forces reassembled from their trips to Ospringe, Eastling, Chilham, Brabourne, Stelling, Crundall, and Pluckley-cum-Pevington. From Lenham, the army moved on via Maidstone, Seal, Westerham, Limpsfield, Oxted, Tandridge and Godstone, where they halted a while.
The advance party which had gone on to London had been despatched from Seal, and went via Cudham, Chelsfield, Orpington, Eltham and Lewisham to Southwark. After burning the suburbs, they retired via Battersea, Tooting and Merton to Godstone. William then marched the whole army south of London via Ewell, Ashstead, Leatherhead, Guildford, Compton, Wanborough, Basing, Micheldever, Sutton Scotney and Hurstbourne.
Meanwhile, reinforcements came to William from Chichester or Portsmouth (Beeler is not certain which), via Fareham, Wickham, Bishop’s Waltham, Droxford, Exton, Wanford, West and East Meon and Alresford. There they were met by ‘a detachment from the main army’ that came via Farnham, Hartley Maudit and Farringdon. The army in two columns then moved northwards to the Thames.
Then the left wing of the army moved west from Alresford to Lambourne; the right from Hurstbourne to Highclere, where it divided into two. One part went to Wantage and Wallingford, the other from Highclere to East Isley and Wallingford. Meanwhile, the left wing went through Farringdon, Sutton Courtney to Whittenham and Wallingford. Then from Wallingford the main army went along the Icknield Way to Risborough and Wendover.
Meanwhile, ‘a flanking column’ moved along to the north to Buckingham. From Risborough the army continued in three columns: the left to Aylesbury and Luton; the centre along the Icknield Way; the right through the valleys of Bulbourne and Gade. The left went via Aylesbury to rejoin the centre at Luton; the centre went on to Hertford; the right to Langford. A ‘detachment’ took Hitchin and then went on to a rendezvous at Hertford. The left went from Luton to Bedford and Hertford, and another ‘detachment’ to Cambridge, going south via Potton. Eventually, all joined forces at Hertford. The army was at last ready to deal with London.
You might consider the earlier account of the expedition, based chiefly on William of Poitiers, rather bare bones in comparison to this enviably detailed description of the route. One little question raises its ugly head. How did Beeler and those he was following gain their information? The answer is from Domesday Book. Now there, you would think, is a very solid source of information, more reliable than those biased chroniclers. Domesday is, of course, a magnificent source, but not, one would suggest, for the route of the army in 1066.
The whole thing stems from an interesting idea proposed by F.H. Baring in his article on ‘The Conqueror’s Footprints in Domesday’ in 1898, and modified in his Domesday Tables in 1909.15 The basic idea was that the amount of waste recorded in Domesday Book might relate to the degree of damage done by the invading army in 1066. Baring’s suggested route was somewhat less detailed than the one above.
Some historians were immediately enraptured: A.M. Davies thought that Baring was the ‘good fairy’ who had waved his magic wand and put the whole march into order. It has since been often elaborated upon, for example, by Fowler, Butler and Beeler, but in many other works too. They also considered that the greater the waste, the greater the force, so that one could identify routes for the whole army, parts of the army and small groups. The route deduced in this way has got further and further away from any sort of reality.
The problem is that the question-marks against such a deduction are very considerable, enough to undermine any trust in it. Firstly, we do not know exactly what Domesday waste represents. Sometimes it appears not to mean actual waste at all, but some privileged assessment for the landholder concerned. Even if we have actual waste, Domesday rarely gives evidence of its cause, even less does it suggest when the waste occurred. Only in one instance does Domesday say that waste was caused by an army.16Then again, Domesday was drawn up twenty years after 1066. The waste it records might have resulted from events before 1066, when there had been a good deal of disturbance, say, the ravaging of 986, 1006 and 1041, or from any of the post-1066 rebellions and disorders. It is not at all certain anyway that a passing army would leave enduring damage of the kind envisaged; it would not compare with damage from a war fought over a region or even from lengthy sieges.
There is simply no way of distinguishing waste caused by the army in 1066 and waste caused by any other means at all – which might include all sorts of man-made or heaven-sent disasters. Therefore, to draw up a map marking all the manors where waste was heaviest is a very unreliable means of tracing the route of the army. When it was done, it did not seem to trace a route at all. However, those sold on the idea did not abandon it, far from it. They began to invent all sorts of divisions of the army to cover several routes and make use of all the scattered manors noted for waste, and even special detachments to go to isolated examples of waste which would not fit even with their multiplied routes.
The thing has become an enormous farce. So far as I know, although some have questioned aspects of it, the thesis has not been entirely rejected. It therefore seems worthwhile to have spent some space on it. In conclusion, we may say that the waste scheme may give a little assistance in confirming the chroniclers’ evidence for William’s route, but it is pointless to expect any detailed information from it. You will forgive me, I hope, if for the rest of the Conqueror’s marches in 1066 and afterwards, I concentrate on what the chronicle evidence tells us.
William of Poitiers describes the coronation in London. According to him, William had refused to be consecrated by Stigand, and the Archbishop of York addressed the English people and asked them if they consented to William receiving the crown, to which they gave their assent ‘joyfully, without hesitation’. Then the Bishop of Coutances addressed the Normans, and they expressed the same opinion. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, William had to promise ‘that he would rule all this people as well as the best of kings before him, if they would be loyal to him’, before Eadred would crown him. Poitiers continues: ‘he [the Archbishop of York] put on the royal diadem and placed him on the royal throne in the presence and with the assent of numerous bishops and abbots in the basilica of St Peter’.17 During the ceremony it was said that the Conqueror trembled, but from anxiety and humility rather than from fear.18
Poitiers’ version of the disturbances which accompanied the coronation was that the mounted Norman guards, patrolling outside the abbey, heard the shouting in English and feared the worst. They then set fire to the suburbs. If true, it does not say much for the discipline of those guards. Others have thought that the chronicler was covering up some genuine opposition and rioting against William, with which the guards had to deal. As Orderic points out, the guards had been placed there for fear of such disturbance. He confirms that the Norman guards themselves started a fire, and this caused some inside the church to rush out in panic.19
The disturbances rather marred the occasion, but the coronation was accomplished with sufficient legality to satisfy the Church. Poitiers claimed that it was by hereditary right, but we know it was a claim which could not stand much investigation. Poitiers asserted that it was with the assent of the English people, but the noises outside the church were enough to remind William of what remained to be achieved before he could rule England in fact as well as in name. It was by force that William had taken the throne, and by force he would have to retain it. The Norman Conquest was not yet over, but a major success had been achieved and William, duke of Normandy, had become king of England.
THE COMPLETION OF THE CONQUEST
In the following years William had little time for rest. In effect, by Christmas 1066 he held the south-east of England. He must now turn his mind to the other regions. But he had also to keep a watchful eye on affairs in his duchy. Normandy could not be abandoned for long. So began that tedious business for the king-dukes of moving backwards and forwards between kingdom and duchy. Medieval government was always achieved on the move. William’s conquest meant that his movements would from then on have to be much greater and involve frequent crossings of the Channel.
William made immediate efforts to reward those who had helped him. He gave vacated lands to his followers, he sent back gifts to the churches in Normandy, he sent gold and silver to Rome as well as Harold’s banner of the Fighting Man. His abbey at Caen received various gifts of great value. Poitiers says that they celebrated his memory in a thousand French churches. Towns, castles, villages, monasteries congratulated him on his victory.
He took stock of the situation, and while in London began to make arrangements for the city and for his new kingdom: ‘he took wise, just and merciful decisions’.20 Poitiers says he forbade his men to drink in taverns in order to prevent the kind of disorders that would follow. He ordered them to keep within the law and to refrain from killing and rape, and set up severe punishments for those who disobeyed.
He left London and stayed a few days at Barking, while fortifications were erected within the city ‘against the numerous and hostile inhabitants’.21 After the disturbances during the coronation he wanted to be sure of security in London. The northern earls, Edwin and Morcar, made their peace with William, seeking his pardon. Other nobles did the same. He confirmed in their lands those who submitted, and treated them with honour.
The castle of Dover was put in the hands of his half-brother, Odo of Bayeux, who was made earl of Kent. With its proximity to the continent the Conqueror saw this as a vital region. William himself returned to Pevensey and prepared to cross to Normandy. He gave rewards to those men who had fought for him and were now departing with him for the continent. According to Orderic, they included men whose wives were misbehaving, ‘consumed by fierce lust’ and threatening to take other men if their husbands did not return. The chronicler laments: ‘what could honourable men do if their lascivious wives polluted their beds with adultery?’.22
The Conqueror had other reasons. Leaving England in the hands of trusted lieutenants, he had to risk a return to the duchy while much of his new realm lay in uncertain subjection. The completion of the Conquest must be delayed while he made sure of the duchy. He took with him various hostages and important persons in order to guarantee peace in England, including Stigand, Edgar the Aetheling, the northern earls Edwin and Morcar, Earl Waltheof (son of the old earl of Northumbria, Siward), and many others to ‘ensure that they would cause no disturbances during his absence’.23 William crossed the Channel to Normandy in March 1067.
Poitiers says that the locals in the towns he passed through came out to greet him, even the humblest. As he approached Rouen the citizens, old, young, women, all came out to meet him, to see the hero, to acclaim and applaud. He celebrated his return at Easter 1067 in the church of Ste-Trinité at Fécamp, to which came a crowd of clergy, people and knights. Ralph de Valois, father-in-law of the French king, came to offer congratulations, and William made show of various trophies brought back with him. Among the churches to receive gifts were those at Dives and Jumièges.
According to Baudri de Bourgueil, William’s wife Matilda had a series of tapestries dealing with four subjects, and which she herself had made, displayed round her chamber. One of the set dealt with the conquest of England. Whether this is Baudri’s imagination or not, who can tell, but it reflects an interest in the event and a pride in the achievement. The Bayeux Tapestry itself demonstrates the same attitude, as do the poems and chronicles which record it.24
William returned to England on 6 December 1067. Now he must proceed with the conquest. England had been left in the care of Odo of Bayeux, who held Dover and Kent, and of William fitz Osbern, who had been given command of Winchester and made deputy to the king in the south.25 They were two of the Conqueror’s closest associates. Poitiers says that the English did not dare to rebel openly, but that they conspired in secret, and sent frequent requests for aid to Denmark and elsewhere.26
William’s first serious problem with the new kingdom came not from the English but from his ally, Eustace of Boulogne. The uncertainty of his loyalty is shown by the fact that William, before the invasion, kept Eustace’s son at court ‘as a guarantee of his faith’. Eustace conspired with men in Kent, who, says Poitiers, were easily moved by their hatred of the Normans, to attack the castle at Dover.27
Dover was the shared responsibility of Odo of Bayeux and Hugh de Montfort. At the time, they were in action to the north of the Thames. Eustace, informed by the locals who offered aid, came at night by sea to try and take Dover by surprise. A force of Kentishmen was in arms prepared to assist him, but the garrison was ready and did not succumb. Eustace was beaten off after a fight of several hours, ‘shamefully defeated’, and his nephew taken prisoner. Eustace retreated to his fleet on horseback and at once weighed anchor and escaped. The garrison made a sortie during this retreat, and savaged Eustace’s rearguard, some of whom fell over the cliffs to their death, some committed suicide, some drowned. Later, Eustace made his peace with William.28
There was already trouble at the other extremity of the kingdom. William had made an appointment which might be open to criticism in selecting Copsi to be earl of Northumbria. Copsi had been Tostig’s main lieutenant in the north, so perhaps this was a nod to the semi-alliance that Tostig had made with the duke, to be seen as a deliberate reminder that Tostig had been badly treated by his own brother. It was also a reward for embracing the Conqueror’s cause, and Poitiers praises his personal ability.29 Perhaps also it was an intended snub to Edwin and Morcar, whose allegiance was uncertain and whose family, from the Conqueror’s viewpoint, might look too powerful.
But Copsi was not a good solution to the problems of Northumbria, where all southern appointments were viewed with scorn. Copsi barely had time to savour his appointment before he had been ambushed and murdered in March 1067. His assassin was the dispossessed descendant of the former earls of Bernicia, Oswulf. This is one of the last events recorded in William of Poitiers. The end of his chronicle has not been preserved, but it is thought that Orderic Vitalis continued to use it, giving his work an added value for these vital years of the completion of the Conquest.30
There were serious rebellions against William in England, but they lacked any unified control or even purpose. Although not always confined to regional personnel, they tended to be regional in their extent. Apart from problems on the border, William faced serious opposition in the north, at Exeter and in East Anglia. We cannot go into detail over his campaigns in these and other areas. But we may praise the consistency of his effort and success, even when we are horrified at the manner of its accomplishment.
The last few years of the 1060s was the period during which the conquest of the rest of England was achieved. Most of the great lords submitted, but it was soon obvious that many harboured resentments or rebellious inclinations. William of Jumièges wrote that William ‘found many Englishmen whose fickle minds had turned away from loyalty’.31 Ambushes of Norman soldiers were set up in various places. In 1067 there were rebellions in Hereford and Kent. The years 1068 to 1070 have recently been labelled the time of ‘the English revolt’, which broke out in various places but especially in the north.32
In 1068 Exeter, where Harold’s mother resided, opposed the new king. The city sent messages to try and stir up support. The citizens manned the gates and the walls. William had already taken hostages, and one of these was blinded before the watching citizens. He surrounded the city and attempted to storm it, and then commenced mining operations.33 The siege lasted eighteen days and ended in a surrender on terms. At once, William set about building a castle within the walls.
In 1068 William moved north in force and Mercia submitted to his presence. He captured York and fortified it. Norman control of the area only really began with this move, and was still a tender plant. York and the north was the most severe test of William’s authority. The city ‘was seething with discontent’, and was not prepared to be swayed by its archbishop’s attempts to persuade it to accept the changes.34 The peace made with William was uneasy.
The year 1069 saw a concerted effort of those willing to oppose him in the north, including Earl Waltheof, Edgar the Aetheling and forces from Denmark and Scotland. It was the most important combination of enemies to oppose William as king. Sweyn Estrithsson sent a large fleet of 240 ships to England, and later came himself. The Danish fleet made several attempts at landing, but England’s improved defences operated well and the Danes were forced to move on each time. They finally linked up with the English rebels when many rode and marched to meet them, ‘rejoicing exceedingly’.35
Edgar the Aetheling spent much of the period of William’s early reign in Scotland, and his sister Margaret married Malcolm III Canmore, the king of Scots (1058–93). Part of the Conqueror’s relative tolerance of Edgar, despite the considerable threat from his birth and position, no doubt stemmed from William’s desire to make peace with the Scots. Thus Edgar was to survive the reign and even go on the First Crusade.
The northern rebels and invaders concentrated at York. They included Earl Waltheof, Edgar the Aetheling, Earl Gospatric (a relative of Edgar’s), the sons of Karli of the house of Bamburgh, Sweyn Estrithsson and Malcolm, king of Scots. Virtually all the powers of the north, past and present, English, Scottish and Danish, had combined against the Norman interlopers. It became ‘a general rising of the north’.36
Trouble began on 28 January 1069 with an attack on a Norman expeditionary force which had advanced to Durham. The Durham chronicler says the Normans provoked the people by their aggression, which included killing men of the Church. The Northumbrians then caught the Normans by surprise early in the morning, and among those killed was Robert de Commines, the newly appointed earl of Northumbria. Then the gathering rebels focused their attention on York. A Norman force at York under Robert fitz Richard, the castellan of Clifford’s Tower, chose to make a rash sortie against the rebels in 1069, and was massacred: ‘many hundreds of Frenchmen’ were killed.37
William Malet, who had survived by staying within the castle at York apparently with his wife and two children – a perilous place for them to be – sent to William for aid.38 The king returned from Normandy and marched north again without hesitation. He was delayed at Pontefract but eventually Lisois de Moutiers found a ford. The rebels decided to get away and William recovered York; he ‘spared no man’, and built a second castle (the Old Baile), which was entrusted to William fitz Osbern.39 Even after this there was an attack on both Norman castles, but fitz Osbern held them off. The Danish fleet, paid to withdraw by William after the defeat of the rebels, finally returned home in a sad state according to Orderic Vitalis.40
William punished the region with the most harsh of all his harsh measures in England, the harrying of the north. Harrying as a punishment was not new in England, but William’s was so severe as to be long recalled. Symeon of Durham wrote that, as a result: ‘there was no village inhabited between York and Durham’.41 The harrying was condemned even by normally favourable chroniclers. Orderic wrote:
nowhere else had William shown such cruelty. Shamefully he succumbed to this vice, for he made no effort to restrain his fury and punished the innocent with the guilty … My narrative has frequently had occasion to praise William, but for this act which condemned the innocent and guilty alike to die by slow starvation I cannot commend him … I would rather lament the griefs and sufferings of the wretched people than make a vain attempt to flatter the perpetrator of such infamy.42
The Conqueror sought out any rebel, and any who got in the way. His troops spread over a great distance, combing woodland and remote areas, leaving no hiding place unsearched. He wanted the whole region north of the Humber to be deprived of food. Houses and crops were destroyed, any living creature that crossed the path of William’s troops was slaughtered till a great band of ashes and waste spread over Yorkshire.
The Conqueror also dealt with the Scottish involvement. In 1072 William led an expedition into the northern realm. King Malcolm Canmore was forced to submit and do homage. The deal probably included the submission also of Edgar the Aetheling, who had frequently taken refuge north of the border and was the Scottish king’s brother-in-law. He was forced to leave Scotland for Flanders, but within a couple of years Edgar had submitted, and was even able to appear at William’s court.
In the meantime, there had also been problems in the west. Just as Scottish encouragement aided the northern rebels, so were the Welsh involved along the western borders. A Welsh rebellion was beaten down in 1069 and in the following year William took over Chester in person and sent an expedition into North Wales. There had been further disturbances in the south-west. Twice the surviving sons of Harold Godwinson brought a force from Ireland.
Three sons of Harold are named altogether: Godwin, Edmund and Magnus. They came first in 1068, and then again in the summer of 1069. On the first occasion they raided into the Avon and attacked Bristol, which fought them off, and then raided in Somerset. They brought sixty-four ships on the second occasion, landing in the mouth of the Taw.43 They came to Exeter and caused devastation around the city. Count Brian for the Conqueror led out a force against them and there were two clashes which together destroyed the raiders, who went away in but two small ships. Harold’s sons returned to Ireland. William of Jumièges thought that 1,700 had been killed in their venture.44 The failure of her grandsons was sufficient to cause Harold’s mother, Gytha, to leave Exeter and go into exile abroad, where she died.45
There were widespread outbreaks of opposition, but all were crushed: at Chester, Shrewsbury, Stafford, Montacute, Exeter and elsewhere. Sometimes William dealt with it in person, sometimes men acted for him. The reliability of these troops under such leaders as Count Brian, William fitz Osbern and Robert of Mortain goes far to explain the success of the prolonged period of fighting which brought about the completion of the Conquest.
The final serious thrust of opposition broke out in East Anglia. This will always be associated in our minds with the half legendary personage of Hereward the Wake, identified as a thegn (perhaps a king’s thegn) from Lincolnshire who had held three manors, and who was said to have been outlawed for an earlier attack on a Norman lord. One suggestion is that he had been involved in the northern revolt of 1069.46
Detail can be added to the bones of this story of Hereward only from the twelfth-century poem about his exploits, the Gesta Herewardi (Deeds of Hereward), and in this there is difficulty divorcing reliable material from legend. The fact that it was written does suggest a surviving anti-Norman attitude in England. We can say little about Hereward for sure. The rebellion of which he was part was a last throw by the combined surviving English nobles prepared to take up arms against the Normans. It finally broke the northern earls. The Conqueror had offered Edwin marriage to his own daughter. When this had been advised against by some of his courtiers, he had changed his mind, which had brought Edwin to the point of rebellion, with English and Welsh support.
Now Morcar joined the rebellion in Ely in 1071. The rebels had taken to this isolated and difficult area. Ely was then truly an island, surrounded by waters and treacherous marshland. But William approached in force, probably entered the island at Aldreth, and caused the rebels to flee. Morcar submitted, and Hereward escaped.47 The real Hereward disappeared into obscurity - we know nothing more of him at all – but the legendary Hereward grew in stature as the years passed. Morcar was thrown into prison under the guard of Robert de Beaumont, and stayed there for the rest of his life. Orderic says that in trying to raise help to get his brother released, Earl Edwin was killed after being betrayed by his own servants.48
As for Waltheof, son of Siward, he had been given Northamptonshire by the Conqueror, and also William’s niece Judith in marriage in 1070. Orderic says he was handsome and of fine physique. He had no apparent reason to oppose William, having suffered more disappointment before the Conquest than after. Yet he conspired against William in 1075 with two of the newly appointed earls, Roger Montgomery of Hereford and Ralph the Breton of Norwich. Orderic says they spread the message that ‘the man who now calls himself king is unworthy, since he is a bastard … He unjustly invaded the fair kingdom of England and unjustly slew its true heirs … all men hate him and his death would cause great rejoicing.’
The chronicler records that these two approached Waltheof, who was reluctant to join them and refused to take part in rebellion. The earls sought aid from Denmark, rebelled in 1075 and were beaten in battle. Later, Ralph fled to Denmark and then to Brittany. But his men in Norwich suffered: ‘Some of them were blinded/And some banished from the land.’49 Earl Roger was taken prisoner and tried, then cast into prison. When the Conqueror sent him gifts in prison the earl ordered them to be burned, causing William to swear he would never be released. Earl Roger died in fetters.50
If we may trust Orderic, Waltheof was not guilty. Lanfranc later also expressed the view of Waltheof’s innocence. But it did not save him from William’s vengeance against the rebels. According to Orderic, Waltheof was accused of conspiracy by his own wife, Judith. The earl admitted being approached but said he had refused to give support. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle on the other hand implies Waltheof’s guilt in conspiring, and rather oddly says that ‘he accused himself’ and sought pardon.51 Waltheof was imprisoned for a year at Winchester. There were some at court ready to advise that he should be executed. The probable guilt of Waltheof was in failing to reveal the conspiracy of which he was aware.52
For fear of repercussions in Winchester, Earl Waltheof was taken from his prison early in the morning of 31 May 1076. The executioners allowed him to say the Lord’s Prayer, but when he broke into tears before its completion, they would wait no longer and hacked off his head with a sword. According to Orderic, the severed head continued ‘but deliver us from evil. Amen.’53 The body was later exhumed and taken to Crowland for burial.
More trouble for William later in his reign came from his own half-brother, Odo of Bayeux, in whom ‘vices were mingled with virtues’ and who was also brought down for his opposition to the king.54 It was said that Odo sought the papacy for himself, expecting help from the Normans in Sicily and planning to lead a band of knights from England. William scotched the scheme and arrested Odo probably in 1083. One assumes that William’s complaint was that Odo was deserting his duties, but the whole tale has a fishy ring about it, and one suspects some other plotting of Odo’s had come to the Conqueror’s attention. Odo was imprisoned till the end of the reign. He would cause a similar stir after his release against the new king.
William’s reign was hardly a happy one. At no time was he free from cares. His quarrels with his own son, Robert Curthose, were perhaps as hurtful as any of the rebellions listed above. But William had won a throne, and his family retained it. The rebellions were all crushed, the opposition virtually annihilated. The Norman Conquest of England was one of the most complete and efficient conquests in history.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CONQUEST
There were immediate effects of the Conquest in England: a new king, a new nobility and ruling class, a rash of castle building, changes in the Church. William began with words of tolerance, and permitted those English who submitted before his coronation to retain their positions and at least some of their lands. But within a decade he had obliterated the higher echelons of the Old English nobility. By the time of the Conqueror’s death, the greater nobility in England was of continental extraction, though English blood often survived through marriage.
The success of the Conquest also fuelled an attitude of the Normans to their own warlike qualities, almost their invincibility. Such views had been growing already, a somewhat distorted idea of a Norman past leading to the present triumph, an idea of themselves as a distinct people rather glossing over the true history of their development, contributing to what has been seen by Ralph Davis as a Norman ‘myth’.55
How far social structure altered after the Conquest is a matter of much controversy, and will always be so. We can but sketch a part of the discussion here. There has been debate over the nature of the settlement which followed the Conquest. Norman and French nobles took over much of the land. Others came in the wake of the Conquest seeking profits, some of whom settled in towns. Differentiating between Normans and English in the documents is a very difficult business, so analysis of the settlement is bound to be imprecise. The general conclusion must be that Normans and other French did come, nobles and their households, soldiers, townsmen, clergy and others, but that the numbers were not enormous. If William intended integration with the native population, a ‘multi-racial settlement’ as one historian has expressed it, then he was to a degree disappointed. Integration followed eventually, but during William’s reign much tension remained between conquered and conquerors.56
The matter of social effects of the Conquest has usually been framed in terms relating to feudalism. We have already hinted that there were similarities in the society of the two regions. Recent historical research tends to emphasise the similarities rather than the differences. Feudalism, as we have said, is a construct of historians rather than a fact of medieval life, and they have made of it rather what they choose: one one thing, one another.
If we ask rather how did society in England change because of the Conquest, we may get a more satisfactory answer than by seeking to know if the Normans introduced feudalism to England. Certainly they did not transplant whole some living organism of society into a land whose old society died out. What occurred was much more of a merging, a new development in itself, fed from both sources.
Knight-service and castles, symptoms of what is generally seen as feudalism, were relatively recent developments in Normandy itself, and much less systematic than once thought. In England already there was a nobility which provided the élite of the military forces and which held land. In Normandy and England there was some land to which military service was attached, and other land to which it was not.
The circumstances of the Conquest, rather than any seeking after social change, provided the main impact. Invasion, conquest, rebellion: it was a time of crisis and insecurity. The Normans inevitably built fortifications quickly and in the style just becoming fashionable at home. That is, they built castles, and in the circumstances mostly cheap and quick ones made of earth and timber. One thing which did change was the function of the fighting men which military service produced. No longer would the English have entirely infantry forces, from now on the élite troops would be cavalry – though like the Normans they would balance the cavalry with good infantry.
The intention was not social change, but sometimes that was the effect. The new lords of the land resided in their new fortifications. In such circumstances military force was required, and often quickly or even permanently for garrisons. The English system was not abandoned, but new elements entered into it. Here and there, quotas of military service were demanded, service in return for the land held, service in garrisons as well as in the field.
It was no more a system in England than it had been or was in Normandy, but it became more systematic in the course of time: arrangements for military service were regulated for peacetime needs as well as for the crisis years after 1066. So that England did become a society where the lords were also the military leadership, and where land-holding entailed providing forces for the king more or less commensurate with the land held – though never in a precise calculation. English society and its military arrangements had been heading in a similar direction, but the changes were more sudden than would otherwise have been the case.
It has not usually been easy to make comment on the fate of the ordinary English subject population. However, recent work has assisted in this matter, and we can see that changes were not always as drastic in all levels of society as might be thought, and that much of the Old English society survived. It has been suggested that the Normans ‘introduced no new systems of agricultural exploitation or estate management’.57
The continuity in the lower ranks of society is much as one might have suspected, but can now be given some satisfactory basis in evidence. It supports the knowledge of continuity in some areas, not least in the retention of English as a language, and at least some aspects of Old English culture. This is not to say that some depression in social terms did not result from the changes. Domesday Book makes clear that many English peasants had to surrender something of their freedom as an accommodation with their new lords. Domesday does not have the whole story and rather minimises English survival, leaving out ‘a whole stratum of free men’.58 Many middling rank families are shown to have survived and even to have done well in the new conditions. The lower levels of royal service were also filled by Englishmen.59
But it is surely also true that, for many, the Conquest was a disaster. A recent article has stressed the ‘catastrophic impact’ upon the minds of the English that must have resulted.60 A very high proportion of the nobility had been killed in the fighting of 1066, perhaps a half, with all the grief which that left behind for families and friends. Some of the women were pushed into unwelcome marriages, some took refuge in nunneries to escape such matches.
The destruction of property and houses for war was considerable. In many towns, such as Cambridge or Exeter, the Normans destroyed entire quarters in order to build new castles. The strength of the new monarchy was demonstrated by the level of taxation which could be enforced. The enforcers were often highly unpopular. We do not need to wait for Robin Hood to find hated sheriffs. It was written of one, Picot, that he was ‘a hungry lion, a ravening wolf, a cunning fox, a dirty pig, an impudent dog’.61
The D chronicler wrote that the Normans ‘built castles far and wide throughout this country, and distressed the wretched folk, and always after that it grew much worse’.62 The harrying of the north brought misery to hundreds who could no longer survive in the devastated region. The Durham chronicler wrote: ‘so great a famine prevailed that men, compelled by hunger, devoured human flesh, that of horses, dogs and cats, and whatever custom abhors … It was horrific to behold human corpses decaying in the houses, the streets and the roads.’63
The chroniclers do not often pass comment on the distress they describe, though giving enough evidence of suffering. However, Orderic Vitalis, who had lived his early boyhood in England and was half-English, thought that the English aided Eustace of Boulogne in rebellion because they were ‘goaded by Norman oppression’. He says that ‘England was exhausted with tribulation after tribulation … fire, rapine, and daily slaughter brought destruction and disaster on the wretched people and utterly laid waste the land’. Of the harrying of the north, he wrote: ‘in consequence so serious a scarcity was felt in England, and so terrible a famine fell upon the humble and defenceless population, that more than 100,000 Christian folk … perished of hunger’.64
The change in the Church, if not so drastic as the changes in the nobility in terms of method, was as complete in terms of effect for the greater prelates. In the words of Barlow, ‘the English Church had come under new management’. English bishops were allowed to continue, but on their deaths were replaced by a continental group. By 1073 the bishops included eight Normans, four Lotharingians, one Italian and only two Englishmen; by 1087 there were eleven Normans and one Englishman. The change in the abbeys was not quite so drastic, but a similar process was observed in most of the greater houses, continental abbots replacing English predecessors.
Stigand was permitted to hang on until 1070, partly because of his submission. But in 1070 he was removed and replaced by Lanfranc as Archbishop of Canterbury. Lanfranc was not Norman, but he had received preferment in the Norman Church before the Conquest. He was a leading figure in the Church, a thinker, writer, teacher and reformer and a great Archbishop of Canterbury. But he was a whole-hearted supporter of the Conqueror’s regime.
Lanfranc also introduced Church reforms, with which he was already associated on the continent, into England. Such changes would no doubt have come into England without the Conquest in time, and we need not disparage the state of the Old English church. But as events turned, a number of significant reforms were introduced through the new episcopate and under the aegis of the new king.
It was also an age of great church building, and somewhat accidental that hundreds of the new stone churches either replaced older English buildings, or survived better than they did. There was also a centralising policy for episcopal sees. Where existing centres were in small and remote places they were often moved to a more urban and central position: Elmham to Thetford, Selsey to Chichester, Lichfield to Chester. This was a trend which had begun before the Conquest.
Leading churchmen played a major role in the Conqueror’s administration, and it is not surprising that they should keep their continental ways. This must be one reason that the documentation of government, in particular the charters, reverted to Latin from Old English. Again, one need not attack the state of English government, it is simply that the Conquest brought certain changes with it. Both England and Normandy had reasonable systems before 1066, and both contributed something to the Anglo-Norman state which emerged. But one cannot deny that the Conquest brought change which would not otherwise have occurred in the form it did.
Thus shires and hundreds and many other English institutions survived, but would there, for example, ever have been a Domesday Book had there not been a Norman Conquest? The answer is surely no. The English system could have produced such a work, and its contents owed a great deal to existing English practice and methods, but there would have been no need for quite such a document without the Conquest and no driving force behind it without the Conqueror. Thus we possess one of the great records from the eleventh century, an absolute godsend to historians, a fund of all sorts of information.
In conclusion, we may ask what were the main political effects of the Conquest? They are mostly obvious but this does not make them any the less important. For a start, there was a new king and this would soon be seen as the beginning of a new dynasty – to such an extent that a thirteenth-century king would be known as Edward I, disregarding the rule of the Old English monarchs of that name. The Conqueror made some claims about his right by descent, but it was right by force which everyone recognised.
The Conquest had brought a new line to the throne. And for centuries, in some ways even till now, that has meant a king (or queen) of England who would not have been on the throne but for the events of 1066. More immediately, William’s reign in England was followed by that of his two sons, William II Rufus (1087–1100) and Henry I (1100–35); then by his grandson, Stephen (1135–54) and his great-grandson, Henry II (1154–89). For all the changes and problems of succession which the period 1066 to 1189 covered, it is still true that William’s line ruled in England, and of course would continue so to do.
Kings of England and Dukes of Normandy.
The imposition of a French nobility also had its effects. The new lords of England belonged to families which mainly held considerable lands across the sea. For some time, this would cause a new situation in English politics, and obviously affected the English nobility’s attitude to continental affairs. Out of this, as well as out of succession disputes, came an interweaving of affairs in kingdom and duchy. The two stayed tied in political matters for centuries. William as duke of Normandy conquered England in 1066; his son Henry I as king of England conquered Normandy in 1106.
It is probably true that the Conquest had some influence on the greater unity of England and on the dominance of England over its British neighbours. But both developments had begun before, and neither had dramatic improvement at once. It has reasonably been argued that despite the harrying, indeed partly because of it, the north was not truly ruled from the south for many years to come.65 Northern separatism remained a factor in English politics long after William’s death. But it is probably true that the English magnates lost something of their powers relative to the king. No Anglo-Norman earl would quite equate in status to, say, Godwin of Wessex. The powers of earls diminished somewhat and the powers of royal authority within the earldoms increased.
The link between England and Normandy brought even more dramatic enlargement to the rulers of England in time. Henry of Anjou, son of the Empress Matilda, inherited Anjou from his father; Normandy from his mother, but made possible by his father’s conquest of it; and soon England. By various means he became lord of all western France, and what we know as the Angevin Empire was born. Out of that came inevitable conflict with the Capetian kings of France: the losses under King John, the revival in the later Middle Ages in the first stages of the Hundred Years’ War. Not until the fifteenth century was this conflict truly determined, so that France as we know it would emerge, and the English crown would be shorn of nearly all its hold on continental lands.
In some sense, all of this came about because of Hastings and the Norman Conquest. Indeed, it would not be untrue to suggest that English history from 1066 until now is a consequence of the battle of Hastings. It would not otherwise have been as it has been. It truly was a great and significant battle: it changed a crown, it changed a nation, and it deserves its reputation as one of the few occasions and dates which everyone remembers. If I decided the dates of national holidays, 14 October would be one of them.
Notes
1. William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 210; N. Hooper, ‘Edgar the Aetheling: Anglo-Saxon prince, rebel and crusader’, Anglo-Saxon England, xiv, 1985, pp. 197–214.
2. Bayeux Tapestry, pl. 71–2.
3. William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 210.
4. Thorpe (ed.), The Bayeux Tapestry, p. 54.
5. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, p. 178.
6. William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 204; Thorpe (ed.), The Bayeux Tapestry, p. 54.
7. Swanton, Three Lives of the Last Englishmen, p. 13.
8. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, p. 180.
9. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, p. 180.
10. William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 212: ‘ad Fractam Turrim’.
11. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, p. 180.
12. Whitelock et al. (eds), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 144; Cubbins (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 80.
13. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, p. 182.
14. J. Beeler, Warfare in England, 1066–1189, New York, 1966, pp. 25–33.
15. F.H. Baring, ‘The Conqueror’s footprints in Domesday’, EHR, xiii, 1898, pp. 17–25; Baring, Domesday Tables; G.H. Fowler, ‘The devastation of Bedfordshire and the neighbouring counties in 1065 and 1066’, Archaeologia, lxxii, 1922, pp. 41–50; D. Butler, 1066: the Story of a Year, London, 1966; A.M. Davies, ‘Eleventh century Buckinghamshire’, Records of Buckinghamshire, x, 1916, pp. 69–74; and J. Bradbury, ‘An introduction to the Buckinghamshire Domesday’, in A. Williams and R.W.H. Erskine (eds), The Buckinghamshire Domesday, London, 1988, p. 32. The idea goes back beyond Baring in origin, see J.J.N. Palmer, ‘The Conqueror’s footprints’. Palmer puts damaging questions against the Baring thesis, but does not draw the full conclusions, and has missed my 1988 comments.
16. R. Welldon Finn, The Norman Conquest and its Effects upon the Economy, London, 1971, p. 19.
17. William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 220.
18. J. Nelson, ‘The rites of the conqueror’, ANS, 1981.
19. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, p. 182–4.
20. William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 230.
21. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, p. 194.
22. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, p. 218.
23. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, p. 196.
24. Baudri de Bourgueil, ed. Abrahams, p. 196.
25. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, p. 196.
26. William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 264.
27. William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 266.
28. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, p. 204–6.
29. William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, pp. 268–70.
30. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, p. 208 has the last information clearly derived from Poitiers’ surviving manuscript, from then on we may expect material from Poitiers but only surviving in Orderic. This is made practically certain by Orderic’s comment, p. 258: ‘William of Poitiers has brought his history up to this point’: i.e. Orderic, pp. 208–58, must make use of the lost end section of Poitiers.
31. William of Jumièges, ed. van Houts, ii, p. 178.
32. Williams, The Norman Conquest, p. 24.
33. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, p. 212.
34. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, p. 216.
35. Whitelock et al. (eds), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 150.
36. Kapelle, The Norman Conquest, p. 112.
37. Whitelock et al. (eds), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 150; Symeon of Durham in Stevenson, p. 550; Cubbins (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 84.
38. Symeon of Durham in Stevenson, p. 551.
39. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, pp. 222, 230.
40. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, p. 234.
41. Symeon of Durham in Stevenson, p. 551.
42. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, pp. 230–2.
43. Whitelock et al. (eds), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, pp. 148–9, D and John of Worcester, eds Darlington amd McGurk, give sixty-four ships; Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, p. 224 has sixty-six.
44. William of Jumièges, ed. van Houts, ii, p. 182.
45. It is not certain when she went, it may have been before the second raid, since John of Worcester has 1068. Orderic says she went to France, Worcester has Flanders – which seems more likely.
46. Williams, The Norman Conquest, pp. 35, 49–50 and n. 21.
47. Whitelock et al. (eds), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 154.
48. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, p. 258.
49. Whitelock et al. (eds), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 158.
50. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, p. 318.
51. Whitelock et al. (eds), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 157; Cubbins (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 87: ‘wreide hine sylfne, 7 bæd forgyfenysse, 7 bead gærsuman’.
52. William of Malmesbury, ed. Stubbs, ii, pp. 313–14.
53. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, p. 322; Symeon of Durham in Stevenson, p. 563, has an axe.
54. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, p. 266.
55. R.H.C. Davis, The Normans and their Myth, London, 1976; G. Loud, ‘The Gens Normannorum – myth or reality’, PBA, iv, 1981, pp. 104–16; M. Bennett, ‘Stereotype Normans in Old French vernacular literature’, ANS, ix, 1986, pp. 25–42. Searle, Predatory Kinship, suggests there was some reality to the ideas of a Scandinavian inheritance.
56. D.J.A. Matthew, The Norman Conquest, London, 1966, p. 97.
57. Williams, The Norman Conquest, p. 3.
58. Williams, The Norman Conquest, p. 85.
59. Williams, The Norman Conquest, pp. 3, 103.
60. E. van Houts, ‘The trauma of 1066’, History Today, 46, 1996, pp. 9–15, p. 9.
61. Williams, The Norman Conquest, p. 88; E.O. Blake (ed.), Liber Eliensis, Camden 3rd ser, xcii, London, 1962, p. 211.
62. Whitelock et al. (eds), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 145; Cubbins (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 81: ‘7 warhton castelas wide geond ¬as eode, 7 ¬earn folc swencte, 7 aδδan hit yflade swiδe’.
63. Symeon of Durham in Stevenson, p. 551.
64. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii, pp. 204, 220, 232.
65. Kapelle, The Norman Conquest, e.g. p. 233.