by Marc Morris
So the king was dead; long live the king? The Carmen says that, with Harold thus entombed, William ‘renounced the title of duke [and] assumed the royal style’, but Poitiers once again offers a pointed rebuttal: the victor could have gone on immediately to London, placed the crown on his head and rewarded his followers with the booty, slaying Englishmen or driving them into exile; but, we are told, ‘he preferred to act more moderately, and rule with greater clemency’. Both comments, of course, are equally nonsensical. There was no rule that said the man who killed a king must automatically replace him, nor was William in any position to march on Westminster. He had won a great victory, and succeeded in what we take to be a deliberate strategy of decapitation. But when Poitiers, even in what is obviously a rhetorical passage, suggests that’ the forces of Normandy had subjugated all the cities of the English in a single day’, the effect is unintentionally comic. The truth was that, apart from Pevensey and Hastings, every town and city in England still remained to be taken.4
In London, for example, the streets were teeming. ‘A crowd of warriors from elsewhere had flocked there’, says Poitiers in a more prosaic mode, ‘and the city, in spite of its great size, could scarcely accommodate them all.’ Some of these men were doubtless the troops summoned by Harold that had not arrived by the time of his premature departure. Others were survivors from Hastings – ‘the obstinate men who had been defeated in battle’, as the Carmen calls them. Their collective mood was determined and defiant. The Carmen speaks of their ‘hope of being able to live there in freedom for a long time’, while Poitiers goes even further, saying ‘it was indeed their highest wish to have no king who was not a compatriot’.5
With Harold gone, there was only one plausible candidate. ‘Archbishop Ealdred and the citizens of London wished to have Edgar Ætheling as king’, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘as indeed was his right by birth.’ The great-nephew of Edward the Confessor, last of the ancient royal line, Edgar did indeed have a better claim than anybody else. Yet, as events at the start of the year had shown, a teenager with a strong claim could easily be elbowed aside by a powerful man with a weak one. Support from the archbishop of York, who had led the mission to bring Edgar’s father home from Hungary, was useful, as was the allegiance of the Londoners. But for the boy to have any hope of success he would need friends with more muscle.
The only individuals in London that autumn in a position to lend such strength were Eadwine and Morcar, the brother earls of Mercia and Northumbria, last seen losing the battle of Fulford several weeks earlier. What they had been doing in the meantime is frustratingly unclear: contemporary sources make no mention of them until this point, and later ones are contradictory. Orderic Vitalis, for example, states categorically that they had not fought at Hastings, whereas John of Worcester implies that they had, but withdrew before its bloody conclusion. On reaching London their first thought was reportedly to get Harold’s widow, Ealdgyth – their sister – out of harm’s way, to which end they sent her north to Chester; but they also gave their backing to Edgar Ætheling. ‘Eadwine and Morcar promised they would fight for him’, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.6
None of this, of course, can have been known to William in the days immediately after the battle. Having buried his own dead, the duke had withdrawn to Hastings, where he waited, in the words of the Chronicle, ‘to see if there would be any surrender’. According to the Carmen he stayed there for a fortnight, but no surrender came. ‘When he realized that none were willing to come to him’, says the Chronicle, ‘he marched inland with what was left of his host.’
William began his march by heading east along the coast. His first stop was the town of Romney, where, says Poitiers, ‘he inflicted such punishment as he thought fit for the slaughter of his men who had landed there by mistake’ – an interesting, belated indication of the dangers the Normans had risked by crossing the Channel at night. Presumably leaving the charred remains of Romney behind him, the duke proceeded further along the coast to Dover. ‘A great multitude had gathered there’, says Poitiers, ‘because the place seemed impregnable’, and both he and the Carmen devote several lines to describing the defensive advantages of the rocky headland on which Dover Castle now stands. As the Normans approached, though, the defenders lost heart and surrendered. More burning followed when the town was occupied, which Poitiers insists was accidental, and blames on the lower ranks of the duke’s army, greedy for plunder.
William remained at Dover for some time: a month according to the Carmen, though Poitiers, perhaps more credibly, implies it might have been just over a week. One reason was his reported desire to strengthen the site’s existing defences (some historians would date the origins of Dover Castle from this point); another may have been the need to wait for the ‘reinforcements from overseas’ referred to by the D Chronicle. Despite the losses suffered at Hastings, William’s army was clearly still formidably large. Too large, perhaps: during their stay at Dover, some of his men resorted to drinking water and eating freshly killed meat, which led to an outbreak of dysentery and in due course many deaths. Their high-risk diet indicates that supplies of more suitable foodstuffs must have run short, and reminds us of a fundamental point: the Normans were living off the land, and needed to keep foraging and ravaging in order to remain alive. A short time later, Poitiers tells us, William himself fell ill, but despite the concern of those close to him he pushed on, ‘lest the army should suffer from a shortage of supplies’.7
Leaving a garrison at Dover, as well as those too ill to continue, William set his sights on London. As he advanced, representatives of other cities approached him and offered their submission. The citizens of Canterbury did so, says Poitiers, fearful of total ruin if they resisted further. The Carmen, meanwhile, carries the uncorroborated but entirely credible story that the duke sent troops to demand the surrender of Winchester, the site of the royal treasury and hence a highly desirable prize. Since the start of the year the city had been held by Edward the Confessor’s widow, Edith, as part of her dower, and this, says the Carmen, meant that its inhabitants were treated leniently, with William requiring only a profession of fealty and a promise of future rent – terms which the former queen and the city fathers chose to accept. Other towns and cities evidently had to make their submission on such terms as they could get, which generally involved the payment of large tributes. ‘Just as hungry flies attack in swarms wounds brimming with blood’, says the Carmen, ‘so from all sides the English rush to dance attendance on the king. Nor do they come with hands empty of gifts. All bring presents, bow their necks to the yoke, and kiss his feet on bended knees.’8
But not the citizens of London. If he had not known before, by now William had heard about the election of Edgar Ætheling.’ When he learnt what had been done in London’, says the Carmen, ‘contrary to justice and by fools, he ordered his troops to approach the walls of the city.’ Unfortunately at this point the Carmen becomes an unreliable guide, describing a siege of London which is at odds with the accounts of all other writers. We seem to be on surer ground with William of Poitiers, who explains how the approach of an advance party of Norman knights triggered an English sortie. Poitiers does not say so, but since the city lies on the north side of the Thames and the Normans were approaching from the south, the defenders must have crossed the river to meet their enemies, which presumably means they used London Bridge. The sortie was unsuccessful, with the English forced into a retreat, back across the bridge and inside the walls. The Normans vented their fury by torching all the houses on the south bank.9
With his army on one side of the Thames and London’s recalcitrant citizens safely ensconced on the other, William faced a major problem: how to induce a surrender without attempting a suicidal direct assault. The solution was the kind of terror campaign he had used in similar circumstances earlier in his career, most recently in the case of Le Mans. The Norman advance from Hastings to London can hardly have been the peaceful progress that some later chroniclers p
retended; apart from anything else, the need to forage for food would have meant much violent appropriation. Even William of Poitiers, although he makes some prefatory noises about clemency and moderation, could not avoid mentioning the punishing of Romney and the burning of Dover. These actions, however, Poitiers evidently felt could be justified or excused as accidental; when, by contrast, he comes to describe the army’s actions after the confrontation on the south bank, he retreats into one of his telling silences, saying only that the duke proceeded ‘wherever he wished’. It is our English sources, despite their habitual terseness, that furnish us with a fuller picture. William, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘harried that part of the country through which he advanced’. From this moment, if not before, foraging became outright ravaging – wilful and deliberate destruction, intended to sow fear among those who had not yet submitted. Some idea of the extent of the campaign is provided by John of Worcester, who wrote that the Normans ‘laid waste Sussex, Kent, Hampshire, Middlesex and Hertfordshire, and did not cease from burning townships and slaying men’.10
As to precisely where they went, we cannot know. More than a century ago, a scholar called Francis Baring suggested that the route of William’s devastating march could be recovered by looking at the depreciation of land values recorded in the Domesday Book. It all seemed very clever and well substantiated, and one can still find books written in the not too distant past that cite Baring’s reconstruction with approval. Latterly, however, the Baring method has been discredited, not least because even its staunchest advocates are unable to agree on the same conclusion.11 The truth is that we can only recover the general direction of the duke’s route from the information recorded in the chronicles. We can be fairly sure that, having decided against a direct assault on London, William headed west. If John of Worcester is right, the Normans harried into Hampshire, then turned north, burning their way through Berkshire and on into Oxfordshire, before coming to a stop at Wallingford. As its name implies, Wallingford was a convenient place for the Normans to cross the Thames (apparently the first place they could have crossed the river without recourse to boats or bridges). It may also have had an additional importance as a military target: the town’s entry in the Domesday Book contains a passing reference to land ‘where the housecarls lived’. To judge from the comments of the chroniclers, William stayed in Wallingford for several days – even the brief account of William of Jumièges says that the duke ordered his troops to pitch camp there – and one naturally suspects that during this time, as at Dover, work commenced on the town’s new castle.12
According to William of Poitiers, it was at Wallingford that the archbishop of Canterbury, Stigand, came and did homage to William, at the same time renouncing Edgar Ætheling. While we have no particular reason to doubt that this was the case, we might suspect that Poitiers exaggerates the archbishop’s role in the English resistance. In his account, Stigand is portrayed as the leader of the Londoners at the time of Edgar’s election; Ealdred, whom the English sources identify in that role, receives no mention. Very likely Poitiers is altering the past here, conscious of the subsequent fortunes of the two men, protecting Ealdred’s reputation by making Stigand the scapegoat. (He may have done much the same with the coronation of Harold at the start of the year.) The submission of the archbishop of Canterbury was, of course, significant. But the opposition in London, for the time being, continued.13
And so therefore did the harrying. Having crossed the Thames at Wallingford, the Norman army resumed its devastating progress, turning north-east so that the line of their march began to encircle the capital. Probably following the ancient path along the Chilterns known as the Icknield Way, William and his men passed through Buckinghamshire and on into Hertfordshire (as John of Worcester indicates), where they established another camp (and possibly the great motte-and-bailey castle) at Berkhamsted.
By now the mood in London must have been quite despondent. Apart from the terrifying spectacle of the Norman progress, English spirits had been dealt a crushing blow by the desertion of Eadwine and Morcar. The two earls, says John of Worcester, ‘withdrew their support and returned home with their army’, presumably meaning that at some point during the autumn they had left London and gone north to their earldoms. As a result of this action, Eadwine and Morcar have long been cast, probably unfairly, in the role of arch traitors. In the early twelfth century, for example, William of Malmesbury described them as ‘two brothers of great ambition’, and stated, quite inaccurately, that they left London because the citizens had refused to elect one of them as king: as we have seen, our most closely contemporary source, the D Chronicle, indicates that the earls had initially promised to fight for Edgar Ætheling, and says nothing about their departure for the north. At the same time, the D Chronicle, brief as it is, conveys vividly the collapse of hope among the English in London in the weeks that followed, as they contemplated fighting in the name of a child king against the terrible enemy that was wasting the land beyond their walls. ‘Always when some initiative should have been shown, there was delay from day to day, until matters went from bad to worse, as everything did in the end.’14
And so the English in London – or at least those who had championed the cause of young Edgar – decided to surrender. As the darkest days of the year drew in, Edgar himself, accompanied by a delegation of magnates and bishops, began the thirty-mile journey from London to Berkhamsted in order to submit to William’s superior might. They went, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘out of necessity, after most damage had been done – and it was a great piece of folly that they had not done it earlier’. When at last they came before the Conqueror, ‘they gave hostages, and swore oaths to him, and he promised them that he would be a gracious lord’.
Did this mean that William was England’s new king? To English minds, the answer must have been yes. As we’ve seen, English kingship was elective: a ruler’s reign began the moment he was accepted by the magnates. This means, of course, that the ætheling must have been regarded as king as well. Although the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is understandably very coy about saying so, Edgar’s rule had clearly been proclaimed in the days immediately after Hastings. We are told, for example, that after the death of their abbot from wounds sustained in the battle, the monks of Peterborough had sent his successor to Edgar for confirmation, and – more to the point – Edgar had ‘gladly consented’. William of Poitiers is even more explicit: ‘They had chosen Edgar Ætheling, of the noble stock of King Edward, as king.’ Evidently Edgar, like the Confessor before him, had not been crowned in the early days of his reign, but in English eyes this did not matter. Coronation, to repeat, was simply confirmation – it conferred God’s blessing, but not the kingship itself.15
The Normans, however, saw matters differently. On the Continent, a king was created at the moment of his coronation, not before. The Edgar episode, of course, gave them good reason for insisting on this point: the boy had not been crowned; ergo he was not king. The English may have thought this was rather irregular, but they were clearly in no position to debate constitutional practice, and so fell quickly into line with Norman thinking. At the same time, they realized that this new logic left the country in an anxious state of limbo: England would have no king until William was crowned. Hence, says William of Poitiers, ‘the bishops and other leading men begged him to take the crown, saying that they were accustomed to obey a king, and wished to have a king as their lord’. The Normans, too, urged their leader to take the throne quickly, albeit for different reasons. ‘They wished their gains and honours to be increased by his elevation.’16
But, according to Poitiers, William himself hesitated. It was not seemly, he said, to rush when climbing to the topmost pinnacle. Given that this had been the whole point of the Conquest, we might assume that this scene is Poitiers’ own invention – a conceit designed to emphasize his master’s thoughtfulness and modesty, and hence ultimately his suitability to rule. Yet unseemliness is not the only argument that the Conquero
r is said to have put forward. What chiefly dissuaded him, he told his closest companions, was the confused situation in England: some people were still rebelling; also, he had wanted his wife to be crowned with him, and she, of course, was still in Normandy. These arguments seem quite credible. At this point only the south-eastern part of the country was under William’s control. It would have been perfectly understandable had he wished to complete his military takeover, and to have all Englishmen submit to him, so that he and Matilda could experience an orderly coronation at some future date. In this respect at least, his attitude towards the ceremony was not so very different from that of his Anglo-Saxon predecessors.
Eventually, having put the matter to a meeting of his magnates, William was talked around. ‘After carefully reconsidering everything’, says Poitiers, ‘he gave way to all their requests and arguments.’ Apparently the key argument that persuaded him to change his mind was the military one. ‘Above all, he hoped that once he had begun to reign, any rebels would be less ready to challenge him and more easily put down.’ The decision taken, says Poitiers, William sent some of his men ahead to London to make the necessary preparations.17