The Norman Conquest

by Marc Morris

  Abbreviations

  (Unless otherwise indicated, the place of publication is London)

  ANS Anglo-Norman Studies

  ASC Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (cited by year)

  Barlow, Confessor F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor (new edn, 1997).

  Bates, Conqueror D. Bates, William the Conqueror(1989).

  Carmen The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio of Guy, Bishop of Amiens, ed. F. Barlow (Oxford, 1999).

  Councils and Synods Councils and Synods with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, I, 871–1204, ed. D. Whitelock, M. Brett and C. N. L. Brooke (2 vols., Oxford, 1981).

  Douglas, Conqueror D. C. Douglas, William the Conqueror: The Norman Impact Upon England (1964).

  DNB www.oxforddnb.com (cited by name). For the printed text, see The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (60 vols., Oxford, 2004).

  Eadmer Eadmer’s History of Recent Events in England, ed. G. Bosanquet (1964).

  EER Encomium Emmae Reginae, ed. A. Campbell and S. Keynes (Cambridge, 1998).

  EHD English Historical Documents

  EHR English Historical Review

  Fernie, Architecture E. Fernie, The Architecture of Norman England (Oxford, 2000).

  Freeman, Norman Conquest E. A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England (6 vols., Oxford, 1867–79).

  Gaimar, Estoire Geffrei Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis, ed. and trans. I. Short (Oxford, 2009).

  Garnett, Short Introduction G. Garnett, The Norman Conquest: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2009).

  GND The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, ed. E. M. C. van Houts (2 vols., Oxford, 1992–5).

  HH Henry of Huntingdon, The History of the English People 1000―1154, ed. and trans. D. Greenway (Oxford, 2002).

  JW The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, trans. J. Bray and P. McGurk (3 vols., Oxford, 1995, 1998, forthcoming).

  Letters of Lanfranc The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. and trans. V. H. Clover and M. T. Gibson (Oxford, 1979).

  OV The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. M. Chibnall (6 vols., Oxford, 1968–80).

  RRAN Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Ada of William I (1066–1087), ed D. Bates (Oxford, 1998).

  SD, History Simeon of Durham, History of the Kings of England, trans. J. Stevenson (facsimile reprint, Lampeter, 1987).

  SD, Libellus Simeon of Durham, Libellus de Exordio atque Procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, ed. D. Rollason (Oxford, 2000).

  Snorri Snorri Sturluson, King Harald’s Saga, ed. M. Magnusson and H. Pálsson (1966).

  Sources and Documents The Norman Conquest of England: Sources and Documents, ed. R. A. Brown (Woodbridge, 1984).

  TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

  VER The Life of King Edward who Rests at Westminster, ed. F. Barlow (2nd ed n, Oxford, 1992).

  Wace The History of the Norman People: Wace’s Roman de Rou, trans. G. S. Burgess (Woodbridge, 2004).

  WM, Gesta Pontificum William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, I, ed. and trans. M. Winter-bottom (Oxford, 2007).

  WM, Gesta Regum William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, I, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1998).

  WM, Saints’ Lives William of Malmesbury, Saints’ Lives, ed. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson (Oxford, 2002).

  WP The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, ed. R. H. C. Davis and M. Chibnall (Oxford, 1998).

  Notes

  INTRODUCTION

  1 Nor as many books and articles, of which there are thousands. For older publications, see S. A. Brown, The Bayeux Tapestry: History and Bibliography (Woodbridge, 1988). For more recent research, see The Bayeux Tapestry: Embroidering the Facts of History, ed. P. Bouet, B. Levy and F. Neveux (Caen, 2004); King Harold II and the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. G. R. Owen-Crocker (Woodbridge, 2005); The Bayeux Tapestry: New Interpretations, ed. M. K. Foys, K. E. Overbey and D. Terkla (Woodbridge, 2009); The Bayeux Tapestry: New Approaches, ed. M. J. Lewis, G. R. Owen-Crocker and D. Terkla (Oxford, 2011).

  2 D. J. Bernstein, The Mystery of the Bayeux Tapestry (London, 1986), 71–2.

  3 The contributors to the 1999 conference at Caen were unanimous in declaring for Odo: Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Bouet et al., 406. For the Canterbury connection, see C. Hart, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry and Schools of Illumination at Canterbury’, ANS, 22 (2000), 117–67 and idem, ‘The Cicero-Aratea and the Bayeux Tapestry’, King Harold II, ed. Owen-Crocker, 161–78. If the Tapestry was commissioned by Odo, it was presumably commissioned before his imprisonment in 1082, though later dates have been proposed.

  4 C. Hicks, The Bayeux Tapestry: The Life Story of a Masterpiece (London, 2006).

  5 M. J. Lewis, The Real World of the Bayeux Tapestry (Stroud, 2008); L. Ashe, Fiction and History in England (Cambridge, 2007), 35–45.

  6 M. Morris, A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain (2008); Itinerary of Edward I, ed. E. W Safford (3 vols., List and Index Society, 103, 132, 135, 1974–7); RRAN, 76–8.

  7 There are several different modern translations of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. I have used The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. G. N. Garmonsway (new edn, London, 1972), and also the translation by Whitelock in EHD, ii, 107–203. Both are cited by year rather than page number.

  8 M. Chibnall, The Debate on the Norman Conquest (Manchester, 1999), 59.

  9 WP, 26–7; The Life and Letters of Edward A. Freeman, ed. W. R. W. Stephens (2 vols., London, 1895), ii, 216. For Freeman’s character, see his entry in the DNB.

  10 D. Bates, ‘1066: Does the Date Still Matter?’, Historical Research,78 (2005), 446–7.

  11 P. Stafford, ‘Women and the Norman Conquest’, TRHS, 6th ser., 4 (1994), 221–49.

  12 Bates, ‘1066: Does the Date Still Matter?’, 447–51; R. Barber, ‘The Norman Conquest and the Media’, ANS, 26 (2004), 1–20; J. Gillingham, ‘“Slaves of the Normans?”: Gerald de Barri and Regnal Solidarity in Early Thirteenth-Century England’, Law, Laity and Solidarities: Essays in Honour of Susan Reynolds, ed. P. Stafford, J. L. Nelson and J. Martindale (Manchester, 2001), 160―70. More generally, see Chibnall, Debate, passim.

  13 E. g. R. A. Brown, The Normans and the Norman Conquest (2nd edn, Woodbridge, 1985), 5.

  14 ‘Change of a magnitude and at a speed unparalleled in English history’: Garnett, Short Introduction, 5. For a general discussion, see Bates, ‘1066: Does the Date Still Matter?’, passim.

  15 See in particular the work of John Gillingham, much of which is reprinted in his The English in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2000).

  16 See in particular R. R. Davies, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles, 1093–1343 (Oxford, 2000).

  CHAPTER 1

  1 E. Bozoky, ‘The Sanctity and Canonisation of Edward the Confessor’, Edward the Confessor: The Man and the Legend, ed. R. Mortimer (Woodbridge, 2009), 173–86.

  2 The Anglo-Saxons, ed. J. Campbell (1982), remains a fine introduction.

  3 In general, see M. Arnold, The Vikings: Culture and Conquest (2006).

  4 S. Foot, ‘The Making of Angelcynn: English Identity before the Norman Conquest’, TRHS, 6th ser., 6 (1996), 25–49; P. Wormald, ‘Engla lond: The Making of an Allegiance’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 7 (1994), 1–24.

  5 See The Battle of Maldon AD 991, ed. D. Scragg (Oxford, 1991).

  6 All the information about Æthelred in this chapter can be found in his DNB entry. For more extensive treatments, see R. Lavelle, Aethelred II: King of the English, 978–1016 (Stroud, 2008) and A.Williams, Æthelred the Unready: The Ill-Counselled King (2003).

  7 On the early history of Normandy, see D. Bates, Normandy before 1066 (Harlow, 1982).

  8 On the extent to which the Normans remained Norsemen, cf. Bates, Normandy, and E. Searle, Predatory Kinship and the Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066 (Berkeley, 1988).
<
br />   9 ASC E, 1014.

  10 EHD, i, 247, 335–6; below, 23

  11 Barlow, Confessor, 35n.

  12 S. Keynes, ‘The Æthelings in Normandy’, ANS, 13 (1991), 176–81; ASC E, 1016, 1017.

  13 ASC E, 1017; GND, ii, 20–1; EER, [xxii–xxiv], 32–5. See also E. van Houts, ‘A Note on Jezebel and Semiramis, Two Latin Poems from the Early Eleventh Century’, idem, History and Family Traditions in England and the Continent, 1000–1200 (Aldershot, 1999), III, 18–24.

  14 E. van Houts, ‘Edward and Normandy’, Edward the Confessor, ed. Mortimer, 64.

  15 M. K. Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England in the Early Eleventh Century (1993), 86–8; cf. Keynes, Æthelings’, 181–4.

  16 Richard II died on 23 August 1026, Richard III on 5 or 6 August 1027. See D. Douglas, ‘Some Problems of Early Norman Chronology’, EHR, 65 (1950), 296–303; D. Crouch, The Normans (2002), 46–8.

  17 GND, ii, 76–8; E. van Houts, ‘The Political Relations between Normandy and England before 1066 according to the Gesta Normannorum Ducum’, idem, History and Family Traditions, V, 85–97.

  18 Sources and Documents, 8; GND, i, xxxii–xxxv; ii, 76–9; Keynes, Æthelings’, 186–94.

  19 Sources and Documents, 8; GND, ii, 78–9.

  20 Ibid.; R. Mortimer, ‘Edward the Confessor: The Man and the Legend’, Edward the Confessor, ed. Mortimer, 4–5.

  21 GND, ii, 79–85. The story that Robert visited the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople, carried in a later redaction of the GND, has been discredited. See E. van Houts, ‘Normandy and Byzantium in the Eleventh Century’, idem, History and Family Traditions, I, 544–59.

  CHAPTER 2

  1 EHD, i, 335; GND, ii, 78–9; DNB Cnut.

  2 M. Hare, ‘Cnut and Lotharingia: Two Notes’, Anglo-Saxon England, 29 (2000), 261–8; HH, 17–18.

  3 DNB Cnut; The Letters and Poems of Fulbert of Chartres, ed. F. Behrends (Oxford, 1976), 67–9.

  4 N. Hooper, ‘The Housecarls in England in the Eleventh Century’, ANS, 7 (1985), 161–76. For a summary, see M. K. Lawson, The Battle of Hastings 1066 (Stroud, 2002), 158–9; ASC E, 1012; below, 32, 75–6.

  5 J. S. Moore, ‘“Quot Homines?”: The Population of Domesday England’, ANS, 19 (1997), 307–34, arrives at an estimate of 1.9 million in 1086.

  6 See, for example, the fleeting references in F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (3rd edn, Oxford, 1971) and The Anglo-Saxons, ed. J. Campbell (1982). A notable exception is J. M. Kemble, The Saxons in England (1849), i, 185–227. In general, see D. A. E. Pelteret, Slavery in Early Mediæval England (Woodbridge, 1995); idem, ‘Slave Raiding and Slave Trading in Early England’, Anglo-Saxon England,9 (1981), 99–114; J. S. Moore, ‘Domesday Slavery’, ANS, 11 (1989), 191–220; D. Wyatt, ‘The Significance of Slavery: Alternative Approaches to Anglo-Saxon Slavery’, ANS, 23 (2001), 327–47.

  7 Pelteret, Slavery, 70.

  8 Ibid., 65.

  9 H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, Law and Legislation from Æthelberht to Magna Carta (Edinburgh, 1966), 10, 16, 20–1.

  10 EHD, i, 931. See also WM, Gesta Regum, 362–3, and WM, Saints’ Lives, 100–3.

  11 EHD, i, 468–9; A. Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995), 73; P. A. Clarke, The English Nobility under Edward the Confessor (Oxford, 1994), 32–3.

  12 EHD, i, 930, 932.

  13 K. Mack, ‘Changing Thegns: Cnut’s Conquest and the English Aristocracy’, Albion, 4 (1984), 375–87.

  14 For runestones, see Anglo-Saxons, ed. Campbell, 198.

  15 S. Baxter, The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 2007), 26–8. For a more detailed analysis, see S. Keynes, ‘Cnut’s Earls’, The Reign of Cnut: King of England, Denmark and Norway, ed. A. R. Rumble (1994), 43–88.

  16 DNB Godwine; ASC E, 1009; VER, 8–11.

  17 L. M. Larson, ‘The Political Policies of Cnut as King of England’, American Historical Review, 15 (1910), 735; DNB Thorkell; DNB Erik; Baxter, Earls of Mercia, 33–4.

  18 Ibid., 33–5.

  19 DNB Siward; R. Fleming, Kings and Lords in Conquest England (Cambridge, 1991), 48–52.

  20 Lawson, Cnut, 113–14.

  21 ASC E, 1035. For pre-Conquest assemblies, see J. R. Maddicott, The Origins of the English Parliament, 924–1327 (Oxford, 2010), 1–56 (39 for this particular episode).

  22 ASC E, 1035.

  23 EER, 32–5, 38–41; ASC C, D and E, 1035.

  24 EER, [xxxii–xxxiii].

  25 GND, ii, 104–7.

  26 EER, [xxxiii–xxxiv], 40–3.

  27 Ibid.; ASC C and D, 1036; GND, ii, 106–7; WP, 7, says Alfred went ‘better prepared than his brother for armed opposition. He also sought his father’s sceptre’; JW, ii, 522–5.

  28 ASC E, 1035; EER, [xxx].

  29 Ibid., 42–7; ASC C and D, 1036; DNB Alfred Ætheling. Cf. Barlow, Confessor, 45–6.

  30 Cf. ASC C and D, 1036; GND, ii, 106–7; EER, [lxv], lxv, 42–5.

  31 ASC C, 1037.

  32 EER, [xxxv–xxxvii]; 36–7, 46–9.

  33 Ibid., [xxxvii], 48–51.

  34 ASC E, 1040, says Harold ruled England for four years and sixteen weeks, implying his reign began in late November 1035. He was the first king to be buried at Westminster Abbey, if only briefly. DNB Harold I.

  35 ASC C, 1040.

  36 Ibid.; JW, ii, 530–1.

  37 Pending publication of JW volume 1, see A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England, c.550 to c.1307 (1974), 43–8.

  38 JW, ii, 530–3. His claim that Godwine gave Harthacnut a ship appears to be a confusion with the earl’s gift to Edward the Confessor two years later. S. Keynes and R. Love, ‘Earl Godwine’s Ship’, Anglo-Saxon England, 38 (2009), 202–3.

  39 ASC C and E, 1040. For debate about these figures, see M. K. Lawson, ‘The Collection of Danegeld and Heregeld in the Reigns of Æthelred II and Cnut’, EHR, 99 (1984), 721–38; J. Gillingham, ‘“The Most Precious Jewel in the English Crown”: Levels of Danegeld and Heregeld in the Early Eleventh Century’, EHR,104 (1989), 373–84; Lawson, ‘“Those Stories Look True”: Levels of Taxation in the Reigns of Æthelred and Cnut’, EHR, 104 (1989), 385–406; Gillingham, ‘Chronicles and Coins as Evidence for Levels of Tribute and Taxation in Later Tenth- and Early Eleventh-Century England’, EHR, 105 (1990), 939–50; Lawson, ‘Danegeld and Heregeld Once More’, EHR, 105 (1990), 951–61.

  40 ASC E, 1040; P. Stafford, Unification and Conquest (1989), 81; JW, ii, 532–3.

  41 ASC C, 1040, 1041.

  42 EER, 52–3; ASC C, 1041.

  43 J. R. Maddicott, ‘Edward the Confessor’s Return to England in 1041’, EHR, 119 (2004), 650–66.

  44 WP, 6–7; JW, ii, 532–5; ASC C and E, 1040; Keynes and Love, ‘Earl Godwine’s Ship’, 195–6.

  CHAPTER 3

  1 According to a contemporary chronicler called Ralph Glaber, Robert had at one time married a daughter of King Cnut, but broke it off because he found her so odious. For the problems with this comment, see Douglas, ‘Some Problems’, 292–5.

  2 WM, Gesta Regum, 426–7; E. M. C. van Houts, ‘The Origins of Herleva, Mother of William the Conqueror’, EHR, 101 (1986), 399–404.

  3 Freeman, Norman Conquest, ii, 581–3.

  4 Rodulfus Glaber, Historiarum Libri Quinque, ed. J. France, N. Bulst and P. Reynolds (2nd edn, Oxford, 1993), 204–5; GND, i, 58–9, 78–9. See also D. Bates, ‘The Conqueror’s Earliest Historians and the Writing of his Biography’, Writing Medieval Biography 750–1250: Essays in Honour of Professor Frank Barlow, ed. D. Bates, J. Crick and S. Hamilton (Woodbridge, 2006), 134.

  5 Douglas, Conqueror, 15, 36; GND, ii, 80–1.

  6 Rodulfus Glaber, ed. France et al., 204–5.

  7 E. Hallam and J. Everard, Capetian France, 987–1328 (2001), 7; T. Holland, Millennium (2008), 146n.

  8 T. Reuter, ‘Plunder and Tribute in the Carolingian Empire’, TRHS, 5th ser., 35 (1985), 75–94; J. Dunbabin, France in the Making, 843–1180 (2nd edn, Oxford, 2000), 1–16, 27.

&n
bsp; 9 Ibid., 27–43.

  10 R. A. Brown, English Castles (2nd edn, 1976), 14–39; Fernie, Architecture, 3–14.

  11 Dunbabin, France in the Making, 43, 52–4; R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950–1350 (1993), 43–51.

  12 Dunbabin, France in the Making, 143–50.

  13 Ibid., 232–7; D. Crouch, The Birth of Nobility: Constructing Aristocracy in England and France 900–1300 (Harlow, 2005), 261–4. See the debate on ‘The “Feudal Revolution’” between T. N. Bisson, D. Barthélemy, S. D. White, C. Wickham and T. Reuter in Past and Present, 142 (1994), 6–42; 152 (1996), 196–223; 155 (1997), 177–225.

  14 Bates, Normandy, passim. For a contrary view see Searle, Predatory Kinship, but cf. Bates’s review of Searle in Speculum, 65 (1990), 1045–7.

  15 Bates, Normandy, 99, 156–7; D. C. Douglas, ‘The Earliest Norman Counts’, EHR, 61 (1946), 129–56.

  16 Fernie, Architecture, 11–12, 50; OV, iv, 290–1.

  17 Bates, Normandy, 65–8, 116–17, 165; R. H. C. Davis, ‘The Warhorses of the Normans’, ANS, 10 (1988), 67–82.

  18 H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘The Peace and Truce of God in the Eleventh Century’, Past and Present, 46 (1970), 42–67.

  19 Bates, Normandy, 66–7, 174, 195.

  20 Douglas, Conqueror, 32–9; C. Potts, Monastic Revival and Regional Identity in Early Normandy (Woodbridge, 1997), 121, 128, 131.

  21 GND, ii, 92–3, 110–11.

  22 Douglas, Conqueror, 37, 40; GND, ii, 92–5; OV, iv, 82–3.

  23 D. Bates, ‘The Conqueror’s Adolescence’, ANS, 25 (2003), 7–8; GND, ii, 92–5, 98–9.

  24 Bates, ‘Conqueror’s Adolescence’ 3–4; WM, Gesta Regum, 426–7. The subsequent recriminations over the surrender of Tillières to Henry (see GND, ii, 100–1) may explain why contemporary chroniclers fail to mention the king’s involvement in William’s knighting.