The Norman Conquest

Podcat Transcript

On October 14, 1066, England changed forever.

Forces led by William of Normandy sailed from France and defeated the King of England, putting the country on a radically different trajectory.

It affected everyone from the aristocracy down to the commoners, and it even trickled down to the very language spoken in the country itself.

In fact, the events of 1066 can still be clearly seen and felt today.

Learn more about the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

The genesis of this episode comes from the fact that I’ve mentioned the Norman Conquest so many times that I figured it was time to dedicate an entire episode to the subject.

The events of 1066 had an outsized impact on the British Isles and, eventually, the world.

To understand the events of that year, we must look at what was happening in England before the Norman Conquest.

By the early 11th century, England had developed into a relatively centralized Anglo-Saxon kingdom.

King Edward the Confessor, who took the throne in 1042, ruled over a land with established administrative systems, a tax structure called the Danegeld, and a powerful nobility organized under earls.

The English economy was primarily agricultural, with a growing network of towns and trading connections across Northern Europe.

Just as a note, Edward the Confessor is not given a number with his name. By convention, numbering kings starts after the Norman Conquest, for kings who had names both before and after the Conquest.

Edward I was born over two hundred years after Edward the Confessor, and Edward the Confessor was preceded on the throne by Edward the Elder and Edward the Martyr.

Anyway, Edward the Confessor didn’t have a heir. This always causes huge problems in any monarchy because it results in competing claims to the throne.

When Edward died on January 5, 1066, that is exactly what happened. There were four different claimants to the English throne.

The first was Harold Godwinson, the Earl of Wessex, and the brother-in-law of Edward through his sister Edith.

The second was William of Normandy. Normandy is the region of France along the Atlantic Ocean that was settled by Vikings in the 10th century.

The third was Harald Hardrada, who was the King of Norway.

The final claimant was Edgar Ætheling, Edward’s young grandnephew, with a tenuous blood claim to the throne.

When Edward died, the first claimant, Harold Godwinson, arguably had the best hand to play. He was chosen by the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot, or council of nobles, to become king and was crowned Harold II shortly thereafter.

Now, you might be wondering why I just said the king numbering began after the Norman Conquest. Harold is considered the second because there have been no Harolds since.

This infuriated William of Normandy. William claimed that Edward had once promised him the throne when Edward was exiled to Normandy, and that Harold had even sworn an oath of support to William while in Normandy years earlier. William considered Harold’s coronation an act of treachery.

At the same time, Harald Hardrada of Norway, asserting a claim based on a prior treaty between earlier kings, also set his sights on the English crown.

In September 1066, Harald Hardrada invaded England from the north, aided by Harold Godwinson’s estranged brother Tostig. They were initially successful, defeating English forces at the Battle of Fulford near York. But Harold Godwinson swiftly marched his army north and decisively defeated the invaders at the Battle of Stamford Bridge on September 25, 1066, killing both Hardrada and Tostig.

There were now only three claimants.

No sooner had Harold secured the north than William made his move.

He had spent months gathering an invasion force of approximately 7,000 men and 700 ships. With papal blessing, formalized in a papal banner that was carried into battle, William landed at Pevensey Bay on September 28, 1066, just days after Harold II’s victory at Stamford Bridge.

His force included cavalry, archers, and infantry.

This forced Harold to turn south, exhausting his already battle-worn army. He marched his army approximately 250 miles in about two weeks—an impressive feat of medieval logistics.

On October 14, 1066, Harold’s army met William’s on Senlac Hill near the town of Hastings in Southeast England.

King Harold’s army, numbering an estimated 7,000 to 8,000 men, was composed primarily of two groups: the professional soldiers known as housecarls and the local militia known as the fyrd. The housecarls were elite infantry, armed with long-handled battle axes and protected by chain mail and round or kite-shaped shields.

They formed the core of Harold’s force, disciplined and trained, and were stationed in the center of the line. Surrounding them were the fyrdmen, levied from the shires, less experienced and often poorly equipped, typically bearing spears, javelins, and basic armor or none at all.

The English army deployed on the ridge of Senlac Hill in a tight, dense formation known as the shield wall—a defensive line several ranks deep meant to repel frontal assaults. The army was entirely composed of infantry, with no cavalry or organized archery units, relying instead on the strength and discipline of the shield wall to withstand attacks.

William’s Norman army, which was roughly equal in size to Harold’s, was more diverse and organized into three main divisions based on regional origin.

On the left flank stood the Bretons, possibly under the command of Count Alan of Brittany. In the center, William himself led the Norman contingent, accompanied by his half-brother Bishop Odo of Bayeux and some of his most experienced knights and infantry.

On the right flank were the Flemish and Franco-continental forces, likely under the command of Eustace II of Boulogne. William’s army utilized a combined-arms approach, featuring archers and crossbowmen in the front ranks, infantry behind them, and heavily armored cavalry positioned at the rear.

The battle plan called for archers to initiate combat, followed by infantry assaults and then cavalry charges to exploit weaknesses in the English line. William’s forces repeatedly attacked uphill against the English shield wall, employing tactics such as feigned retreats to draw parts of the English line out of position.

As the day wore on, the English shield wall gradually weakened. The decisive moment came when Harold was killed—accounts differ on whether by arrow to the eye as depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry or by Norman knights. With their king dead, the English forces collapsed.

Following his victory, William moved cautiously, securing Dover and Canterbury before approaching London. Initially, the English resistance rallied around Edgar Ætheling, the last claimant, but William’s strategic movements and willingness to ravage the surrounding countryside convinced London to surrender.

William was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066, though the ceremony ended in chaos when Norman guards, mistaking English cheers for an attack, set fire to nearby houses.

At the coronation, Edgar, along with other English nobles, submitted to him and pledged their loyalty.

After William’s victory at Hastings, his control over much of England was tenuous, especially in the north, where loyalty to the Anglo-Saxon royal line remained strong. In 1069, a major uprising erupted around York, fueled by discontented Anglo-Saxon nobles and reinforced by a fleet of Danish invaders who had landed in the Humber estuary. William responded with overwhelming force.

Known as the Harrying of the North, it was a brutal military campaign carried out in the winter of 1069 to 1070.

After suppressing the rebellion at York, William initiated a systematic campaign of destruction across Yorkshire and parts of Northumbria. His forces burned villages, slaughtered livestock, destroyed crops, and salted the earth to render the land infertile.

The objective was not merely to defeat the rebels but to eliminate the possibility of future uprisings by depriving the region of the means to support a resistance.

Chroniclers reported that tens of thousands perished, either from violence or starvation. Entire regions were left depopulated and desolate for years afterward.

Hereward the Wake’s resistance in the Fens was one of the most famous episodes of Anglo-Saxon rebellion against Norman rule following the conquest of 1066. Centered around the marshy region of the East Anglian Fens, the resistance occurred between 1070 and 1071.

Hereward, often depicted as a folk hero and freedom fighter in later legends, was likely a member of the local Anglo-Saxon nobility who had been dispossessed by the Normans. His early life is obscure and shrouded in myth, but contemporary and near-contemporary sources suggest he was active as a guerrilla leader against Norman forces.

He gained notoriety when he led a band of rebels in sacking the Norman abbey at Peterborough in 1070. The abbey had been recently taken over by Norman clergy, and Hereward’s attack was both symbolic and practical—it was a blow against Norman religious authority and a raid to seize supplies and treasure.

After this, Hereward and his followers took refuge in the Isle of Ely, a naturally defensible area surrounded by dense marshland and waterways. There, they were joined by other rebels, including Earl Morcar, one of the last prominent Anglo-Saxon nobles not yet subdued. The resistance at Ely became the final stronghold of organized English opposition to Norman rule.

William the Conqueror responded decisively. He launched a campaign to subdue the rebels, constructing causeways and possibly even bringing in flat-bottomed boats to navigate the marshes and besiege the isle. Despite the region’s difficult terrain, Norman forces eventually penetrated Ely in 1071, aided by betrayal or bribery from within the resistance.

After the Battle of Hastings in 1066, William also undertook a systematic replacement of the English nobility with Norman and other continental lords, reshaping the social and political structure of the kingdom.

Initially, William claimed he would rule as the rightful successor to Edward the Confessor, and in the first months after Hastings, he confirmed some English nobles in their positions. However, repeated rebellions in the years following his coronation convinced William that the Anglo-Saxon elite could not be trusted to remain loyal.

In response, William confiscated vast amounts of land from English nobles, either because they had fought against him or because he claimed they had forfeited their rights through rebellion or treason. By around 1075, nearly all significant English landowners had been displaced. William redistributed their lands to his Norman followers, creating a new aristocracy loyal to him personally.

This included powerful barons, knights, and church officials who had fought for him or supported his cause. In many cases, these Normans were granted estates spread out across different regions of England, a deliberate strategy to prevent them from building independent power bases.

By the time of the Domesday Book in 1086, which was a giant survey of the kingdom, it was clear that over 90% of English land was in Norman hands, and the old Anglo-Saxon ruling class had effectively vanished.

The Norman Conquest of 1066 had a profound and lasting impact on English law, culture, and language. It reshaped the kingdom in fundamental ways and marked the beginning of a new era in English history.

The Norman Conquest introduced the feudal system to England, reorganizing society around landholding and military service. William the Conqueror claimed all land and distributed it to loyal followers, centralizing power under the crown. While preserving some Anglo-Saxon customs like trial by jury, he merged them with Norman practices, especially in land and inheritance law, creating a hybrid legal tradition that evolved into English common law.

Culturally, the Normans brought continental styles in architecture, religion, and governance. Romanesque buildings replaced Anglo-Saxon structures, and church reforms aligned England more closely with Rome, replacing native clergy with Norman bishops.

The Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidered cloth nearly 70 meters long that visually tells the story of the Norman Conquest of England. It was created in the 11th century and is on display in Bayeux, France, today.

Linguistically, Norman French became the language of the elite and blended with Old English over time, giving rise to Middle English. A topic that I covered in a previous episode.

Moreover, since William the Conqueror, every single English monarch, and later British monarch, has been a descendant of William. Granted, sometimes the lines of descent are complex, but every king and queen can trace their lineage to William, even if they had to go to Germany to find one.

The Norman Conquest totally changed England. Everything you probably think about England came about, directly or indirectly, because of the Norman Conquest.