England in the Middle Ages: The Normans 1066-1154

By Peter Simpson

Experience the fascination and excitement of this formative period in English history. The Normans combine an authoritative account of the main events with the human stories of how people lived, learned, played, prayed, loved, and were governed.

The format has been designed to enable the reader to absorb the essence of the period. With over one hundred illustrations, maps, and time lines, the emphasis was on writing a serious history book with easy readability.

Peter Simpson’s encyclopedic knowledge of the English Middle Ages has enabled him to delve into fascinating details of the time and the links with England today to be found in language, institutions, and places. A lifetime of business, study, and research has enabled him to understand and relate the evolving architecture, trade, economics, and science and technology of this formative period in English history.

England in the Middle Ages: The Normans 1066–1154 is ideal for scholars, students, visitors to England and Normandy, and for the general history reader.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796045437

Peter Simpson

Peter Simpson has spent a lifetime studying the history of his native England after graduating from the University of Kent with a B.A. in the subject. His experiences in global business and travel have allowed him to explain the science, technology and business developments of the Middle Ages while his interest in art and architecture brings a sensitive interpretation to the aesthetics of the time. He is a member of the Medieval Academy of America. In writing this series of books on England in the High Middle Ages he has set out to bring this formative period of the British State to scholars, students and the general history reader. Peter and his wife Donna own and manage a specialized Market Research and Consulting firm and live in Lewiston, New York and Estero, Florida with a collection of cats.

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Copyright © 2019 by Peter Simpson.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2019909497

ISBN:                Hardcover                         978-1-7960-4545-1

                          Softcover                            978-1-7960-4544-4

                          eBook                                  978-1-7960-4543-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Rev. date: 07/29/2019

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CONTENTS

Foreword

List of World Heritage Sites in England and France Dating to This Period and Featured in These Books

Chapter 1     The Norman Conquest

Chapter 2     Life Under the Normans

Chapter 3     William Consolidates and Defends 1070–1085

Chapter 4     The Reign of William II 1089–1099

Chapter 5     The Reign of Henry I 1089–1120

Chapter 6     The Reign of Henry I 1121–1135

Chapter 7     Stephen Takes the Throne

Chapter 8     Stephen’s Early Days and the Redistribution of Power in England and France

Chapter 9     Empress Matilda Invades England

Chapter 10   Queen for a Day

Chapter 11   Life in Early 12th Century England

Chapter 12   Barons Unrestrained—the 1140s

Afterword

Appendix

Sources

Bibliography

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

No.                                 Subject

1         Brixworth Church, Northamptonshire

2         A modern-day Romney sheep

3         Westminster Abbey in the Bayeux Tapestry

4         Senlac Hill, scene of the Battle of Hastings

5         Clifford’s Tower, York

6         Chepstow Castle

7         Chepstow Castle Great Hall

8         Winchester Cathedral

9         Dunster Castle today

10       Bayeux Tapestry, attack on Dinan

11       Bamburgh Castle

12       Onager/Mangonel catapult

13       Lewis Castle

14       St. Andrew’s Church, Greensted

15       Fingest Church

16       St. Edmund’s, Castleton

17       Bayeux Tapestry, Battle of Hastings

18       Ruins of Croyland Abbey

19       Aerial view of Pevensey Castle

20       Berkeley Castle

21       The Tower at Rouen

22       Mont-Saint-Michel

23       St. Anselm’s Seal

24       Hastings Castle

25       Tower of London

26       Old Sarum (model)

27       Southwell Minster

28       Arques Castle

29       Kenilworth Castle

30       Lamprey

31       St. George’s Tower, Oxford

32       Stoat

33       Carisbrooke Castle Motte and Keep

34       The Shell Keep Cardiff Castle

35       The aula of the Castle of Caen

36       Norman keep Falaise

37       Arundel Castle

38       Grosmont Castle

39       White Castle

40       Ely Cathedral

41       Lincoln Castle

42       Lincoln Cathedral

43       Forest of Dean

44       Wolvesey Castle

45       Tynemouth Castle

46       Old Cottage St. Fagans open-air museum

47       Thetford Abbey showing flint-building materials

48       Winchester Cathedral floor tiles

49       Peat cutting

50       Morwenstow, Devon

51       Horse plowing

52       Plan of Fountains Abbey

53       Fountains Abbey

54       Book of Kells

55       Carolingian minuscule

56       Gothic black letter

57       Magna Carta

58       Castle Acre Priory

59       Tintern Abbey

60       Keep at Colchester Castle

61       Capitals in Canterbury Crypt

62       St. Laurence’s Church, Bradford

63       Fresco Narnia

64       Bodkin arrowheads

65       York Cathedral from the city walls

66       Canterbury Castle

67       Durham Cathedral

68       St. Davids Cathedral

69       St. Davids Cathedral internal

70       Round Church, Cambridge

71       Mary Magdalen St. Albans Psalter

72       Trebuchet (modern reconstruction)

73       Warkworth Castle

74       St. Martin’s Church, Wareham

75       Lancaster Castle keep

76       King’s chamber, Dover Castle

77       St. Albans Cathedral

78       Binham Priory

79       The keep at Hedingham Castle

LIST OF MAPS, TIMELINES, AND GENEALOGY

No.                                 Subject

1         England and Normandy in 1066

2         The Battles of 1066

3         William’s invasion

4         Royal castles built to secure the Midlands in 1069

5         Centers of rebellion, 1069–1070

6         Winchester in 1148

7         The rapes of Sussex and Kent

8         The Champagne fairs

9         France in eleventh and twelfth centuries

10       The Location of the Vexin

11       The Three castles of the Rebellion of 1087

12       William II inroads into Normandy, 1090

13       Location of Mont-Saint-Michel

14       Duke Robert’s line of attack, 1094

15       Location of Domfront Castle

16       Location of death of William II

17       Duke Robert invades England

18       Location of Maine

19       Henry II castles

20       Medieval kingdom of Wales

21       Locations campaign 1118

22       Locations campaign 1119

23       The Positions of the interested parties at the moment of King Henry I’s death

24       Reading, Wallingford, and Oxford

25       Locations of uprising, 1138

26       Duke Robert’s journey from Arundel to Bristol

27       Campaign 1141

28       Campaign 1142

29       Routes of stone shipped from Caen to major English building sites.

30       Fifty-third parallel in England

31       Areas of attested landscape devastation during the anarchy, 1135–1141

32       Areas of attested landscape devastation during the anarchy, 1142–1154

33       Areas of attested landscape devastation in a Danegeld, 1155–1156

34       Stephen’s campaign of 1143

35       Geoffrey of Essex’s confiscated castles, 1143

36       Death and burial places of Queen Matilda

List of Genealogies and Timelines

1       Norman genealogy

2       Events in the Reign of William I

3       Events in the Reign of William II

4       Events in the Reign of Henry I

5       Events in the Reign of King Stephen

List of Genealogies and Timelines

1       Model of the medieval economy

2       Price fluctuations for a basket of regular purchases, 1200–1500

3       Price fluctuations for grain crops, 1200–1500

FOREWORD

After I finished my first book, The Forgotten Fourdrinier, I wanted to try something different. Fourdrinier was a process of discovery about one man and bringing back to history an almost-forgotten eighteenth-century artistic talent. I looked for a broader canvas where I might contribute something and settled on England in the High Middle Ages.

Much is written of the Norman, Angevin, and Plantagenet periods; and most of the original sources from that time are freely available in modern English online or in older books. There are many fine studies of the period, written mostly by academics, many of which are quite narrow in scope, biographical or organized into topics rather than sequential events, and often very expensive to purchase. I am drawing on them, but my objective was to produce a series of books that are readable, accurate, well balanced, and that cover a broad range of time and topic, organized in chronological order to tell the story in terms of the flow of events and socioeconomic trends.

These books are organized around a time-based history moving from one event to another, but with interspersed chapters about general life for all of England’s inhabitants. A great challenge is to avoid excessive repetition between volumes while covering in each the appropriate amount of detail. As a result, this book and its successive volume on the Angevins do form a composite whole, as they will with the planned next volumes on the Plantagenets to 1399.

There are some overarching themes in this book.

England was not just conquered by the Normans; it was colonized by them. The submersion of the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic majority beneath a tiny group of Norman barons and churchmen was unlike any previous invasions—Roman, Saxon, Jutish, or Danish.

The lack of an established protocol for the inheritance of the crown and the desire of kings to accommodate all their male children with significant positions created divisive and violent succession disputes and fragmented great kingdoms into minor kingdoms and duchies. The practice of arranged royal marriages often led to relationships that were not cordial and children who were brought up by nurses and educated by monks, tutors, and trainers, rarely seeing their parents or one another. It was acceptable, or at least common, for kings and queens to have favorites among their broods and also for kings to sire a number of illegitimate children whom they also accommodated with aristocratic or ecclesiastic positions. This favoritism could lead to parents fermenting dissent within their families; Eleanor of Aquitaine’s support for her son Prince/King Richard against her husband, his father, being a prominent example.

In this period, European society had developed to a point where the Great Game, the maneuvering of kingdoms and empires and the seeking of balance of powers, was beginning to emerge. For England and the Norman monarchy, the constant rivalry and low-grade hostilities with France, Flanders, and Anjou led to attempts to ally with popes, Spanish kings, and the Holy Roman Empire to encircle France and limit her ability to threaten Norman interests. But the greatest conflict of all was between Christendom and Islam being played out in modern Turkey and the Near East.

Matching and rivaling the temporal powers was the power of the supranational Church. Over five hundred years had passed since Pope Gregory I had set the Church above kings as the ultimate power in Europe and the only representative of Christ on earth.

For millennia, emperors and kings had been seen as earthly representatives of God or actually incarnations of gods. Persian, Babylonic, Egyptian, and Roman civilizations all had this trait. The rise of Christianity and the papacy marked a departure from this common pattern, creating the pope as God’s representative on earth (but not a god in himself) separate from the temporal head of state. This inevitably led to friction and conflict. The two powers chafed at each other with kings seeking to evade the Church’s influences or employ them for their own ends. Thanks to Pope Gregory, popes had the power of excommunication and interdict, which could make life very difficult for errant rulers.

There were important currents of change. The rise of the stone castle and the relative supremacy of defense over attack adversely affected the population at large. Instead of small groups of well-armed men settling disputes in battle, warfare became a giant game of chess in which the siting and occupation of castles and defended towns and cities created powerful zones of influence.

Those with the skill to build (and demolish) castles were in great demand by the king and the major barons. Norman master builders were in short supply, and entries in the Domesday Book show that they did well for themselves. Waldin the Engineer, who held a dozen manors in Lincolnshire worth twelve pounds; Radbell the Artificer, who was an expert in siege warfare; and Durand the Master Carpenter, with two manors in Dorset, were among Norman names with large manors while Anglo-Saxon names of craftsmen were absent.

A well-defended stone castle could seldom be reduced quickly. Starvation and disease were their main enemies, and the tedious task of undermining the walls, where that was even possible, was the major threat. The quickest way to defeat a rival was to devastate their land—burning cottages, mills, barns, and other assets; driving off livestock; and killing or chasing away the inhabitants. Such devastation could impact an area for generations.

It remains an open point the extent to which there were private fortifications before the Conquest, and there is reason to suppose that the defensible town as a site of mass refuge, the strategy of King Alfred against Danish incursion, was the almost universal choice before the Normans. The Normans, themselves recently descended from those making incursions into middle Europe, naturally saw the castle as a military base for a relatively small number of heavily armed men and their horses. Against a barely armed population, many castles built in the first hundred years after the Conquest could be said to be much more elaborate than necessary, but they may reflect the mentality of a tiny and thinly dispersed colonizing elite among a sea of (perceived to be inferior) English.

Castles were not the only major stone buildings springing up. Religious houses, abbeys, monasteries, convents, priories, and friaries were being established everywhere. Ahead of the cathedral building boom, which was to follow, these religious institutions drove progress in medicine, mechanical engineering, creative arts and literacy, representing a church that was a great temporal as well as spiritual power and thus very wealthy.

So in this book, I seek to review the strengths and flaws of the kings and the governmental system and the life in England under their control.

Our main point of emphasis is to describe what life was like and how events and violence of this time impacted the ordinary people of England (and by extension, Wales, Scotland, and Normandy). For this we have very little in terms of contemporary record and have to piece together the chronicles and the historical and archeological efforts of many scholars. Inevitably I am drawing some inferences, and I have tried to be open about this with phrases such as we have to imagine or it might have been the case and so on. I want to be able to help the reader see the people of this time as not too different from us. True they did not have the printing press, did not have the skill of perspective drawing or painting, had lost much of the knowledge and science of the Greeks and Romans, and had only a rudimentary understanding of physics and chemistry; but their emotions, reasoning, and social and economic processes were very similar to our own. For this reason, I have quoted original sources at some length so that the reader can see that administrative methods and language from nine hundred years ago are quite familiar to us today.

A word of caution though. I believe that we need to avoid seeing the past through the moral optic of the present. We will deal here with matters of religion, morality, minority status, sexuality, and gender roles that are often at odds with our feelings today. Christianity was the dominant belief system, and it provided very complete views on these topics based on a literal interpretation of the Bible that could be read to cast womanhood as responsible for the fall from grace, Jews as the murderers of Christ, and sexual probity as a way of righteousness. The Church was gradually driving this last point further to condemn the flesh as intrinsically sinful so that, for example, sexual activity other than strictly for procreation was a sin in itself. This all led to sanctions that we find abhorrent, and we must tread the narrow path between condemning what we feel to be wrong and yet understanding the deep philosophical roots that drove those behaviors.

Since writing the previous paragraph and as this book went to press, I saw an article in the New York Times that the International Congress on Medieval Studies, being held in May 2019 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, is feeling obliged to address concerns over white supremacy and the weaponization of the Middle Ages by right-wing groups. Apparently, a lot of bad feeling has arisen, and some medievalists of color are boycotting the meeting. This is extremely sad. Of course Europe in the Middle Ages was white male dominated (except in Spain and Sicily); after all, we have not yet completed the process of remediating this bias in our own time. Women were subservient to their fathers and husbands. Homosexuality was officially condemned and could be punished. Slavery still existed, although it was in decline. Anti-Semitism was practiced to the point of massacre at times. Corruption and violence were commonplace. However, the focus of the Crusades was to recover Christian sites and to offset the economic impact of the impact of Muslims on the Asian trade. Muslims were characterized as non-Christian so that, according to Bernard of Clairvaux among others, killing them was not homicide. However, the prejudice was cultural and religious more than racial and based on what they were not, rather than their profession of Islam.

The task of historians is to study through the lens of the standards of that time. We seek to understand where people followed the mainstream and where they struck out on their own, how thought changed, and when new social orders emerged. It is futile to critique past periods for not conforming to our own standards and morals. However pure our thoughts may be now and however much we are attached to them, they are unlikely to be the last word on morality, and we in our turn will be judged and found wanting by our descendants.

I have tried to be very diligent in dealing with all these moral issues completely objectively, and if any reader feels otherwise, I ask their forgiveness.

In the same vein, the temptation to see close modern parallels to medieval events is very strong, writing as I do in times of Trumpworld and Brexit. I have resisted, and I suggest you do too, as that thinking leads us to forget the very different moral and intellectual drivers of the time.

We are used to looking at the Middle Ages through the eyes of Shakespeare, Hollywood, and dry, event-driven history. But life was no more formal, no more stilted, no less human than it is today, and without too much speculation, this book seeks to engage the reader with the human side of Norman England alongside the events and culture of the period.

The events narrated here include a bewildering number of characters (many of whom have the same name; there is a plethora of Williams, Henrys, Roberts, and Matildas) and broad geographical scope, including political borders that no longer exist. I have tried to make all this as clear as possible with outline maps and to make this an enjoyable and easy book to read. To help the reader keep all the people names straight, I generally spell out their full title, like Henry I or the Empress Matilda. This may be a bit tedious, but it means that you do not have to stop and wonder who a particular player is.

Compared to later centuries, there is relatively little remaining of eleventh- and twelfth-century architecture, literature, poetry, and music. In art we have a certain amount of stained glass, sculpture, decorative tiling, and other objects; and in writing, charters and legal documents and books of theology, religion, and learning. What little literature survives from before 1150 is Welsh, Irish, or from the Continent. All this represents the pastime of the intelligentsia and those who were influential. What circulated as stories in the vernacular to delight the general population are mostly lost.

In the text italics are used to denote both words that are not in use or do not have the same meaning as today—non-English words and direct quotations from medieval writings. The index is quite extensive and designed to help the inquirer after information as well as the general reader.

While this is emphatically not a travel book, I do try to mention and index as many place names in England as possible and occasionally call out the accessibility of ruins and monuments in England and Normandy for those who wish to visit them or better understand the historical role of their local area. Many major sites have either disappeared or are hard to find, and you might pass them by every day and not know that they are there. I have been careful to select illustrations that show items and buildings from the period.

For footnoted references, I have tried to keep them to a reasonable minimum. Where facts are undisputed, backed up by multiple sources and readily available, I have not referenced them. I have referenced more obscure sources, including PhD theses, and acknowledged whole chapters and whole works from modern authors where their insights have been used. Some of the references are old, but this is mostly because they are readily available translations of Anglo-Saxon, French, and Latin works.

I would like to thank my longtime friend and mentor Caroline (Connie) M. Stuckert, PhD. She has conducted research and excavations in England and is the editor of, and a contributing author to, The People of Early Winchester: Winchester Studies from the Oxford University Press (2016). She materially impacted the overall shape and direction of these books as well as helped with licensing some key maps.

List of World Heritage Sites in England and France Dating to This Period and Featured in These Books

England

• Canterbury Cathedral

• St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury

• St. Martin’s Church, Canterbury (the oldest church in England)

• Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd, Wales

o Conwy Castle

o Beaumaris Castle

o Caernarfon Castle (Carnarvon is the English rendering)

o Harlech Castle

• Durham Castle and Cathedral

• Westminster Abbey

• Fountains Abbey

• Tower of London

France

• Chartres Cathedral

• The Loire Valley between Sully-sur-Loire and Chalonnes

• Mont-Saint-Michel

• Provins (town of medieval fairs)

• Routes to Santiago de Compostela

Norman%20Geneology500%20(2).jpg

Events in the Reign of William I

CHAPTER ONE

The Norman Conquest

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands,

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

—Richard II, William Shakespeare

England, a country of green and blue. Its highest peak is Scafell Pike in the Lake District at just over 3,200 feet (975 meters), and it is nowhere extensively flat except in East Anglia. Rivers and streams are mostly short but are numerous—only two are over 200 miles (320 kilometers), the Severn and the Thames, and many come in at around 75 miles (120 kilometers). Every type of temperate landscape can be found from mountain to rolling downs and from marshes to tall and demanding moors. Within an area of only 50,000 square miles (130,000 square kilometers), it displays to this day great diversity and beauty (by comparison, New York state in the USA covers 54,000 square miles).

The size of the population and the details of the landscape in our period are somewhat controversial, but for our purposes, generalities are sufficient. Where today 55 million people make their home in England (1,100 for every square mile), at the time of the Norman invasion, there were perhaps 1.25 million or around 23 people for every square mile. Wales, Scotland, and Ireland were much less populous being much more barren and were largely inhabited by people of Celtic—that is to say original English—descent, while the population of England was diverse but principally made up of Saxon and Danish roots, collectively called Anglo-Saxon in our time.

If we could fly low and slow over the land before the Norman invasion, we would find a swath from Yorkshire in the North East, through the Midlands and down to the South Coast was dotted with nucleated villages surrounded by large communally worked fields, with pastures, woods, rivers, and ponds providing all the needs of a rural and agrarian life. The villages would be of two types, with either cottages strung out along a single road or else clustered around a square or rectangular village green.

If it were March or April, we would see men and boys out with teams of six or eight oxen plowing the rich, heavy soil. If it were August, whole families would be in the fields gathering wheat or other cereals into staves, ready to be threshed and taken to the lord’s mill for grinding into flour. Swift flowing streams were commonplace and could be harnessed to provide milling power. If it were September, we might see groups gathering acorns and kindling wood or harvesting naturally growing fruit trees. In the cottages, wives would be brewing beers and ciders. Here and there we could see great abbeys and monasteries or lesser priories, also with worked fields, outlying farms (granges) but often with large sheep herds or mining operations and quite complex outbuildings. Cities and towns would be few, but some larger villages would show defensive earthworks left over from the days of Danish and Viking raids (not unknown in the eleventh century but less so than in the past). Here and there we would see it was market day, and local inhabitants would be driving livestock or carrying or carting in their surplus production into towns for sale. In a few small cities built within old Roman encampments such as Chester, you might see some remnant of Roman discipline with streets laid out in rectangular fashion with a clear north-south and east-west axis of major roads but that as already breaking down into the familiar maze of erratic lanes. This was not to be challenged until Christopher Wren and others proposed rebuilding London after the Great Fire of 1666 and Benjamin Franklin laid out cities like Philadelphia in the New World. Peering at these cities on Google Earth, it is almost impossible to see any order within the line of the old town walls.

Where towns were based on Roman communities, many of the civic buildings had been torn down, burned out, or just collapsed through lack of maintenance. Setting up a town inside the ready-made defensive walls was critical to survival in the late Roman and post-Roman periods, but the great piles of stonework, standing or fallen, contained much more stone than was needed or could be handled for erecting modest houses and buildings and roads simply wound round them. Where there are grid-like street patterns, the town was either newly laid out (as, for example, Bury St. Edmunds was to be rebuilt around the abbey by Abbot Baldwin during the period 1065 to 1097) or where considerable effort had been expended to eradicate the old Roman streets as in Winchester by Alfred the Great (847 or 849 to 899 CE).

Abbot Baldwin was born in Chartres but came to England before the Conquest to take up the post of physician to Edward the Confessor and became abbot at Bury St. Edmunds in 1065. He raised troops to support Harold’s army against William I but nonetheless survived in his post until his death in 1097.

As we fly on, everywhere we would see wooden Saxon churches with their graveyards and priests’ cottages. We might expect to see stone castles with their moats and outworks, but they were a Norman innovation and would come later. If we were lucky, we might see the king or a great noble in progress with his retinue of knights, clerks, officials, justices, clerics, carts, and baggage as they progressed around the country, living off their landholdings and settling disputes. Barely inhabited parts would be made up of moors and heaths, mountains and marshes, but even here isolated farms or hamlets could be seen, often with sheep herding as the main activity.

As the year 1000 CE had approached, some—swayed by famine, eclipses, shooting stars, and other phenomena—hoped or feared that the end of the world was coming. The traveling (and, according to some, disreputable) monk Ralph Glaber documented these events and forecast doom.¹ But in fact Europe was at a turning point where the so-called Dark Ages were ending and a time of economic, political, and population growth was beginning, which would see the dramatic rise of dominant Christendom as expressed though the monastic movement, the cathedral-building program, and considerable political power. There were two non-Christian hostile powers and raiders that were dealt with in different ways. The Nordics, the Danes, the Vikings, and the rest were in the process of being converted and assimilated; and the monotheistic Islamists were resisted by, and even rolled back by, the Crusades. The difference was that the Nordic peoples were not driven by religion but most likely their inability to produce enough food for their increasing population. When the Anglo-Saxon kings offered to buy them off for cash, they took that option, as the cash could be used to buy their necessities. When they saw an opportunity to set themselves up in what is now Normandy, they took it. Remembered for rapine and plunder, they were really ensuring their survival. Islam, on the other hand, was driven by a religious belief that in turn led to the widespread conversion of residents of the territories they took over. Although in the year 1000 Leif Erikson planted a short-lived colony in North America, Europe was inward looking and defensive minded.

There followed the development of a cash economy and the beginnings of the modern state, all punctuated by crisis, violence, famine, plague, and war. What we think of as a time of knights, crowns, ceremonial behavior, and formality was a rough-and-tumble crucible of change and dynamism.

Western Europe had a degree of cohesion and prosperity that bode well for its future provided that it could maintain good governance. The downfall of the Carolingian Empire left much chaos, and strong government was patchy but certainly was found in England and Normandy.

Existing entirely in the temperate zone with a mix of mountains, lakes, rivers, and well supplied with fertile alluvial soils, Europe was warmed by the Gulf Stream and watered by benign westerly winds. Cereal crops and fruits of many kinds grew well in all regions, from nuts and fruits in the Mediterranean area where goats and sheep could forage to grapes and wheat in the midzone, giving way to rye and then barley and oats, along with root crops as you moved north where sheep still flourished; but cattle were much more numerous than in the south. Man’s universal need for alcohol was met by wine in the south, ciders in the midzone, and beer in the north, with a thriving mead² industry in some areas. The rivers and seas abounded with fish and mammals, and even in these times, there was whaling off the coast of England and Norway. Herring in the North Sea and cod in the Arctic Ocean were dependable food supplies and good sources of proteins and omega-3 fats.

While climate cycles could bring crop failure and privation, it is possible that some of the famines that did occur were partly brought about by population numbers nudging the boundaries of food supply. With no effective means of birth control other than abstinence, a high level of infant mortality, and a need to have children to help work the land and support parents in their later life, the population was bound to rise until knocked back by war, inadequate agricultural production, famine, and disease.

Western Europe was uniformly committed to the Roman Catholic (universal) Church, although the degree of control exercised by the pope and his administration varied according to the strength and inclinations of emperors and kings. But regardless, the Church was enormously rich as it had been endowed with land, gold, and money over the years and held it all in mortmain (literally the dead hand of the Church, which never willingly gave up property once it had been acquired). The Church provided spiritual leadership, education, science and industry, welfare for the people, and a network of churches, abbeys, and other religious houses that spanned the continent. All wealthy and educated people spoke medieval Latin, a vernacular version of Ecclesiastical Latin, which helped knit together the Western world.

The Church had grown up in the late days of the Roman regime, which was an imperial organization with a great deal of power vested in the emperor, including ultimate authority in religious matters. Christianity, founded in the second half of the first-century CE, was persecuted and denied until the time of Constantine (died 337 CE) and finally became the official state church of the empire under Theodosius in 380 CE. Having ridden the empire close to its fall, the Church lived through the withdrawal of the legions from England in 410 CE, and the final collapse of the empire generally reckoned to have been in 476 CE. Surviving through the Dark Ages, it was, by the eleventh century, a supranational organization claiming considerable authority and rights over all of Western Europe and, less practically, the eastern Byzantine empire, which had its own competing Orthodox church.

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Illustration 1.   Brixworth Church, Northamptonshire, is the most complete example of Saxon ecclesiastical architecture in the British Isle. The upper tower and spire are from the fourteenth century, but much of the rest, including a round tower, date from the seventh century with ninth-century additions.

(Credit for original color image goes to Motacilla.)

In these circumstances, avaricious war and disputes over territory and resources were seldom a life-or-death struggle for the necessities of life but more for dynastic aggrandizement and security and for taking the wealth of others in order to become wealthier and more secure.

For centuries leading up to the year 1043 CE, England had seen an ongoing struggle between Scandinavia and the Anglo-Saxons, themselves originally invaders and now formed into a powerful state along the lines set up by King Alfred (the Great). This English Saxon state was, along with the empire of Charlemagne, an outstanding oasis of law and control within chaotic early medieval Europe and much more enduring than the Carolingian regime. The lawlessness and lack of central leadership elsewhere created a long-term culture of violence and war for land, resources, and status that extended into the period of our story.

Anglo-Saxon England fought against waves of Danes, Jutes, and Vikings to the point where, in 1016, the Danish King Cnut had become king of all England, albeit converted to Christianity and sworn to rule in a Christian manner. Why was England so desired and fought over? Because its maritime climate (relatively warmer then than it is now); regular and mostly moderate rainfall; rolling hills; sources of coal and metals such as silver, lead, and tin; and its readily defensible position as an island made it a tempting and relatively soft target for continental kings and nobles wanting to extend their power and wealth. The population was probably around 1–1.5 million (much less than when the last Roman legions left in 410 CE) and only 5 percent of the total population of Europe, so the land was sparsely populated and ripe for colonization.

The economy was largely at a subsistence level except that perhaps 10 percent of the population lived in cities and towns or were skilled artisans and lived (at an above average income level) on the surplus that agricultural system was able to supply. Already England was producing a large surplus of wool generating foreign earnings.

Sheep (Ovis aries), sc

ap in Old English, are hardy animals that yield wool, meat, milk, and hoof and horn. They do well on pastures with a variety of grasses and short leguminous plants, and they graze steadily rather than browse selectively like goats. They will overgraze an area quickly and need extensive space. Where there is a snowy winter climate, sheep farmers can practice transhumance farming, taking the sheep to higher pastures in the summer while the more sheltered lower pastures recover. The only other regularly domesticated animal that grazes in this way is the horse, and there was more than enough room on the English downs and uplands and in the river valleys to graze large flocks of sheep. With the shepherd and his dogs to discourage bears,³ wolves, and human predators, sheep thrived. The medieval long-wool sheep were a medium-size breed, direct ancestors of the present-day Romney breed, named for the Romney Marsh area of Kent and now spread all over the world.

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Illustration 2.   A modern-day Romney sheep. English medieval sheep are thought to have been similar in size and appearance.

(ID 49388118 © Halpand | Dreamstime.com)

Sheep were domesticated as far back as 10,000 BCE, but the earliest known woven wool fabric dates to around 3000 BCE. Wool and linen (made laboriously from flax) were the only textiles available and thus a major staple in Greek, Roman, and medieval times. Cotton originated in India (and Latin America, but that was yet unknown to Europeans) and did not arrive in Europe in any quantity until the twelfth century, brought by the Muslim invaders and settlers. Cotton was well suited to the Middle East and North Africa and to the sophisticated irrigation and hydro-management skills of the Muslims, but would not grow as far north as England, which was much better suited to sheep.

Wool was a major industry across medieval Europe, and England and Castile in Spain were the main large volume sources of quality fleece. Wool is a fiber made up mostly of proteins and has a distinct crimp, a wavy or curly character. The combination of the high-surface energy of protein along with the crimp made it self adherent and easy to spin and weave. Woolen cloth inhibits heat transfer and keeps the wearer very warm. It can absorb up to one-third of its own volume in water and then dry out again. This gives it a wicking ability, to wick away sweat and therefore heat, from a hot person or horse.

At the time covered by this book, England exported wool to be processed and woven overseas; it was later, under Edward III, that an indigenous industry of weaving and dyeing was actively encouraged and incentivized by favorable tax terms to capture as much value as possible.

Sheep provided other benefits. They were easier to keep and control than cattle, and their manure was a good source of nutrients for the soil. Penning them in a field with hurdles (light portable fencing) or with hedges could enhance the productivity of the land. That manuring was an essential part of crop culture was universally known.

A significant spur to the sheep-keeping industry was the establishment of Cistercian monasteries in the twelfth century. This order admitted many lay brothers (conversi) who drained and worked land and supported the monasteries and their monks dedicated to a strict set of Benedictine rules.

So with open land, fertile chalky soils, gentle and regular rain, low population, mineral resources, defensible hills, many navigable rivers and streams, and woods and forests for timber and fuel, England was a prize that many sought.

There was another reason. England was a well-managed nation-state, despite the violence and invasions of recent centuries. The feudal system was cemented into place, taxation was well organized, and England had emerged from the so-called Dark Ages⁴ as one of the richest nations in Europe. This happy state was due in no small measure to the native Saxons and the invading Danes coming to the conclusion that a cash transfer, which acknowledged that the Danes could do very great damage to the economy and social structure, was preferable to fighting.

Monasticism and its great institutional communities and businesses that both strengthened and dominated the medieval economy of Europe was already strong in England. It had gone through a resurgence and reformation in the tenth century lead by Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury; Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester; and Oswald, archbishop of York. This economy strength in turn strengthened the political power of the Church.

Dunstan progressed as abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, bishop of Worcester, bishop of London, and archbishop of Canterbury and later was canonized as a saint. With his colleagues, he worked to restore the Rule of St. Benedict, a script from the sixth century by Benedict of Nursia that laid out a balanced and practical set of rules for monks in communal living. This reform led to a wave of monastic endowments, not just in England where at least seventeen communities were founded in the tenth century but right across Europe where at least further seventy-five were put in place.

Great monasteries and nunneries were built at Glastonbury and Romsey, Peterborough and Worcester, Shaftsbury and Ramsey. Religion had a deep and long history in England, but it was a local and insular tradition with its own Saxon saints. The oldest surviving list, the eleventh-century Secgan fully titled The Account of God’s Saints Who First Rested in England,⁵ names eighty-nine Saxon saints resting in fifty-four sites across the country. Most of them had been active in England in their lifetimes. The list includes saints by popular acclaim who were not formally canonized by the church, including King Alfred the Great.

On April 3, 1043, King Edward (the Confessor) was unexpectedly crowned king of England in Winchester Cathedral in the ancient capital of the West Saxons, the Saxons of Wessex. The story of the English Middle Ages is full of unexpected kings! He was the surviving son of King Æethelred II and his wife, Emma of Normandy, and the half brother of the very short-reigned King Harthacnut, whose untimely death led to Edward becoming king.

Edward’s position was delicate as a number of very powerful Saxon nobles had to be managed carefully, but Edward achieved this relatively well. Although toward the end of his long reign, the Godwin family once again became preeminent and troublesome. King Edward, with the support of Harold Godwinson, was able to establish more or less control over Wales and parts of Scotland.

Shortly after Edward’s death, his wife, Edith, commissioned a biography, almost certainly written by a monk. A copy from 1100 survives in the British Library in London, Vita Ædwardi Regis qui apud Westmonasterium Requiescit (Life of King Edward Who Rests at Westminster). According to this work, he was a very proper figure of a man—of outstanding height, and distinguished by his milky white hair and beard, full face and rosy cheeks, thin white hands, and long translucent fingers; in all the rest of his body he was an unblemished royal person. Pleasant, but always dignified, he walked with eyes downcast, most graciously affable to one and all. If some cause aroused his temper, he seemed as terrible as a lion, but he never revealed his anger by railing. Of course, as with all medieval sources, there is a bias, but still the kingliness of Edward comes across.

The lasting monument to Edward the Confessor is Westminster Abbey (formally the Collegiate Church of St. Peter at Westminster), which was originally built on Thorney Island, an island in the River Thames that has since become physically a part of the city. Supposedly the abbey was founded by the Bishop Mellitus who died in 624 CE.⁶ Edward the Confessor began rebuilding the wooden structure in stone sometime before 1052, completing it in 1065, whereupon he died and was buried in it. It was completely rebuilt by Henry III in the thirteenth century, and almost nothing of the original remains. Edward’s remains were transferred to a magnificent shrine that is still to be seen.

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Illustration 3.   Westminster Abbey in the Bayeux Tapestry as built by Edward the Confessor and shown in the Bayeux Tapestry. The coffin of Edward is being carried to his burial. This abbey was the first Romanesque building in England.

After Edward’s death in January 1066, normal succession would have led to Edgar Ætheling becoming king, but he was young and unprepared. The Godwin family had gradually gained ascendance over the rest of the aristocracy, and the witenagemot, the assembly of lords both lay and ecclesiastical, elected Harold Godwinson as king. At its peak of power and control, the Saxon House of Wessex was to be cut down by a Norman invader who contested the right of Harold Godwinson, Harold II of England, to succeed Edward.

Harold’s father, Godwin, Earl of Wessex, was a very powerful noble who was involved in the selection of Edward to become king. Godwin’s daughter became King Edward’s wife in 1045, and at that time, Harold became earl of East Anglia. In 1053 Earl Godwin died and Harold succeeded him as his elder brother, Sweyn, was in exile. In 1058 his power increased as he also became earl of Hereford and, by this time, was the center of political opposition to Edward the Confessor. The main bone of contention was Norman influence over English affairs. During Cnut’s twenty-year reign, Edward was in exile, most probably in Normandy, and he certainly developed a good relationship with the leadership of the duchy. He was, after all, the cousin of the duke on his mother’s side and certainly politically active in Normandy in the early 1130s, witnessing a number of charters.

William of Jumièges, William the Conqueror’s chronicler and apologist states that in 1034 William’s father, Robert, led a fleet to invade England and place Edward on the throne; but the fleet was scattered and damaged by a storm and the attempt was abandoned. Duke Robert died the following year.

After the death of Cnut in 1035, he was succeeded by Harthacnut as king of Denmark, who made Harold Harefoot his regent in England. Edward and his brother Alfred came to England perhaps to raise revolt, but the Godwins captured Alfred and handed him over to Harold Harefoot, who had him cruelly blinded and killed. After some fighting, Edward retreated to Normandy. By 1041 Harthacnut was king of England, and he invited Edward home to be his successor. Upon the death of Harthacnut in 1045, Edward became king with the support of the capturer and betrayer of his brother, Earl Godwin.

Thus, three threads came together in King Edward. He himself was part Saxon but by birth and by exile mostly Norman; the Godwins were pure Saxon and along with the rest of the earls supported a continuation of the Danish Cnut’s laws and style of kingship. The delicacy of Edward’s position, his possible hatred of the Godwins over the death of his brother, and his sympathetic links to Normandy are clear. Duke William’s position was always that Edward had promised the throne to him, perhaps when Edward was in exile.

And so Edward danced his delicate dance for the next twenty years, toward the end of which the Godwins became stronger, as we have seen. In 1064 Harold Godwinson, now the most powerful man in England after the king (or perhaps even more powerful) was shipwrecked on the coast of Normandy.

It is unclear why he was there. Later revisionist history favoring William suggests he was sent by King Edward to pay homage to Duke William as Edward had decided on the duke as his successor. This seems unlikely as kingship was not decided by the king or by familial relationship; the witenagemot decided that after the king’s death. Whatever the reason, he fell ashore at Ponthieu and was captured by Guy I, the local count who imprisoned him. The commentary on this section of the Bayeux Tapestry reads, Hic apprehendit wido haroldum et duxit eum ad