Trollheart

Another who supported the legitimisation of Bernard was a Benedictine monk called Notker the Stammerer, but nobody paid him any attention, as you could never tell what he was saying. In fact (drum roll) you could say that the did Not ker about his views! Ba-tish! Yeah, well anyway, Charles continued to try to circumvent the fact that he had no actual legitimate children by attempting to cook the books, inserting the word proles (offspring) into the charters, but nobody was fooled. Specially as he did it in blue biro possibly. He then chummed up to Hadrian’s successor, Pope Stephen V, but though he agreed to meet him the new pope pulled out at the last minute, possibly claiming he was washing his cassock or something. Charles then plumped for adoption, making Louis of Provence his heir for some reason, but Pope Stephen wagged his finger and said no way pal, not blessing that line of succession!

All this bumbling and fumbling around, trying desperately to get someone to carry on your dynasty, from a man who had never been a great king anyway (well, great in the sense of being fat, but it’s widely reported most if not all of his crowns fell to him without any real effort, and he never waged any proper war or got his nose bloodied like any self-respecting monarch) people began to look elsewhere for an heir. Odo headed down to his palace in 887, and may have been confirmed heir there. Either way, there was trouble a-plenty at Chez Charles, as he first accused his wife of infidelity. Having proven her innocence through trial by fire, she quite rightly told him where he could stick it and sodded off to a nunnery. Then he pounced on his hated enemy, Liutward his archchancellor, first minister and also bishop of Vercelli, with whom he had accused his - now proven innocent and convent-bound - wife of having an affair. Nobody liked him, so it was not any hardship to kick his ass out of court. Which he did. Probably with relish. He then replaced him with Liutbert, which really makes me think it was just the archchancellor wearing a funny wig. I mean, come on!

Proof that he was either desperate or losing it, or both, surfaces when you realise that Louis II, Louis of Provence, whom he wished now to make his heir, was, well, blind, as evidenced by that quaint French custom of naming someone after their main trait, so he was called Louis the Blind. Blind drunk? No, just blind. I wonder what they would have called me? Trollheart the Arsehole, probably. Anyway I digress. Adding to old Fat Boy’s woes, one of his nephews decided he fancied the throne and went to war against him. History doesn’t record what happened, but it probably involved a lot of huffing and puffing on Charles’ part, a sort of “hold on till I get my breath, would you, there’s a good lad” and stuff like that. In the end, to nobody’s surprise, and probably not even his own, he was deposed, and that was that.

His fall wrecked the Frankish empire, as claimants and challengers to this and that throne popped up all over the place, and the empire disintegrated into separate kingdoms and countries, one of which became West Francia and later France. Which brings us back to our mate Odo.

Elected as the new king of that new country, he went about tearing the Vikings a new one, but as ever, heavy rests the head or something, and yet another Charles wanted to be king. Simple. Yeah. Charles the Simple. Doesn’t sound like the kind of guy you want sitting on the throne, does it? I don’t know if his title meant simple in the way of the brain, or that he was an uncomplicated man. Tell you what: let’s find out, shall we? Well he was also called Charles the Straightforward, so I think we’re looking more at a sort of direct, Meerkat Market sort of simple than the drooling, idiotic smile variety. Charles is however important, so we will come back to him very shortly. Meanwhile, Odo was crowned in 888 and would rule for ten years, though as I say his reign would be marred by his struggle against Charles.

In fact, I can’t see that he had that great a time after saving Paris. He ended up looking for the support of the king of East Francia, Arnulf, but he must have insulted his wife or his wine or something (Frenchman, more likely the wine) as Arnulf instead threw his lot in with Charles, and Odo was forced to concede territory on the Seine to him. He had battled Arnulf for three years, and on the fourth he died, in 898. That left the throne Charles’ for the taking. And he took.


Charles III, Charles the Simple (879 - 929)

We’ve already spoken a little about him above, but here are some more funny facts. He was preceded by - wait for this - Louis the Child, who wasn’t a child. Though he was when he ascended the throne - probably with a bit of a bump-up from someone; he was only six, and died at eighteen. What a bummer. What did he die of? He died of a Tuesday. No, seriously, let’s see. Died of terminal depression, it says here. Wow. If an eighteen-year old king can die of depression, how many of his subjects must have kicked the bucket? Anyway enough about him, as he’s really not important except for me to point a finger and laugh at. Back to Charles the Simple. His dad was another stammerer, Louis the Stammerer - was he king? Yes. Yes he was, and by all accounts, though not a man to make waves or any impact of any sort, you kind of can’t argue with the words of Herman Munster, sorry Sebastian Munster that “he was a sweet and simple man, a lover of peace, justice and religion.”

Oh for the love of - another child! This time Charles the Child, whom Louis succeeded as King of Aquitaine. He also died at age 18, though not from depression, unless you count being depressed by having been hit in the head by a sword while fooling around in mock combat with your own men! The incident left him a little doolally, and he passed away in 866. But as for Charles the Simple, well, he was destined to make his mark on history. Hey, at least he had a mother with a decent name - Adelaide of Paris, because, you know, she was from Paris. In the year 911 (shut up) Paris was again besieged, and again by Rollo, who had come back to finish the job. After Charles had kicked his arse he decided to negotiate with Rollo, and granted him all the land between the river Epte and the sea, and the Duchy of Brittany, naming it all as the new Duchy of, you guessed it, Normandy. Anyone singing “Pass the Dutchie” can leave right now, I’m serious. We don’t need your kind here. Where was I? Oh yeah. In return for this grant, Rollo and all his men were to swear fealty to France, and he himself was to be baptised as a Christian and take Charles’ daughter Gisela as his wife.

It was quite clever of Charles to grant Rollo and the Vikings-soon-to-be-Normans the Duchy of Brittany (yeah, you can go too. You! The one singing “Hit Me Baby One More Time”! Out!), as this was at the time an independent kingdom he had been trying without success to conquer. Now all he had to do was sit back and let his new Viking/Norman allies conquer it for him. Well, for them, but it amounted to the same thing. That year, 911, is also the one in which our friend Louis the Child comes, briefly, back into the picture. With his death, the East Francians elected him king, as they didn’t fancy Conrad I. Well, this is not quite true. Bloody fragmented kingdoms within fragmented kingdoms! Right. Lotharingia was part of East Francia, and they were the ones who elected Charles their king, but essentially saw him as king of all East Francia. This didn’t bother Conrad too much, not because he didn’t care but because he was too busy fighting off claims to his throne, and not only from Charles, but within his own kingdom. So in one way - probably a very wrong way - you could make a very tentative case for Charles the Simple, being technically but not really king of both East and West Francia as being the first actual king of all of France. But you’d be wrong. Also it didn’t last. After Conrad kicked it, it looks like Saxons or some form of Germans anyway took East Francia, and it then either became Germany or was subsumed into it.

Despite six tries, our Charles just couldn’t muster up a son - daughter, daughter, daughter, daughter, daughter… hold on, hold on! Could it be? Is it poss - nah. Another daughter - so like kings everywhere at that time he blamed it on his wife and dumped her to marry another woman, this time the daughter of an English king. English gels knew how to do it right, and out popped an heir, first time of asking. Jolly good show! This boy would go on to rule as Louis IV, but I don’t think he was one of the Bourbon dynasty kings, the likes of Louis the Sun King XIV and zut alors! Where’s me head Louis XVII, and since I’m not writing the history of France (yet!) I don’t really care.

A sad end really for Charles. His own brother Robert marched against him, with the backing of the nobles who had really got pissed off at him for doling out land that was theirs by right, and though Robert was killed in the ensuing battle, Charles was captured and died in prison in 921. Not a very fitting way to end your reign, even if it was a simple one.

But one thing Charles would always be remembered for was for the basic creation of the Norman state, which would go on to cause such misery and hardship in England (and, by extension, Ireland, Scotland and Wales) but which would also fundamentally change Europe and most of the western world.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Rollo (c. 835/87- - 928/933)

All right, let’s just get this out of the way, for those of you who have seen Vikings and think “Oh yeah, that’s Ragnar’s brother!” He wasn’t. At least, so far as history can ascertain (and you can see from the dates of his birth and death that there’s not even agreement on those), Ragnar may or may not have lived (I think I went into this earlier, pretty sure I did) but if he did, he wasn’t around at the same time Rollo was. Rollo can be definitely traced to a proper historical figure though, and so we have a lot more certainty about him than we do about Ragnar. Some facts about him that Vikings got right are that he was a giant of a man, nicknamed “The Walker”, as it was said he was too big for any horse to carry, that he did attack Paris (as we’ve seen above) and was the father of the Norman dynasties. He also contributed to the history of England in a way which will link us back to 1066, if you’ll just bear with me.

But to understand the Normans, and why they so easily defeated the English at Hastings, as I said, we have to know more about them, and it starts with Rollo. We’ve already seen a pencil sketch of him; we know he was a Viking lord who changed tactics from harrying the English to harrying the French (no doubt to a great big “huzzah!” from the English, one they would live to very much retract and regret) and that he besieged Paris. Unable to take it he came to a compromise with Charles the Fat and settled in the area of France (well, West Francia as it was known at the time) which came to be known as Normandy. But they’re only the barest bones, so let’s put the flesh on this skeleton.

Although he is definitely believed to have come from Scandinavia (duh, historians!) nobody can say for sure if it was Norway or Denmark where he was born. He was referred to as “Rollo the Dane”, but then, Dane was a general catch-all label for all Vikings that Europeans used, regardless of their country of birth (which they were unlikely to have known anyway; it’s not like they would ask, as they fended off a blow from a huge axe with a shield, “By the way, where was it you said you came from again?”) so that’s no proof of anything. There does seem to be evidence to suggest he was chased, harried out of or exiled from Scandinavia though, and the first time contemporary history picks him up is attacking Paris in that siege. There are other accounts, but you know historians: two or three corroborating sources at least please, or we’re not interested.

So whatever he did before arriving on the shores of France is mostly unknown, and kind of unimportant anyway, as it is really from the time he became a Norman - the first, you could say - that we’re interested in him. So what happened after Charles said to him “That bit there, down to there, that bit, that, you might have to fight for that bit, they don’t like me and I haven’t been able to subdue them but I’m sure you could. Oh, and that bit too. But not that one. That’s mine.”? We know Rollo was baptised and became a Christian, and that he then took the daughter of the king for his wife. Before this, there is an account of him carrying off the daughter of the Count of Rennes (well, what self-respecting Viking - still a Viking at this point, 876 - wouldn’t carry off a beautiful woman? Went with the territory) and marrying her, she giving him a son, but our friendly historians believe this may be what they term “quasi-bollocks”, meaning it might or might not be true, depending on how many rounds you’re prepared to buy.

Stories, too, of his friendship with an English king, originally identified as Alstem, later seemingly confirmed as Athelstan, (look, just don't start, all right? The things that show got wrong...) the Danish leader Guthrun whom Alfred the Great baptised and then renamed. Again, this could be true or just “qb”, and again it really doesn’t matter, because dial the emergency services or stand outside Ground Zero: 911 is the year we’re most interested in, as this becomes Year Zero for the creation of the Norman State.

Once the lands had been granted to him, Rollo (now baptised as Robert, but it doesn’t seem like he’s ever referred to as anything other than Rollo) decided it was time to put manners on the other Vikings in France and show them who was boss. When Charles the Simple was kicked off the throne though, Rollo thought his deal was over, and so it was hell for leather across West Francia as he pushed the borders of his new realm outwards. Eventually the new king sued for peace, giving Rollo more land. Because of their close connection with the native French, Rollo’s descendants clove to the Catholic tradition, one of many reasons why England would become, for almost four hundred years, a Catholic country.

Rollo died, cause unknown, sometime between 923 and 928. His great-great-grandson was called William, and this is where we return, as it were, by a circuitous route, to the end of English rule and the coming of the Normans to England in 1066.

But of course, it wouldn’t be like me to just go for Hastings now would it? Of course not. First we need to talk about himself.



William I, aka William the Conqueror (1028 - 1087)

The man who would change English politics and start a dynasty that would last centuries lost his father early, when the Duke of Normandy, Robert I (also known humbly as Robert the Magnificent) died on the way back from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1035. Before departing, Robert had declared William his heir, and extracted from all his nobles a promise to uphold his claim, therefore WIlliam became Duke on the death of his father at the tender age of seven years. There’s no such thing, so far as I know, as a regent for a duke, so though he was far too young to rule, William had to take on the job. He did however have allies, in Archbishop Robert, his great-uncle, and the king himself, Henry I. Things took a turn for the worse though when Robert died in 1037, and the duchy descended into anarchy.

William fell under the protection of various guardians, including Alan of Brittany and Gilbert of Brionne, and others, all summarily slain as the young duke’s enemies tried to get to him. He eventually had to seek the protection of the king, but when grown he returned with him in 1047 and retook Normandy, defeating his enemies. He spent five years hunting them down and consolidating his power, but then that power became just a little too consolidated for the king’s liking, and, fearing the power the young duke was building up in Normandy, Henry teamed up with his enemies against William. William proved himself an able commander and a charismatic leader, resulting in some of his former enemies joining him against Henry (turnabout is, after all, fair play) and his battle finally came to an end when both the king and his main ally Geoffrey of Anjou died in 1060.

In 1049 William had married Matilda of Flanders, cementing his alliance with Germany, though His Holiness Pope Leo IX, for some reason, refused to allow the marriage. He went ahead anyway, sort of taking a future page from one of his successors, Henry VIII, though he stopped short of creating his own Church.

Eve of the, um, Battle

It’s always struck me as odd that a simple duke should decide to invade England. Was this not the prerogative of the king? Was it not kings who invaded and tried to take crowns from other kings? I suppose it’s quite possible that if you look through history there have been some instances of other nobles invading foreign countries, but I would have thought that would have been a prelude to their king coming over and sitting on the throne? Did the French king give his blessing to, or even permission for, such a huge and potentially world-changing action? Who was even king at this time? Let’s see. Hmm. Philip I is shown as being “king of the Franks” but there’s no reference to his being involved in William’s campaign. I suppose it’s possible he had other things to worry about. William probably didn’t feel he owed him any real fealty anyway, as Normandy was essentially all but a separate state, and powerful, so maybe Philip just let him go his own way. I’ll try to research that a bit further later, because I find it strange. Would, for instance, say maybe Cnut or Alfred the Great allowed one of their dukes or barons to boogie over to France and try to take the crown? Sounds unlikely.

Then again, perhaps given the story that William had been promised the English crown, his boss thought maybe it gave him that right. Perhaps Philip was too busy fighting (or, considering his suffix, “the amorous”, engaged in other activities) and just said “Sure if he promised ye the crown, you go and take it like a good man there, and leave me alone.” Why he should have suddenly gained a Dublin accent we will never know. But there is no mention of him, whether he approved, disapproved or was totally oblivious to the ambitions of the Duke of Normandy, and it does appear, on the surface anyway, that he just left him to it.

Winding our way across the Channel and back to Merry Old England, it will possibly be remembered that we left the country in a state very much other than merry, as King Harold Godwinson was somewhat less than secure on the English throne, having in total three claimants to the Crown, one of which was his own half-brother. Four, in fact, if you include Edward Atheling, though he was only fourteen at the time. Tostig, the other brother, had been exiled, and we’ll have a shufty at him in a moment. The third claimant, as already discussed in the previous chapter, was the king of Norway, Harold Bastard Hard, I mean Harold Hardrada. He had made an agreement with his uncle, King Magnus, that should Harthacnut die without an heir, then his son would take the crown, but should Magnus do the same, then his heir would be next in line for the throne.

It’s been almost a year, and I’m getting a little confused, so let’s recap on all these people and sort things out before we go any further.

First, Harthacnut: as everyone knows (and if you didn’t know, then you would from his name) he was the son of Cnut, one of the wisest and longest-reigning kings of England, and the first ever Viking one. Harthacnut succeeded to the throne on the death of his half-brother Harold Harefoot, who had come to power after the great Cnut had passed away, he being his son by Aelfgifu, and Harthcnut being busy with trying to establish control in Norway. When Harold died, Harthacnut returned and took the throne, but only lasted seven years, dying, it appears, of terminal alcohol poisoning at a wedding.

Next up was Edward the Confessor, and he died childless, having decided to take a vow of chastity, which kind of threw the succession into chaos. They really needn’t have worried, as William was on his way to sort out all their problems for them and take away forever the burden of ruling England. But anyway it was his brother, son of the late great Earl Godwin, and last of the Anglo-Saxon kings, did he but know it, Harold II, known as Harold Godwinson, who became his heir. Harold had to fight off an attempt by his namesake with different spelling, King Harald of Norway, then, having kicked his arse, may have thought, this French William will be a piece of cake. Shoot out my eye if - oh wait: I’ve done that one, haven’t I?

So for whatever reason he was allowed, ignored or just went anyway, William decided the time was ripe to cash in on that “IOU 1 crowne of ye Englishe” and headed west, with a rather large army. His wife may have complained about not wanting to live in such a miserable rainy country, but history records his reply as “I’ll give you miserable, you moaning old…” (the rest of the manuscript has sadly been lost to the ravages of time) and Hastings-bound he came.

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Trollheart

Back to Harald we go. No, the other one. When he came over from Norway to kick the son of the Earl of Godwin (Godwinson, get it?) off the just-vacant English throne, he brought with him another enemy of the then-king, but paradoxically also a claimant, so not quite sure how that worked. Tostig has already been mentioned, Harold’s brother whom he exiled from England, but who believed he jolly well had just as much a right to the crown as his sibling, dash it all, and decided to support the Norwegian king, perhaps in the hope he might be granted a duchy or a baronetcy or some damn title with a lot of land anyway. Okay, let’s unpack this.

Tostig had come with his army to take the throne but had been driven off by his brother, and instead decided to head north, where there were always arses to kick. Unfortunately, these arses kicked back, so to speak, and Tostig was harried by the Earls of Mercia and Northumbria, and he lost most of his men. He decided to go to Scotland and lick his wounds, and maybe see if he couldn’t scare up some support there. The Scots were always on for a fight, after all, and there was little they hated more than the English. Of course, he was English too, so there was that. As it went, King Harald, the Norwegian one, was cooling his heels on the south coast, looking at his watch and wondering where the hell this WIlliam character was, said to meet him on the south coast 1066, and here it was and no sign of him. It was then that his men came to him and said “Look Your Majesty, we’d love to stay and die horribly in your service, get mutilated and maimed for life all to get you this throne your heart seems set on, but the thing is, we’re militia, see, and, well, we have these crops that need to be harvested.” So off they went to return to a much safer life as farmers (unless you happened to get in the way of the local lord, who might just that morning have arisen with an insatiable desire to mow down farmers, the things these lords get up to, I don’t know) and Harald was kind of left armyless.

So he moseyed on up north, which seemed to be the in-place to go, where he met a rather despondent Tostig. “How many men you got?” he asked him possibly over a few pints of good dark ale (or, being the north, possibly grey ale, and also possibly not good). “Not much,” belched Harald maybe. “A mere 300 ships, no more than 15,000 men.” Tostig may have grinned and the two may even have clinked glasses, who knows? “That’ll do for me,” it’s possible Tostig may have said, having perhaps spent too long among northerners, and so they banded together and went to kick the king out of the royal palace. As for William, well, Harald may have thought philosophically, he may turn up, he may not, but this guy has an army here and now, and I’ll be buggered if I’m spending another season pulling my dick in this cold climate waiting for him.

At York, at the end of September, Tostig was able to have his revenge on the two earls, whom he and his new ally sent running like girls maybe as they roundly defeated them at the Battle of Fulford. Had they waited for Harold Godwinson, who had texted ahead saying there was heavy traffic on the A40 maybe, they might have triumphed, but as ever in English politics (and not just English of course) nobody trusted anybody else, and the two earls thought maybe Harold would set Tostig up as Earl of Northumbria. The other earl, Edwin of Mercia, may have shrugged that that would suck, but what had it to do with him, and may have been answered by the reminder that there was also a Norwegian bastard involved, who might fancy Edwin’s earldom. So stung into action, the two decided **** Harold, we can take these two pussies.

They were wrong.

So when Harold did finally huff and puff his way up the motorway he found his allies nothing more than a rapidly-receding cloud of dust, with Harald and Tostig there going “Now, about this throne.” They met at Stamford Bridge, and in true Chelsea home style, there was a massacre. 2-0 to the English king as he not only defeated Tostig and Harald, but killed them both. The exertion, however, left his forces depleted, and all he could probably think was that this would be the worst time for, say, an attack to come from across the sea.

He had barely a month to wait.

Of course, I’m sure we all understand well enough that it wasn’t as if William texted Harold - “You, me, Hastings. Be there.” In fact, neither probably had any idea where the decisive battle would be, and like any king (or in this case, duke, but soon to be king) landing on foreign shores he was invading, William had a lot of raiding and harrying and possibly raping to do as well before he got to grips with his enemy. His power had obviously grown by now, and I don’t know whether you could call him the de facto king of France, but he was certainly able to muster men from Flanders, Brittany and other parts of France to fight for him, and though as ever historians disagree over the size of his force, it’s generally accepted to have been somewhere between the 7,000 and 10,000 mark. Hard to be sure, as contemporary historians and present ones never get on: if they see each other at the bar, watch out and hold onto your pint. Naturally, those on William’s side would have been exaggerating to make him look more of a threat than he was, but it’s never possible to be sure. So we stick with this range.

Doesn’t seem that huge really. King Harald only brought about 15,000, and his army was considered large. Well, as they say, it’s often not how big it is but where you stick it, and William stuck it to the English. Let’s not forget Harold’s men were also shagged out after the Battle of Stamford Bridge, and a fresh army with a duke eyeing his crown was really the last thing he needed right now. Right now though, was exactly when William came, and he landed in England only a few days after the battle, Harold’s army limping home and looking forward to putting their feet up with a cuppa and a copy of Soldier Times or whatever. Sussex was where he made his invasion, setting up a wooden castle (huh?) at Hastings and using it as a base for attack. Since this was Harold’s stomping ground, the idea was to lure him there by wrecking everything around, levelling his relative’s castles and basically causing **** all through the neighbourhood till the king came to ask them nicely to keep it down if they wouldn’t mind, there were people trying to sleep, and Mildred at number ten had a newborn that just would not ****ing stop crying.

But when he got the e-vite that was it, and it would be rude not to respond, so off he went to Hastings. He set up defensive camp on Saulac Hill, hoping to surprise William, but the duke’s scouts were out and about and had probably recognised Harold due to the crown on his head or something. Anyway, they legged it back to tell their master the English ruler was on the way, and William rode out to meet them. It was October 14 1066, the day everything changed for England. In a stunning piece of irony, those little quirks history is wont to throw up from time to time, the place where the battle actually took place was called, um, Battle. It still is, and I assumed it had been renamed for the famous confrontation, but it seems it has always had that name. So in effect, it wasn’t really the Battle of Hastings, but then, the Battle of Battle 1066 would just be silly, wouldn’t it?

Anyway the battle lasted pretty much all day, and as you know, I don’t do all this battlefield historians ****e; not interested in who made a pincer movement or who cut off who from their forces, who took this flag or that ridge or any of that bollocks. But I’ll see what I can pick out from the details, see if there is anything I should be writing and telling you about. Okay, I see there was a rumour started that William had been killed, and the army began to panic and retreat, the English pushing forward until the man himself appeared, shouting rather unnecessarily that he was alive, and led the counter-offensive as the English wet themselves and fled. Incredible as it may seem to us, but perhaps a totally English thing (and observed by the French too) the two armies appear to have broken for afternoon tea, taking a rest and getting their strength back. Bah! Wouldn’t have happened at El Alamein, I can tell you that!

Nevertheless, once Harold went down that was that. Again with the differing accounts, but whether it’s the truth or just the accepted one, the later Bayeux Tapestry has the famous drawing of the king being shot in the eye by an arrow and thus being killed. That may not be the case, but it’s passed down into legend and popular history, and who am I to dispute it? Although some of his men rallied around the king’s corpse and fought to the end, as in most battles, once the leader is slain the army is out of here, and so they were. William had won the day, and the last English king had bit the dust. A lot of long-winded explanations and theories over how and why William triumphed, but they seem to be mostly centred on the English attacking when they should have been defending (Newcastle United anyone?), being fooled by the feigned retreats the Normans pulled off during the battle, only to be led into an attack, and their lack of cavalry, which would always remain one of the Normans’ biggest advantages.

A decisive and stirring victory it may have been, and indeed the beginning of the end for English rule, but if William thought the country was going to fold like a pack of cards and meekly accept a frog as their new sovereign, well, he was about to find out he was in error.

Edgar Atheling (1052 - 1125 or possibly later)

We’ve heard of him before. He was the son of Edgar the Exile who, once his exile was over, returned to England only to earn a new name: Edgar the Dead. With so many powerful claims to the throne on the death of Edward the Confessor, and he being so young, still in his teens, at the time, Edgar Atheling was not really considered a runner, and Harold Godwinson was crowned instead. When Harold fell, and William began his march towards London in order to take the crown that was possibly rightfully his but never mind if it wasn’t, he had won it by right of combat, the English elected Edgar as king. He never ruled though. In Southwark he fought with the English for control of London Bridge, unable to gain access to the city, he expected to encounter only token resistance at the bridge, but one of the leaders of the defenders, a man called Ansgar (or Esegar), the sheriff of Middlesex, had been with Harold at Hastings, and had returned to Southwark to organise its defence.

William, somewhat nonplussed to see such a force arrayed against him - even the townsfolk were armed and joined the effort - offered Ansgar the sheriffship under his rule if he would submit to him, but Ansgar told him where to stick it and they attacked. You have to give it to this guy: he was so badly wounded he had to be carried around in a litter, and had been offered pretty generous terms by the victorious duke, soon to be his king. If he recognised him not only would he be allowed retain his lands, but he could also have a seat on the council. Now, you can’t say fairer than that, can you? But England doesn’t like invaders, especially ones who rub out their kings, and so there was no compromise.

It’s possible those two earls, he of Mercia and the other of Northumbria, were there defending the town too, and though William’s cavalry broke through, they faced such stiff opposition that they could not hold the bridge, so they set it ablaze, and Southwark was virtually razed to the ground. London continued to put up stiff resistance until the clergy, convinced by William that they should concede, swore their fealty and he was allowed enter the city. He was crowned the first Norman king of England on Christmas Day.

His first few years, however, were far from easy or peaceful. England had been battered into submission, with the only real alternative to William - now known forever more as “the Conqueror” - being the weak and ineffectual and inexperienced Edgar Atheling, and really nobody wanted to rally behind him. When William returned to Normandy in March though, the English took their chance and revolted here there and everywhere, leaving his half-brother Odo, and his partner, William Fitzosbern with rebellions to put down, which they did. William was back at the end of the year and took a hand in suppressing the revolts himself, the great strength of his policy being what would become a feature of Norman conquest, not only in England and Ireland but everywhere: he built castles and installed garrisons there, so that there was no chance of rebels getting too uppity again. If they did, there was a ready-made force there to take care of them.

But then there were rebellions and there were rebellions, and one definitely demanded his own personal attention.

The Harrying of the North: No Mercy from the Normans

In late 1069 the north rose. To almost paraphrase and parallel Game of Thrones, winter was coming and the north had united behind Edgar. I don’t know if they proclaimed him “King in the North” or anything - most likely not; they’d have wanted him to have been recognised and acknowledged as king of all England - but they rallied and stood against William, still more or less at this point seen as an invader, and a Frenchman to boot. England had not forgotten the old rivalry with France, and this guy might call himself a Norman, but he came from France, and that was good enough for them. England - and Ireland - would of course have cause to hate and revile the word Norman over the next few hundred years, even more than it had hated the word French. What became known as “the harrying of the north” was only the beginning.

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I suppose at this point it might be helpful to explain what “the north” comprised at the time. Borders and boundaries would be redrawn during William’s reign, but at the time of his accession to the throne the north was Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland, Lancashire, Cumberland and Westmorland (see map above). Many of these places, you may remember, had been part of Danelaw, and occupied by Vikings in the time of Alfred and Aethelred and so on, and they had little taste to bend the knee to a French king. They possibly saw their Norman cousins as Vikings who had submitted themselves to France, and were no longer worthy of the warrior race. Or maybe they just didn’t like William, who knows? Either way, they weren’t having it.

One of the main points of contention was the earldom of Northumbria. This area had been a trouble spot since the days of Danelaw, often allying against the king, and by this time it had changed hands three times since the days of Tostig (remember him?). The first had been when a supporter of his, with the unlikely name of Copsi (sounds like a character from Beatrix Potter!) took over, swearing fealty to William, having fought Harold with Harald, as it were, on the side of Tostig at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. But the north was against William, and within weeks of being made the new earl Cosplay sorry Pepsi sorry Copsi was killed, replaced by Osulf, who was in turn murdered and the earldom then bought by his cousin, Cospatrick. Who promptly offered his allegiance to Edgar. And so here we were.

William, having had quite enough of these Ango-****ing-Saxons and their treachery and treason (there’s always an excuse for it) rode to Northumbria and Edgar and Cospatrick and assorted allies all scattered, making a beeline for Scotland, where the king, Malcolm II, always happy to stick it to an English monarch, especially a new one finding his feet, said “Come on in, all o’ ye! Sure ye’ll find braw shelter at mah hearth, ye ken!” or something. William then solved the problem of the Earldom of Northumbria by conferring it on someone he could trust, a Norman. Job done.

Or not quite. Secure now in his new position, Robert de Comines rode into Durham and swiftly adn brutally learned that the one thing the north did not like was a ****ing Frenchman trying to lord it over them. So that was the end of him, and the beginning of a resurgence of the revolt. The rebels then burned York castle, which really ticked William off and he rode back, snarling “That ****ing castle cost me a lot to build, you English bastards!” And someone may have whispered in his ear so that he added, shrugging “Oh. Right. Yeah. And you killed my newly-appointed earl, too!”

As it often does, rebellion spread, so other towns rose in support of Edgar, who turned to a Viking, Sweyn II, a nephew of Cnut the Great, who was probably none too pleased to see what a pig’s breakfast this William head was making of his uncle’s ex-kingdom, and sent a large fleet against him. They retook York, but when William came again to make them give it back, they quipped “Didn’t want your stupid castle anyway!” and ran back across the border to Scotland. Possibly seeing what a useless wimp this Edgar Atheling was, Sweyn headed back down the coast, William bought him off in the time-honoured fashion and he buggered off back to Denmark with all his ships. You could probably hear the sound as William clapped his gloved gauntlets together and eyed the north.

“Right!” said he, probably. “Now let’s sort this ****ing place out once and for all!”

And so he did.

The people would remember it forever as the Harrying of the North. Historians would call it genocide. Even later, more sympathetic writers of Norman descent would opine that it was cruel and merciless, but that William had no choice. Basically, it was a slaughter. The Viking blood that pulsed in his Norman veins was up now, and William had had just about enough of these English. He set to ensuring they would learn their place, would stay there, and would never rise again. Nobody was spared: towns, villages, households; men, women, children, animals, possibly even furry toys - all fell to the sword, the arrow and the fire. The North was set ablaze from border to border, the fires possibly reflected in the eyes of the king and his men as they went about their business like demons from Hell. Well, they wouldn’t be demons from anywhere else, would they, but you know what I mean.

An Anglo-Norman chronicler wrote in 1116 of the fury of the king, and how savage - and indeed, unjust - his reprisals were: "The King stopped at nothing to hunt his enemies. He cut down many people and destroyed homes and land. Nowhere else had he shown such cruelty. This made a real change. To his shame, William made no effort to control his fury, punishing the innocent with the guilty. He ordered that crops and herds, tools and food be burned to ashes. More than 100,000 people perished of starvation. I have often praised William in this book, but I can say nothing good about this brutal slaughter. God will punish him."

It may not really have been the best policy. If you’re trying to establish your rule on a foreign land, trying to (presumably) create alliances and win allies, torching half of the country is probably not the way to go. Then again, it was only the north. This would, however, instil forever in that half of the country a hatred, resentment and resistance to William’s rule which would come back to haunt him. English kings had raided and go on the rampage before, but not, it would seem, in such an indiscriminate and murderous way. Villages were torched, crops destroyed, livestock killed, the whole land laid waste. In the ensuing and inevitable famine, it was said, with some support, that people turned to cannibalism in order to survive. I don’t believe this had happened in England before this, so there’s a mark of shame William was never able to remove from his reign.

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Band of Brothers: Harold’s Progeny Rise

Although he had been crowned King of England, the West Country remained loyal to Harold, where his mother Gytha had set up her powerbase while her three grandsons Godwin, Magnus and Edmund sailed to Ireland to muster an army. With the ex-queen mother and three potential heirs to the throne in residence, Exeter became a beacon of resistance, and supporters of Harold flocked there. William could not allow such a challenge to his authority to remain, and so as soon as he was in a position to, he rode for Exeter to force the queen’s submission. Ooe-er! Sounds kinky! (Shut it, you!) He arrived with a large force and besieged the castle (nothing a Norman liked better than a good siege) which held out for eighteen days before surrendering.

Though he suffered heavy losses as the town was determined to resist him, William finally managed to breach the walls by the use of mines, said to be the first time this technique was ever used in England. Gytha, seeing the game was up, had had it away on her toes in a boat, fed up of waiting for her worthless son’s nippers to come to her rescue, and William took the city, perhaps surprisingly sparing all its defenders and citizens. Maybe he'd worked out all his aggression putting down the northerners. He then did something which again became de rigueur for Normans, and built a castle at Exeter, ensuring it would remain loyal to him. Gytha ended up on the Island of Flat Holm, waited, waited and waited some more, than said **** this and headed back to Flanders, from where she vanishes from history.

Meanwhile, the three sons of the defeated and dead King Harold Godwinson had fled after Hastings to Ireland, where they petitioned the king, Diarmait Mac Máel na mBó for assistance. The Irish, always ready to strike a blow against their neighbours to the east, agreed and sent a small fleet to engage William’s forces. William had by now left Devon, but his men engaged the brothers and put up stiff resistance, sending them yelping back across the Irish Sea, possibly one brother short. The king grumped “You feckin’ lads back already? Did yiz get that Norman bastard? Yiz didn’t? Holy Jaysus! Do I have to do everythin’ meself here? Look, here, take these men and boats and for the love of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, will yiz get the job done this time, or don’t bother comin’ back! I tell yiz, it won’t be Ireland of the thousand welcomes for you hoors if yiz come back defeated again. Now get up that yard!” Or words, vaguely, to that effect.

Back the brothers went in June 1069. Still no William (he was oop north) but Brian of Brittany, his second cousin, met them in battle and the superior Norman forces, with those all-important cavalry units, kicked their arses and sent them home. It’s reported that the Irish king decided to get very drunk that night, and wasn’t seen for several days. The remaining brothers followed their mother out of history, and that was the end of any challenge by the line of Godwinson to the rule of William the Conqueror.

But what about our man Edgar the Halfling, sorry Atheling, still hiding out under Malcolm’s kilt? Well, not much really. He literally did hide in Scotland until William decided it was time Malcolm bent the knee, and in 1072 part of the deal was that Edgar should be kicked out of Scotland, and indeed out of Britain. He went, where it seems all deposed/exiled/on the run kings, queens, nobles and persons of dubious birth went: Flanders. Eventually he decided to give up and accept William as his sovereign, so he doesn’t really feature much more in the story of the Norman conquest of England.

But the Welsh do.

The Dragon Awakes, Look You! Eadric’s Wild and Possibly Savage Revolt: A Prelude

You have to feel cautious engaging anyone with “the Wild” as their suffix, and Eadric was a wealthy owner of land in Shropshire and Herefordshire, said to be (though unconfirmed) a brother of that jolly ealdorman, Eadric Streona. Fiercely resistant to William’s rule, he nevertheless realised that he needed allies, and turned to the west, where he joined forces with the Welsh princes Bledden and Rhiwallon ap Cynfyn, princes of Powys and Gwynedd. Around the time William was counting out gold pieces of whatever into Sweyn II’s eager hand to enable* him to **** off home and leave Edgar high-tailing it back to Scotland, Eadric and his Welsh allies attacked Shrewsbury Castle, while others of their forces took on the newly-built one at Exeter. Neither were successful, both pushed back and the Anglo-Saxons beginning perhaps to learn the value of a good stone castle at your back, so much more so if it was a Norman one.

However, as it was necessary to take a left-turn in the History of Ireland to look into that of Scotland, as I research more I feel that the same is important here, so that we can better understand the relationship, not only between Wales and England, but between the Welsh themselves. Like any nation of the time, their country was never really at peace, rival kings and princes fighting among each other for control of this or that territory, and while there was, to my knowledge, no actual war of Welsh independence, the land of the Valleys has always been one of the most fiercely independent of the United Kingdom. Okay, we all have - Ireland and Scotland too, but I’m not very familiar with the actual history of Wales, so before I go too much further and start talking about princes and alliances and grievances and wars, it would probably be helpful to know who and what I’m talking about.



This, then, is obviously not intended to be a history of Wales, but a quick retelling of how the Welsh got to where and how they are. Considering that they are so deep, as it were, in English territory, how did they stay virtually independent, even up to today? Scotland you can understand: it’s way up there in the cold, frozen north, and it has highlands and crags to defend itself, plus the weather is awful in general and even as* you come down closer to the south, the people from the likes of Sunderland and Newcastle are more closely aligned with Scotland, in some ways, than they are with England. They did, after all, bear the brunt of invasions from England when kings rode north to try to conquer Scotland, and there have been certainly instances of the Scots and the men from the north banding together against a marauding king. This king, almost invariably, would have been an English one, but the English in the north were not prepared to smooth his way.

Add to this the fact that, as mentioned above earlier, places like Northumbria* had a tradition of being settled by Vikings (Saxons) and had been covered under Danelaw from about the eighth century. They had fought against kings of Wessex and Mercia, and held their own land as long as they could. There was no real loyalty in the north to the king, who traditionally ruled from, and in, the south, as today. London might as well have been a million miles away from places like Newcastle, and the north did not really regard the English king as theirs. Mind you, they weren’t about to submit to the Scottish one either, but in general, unless forced to, as we saw in the War for Scottish Independence, the Scots didn’t tend to bother too much about crossing the border into the south, so it’s now as if Northumbria was being constantly menaced by Scottish armies.

All of this, then, makes it easy to see how Scotland, for a time at least, was able to maintain its own independence, even if seen by the king as being part of his dominions. In some ways, it probably just wasn’t seen as worth going all that way to try to bring them to submission. Let them stay up there in the cold and think they were independent; when the time came, the king could march on them, but for now, the toasty throne room of London was much more attractive. Not so though with Wales. Wales essentially takes up most of the lower west half of Britain, and is more like a part of it than is Scotland. So how was it that the Welsh avoided being invaded and subjugated for so long?

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Land of my Fathers: A (Very) Short History of Wales

Leaving aside the 300-year occupation by Rome, the first major battle to involve Wales was the Battle of Chester, in 616 AD (there are sources who give other dates, but **** them: I’m sticking with this one. Who cares anyway? Bloody historians!) when the invading Angles and Saxons under Aethelfrith, one of the kings of half of Northumbria (as detailed previously) - he was the one who had all those priests killed, as they were praying for victory - faced the "wild" Welsh.* Chester being close to the Welsh border, it was a force of men from Powys, Rhôs and possibly Mercia too which met Aethelfrith and whose leaders were killed in the battle. Wales was broken into two main kingdoms, Powys and Gwynedd, but the first man to rule over the entire country was Rhodri Mawr in the 9th century. Of course, this then became the period in which the Viking raids on Britain began, and the Welsh were no exception to the depredations of the Danes.

Wales was, like Ireland, overwhelmingly Christian, some of this being due perhaps to the influx of Irish settlers who arrived around the fourth century, and like Ireland (and indeed England, before the ascension of Henry VIII) there were monasteries and abbeys dotted across the country, and monks, abbots and friars administering to the spiritual needs of the people. Over time, parts of what were Wales and the northern kingdoms were taken and absorbed into both Scotland and England, leaving Wales more or less as it is today. Although Rhodri Mawr ruled over Wales, the first man to do so effectively came a century after him, but would die before William even set sail for England and his new realm.

Gruffydd ap Llywelyn (c. 1010 - 1063)

Originally king of Gwynedd in 1039 on the death of* the previous ruler, Iago, supposedly his grandfather, he killed the brother of the Earl of Mercia and then attacked Dyffed, where he defeated Hywel ab Edwin (no relation, I don’t think) who had Irish support. Gruffydd drove them out but they returned again two years later, in 1044. Again Gruffydd routed the new Irish army and this time ended Hywel’s threat by the simple expedient of ending his life. He then linked up with Aelfgar, a disgruntled son of the Earl of Mercia who had a bone to pick with Harold, and together they attacked Hereford. Look, when the leader of the defenders is called Ralph the Timid, you’re not exactly going to be expecting a hard time, are you?

And they didn’t, leaving the town ablaze as they left. Soon after, Aelfgar got the earldom of East Anglia and was as happy as a pig in ****, so this time Gruffydd attacked Hereford on his own. Maybe he thought it hadn’t been burned enough so he wanted to finish the job. Taking territory after territory and kingdom after kingdom, he seemed unstoppable, and in 1057 was recognised as King of Wales. It should be made clear that he had to swear fealty to Edward the Confessor, as did the King of Scotland, and rule as a kind of “under-king”, so that he had Edward’s blessing, meaning peace with England. As long, of course, as Edward felt like maintaining that peace.

He is recorded as being the only true King of Wales, and he reigned for seven years. Whether he was a brutal ruler or a just one I don’t know, but the fact is that there was peace in his reign, enforced or not who can tell. In 1062 Harold rode against him, sent by the then-king, Edward the Confessor, and put him to flight. The next spring Tostig joined up with Harold and together they encircled Gruffydd’s position, cutting him off and then literally cutting him off as they took his head to the king. In fact, it was Gruffydd’s own men, desperate for peace with England, who agreed to kill him and send his head on to the king. Wales was again divided into the three traditional kingdoms, Harold reached an agreement with two Welsh kings and they were set up each to rule one of the kingdoms. Not sure who ruled over the third.

From around 1070 to 1081 Wales was again at war, as king fought king and territory changed hands, and internal strife tore the country apart, but by and large the new Norman monarchy left them to it, other things on William’s mind. I suppose the prevailing wisdom was that as long as the Welsh were fighting amongst themselves they were never going to be united, and therefore no threat of attack from Wales existed. However in 1081 William decided that Wales was becoming just a little too united for his tastes: Gruffudd ap Cynan had managed to regain control of Gwynedd, and had an army of Irish mercenaries at his side. That didn’t look good, and the old adage held true that when an under-king gets less under than you want him to be, time to teach him his place.

So William sent the Earl of Chester, Hugh D’Avranches, to parley with him but it was a trap and he was captured at Rug (you could say he had the rug pulled out from under him, ho ho) and nicked his lands. He then tried to install bishops and priests loyal to the Normans in place of the traditional native Welsh ones, but this did not go well, leading to the bishop having to carry a sword and go around with a bodyguard when he went out. Shades of The Simpsons: “Bishop carries less than fifty dollars” huh? In the end, Gruffudd escaped from Chester and returned to lead a revolt in 1094, but we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves, so that’s where we’ll leave the history of Wales for now.

I wonder if it was a mistake for William to keep shuttling back and forth between France and England? In his absence something always seemed to happen, and it must have been hard to keep control when you’re constantly moving between the two countries. But then he had holdings a-plenty in Normandy which he had to watch over, and England in general wasn’t exactly being welcoming to him, so maybe he preferred being back in the homeland whenever he could. His method of land control amounted to a feudal system, as practised by the Normans, where the king basically held all the land and distributed it to those he saw fit to receive it, and took it from those he did not. This resulted in many English lords losing their lands and castles for having stood against him, and also the often forced marriage of English women to Norman lords, in order that the property would remain in, or pass into, Norman hands. As usual, the king retained control by the usage of castles, more and more built throughout England as William consolidated his power.

However, somewhat in comparison, in a strange way, to the Ascendancy landlords in Ireland in the nineteenth century, William spent very little time in England, preferring to administer his new kingdom through intermediaries. This had several consequences, the first of which was of course the rise to unprecedented power of lower lords, who were left to look after areas of England, though still directly under the control of the absentee king. The next was the all but elimination of the English aristocracy, as Normans became the dominant power in England and Englishmen, all now seen as “Saxons”, were relegated to a second class status, again somewhat like Catholics in Ireland some hundreds of years later. Englishmen could no longer hold posts in the Church, or if they had lifetime appointments, were replaced on their death (and who is to say, with not a shred of evidence but you know, that some of these troublesome natives were not assisted out of this world early?) by Normans.

Another consequence was the “**** this I’m out of here” syndrome, or to put it more mildly and* politely, the exodus of English to other countries not controlled by the Norman king: Scotland, Ireland and even Scandinavia - well, not surprising, considering how many Vikings still remained in England - as well as the Byzantine Empire, which was crying out for good mercenaries, and where a seasoned English soldier or commander could make good money. Back home, even the language was changing, as the Norman overlords forced the use of their Anglo-Norman tongue, and Old English - the dominant language before Hastings - began to undergo the same fate as Gaelic would in Ireland with the later arrival of the English, technically the Normans really. Administrative documents were now written in Latin, not English, and the Forest Laws were enacted, designating certain areas of England as belonging to the king, royal forests wherein no commoner may tread or hunt. This would of course in a few hundred years give rise to the legend of the one man who dared not only hunt in the forest, but live there and strike from it as his base to harry the occupying Normans.



(Did he exist, or was he just a myth, put about to bolster Saxon courage and provide a figure of resistance? Was he based on a real-life figure? I don't know, and we'll examine the legend of Robin Hood when we get to the era in which he supposedly lived. One thing I do know pretty much for sure, and that is that he was not a fox.)

It might seem odd that all of these changes came about not due to a mass immigration of Normans to England, but a relatively small number. It’s estimated that the population of Normans at the time of William the Conqueror only amounted to about 8,000 - that’s about a thousandth of the population of London alone today, and less than half of its population at the time. In all of England. So it’s not like the Normans outnumbered the English. Far from it; they were very much the minority. But then, once you’re in power and have all the major institutions, including the army of course, under your control then it kind of really doesn’t matter how inferior your numbers are.

While there were definitely advantages to the Norman conquest (not if you were there at the time, and English, of course), such as the abolition in short order (well, two hundred years, but lightning fast in terms of history) of slavery, this in a way didn’t matter for England, as almost all of the peasant or serf working class English were relegated ot the position of all but slaves. They had few rights, taxes of increasing cruelty were levied on them to pay for foreign wars, and they had no representation in the country. Not as if anyone could have voted or anything in the time of the House of Wessex, but at least you could expect that the king would, generally, have your best interests at heart. Not so under the Normans. It would probably be fair to say that English Saxons were looked upon by the new occupier ruling class as about as favourably as Jews were in Germany in the 1930s, or blacks in the Deep South in the nineteenth century, or the tenant farmers in Ireland by the Ascendancy landlords. In other words, in the eyes of the Normans, they had no rights, and this would continue for centuries until, eventually, as always happens, the invaders were not defeated by force but by inevitable circumstances.

As they began to intermarry with Saxon women, Norman men would acclimatise to the English ways, and the two peoples would more or less mingle to become one, as had happened to the Vikings in Ireland and indeed in France, where the Normans had become about as French as you could be. Now they would, slowly and not without bitter contest and bloodshed over the next few hundred years, almost against their will be turned from French into Englishmen, and England would be ruled by a sort of hybrid of both for the foreseeable future.

But to the native English, for a very long time, the Normans would be French, the enemy who came across the sea and killed their king, and then set about changing their land till it was virtually unrecognisable, a brutal, occupying force that frequently burned villages and towns, either in reprisal for rebellions or just because they were bored, and the Saxon scum had to be taught their place, and kept there. The huge, frowning Norman castles which would rise all over England, and remain there to this day, would be, and are, a lasting reminder of the huge and all-but world-changing effect these people would have on England, Ireland, Europe and further afield.

The time of the Normans had begun.

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