Peter Rex - 1066: A New History of the Norman Conquest

Even after well over a thousand years since it was accomplished, the Norman Conquest of England still holds a peculiar fascination for many people. There had been other invasions and successful conquests of this country from the Roman invasion in the reign of the Emperor Claudius and the advent of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in the fifth century to the Viking invasions of the ninth and, early in the eleventh century, the conquest by Cnut the Great and his Danes. But the invasion by Duke William, the bastard of Normandy, was, in many respects, qualitatively different.

Cnut the Great had imposed his rule on the country and inserted many of his higher ranking supporters into positions of power and influence, allowing the rank and file of his armies to acquire lands left vacant after the battles between the English and the Danes. But he had not, for the most part, supplanted the native English nobility or carried out a massive transfer of land and power. Indeed, two of his highest ranking nobles were Englishmen raised to the rank of Earl and given the status and power of provincial governors; Earl Leofric in Mercia, the son of an English Ealdorman and Godwine, the thegn of Sussex, in Wessex.

But Duke William did not only make himself King, as others had done before him, nor did he merely add yet another cohort of nobles to the ranks of those already in power, instead he virtually eliminated the whole of the existing governing class and transferred the ownership of their estates to his own somewhat mixed collection of followers, Bretons, Flemings, Poitevins and, above all, Normans.

This book is an attempt to convey the manner in which this invasion and conquest was devised, planned and executed. It describes the steps taken to establish, in the eyes of other European princes and of the Papacy, Duke Williams right to the English throne, by asserting an hereditary claim to the throne, as a relative of the saintly, recently deceased, King Edward, who was alleged to have actually designated the Duke as his heir, and by manoeuvring the Kings successor, Harold II, the former Earl of Wessex, recognized even by the Normans themselves as the Dux Anglorum (Duke of the English), just as William himself was Dux Normannorum (Duke of the Normans), into a false position wherein he could be convincingly portrayed to the other Princes as a faithless and perjured vassal and, therefore, a usurper.

A tremendous propaganda campaign preceded the Conquest which was written up afterwards (when all those who might have been able to refute it were dead, dispossessed or in exile) and a wonderfully executed pictorial version was made, the Bayeux Tapestry, to ensure that the message was conveyed even to those who could neither read nor write. So well-crafted was the campaign that much of it still impresses the minds of modern historians who are unable to free themselves from its insidious influence.

Most of this account is devoted to a stage by stage description of the Conquest itself and its effects on the nobility and clergy of England and upon the ordinary people. Duke Williams military preparations are described and his launching of the invasion. Much space is devoted to the Battle of Hastings and the Bastards terror campaign which intimidated the survivors into surrender. This is followed by an account of the reaction which set in when the true nature of Norman rule was revealed and the struggle, in vain, to remove the Norman Yoke. Then the story moves on to explain how the Norman settlement was carried out; the dispossession of the English, the Harrying of the North, the cleansing of the English Church and so on. It ends with the mysterious revolt by two Norman earls and the execution for involvement in it of Earl Waltheof, son of Cnuts great earl, Siward of Northumbria.

In writing this book I acknowledge my debt to the work of all those scholars whose works have been consulted and without which it would not have been possible. They are, of course, in no way responsible for the views and interpretations contained in it and any errors are my own.

I am grateful, as always, to the Librarian of St Johns College, Cambridge, for his permission to use the College Library.