On the 14 October 1066 the Battle of Hastings took place between Duke William of Normandy and Harold II, last Saxon King of England.
William was victorious and the Normans were to rule England for the next centuries, bringing about irrevocable changes to land-ownership, laws and the English language itself.
England was a rich and prosperous Anglo-Saxon kingdom, modern for its time with a centralised and efficient state. But its prosperity made it a target for invasions.
Rivals for the throne: Duke William and King Harold
Duke William of Normandy invaded claiming the previous English King, Edward the Confessor, had promised him the throne by virtue of being his cousin by marriage.
Harold was the head of the most powerful family in England, the Godwins (see Sir Francis Palgrave in his History of Anglo-Saxons, p333, or the introduction to Professor Frank Barlow's The Godwins). When Edward died without heir in January 1066, a council of nobles made Harold King.
Duke William spent the summer building up his forces for invasion. Harold raised an army to defend his kingdom but in September the Norwegians invaded the North of England.
Harold and his army marched 200 miles from his capital in London to Yorkshire where he defeated the Norwegians at the fierce Battle of Stamford Bridge. When he was celebrating victory he heard that Duke William had landed on the south coast of England. So Harold marched to confront William with what was left of his army.
Battle of Hastings
The Bayeux Tapestry, which was made in the 1070s and is more than 200 feet long, portrays the events of 1066, showing the characters, dress and armour of the combatants. There are also later sources such as Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Orderic Vitalis and Eadmer of Canterbury.
Despite discrepancies between the sources and the tapestry, we can glean an account of the battle.
There were about 7,000 soldiers on each side. Harold's men fought on foot on top of Senlac Hill, today near the town of Battle about eight miles from the south coast. William's army was split into three groups: Bretons, Normans and French.
The battle started after 9am and raged all day. In the morning the Norman's Breton allies broke and fled and there was a rumour that Duke William himself was killed. Orderic Vitalis says William took off his helmet and paraded himself in front of his troops. Harold's two brothers were killed as the Norman army rallied and renewed the attack.
Towards the evening, a group of Norman knights led by Duke William were able to charge and kill King Harold, a scene that is shown in the Bayeux Tapestry (see image). English resistance melted away; Duke William had won.
Norman rule
William rewarded his nobles and knights with land and dispossessed the Anglo-Saxons.
In 1086, William ordered the compilation of the Domesday Book to record who owned what. Domesday shows that he and his family owned 20 per cent of England, the church another 25 per cent and about Norman and French knights 50 per cent (About 200 can be identified but there are more who are obscure). Only 5 per cent was still owned by the English.
Anglo-Saxons who had freely owned their land were forced to pay rent to Norman lords or had it stolen. For example, The BBC quotes Domesday: "Aelfric, the pre-Conquest lord of March Gibbon in Buckinghamshire, paid his rent 'miserably and with a heavy heart'."
The Normans imposed serfdom on many peasants, under which they had to pay rent or work for their lord in exchange for land. This system lasted until the 15th century. The burdensome rule of the Normans became known as the Norman Yoke.
The language of the court and the aristocracy was now French while the mass of the people (more than 90%) spoke English. The nobles eat beef, pork and mutton while in the field the peasants looked after cattle, swine and sheep. The language of law and government changed, words such as govern, parliament, court, state, judgement are all French in origin. It wasn't until several hundred years later that the aristocracy and legal documents used English.
The birth of rights
But there was one unintended consequence to the conquest. Duke William had to reward his followers by giving them half of England, so creating a potentially powerful opposition to royal rule.
Frequent clashes occurred between the power of the king and that of the barons. Most famous were King John's granting of Magna Carta in 1215 and 50 years later Simon de Montfort's struggle for a parliament. While these conflicts over rights were between the King and the nobility, they offered opportunities for the great mass of people to advance their own causes – serfdom died out in England in the 15th century, far earlier than other European countries.
So, despite the enormity of the changes and the harsh rule, the Norman conquest of 1066 created the conditions for the struggles against the King that gave us the Magna Carta, the first parliament and other important legal rights such as due process in law - achievements that are the cornerstone of democracy today.
Sources
Manchester University Press has an online resource on the Normans and the battle including original sources.
The Bayeux Tapestry is in Normandy, France. But a Victorian replica is in Reading, England, which also has online the various panels of the tapestry.
The BBC have recently run a series of programmes about the Normans and medieval life.
Keith Sellick - Independent media professional with more than 20 years experience working in print and online
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