25, A. D. 1066. Three days later, on the Thursday, September
28, William of Normandy landed his more formidable army of
invasion at Pevensey, on the extreme southeastern coast. The
news of William's landing reached Harold, at York, on the
following Sunday, it is thought, and his victorious but worn
and wasted army was led instantly back, by forced marches,
over the route it had traversed no longer than the week
before. Waiting at London a few days for fresh musters to join
him, the English king set out from that city October 12, and
arrived on the following day at a point seven miles from the
camp which his antagonist had entrenched at Hastings. Meantime
the Normans had been cruelly ravaging the coast country, by
way of provoking attack. Harold felt himself driven by the
devastation they committed to face the issue of battle without
waiting for a stronger rally. "Advancing near enough to the coast
to check William's ravages, he intrenched himself on the hill
of Senlac, a low spur of the Sussex Downs, near Hastings, in a
position which covered London, and forced the Norman army to
concentrate. With a host subsisting by pillage, to concentrate
is to starve, and no alternative was left to William but a
decisive victory or ruin. Along the higher ground that leads
from Hastings the Duke led his men in the dim dawn of an
October morning to the mound of Telham. It was from this
point, that the Normans saw the host of the English gathered
thickly behind a rough trench and a stockade on the height of
Senlac. Marshy ground covered their right. ... A general
charge of the Norman foot opened the battle; in front rode the
minstrel Taillefer, tossing his sword in the air and catching
it again while he chanted the song of Roland. He was the first
of the host who struck a blow, and he was the first to fall.
The charge broke vainly on the stout stockade behind which the
English warriors plied axe and javelin with fierce cries of 'Out,
Out,' and the repulse of the Norman footmen was followed by
the repulse of the Norman horse. Again and again the Duke
rallied and led them to the fatal stockade. ... His Breton
troops, entangled in the marshy ground on his left, broke in
disorder, and a cry arose, as the panic spread through the
army, that the Duke was slain. 'I live,' shouted William as he
tore off his helmet, 'and by God's help will conquer yet.'
Maddened by repulse, the Duke spurred right at the standard;
unhorsed, his terrible mace struck down Gyrth, the King's
brother, and stretched Leofwine, a second of Godwine's sons,
beside him; again dismounted, a blow from his hand hurled to
the ground an unmannerly rider who would not lend him his
steed. Amid the roar and tumult of the battle he turned the
flight he had arrested into the means of victory. Broken as
the stockade was by his desperate onset, the shield-wall of
the warriors behind it still held the Normans at bay, when
William by a feint of flight drew a part of the English force
from their post of vantage. Turning on his disorderly
pursuers, the Duke cut them to pieces, broke through the
abandoned line, and was master of the central plateau, while
French and Bretons made good their ascent on either flank. At
three the hill seemed won, at six the fight still raged around
the standard, where Harold's hus-carls stood stubbornly at bay
on the spot marked afterward by the high altar of Battle
Abbey. An order from the Duke at last brought his archers to
the front, and their arrow-flight told heavily on the dense
masses crowded around the King. As the sun went down, a shaft
pierced Harold's right eye; he fell between the royal ensigns,
and the battle closed with a desperate mélée over his corpse."
_J. R. Green,
A Short History of the English People,
chapter 2, section 4._
ALSO IN:
_E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 15, section 4._
_E. S. Creasy,
Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World,
chapter 8._
_Wace,
Roman de Rou,
translated by Sir A. Malet._
{793}
England: A. D. 1066-1071.
The Finishing of the Norman Conquest.
"It must be well understood that this great victory [of
Senlac] did not make Duke William King nor put him in
possession of the whole land. He still held only part of
Sussex, and the people of the rest of the kingdom showed as
yet no mind to submit to him. If England had had a leader left
like Harold or Gyrth, William might have had to fight as many
battles as Cnut had, and that with much less chance of winning
in the end. For a large part of England fought willingly on
Cnut's side, while William had no friends in England at all,
except a few Norman settlers. William did not call himself
King till he was regularly crowned more than two months later,
and even then he had real possession only of about a third of
the kingdom. It was more than three years before he had full
possession of all. Still the great fight on Senlac none the
less settled the fate of England. For after that fight William
never met with any general resistance. ... During the year 1067
William made no further conquests; all western and northern
England remained unsubdued; but, except in Kent and
Herefordshire, there was no fighting in any part of the land
which had really submitted. The next two years were the time
in which all England was really conquered. The former part of
1068 gave him the West. The latter part of that year gave him
central and northern England as far as Yorkshire, the extreme
north and northwest being still unsubdued. The attempt to win
Durham in the beginning of 1069 led to two revolts at York.
Later in the year all the north and west was again in arms,
and the Danish fleet [of King Swegen, in league with the
English patriots] came. But the revolts were put down one by
one, and the great winter campaign of 1069-1070 conquered the
still unsubdued parts, ending with the taking of Chester.
Early in 1070 the whole land was for the first time in
Williams's possession; there was no more fighting, and he was
able to give his mind to the more peaceful part of his
schemes, what we may call the conquest of the native Church by
the appointment of foreign bishops. But in the summer of 1070
began the revolt of the Fenland, and the defence of Ely, which
lasted till the autumn of 1071. After that William was full
King everywhere without dispute. There was no more national
resistance; there was no revolt of any large part of the
country. ... The conquest of the land, as far as fighting
goes, was now finished."
_E. A. Freeman,
Short History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 8, section 9; chapter 10, section 16._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1067-1087.
The spoils of the Conquest.
"The Norman army ... remained concentrated around London [in
the winter of 1067], and upon the southern and eastern coasts
nearest Gaul. The partition of the wealth of the invaded
territory now almost solely occupied them. Commissioners went
over the whole extent of country in which the army had left
garrisons; they took an exact inventory of property of every
kind, public and private, carefully registering every
particular. ... A close inquiry was made into the names of all
the English partisans of Harold, who had either died in
battle, or survived the defeat, or by involuntary delays had
been prevented from joining the royal standard. All the
property of these three classes of men, lands, revenues,
furniture, houses, were confiscated; the children of the first
class were declared forever disinherited; the second class,
were, in like manner, wholly dispossessed of their estates
and property of every kind, and, says one of the Norman
writers, were only too grateful for being allowed to retain
their lives. Lastly, those who had not taken up arms were also
despoiled of all they possessed, for having had the intention
of taking up arms; but, by special grace, they were allowed to
entertain the hope that after many long years of obedience and
devotion to the foreign power, not they, indeed, but their
sons, might perhaps obtain from their new masters some portion
of their paternal heritage. Such was the law of the conquest,
according to the unsuspected testimony of a man nearly
contemporary with and of the race of the conquerors [Richard
Lenoir or Noirot, bishop of Ely in the 12th century]. The
immense product of this universal spoliation became the pay of
those adventurers of every nation who had enrolled under the
banner of the duke of Normandy. ... Some received their pay in
money, others had stipulated that they should have a Saxon
wife, and William, says the Norman chronicle, gave them in
marriage noble dames, great heiresses, whose husbands had
fallen in the battle. One, only, among the knights who had
accompanied the conqueror, claimed neither lands, gold, nor
wife, and would accept none of the spoils of the conquered.
His name was Guilbert Fitz-Richard: he said that he had
accompanied his lord to England because such was his duty, but
that stolen goods had no attraction for him."
_A. Thierry,
History of the Conquest of England by the Normans,
book 4._
"Though many confiscations took place, in order to gratify the
Norman army, yet the mass of property was left in the hands of
its former possessors. Offices of high trust were bestowed
upon Englishmen, even upon those whose family renown might
have raised the most aspiring thoughts. But, partly through
the insolence and injustice of William's Norman vassals,
partly through the suspiciousness natural to a man conscious
of having overturned the national government, his yoke soon
became more heavy. The English were oppressed; they rebelled,
were subdued, and oppressed again. ... An extensive spoliation
of property accompanied these revolutions. It appears by the
great national survey of Domesday Book, completed near the
close of the Conqueror's reign, that the tenants in capite of
the crown were generally foreigners. ... But inferior
freeholders were much less disturbed in their estates than the
higher. ... The valuable labours of Sir Henry Ellis, in
presenting us with a complete analysis of Domesday Book,
afford an opportunity, by his list of mesne tenants at the
time of the survey, to form some approximation to the relative
numbers of English and foreigners holding manors under the
immediate vassals of the crown. ... Though I will not now
affirm or deny that they were a majority, they [the English]
form a large proportion of nearly 8,000 mesne tenants, who are
summed up by the diligence of Sir Henry Ellis. ...
{794}
This might induce us to suspect that, great as the spoliation
must appear in modern times, and almost completely as the
nation was excluded from civil power in the commonwealth,
there is some exaggeration in the language of those writers
who represent them as universal reduced to a state of penury
and servitude. And this suspicion may be in some degree just.
Yet those writers, and especial the most English in feeling of
them all, M. Thierry, are warranted by the language of
contemporary authorities."
_H. Hallam,
The Middle Ages.
chapter 8, part 2._
"By right of conquest William claimed nothing. He had come to
take his crown, and he had unluckily met with some opposition
in taking it. The crown-lands of King Edward passed of course
to his successor. As for the lands of other men, in William's
theory all was forfeited to the crown. The lawful heir had
been driven to seek his kingdom in arms; no Englishman had
helped him; many Englishmen had fought against him. All then
were directly or indirectly traitors. The King might lawfully
deal with the lands of all as his own. ... After the general
redemption of lands, gradually carried out as William's power
advanced, no general blow was dealt at Englishmen as such. ...
Though the land had never seen so great a confiscation, or one
so largely for the behoof of foreigners, yet there was nothing
new in the thing itself. ... Confiscation of land was the
every-day punishment for various public and private crimes.
... Once granting the original wrong of his coming at all and
bringing a host of strangers with him, there is singularly
little to blame in the acts of the Conqueror."
_E. A. Freeman,
William the Conqueror,
pages 102-104, 126._
"After each effort [of revolt] the royal hand was laid on more
heavily: more and more land changed owners, and with the
change of owners the title changed. The complicated and
unintelligible irregularities of the Anglo-Saxon tenures were
exchanged for the simple and uniform feudal theory. ... It was
not the change from alodial to feudal so much as from
confusion to order. The actual amount of dispossession was no
doubt greatest in the higher ranks."
_W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 9, section. 95._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1069-1071.
The Camp of Refuge in the Fens.
"In the northern part of Cambridgeshire there is a vast extent
of low and marshy land, intersected in every direction by
rivers. All the waters from the centre of England which do not
flow into the Thames or the Trent, empty themselves into these
marshes, which in the latter end of autumn overflow, cover the
land, and are charged with fogs and vapours. A portion of this
damp and swampy country was then, as now, called the Isle of
Ely; another the Isle of Thorney, a third the Isle of
Croyland. This district, almost a moving bog, impracticable
for cavalry and for soldiers heavily armed, had more than once
served as a refuge for the Saxons in the time of the Danish
conquest; towards the close of the year 1069 it became the
rendezvous of several bands of patriots from various quarters,
assembling against the Normans. Former chieftains, now
dispossessed of their lands, successively repaired hither with
their clients, some by land, others by water, by the mouths of
the rivers. They here constructed entrenchments of earth and
wood, and established an extensive armed station, which took
the name of the Camp of Refuge. The foreigners at first
hesitated to attack them amidst their rushes and willows, and
thus gave them time to transmit messages in every direction,
at home and abroad, to the friends of old England. Become
powerful, they undertook a partisan war by land and by sea,
or, as the conquerors called it, robbery and piracy."
_A. Thierry,
History of the Conquest of England by the Normans,
book 4._
"Against the new tyranny the free men of the Danelagh and of
Northumbria rose. If Edward the descendant of Cerdic had been
little to them, William the descendant of Rollo was still
less. ... So they rose, and fought; too late, it may be, and
without unity or purpose; and they were worsted by an enemy
who had both unity and purpose; whom superstition, greed, and
feudal discipline kept together, at least in England, in one
compact body of unscrupulous and terrible confederates. And
theirs was a land worth fighting for--a good land and large:
from Humber mouth inland to the Trent and merry Sherwood,
across to Chester and the Dee, round by Leicester and the five
burghs of the Danes; eastward again to Huntingdon and
Cambridge (then a poor village on the site of an old Roman
town); and then northward again into the wide fens, the land
of the Girvii, where the great central plateau of England
slides into the sea, to form, from the rain and river washings
of eight shires, lowlands of a fertility inexhaustible,
because ever-growing to this day. Into those fens, as into a
natural fortress, the Anglo-Danish noblemen crowded down
instinctively from the inland to make their last stand against
the French. ... Most gallant of them all, and their leader in
the fatal struggle against William, was Hereward the Wake,
Lord of Bourne and ancestor of that family of Wake, the arms
of whom appear on the cover of this book."
_C. Kingsley,
Hereward the Wake,
Prelude._
The defence of the Camp of Refuge was maintained until
October, 1071, when the stronghold is said to have been
betrayed by the monks of Ely, who grew tired of the
disturbance of their peace. But Hereward did not submit. He
made his escape and various accounts are given of his
subsequent career and his fate.
_E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 20, section 1._
ALSO IN:
_C. M. Yonge,
Cameos from English History,
first series, chapter 8._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1085-1086.
The Domesday Survey and Domesday Book.
"The distinctive characteristic of the Norman kings [of
England] was their exceeding greed, and the administrative
system was so directed as to insure the exaction of the
highest possible imposts. From this bent originated the great
registration that William [the Conqueror] caused to be taken
of all lands, whether holden in fee or at rent; as well as the
census of the entire population. The respective registers were
preserved in the Cathedral of Winchester, and by the Norman
were designated 'Ie grand rôle,' 'Ie rôle royal,' 'Ie rôle de
Winchester'; but by the Saxons were termed 'the Book of the
Last Judgment,' 'Doomesdaege Boc,' 'Doomsday Book.'"
_E. Fischel,
The English Constitution,
chapter 1._
For a different statement see the following: "The recently
attempted invasion from Denmark seems to have impressed the
king with the desirability of· an accurate knowledge of his
resources, military and fiscal, both of which were based upon
the land. The survey was completed in the remarkably short
space of a single year [1085-1086]. In each shire the
commissioners made their inquiries by the oaths of the
sheriffs, the barons and their Norman retainers, the parish
priests, the reeves and six ceorls of each township.
{795}
The result of their labours was a minute description of all
the lands of the kingdom, with the exception of the four
northern counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland
and Durham, and part of what is now Lancashire. It enumerates
the tenants-in-chief, under tenants, freeholders, villeins,
and serfs, describes the nature and obligations of the
tenures, the value in the time of King Eadward, at the
conquest, and at the date of the survey, and, which gives the
key to the whole inquiry, informs the king whether any advance
in the valuation could be made. ... The returns were
transmitted to Winchester, digested, and recorded in two
volumes which have descended to posterity under the name of
Domesday Book. The name itself is probably derived from Domus
Dei, the appellation of a chapel or vault of the cathedral at
Winchester in which the survey was at first deposited."
_T. P. Taswell-Langmead,
English Constitutional History,
chapter 2._
"Of the motives which induced the Conqueror and his council to
undertake the Survey we have very little reliable information,
and much that has been written on the subject savours more of
a deduction from the result than of a knowledge of the
immediate facts. We have the statement from the Chartulary of
St. Mary's, Worcester, of the appointment of the Commissioners
by the king himself to make the Survey. We have also the
heading of the 'Inquisitio Eliensis' which purports to give,
and probably does truly give, the items of the articles of
inquiry, which sets forth as follows:
I. What is the manor called?
II. Who held it in the time of King Edward?
III. Who now holds it?
IV. How many hides?
V. What teams are there in demesne?
VI. What teams of the men?
VII. What villans?
VIII. What cottagers?
IX. What bondmen?
X. What freemen and what sokemen?
XI. What woods?
XII. What meadow?
XIII. What pastures?
XIV. What mills?
XV. What fisheries?
XVI. What is added or taken away?
XVII. What the whole was worth together, and what now?
XVIII. How much each freeman or sokeman had or has?
All this to be estimated three times, viz. in the time of King
Edward, and when King William gave it, and how it is now, and
if more can be had for it than has been had. This document is,
I think, the best evidence we have of the form of the inquiry,
and it tallies strictly with the form of the various returns
as we now have them. ... An external evidence failing, we are
driven back to the Record itself for evidence of the
Conqueror's intention in framing it, and anyone who carefully
studies it will be driven to the inevitable conclusion that it
was framed and designed in the spirit of perfect equity. Long
before the Conquest, in the period between the death of Alfred
and that of Edward the Confessor, the kingdom had been rapidly
declining into a state of disorganisation and decay. The
defence of the kingdom and the administration of justice and
keeping of the peace could not be maintained by the king's
revenues. The tax of Danegeld, instituted by Ethelred at first
to buy peace of the Danes, and afterwards to maintain the
defence of the kingdom, had more and more come to be levied
unequally and unfairly. The Church had obtained enormous
remissions of its liability, and its possessions were
constantly increasing. Powerful subjects had obtained further
remission, and the tax had come to be irregularly collected
and was burdensome upon the smaller holders and their poor
tenants, while the nobility and the Church escaped with a
small share in the burden. In short the tax had come to be
collected upon an old and uncorrected assessment. It had
probably dwindled in amount, and at last had been ultimately
remitted by Edward the Confessor. Anarchy and confusion
appears to have reigned throughout the realm. The Conqueror
was threatened with foreign invasion, and pressed on all sides
by complaints of unfair taxation on the part of his subjects.
Estates had been divided and subdivided, and the incidence of
the tax was unequal and unjust. He had to face the
difficulties before him and to count the resources of his
kingdom for its defence, and the means of doing so were not at
hand. In this situation his masterly and order-loving Norman
mind instituted this great inquiry, but ordered it to be taken
(as I maintain the study of the Book will show) in the most
public and open manner, and with the utmost impartiality, with
the view of levying the taxes of the kingdom equally and
fairly upon all. The articles of his inquiry show that he was
prepared to study the resources of his kingdom and consider
the liability of his subjects from every possible point of
view."
_Stuart Moore,
On the Study of Domesday Book
(Domesday Studies, volume 1)._
"Domesday Book is a vast mine of materials for the social and
economical history of our country, a mine almost
inexhaustible, and to a great extent as yet unworked. Among
national documents it is unique. There is nothing that
approaches it in interest and value except the Landnámabók,
which records the names of the original settlers in Iceland
and the designations they bestowed upon the places where they
settled, and tells us how the island was taken up and
apportioned among them. Such a document for England,
describing the way in which our forefathers divided the
territory they conquered, and how 'they called the lands after
their own names,' would indeed be priceless. But the Domesday
Book does, indirectly, supply materials for the history of the
English as well as of the Norman Conquest, for it records not
only how the lands of England were divided among the Norman
host which conquered at Senlac, but it gives us also the names
of the Saxon and Danish holders who possessed the lands before
the great battle which changed all the future history of
England, and enables us to trace the extent of the transfer of
the land from Englishmen to Normans; it shows how far the
earlier owners were reduced to tenants, and by its enumeration
of the classes of population--freemen, sokemen, villans,
cottiers, and slaves--it indicates the nature and extent of
the earlier conquests. Thus we learn that in the West of
England slaves were numerous, while in the East they were
almost unknown, and hence we gather that in the districts
first subdued the British population was exterminated or
driven off, while in the West it was reduced to servitude."
_I. Taylor,
Domesday Survivals
(Domesday Studies, volume 1)._
ALSO IN:
_E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest,
chapters 21-22 and appendix A in volume 5._
_W. de Gray Birch,
Domesday Book._
_F. W. Maitland,
Domesday Book (Dict. Pol. Econ.)._
{796}
ENGLAND: A. D. 1087-1135.
The sons of the Conqueror and their reigns.