Amazing & Extraordinary Facts About Kings & Queens (7 page)

O
n his deathbed in January 1066, Edward the Confessor had a dream that God’s curse lay on England for her sins. With unseemly haste Earl Godwin’s son, Harold, took the throne with the blessing of his Saxon peers before either of his rival pretenders, Edgar the Atheling or Hardrada, king of Norway, could press their claims. Though Harold had served Edward faithfully for many years as his military commander, many believed his enthronement in Westminster Abbey – literally within hours of the outgoing king’s burial – would disturb Providence. There was also William, Duke of Normandy, to consider. Had not Edward the Confessor strangely promised him the English crown?

Another promise, however, carried yet more weight. Two years earlier, Harold had embarked on a trip into the English Channel, a journey that has prompted a good deal of speculation. He departed from Bosham on the south coast, allegedly after a merry feast. The depiction of Harold in the Bayeux Tapestry shows him carrying a hawk and a hound in a single boat, suggesting merely a pleasure trip.

The French version of events says that Harold had been instructed by the English king to go to Normandy and swear allegiance to William. Well, it would, wouldn’t it? Whatever the motive, Harold’s expedition ran into stormy weather, he was shipwrecked off the coast of Normandy and arrested by Count Guy of Ponthieu. The Norman account continues with the hapless Harold being rescued by Duke William and in return Harold helps him fight his enemies in Brittany. For his great valour Harold is honoured with a knighthood, and at some stage he apparently swears an oath of fealty to William.

Unfortunately there is no record in
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
to confirm or deny this account, nor to clarify exactly what French status Harold was supporting. Doesn’t it seem strange that Harold, who had every reason to think he himself to be the next English king, should give away the crown so lightly? Unless, perhaps, he was tricked in some way.

Certainly he must have been under extreme pressure in the circumstances, for he was in William’s power. All the Norman nobles, knights, and churchmen crowded round him bearing witness to the deed. Once the oath had been sworn, it seems William stood up from his ducal throne, and stepped forward to remove a cloth revealing a special casket containing holy relics. The significance is obscure but may it not be possible that Harold believed he was simply endorsing William’s claim to some French seat of power, not the English throne, and that this promise bore unbreakable divine sanction? Perhaps Harold was confused and simply went along with events to show good faith.

At any rate, his return to England was received badly. The Bayeux Tapestry depicts Edward pointing an accusatory finger at Harold. Had the king perhaps just got wind of the fact that his commander had just given away his kingdom? These circumstances might explain the hastiness with which Harold had himself crowned.

An anxious public feared that all may not be well in the heavenly abode. As Harold appeared at Easter tide donning the crown, some shivers of apprehension must have greeted him. And sure enough, their misgivings were justified. Within weeks, a startling apparition appeared in the sky. The shape of a gigantic flaming sword burned the eyes of its beholders. For seven nights it blazed forth. There was no doubt God was expressing his disapproval. And the symbol of his choice could mean only one thing: disaster for the Saxon kingdom.

Not realising that this celestial event was in fact a periodic manifestation of Halley’s Comet, the English people feared the worst. And indeed, despite Harold’s heroic efforts to repel invasions on two fronts – first from the Scandinavian Hardrada in York, and then from William of Normandy at Hastings – the providential sign proved to be true. As
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
declared, ‘the Frenchmen gained the field of battle, as God granted them for the sins of the nation.’ Thus began the Norman Conquest which would change the culture of England forever.

I
t is often assumed that once William of Normandy had won the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and killed King Harold the rest of the country was a pushover. In fact, it took him seven gruelling long years of battle before he gained complete control.

After Hastings, William had no more than a foot in the door of England. There were too many other interested parties for the conquest to be straightforward. Besides, his army was limited in numbers to how many could be shipped across the Channel at any one time. He attacked London with only about 7000 men and had to rely on strategy and cunning. His terror tactics worked on the English people’s low morale, feeling as they did that the Normans were instruments of God’s vengeance.

Nevertheless, as William would find out, there were many pockets of fierce Saxon resistance, determined not relinquish their land without a fight - the rebellion led by Hereward the Wake in East Anglia was particularly ferocious. And William had to contend with Danish incursions too. But the Conqueror was tough and cruel. He would think nothing of destroying whatever might stand in his way, if necessary slaughtering livestock, smashing crops, even burning whole Saxon villages.

The only way William could hope to secure a lasting stranglehold on his new kingdom was to build castles everywhere, and so he did in virtually every main town of Britain. The largest strongholds were the Tower of London and Windsor Castle.

Nothing of the like had been seen before in Anglo-Saxon England. Alfred the great had built fortified towns, the burghs, designed to protect the inhabitants from Danish raids. But the new Norman model of the motte and bailey – a wooden, pallisaded keep towering over a fortified compound – stood out mightily in the landscape, a constant reminder of the brute force of the new regime. Norman feudalism was born: a two-tier society now operated of Norman lords and Anglo-Saxon underlings.

As a master, indeed an obsessive, of law and order, William ordered an exhaustive inventory to be drawn up itemising every building in the land. This became known as the Domesday Book (from the Latin
domus
, ‘home’). In so doing William could ensure that every burgh had a baron registered in charge who could be summoned to meetings at which new legislation could be delivered. Old Sarum, whose ruins can be seen above Salisbury Plain, was the site of his great court.

William the Conqueror’s building programme was unparalleled in Europe. As well as castles, he built numerous cathedrals. Thus came to Britain the Norman style of church architecture, with its massive stone columns and wide naves, which in themselves stood out as awesome symbols of the permanence of the Conquest.

At Winchester William ordered the construction of a much greater cathedral than the existing Old Minster to demonstrate how much more powerful was his earthly rule than that of his Saxon predecessors. And just to ram home the point, he had himself re-crowned every Easter in the Old Minster while the works were going on next door.

William also had the area around Winchester cleared to create a royal hunting ground, known as the New Forest. Deer and boar became protected species in this and many other royal reserves created. Poaching was made a capital offence.

As a measure of the man’s stamina, William was still Duke of Normandy and so had to maintain his duties there too. Constantly needing to tear off to France to fix some sqabble or other, the new king of England must have spent a good deal of his life on horseback.

The activity must have helped to keep him fit and healthy for William lived into his sixties – not bad for a man of this time. Although dying lonely and sad, he passed on to his offspring a kingdom which, in spite of everything, became a peaceable land. It was said that ‘a man might go the length and breadth of the kingdom with his pockets full of gold … and no man durst slay another’; one might add, ‘for fear of the law’!

O
n his deathbed William the Conqueror, in typically organised fashion, made plans for the division of his territories. His eldest son, Robert, would inherit Normandy, William ‘Rufus’ (so named for his ruddy features and flaxen hair), would get all England, and the youngest, Henry (future Henry I), would be given a modest sum of money.

His namesake, though the favourite son, proved to be quite a different character. Savage and ruthless he was, like his father, but much more wayward, unpredictable, and, above all, dishonourable.

William II had little respect for anyone – for his subjects, even for his fellow noblemen, and certainly very little for the Church. When the see of Canterbury fell vacant after the death of Archbishop Lanfranc, William refused to fill the post for four years, instead siphoning off its funds for his own pleasure. When the no-nonsense scholar Anselm was sent by the pope to fill the position, he soon fell out with William over the matter and was rapidly forced into exile.

It was in the field of recreational sport that the people of England, the Anglo-Saxons, felt the hurt most. William Rufus continued the policy of his father of turning land over to hunting reserves. Both the poor and the rich were affected. Cultivated land as well as rough pasture was confiscated, so the poor suddenly found they were without a food supply, while the rich could not indulge in their traditional sport. The unpopularity of this policy resulted in a growing restlessness in the country and when Rufus found one day he had a rebellion from his own nobles on his hands, he was made to think hard about his options.

Rather than come to terms with his fellow French speakers, Rufus turned to his Anglo-Saxon subjects for support:

The promise of their hunting rights restored, people volunteered their military services and Rufus could quell the uprising at Rochester. Alas, once the matter was resolved, it was business as usual; the promised reform was quietly forgotten.

The story about the death of Rufus is well known but we do not know whether it happened by accident or was an assassination. One afternoon in August William led a hunting party in the New Forest near Brockenhurst. His brother Henry was with him. One of the huntsmen, Walter Tyrell, was supposedly aiming at a stag but his arrow instead struck the king, who died instantly. The party was thrown into a panic and fled the scene.

The king’s body was later found by a charcoal-burner, named Purkiss, who took the corpse on a cart to Winchester. In a flurry of anxiety the king was quickly buried beneath the cathedral tower with no rites. Henry ransacked the treasury and had himself crowned, while Tyrrell fled abroad never to return.

As though by act of divine displeasure at these proceedings, the tower collapsed two years later, confirming suspicions that an ill deed was committed in those woods. Did Henry and his counsellors run the risk that the king’s deep unpopularity would allow them to get away with this ‘accident’, thus enabling Henry to snatch the crown while his elder brother, and rightful heir, Robert was absent on crusade?