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Norman displacement of English towns?
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Message 1.Β
Posted by Herewordless (U14549396) on Tuesday, 28th June 2011
In order to make their mark on their newly-won land, the Normans built motte and bailey castles, later in stone (as were cathedrals) and cleared swathes of selected land/villages for forest land specifically to be set aside and stocked with deer etc, for royal hunting only.
The prime example of this is the 'New Forest' in Dorset which reputedly uprooted many English communites and villages to make way for the forest. Pain of death and/or mutilation befell and trespassers or poachers who dared to defy Norman Forest laws, but this was out of practice by the reign of Stephen.
In Norwich 1067, the Normans displaced large sections of the community to make way for their castle, and archaeologists have unearthed many hastily disinterred Anglo-Saxon bodies (probably forced to be dug up by locals- friends and family of the deceased?) that had been unearthed just to make space for the new masters. -
Message 2
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 28th June 2011
Hereword
The case of building destruction in towns like Norwich should be regarded as identical with any modern urban demolition in order to make the space for the building of essential amenities.
Events in England in the half century at least before 1066 had shown a clear need for a much more ambitious investment in defences against the threats of the time. In fact most historians I believe would agree that the building of the Norman castles at militarily strategic places was also a catalyst for the "industrial revolution" that took place in the Twelfth Century, when those early Motte and Bailey's were upgraded to stone. The factors that werre strategically important were also economically important, and old towns and new towns, and later cities, grew up under the shadow of the castle because (a) it was more secure , and (b) the castle itself was often an important market.
As for the New Forest villages I am not sure that much of the land around there was suited to the kind of farming that could pay for the new more secure Norman England in taxes and tithes. And it is more common to associate the protetion of large spaces as hunting reserves as all part of an English tradition of conservation, protection of species from being hunted to extinction and protection of invaluable trees in a native vegetation where the oak is common, and may take 600 years or so to grow to full maturity. Legends and cults of "The Green Man" hung on for centuries.
Cass -
Message 3
Posted by Herewordless (U14549396) on Tuesday, 28th June 2011
Hi Cass,
I think the Normans aimed merely to clear space of English settlements in the New Forest region so that kings might hunt, not that their tenants may farm.
You are right about the downtrodden English clinging to legends of the Green Man, Herne or later, Robin Hood. Still further, the huge English revolt at Ely in 1071-1 led by Hereward gave rise to such myths and also the folk memory of such rebels living as dispossessed outlaws in the woodlands?
Yet later still, in the aftermath of the Montfortian rebellion and doomed loss at Evesham, 1265, dispossessed nobles hid yet again in woods, and fought the powers from them. -
Message 4
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 28th June 2011
Hereward
But why hunt?.. There is a modern assumption that this was just for fun.. But hunting was the sport of Kings because the main business of Kings was having a capacity to deal with the borders of life death and hunting was a regular way for people in that age to hone their military skills.. But it is also very noticeable that the French attitude to hunting is very different to the English one. My French wife having lived in England too long was horrified a few years ago by the notice on a Town Hall listing all the "vermin" that the french populace are entitled to hunt to extinction, like the general absence of litter bins other than Nature it seems to reflect a reality in which French people feel that Nature is a greater threat to them than they are to Nature. England has an old tradition of peaceful co-existence.
Cass -
Message 5
Posted by hotmousemat (U2388917) on Wednesday, 29th June 2011
and cleared swathes of selected land/villages for forest land specifically to be set aside and stocked with deer etc, for royal hunting only.
The prime example of this is the 'New Forest' in Dorset which reputedly uprooted many English communites and villages to make way for the forest. Pain of death and/or mutilation befell and trespassers or poachers who dared to defy Norman Forest laws, but this was out of practice by the reign of Stephen.Β
A 'forest' is simply an area where 'forest law' applies, it doesn't have to be either covered in trees or set aside exclusively for hunting. Ownership of the land usually remained with the existing landowners and tenants, who also had complex rights of grazing and forage to which the royal right to hunt deer was just one more addition.
The right to run livestock on other people's land was seen as oppressive, part of the new post-conquest system which said that all land ultimately belonged to the King, not least because of the extra layer of bureaucracy it imposed, but this was more a problem for landowners than peasants (and got largely sorted out in Magna Carta).
The brutal penalties for breaking Forest Laws were not what they seemed either. There were theoretical harsh punishments for breaking all sorts of laws, not just to do with hunting but for doing things like putting more than your share of geese on the marsh or collecting firewood from the wrong place. But curiously, these punishments never seem to have been applied. Quite often, people were simply pardoned. More usually, they were fined an amount appropriate to the economic damage they had caused.
When I was a lad, TV series like 'Robin Hood' turned tales of Norman and Saxon into allegories of the contemporary class struggle. (They were often made by left wing Americans who had effectively been 'blacked' by their own nation's industries). All good fun, but a gross oversimplification of the complexities within real medieval society. -
Message 6
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 29th June 2011
Further to what hothousemat has posted, in addition to the investment in Castles and defence- made an obvious necessity by the fact that England had been conquered twice in the Eleventh Century- assuming that we continue to call the events of 1066 "the Norman Conquest"- as is made very evident in the Domesday Survey the Anglo-Norman monarchy tried to improve the bureaucratic working of the English State and this is particularly associated with "the Manorial System".
Manor Houses were not the houses of the local gentry of the village but official collection points for taxation due to central government. But such a system assumed the existence of a viable population able to support such a focal point that- like the later factories of the great English trading companies in Africa and India- had to be of a credible strength and security in order to act as a safe deposit for funds. Those Robin Hood stories were full of the spirit of lawless times when people moving with wealth through the extensive wild parts of England were set upon by those robbing the rich to give (or take) for the poor. Another Norman law said that any corpse found out in such places (and no doubt as is shown in the Bayeux Tapestry the dead were usually stripped of what they were wearing in those hard times) would be assumed to be "Norman" and the local population would be suspect and punished, unless they could prove the English identity of the dead person.
So I come back to the apparently limited agricultural potential of the New Forest region, and therefore the challenge for any local population to meet the "wealth criteria" necessary to set up viable units of Anglo-Norman local government.. So the New Forest "clearances" were probably much like the Highland clearances, where once the poor crofters who could not afford viable rents were pushed off the land, and the land was put to the deer and the grouse and hunting parties.
The reality of good government is that most places have to generate the wealth necessary to fund it sooner or later : and the Domesday Survey was closely connected to William I's gut feeling that the English had managed to create a situation in which the defence of England was being subsidised by Normandy.
It is interesting to note- in the light of my earlier post- that a large area of Salisbury Plain [ not really all that far away] has been set-aside as military training ground more suitable to the more modern concept of warfare in large open battle-fields using mechanised units rather than horses.
Cass -
Message 7
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 29th June 2011
Quote "When I was a lad, TV series like 'Robin Hood' turned tales of Norman and Saxon into allegories of the contemporary class struggle. (They were often made by left wing Americans who had effectively been 'blacked' by their own nation's industries). All good fun, but a gross oversimplification of the complexities within real medieval society."
The way that historians embraced a particular view of the "poor exploited working class" and looked back into history for suitable material is very interesting: and by the Fifties could be embraced by both Left Wing and Right Wing politicians, the Left Wing claiming to be the champions of the Working Class, and the Right Wing pointing out that the actual interests of the working people had been best served by the actual poltical system, as best exemplified by the English tradition of measured and gradual change which had gradually removed the evils of the Past more effectively than within countries that had taken the Revolutionary route.
In the Fifties and early Sixties the lot of the common people in the countries of great Revolutions- France, Russia, Germany and China- was nothing to write home about.
And the threat of internal revolution and external attack that had destroyed Ancient Rome had resulted by the Fifties in the development of mechanisms that would or could end this whole thrust of History. Nuclear weapons made the idea of major war MAD, while Western thought had produced a new and enlightened elite capable of "running the whole show" much more efficiently than ever before and defusing all internal revolutionary pressures by means of economic planning and management that would become a real "opium of the people", cutting through the instabilities and failures of free market economics with its winners and losers.
Of course this meant a vast extension of the kind of policies pioneered by Lloyd George in his People's Budget, which inspired cartoons showing the Welsh Wizard as a modern day Robin Hood. When the Attlee Government were setting up this new-improved Welfare State after the Second World War, Aneurin Bevan famously abandonned war-time unity and labelled "the rich" as vermin, and those Robin Hood stories showed grasping avarious and selfish men who cared nothing for others. This all helped to justify the dedistributive taxation systems associated withe the new politics of the Sixties "In Place of Strife" in which taxation levels rose to 95% for high earners.
This is all relevant to the present crises because the dreams of a managed world and a truly managed economic system have proved a false dawn. The dreams of Communist and Socialist Revolution as well. Mr Osborne has referred to his generation of politicians as those whose mature ideas were being forged at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism. But those developments undermined the fragile equilibrium of the post-war situation in which high taxation was tolerated both to undermine the class war at Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ and to pay "whatever it takes" to be equipped with "Overwhelming Force" in the case of a Third World War.
The "rich" now wanted tax-cuts. Economic Planning had failed and created moribund economies dependent upon taxation. But "the masses" had become accustomed to being subsidised. In the short-term, however, with the apparent triumph of Capitalism a new wave of "Carpet-Bagging" adventurers took the "gospel" to those regions with vast resources- human and natural- that had previously been no-go areas of Socialism and Communism. With a Big Bang Western Finance could earn such returns in such areas that Western States and individuals could carry on almost as before on credit, until the system over-reached itself.
And now we face short-termism and crisis management in the face of widespread popular discontent.
PS. An interesting example of the way that British politicians have sought to wed the potentially "revolting" masses to the Parliamentary system and politics through History was Tony Blair's highlighting of the role of Britain in starting the task of abolishing the slave trade by Act of Parliament. It was clearly in part aimed at trying to show to Britain's "black" population that "Parliament works" and that the Labour Party works for the working class.
But it seems that it backfired because it revived an awareness of the different history of British people-those of direct African descent- who enslaved and sold the slaves- and those of Afro-Caribbean descent, whose ancestors were enslaved and sold.
As hothousemat has said any "oversimplification of the complexities" of real life should be avoided. But politics is by definition involved in that process.
Cass -
Message 8
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Wednesday, 29th June 2011
Surely hunting was not just about honing military/chevalier skills, but about providing a significant portion of protein to their diets which would otherwise have been availalbe only after the autumn slaughter of domesticated animals for which there was insufficient winter feed to last them through to spring?
Speaking of castles, does anyone know how 'expensive' they were, in terms of the economy? And cathedrals too, come to that. ie, were they the maedival equivalent of, say, a major new hospital now, or a fighter jet, or new Scottish Parliament? What proportion of GDP went on building castles and cathedrals?
I would imagine a very hefty one, but then maybe, like the Egyptian pyamids, their main cost was labour, and labour would only have 'idled' in winter anyway.....?
I wonder which was more expensive? A church/cathedral or a castle? (In terms of capital outlay at any rate). Whatever the cost of a church/cathedral, I guess it shows the real economic and political power of the Church that it could get them built at all. I can appreciate the Powers That Be ordering castles, however much they may have bankrupted the local economies, because there was force majeure backing castle building, but there was surely only 'spirtual force' backing church/cathedral building. -
Message 9
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Wednesday, 29th June 2011
"But it seems that it backfired because it revived an awareness of the different history of British people-those of direct African descent- who enslaved and sold the slaves- and those of Afro-Caribbean descent, whose ancestors were enslaved and sold. "
Backfired on whom? On the dangerously simplistic afficionados of the 'black skin good, white skin bad' type of leftist Animal Farmers???
Who knows, maybe it even backfired on the reputation of Islam, since I believe a lot of the African slavers were Muslims. -
Message 10
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Wednesday, 29th June 2011
"When I was a lad, TV series like 'Robin Hood' turned tales of Norman and Saxon into allegories of the contemporary class struggle.
****
Surely the ideology of the 'Norman Yoke' goes back a long, long way in English history, definitely back to the 17th C IIRR! It was part of the standing 'anti-establishment' premise that the Normans were the powerful oppressors of the powerless Saxons, whose lands the Normans had expropriated.
I have a theory (!) that the Norman Conquest was actually the primal architect of our tradition of democracy, because it created a foreign 'ruler' against whom we could 'legitimately' rebel - I say legitimate because it's always been acceptable to rebel against foreign invastion, but far less so to rebel against aristocratic oppression. If the aristocrats were also foreign, that created a situation in which the exploited poor could be hostile without being accusable of 'class warfare' by their betters! -
Message 11
Posted by hotmousemat (U2388917) on Wednesday, 29th June 2011
Another aspect of hunting is the importance in a non-cash economy of giving your retainers and allies gifts. Venison was a near royal monopoly. Wild swans still are:
I can appreciate the Powers That Be ordering castles, however much they may have bankrupted the local economies, because there was force majeure backing castle building, but there was surely only 'spirtual force' backing church/cathedral buildingΒ
The church was also the closest thing the King had to a civil service. Spiritual magnates like bishops were also a useful parallel power structure to the great landowners. Since church offices were not (or shouldn't be!) hereditary they tended to have different political interests, so there was something to be said for balancing a feudal castle with a religious foundation.
The civil service aspect is perhaps more clearly seen on the continent. When German princes were incorporating wild areas to the east, the usual method was to get one of the great religious houses to plant a new monastery. Who else had the money and the organisation to undertake such long term civil projects? -
Message 12
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 29th June 2011
jenny
Of course hunting revealed a great deal about fitness of character and body too, important for the credibility of all in the elite- and those hoping to make it. The whole point of a State is that it harnesses the human capacity for viciousness- and "domesticates" it.. The extremes of blood lust and incapacity to take life when necessary would both be revealed. What seems to be typical of hunting societies worldwide is that hunters learn to respect animals.
I am not sure of the investment involved. The AS Chronicle note on William I in its obituary says that he was incredibly greedy for gold, much of which he spent on castles.. But investment building- as Dr. Schumacher explained in "Small is Beautiful" with his "Buddhist Economics"- created (as you say) all manner of employment and the opportunity for a whole range of working people to earn a living. And in the case of castles and religious buildings the ongoing public benefit was very important. In these days when paying off loans to international creditors is a key factor in politics one has to remember that England had fallen into the situation of paying "Danegeld"- protection money- to the Viking raiders, who had frequently wreaked devastation and made meaningful investment in economic development/improvement hardly worth attempting.
Both castles and churches provided a new security, with the Churches storing and protecting harvests in great tithe barns, which- as in Joseph's advice to the Pharaoh- meant that the Church could offer social security in time of harvest failure and famine. By the end of the century, thanks to an English brother, the Cistercian order in Burgundy came up with the kind of monasticism that turmed monasteries into small towns which were economic complexes serving both monastic and lay communities and played their full part in the "industrial revolution".
The significance of the Church in the economy was perhaps symbolised in the fact that most settlements seem to have had a "Market cross" to which all parties repaired when striking any kind of deal. The cross was like the cheque guarantee card.
And when you say "the power of the Church" the great areas of Church building in England were often those where people were making fortunes out of the wool trade, and later the woolen trade- notably Norfolk and the Cotswolds. There rich people wished to show their gratitude to God and their public spirit by helping to fund the building of Churches that (as I have said about the new St Pauls after the fire) were not built according to the actual needs of the Church, but in accordance with the pride and ambition of the local community.
As for castle-building the economic advantages were seized upon during the war between Stephen and Matilda with -in effect- a situation not unlike the war-lord situation in China in the Twenties, for a power-vacuum at the heart of government left people still looking for the security of the "strong". Henry II had these illegal castles pulled down.
Cass -
Message 13
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 29th June 2011
jenny
My comment about the impact of all of the coverage of the Abolition of the Slave Trade was expressed with the reservation "seemed" because it is a personal observation based upon quite considerable experience of Inner City London including Lambeth..
You may remember the sudden spate of youth killings that seemed according to the Press to be inexplicable.. But they seemed to me to start just when this whole question of the Slave Trade was being commemorated in the Media- often using the propaganda material produced by the Wilberforce Campaigns as being Historical truth- rather than mere evidence.. One of the things that Wilberforce said in his great speach was that Africans had been brought down lower than the apes, and the Wilberforce picture of the trade, though it was aimed at trying to make Britain feel guilty, was predicated upon this kind of portrayal of African people and Africa.
And to my perception a large number of the young people getting killed in the flare-ups between gangs seemed to have African names.
On occasion it often seemed that there was mixed parentage , but a single-parent family which left the young person living to some extent out of touch with their "roots" and the depth of feeling around the issues.
As you point out Islam was and had been intimately involved in the African slave trade for centuries, and my hypothesis is that the opening of the Atlantic sea-board in West Africa allowed small and peripheral states dominated and subject to a powerful religious based Empire in land to struggle for their independence- much as the English threw off the "yoke" of Rome and refused the yoke of the new Spanish Empire, and then the French. In other words the wars in Africa in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Cnetury were essentially no different from the wars between the powers of Western Europe at the same time.
Cass -
Message 14
Posted by Simon de Montfort (U14278627) on Thursday, 30th June 2011
"Speaking of castles, does anyone know how 'expensive' they were, in terms of the economy? And cathedrals too, come to that. ie, were they the maedival equivalent of, say, a major new hospital now, or a fighter jet, or new Scottish Parliament? What proportion of GDP went on building castles and cathedrals?"
I remember being told that there were several reasons why York Minster ( the largest medieval cathedral in northern Europe ) took 250 years to build but the principle one was the shortage of money. Others were the black death, not working outside in winter, wars with Scots and the Wars of the Roses.
Where did the money come from? Not out of the Archbishops pocket? Most parts of the building and fabric were the result of donations from wealthy benefactors. Stone from the quarries of Barons and oak from their forests.
Knights off to battle often paid for stained glass memorials and the nouveau riche (town merchants) often liked to contribute to a window (an early form of advertising if their emblem, shield or "logo" was included.)
Today Engish cathedrals cost a fortune to keep maintained usually by the local Dean & his chapter raising funds such as admission fees. Not like in France where nearly every castle and cathedral is surrounded by scaffolding paid for by the State or the local departement (county).
I recently paid a visit to the Castle of Dio in southern France. It has just had several million euros spent on it by the French taxpayer (and some english ones!). It is 70 kilometres from the nearest large town (Montpellier) is in the middle of nowhere and probably gets just a few hundred visitors a year. Splendid stuff but a tad extravagant nevertheless! Don't tell the Greeks! -
Message 15
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 30th June 2011
Presumably Cathedrals also were a good investment- not least for a city- if like Canterbury they could become a great centre of pilgrimage. Like the expected influx of "sports pilgrims" expected in 2012 - arguably a modern religion or belief system ( Does anyone else remember "Soccer Kakao"- or something like that in post-war Japan?) special festivals and occasions would be nice little earners.
Chaucer's innkeeper at the Tabard Inn had material and well as spiritual reasons to join the group of Chaucer's pilgrims.
And to be secular in this secular age, having a Cathedral surely used to be one of the prerequisites of gaining "City" status.
Cass -
Message 16
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Saturday, 2nd July 2011
Thank you all for your very interesting and erudite answers to my several questions!
Much appreciated! -
Message 17
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 2nd July 2011
jenny
re your "Norman Yoke", idea that may well have applied to Scotland and Ireland from the time that the Anglo-Norman barony took its castle building etc into those realms, and took over the Scottish Lowlands and the Irish Pale.. In this context such ideas would have come naturally into the various uprisings there against the Crown at Westmister during the Seventeenth Century.
But our course on British Constitutional History at Uni started with Edward the Confessor's Coronation Oath that laid down a kind of contract between the English people and the Crown, in line with a document that I read recently written for the Cambridge area which stipulated quite clearly the rights and the duties of all the ranks of English Society.
In the light of this my take on 1066 is that Harold of Wessex was seen by large numbers of the population as something of an upstart adventurer from a family of dubious honour and a dubious history of doing the right thing. Whereas William of Normandy (already given the popular title of "The Conqueror" because of the military prowess that had made him- his father's "love-child"- the Duke of Normandy before his brothers) acted in much more obvious legitimacy. He got the Pope to rule on the rightness of his case, and sailed for England with a banner showing the support of the Church.
William always insisted on the legitimacy of his claim to be King, and he assured everyone that he would rule in accordance with the Coronation Oath of Edward the Confessor., as every monarch has done since.
And he finally came to the throne as the result of negotiations,not fighting. Once Harold was dead and the throne was vacant once more, William held talks with the other two great English Earls , Edwin and Morcar, as well as with leading citizens of the City of London. There he proved that he was a "man we can do business with". He rose into London and was crowned at Westminster.
But it is true that the sense of "them and us" struggle did come back into British history and people like Marx and Engels could be so persuaded that this- rather than the English idea of Commonweal, which was what made England so strong and successful- was the "eternal reality", leading to their idea of "the class struggle" which ensured that the United Kingdom would be a "house divided against itself" that would fall.
But endless struggle does appear to the Southern English to have been the tradition in the tribal, clannish, feuding and warring realms of other parts of England and of its British neighbours. By the end of the nineteenth century this warring tradition was being channelled into the new tribalism of the new religion of the industrial working class- football.
Cass -
Message 18
Posted by NormanRHood (U14656514) on Saturday, 2nd July 2011
i saw that on youtube
its depresing the normans were so harsh but maybe the english had two groups who fought each other like the scots did? -
Message 19
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 2nd July 2011
NormanRHood
As I see it William of Normandy, having met King Harold and defeated him in battle- and King Harold took up battle stations and submitted his case to trial by battle- tried to be not exactly "mr nice guy"- no-one wanted another Holy Confessor" king- a soft touch for Viking raiders/invaders.. But his initial settlement was not harsh. Those people who had staked everything on their support for Harold, naturally enough lost it.
But the harshness came after English people who had formally accepted William as their King annointed of God, rose in rebellion and in York slaughtered the garrison that William had placed there.
William had given them enough rope for them to hang themselves, and returned to England from his Norman province to make a rapid and severe tour as "Mr Nasty". He swept around especially those regions of England that Charles Kingsley (Cambridge Professor of Modern History amongst other things) might have counted in his novel about Herewarde the Wake as places of "Highlanders" as opposed to the regions of Lowlanders" that were much more peaceful- in line with (as he saw it) the state of Nature which was much easier to tame.
Cass -
Message 20
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Tuesday, 5th July 2011
"William always insisted on the legitimacy of his claim to be King,"
Well, as Mandy Rice-Davies said, 'He would, wouldn't he?'..
After all, as we know:
"Treason doth never prosper. And the reason?
If it doth prosper, none dare call it treason."
Same with conquest....
I'm afraid I just can't see William the Bastard as anything other than A Bad Thing for the country. I know the argument in his favour says he dragged England into Continental Europe, and the Saxon/Danish alternative would have been to relegate England to some kind of Scandinavian outpost, but even if that were true for the middle ages it's unlikely to have lasted once the trans-atlantic trade routes opened up, and England's geography became its very decisive history.
One also wonders whether a maedival Saxon England would have been as belligerant towards the British Celtic regions, and whether Wales/Scotland/Ireland might not have become unified kingdoms in their own right/earlier. -
Message 21
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 5th July 2011
jenny
I think that we have to accept that the Medieval mind was fundamentally based upon a belief in God, so- as far as I am concerned- Englishmen in 1066 would have looked at the dubious and opportunistic scheming of the Godwinsons, including King Harold, as forerunners of Machiavellianism and lack of the Civilization which King Alfed had done so much to make victorious and enduring. Men who were not "oathworthy"- the litmus test for the respectability of even common folk.
At least at Senlac Hill King Harold submitted the legitimacy of his claim to the throne to "trial by battle"- one of the fundamental ways of solving civil disputes on matters of legitimacy- and one could say that this still applies to the court of law and those "champions" who are silks. At Stamford Bridge he had fought rather like those Welshmen in the borders where he had commanded the English forces- battles of skirmishing, ambush etc.. Not the kind of thing that a King actually would stoop to doing.
Apparently at least one Norman Chronicler ascribes William's victory to the fact that his men spent the night conducting a Holy Vigil on their knees, as befitted Christian Knights placing their fate into God's hands. Harold on the other hand spent the knight holding a great feast.. But then he was not to know that William would advance and do battle early the next day. That was William's decision, and Harold had not yet feasted Englishmen enough in order to be able to ask them to lay down their lives in his cause.
William won, and that showed God's judgement. in law.
As for what happened when England was in a position to exploit the Atlantic trade routes, from the late fifteenth century right into the Nineteenth Century the dynamic that was created in 1066 was important- with the towns and industries that the Anglo-Norman rule made possible becoming vital to the "rise of the urban Middle Class" and hence the key role of the House of Commons as the body that represented the people capable of generating the wealth necessary for modern government.
Subsequent to that the consequences of the English dimension that Anglo-Norman adventures into England's Celtic neighbouring lands (lands seemingly of endemic warfare, destruction and all the features that militate against economic progress)- helped to create the self-destructiveness of Great Britain over the last couple of hundred years. A house divided against itself must fall.
I think that I noted that today is the anniversary of the first alliance between the Scots and the French against England: and the anniversary of the setting up of the NHS with its idea that access to medical care should have nothing to do with having taken part in the process of building up the "Commonwealth" that is needed to pay for it.
Cass -
Message 22
Posted by NormanRHood (U14656514) on Tuesday, 9th August 2011
well didnt a king need a big forest?just kidding
-
Message 23
Posted by Herewordless (U14549396) on Tuesday, 9th August 2011
"opportunistic scheming of the Godwinsons, including King Harold, as forerunners of Machiavellianism"
Casseroleon, your distaste for Harold et al doesn't tally with fact according to near-contemporary sources.
He was bestowed the crown by Edward himself- in the presence of Robert FitzWimarc- popularly acclaimed to kingship after a very loyal 20-odd year period as Edward's ambassador and general. Not one word is recorded of any dissent on his part, nor any hint of a coup against the king.
I may also be wrong if we all knew the full truth, but I think you are slave to Normanist versions of history. -
Message 24
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 25th August 2011
Hereword
Well a dying Edward is alleged to have named Harold Godwinson in the presence of the "in crowd" whose elite positions within English society seemed for the most part more secure with the internal candidate- one of their own.. I suggest that you read the AS Chronicle with a view to understanding what the common people would have thought of this King who taxed the people more heavily than any King had ever done before- and just to protect his own hold on the throne. And when in the Autumn he could no longer supply the fyrd with their upkeep" because he had mismanaged the whole affair, the fyrd claimed their right to go home to gather the harvest since the King could not "keep them" any more- though this meant leaving the south coast undefended against any invasion.
Actually this whole thing comes up in something that I have just drafted while away in which I argue that the "Norman Conquest" needs to be seen as part of the wider battle for Christendom.
The 1916 Medieval History that I just finished reading pointed out that, when King Alexius of Byzantium appealed to Pope Urban for aid against the Turks c1070 a large proportion of his forces were English mercenaries. But we too often forget that England was conquered fifty years before 1066 and that Englishmen wishing to fight for the future of Christian Civilization might well have felt that what was more important than trying to rid England of Viking overlords, was actually saving the key Holy Places of Christianity- threatened by the three other great folk invasions of that time, including the mass of "pagans" which swept down into the Balkans cutting off the land route between Italy and Byzantium. Christianising these people was an urgent challenge, and the Hungarians were Christianised c1000 AD.
Edgar the Atheling's candidacy in 1066 was weakened by his youth, but also because he had been sent to grow up in safety in Hungary. From there he had nobody "in his pocket". William of Normandy- on the other hand, had played a key role in the election of the new Pope c1060, and in 1066 this Pope reciprocated the favour and backed William to be King of England.
Cass -
Message 25
Posted by Simon de Montfort (U14278627) on Monday, 29th August 2011
"In the light of this my take on 1066 is that Harold of Wessex was seen by large numbers of the population as something of an upstart adventurer from a family of dubious honour and a dubious history of doing the right thing. Whereas William of Normandy (already given the popular title of "The Conqueror" because of the military prowess that had made him- his father's "love-child"- the Duke of Normandy before his brothers) acted in much more obvious legitimacy. He got the Pope to rule on the rightness of his case, and sailed for England with a banner showing the support of the Church. "
Cass
If Harold had won at Hastings I doubt whether Eleanor of Aquitaine (the most
desirable woman in Christendom in 1166) would have divorced King Louis of France to become the wife of young Prince Hal who later became Henry II of England and ruler of an Empire stretching from Newcastle on Tyne to Toulouse near the Pyrennes.
I agree with you. I'm glad that William the Bastard won at Hastings. The English language to-day made up of 60% French words is the basis of world wide communication in the 21st Century. -
Message 26
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 29th August 2011
Simon
Your sequence is wrong..
Eleanor's marriage to King Louis was effectively over when they returned from the Second Crusade, though the Pope-when they stayed with him in Rome- insisted that they should sleep together hoping for a miracle.
It seems likely that the time that she spent out in the Levant with her uncle Baldwin (?)- a hero of the First Crusade who stayed behind to run a Crusader state- had fed her more romantic expectations of what a King should be.. [Do you know the story of Eleanor's sister Petronella (?)
As a "divorcee", and the feudal lord of Acquitaine in her own right, Eleanor was very much a vulnerable target for any man who was able to ride off with her and force her into a marriage that would make him Lord of Acquitaine.
Geoffrey of Anjou was a suitable protector and they had "history", but he was no longer available. But his son Henry had already shown himself quite capable in the struggles for his mother's right to the English crown. Eleanor married him. And her money funded the defeat of King Stephen. His son was dead, and the settlement was that he was left as King, acknowledging Henry of Anjou as his successor.
As for your more general comment I think that only "Little Englanders" can regret the Norman Conquest- and those, as I have said, seem to ignore that England had already fallen to the Vikings 50 years before Hastings.
Actually in the piece that I have to type up some time I briefly outline the three "Angevin Empires" that were important in Medieval History- only that of Henry and Eleanor and their children being English based.
Cass
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