Norman Domination

The comprehensive impact of Norman rule upon the English population

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The Normans

The area that became Normandy was a rich agricultural area of some prosperity, which was Romanised and urbanized in Roman times, with many Gallo Roman villas. After the fall of the Romans, the area was settled by Germanic tribes. Over time the area fell under Frankish control and monasteries were established there, including Mont Saint Michel, then Montaume, established in 708 CE. Its long coastline made it susceptible to attacks from Saxon pirates.

Viking raids began in about 790 CE, attracted by the wealth of the monasteries. By the early ninth century CE, Louis the Pious was the Frankish King, son of Charlemagne, with hi seat at Aachen. The Carolingian rulers fond it increasingly difficult to defend their widespread lands. Viking attacks on the area to become Normandy began in earnest in 841 CE with attacks on Rouen.

Normandy was founded as a separate province by the Norseman known as Rollo (d 933 CE), but whose Scandinavian name was Hrólfr, the Glorious Wolf. His nickname was Gungu, the Wanderer, and he seems to have been a traveller, pillaging around the Baltic and travelling to the British Isles where he met a Christian, Kathleen, in Northern England, and they had a child.

He seems to have arrived in Normandy in about 905 CE where he founded a settlement around the mouth of the Sein, from where he attacked Paris and Rouen with varying success. He seems to have been mentored by Cotill who taught him the Carolingian political landscape.

By about 911 CE, the new Scandinavian settlers of Normandy were part of the political landscape. A treaty was signed with the Carolingian King Charles the Simple, known as the Treaty of Saint Clair sur Epte after a failed attempt by Rollo to siege Paris and Chartres. The Treaty provided that Rollo be given land around the mouth of the Seine near Rouen. Charles could not easily manage the protection of his wider Kingdom, so Rollo was obliged to protect Normandy, including from Viking attack. Rollo was converted to Christianity and formally given the name Robert. He was made Gerl or Earl of the Normans and Count of Rouen. The agreement was very favourable to Rollo and he was given considerable autonomy free of usual feudal obligations. He married the King of Franc’s daughter, Gisella, to bind the deal.

At this stage the Norman lands were a relatively small parcel around Rouen. However following a cycle of attack and counter attack with local aristocrats he took more land and used his leverage to obtain royal sanction for his new acquisitions from the weak French King. By 933 CE he was adding more land to the west. This was rich agricultural land.

Rollo also faced the challenge however to rule the local population, who had previously experienced the Viking threat with terror. Rather than adopt the Scandinavian system of government through an assembly of free men, the Thing, he adopted local more authoritarian laws. He banished non conformers as outlaws. He supported the agricultural and fishing industry so that the new duchy would thrive. Normandy grew in prosperity. The Scandinavian pagan ways were replaced by Christian traditions within a generation. This led to the very quick establishment of a distinct Norman identity.

The new Duchy was constantly threatened by the nobility of other territories of the Franks and complicated strategy of alliance and counter alliance was the backdrop to Frankish politics.

Rollo’s son, William Longsword (c893 CE to 942 CE), was killed in an ambush by the Bretons, in 942 CE. He became a martyr and his son, Rollo’s grandson, Richard I (942 CE to 996 CE), was his successor.

In the early years of Richard I’s reign, King Louis IV gave wardship of the ten year old King to the Count of Pontviou who started to give away Norman lands. By this time there was sufficient Norman cohesion that the Norman people marched on the King’s palace to protest. Hostages were taken and the French King was forced to acknowledge Richard as Duke of Normandy. The French King then sought support from the Holy Roman Imperial Forces, but the Normans repulsed them. Richard I aspired for a permanent legacy in the new dynasty. He consolidated Norman control over the lands won by Rollo. Richard’s son Robert II was established as Archbishop of Rouen.

Richard II (reigned 996 CE to 1026) was the next Duke and he allowed Vikings who were attacking English lands to sell their goods in Normandy and to seek sanctuary there. This was in contravention with a previous treaty with Ethelred the Unready not to assist the Vikings. After a period of tension between Normandy and France, peace was cemented by the marriage of Richard’s sister Emma to Ethelred, whose sons were Alfred and Edward the Confessor. When Cnut invaded England in 1016, he forced Emma to marry him, after Ethelred’s death that year. Alfred and Edward the Confessor were sent to Normandy to be raised. Emma of Normandy eventually gave birth with Cnut to Harthacanute.

The Normans continued to identify with their Scandinavian ancestors, and tended to be favourable towards the Danes.

Richard III (997 CE to 1027) faced opposition to his succession in 1026 from his brother, Robert I the Magnificent, who ultimately prevailed by 1027 as Robert I (1000 to 1035). A new class of more aggressive Norman barons started to prevail during Robert’s reign, which was initially a time of internal reprisal. In 1034, Robert named his illegitimate son, William (sometimes called William the Bastard), as his heir and went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he died.

The eight year old William II of Normandy (c1028 to 1087), one day to be known as William the Conqueror, who was in Nicaea, took the title to Normandy. William had been born into a Normandy seized by his father in an act of fratricide, which had become increasingly fractious. There was an inevitable period of infighting and deaths. Guy of Burgundy tried to seize William who fled to the protection of King Henry I of France who supported William’s return to Normandy in 1047 when he was able to defeat opposition at the Battle of Val-ès-Dunes near Caen.

In England, Edward the Confessor, son of Ethelred the Unready and Emma of Normandy, raised in Normandy, was doing Norman things, like building Westminster Abbey. In 1051, the heirless English King, was said by the Normans to have chosen William as his successor to the English crown. It was at this time that Edward had exiled the dangerous Godwin, Earl of Wessex, his father in law.

In 1052 Godwin was allowed to return and reached agreement to return the Godwins’ lands, and end some disliked Norman practices.

Back in Normandy William lost support of the French King and faced fresh attacks in 1054, which he repelled again. There followed a period of more land grabbing and more Norman success.

In about 1065, Harold Godwinson was in Normandy and the Norman version of events is that he took an oath to uphold William’s claim to the English throne.

Edward the Confessor died in 1065. It was later claimed in the Vita Edwardi, that he named Harold as his successor. Harold was crowned on 6 January 1066 in the newly built Westminster Abbey.

Harold immediately faced the dual threat from Harold Hardrada and William of Normandy. He defeated the former at Stamford Bridge, but lost to the later at Hastings.

William consolidated his hold on England by first taking Dover (the key port), Canterbury (to gain religious control) and Winchester (seat of the royal treasury).

The indigenous population tried to rally support for an alternative King, Edgar the Agling, but he conceded by December 1066. William was crowned King of England on 25 December 1066 at Westminster Abbey.

The Duke of Normandy’s primary interest remained Normandy, but his new Kingdom of England gave him prestige and a new source of income.

He quickly built Norman castles around the country. They were intended to be ominous threats to the local population. Non compliance with the new regime would be met severely from Norman soldiers riding out from these castles to punish disloyalty.

Domination after the Conquest

After he faced rebellion, William I adopted a more ruthless approach to governing the country.

· There was military domination. The Normans built initially wooden and later stone castles across the countryside. William was ruthless in supressing rebellion.

· There was political domination. The Normans dispossessed the indigenous aristocracy. He now proclaimed that every part of the kingdom belonged to him by right of conquest. The Domesday Book provided William with administrative dominance over 13,400 named places.

· There was social domination. The local populations, the nativii, were regarded as mere peasants and to be scorned and laughed at.

· There was cultural domination. The Normans purged the church. Libraries of written material were lost. The Normans stopped using English in documents by 1070.

An uprising in York was ruthlessly put down, York ravaged and William rode through the city, wearing his Crown, on Christmas Day 1069. The harrying of the north which followed ruthlessly carried out the threat intended by the encircling of the countryside by Norman castles.

For William violence and suppression worked.

However William saw himself as a Norman, whop also ruled England. There was no attempt at consolidation. He had two distinct roles as Duke of Normandy and King of England, with distinct laws. For Normandy, William was a vassal of the French King, so separation avoided the same issue arising for England. He did not bring England under the Norman legal code, since that would have subsumed England into the French orbit.

England was therefore administered as shires, divided into wapentakes, administered by royal; sheriffs, who collected taxes and applied the law. Adopting traditional Anglo Saxon administration suited William well. The Domesday Book was created at Christmas 1085 and completed by August 1086, to consolidate Norman domination.

There were therefore many building blocks from the pre Norman history of the nation that survived this time of ruthless change. William was persuaded to show some element of continuity to cement his rule. He did after all place significance in persuading his new subjects of his natural succession to Edward the Confessor. There were aspects of Anglo Saxon government that continued, and English saints started to return into the cultural tradition.

The Norman castles started to provide a trading focus and towns grew around them.

England started to be drawn in to a player in the struggles of the European nations. Yet, it remained relatively stable and unified. It continued to be influenced by forces from Scandinavia and from Scotland.

Succession

William left Normandy to his oldest son, Robert, reflecting the primacy in William’s eyes of Normandy. His younger son, William, was left the Kingdom of England. William the Conqueror died on 9 September 1087.

Robert of Normandy was Duke until 1106. He sought the English throne too, and as Richard Curthose (‘short stockings’), was an unsuccessful pretender to the English throne. He fell out with his brothers William II and Henry I. He was ultimately defeated at the Battle of Tinchebray and Normandy was absorbed into the English Crown.

This separation continued and future Kings would continue to style themselves as Rex Anglorum and Dux Normanoran, held by one person, but never consolidated.

There is an In Our Time podcast on ‘the Norman Yoke’ – the idea that the Battle of Hastings sparked years of cruel Norman oppression for the Anglo Saxons.

William I died in 1087.

By the early twelfth century, writing started to reflect a greater recognition of an English identity and the Conquest started to be downplayed.