King of England by conquest

Please refer to the previous section to read the legal claim William 1st had to the English throne even though he was not a Saxon  but a Viking related to Rollo the first Viking to settle in France. He was known as William The Bastard until he conquered all of England.

William was indeed a “bastard” in that his father and mother never married. His father “Robert The Devil”, Duke of Normandy spotted his mother Arlette, a teenager (15 years old), while she was washing herself in a local stream and her youthful, semi naked, body provided the stimulus for an immediate union and 9 months later William was born. He saw little of his father who was almost permanently at war and was brought up by Arlette until he was 7 when his father went on a pilgrimage to Nicea and was never seen again.

William The Bastard immediately became Duke of Normandy and had three body guards who were straight way murdered. This seven year old wonder boy survived against all odds and kept Normandy intact even though the King of France was regularly attacking to get his land back at the mouth of the Seine.

William was married around 1050 to his cousin Matilda of Flanders and granddaughter of  the King of France when they were both about 22. She produced him 4 sons and 5 daughters between 1052 and 1065. Nine Children in 13 years. He had to get permission from the Pope in Rome to marry his cousin even in those times.

His son Robert became Duke of Normandy, William (2nd) King of England and his son Henry (1st) King of England and Duke of Normandy. 

In 1066 when William 1st  became King of England he inherited the best run and civilised state in Europe, (Forgetting Byzantium).  William’s lands in France needed continuous defence from the French King and in England he had to quell Saxon reprisals for six years and regular incursions by the still barbaric illiterate Welsh and Scottish war lords. The English King now ruled simultaneously in both England and part of France which set the scene for regular land battles over territory in France for the next 500 years.

To enable him to run both territories William ruled England by replacing the old Saxon Earls with Norman French speaking Barons and the Archbishop of Canterbury and all other senior clergy with French speakers from Norman churches. This involved the building of castles and huge churches all over the country. The local Anglo-Saxon population were duly suppressed being intimidated by these huge new buildings. (The Normans were the best stone masons and architects in Europe.) Indeed the Normans were the best military in the whole of Europe demonstrated by the Battle of Hastings (The battle against Harold for the English throne) where Harold was fighting mainly with swords and spears and William with a huge horse mounted division (Cavalry) and disciplined archers with powerful bows. This military superiority enabled him to enlarge his English territories by push back the Welsh and the Scots. Something the Romans had never achieved. The Normans only brought 4000 people into England, probably ten times fewer than the Angles and Saxons and they never integrated hence the genetic English remained as did the local language (vernacular).

William was used to running a country using the “Feudal System” which involved the King owning everything (land, animals and buildings) and everybody else renting it from him. In practise this meant he rented everything to his Barons in return for them providing him with an army when required. In turn the Barons leased out the land given to them (leased from the King) to local farmers and millers etc.

To find out exactly what rent he could charge William had to do an inventory of the country which was completed in 1085 and published in The Doomsday Book. The population of people and pigs and mills and houses in 1085 is listed in this book for anybody to read today.

We have seen that William was a builder of Castles. Two of his best known being the Tower of London (originally of wood for speed of erection) and Windsor Castle.

William died while fighting the King of France in 1087 and his body is buried in the cathedral of Caen in Normandy. He had previously organised  that England should be ruled by his son William Rufus and Normandy by his eldest son Robert. 

Further Notes on King William 1st

• At the Battle of Hastings William had brought with him in ships over the 50 miles of sea which separates England from Normandy, 6000 horses all shod and with saddles and stirrups. He also had archers as well as foot soldiers with swords, shields and spears. Harold only had the latter. Some say a battle between a 7th and an 11th century army. This military technology remained in England.
• William governed England and Normandy simultaneously expanding territories in both domains. In France his main adversary was the King of France who ruled only the surrounds of Paris. In England the foreign adversaries were from Wales and Scotland neither of which had been occupied or ruled by either Romans, Anglo-Saxons or Vikings and who were still not ruled internally by one King but by a number of War Lords. William aided by his cavalry and archers sufficiently impressed both countries to keep them out of England when he was in residence. When in France he used his Barons who were generally Norman by birth (some also from Flanders and Brittany) to whom he had rented vast estates along the borders for no cash, in return for keeping the enemy at bay. Any Welsh or Scottish land they conquered could be used to extend their estates and wealth. The Barons used their cavalry and archers brutally generally killing any local war lord they could get their hands on.
• Scotland just prior to this were ruled in the south by the Irish tribe the “Scotties” who had yet to conquer and then virtually exterminate the original Scottish tribe the Picts. Shakespeare found this period in Scotland sufficiently interesting to form the basis one of his best known plays, “Macbeth”.
• Only 4000 Normans and French settled in England after 1066 and did not immediately integrate with the locals who they considered not worth breeding with. Initially the educated Norman clergy would have developed the language skills to communicate with the locals. The Barons spoke only French for their first generation. The local English were in a permanent state of terror. The 4000 Normans ruling a country of 2 million should be compared with the some 200,000 Anglo-Saxons who arrived some 400 years earlier when the population was probably less than 1 million and who exterminated the majority of male Britons.
• William and the Christian church in Rome. William was a Christian King however the Pope would expect a Christian King to visit Rome too seek spiritual guidance. William sort no guidance from the Pope and ordered that all instructions from the Vatican should be addressed to him and not the Church in England. William then decided which theological rules he would agree to send on to his Archbishop of Canterbury.
• Jews had fled from Jerusalem 1000 years previously and had taken up residence in many European countries where generally they were hated and treated as second class citizens not permitted to own property or farmland. The majority of Jews were better educated then their Christian neighbours being taught to read and write and speak two languages. Christians were forbidden by the Church to lend money and this being one of the few trades permitted for Jews they got good at developing syndicates for large scale loans. William in Normandy borrowed from Jews to finance his wars including the invasion of England and it was quite natural for him to bring the Jewish bankers into England to help him finance the development of his new colony. This was the first occasion Jews had been resident in England in any numbers.
• William 1st was thus the most powerful King in Europe with the best military and the necessary finance.
• William with his beloved wife Matilda, the daughter of the Count of Flanders, had 10 children, 6 girls and the 4 boys, the eldest Robert became Duke of Normandy, Richard who was killed before his father died while out hunting, by a stag in the New Forest England, William who became William Rufus or William 2nd King of England and Henry who became Henry 1st King of England. A daughter of William 1st Adela, and her French husband Stephen Henry, produced King Stephen of England, see later.