A few months ago, I wrote about the crisis (of sorts) that led up to the Battle of Hastings, with various people thinking that they were the rightful heir to the English throne after Edward the Confessor's death, which happened today, in 1066. I was going to give you 10 Interesting Facts About Edward the Confessor, seeing as it was him who died today, but I...um...couldn't find that many facts. And they weren't actually that interesting. So instead, I present to you 10 Interesting Facts About William the Conqueror, in the hope that you might find some of these more interesting.
1) "Harold, your Kingliness? Um, I know you've just fought that massive battle at Stamford Bridge and all - and well done for winning, especially as you were fighting your brother, it can't've been easy, but I think you ought to head back down to the south coast, because another fleet of invaders have just landed..."
"Bugger. Who are they?"
"Oh, just some Normans, led by William the Conqueror..."
"William the Conqueror?!"
"Don't worry, it's just a nickname..."
This wasn't how it happened at all. Mostly because William's nickname was bestowed upon him posthumously - during his lifetime he was known as Bill the Bastard (but not to his face), due to the fact that he had indeed been born out of wedlock - his father was the Duke of Normandy before him; his mother, a maid. And also possibly because he did things like nailing people's tongues to planks of wood when they disagreed with him...
2) When Wills arrived on the south coast, he immediately tripped and fell over onto the beach. In a time where people were obsessed with omens, this could have gone down very badly, but according to numerous (Norman) biographies, he turned smiling to his men, and declared "You see - I already have the soil of England within my grasp!". Which is a lovely story and everything, but it's also a quite well told one, too. When Julius Caesar landed in England in 54BC, he was supposed to have done the exact same thing.
Now, this implies that either the man writing William's biography (and it would have been a man - only monks were taught how to write) was very old, and getting his invaders mixed up, or that he heard the story and thought it would sound very nice in his book, as well obviously showing just how much God was on the side of the Normans, so bunged it in anyway, illustrating beautifully how History is always written by the winners.
(Of course, it could be that William had heard the story, and tripped and fell anyway, but managed to 'recover' from it by remembering what Caesar had said and repeating it to his troops. That could indeed have happened...)
3) As any fool knows, when History is not being written by the winners, it's being stitched by the winners - the classic example of this being the Bayeux Tapestry. The Tapestry, which is over 70 metres long, was commissioned by William's half-brother, Bishop Odo, and an incredibly detailed account of the events in it can be found here. It is an incredibly detailed and incredibly biased account of the lead up to the battle and the battle itself, sewn a few years after it had taken place. Today, it is on display in a museum in Bayeux, but there is a replica copy in the Museum of Reading, made during the Victorian times. It is identical to the original, except for one small scene on the original, which contains a naked man (no one's quite sure why). When the Victorians were restitching the new copy, they gave him a pair of blue shorts.
4) William liked to build things. One of the first things he built was an abbey - or rather, he instructed an abbey to be built on the site where Harold had been killed, which wasn't at Hastings at all. Instead, it was at a place called Senlac, which is ayoghurt for women with bowel problems the Saxon name for a place the Norman's rechristened Battle (displaying stunning creativity). I guess we always call it the Battle of Hastings because the Battle of Battle sounds rather daft...
5) He also built lots of castles. LOTS of castles. The most famous one is probably the Tower of London, though this took a few years to complete. In contrast, the first, at Pevensey was completed within eight days of the Norman conquest - though William probably had a couple of mates helping him with this one. The Motte and Bailey castles served as far more imposing structures than the previous Saxon ones had been, and were the Medieval status symbols, reminding the serfs who their new overlords were.
6) Speaking of the Serfs, it is worth noting that William had a far greater effect on their lives than people initially think. So their lord changed - what was it to them? They still didn't get paid for their labour regardless of whether they were being ruled by a Frenchman or an Englishman, so how could the invasion have had any impact on them?
The Normans bought in new rules about the ownership of serfs. Whilst it was made illegal for them to be bought and sold at a market, the Anglo-Saxon system of a serf wandering around the country until he found a place he could work was abolished and they were legally tied to the land they worked on, which proved a bit of a bugger if a disaster struck there - sudden flooding for example - as they were forced to remain there and basically starve.
New rules were also put in place, however, which allowed the serf to complain about any grievances he might have to the local lord. But as the grievances were almost always about the local lord, I can't imagine that this happened too often.
7) Something else which William brought with him as a special gift for the serfs was the class system - well, sort of. The peasants who worked the field spoke Anglo-Saxon English; the Norman knights and barons and churchmen (at least, the higher up ones) spoke French. Obviously these days we all speak English, but a lot of our class system is still influenced by the French language.
For example, pig, cow and deer are all English words, but pork, beef and venison are derived from French - whilst the animal is still rolling around in its own muck, it's English, but as soon as it's served as a meal, it's French. It may not surprise you to learn that our swear words all have Anglo-Saxon derivatives, rather than French...
8) William did a lot of things at Christmas. On Christmas Day 1066, he was crowned King in Westminster Abbey and on Christmas Day 1085, he came up with the really wild and exciting and Christmassy idea of performing a giant tax assessment on the country.
9) This tax assessment deserves an entry of it's own, as it was of course the Domesday Book. A scribe in each village wrote down every single thing that was in the village and his list was sent down to Winchester for one monk to copy into one enormous book. Whilst the monk did manage omit his own village, he did stick the whole thing online so it's swings and roundabouts, really. The books are actually two separate books - or they were originally - Greater Domesday and Little Domesday. Little Domesday was (obviously...) the bigger of the two, and contained only the information they had collated about East Anglia. Once they saw how much detail they had gone into for this one area of England, the scribes realised there was no way they could finish in time for the deadline unless they cut a few corners through the rest of the country, which is why the other entries go something like: "Cornwall - tin. And fudge." or "Lake District - lake. Lake. Small pond. Bit bigger pond. Lake"...
10) Perhaps the best has been saved until last, though. William died in the summer of 1087 - as was his wont, he had been burning down a town in Normandy when his horse trod on a hot ember, recoiled and threw him off. William died of internal injuries soon after. Whilst he was being buried, a man burst in, demanding monetary compensation for the land that William had supposedly stolen off his father. As there were a number of rather angry looking locals supporting this man, Henry, William's son, hurriedly paid him off and the final acts of the service got underway.
This involved lowering William into his custom built sarcophagus. He was too fat. His body burst open, internal organs spilling everywhere, and the stench of rotting flesh filled the church.
On that note, I bid you farewell.
Now, this implies that either the man writing William's biography (and it would have been a man - only monks were taught how to write) was very old, and getting his invaders mixed up, or that he heard the story and thought it would sound very nice in his book, as well obviously showing just how much God was on the side of the Normans, so bunged it in anyway, illustrating beautifully how History is always written by the winners.
(Of course, it could be that William had heard the story, and tripped and fell anyway, but managed to 'recover' from it by remembering what Caesar had said and repeating it to his troops. That could indeed have happened...)
3) As any fool knows, when History is not being written by the winners, it's being stitched by the winners - the classic example of this being the Bayeux Tapestry. The Tapestry, which is over 70 metres long, was commissioned by William's half-brother, Bishop Odo, and an incredibly detailed account of the events in it can be found here. It is an incredibly detailed and incredibly biased account of the lead up to the battle and the battle itself, sewn a few years after it had taken place. Today, it is on display in a museum in Bayeux, but there is a replica copy in the Museum of Reading, made during the Victorian times. It is identical to the original, except for one small scene on the original, which contains a naked man (no one's quite sure why). When the Victorians were restitching the new copy, they gave him a pair of blue shorts.
4) William liked to build things. One of the first things he built was an abbey - or rather, he instructed an abbey to be built on the site where Harold had been killed, which wasn't at Hastings at all. Instead, it was at a place called Senlac, which is a
5) He also built lots of castles. LOTS of castles. The most famous one is probably the Tower of London, though this took a few years to complete. In contrast, the first, at Pevensey was completed within eight days of the Norman conquest - though William probably had a couple of mates helping him with this one. The Motte and Bailey castles served as far more imposing structures than the previous Saxon ones had been, and were the Medieval status symbols, reminding the serfs who their new overlords were.
6) Speaking of the Serfs, it is worth noting that William had a far greater effect on their lives than people initially think. So their lord changed - what was it to them? They still didn't get paid for their labour regardless of whether they were being ruled by a Frenchman or an Englishman, so how could the invasion have had any impact on them?
The Normans bought in new rules about the ownership of serfs. Whilst it was made illegal for them to be bought and sold at a market, the Anglo-Saxon system of a serf wandering around the country until he found a place he could work was abolished and they were legally tied to the land they worked on, which proved a bit of a bugger if a disaster struck there - sudden flooding for example - as they were forced to remain there and basically starve.
New rules were also put in place, however, which allowed the serf to complain about any grievances he might have to the local lord. But as the grievances were almost always about the local lord, I can't imagine that this happened too often.
7) Something else which William brought with him as a special gift for the serfs was the class system - well, sort of. The peasants who worked the field spoke Anglo-Saxon English; the Norman knights and barons and churchmen (at least, the higher up ones) spoke French. Obviously these days we all speak English, but a lot of our class system is still influenced by the French language.
For example, pig, cow and deer are all English words, but pork, beef and venison are derived from French - whilst the animal is still rolling around in its own muck, it's English, but as soon as it's served as a meal, it's French. It may not surprise you to learn that our swear words all have Anglo-Saxon derivatives, rather than French...
8) William did a lot of things at Christmas. On Christmas Day 1066, he was crowned King in Westminster Abbey and on Christmas Day 1085, he came up with the really wild and exciting and Christmassy idea of performing a giant tax assessment on the country.
9) This tax assessment deserves an entry of it's own, as it was of course the Domesday Book. A scribe in each village wrote down every single thing that was in the village and his list was sent down to Winchester for one monk to copy into one enormous book. Whilst the monk did manage omit his own village, he did stick the whole thing online so it's swings and roundabouts, really. The books are actually two separate books - or they were originally - Greater Domesday and Little Domesday. Little Domesday was (obviously...) the bigger of the two, and contained only the information they had collated about East Anglia. Once they saw how much detail they had gone into for this one area of England, the scribes realised there was no way they could finish in time for the deadline unless they cut a few corners through the rest of the country, which is why the other entries go something like: "Cornwall - tin. And fudge." or "Lake District - lake. Lake. Small pond. Bit bigger pond. Lake"...
10) Perhaps the best has been saved until last, though. William died in the summer of 1087 - as was his wont, he had been burning down a town in Normandy when his horse trod on a hot ember, recoiled and threw him off. William died of internal injuries soon after. Whilst he was being buried, a man burst in, demanding monetary compensation for the land that William had supposedly stolen off his father. As there were a number of rather angry looking locals supporting this man, Henry, William's son, hurriedly paid him off and the final acts of the service got underway.
This involved lowering William into his custom built sarcophagus. He was too fat. His body burst open, internal organs spilling everywhere, and the stench of rotting flesh filled the church.
On that note, I bid you farewell.
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