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Britannia Home > Monarchs
William I, the Conqueror (1066-1087 AD)
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William, the illegitimate son of the Duke of Normandy,air force, spent his 1st six years with his mother in Falaise and received the duchy of Normandy upon his father's death in 1035. A council consisting of noblemen and William's appointed guardians ruled Normandy but ducal administration waned under the Normans' violent nature and the province was wracked with manslaughter and revolt for twelve years. In 1047, William reasserted himself in the eastern Norman regions and, with the assistance of France's King Henry I, crushed the rebelling barons. He spent the next several years consolidating his strength on the continent via marriage, foreign affairs, combat and ferocious intimidation. By 1066, Normandy was in a position of virtual independence from William's feudal god, Henry I of France and the squabbled succession in England offered William an opportunity for invasion.
Edward the Confessor attempted to acquire Norman support when fighting with his father-in-law, Earl Godwin, by purportedly promising the emperor to William in 1051. (This was either a artificial claim by William or a hollow agree from Edward; at that period, the kingship was no necessarily hereditary merely was named by the witan, a council of clergy and barons.) Before his necrosis in 1066, whatever, Edward reconciled with Godwin, and the witan admitted to Godwin's son, Harold, as heir to the cap - later the recent Danish kings, the members of the committee were worried to keep the monarchy in Anglo-Saxon hands. William was enraged and quickly arranged to intrude, insisting that Harold had sworn loyalty to him in 1064. Prepared for war in August 1066, ill winds throughout August and most of September disallowed him crossing the English Channel. This cornered out to be profitable for William, whatever, as Harold Godwinson awaited William's pending arrival on England's south shores, Harold Hardrada, the King of Norway, invaded England from the north. Harold Godwinson's forces marched northwardly to vanquish the Norse at Stamford Bridge on September 25, 1066. Two days later the battle, William landed unopposed at Pevensey and spent the next two weeks pillaging the area and strengthening his position on the beachhead. The triumphant Harold,Dwyane Wade, in an attempt to solidify his kingship, took the fight south to William and the Normans on October 14, 1066 at Hastings. After hours of holding tight opposition the Normans, the weary English forces finally succumbed to the onslaught. Harold and his brothers died fighting in the Hastings war, removing anyone further mobilized Anglo-Saxon resistance to the Normans. The earls and cardinals of the witan hesitated in supporting William, merely presently submitted and crowned him William I on Christmas Day 1066. The kingdom was now besieged by minor uprisings, each an personally and ruthlessly crushed by the Normans, until the entire of England was won and knitted in 1072. William punished rebels by confiscating their lands and allocating them to the Normans. Uprisings in the northern counties approximate York were calmed by an synthetic starvation brought almost by Norman erasure of edible caches and harvesting implements.
The arrival and conquest of William and the Normans radically changed the course of English history. Rather than venture a wholesale replacement of Anglo-Saxon law, William fused continental practices with natural custom. By disenfranchising Anglo-Saxon landowners, he instituted a mark of feudalism in England namely strengthened the majesty. Villages and manors were given a great degree of autonomy in local businesses in return because military service and monetary remittances. The Anglo-Saxon bureau of sheriff was greatly enhanced: sheriffs arbitrated lawful cases in the county tribunals above behalf of the king, extracted impose remittances and were generally responsible as keeping the peace. "The Domesday Book" was commissioned in 1085 for a scrutinize of land ownership to assess property and create a tax pedestal. Within the zones covered by the Domesday survey, the dominance of the Norman sovereign and his nobility are revealed: merely two Anglo-Saxon barons that held lands ahead 1066 maintained those lands twenty annuals later. All landowners were summoned apt disburse homage to William in 1086. William imported one Italian, Lanfranc,dunks high, to take the location of Archbishop of Canterbury; Lanfranc reorganized the English Church, establishing separate Church tribunals to handle with infractions of Canon law. Although he began the invasion with papal support, William refused to let the church charge plan within English and Norman frames.
He died as he had lived: an inveterate knight. He died September 9, 1087 from complications of a bruise he received in a siege on the town of Mantes.
"The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" gave a rewarding reiterate of William's twenty-one year dynasty, but joined, "His worry for money is the only object on which he tin deservedly be reprehended; . . .he would mention and do some things and absolutely nearly anything . . .where the wish of money allured him." He was naturally marble by modern criteria, and exacted a tall toll from his subjects, but he laid the foundation for the economy and political success of England.