The Battle of Hastings

By August William had gathered his army and his fleet at the mouth of the Dives River. At this point he probably intended to sail due north and invade England by way of the Isle of Wight and Southampton Water. But adverse winds held up his fleet, and in September a westerly gale drove his ships up-Channel. William regrouped his forces at Saint-Valéry on the Somme. He had suffered a costly delay, some naval losses, and a drop in the morale of his troops. The delay, however, yielded a very important benefit for William: on September 8 Harold was forced to release the peasant army he had summoned to defend the southern and eastern coastlines, leaving them without adequate protection. On September 27, after cold and rainy weather, the wind turned in William’s favour. William embarked his army and set sail for the southeastern coast of England. The trip was not without incident: William’s ship lost touch with the rest of the fleet, but he calmed his crew by supping as if he were at home, and contact with the other ships was made not long after. The following morning he landed, took the unresisting towns of Pevensey and Hastings, and began to organize a bridgehead with 4,000 to 7,000 cavalry and infantry.

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William’s forces were in a narrow coastal strip, hemmed in by the great forest of Andred, and, although this corridor was easily defensible, it was not much of a base for the conquest of England. The campaigning season was almost past, and, when William received news of his opponent, it was not reassuring. On September 25 Harold had defeated and slain Tostig and Harald at Stamford Bridge, near York, in a bloody battle with great losses on both sides, and he was retracing his steps to meet the new invader at Hastings. On October 13, Harold emerged from the forest, but the hour was too late to push on to Hastings, and he took up a defensive position instead. Early the next day, before Harold had prepared his exhausted troops for battle, William attacked. The English phalanx, however, held firm against William’s archers and cavalry. The failure to break the English lines caused disarray in the Norman army. As William’s cavalry fled in confusion, Harold’s soldiers abandoned their positions to pursue the enemy. William rallied the fleeing horsemen, however, and they turned and slaughtered the foot soldiers chasing them. On two subsequent occasions, William’s horsemen feigned retreat, which fooled Harold’s soldiers, who were then killed by their opponents. Harold’s brothers were also killed early in the battle. Toward nightfall the king himself fell, struck in the eye by an arrow according to Norman accounts, and the English gave up. William’s coolness and tenacity secured him victory in this fateful battle. He then moved quickly against possible centres of resistance to prevent a new leader from emerging. On Christmas Day, 1066, he was crowned king in Westminster Abbey. In a formal sense, the Norman Conquest of England had taken place.

King of England

William was already an experienced ruler. In Normandy he had replaced disloyal nobles and ducal servants with his friends, limited private warfare, and recovered usurped ducal rights, defining the duties of his vassals. The Norman church flourished under his reign, as he adapted its structures to English traditions. Like many contemporary rulers, he wanted the church in England to be free of corruption but also subordinate to him. Thus, he condemned simony and disapproved of clerical marriage. He would not tolerate opposition from bishops or abbots or interference from the papacy, but he remained on good terms with Popes Alexander II and Gregory VII—though tensions arose on occasion. During his reign, church synods were held much more frequently, and he also presided over several episcopal councils. He was ably supported in this by his close adviser Lanfranc, whom he made archbishop of Canterbury, replacing Stigand; William replaced all other Anglo-Saxon bishops of England—except Wulfstan of Dorchester—with Normans. He also promoted monastic reform by importing Norman monks and abbots, thus quickening the pace of monastic life in England and bringing it into line with Continental developments.

William left England early in 1067 but had to return in December to deal with unrest. The rebellions that began that year reached their peak in 1069, when William resorted to such violent measures that even contemporaries were shocked. To secure his hold on the country, he introduced the Norman practice of building castles, including the Tower of London. The rebellions, which were crushed by 1071, completed the ruin of the English higher aristocracy and secured its replacement by an aristocracy of Norman lords, who introduced patterns of landholding and military service that had been developed in Normandy. To secure England’s frontiers, he invaded Scotland in 1072 and Wales in 1081, creating special defensive “marcher” counties along the Scottish and Welsh borders.

During the last 15 years of his life, William was more often in Normandy than in England, and there were five years, possibly seven, in which he did not visit the kingdom at all. He retained most of the greatest Anglo-Norman barons with him in Normandy and confided the government of England to bishops, trusting especially his old friend Lanfranc. He returned to England only when it was absolutely necessary: in 1075 to deal with the aftermath of a rebellion by Roger, earl of Hereford, and Ralf, earl of Norfolk, which was made more dangerous by the intervention of a Danish fleet; and in 1082 to arrest and imprison his half brother Odo, who was planning to take an army to Italy, perhaps to make himself pope. In the spring of 1082 William had his son Henry knighted, and in August at Salisbury he took oaths of fealty from all the important landowners in England. In 1085 he returned with a large army to meet the threat of an invasion by Canute IV (Canute the Holy) of Denmark. When this came to nothing, owing to Canute’s death in 1086, William ordered an economic and tenurial survey to be made of the kingdom, the results of which are summarized in the two volumes of Domesday Book, one of the greatest administrative accomplishments of the Middle Ages.

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Despite his duties as king, William remained preoccupied with the frontiers of Normandy even after the conquest. The danger spots were in Maine and the Vexin on the Seine, where Normandy bordered on the French royal demesne. After 1066, William’s Continental neighbours became more powerful and even more hostile. Fulk the Surly succeeded to Anjou in 1068 and Robert the Frisian to Flanders in 1071. King Philip I of France allied with Robert, and Robert allied with the Danish king, Canute IV. There was also the problem of William’s heir apparent, Robert Curthose (the future Robert II), who, given no appanage (grant of land from the royal domain) and seemingly kept short of money, left Normandy in 1077 and intrigued with his father’s enemies. In 1081 William reached agreement with Fulk in the treaty of Blancheland: Robert Curthose was to be count of Maine but only as a vassal of Fulk. The eastern part of the Vexin, the county of Mantes, had fallen completely into King Philip’s hands in 1077, when William had been busy with Maine. In 1087 William demanded from Philip the return of the towns of Chaumont, Mantes, and Pontoise. In July he entered Mantes by surprise, but, while the town burned, he either suffered an injury from which he never recovered or he fell fatally ill (sources differ). He was thwarted at the very moment when he seemed about to enforce his last outstanding territorial claim.