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História da Língua Inglesa   

Normandy, William of Normandy, and The Norman Conquest

Normandy

French Normandie, historic and cultural region encompassing the northern French départements of Manche, Calvados, Orne, Eure, and Seine-Maritime and coextensive with the former province of Normandy.

Ancient History

The Seine and Eure valleys were inhabited from paleolithic times. Their Celtic inhabitants were conquered by Julius Caesar in 56 BC, and the region eventually became the Roman province of Gallia Lugdunensis Secunda. Its inhabitants were Christianized in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD and passed under Merovingian Frankish rule in the late 5th century, becoming part of the Frankish kingdom of Neustria.

The Normandy coast was repeatedly devastated by raids of the Vikings, or Northmen, from the 8th century on, and as its Carolingian rulers became weaker, the Vikings penetrated farther inland in the course of their depredations. Finally the French king Charles III the Simple ceded the territory around Rouen and the mouth of the Seine River to Rollo, the chief of the largest band of Vikings, in the Treaty of St. Clair-sur-Epte (911). Rollo's Scandinavian countrymen immigrated in large numbers to settle the country, and they adopted the French language, customs, and religion. These Vikings became known as Normans, and the region they settled became known as Normandy.

Rollo's Christianized successors to the dukedom of Normandy acquired neighboring territories in a series of wars, becoming so powerful that the control they exercised over their domains was practically independent of the French crown. William, duke of Normandy and a distant successor to Rollo, mounted an invasion of England in 1066, becoming William I of England (William the Conqueror) and thus uniting the rule of England and Normandy in himself. When William died in 1087, the personal union of Normandy and England was broken as his sons disputed the succession. Their fraternal quarrels ended in 1106, when one son, Henry I, king of England, defeated his brother, Robert, duke of Normandy, in the Battle of Tinchebrai, after which the succession in Normandy temporarily passed to the English kings. However, in 1144 Geoffrey Plantagenet, count of Anjou, conquered Normandy. In 1150 he ceded the duchy to his son Henry, who later became king of England as Henry II in 1154.

In this way Normandy became part of the so-called Angevin (from Anjou) empire, which was a series of far-flung territories ruled by Henry II and succeeding English kings. But Normandy thus also became a primary objective for the Capetian kings of France in their struggle against the Plantagenet Angevins of England. The military and diplomatic struggles of the French Capetian monarchs Louis VII and Philip II Augustus to gain control of the region from its English Angevin rulers culminated in the complete conquest and annexation of Normandy by Philip in 1204. However, it was only with the Treaty of Paris (1259) that the English crown in the person of Henry III formally surrendered its claim to Normandy, thus acknowledging the loss of the duchy to France. The English subsequently reconquered Normandy in the early 15th century during the Hundred Years' War, but the French again recovered it, achieving permanent control in 1450 after their victory in the Battle of Formigny.

William of Normandy

b. c. 1028, Falaise, Normandy
d. Sept. 9, 1087, Rouen

Byname William The Conqueror, or The Bastard, or William of Normandy, French Guillaume Le Conquérant, or Le Bâtard, or Guillaume de Normandie, duke of Normandy (as William II) from 1035 and king of England from 1066, one of the greatest soldiers and rulers of the Middle Ages. He made himself the mightiest feudal lord in France and then changed the course of England's history by his conquest of that country.

Early Years

William was the elder of two children of Robert I of Normandy and his concubine Herleva, or Arlette, the daughter of a burgher from the town of Falaise. In 1035 Robert died when returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and William, his only son, whom he had nominated as his heir before his departure, was accepted as duke by the Norman magnates and his feudal overlord, King Henry I of France. William and his friends had to overcome enormous obstacles. His illegitimacy (he was generally known as the Bastard) was a handicap, and he had to survive the collapse of law and order that accompanied his accession as a child.

Three of William's guardians died violent deaths before he grew up, and his tutor was murdered. His father's kin were of little help; most of them thought that they stood to gain by the boy's death. But his mother managed to protect William through the most dangerous period. These early difficulties probably contributed to his strength of purpose and his dislike of lawlessness and misrule.

Ruler of Normandy

By 1042, when William reached his 15th year, was knighted, and began to play a personal part in the affairs of his duchy, the worst was over. But his attempts to recover rights lost during the anarchy and to bring disobedient vassals and servants to heel inevitably led to trouble. From 1046 until 1055 he dealt with a series of baronial rebellions, mostly led by kinsmen. Occasionally he was in great danger and had to rely on Henry of France for help. In 1047 Henry and William defeated a coalition of Norman rebels at Val-ès-Dunes, southeast of Caen. It was in these years that William learned to fight and rule.

William soon learned to control his youthful recklessness. He was always ready to take calculated risks on campaign and, most important, to fight a battle. But he was not a chivalrous or flamboyant commander. His plans were simple, his methods direct, and he exploited ruthlessly any advantage gained. If he found himself at a disadvantage, he withdrew immediately. He showed the same qualities in his government. He never lost sight of his aim to recover lost ducal rights and revenues, and, although he developed no theory of government or great interest in administrative techniques, he was always prepared to improvise and experiment. He seems to have lived a moral life by the standards of the time, and he acquired an interest in the welfare of the Norman church. He made his half brother, Odo, bishop of Bayeux in 1049 at the age of about 16, and Odo managed to combine the roles of nobleman and prelate in a way that did not greatly shock contemporaries. But William also welcomed foreign monks and scholars to Normandy. Lanfranc of Pavia, a famous master of the liberal arts, who entered the monastery of Bec about 1042, was made abbot of Caen in 1063.

According to a brief description of William's person by an anonymous author, who borrowed extensively from Einhard's Life of Charlemagne, he was just above average height and had a robust, thick-set body. Though he was always sparing of food and drink, he became fat in later life. He had a rough bass voice and was a good and ready speaker. Writers of the next generation agree that he was exceptionally strong and vigorous. William was an out-of-doors man, a hunter and soldier, fierce and despotic, generally feared; uneducated, he had few graces but was intelligent and shrewd and soon obtained the respect of his rivals.

The Norman Conquest

The Norman Conquest has long been argued about. The question has been whether William I introduced fundamental changes in England or based his rule solidly on Anglo-Saxon foundations. A particularly controversial issue has been the introduction of feudalism. On balance, the debate has favoured dramatic change while also granting that in some respects the Normans learned much from the English past. Yet William replaced his initial policy of trying to govern through Englishmen with an increasingly thoroughgoing Normanization.

The military conquest of England by William, duke of Normandy, primarily effected by his decisive victory at the Battle of Hastings (Oct. 14, 1066), and resulting ultimately in profound political, administrative, and social changes in the British Isles.

Edward the Confessor, last king of the Old English royal line, had almost certainly in 1051 designated William as his successor. Although on Edward's death (Jan. 5, 1066) Harold, the powerful earl of Wessex, had himself crowned king, his position was far from secure. On the Continent the political situation favoured William's enterprise; and by August 1066 he had assembled a force of about 5,000 knights ready for embarkation.

Harold had kept his militia on guard throughout the summer; in early September, with supplies exhausted, it was dismissed. Harold had then to hasten to Yorkshire, where at Stamford Bridge (September 25) he defeated an invading army led by Harold III Sigurdsson, king of Norway.

The northerly wind, which for eight weeks had penned William's transports in harbour, changed on September 27. William crossed the Channel immediately, landing in Pevensey Bay on September 28 and moving directly to Hastings. Harold made a forced march southward and by October 13 was approaching Hastings with about 7,000 men, many poorly armed and untrained. He was almost certainly unwise in thus forcing an early engagement. Surprised by William at dawn on October 14, he drew up his army on a ridge 10 miles (16 km) northwest of Hastings. Throughout the day William attacked with cavalry charges interspersed with flights of arrows. The English were gradually worn down; late in the afternoon Harold was killed by a chance arrow, and by nightfall the remaining English had scattered and fled.

William then made a sweeping advance to isolate London, and at Berkhamstead the major English leaders submitted to him. He was crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. Sporadic native revolts continued until 1071. The most serious, in Northumbria (1069-70), William suppressed in person, proceeding thereafter to devastate vast tracts of the North. The subjection of the country was completed by the rapid building of a great number of castles.

The extent and desirability of the changes brought about by the Conquest have long been disputed among historians. Certainly in political terms William's victory destroyed England's links with Scandinavia, bringing the country instead into close contact with western Europe. Inside England the most radical change was the introduction of military feudalism. While tenure of land in return for services had existed before the Conquest, William's establishment of a system that would provide him with upward of 4,000 knights for his feudal host revolutionized the upper ranks of society. England was parceled out among about 180 Norman tenants in chief and innumerable mesne tenants, all holding their fiefs by knight service. The resultant almost total replacement of an English with a Norman aristocracy was paralleled by a similar change of personnel among the upper clergy and administrative officers.

Anglo-Saxon England had developed a highly organized central and local government and an effective judicial system. All these were retained and utilized by William, whose coronation oath showed his intention of continuing in the English royal tradition. The old administrative divisions were not superseded by the new fiefs; nor did feudal justice normally usurp the customary jurisdiction of shire and hundred courts. In them, and in the king's court, the common law of England continued to be administered. Innovations included the new but restricted body of "forest law" and the introduction in criminal cases of the Norman trial by combat alongside the old Saxon ordeals. Increasing use was made of the inquest procedure--the sworn testimony of neighbours, both for administrative purposes and in judicial cases. A major change was William's removal of ecclesiastical cases from the secular courts, which allowed the subsequent introduction into England of the then rapidly growing canon law.

Apart from the tragedy of the dispossessed Old English aristocracy, probably the most regrettable effect of the Conquest was the total eclipse of the English vernacular as the language of literature, law, and administration. Superseded in official documents and other records by Latin and then increasingly in all areas by Norman-French, written English hardly reappeared until the 13th century.

Copyright © 1994-2000 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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