Norman Domination
Regime change
The
Normans
The
area that became Normandy was a rich agricultural area of some prosperity,
which was Romanised and urbanized in Roman times, with many Gallo Roman villas.
After the fall of the Romans, the area was settled by Germanic tribes. Over
time the area fell under Frankish control and monasteries were established
there, including Mont Saint Michel, then Montaume,
established in 708 CE. Its long coastline made it susceptible to attacks from
Saxon pirates.
Viking
raids began in about 790 CE, attracted by the wealth of the monasteries. By the
early ninth century CE, Louis the Pious was the Frankish King, son of
Charlemagne, with his seat at Aachen. The Carolingian rulers found it
increasingly difficult to defend their widespread lands. Viking attacks on the
area to become Normandy began in earnest in 841 CE with attacks on Rouen.
Normandy
was founded as a separate province by the Norseman known as Rollo (d 933
CE), but whose Scandinavian name was Hrólfr, the Glorious Wolf.
His nickname was Gungu, the Wanderer, and he
seems to have been a traveller, pillaging around the Baltic and travelling to
the British Isles where he met a Christian, Kathleen, in Northern England, and
they had a child.
He
seems to have arrived in Normandy in about 905 CE where he founded a settlement
around the mouth of the Seine, from where he attacked Paris and Rouen with
varying success. He seems to have been mentored by Cotill
who taught him the Carolingian political landscape.
By
about 911 CE, the new Scandinavian settlers of Normandy were part of the
political landscape. A treaty was signed with the Carolingian King Charles the
Simple, known as the Treaty of Saint Clair sur Epte
after a failed attempt by Rollo to siege Paris and Chartres. The Treaty
provided that Rollo be given land around the mouth of the Seine near Rouen.
Charles could not easily manage the protection of his wider Kingdom, so Rollo
was obliged to protect Normandy, including from Viking attack. Rollo converted
to Christianity and formally given the name Robert. He was made Gerl or
Earl of the Normans and Count of Rouen. The agreement was very favourable to
Rollo and he was given considerable autonomy free of usual feudal obligations.
He married the King of France’s daughter, Gisella, to bind the deal.
At
this stage the Norman lands were a relatively small parcel around Rouen.
However following a cycle of attack and counter attack with local aristocrats
he took more land and used his leverage to obtain royal sanction for his new
acquisitions from the weak French King. By 933 CE he was adding more land to
the west. This was rich agricultural land.
Rollo
faced the challenge to rule the local population, who had previously
experienced the Viking threat with terror. Rather than adopt the Scandinavian
system of government through an assembly of free men, the Thing, he
adopted local more authoritarian laws. He banished non conformers as outlaws.
He supported the agricultural and fishing industry so that the new duchy would
thrive. Normandy grew in prosperity. The Scandinavian pagan ways were replaced
by Christian traditions within a generation. This led to the very quick
establishment of a distinct Norman identity.
The
new Duchy was constantly threatened by the nobility of other territories of the
Franks and complicated strategies of alliance and counter alliance was the
backdrop to Frankish politics.
Rollo’s
son and successor, William Longsword (c893 CE to 942 CE), was killed in
an ambush by the Bretons, in 942 CE. He became a martyr and his son, Rollo’s
grandson, Richard I (942 CE to 996 CE), was his successor.
In
the early years of Richard I’s reign, King Louis IV gave wardship of the ten
year old King to the Count of Pontviou who started to
give away Norman lands. By this time there was sufficient Norman cohesion that
the Norman people marched on the King’s palace to protest. Hostages were taken
and the French King was forced to acknowledge Richard as Duke of Normandy. The
French King then sought support from the Holy Roman Imperial Forces, but the
Normans repulsed them. Richard I aspired for a permanent legacy in the new
dynasty. He consolidated Norman control over the lands won by Rollo. Richard’s
son Robert II was established as Archbishop of Rouen.
Richard
II (reigned 996 CE to 1026) was the next Duke
and he allowed Vikings who were attacking English lands to sell their goods in
Normandy and to seek sanctuary there. This was in contravention with a previous
treaty with Ethelred the Unready not to assist the Vikings. After a period of
tension between Normandy and France, peace was cemented by the marriage of
Richard’s sister Emma to Ethelred, whose sons were Alfred and Edward the
Confessor. When Cnut invaded England in 1016, he forced Emma to marry him,
after Ethelred’s death that year. Alfred and Edward the Confessor were sent to
Normandy to be raised. Emma of Normandy eventually gave birth with Cnut to Harthacanute.
The
Normans continued to identify with their Scandinavian ancestors, and tended to
be favourable towards the Danes.
Richard
III (997 CE to 1027) faced opposition to his
succession in 1026 from his brother, Robert I the Magnificent, who ultimately
prevailed by 1027 as Robert I (1000 to 1035). A new class of more
aggressive Norman barons started to call the shots during Robert’s reign, which
was initially a time of internal reprisal. In 1034, Robert named his
illegitimate son, William (sometimes called William the Bastard), as his
heir and went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he died.
The
eight year old William II of Normandy (c1028 to 1087), one day to be
known as William the Conqueror, was in Nicaea when he took the title to
Normandy. William had been born into a Normandy seized by his father in an act
of fratricide, which had become increasingly fractious. There was an inevitable
period of infighting and death. Guy of Burgundy tried to seize William who fled
to the protection of King Henry I of France who supported William’s return to
Normandy in 1047 when he was able to defeat opposition at the Battle of Val-ès-Dunes near Caen.
In
England, Edward the Confessor, son of Ethelred the Unready and Emma of
Normandy, raised in Normandy, was doing Norman things, like building
Westminster Abbey. In 1051, the heirless English King, was said by the Normans
to have chosen William as his successor to the English crown. It was at this
time that Edward had exiled the dangerous Godwin, Earl of Wessex, his father in
law.
In
1052 Godwin was allowed to return and reached agreement with Edward including
for the return the Godwins’ lands, and the end of some
unpoular Norman practices.
Back
in Normandy William lost support of the French King and faced fresh attacks in
1054, which he repelled again. There followed a period of more land grabbing
and more Norman successes.
In
about 1065, Harold Godwinson was in Normandy and the Norman version of events
is that he took an oath to uphold William’s claim to the English throne.
Edward
the Confessor died in 1065. It was later claimed in the Vita
Edwardi, that he named Harold as his successor.
Harold was crowned on 6 January 1066 in the newly built Westminster Abbey.
Harold
immediately faced the dual threat from Harold Hardrada and William of Normandy.
He defeated the former at Stamford Bridge, but lost to the later at Hastings.
William
consolidated his hold on England by first taking Dover (the key port),
Canterbury (to gain religious control) and Winchester (seat of the royal
treasury).
The
indigenous population tried to rally support for an alternative King, Edgar the
Agling, but he conceded by December 1066. William was
crowned King of England on 25 December 1066 at Westminster Abbey.
The
Duke of Normandy’s primary interest remained Normandy, but his new Kingdom of
England gave him prestige and a new source of income.
He
quickly built Norman castles around the country. They were intended to be
ominous threats to the local population. Non compliance
with the new regime would be met severely from Norman soldiers riding out from
these castles to punish disloyalty. The castles were the stamp of new authority.
Domination
after the Conquest
After
he faced rebellion, William I adopted a more ruthless approach to governing the
country.
· There
was military domination. The Normans built initially wooden and later stone
castles across the countryside. William was ruthless in supressing rebellion.
· There
was political domination. The Normans dispossessed the indigenous aristocracy.
He proclaimed that every part of the kingdom belonged to him by right of
conquest. The Domesday Book provided
William with administrative dominance over 13,400 named places.
· There
was social domination. The local populations, the nativii,
were regarded as mere peasants and to be scorned and laughed at.
· There
was cultural domination. The Normans purged the church. Libraries of written
material were lost. The Normans stopped using English in documents by 1070.
An
uprising in York was ruthlessly put down, York ravaged and William rode through
the city, wearing his Crown, on Christmas Day 1069. The harrying of the north which followed
ruthlessly carried out the threat intended by the domination of the countryside
by Norman castles. The clear message was that they were a real threat to any
disloyalty.
For
William violence and suppression worked.
However
William saw himself as a Norman, who also ruled England. There was no attempt
at consolidation. He had two distinct roles as Duke of Normandy and King of
England, with distinct laws. For Normandy, William was a vassal of the French
King, so separation avoided an issue of his vassal-ship to France arising for
England. He did not bring England under the Norman legal code, since that would
have subsumed England into the French orbit.
England
was therefore administered as shires, divided into wapentakes, administered by
royal sheriffs, who collected taxes and applied the law. Adopting traditional
Anglo Saxon administration suited William well. The money flowed in. The
Domesday Book was created at Christmas 1085 and completed by August 1086, to
consolidate Norman domination.
There
were therefore many building blocks from the pre Norman history of the nation
that survived this time of ruthless change. William was persuaded to show some
element of continuity to cement his rule. He did after all place significance
in persuading his new subjects of his natural succession to Edward the
Confessor. There were aspects of Anglo Saxon government that continued, and
English saints started to return into the cultural tradition.
The
Norman castles started to provide a trading focus and towns grew around them.
England
started to be drawn in to a player in the struggles of the European nations.
Yet, it remained relatively stable and unified. It continued to be influenced
by forces from Scandinavia and from Scotland.
Succession
William
left Normandy to his oldest son, Robert, reflecting the primacy in William’s
eyes of Normandy. His younger son, William, was left the Kingdom of England.
William the Conqueror died on 9 September 1087.
Robert
of Normandy was Duke until 1106. He sought the English throne too, and as
Richard Curthose (‘short stockings’), was an unsuccessful pretender to the
English throne. He fell out with his brothers William II and Henry I. He was
ultimately defeated at the Battle of Tinchebray and
Normandy was absorbed into the English Crown.
This
separation continued and future Kings would continue to style themselves as Rex
Anglorum and Dux Normanoran, held by one
person, but never consolidated.
By
the early twelfth century, writing
started to reflect a greater recognition of an English identity and the
Conquest started to be downplayed.
or
Return to Act 6 – the Game of Thrones
There
is an In Our Time podcast on ‘the Norman Yoke’ – the
idea that the Battle of Hastings sparked years of cruel Norman oppression for
the Anglo Saxons.