NOW IT’S THE NORMANS
1066 AND ALL THAT!
AND WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR
(Or William the Bastard as he was also known!!)
William’s ancestors were Vikings too, so we hadn’t completely seen the back of them. Vikings had settled in Northern France, hence Normandy, 150 years earlier in 900 AD and William believed he was an heir to the English Throne because King Edward the Confessor had promised it to him. But one of the English Earls disagreed and had himself declared King Harold. He wasn’t actually the heir in line to the throne, but he was on the spot and William was still in France when the position became vacant!
So William invaded..the Battle of Hastings decided the output of the conflict, when Harold was killed with and arrow in the eye…Nasty!!
The most troublesome area for the Norman expansion as you might expect was the North of England. William destroyed all the land from York and Hull northwards and made it uninhabitable. He burned towns, villages farms and fields, destroying crops and so creating a huge famine. It is estimated that 100,000 people died and others moved south bringing about a refugee problem there. Our area may have been spared the worst of it but most of England was damaged and the Domesday Book records that the value of Blackwell dropped by more than half between 1066 and 1086, so William’s income from taxation suffered similarly. Shame!!
Apparently William apologised on his deathbed for what became known as “The Harrying of the North” , thinking he might have been a but harsh and hoping his God would not condemn his spirit to hell!! Bit late??
Dorothy Mellors 2024
The Domesday Book