William The Conqueror Was Spared By His Son During A Battle Over Land

Robert II was the eldest son of William the Conqueror, the famous Duke of Normandy who conquered England in 1066.  Although Robert was designated to eventually inherit his father’s dukedom of Normandy, he was impatient for power and wanted to be given a realm to govern as soon as possible. William the Conqueror, however, was staunchly unwilling to delegate the governance of his Norman lands to Robert, and as the years rolled by, the repudiated son became more and more frustrated. By 1077, Robert had run out of patience, and he reportedly stormed out of his father’s court and went into a self-imposed exile, hoping he could take control of Normandy with the help of his father’s enemies in France.

In 1079, Robert II returned to Normandy with the help of troops from Flanders, and with the support of King Philip I of France. Robert’s reappearance caused such a stir in Normandy that William the Conqueror was forced to mobilize an army and take to the field against his wayward child. Father and son clashed near Gerberoi castle, a fort granted to Robert by King Philip I. The battle was apparently quite chaotic, and William the Conqueror was reported to have been unhorsed during the fray. Before or during the fall from his horse, William was said to have also suffered an injury to his arm or hand. Worst of all, when King William’s foes realized that he had fallen from his mount, Robert became fully aware of his father’s vulnerable position.

With William the Conqueror at his mercy, Robert supposedly made an honorable choice—he wanted land, not his father’s death, and decided to let King William escape. According to the Chronicle of Florence of Worcester, “Robert, recognizing his father’s voice, instantly dismounted, and, bidding him to mount his own charger, suffered him to depart. The king soon afterward retreated having had many of his men slain and some taken prisoner, and his son William [II Rufus] and serval others wounded” (entry for AD 1079). Despite Robert’s victory in the battle at Gerberoi, which was also attested to in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, William the Conqueror eventually regained momentum and won the war, forcing Robert II to retreat once more to Flanders.  Although he would continue trying to seize Normandy by force, Robert would not succeed in claiming the dukedom until after William the Conqueror’s death in 1087.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Bayeux Tapestry scene of Battle of Hastings showing knights and horses, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle translated by Benjamin Thorpe in 1861 and republished by Cambridge University Press, 2012.
• The Chronicle of Florence of Worcester translated by Thomas Forester. London: Petter and Galpin, originally published 1854. 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-I-king-of-England/New-alliances 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-II-duke-of-Normandy 
• https://www.ancient.eu/William_the_Conqueror/ 
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail/conquest/norman/william_the_conqueror_01.shtml 
• https://www.royal.uk/william-the-conqueror

William The Conqueror’s Rebel Roundup Of 1071

Although William the Conqueror defeated the Anglo-Saxon King Harold Godwinson and seized the throne of England in 1066, the surviving Anglo-Saxon royals and their loyalists continued resisting Norman rule for years to come. The late King Harold’s sons launched several ineffective attacks against Norman-controlled England from a base in Ireland, while another Anglo-Saxon claimant to the throne, Edgar the Ætheling, inspired more threatening (but ultimately unsuccessful) rebellions in the Northumbrian region, even going so far as to enlist the help of the Scots and the Danes in his doomed uprisings. For many a ruler, such attacks, uprisings and foreign interventions might have been fatal. William the Conqueror, however, was one of the most competent rulers of the Middle Ages, and with his Norman war machine and castle-building prowess, William’s occupation of England was too firm for the Anglo-Saxon resistance to overcome.

By 1071, the hopes and morale of the resistance in Northumbria had plummeted. Even Earls Edwin and Morcar, two of the most prominent leaders of the resistance, decided to abandon England and flee to Scotland, where Edgar the Ætheling had already found asylum. The earls decided to split up for their journey, Edwin leading some followers on a route by land, while Morcar took to the sea with other high-profile resistance leaders. Unfortunately, neither party would have any luck on their journey in 1071.

Earl Edwin’s attempt to escape came to a quick end. As it happened, there were traitors in the party of rebels that fled by land. Consequently, Earl Edwin’s life ended in a grisly ambush on the road.  Earl Morcar and the resistance members who decided to flee by sea made better progress. They successfully boarded a ship and started working their way up the network of English rivers, eventually reaching the Isle of Ely, a haven for dissidents. Yet, Morcar’s party, too, did not escape the attention of King William’s spies and informants. When the rebels landed in Ely, King William was quickly informed of their location. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle concisely described the king’s swift and overwhelming siege of the rebels’ position: “when king William was informed of that, he ordered out a naval force and a land-force, and beset the land all about, and wrought a bridge and went in, and [simultaneously attacked with] the naval force on the water-side. And then the outlaws went and surrendered to the king” (A.n. M.LXXI).

Of all the resistance leaders at Ely, only the semi-legendary figure, Hereward the Wake, was able to escape. The less-fortunate warriors who were captured during the siege faced more gruesome fates, including mutilation, imprisonment or execution. Earl Morcar was reportedly imprisoned for the rest of William the Conqueror’s reign and died, still in jail, sometime during the reign of William II Rufus (r. 1087-1100).

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Scene from the life of William the Conqueror by James William Edmund Doyle (1822–1892), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle translated by Benjamin Thorpe in 1861 and republished by Cambridge University Press, 2012.
• The Chronicle of Florence of Worcester translated by Thomas Forester. London: Petter and Galpin, originally published 1854. 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-I-king-of-England/The-Battle-of-Hastings 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edgar-the-Aetheling 
• http://www.englishmonarchs.co.uk/normans_15.html 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hereward-the-Wake 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-II-king-of-England

The Linked Deaths Of Thane Liulf And Bishop Walchere

William the Conqueror, king of England from 1066 to 1087, successfully arranged for Walchere of Lorraine to become the bishop of Durham around 1072. Around the time of Walchere’s appointment to the bishopric, resistance among the newly-conquered Anglo-Saxon population to King William’s Norman rule was beginning to die down. One visible example of this growing acceptance and assimilation among the Anglo-Saxons was the case of a certain wealthy man named Liulf. During the pre-1066 heyday of the Anglo-Saxons, Liulf had been a powerful thane with landholdings scattered in several regions of England. Sometime after 1072, however, Liulf chose to accept Norman rule and decided to live out his retirement in Durham.

As an Anglo-Saxon nobleman, Liulf had business and government experience, and he attempted to cultivate a friendship with the Norman administrators in Durham by offering his advice to them on any matters that they were willing to discuss. He had some success growing closer to Bishop Walchere, but the other administrators, such as the bishop’s secular counterpart, Gilbert, never warmed to the retired thane. As Liulf grew closer to the bishop, the other Norman officials in Durham only continued to become more and more irritated with his presence. Nevertheless, Liulf was safe as long as his friendship with Bishop Walchere remained intact.

Unfortunately for Liulf, something occurred around 1080 that caused a breach between the bishop and the thane. What exactly caused the divide is unknown, but Bishop Walchere’s faith in Liulf was shaken to such a visible extent that the Norman officials operating out of Durham predicted that if they struck at their Anglo-Saxon rival at this time, there would be little repercussion from the bishop. Putting their hopes on this hunch, Liulf’s enemies made their move, and the Anglo-Saxon thane was murdered in his home.

It is difficult to gauge the bishop’s reaction to the death. On the one hand, he reportedly did an investigation, accusing the aforementioned administrative and military official, Gilbert, of being involved in the murder. This official, along with other people implicated in the death, faced banishment from the region of Northumbria. Yet, on the other hand, Bishop Walchere reportedly allowed Gilbert and other such banished people to secretly stay at his Durham church property.

Unfortunately for the Normans in Durham, Liulf had been a well-connected man. His family, friends and other angry Anglo-Saxons marched on Durham to demand revenge. This force became all the more irate when they learned that Bishop Walchere was sheltering the very people that he had earlier banished for being involved in the murder. The bishop, for his part, apparently attempted to negotiate some sort of peace settlement between the accused murderers and the Anglo-Saxons rioters who had poured in from various sections of Northumbria. Bringing these two parties together, however, had a disastrous effect. The fates of Bishop Walchere and his Norman comrades were reported in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which stated, “In this year [1080] bishop Walchere was slain in Durham, at a meeting, and a hundred men with him, French and Flemish; but he himself was born in Lorraine. This the Northumbrians did in the month of May” (AD 1080). In response to the massacre, King William reportedly sent a Norman army to ravage the region of Northumbria.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (A scene from the reign of Henry IV, illustrated by James William Edmund Doyle (1822–1892), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle translated by Benjamin Thorpe in 1861 and republished by Cambridge University Press, 2012.
• The Chronicle of Florence of Worcester translated by Thomas Forester. London: Petter and Galpin, originally published 1854.  

The Northumbrian Coup Against Earl Tostig

Tostig Godwinson became the Earl of Northumbria in 1055. His brother was Earl Harold Godwinson of Wessex and his brother-in-law was King Edward the Confessor of England (r. 1042-1066). Encouraged by his own power and that of his relations, Earl Tostig began to act tyrannically in Northumbria, angering his local liegemen in various ways. The least nefarious of these abuses was a poorly explained increase on Northumbrian taxes. More scandalous, however, were the assassinations of several noblemen that occurred at that time in Northumbria, which the locals attributed to the machinations of Tostig and the fellow members of his House of Godwin.

By 1065, the Northumbrians were fed up with Tostig’s rule. According to the chronicler, Florence of Worcester (d. 1117), the assassinations of three prominent Northumbrians (named of Cospatric, Gamel and Ulf) were what finally caused the region to rebel against its tyrannical leader. Around October 3, 1065, a coup was reportedly launched by a group of local Northumbrian noblemen. At a time when Earl Tostig was away from Northumbria, the members of the coup marched with a small army to the earl’s seat of power at York. The rebellious force skillfully infiltrated the city, systematically executed around two hundred of Tostig’s loyal administrators, and seized control of the treasury and armory in York. With the city of York firmly in the conspirators’ hands, the maneuverings in Northumbria against Tostig transitioned out of the shadows and became a more public affair. Noblemen and peasants rallied behind the coup, and an anti-Tostig army was mobilized which reached a formidable size.

Earl Harold Godwinson led the English response to the Northumbrian revolt, leading on behalf of the increasingly ill King Edward the Confessor. By the time he and his army arrived on the scene of the rebellion, Harold Godwinson found the Northumbrians organized and well-led by a prospective earl named Morcar. As Morcar’s leadership among the rebels was stable and his Northumbrian army had formidable strength, Harold Godwinson was not enthusiastic about attacking the rebel force, even if it was his brother Tostig’s earldom that was at stake. Instead of going to war and crushing the rebellion, Harold Godwinson instead opened up negotiations with Morcar and the rebel leadership. During these negotiations between the English army and the Northumbrian rebels, Harold Godwinson did not put up much of a fight for his tyrannical brother, Tostig. Instead, England accepted Morcar as the new Earl of Northumbria, and Tostig Godwinson was outlawed.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Image from page 44 of "The book of the Bayeux tapestry” edited by Hilaire Belloc (c. 1914), [Public Domain] via flickr and Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle translated by Benjamin Thorpe in 1861 and republished by Cambridge University Press, 2012.
• The Chronicle of Florence of Worcester translated by Thomas Forester. London: Petter and Galpin, originally published in 1854. 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tostig-Earl-of-Northumbria 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-king-of-England-1002-1066 
• https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/morcar-earl-northumbria  

The Odd Tale Of A Joust And Duel Between Edmund Ironside And Canute The Great

From 1013-1014, the Danish King, Sweyn Forkbeard, usurped power in England, displacing the Anglo-Saxon monarch, Æthelred the Unready, and his son, Edmund Ironside. After Sweyn’s death in 1014, Æthelred sailed back to England and was proclaimed king once again by his people. At the same time, Sweyn’s son, Canute, also had a claim to the throne of England. Canute was in a precarious political situation, however, for at the same time that much of England was siding with Æthelred against the Danes, a rival son of Sweyn Forkbeard, by the name of Harald (II) Sweynsen, was simultaneously staking his own claim to Denmark. Thus, unsure about the manpower he could muster or the resources he could access, Canute found himself unprepared for war against the resurging Anglo-Saxons. It would take him about a year to gather enough funds and troops to truly begin campaigning against Æthelred the Unready and Edmund Ironside in 1015 and 1016.

Æthelred the Unready died in early 1016, as a fleet led by Canute was closing in on London. With Æthelred’s death, his crown passed to Edmund Ironside. As his “Ironside” nickname suggests, King Edmund (II) put up a stout defense against Canute’s attempts to reclaim the throne of England. Throughout 1016, Edmund and Canute skirmished and battled in multiple clashes of various intensity, the final of which was said to have been the Battle of Ashingdon or Assandun. After that battle, the rival leaders (or their vassals) tired of war, and a peace meeting was arranged on an island then called Olney or Olanege.

According to the histories of Henry of Huntingdon (c. 1080-1160) and Roger of Wendover (d. 1236), Edmund Ironside and Canute were convinced by their supporters to settle their differences once and for all in a duel. As the story goes, an arena was prepared on the designated island and both monarchs arrived in their best sets of armor. They began their fight with spears at opposite ends of a list, competing in something like a joust, yet the two kings wore such exquisite sets of armor that the spears shattered on impact. Next, the kings unsheathed their blades to continue the duel. The English chroniclers claimed, of course, that Edmund Ironside was the superior of the two in the fight, and Henry of Huntingdon outlandishly claimed that Canute, in a moment of fear, offered Edmund control of Denmark in hopes of stopping the duel. Yet, Canute (in this odd scenario) apparently regained some momentum in the duel, and brought the fight back to a standstill. The peculiar tale concluded with Edmund and Canute ending the duel as friends and they agreed to partition England between themselves.

As you may have guessed, this entertaining but unlikely story is viewed with great skepticism, especially since older sources, such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Chronicle of Florence of Worcester, make no mention of a duel occurring during the peace negations between Edmund Ironside and Canute that occurred on the island of Olney or Olanege. Either way, duel or not, Canute would be victorious in the long-run. Edmund Ironside died of illness before the end of 1016, leading to the ascension of Canute as king of all England. Canute would go on to add Denmark and Norway to his realm, and was eventually given the epithet of “the great.”

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Depiction of Edmund Ironside and Canute the Great at the Battle of Assandun, by Matthew Paris  (1200–1259), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle translated by Benjamin Thorpe in 1861 and republished by Cambridge University Press, 2012.
• The Chronicle of Florence of Worcester translated by Thomas Forester. London: Petter and Galpin, originally published in 1854. 
• https://avalon.law.yale.edu/medieval/ang11.asp 
• https://archive.org/details/chroniclehenryh00foregoog/page/n235 
• https://archive.org/details/rogerofwendovers01rogemiss/page/292 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sweyn-I 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ethelred-the-Unready 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Canute-I  

The Battle Of Buttington

King Alfred the Great of Wessex (r. 871-899) struggled to survive against the powerful Viking threats to his kingdom in the 870s, and these scares prompted Alfred to impose sweeping military reforms on his realm. In the 880s, Alfred apparently began to divide his manpower into three categories—warriors on active duty with the kingdom’s field army, warriors on leave at home, and troops serving as regional garrisons. The latter group, the garrisoned warriors, were spread throughout the kingdom in a system of fortified burhs, which could act both defensively and offensively. In addition to bogging down invaders and Vikings until the field army arrived, the forces from the burhs could also band together and strike out at foes whenever the king’s main army was occupied elsewhere. This scenario is exactly what happened at the Battle of Buttington in 893.

The 880s, the time in which Alfred imposed his military reforms, was a decade of relative peace. In 892, however, Alfred’s domain was once more thrown into turmoil when two large Viking forces returned to England, landing in the region of Kent after a long period of pillaging in France. Hastein (or Hæsten), the most famous leader of the new arrivals, camped at Milton. The rest of the newly-arrived Vikings camped to the south of Hastein’s position, setting up their headquarters at Appledore. In response to this threat, King Alfred positioned his field army in-between the two Viking armies by 893, and worked with the burhs in the area to contain the raiders. Alfred had some success, and eventually caught a portion of the Vikings off guard near the Thames, at the Battle of Farnham. Yet, King Alfred was soon called away from the eastern front when he learned that a Viking fleet had appeared on the coast of Devon, in the southwest of England.

While King Alfred was focused defending the southwest, the Vikings in the east (the Appledore and Milton armies) combined together at Shoebury, in Essex. From there, they trekked far across the country, following the Thames and then the Severn, eventually setting up camp in the Welsh region of Buttington. They had made good time, for when the new headquarters on the Severn was completed, King Alfred was still occupied with the Viking fleet and army in the region of Devon.

Unfortunately for the Vikings at Buttington, Alfred’s network of garrisoned burhs allowed the kingdom to defend itself, even if the king was not present with the official field army. As Alfred was not present, Ealdormen Æthelred, Æthelhelm and Æthelnoth took control of the situation and mobilized the nearby burhs, and also called in the support of Alfred’s Welsh vassals and allies. This army of Anglo-Saxons and Welshmen successfully surprised the Vikings at Buttington and besieged the camp from all sides. The Vikings on the Severn were quarantined in the siege for many weeks, which no doubt put King Alfred at ease as he continued his campaign against the separate Viking fleet and army in Devon. The besieged forces at Buttington held out until they had to start slaughtering their own horses for food. Yet, once the horse meat ran out, the Vikings decided to make a desperate charge against the besiegers.

At an unknown time in 893, the starving Vikings poured out of their camp and attacked the army of the Ealdormen. It is unknown whether the goal of the Viking charge was to simply escape or, more ambitiously, to defeat the besiegers in battle, but, whatever the case, the Vikings became bogged down during the combat, resulting in a “mighty slaughter of the Danes there” (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, entry for 893). Many Vikings, however, did punch through the Anglo-Saxon lines and these survivors fled all the way back to Essex, on the eastern side of England. The Battle of Buttington, in addition to showcasing the effectiveness of the garrisoned burh system, was also said to have convinced any remaining Viking-aligned Welsh leaders to defect to King Alfred’s side.

Picture Attribution: (Battle of Stamford Bridge painted by Peter Nicolai Arbo  (1831–1892), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle translated by Benjamin Thorpe in 1861 and republished by Cambridge University Press, 2012.
• The Chronicle of Florence of Worcester translated by Thomas Forester. London: Petter and Galpin, originally published 1854. 
• Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources translated, introduced and denoted by Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004. 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-king-of-Wessex 
• https://www.ancient.eu/Alfred_the_Great/ 
• https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095539594