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A
This episode is brought to you by Marshalls, where you never have to compromise between quality and price. The buyers of Marshalls hustle hard working to bring you great deals on brand name and designer pieces because Marshalls believes everyone deserves access to the good stuff. Visit a Marshalls store near you or shop online@marshalls.com so good, so good, so good. Just in thousands of winter arrivals at your Nordstrom rack store, save up to 70% on coats, slippers and cashmere from Kate Spade, New York, Vince Ugg, Levi's, and more. Check out these boots. They've got the best gifts. My holiday shopping hack join the NordicLub get an extra 5% off every rack purchase with your Nordstrom credit card. Plus buy it online and pick it up in store the same day for free. Big gifts, big perks. That's why you rack. This episode is brought to you by White Claw Surge. Nice choice hitting up this podcast. No surprises. You're all about diving into tastes everyone in the room can enjoy. Just like White Claw Sur. It's for celebrating those moments when connections have been made and the night's just begun. With bold flavors and 8% alcohol by volume. Unleash the night. Unleash White Claw Surge. Please drink responsibly. Hard seltzer with flavors 8% alcohol by volume. White Claw Seltzer Works Chicago, Illinois when did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets. Mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more@WhatsApp.com welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. Five years ago, while the UK was in coronavirus lockdown, we here at History Extra embarked on what we described as what might become a short regular series. Our Sunday Everything youg Wanted to Know episodes. More than 200 instalments later. We've covered everything from the Assyrians to Alcatraz, offering insights from some of the world's leading experts. We wanted to bring you even more of this expertise, so from next week we're going to be starting a new series of multi part explorations of some of history's most fascinating topics, including the Gunpowder Plot, the life and work of Jane Austen, and more. Check back next Sunday for that. But for today's episode, we thought we'd mark the End of this chapter by revisiting the very first Everything youg Wanted To Know episode featuring Mark Morris discussing the Normans with Dave Musgrove.
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B
First question, and this comes from my friend G ugle, who won the Battle of Hastings and why?
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A
Oh, this is an easy one, because we're still fairly confident about the answer that the winner of the Battle of Hastings, we're still reasonably satisfied, was William, Duke William of Normandy, later known, known as the Conqueror. Why? I mean, the contemporary answer would have been because God favored him. You know, when you went to battle in the Middle Ages, you're putting your dispute to the judgment of God. Men don't decide battles. God decides the outcome of battles. So God had decided, according to contemporary minds, that his claim to the throne of England was the greater one. Why? In terms of, you know, the way we would analyze it now, superior generalship, in that William held his line together while Harold's line started to break up. But one of the principal reasons, of course, is luck. I mean, you know, what ultimately decides the battle is William survives it and Harold dies on the battlefield. And with lots of projectile missiles flying around, that could have gone either way. So, yeah, combination of good generalship, luck, and having God decide that your flame is superior.
- [03:55]
B
A couple more from Google and I'm going to combine them. So there was a question, who were the Normans and where did they come from? And then there's also another popular Google search, is, are Normans and Vikings the same? So you could probably answer those questions again.
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A
So the Normans, I mean, Norman is the same root as the word Norseman or Northman. So in a sense, they were Vikings. I mean, they had. Normandy is the area Neustria of Frankia. So it's the part of Frankia which is settled by invaders from Scandinavia from the late 9th, early 10th centuries. But like questions about the Vikings in England, who similarly settle northeastern and eastern parts of England, the question boils down to how many came and what impact did they have on the indigenous peoples. So, clearly, when the Normans arrive in Normandy, they don't eradicate or expel all the native population. They settle down and marry into that population. The numbers of people that did that, we can't recover now. There simply isn't the data. So, yes, the Normans, particularly the elite of Normandy, kind of gloried to some extent in their Viking past, but they very quickly take on Frankish traits, Christian traits. So whereas the first, for example, the first duke of the Normans, or the first ruler of the Normans, later called a Duke is Rolf or Rollo, who has a good traditional Scandinavian Viking name. But he calls his son William, William calls his son Richard, Richard calls his son Richard, etc. So you have Williams, Richards and Roberts there, and all of which are Frankish names and Christian names and they adopt Christianity and they start founding monasteries by the end of the 10th century, so they start building castles, they start fighting on horseback so that they're adopting to all these Frankish customs. So yes, they're ancestrally Viking, but they are quite different, especially by the time we get to 1066, whilst there were other writers in Frankia who would still denigrate them by saying, oh, Normans, you know, they're little, they're just little better than scrubbed up Vikings. There's still a sense among rival Frankish principalities that these were, you know, the descendants of barbarians. But the Normans themselves consider themselves very cutting edge and sophisticated because they'd taken on all this Frankish culture in the meantime. So quite a difference between Normans and Norsemen by the time you get to 1066.
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B
Okay, right, so we're going to take our first reader question. This is asked by Paul Sansoussi and his question is, did Edward, he's referring to Edward the Confessor, make a commitment to William or was William merely being opportunistic when deciding to invade? And then he's got a follow up question, if that is. So why did the Witan ratify Harold's selection by Edward? So this requires a little bit of explanation question, I guess, but it's basically also answering a Google question which is why did the Normans invade England?
- [06:48]
A
Yeah, I mean it's. Well, the short answer to the Google question, why did the Normans invade? Is because in 1066 the succession of England was disputed. So that's the, that's the bottom line. We have a disputed succession because the Edward. You mentioned, King Edward the Confessor, famously, although he reigned for a long time, for 24 or 25 years, he famously doesn't produce any children, doesn't produce any sons. So he leaves. He has a succession problem, the way he seems to have preferred. I say seems because none of the evidence for this is completely incontrovertible. But the way he seems to want to solve it is in 1051 he falls out with his very powerful father in law and brothers in law, the Godwinsons, or Earl Godwin and his sons if you prefer, and expels them. And the Godwin plan, because Edward is married to Godwin's daughter Edith. The Godwin plan had Been well, Edith will produce children with Edward and there'll be lots of little Godwins running around and you know, by a process of, you know, marrying into the, the ancient royal family of Wessex, England, that will solve the succession. But Edward doesn't have anything to do with that. And again historians will say, well, perhaps he or she would, they were just as a couple, infertile. What was said at the time was by a tract commissioned by Edith herself was that they haven't produced any children because Edward hadn't slept with her. So Edward's preferred solution in 1051 is he invites William to come to England. Now that seems the evidence for that is very solid because it's mentioned in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. Although no English sources directly discuss Edward having promised the throne to William. There is a version of the chronicle, the D version of the Chronicle that says William came to England in the winter of 1051, 1052, and talked with Edward about the things they needed to talk talk about. And Edward received him as a vassal and then he went home again. So there's definitely that contact in that crucial period where the Godwins are expelled. So yes, to answer the reader's question or the Twitter question, I think the Norman and the English sources together and Edwards behavior and the Godwin's behavior strongly suggests that William did make a promise of the throne to William in 1051, 1052. But then the Godwins come back in 1052, there's Godwin Revanche and they take effectively, I think they reduce Edward to a rubber stamp at that point. I think for the last 14 years of his reign he's little more than a Godwin cipher. And I think that explains why the Witan as your questioner called it, the King's council decided to go a different way in 1066 because the Godwyn's power after 1052 grows inexorably. So they start off in 1052 when older Godwin dies, he dies in 1053. Rather they start off at that point with one earldom, the earldom of Wessex, which Harold inherits. But by the end of the 1060s they have four earldoms. All four Godwin brothers who aren't either dead or in prison have an earldom each and they have this vast kind of powerful, all controlling affinity of friends and supporters. So the Archbishop of Canterbury is a supporter. The Archbishop of York by 1060 is a Godwinson man. So who's going to say no to the Godwins when Edward finally shuffles off in 1066 and say, oh, actually I think this should go to a Norman duke. This is something that they've been tilting at for 10, 15 years or 20 years perhaps. So I think that's why people around the king in 1066, they're not interested in honouring some promise that Edward made when he was free of Godwin control. They're interested in having the man they want to rule the kingdom.
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B
Okay, so the upshot of that, of course, is that William invades and we get to the Battle of Hastings. So we'll move on to a few Battle of Hastings questions and the most obvious one is why was the Battle of Hastings called the Battle of Hastings?
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A
Ah, well, this is straightforward, as you say. William lands at Pevensey on the 27th or 28th of September 1066. He only spends a day or so there. He moves immediately east to Hastings where he makes his camp. So the Normans, you know, this is where the Anglo Saxon chronicle locates the Normans at Hastings. And when Harold marches down to confront him, Harold's plan, it seems, is to attack the Normans camp to catch the manaweas, as he had caught the other invaders of 1066. The Norwegian king Harald Hardrada is caught off guard by Harold surprising him. So Harold seems to favor the ta da surprise attack. It's King Harald and everyone ends up dead. But in the case of William, William discovers that Harold is on the march and leaves his camp early in the morning of the 14th of October 1066 and intercepts Harold as he's approaching. So they end up fighting at some previously nondescript spot, which the Anglo Saxon Chronicle simply says it was. They met at the site of the old apple tree. But since ever since the battle was fought, of course it's been known as bellum in Latin, battle. So it's the site of the modern town of Battle is where the battle was fought.
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B
And that leads on to the next question by asked by David Rogers, which is the traditional location for the Battle of Hastings. At battle, as you said. Correct. There have been some people which have questioned whether it's in the right place at all.
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A
Short answer, Yes, I mean, as you say, the traditionally the battle was thought to have been thought at battle because it's called battle and there's a socking great abbey there which was built by William the Conqueror to mark the site of the battle. So for hundreds, for 900 years or more, not almost 950 years, everyone was content with this tradition. And then, I mean, there's no better word, really, to say, if you, if you think otherwise, you fall into the category of conspiracy theorists, because you have to dismiss a lot of good contemporary evidence. The main one being. I mean, this, the. The conspiracy theory, as I will call it, hinges on saying, well, there is no evidence that. Or there, rather, the story that Battle Abbey, the altar of Battle Abbey, was built on the spot where Harold fell. This is a confection made up in the late 12th century by the author of the Battle Abbey chronicle, which is an unreliable source, so they say, and therefore this is late evidence and must be ruled out of contention. And that's just not true. If you go back through the chronicles, right back to the early 12th century, you can see the same story. I mean, William of Malmesbury, for example, who's writing in the 1120s, says that the altar of the abbey was situated on the spot where Harold fell. But you can push it back even further than that. The author of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, who was writing demonstrably, writing before 1100 in his obituary for William, says, on the very spot, on Than Ilkenstjorda, my Anglo Saxon pronunciation is terrible, but on Than Ilkenstjoda, on the very spot where God granted him the conquest of England, he caused a great abbey to be built. Now, you know, that's not only an early source, it's an English source. You know, the Anglo Saxon Chronicle in its obituary for William doesn't have. Well, it doesn't have a great deal of positive. It has some positive things to say about William, but also has a lot of critical things to say. There's no reason for this author to be inventing this tale. So you can push the tradition that William built the abbey on the spot where Harold fell right back to William's own lifetime. That same obiturist says, you know, how should we describe William? We who have lived at his court and looked upon him with our own eyes, you know, so it's, it's, it's as close to a good, reliable contemporary source as you can get. And you've still got the abbey there, of course, marking the spot which. And it's in a stupid place to build an abbey. It's on the side of a hill. You know, it's the tradition, the later tradition, that the monks wanted to build it somewhere else, and William told them, no, it has to go on. That particular awkward spot fits very well with the layout, the topography of the abbey. So both the archaeology, or both the architecture and the chronicle tradition fit very well with. That's where the battle was fought, okay?
- [14:44]
B
So English heritage can rest easy, that they've got the right place for their battle. Yeah, and you mentioned Harald Hardrada just then. That leads on to the next question from Chris George. Why did Godwinson, Harold Godwinson, choose to make a stand so soon after Stamford Bridge? So the battle that Harold Hafta fought in, that fight in the North.
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A
Well, I don't think he had any choice. I mean, you know, Harold's in a very difficult position in 1066. He knows about the looming Norman invasion because William makes no secret of it. From the start of 1066, you know, by February, March 1066, he's seeking or has obtained permission from the Pope, or the blessing from the Pope, you might say. And he's. He's building, assembling an armada of ships, he's recruiting men throughout the summer. So all this is happening in plain sight on the other side of the Channel. What doesn't seem to cross his radar at all is the fact that the Norwegians are planning to do the same. The Norwegians, being more of a seaborne power in any case, seem to assemble this very quickly. So William has all his manpower, all his ships concentrated on the south coast, dismisses them in early September 1066 because, as the Chronicle says, he couldn't hold them together anymore. He'd held them together throughout the whole, whole of the late spring and summer. And then within days of having dismissed this huge force, he's told that the Norwegians have invaded and are menacing York. So he has to rush up to Yorkshire to confront them and does, as is well known, does spectacularly well, surprises them, kills Harald Hardrada, the King of Norway, who is one of the most fearsome warriors of his age. Also, his younger brother, Tostig Godwinson, Harold's younger brother, falls in the course of the battle. Harold is responding to this very rapidly developing situation. But then within a few days of the Battle of Stamford bridge, which is 25 September 1066, he learns that the Normans have landed on 27 September 1066. So however long that news takes to travel from Sussex to Yorkshire, which is about 300 miles, say three or four days, with the swiftest running horse, he realises he has to go down south and do exactly the same again. And I saw, because you sent me an email of the questions to sort of run on ahead and anticipate one of the next ones is, you know, why? Why did he do that? Why didn't he send someone else? You just can't do that. If you're king in the Middle Ages, you know, the whole point of Harold as a strong candidate for the kingship in January 1066 is that he's not a sort of 12 year old boy with a stronger blood claim, is that he's a man in his 40s who's proven experience not only in government but in warfare. Warfare. He's the man who conquered Wales, you know, so he's seen to be a strong pair of hands. You can't suddenly say, oh, I've got a bit of a gammy leg, you know, I'm feeling a bit under the weather, I'm going to send someone else to fight the Normans. Kings who do that, you know, you can find the odd example of kings who do that successfully, but that it tends to affect their reputation very badly. 50 years before 1066, you have the death of Aethelred the Unready, who was a king who shirked battle. 150 years after 1066, you have King John, who is a sort of almost brave Sir Robin type figure, adept at running away when you know, danger rears its ugly head. So you have to lead from the front. It's inconceivable that Harold would have said, well, I'm going to send my brother Leofwine or Girth to fight this battle for me. So he has to go down and engage William personally. So that's why the timing and the pace of events is dictated by William landing.
- [18:18]
B
We'll move on to the next, which is quite a specific reading of a bit of the battle. And this is from Johnny H. He asks who led the last stand at the Malphos, which is supposedly a deep ditch where the pursuing Normans were butchered as the battle ended. And then he goes on to say, nobody knows where the bells, Edwin Waltoff and Morcar were. So a fairly detailed question, Fairly detailed.
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A
Question, but unfortunately we don't have fairly detailed sources about the Malphos, so it's unanswerable, I'm afraid. I mean, the Malfoss, sort of much debated. Was it during the battle, was it after the battle? It seems that it's actually the Battle Abbey chronicle that I mentioned earlier and I think Alderic Vitalis. This is a long time since I wrote this book, but those two later chroniclers describe it in some detail, contemporary chroniclers don't. Or maybe William of Poitiers mentions it. But the thing is, none of them will go into the kind of detail that your questioner requires. So all is said is that after. It is actually William of Poitiers who was writing close to events. He talks about the Normans pursuing the English throughout the night into the darkness. And several of the Normans falling into this invisible obstacle, this ancient rampart or ditch. But it's just something that seems to happen in the route. I mean, that maybe that some of the English troops kind of saw this as a point where they could mount us, a sort of last line of defense. But we're not told the names of any of the leaders at that point. Harold is dead. Harold is dead by this point. And the rest of the English are fleeing. As for the earls Edwin and Morcar, it seems, I mean it's very unlikely, it seems to me that they were on the battlefield at all. It depends on how you read particular line of a later chronicle of John of Worcester. You can charitably say, well, yes, they were probably there, but it seems unlikely they were there because they are with the rest of the English resistance in London for the next bit of the story. So unless they sort of hot footed it from Hastings back to London, which is possible, it seems much more likely that they just, just didn't make it in time down to Hastings. And they were kind of fair weather friends of Harald. Anyway, traditionally their family had been the major rivals to the Godwinsons. So short answer. We don't know a lot about the malphothos and certainly no individuals are named as having died or defended it.
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B
And I think in the biotapestry the malphos looks like it might be mid battle. There is that famous bit where the horses are all tumbling head first into sea.
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A
That's right. That may be an attempt on the part of the tapestry artist to show that kind of Malfoss scene. And I say this is. Sorry, it's a long time since I wrote the book. So these kind of footnote y questions have faded from my mind somewhat. But I have a feeling that the tapestry might affect a later narrative source that places the Malfos mid battle. But as I said, the early. I mean, I'm 100% certain now that the earliest description of it is William of Poitier, who's writing in the early 1070s. So within five or six years of the battle. And he talks about it as having happened after the event. So there's no, I think there's no doubt that it happened in the route as they were running away. But the sources mention no individuals.
- [21:16]
B
Sure. Okay. A popular Google question. How long did the Battle of Hastings last in hours. Specifically.
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A
Specifically, we don't know, but we're told it's. It lasted from the sort of like I think maybe one of the chronicler says, from the third hour of the day. It's not from sunrise. It's sort of because it's not from sunrise because the Normans have to reach the battlefield. So they have to march the six miles, six and a half miles from Hastings to battle. So that's going to take them two or three hours. So it can't start much before 9 o' clock in the morning if they leave at sunrise. This is October, remember? So if they, if they march when the sun comes up. But we are told by the contemporary chroniclers, both William and Poitiers, and I think the song of the battle of Hastings, the Carmen, that the battle goes on until day was turning into night. So basically dusk. So about four or five o' clock in October. So it goes on for eight hours, nine hours. Of course, there's no point where someone, once Harold dies, there's no sense in which someone blows a whistle and says, that's it, you know, exchange shirt, shake hands. The battle continues. It becomes a route which we're told lasts throughout the night. So if you, like, you could say it lasts 24 hours or, you know, but if the battle is seen to have been decided when Harold dies, then Harold dies to sort of pinch from Monty Python about tea time.
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B
Okay.
- [22:41]
A
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- [23:49]
B
Used to describe.
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A
An individual whose spirit is unyielding, unconstrained. One who navigates life on their own terms, effortlessly. They do not always show up on time, but when they arrive, you notice an individual confident in their contradictions. They know the rules, but behave as if they do not exist. New Teen, the new fragrance by Miu Miu, defined by you.
- [24:16]
B
A quick one on the biotapestry. The biotapestry, of course, famously shows the Battle of Hastings and the run up to it. And the question from Karen P Is, what's the missing bit of the biotapestry? So she's referring, no doubt, to the missing end section.
- [24:29]
A
Yeah. Unless there's a bit in the middle that she knows about and we don't. That's been nicked. No, it's just the end, the tapestry. I mean, the tapestry is just. I won't go on about it for very long, but the tapestry is just the most amazing survival. To have nearly 70 meters of embroidery from nearly a millennium ago is just astonishing. So we're lucky that we have any of it, Never mind nearly 70 meters, but because it was sort of subject to a fair amount of wear and tear, I suspect a lot of the wear and tear that suffered was from not so much from the medieval period, but from the period, say, from the late 18th century when it became famous and was bundled around a lot, taken to Paris, exhibited at the Louvre. It had plays put on about it in Paris. During the Napoleonic period, it was taken back to Bayeux where it was sort of displayed very badly on a spindle, you know, So I can see during the French Revolution, it was very nearly cut up and turned into bunting. So I can see how all these kind of much later, early modern or modern adventures or misadventures would have caused bits of it to fall off. The reason it survived so well for the previous 700 years was because it was kept in Bayer Cathedral and only taken out on the Feast of the Relics. So it was well curated, if you like, for the first seven centuries of its existence. Having said all of that, so we're lucky that most of it survives. What seems to be missing is the ending. It ends with Harold's death. There's a. There's a fairly heavily restored part that says, and then the English fleet. The obvious scene, everyone has always thought, which it would have ended with is William's coronation in Harold's place. Because we start off. The tapestry starts off with an enthroned king, Edward the Confessor, talking to someone who seems to be Harold Godwinson. It has an enthroned king in the middle, Harold himself. Once he's taken the throne. And therefore it makes sense that it would end with William being crowned in Harold's place. So that seems to be the missing last scene. And I think many people over the years have tried to recreate that scene in one medium or another.
- [26:35]
B
So a couple of questions on Harold himself. One asked by Simon Beale, who I think is a history teacher, and another by Laura Ford. And it's basically, how did Harold die? Apparently it's the main thing that students ask. So he wants a top level historian to give the answer. So how did Harold die?
- [26:50]
A
Well, how did. Okay, so the very short answer is we don't know know or we don't know for certain. Then there's a much longer, more complicated answer, which I'll try and get as short as possible. So it's well known that Harold died with an arrow in the eye because that's the way he's depicted on the Bio tapestry. But then once you start to unpick that, as people have been doing for at least 60, 70 years now, people say, well, is he, is he the actually the figure on the tapestry under the word Harold, which seems to show a figure with an arrow lodged in his eye, or is he another figure a few feet further along the tapestry who is being run down by a Norman on horseback? If you accept that he is the figure likely to be the figure under the word Harold, that then there's people will say, well, hang on, is that really an arrow in his eye? Because if you look at the stitching or the holes on the back of the tapestry, it seems it might be, you know, a spear that has been reinterpreted as an arrow by 19th century restorers. So you can lodge all these caveats for the biotapestries representation. What does it for me, what sort of undermines my faith in the tapestry is not so much these. So if you accept that the tapestry artist intended to show Harold as getting an arrow in the eye, that's what that scene depicts. The problem for me is essentially that the tapestry is an artistic source that borrows heavily from other artistic sources. We're as convinced as we can be that it was made in Canterbury. Canterbury, because at least a dozen of the scenes are borrowed from illustrative manuscripts that were held in either Christchurch or St Augustine's Canterbury. So the tapestry designer would say to somebody, oh, I need a, I need a meal scene. You know, the, the Normans are having dinner here. Go and find me a picture of some chaps having a meal. And someone would come back and say, well, here's a picture of the Last Supper. And they say, well, brilliant. We can use that as a model for this scene. And that's what you can see that happening in lots of scenes with the death of Harold. We seem to see that going on because the scenes surrounding it look very similar to a story in the Apocrypha of the Bible of the death of King Zedekiah. But it's basically he's a king who rebels against his overlord, and his punishment is to have his eyes put out. He's blinded. So if, as it seems likely, the tapestry artist was using an example of an illustrated example of the death of King Zedekiah, then it may just be that that Harold getting his eye put out was being borrowed from this artistic source. The real stumbling block for the the arrow in the eye story is that no other contemporary source mentions an arrow in the eye. Later sources do. So off the top of my head, Henry of Huntington talks about him getting an arrow in the eye or an arrow in the face. Sometimes they're not even specific. They say, an arrow in the face, an arrow in the brain, arrow in the eye becomes the sort of standard description. But there aren't any contemporary sources that tell us how he died. William of Poitiers, who has a very detailed account of the battle, just says the report, Harold is dead, flew around the battlefield, doesn't go to any detail. The source that William of Poitiers is using, a source I mentioned earlier, the Carmen, the Song of the Battle of Hastings, which we think now was made before the spring of 1068. So it's the most contemporary source of all, talks about Harold getting killed by a Norman death squad. Half a dozen or so men led by William go up to him and sort of and single him out and hack him down. Now, you know, again, it's like you're comparing you're weighing a tapestry and embroidery against a poem. There's a lot of artistic license there. So, you know, maybe there were tens of thousands of arrows loose that day. Maybe he got an arrow in the eye. But our most closely contemporary narrative source says that he was done in by a dedicated death squad squad. And the only other thing I can think to strengthen that as a more likely scenario is that William of Poitier, who is William the Conqueror's own chaplain, doesn't repeat that story. So it's an argument from silence. But we know that Poitier had a copy of the Carmen in front of him because he parrots the bits of it he likes and other bits of it that he doesn't like, he directly challenges. He says, some people will tell you this, but this wasn't true. When he gets to the death of Harold, rather than refuting it, he just skips over it. So you could see that as a sort of. A. Sort of a silent endorsement, if you like, of the fact that Carmen's story was accurate. But William of Poitiers didn't want to go into any of those details because it made William look less than chivalrous.
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B
All right, a sort of a quick counterfactual type. One where Jamie Smith is asking, can you speculate about what sort of reign Harold Godwinson would have had had he not died at Hastings?
- [31:41]
A
Oh, yeah, I saw that question. It's a good question, but it's kind of. There's one of those what ifs that we don't really know. I mean, Harold had been a sort of power player since, well, let's say the mid-1040s. He was made Earl of East Anglia. He later 1053 when his father dies, his Earl of Wessex, you know, Harold. I mean, Harold is one of those characters who gets a good press. And, you know, there's certain things about Harold's story which are undeniable, like his victory over Harald Hardrada is rightly the sort of stuff of later legend, you know, because it's a tremendous victory. But the principal source for his career and the careers of his younger brother Tostig, and the career of their father, Earl Godwin, is a source called the Life of King Edward, which is, as its title suggests, ostensibly about Edward the Confessor. It wasn't originally conceived as A Life of Edward. Its author openly admits midway through true in 1066, that the nature of the work has changed because of the outcome of the Battle of Hastings. He says, you know, what am I to do now? You know, that this sort of song of praise has become a tragedy. So I shall tell you about King Edward and the many miracles that were sort of, you know, worked as a result of his influence. But the Life of King Edward, as it's now called, started off as. As a song of praise to the Godwin family, goes on for pages about how wonderful Godwin was. He was like a father to the nation. And his sons are these luminous heroes. So Harold is sort of a super, a demigod in that story. You know, he's sort of chivalrous, merciful. There was no. He was tall, handsome, nice to children and animals, but he really has no flaws. So, yes, the Godwinsons are rising and rising throughout the 1050s. And he's clearly a man, an experienced man, who people, certainly his own faction, which was huge and dominant, wanted to be king. And I dare say with all that sort of popular support that he cultivated, you know, he could have gone on to have a long and successful reign, but we just don't know. I'm always wary of these figures through history that their stock is so high, based on a tract that their family commissioned. You know, it's like the other one I always have in for in 30 seconds is William Marshall. You know, everyone says William Marshall, the greatest knight of the Middle Ages. Yeah. That's a line borrowed from a book commissioned by his sons. I can go and get a mug day from my sons that they gave to me. That's. That says World's Greatest dad on it. But I have to accept the fact that might not be objectively true.
- [34:07]
B
I'm sure you're a very good dad, Mark.
- [34:09]
A
Yeah.
- [34:10]
B
The English resistance. Couple of questions on that, which we will combine. So Michael Allen asks, what happened to the former members of the Anglo Saxon aristocracy who survived the Battle of Hastings? And then George Samuel asked, what was the resistance like after Hastings? Perhaps we could conflate those two.
- [34:24]
A
Yeah, well, it's not. I mean, it's not good at all if you are an aristocrat. I mean, I think I wrote an article for you a few years ago saying it was a tragedy for the aristocracy and there was some blow back from that, saying, what about the poor people that suffered in the harrying of the North? And, yeah, the conquest leads to huge loss of human life across all social classes. But in percentage terms, percentage terms, you know, per capita, it's utterly devastating for the ruling class, because the ruling class gets sort of removed entirely. The data for this is Doomsday Book. So whilst in Doomsday Book you can see the population drop, for example, in Yorkshire of hundreds of thousands as a result of the famine induced by the House. When you look at the ruling class, the people who are the King's tenants in chief or their own tenants, the King's sub tenants, you can see that, you know, there's maybe 500 to a thousand tenants in chief, depending on who you ask. That's in 1066, in 1086, when Doomsday Book is compiled, out of those 500 or a thousand, only 13 names are English. So in terms of the top layer of the aristocracy, the English have been reduced to a kind of a tiny fraction, you know, less than 1% of the landholders. And that's even true if you look down at the King's sub tenants, you know, there's 7 or 8,000 names. Only 10% of that number are still English. By 1086, obviously a lot of them die at the Battle of Hastings, a lot of them die in the subsequent rebellions and battles in the five years that follow. Some of them we know go abroad, some go to Scandinavia. There's been some good recent research based on latest Scandinav myths and I think contemporary Byzantine sources pointing out that some of them relocated to Byzantium. And I, I think in a lot of cases they are just suppressed. So they, they have to accept the fact that they are no longer top ranking aristocrats and they are suppressed into a sort of a gentry class or they're, you know, so they either flee, they're either killed or they have to muck along in reduced circumstances, as you would expect, once you are part, once you are being ruled by a new colonial overlord class. I'm speaking out of school here because I'm not a student of the British in India, but similar sort of thing that there were people running the show and then you have foreigners come in and say, we're in charge now and you can either collaborate and make do in reduced circumstances or you can get out. So that's what happens to them.
- [36:46]
B
All right. So speaking a little bit of the resistance and answering another question from George Edward Mannering, which excited a lot of responses I noticed on Facebook from people discussing this. Was William really the brutal tyrant that many interpretations make him out to be?
- [37:04]
A
Yeah, well, again, I'm sort of going to set up my case with some caution here because there's no doubt, I mean, it depends on sort of how you're going to sort of categorize brutality. I mean the thing that William is famous for, that sort of stains his reputation even by the early 12th century. The person who really gives it to him with both barrels is Auderic Vitalis is the harrying of the the north. Because Aldrich says more than a hundred thousand people died as a result of the harrying and that seems to be confirmed by Doomsday Book. You can see for Yorkshire alone a drop in population of that magnitude. So he has that hanging over him. And I recently did an article for you guys on the anniversary of the harrying, basically sort of finishing with that sentiment that Alderic says, well, you know, no earthly court can judge him, but God will sort him out on this score. You know, so there's that there's that sort of, if you like, genocidal aspect to William's policies. The thing that always bugs me, though, is whenever William is shown depicted in both documentaries and in dramas, more and more in documentaries in this country, is that he's sort of seen as some sort of sadistic maniac who goes around sort of doing politics by chopping off people's arms, legs, you know, putting their eyes out, torturing them, basically. And the implication of this is that this is somehow novel and that no clean limbed Englishman like, say, Harold Godwinson would resort to such terrible foreign continental tactics. And in that case, it's almost that the. The opposite is true. Because while you have two or three instances where William is described as having mutilated his enemies, so there's an incident in Alencon before his. Well before 1066, in the early 1050s. There's a case after the siege of Ely in 1070, where he maims the rebels he can get his hands on. This is kind of entirely par for the course in the 11th century, particularly in England. I mean, England for the last 200 years by this point has had Vikings running around and they certainly sort of don't pat you on the head afterwards and say, don't do it again. You know, they will chop your head off or kill you in all kinds of grisly ways. One of the things that's curious about politics in England after William's accession is that it's very hard to find examples, examples of aristocrats who are deliberately put to death. There's Earl Waltheof, who rebelled against William, or at least conspired against William in 1075. He has his head chopped off in the spring of 1076 at Winchester. And he's an earl, he's Earl of Northumbria. The next earl to be executed in England after Waltheof's death is the Earl of Athol, a Scottish nobleman who's executed by Edward I in 1306. So 230 years after, after Earl Waltheof. So it's very possible and it's not. This isn't my idea. This is an idea I've pinched from other historians, better historians like John Gillingham, you know, who advanced these ideas in the early 1990s. It's arguable that William and the Normans introduced a new idea to English politics, which was, you ought to be chivalrous, you be as unsparing and savage as you like in your warfare, but from their point of view, from their point of view, the people who count the people at the top of the tree. You don't lob people's heads off and execute them. You capture them, you put them away in castles, and if they promise to be very, very, very good, you ransom them and give them some of their lands back. That's chivalry in a nutshell. And you can see William doing that. So it's a long answer, but I think it's. It's one that's worth dwelling on William's reputation, because whilst he is savage in his warfare, as the Normans were, and contemporaries say this all the time, you know, they were fierce and savage in their warfare, in their politics. They didn't stab you to death when you were having dinner, which was the old English way of doing it. And they considered themselves more chivalrous. They looked upon the English way of doing things as barbarous.
- [40:55]
B
Okay, a quick one from Laura Alicexo. Is it true that William the Conqueror spoke little English throughout his entire reign?
- [41:04]
A
Well, we don't know. The only comment we have on that is Aldrich Vitalis, who's writing 50 years later, and he says that, that. That he's kind of characterizing William's approach to England as a whole, and I think it's a fair characterization, is that William, when he starts off as a lot of kings do at the start of their reigns, you know, no one, no one comes to power saying, I'm going to be a wicked, evil king. They have the crown put on their head. It's all very mysterious, it's all very mystical. They're anointed, they're blessed. And they are told, you know, you must protect your people, you must, you know, defend the church, et cetera. You must uphold the law. And they think, yeah, I'll do all that. I'm going to be a good king. And then, you know, the way they deal with the contingency of medieval politics, they might end up having a reputation which is not so good. William, it seems, starts off intending to rule as good English king. His writs, to begin with, are issued in Old English. He initially has a blend of surviving English aristocrats and bishops at his court, rubbing shoulders with Normans. But as the conquest kind of runs out of control in the years that follows, and there are rebellions and repressions, repression, year after year, within four or five years, he gives up on that and embarks on a more repressive policy. And Alderic ties that to his attempts to learn English. Alderich says he tried to learn English, but he lost an interest in it, basically. And that would be. I mean, that would fit well with his itinerary in the 1070s, because he spends more of the 1070s out of England in Normandy than he does in England. So, you know, like a lot of us, he thinks, wouldn't it be nice to speak a second language? I should get some tapes, you know, and then he sort of says, nah, it's too difficult.
- [42:44]
B
Okay, right, we've got a few consequences which I'm going to sort of conflate a bit. So we had Mike Metcalfe who asked, why is the Norman Conquest so significant? When the Vikings had conquered England a short time before then, Chris George did the conquest fundamentally changed the British Isles in the medium to long term. But I think I'm going to put this one, one from Mark James to you, which is more of a comment than a question, but one that you can probably answer and tackle the rest of it, which is the Norman Conquest was the best thing that ever happened to England.
- [43:09]
A
Oh, I wouldn't say that. People have been taking sides on this since the Norman Conquest itself, you know, and sort of every age has kind of seen it's because the conquest is such a watershed, you know, so particularly in the 17th century, again, not a period I know a great deal about, but in the 17, the wars of the 17th century, the, the Civil wars, you know, you had parliamentarians saying, well, all this kind of divine right of kings. This goes back to the conquest. Before the conquest, you know, it was all much freer and better and it was golden age. The Norman yoke theory, I think. I mean, not to dodge the question entirely, but to sort of answer the previous question about, you know, why was the conquest so important when 50, just 50 years earlier, Cnut and the Danes had conquered England? I think the thing that makes the conquest so fascinating, fascinating and so worthy of study is that England is changed by the Conquest, I think, more than any other event in its history. So it's sort of a seismic shift in the way England is governed. And comparing it with the Danish conquest of 50 years earlier, I mean, yes, the Danish conquest, for example, is very bloody. Canute starts his reign with lots of executions, but by the time of Cnut's death, most of the Danes he's installed as earls have disappeared. They've been redeployed to Scandinavia, or they've died and they have been replaced by new Englishmen. Prime example being Earl Godwin of Wessex. So the Danish conquest shakes up the aristocracy, but it doesn't really change the way land is held. It doesn't change the language that is spoken. It doesn't have any really noticeable impact on architecture or religion. Whereas if you look at what the normans do in 1066, you know, every major church, every cathedral, every major abbey is ripped down and rebuilt and we've already talked about chivalry. We see a sudden drop in the number of slaves leading to the abolition of slavery. So I think by sort of every measure that's possible, the Norman Conquest sees this huge and sweeping change.
- [45:07]
B
Did the Normans introduce rabbits to Ireland? Asked by Jen M. Carey, who is some sort of Irish bunny fan.
- [45:14]
A
Never had the rabbits questioned before. Not something I've done a great deal of research on. My dim understanding of the whole controversial and thorny question of rabbits is that I don't think there's any evidence for them in Anglo Saxon England. I'm quite prepared to be corrected because I know there's a lot of stuff being done at the moment on the sort of the archaeology of this sort of thing. You certainly see post conquest into the 12th century the introduction of rabbit warrens, you know, by on aristocratic estates. So they're being sort of kept and cultivated and protected from natural predators after the conquest. I think I read somewhere that it's possible that there were sort of rabbit bones in Roman villas. Fishbourne in Sussex seems to ring a bell. But yeah, I think it basically holds true. As I say answering this out of school. The Normans introduced rabbits to England and therefore I suppose by extension Ireland. But I'm quite happy to be corrected. Okay, we might have to collected this issue.
- [46:11]
B
Might have to come back to that. Jen and carries super quick one from Benjamin T.H. russell. Where did the Norman haircuts come from and why did they start doing it? So I guess that refers to how they look in the biotapestry.
- [46:25]
A
In the biotapestry. Yeah, it's a good question. I don't have a definitive answer. I'm not sure we can definitively answer anything on haircuts from thousand years ago. But there's a letter from one anonymous Englishman to his brother lambasting him for adopting Danish fashion. Says why do you dress like a Dane, you know, why do you disrespect the custom of your ancestors? And one of the things he says is why do you have your hair cut in this heathen fashion which is kind of shaved up the back? And he says with blinded eyes. And I can only imagine with blinded eyes meaning with a long fringe, you know, hanging over your eyes. Exactly what you see on the biotapestry. They've got hair shaved really or closely cropped range right up to their crown almost. And great big long curtains as we would have called them in the 1990s, you know, right across their foreheads. So it certainly seems to be something that the Danes were doing or the Vikings were doing in the 11th century. And I guess it's just, you know, what the Normans did as well. The implication is no clean living Anglo Saxon type would have their hair cut in such a ridiculous fashion. And when you see the English on the biotapestry, they do indeed have very different hairstyles. They have long flowing locks box and long flowing moustaches.
- [47:38]
B
Yes, they do. Yeah. Brilliant. Excellent. Okay, right. One more question and you've only got one word to answer with. I'm afraid so. This is history. Ramsay, if you had to explain the impact of the Norman conquest in one word, what would it be?
- [47:55]
A
You can't say unrivalled. That was Mark Morris talking to Dave Musgrave in a conversation Originally aired in 2020. As I mentioned, next week we'll have something brand new, the first installment of our new Sunday series which will see John Cooper chart the causes and the consequences of the Gunpowder plot. Don't miss that and subscribe now to follow the feed for all the latest episodes. And Doug, here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Limu. Is that guy with the binoculars watching us? Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Ferry Unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates excludes Massachusetts hey, this is Sarah. Look, I'm standing out front of a.m. p.m. Right now and, well, you're sweet and all, but I found something more fulfilled. Filling, even kind of cheesy, but I like it. Sure, you met some of my dietary needs, but they've just got it all. So farewell oatmeal. So long, you strange soggy break up with bland breakfast and taste AM PM's bacon, egg and cheese biscuit made with K tree eggs, smoked bacon and melty cheese on a buttery biscuit. AM PM Too much Good stuff.