The Norman Conquest of England

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 638.

Before the Normans, there were four different peoples that invaded England:

• The Celts (the 6^th century BC)
• The Romans (the 1^st century AD)
• The Anglo-Saxons (the 5^th century)
• The Vikings (the end of the 8^th century)

The Norman Conquest was the last invasion of Britain.

Normandy was a region in the northern part of France, just across the English Channel. Normandy was a feudal state, where the vassals held land in return for military service.

In 1066, the Duchy of Normandy was ruled by Duke William who also thought he had a right to the throne of England. He had been assembling an army to invade England, which also included contingents from other parts of France.

At the beginning of 1066, the last Anglo Saxon ruler of England, Edward the Confessor was on his deathbed. Since he had no children, there was no direct heir to the throne and he had not publicly designated any heir to succeed him. Several people claimed the throne. One was the late king's cousin, William, Duke of Normandy. He was distantly related to Edward the Confessor and claimed that Edward the Confessor had promised him the throne of England on his death. William was also a vassal of the king of France. He had a very strong feudal organization in northern France. His vassals included nearly all the Norman nobles. He had no trouble putting together a huge army of 6000 men, along with several hundred ships. He invaded England, and at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, William defeated another rival for the throne and was crowned King of England.

William the Conqueror's coronation did not go as planned. When the people shouted "God Save the King" the nervous Norman guards at Westminster Abbey thought they were going to attack William. In their fear they set fire to nearby houses and the coronation ceremony ended in disorder.

Although William was now crowned king, his conquest had only just begun, and the fighting lasted for another five years. There was an Anglo-Saxon rebellion against the Normans every year until 1070. The small Norman army marched from village to village, destroying places it could not control, and building forts to guard others. It was a true army of occupation for at least twenty years. The north was particularly hard to control, and the Norman army had no mercy. When the Saxons fought back, the Normans burnt, destroyed and killed. Between Durham and York not a single house was left standing, and it took a century for the north to recover.

Few Saxon lords kept their lands and those who did were the very small number who had accepted William immediately. All the others lost everything. By 1086, twenty years after the arrival of the Normans, only two of the greater landlords and only two bishops were Saxon. William gave the Saxon lands to his Norman nobles. After each English rebellion there was more land to give away. His army included Norman and other French land seekers. Over 4,000 Saxon landlords were replaced by 200 Norman ones.

William was careful in the way he gave land to his nobles. The king of France was less powerful than many of the great landlords, of whom William was the outstanding example. In England, as each new area of land was captured, William gave parts of it as a reward to his captains. This meant that they held separate small pieces of land in different parts of the country so that no noble could easily or quickly gather his fighting men to rebel. William only gave some of his nobles larger estates along the troublesome borders with Wales and Scotland. At the same time he kept enough land for himself to make sure he was much stronger than his nobles. Of all the farmland of England he gave half to the Norman nobles, a quarter to the Church, and kept a fifth himself. He kept the Saxon system of sheriffs, and used these as a balance to local nobles. As a result England was different from the rest of Europe because it had one powerful family, instead of a large number of powerful nobles. William, and the kings after him, thought of England as their personal property.

William gave out land all over England to his nobles. By 1086 he wanted to know exactly who owned which piece of land, and how much it was worth. He needed this information so that he could plan his economy, find out how much was produced and how much he could ask in tax. He therefore sent a team of people all through England to make a complete economic survey. His men asked all kinds of questions at each settlement: How much land was there? Who owned it? How much was it worth? How many families, ploughs and sheep were there? And so on. This survey was the only one of its kind in Europe. Not surprisingly, it was most unpopular with the people, because they felt they could not escape from its findings. It so reminded them of the paintings of the Day of Judgement, or "doom", on the walls of their churches that they called it the "Domesday" Book. The name stuck. The Domesday Book still exists, and gives us an extraordinary amount of information about England at this time.

The changes that took place because of the Norman Conquest were significant for both English and European development.

By bringing England under the control of rulers originating in France, the Norman Conquest linked the country more closely with continental Europe, lessened Scandinavian influence, and also set the stage for a rivalry with France that would continue intermittently for many centuries. It also had important consequences for the rest of the British Islas, paving the way for further Norman conquests in Wales and Ireland, and the extensive penetration of the aristocracy of Scotland by Norman and other French-speaking families, with the accompanying spread of continental institutions and cultural influences.

One of the most obvious changes was the introduction of the Latin-based Anglo-Norman language as the language of the ruling classes in England, displacing the Germanic-based Anglo-Saxon language. Anglo-Norman retained the status of a prestige language for nearly 300 years and has had a significant influence on modern English. It is through this, the first of several major influxes of Latin or Romance languages, that the predominant spoken tongue of England began to lose much of its Germanic and Norse vocabulary, although it retained Germanic sentence structure in many cases.

Develop the statements suggested below:

1) The Norman Conquest was not a peaceful invasion of England.

2) The Norman Conquest put an end to Anglo-Saxon rule in England, but some elements of the Saxon system of ruling were preserved to keep a balance to local nobles.

3) The Norman Conquest gave way to a completely new system of economic relations.

4) The Domesday Book developed the system of taxation.

5) The changes that took place because of the Norman Conquest were significant for both English and European development.

6) The Norman Conquest resulted in obvious changes in the English language.

TEXT 3. Study the information and fulfill the task that follows the text. Text 18 from SUPPLEMENTARY READER will be helpful to complete the table.