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Portrait of William I

Monarchs · Norman & Angevin

William I

c. 1028–1087

House of Normandy — the Norman Conquest

In office: 1066–1087

Duke of Normandy from 1035 and king of England from 1066, William replaced the English landholding class almost entirely with Normans, covered the country in motte-and-bailey castles and crushed resistance in the north with a deliberate famine. In 1085 he ordered the great survey of England recorded in Domesday Book, and in 1086 took a general oath of loyalty at Salisbury. He died at Rouen in 1087 and left Normandy to his eldest son and England to his second.

How to spot them

  • ▸Duke of Normandy, called the Bastard before he was called the Conqueror; son of Robert I and Herleva
  • ▸Crowned at Westminster on Christmas Day 1066; married to Matilda of Flanders
  • ▸The Harrying of the North; the White Tower; Domesday Book; the Oath of Salisbury
  • ▸Sons Robert Curthose, William Rufus and Henry; buried at Saint-Étienne, Caen

In the reign

A Christmas Day coronation at Westminster, interrupted when guards outside mistook the acclamation for a riot and set fire to nearby houses (1066)

25 December 1066; the new king was left trembling at the altar, according to Orderic Vitalis.

A survey of every shire ordered at Gloucester one Christmas, so searching that contemporaries likened its verdict to the Last Judgement (1085)

Domesday Book, compiled in 1086 and still held by The National Archives.

The deliberate devastation of Yorkshire and the north, burning crops and stock so that famine broke resistance (1069–1070)

The Harrying of the North; Domesday still records much of the region as waste.

An oath of loyalty taken from all significant landholders on Salisbury Plain, sworn over the heads of their own lords (1086)

The Oath of Salisbury, binding tenants directly to the crown.

A great stone keep of Caen stone begun beside the Thames to overawe the city of London (c. 1078)

The White Tower, the core of the Tower of London.

A Sussex abbey founded on a battlefield, its high altar set where the defeated king was said to have fallen (c. 1070)

Battle Abbey, founded as penance for the blood shed in 1066.

Rebellion in the Fens ending with the fall of Ely and the escape of an outlaw remembered as Hereward (1071)

Hereward the Wake; Earl Morcar surrendered and was imprisoned for life.

A funeral at Caen at which the corpse, swollen after weeks unburied, burst as it was forced into too small a sarcophagus (1087)

Recorded by Orderic Vitalis; the tomb at Saint-Étienne was later desecrated and only a thigh bone survived.

Quick-fire facts

  • •Illegitimate son of Robert I of Normandy and Herleva of Falaise; duke from 1035, aged about seven
  • •He secured his duchy at Val-ès-Dunes (1047) and Varaville (1057) before turning to England
  • •He married Matilda of Flanders despite papal objection; their abbeys at Caen, the Abbaye-aux-Hommes and Abbaye-aux-Dames, were part of the penance
  • •By 1086 barely a handful of the great English landholders of 1066 were still in possession
  • •He introduced the forest law and created the New Forest as a royal hunting ground
  • •Lanfranc, whom he made archbishop of Canterbury in 1070, reorganised the English Church and separated church and lay courts
  • •He died on 9 September 1087 at Rouen of injuries received when his saddle pommel struck him at Mantes
  • •Normandy went to Robert Curthose, England to William Rufus, and 5,000 pounds of silver to Henry

Drill it — 9 cards

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Sources