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December 2002

Parish History Episode 20

The Conquest of England

The Ninth and Tenth Centuries had seen England devastated by Viking raiders. The Eleventh century was to see England twice subjected to foreign conquest: a Danish conquest in 1016 and a Norman conquest fifty years later.

The earlier invasion and of the conquest grew out of the misfortunes of the reign of Ethelred "the Unready". He had faced increased Danish raiding throughout his reign, and had attempted to eliminate it by paying "Danegeld", that is by paying the raiders to go away. This policy eventually led to financial ruin, and England's inability to pay the money. Ethelred believing that the Danish pirates were receiving covert assistance from those Danes already settled in the Danelaw counties of England, changed his tactics and ordered a genocidal massacre of the "English Danes". Sweyn, King of Denmark, and ruler also by right of conquest of much of Norway and Ireland, then launched a full-scale, and successful, invasion of England. Ethelred conveniently died, and Sweyn also died shortly after capturing London and being proclaimed as King of England.
Sweyn's son, Canute, then succeeded his father. He found elf the ruler of a collection of four kingdoms - Denmark, Norway, England, Ireland - all of them now Christian, thanks to recent missionary successes in Denmark and Norway. None of his kingdoms had any contact with each other, except by sea. This no doubt gave rise to the idea that be ruled over the sea as well as the land, and thus the legend about how he tried unsuccessfully to command the tides to stop flowing.

In this part of his realm, Canute undertook the task of stabilising the border with Scotland, and fought one or two campaigns against Malcolm II, who had hopes of advancing his frontiers beyond the Tweed He also found it necessary to interfere in the affairs necessary the newly established Diocese of Durham.

Bishop Aldhun, the man who had taken the "Family of Saint Cuthbert” from Chester-le-Street to Ripon, to Warden Law, and then to Durham, had died in 1018, the year after the "White Church" (the pre-Norman cathedral) was completed. The monks could not agree on a successor, and so in 1020 Canute, anxious in the aftermath of King MaIcolm's success in the Battle of Carham, to find a "strong" man to take charge of the strong position that Durham occupied, decided to intervene in the election. He rode North for Durham, and shortly after entering the Patrimony of Saint Cuthbert, he took (temporary) monastic vows, and had his head shaved so as to give himself a tonsure. (It is claimed that this took place at a village called suspiciously - Trimdon at any rate, the local barber there still claims, a thousand years later, to cut hair "by Royal Appointment"). On arrival in Durham, Canute joined his fellow monks "in chapter", and, helped by the presence of his soldiers outside the chapter-house, he arranged for the election of one Edmund, said to be a vigorous young man, to be the second Bishop of Durham.

Canute liked to describe that expedition as a pilgrimage. Seven years later he took part in an even more surprising pilgrimage, travelling all the way to Rome. The new German monarch, Konrad II, was also there, for the purpose of his coronation, by Pope John XIX, as "Holy Roman Emperor". Ambassadors from Constantinople had been invited and Canute presumably wished to draw the attention of the Pope, the Germans and the Greeks, to the presence of a third multi-national empire, that of the Danes, Norwegians, English and Irish
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England had found itself, for the first time since the withdrawal of the Roman legions, pan of an empire that extended beyond the British Isles. But Canute died in 1035, and his sons proved incompetent, and the "empire" fell apart. In 1042, Earl Godwin, the leading man among the Anglo¬-Danish lords who were jostling for power in the disintegrating realm, managed to secure the Throne for is own candidate, a lad called Edward, a son of Ethelred the Unready, who had spent Canute's reign in exile In Normandy. This young man, much influenced by French mannerisms after his lengthy stay across the Channel would come to be known, from his exceptional piety as King Edward the Confessor.

He was to reign for twenty-four indecisive years until 1066, while English politics revolved round disputes between two men, who seemed to be the representatives of old and the new England. One was Earl Godwin, Edward's original patron and later to be his father-in-law, as he arranged for the young king to be married to his daughter, Edith. Godwin became the champion of traditional Anglo-Saxon customs, but his influence was opposed by that of Robert of Jumieges, a Norman cleric, confessor to both the King and the Queen, and successively Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury.

King Edward was naturally pious, and proved very biddable, and became increasingly influenced by his confessor. On Robert's advice, he spent much of his time in prayer and fasting, and abstention from all carnal relations with his wife, but despite all these efforts, Queen Edith never presented him with a royal prince to succeed him. Also - surprisingly, perhaps, in view of his reputation for piety - he was unwilling to face the Inevitability of his own death, and never made out a will.

He did of course eventually die. Before then Archbishop Robert had overreached himself, and had arranged for the banishment of Earl Godwin and all his family, except for the Earl's daughter, Queen Edith, who was locked in a convent. By this decree, Edith was compelled, and Edward was enabled, to experiment with the new fashion for celibacy which was sweeping the Western Church in the wake of the Hildebrandine reforms in Rome. But Godwin refused to go quietly. He marched on London, removed his daughter from her convent and restored her to the royal bedchamber (but still no baby prince was born), and instead sent Archbishop Robed into exile in his native Normandy. Then, having taken control of the Kingdom, Godwin himself died, to be followed, in the first week of January, 1066, by King Edward himself.

Edward the Confessor left no direct heir to inherit the vacant throne. But numerous other lords, including Duke William of Normandy, King Sweyn II of Denmark, King Harald of Norway and King Malcolm Ill of Scotland, employed skilled genealogists who were able to establish that their respective masters were each the rightful King of England. But before any of them could move, Earl Godwin’s son Harold seized the throne for himself and was crowned by Stigand, an English priest who, thanks to the support of Earl Godwin and his men, occupied the See of Canterbury, even though Robert of Jumieges was alive and well in Normandy, and reminding Duke William that it was time the Normans took the English throne for themselves, and brought that backward country up to date.

Harold was to be King of England for only nine months. The whole of his reign, from January to October of 1066, was taken up with preparations to repel invasions, whether by Normans, Danes, Norwegians or Scots. Two of the claimants to the English Throne were to set sail against him that year.

King Harald of Norway, the first to land, was to be defeated and killed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. The English army had then immediately to march South, for Duke William of Normandy had landed at Hastings. There the English army met him, and was defeated, King Harold being killed the battle.

Her king dead and her army destroyed. England lay at the mercy of Duke William. Immediately after his victory at Hastings, William moved off into the interior, leading a great horde of predatory and land-hungry knights and vassals. One of them was subsequently to be known, from the lands be seized, as Sir John le Spring.