LECTURE 2 danes raids. NORMAN CONQUEST OF BRITAIN
Plan:
1. Danish raids on Britain. Danegeld.
2. The Norman Conquest of Britain.
3. Changes in the country.
4. Domesday Book.
5. Life in England after the Norman Conquest.
1. Danish raids on Britain. Danegeld
The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms waged a constant struggle against one another for predominance over the country. From time to time some stronger state seized the land of the neighbouring kingdoms and made them pay tribute or even ruled them directly. The first to achieve superiority was Kent. But it was too small territorially; neither did it include the important London area. Its supremacy therefore was but shortlived, so the 7-th century was the century of Northumbrian supremacy.
Only three kingdoms emerged to content for supremacy – Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex. And at last at the beginning of the 9th century Wessex became the strongest state. In 829 Egbert, king of Wessex, was acknowledged by the Kent, Mercia and Northumbria. This was really the beginning of the united kingdom of England, for Wessex never again lost its supremacy and king Egbert became the first king of England. Under his rule all the small Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were united to form one kingdom which was called England from that time on.
The political unification of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms was sped up by the urgent task of defending the country against the dangerous raids of the new enemies. From the end of the 8th century and during the 9th and the 10th centuries Western Europe was troubled by a new wave of barbarian attacks. These barbarians came from the North — from Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and were called North-men. In different countries the Northmen were known by many other names, as the Vikings, the Normans, the Danes. They came to Britain from Norway and Denmark. But more often the British Isles were raided from Denmark, and the invaders came to be known in English history as the Danes.
The Danes were of the same Germanic race as the Anglo-Saxons themselves and they came from the same part of the Continent. But unlike the Anglo-Saxons whose way of life had changed greatly ever since they came to Britain, the Danes still lived in tribes. They were still pagans.
The Danes were well armed — with sword, spear, dagger, battle-axe and bow. Their ships were sailing-boats. In 793 the Danes carried out their first raids on Britain. Their earliest raids were for plunder only. They came in spring and summer, and when the ship was loaded with plunder they returned home for the winter. Every year they went to different places-rarely to the same place twice. Thus all the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms faced the same dangerous enemy.
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In later years large Danish fleets (more than three hundred ships) brought large armies to conquer and settle inthe new lands. They did not go home for the winter but they made large camps, well-guarded, to which they brought their booty. From these camps the Danes would make many raids upon the villages in the area. Thus began the fourth conquest of Britain. The Danish raids were successful because the kingdom of England had neither a regular army nor a fleet in the North Sea to meet them. Northumbria and East Anglia suffered most from the Danish raids. The Danes came into conflict with the strongest of all the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Wessex.
In 871 the Danes invaded Wessex again. But it was not so easy to devastate Wessex as other parts of England. Wessex had united the small Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and under the reign of Egbert’s grandson, King Alfred (871-899) who became known in English history as Alfred the Great, Wessex became the centre of resistance against the invaders.
Alfred managed to raise an army and to stop the offensive of the Danes. He turned undefended villages into fortified towns, or boroughs. Alfred saw that the best way to keep off the Danes was by fighting them at sea, and so he built ships bigger and faster than the Danish ships. He is considered to be the founder of the English fleet. As a result of all these measures, the Anglo-Saxons won several victories over the Danes. In the treaty, which followed in 886, the Danes promised to leave Wessex and a part of Mercia. They settled in the north-eastern part of England, a region which was from that time called the Danelaw, because it was ruled according to the law of the Danes. The great Roman road, Watling Street, was the boundary that separated the Danelaw from Wessex. Thus the Danes were prevented from conquering the whole island and the country was divided into two parts: the Danelaw (Northumbria, East Anglia and a part of Mercia), where the Danes spoke their language and kept to their way of life, and the English south-western part of the country, that is, Wessex, which was under Alfred’s rule.
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In time of peace Alfred the Great took measures to improve the laws in the interests of the great landowners and to raise the standard of culture among them. The king sent for artisans, builders and scholars from the Continent. The monasteries and churches which had been burnt by the Danes were rebuilt and schools were set up in the monasteries for the clergy. A school was started in the palace itself where the sons of the nobles learned to read and write. The books were translated from Latin.
In the second half of the 10th century under the rule of Alfred's descendants the Saxon monarchy was further consolidated. The Anglo-Saxons won several victories over the Danes, took away the Danelaw and ruled over the whole of England. The Danes were not driven out of the country but they were made subjects of Wessex. They submitted to the power of the Anglo-Saxon kings and never tried to make the Danelaw into a separate kingdom. The Danes influenced the development of the country greatly. They were good sailors and traders and they favoured the growth of towns and the development of trade in England. They were skilful shipbuilders.
At the end of the 10th century the Danish invasions were resumed. The Anglo-Saxon kings were unable to organize any effective resistance and they tried to buy off the Danes. The Anglo-Saxon kings gave them money to leave them in peace. The result was that they came again in greater numbers the following year to demand more. In order to make this payment to the Danes in 991 the government imposed а heavy tax called Danegeld, or Dane money. And every time the Danes came back they received more and the government, in its turn, increased the tax of Danegeld collected from the population.
The Danish invasions during the 9th and 10th centuries hastened the process of the development of feudal relations in England. The peasantry which made up the bulk of the population suffered very much from the raids of the Danes.
The Norman Conquest
In the 9th century while the Danes were plundering England another branch of Northmen who were related to the Danes invaded the Northern coasts of France. They were called the Normans.
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Many changes came about in the life of the Normans and the Danes after the 9th century. By the 11th century the Danes had finally settled down as subjects of the English kings. As time went on they gradually mixed with the Anglo-Saxons among whom they lived. Thus they retained their Germanic language and many of their customs that were very much like those of the Anglo-Saxons. But the Normans who had settled down in France were now quite different from their Germanic forefathers. They lived among the French people, who were a different people, with different manners, customs and language. They had learned to speak the French language, and, in many ways, they had become like the French themselves. They adopted their manners and customs, and their way of life. The establishment of the feudal system in France had been completed by the 11th century and the Norman barons had come into possession of large tracts of land and a great number of serfs.
The Normans lived under the rule of their own duke. By the 11th century the dukes of Normandy had become very powerful. Though they acknowledged the king of France as their overlord, they were actually as strong as the king himself. Like other French dukes and counts they made themselves practically independent. They coined their own money, made their own laws, held their own courts, built their own castles. They could wage wars against other dukes and even against the king himself. As a well-armed and well-trained cavalry, the Norman knights were the best in Europe. They were formidable fighters and would wage wars in order to seize new lands and serfs. These descendants of the Northmen who had settled in northern France in the 9th century became the new conquerors of England.
After Canute’s death in 1035 and then the death of his sons (the last one, childless, died in 1042), the Goldwin group (Goldwin held three of the six large earldoms of the country) succeeded on restoring the old Saxon dynasty to the throne of England; that was how Edward, was bought back from Normandy (the part of France occupied by the Northmen). The king Edward who died in 1066 had no children and the Witenagemot chose relative of the deceased king, the Anglo-Saxon Earl, Harold. But William, the Duke of Normandy, cousin to Edward the Confessor, declared himself heir to the throne of England and began preparations for a war to fight for the Crown.
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He called upon all the Christian warriors of Europe to help him gain his rights to English throne. No pay was offered, but William promised land to all who would support him William also asked the Roman Pope for his support. He promised to strengthen the Pope's power over the English Church.
William landed in the south of England and the battle between the Norman and the Anglo-Saxons took place on the 14th of October 1066 at a little village in the neighborhood of the town now called Hastings. The Normans outnumbered the Anglo-Saxon forces and were greatly superior in quality. They were all men for whom fighting was the main occupation in life. The battle went on all day. The Anglo-Saxons were encircled, a great many of them were killed. Harold was killed too and the battle was at an end.
The victory at Hastings was only the beginning of the Conquest. It took several years for William and his barons to subdue the whole of England. Soon after the victory at Hastings the Normans encircled London and the Witenagemot had to acknowledge William as the lawful king of England. Thus the Norman duke became king of England - William I or, as he was generally known, William the Conqueror. He ruled England for 21 years (1066-1087). During the first five years of his reign the Normans had to put down many rebellions in different parts of the country.
In 1071 the subjugation of the country was completed, even the king of Scotland acknowledged William as a lord. All the uprisings were put down and the rebels were punished severely. With lessons of such severe punishment the conquerors meant to keep the people in obedience, to intimidate them so that they should not dare to rise against Norman rule.
Changes in the country
The Conqueror declared that all the lands of England belonged to him by right of conquest. The estates of all the Anglo-Saxon lords who had supported Harold or acknowledged him as king were confiscated. The Anglo-Saxon landowners and the Anglo-Saxon clergy were turned out of their houses. One-seventh of the country was made the royal domain. The other lands the king granted to the Normans and Frenchmen who had taken part in the Conquest and to the Anglo-Saxon landlords who supported him.
The Conqueror claimed that the forest lands which made up one-third of the country belonged to him too. Thus the king of England became the richest feudal lord of all. Each Norman noble, on getting his estate, swore an oath of allegiance to the king and became the king's vassal. Each baron received with the grant of land the promise of the king's protection, but in return he had to render military service to his overlord bringing a number of fully armed knights with him in time of war. Besides, when an estate was inherited by the heir on the death of the holder, a certain payment was to be made to the king.
In England the rule "My vassal's vassal is not my vassal" was broken now and it became the duty of all the landlords, great and small, to support the king against all his enemies, both foreign and domestic. (In other words, if a great lord rebelled against the king, the lesser vassals were to fight for the king, against their immediate overlord.)
For greater security, when William the Conqueror rewarded his important supporters with a large number of estates, he did not give them large blocks of land but gave them a number of small estates scattered about the country. The Conqueror granted land in this way to make it difficult for the great nobles to collect their forces to offer resistance to the royal power.
Another change which William I introduced to reduce the power of the great lords was the abolition of the great earldoms — Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex, that had been established in the reign of the Danish King Canute. Now the country was divided into shires, or counties, as the Normans called them. William I appointed a royal official in each shire to be his “sheriff”. The royal sheriffs became of great importance. Through the sheriffs the king exercised control over all his vassals. The sheriff administered justice in the shire.
To make himself stronger than any of his nobles, William the Conqueror ordered that many castles should be built in different parts of the country. They were nearly all royal castles. No other person was allowed to build a castle without the king's permission.
William I replaced the Witenagemot by a Great Council, made up of bishops and barons who met together to talk over governmental problems and to give their advice to the king. One of the functions of the Great Council was to act as the king's Supreme Court. The right to belong to the Great Council depended on the holding of land granted by the king.
Domesday Book
Twenty years after the Conquest William 1 organized the first registration of all the holders of arable land, pastures, all the taxes paid, etc. The villagers used to say that nothing could be concealed from the king's officials just as you would not conceal anything from God on doomsday. The villagers were threatened to be punished on doomsday, that is why the book in which all these accounts were written was called the Domesday Book.
The names the new owners of the estates were written down in the official state document, the Domesday Book, the Norman lords were considered now the lawful owners of the English lands. Thus the feudal registration of 1086 consolidated the position of the conquerors.
Great changes were brought about in the life of Anglo-Saxon peasantry as a result of the registration organized by William the Conqueror. Before the Conquest many peasants were serfs, or villeins, as they were called in England. The villeins were “bound to the soil and to the lord”. They belonged to the feudal estate, or to the manor, as it was called in England. They were not allowed to leave the lord of the manor. However, alongside with the villeins there were many semi-bondsmen whose services to the lord of the manor were much lighter than those of the villeins. There were also many free peasants. Now all those semi-bond peasants were registered in the Domesday Book as villeins.
In addition the peasants had to pay heavier taxes. He continued to collect even the old Danegeld. Thus the Norman Conquest aggravated feudal exploitation and it hastened the process of turning the free peasants into serfs. The Norman conquerors became not only the owners of the English lands but also the masters of the people who lived on it.
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