Subject to Change
I talk to the world's best historians and let them tell the stories. And the stories are wonderful! (And occasionally I change the subject and talk about films, philosophy or whatever!).
Subject to Change
Ed West on 1066 and all that
Ed West is a journalist and massively popular substacker - do check out his substack The Wrong Side of History. But he has a sideline in history so I got him on the show to talk about 1066 and the battle of Hastings. Ed is on top form so please join us as he talks about:
- why Harold should have listened to his Mum
- Harald Hadrada's absolute last poem
- what made the Norman's so very hard to beat
- and why the Normans were the woke progressives of their day!
If you enjoy the conversation then please follow, share with a history‑minded friend and leave a quick review to help others find the show!
Hello and welcome to Subject to Change with me, Russell Hogg. My guest today is Ed West. Ed is a journalist and cultural commentator with a Substack called The Wrong Side of History. And I think the title nicely captures his slightly gloomy but extremely witty style. It's one of the UK's most popular Substacks, and I don't think it needs any introduction over here in the UK. But for American listeners, I really urge you to seek it out. It's absolutely fantastic.
SPEAKER_00:That's very kind, Russell. Very kind indeed. It's true.
SPEAKER_01:Lovely words. And aside from his work as a journalist and substacker, Ed has written a series of mini histories. And it's one of these we're going to talk about today, which is to say his book about the Norman invasion of England, which goes by the title 1066 and before all that. Anyway, uh welcome Ed to the podcast. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure. This is my second time, I believe. Yes, this is your second time. So I'm on the returnees. Yes, you're on the list of returnees. Okay, so the title of your book, that's a nod to the famous book by Seller and Yateman called 1066 and all that. And I say it's famous, but I don't know because it's pretty old now, but I think it's I think it's well known, certainly still in England. And and that book, it's it's very much a parody and it's very silly, but it does put its finger on things uh quite well, I think. And as far as the book is concerned, there's only two dates in English history. And one of these is when the Romans first invade in 55 BC, and the other is 1066. So leaving aside 55 BC and the Romans, why is 1066 still such a big deal?
SPEAKER_00:Um, I think even with the decline of kind of general historical literacy, it's still the most well-known day. Apparently, I think it was the most popular code for pin numbers that people use. It's it's very easy to remember. And I think for England in particular, it forms the sort of start of our national story. In a way that's not really fair because, as you know, I'm a big fan of Alfred the Great, and and England became a unified kingdom in 927 and with Athelston. But with the arrival of Normans, England is brought under the kind of cultural influence of France, it's much more much bigger and much more important neighbour. And with that come the origins in many ways of our class structure, which is a sort of division between a kind of French influence aristocracy and a sort of Anglo-Saxon peasantry. It completely transforms our language. Old English, if anyone tries to read it, is very, very hard to understand. It's it's one of the languages that has changed the most in the last thousand years or so. It's much more Germanic, and and now what we have instead is a language which is a mixture of German and French. And it's it's been described as probably the most catastrophic defeat for any uh group in European history, in the sense that the entire English ruling class was was completely defeated and uh soft. And that you know, many were actually killed at Hastings, but when the Doomsday Book was was uh recorded 20 years later, there were only two English landholders in the whole of the country. The uh the the church was entirely dominated by Normans, um, and and so it created this idea of two nations, which Disraeli famously talked about and which still is still alluded to a little bit today. I mean, I mention the example of Harry Potter, you know, the obviously the most important cultural um book of the last 30 years. It's had such a huge influence. But even in that, which is you know a lot about that English obsession class, the the baddies have obviously Norman sounding names, Malfoy, Voldemort, and the goodies have the you know, the quintessential Potter is you know is is example of those um kind of English surnames which relate to trade and a kind of low status and and reflect a kind of Anglo-Saxon heritage. So I I think that uh idea of of uh England as a kind of class-based system really comes back to 1066.
SPEAKER_01:So we should also maybe bring in the Normans here because they seem to be quite remarkable. They conquer England, right? They conquer Sicily, they take Antioch, um, they invade the Byzantine Empire several times, you know, sometimes with success, sometimes with less success. But but so who are the Normans? Because they seem to be an absolute nightmare.
SPEAKER_00:The Norm, I mean the Normans they're a fascinating group of people. Their origins uh go about a century and a half earlier, so the beginning of the 10th century, when the the Vikings, the Norsemen, are terrorizing England and France. And when it becomes too hard in France, then they sort of go back to England and vice versa. And eventually the king of the Franks at this point, as they're still called, just sort of accepts that they are a part, they are they're part of life now. So he essentially allows them to settle on the coast in what becomes now known as uh Normandy, uh around Rouen, which is their capital, which was uh you know a very large city in medieval times, and less so now. They originally they are pagans, you know, they originally have the practice of multiple wives, but they very quickly within the two generations or so become very, very Christian, very Catholic. But this doesn't also stop them being incredibly violent. Uh you know, their stories they're full of stories about you know the local bishop who sets fire to a church full of people and commits all sorts of horrible murders and rapes, and and this is a complete feature of it. And they have a very extremely violent uh aristocratic uh kind of society, which is incredibly competitive. And the things to understand about France is that you know, France, we we have a sort of, I suppose, an American World War II kind of jokey image of the French always surrendering. You know, France is the opposite, historically it's always been the most belligerent country in Europe and the most militaristic. Uh, and one of the reasons is it just has the best, most fertile land, north and western France is incredibly fertile, uh, it's incredibly um fought over. And so what emerges is the development of castles all along the the west. Um so Normandy and Anjou to the south uh are just filled. And if you go to the Loire Valley now, that it's you know it's full of chateaus, it's lovely. Those chateaus were originally castles, basically. So every local uh strongman had his castle. Once you had a castle, it was very hard to kind of get rid of you, basically. And at the top of this, the the Norman ruling family were also incredibly belligerent. But the thing about Normans is that they're slightly complex because they they were quite sluggish in some ways, but and they were also firstly incredibly intelligent. They were very, very sophisticated with their battle tactics and they learned very well. And when they were in the East, as they did uh spent a lot of their time, they imitated, they obviously learned a lot from the Byzantines in terms of their military technology. Uh and they also developed, uh, along with the Franks generally, a system which became known as chivalry, which was basically when you captured uh an enemy aristocrat, you ransomed them. It was there was basically a taboo emerge that you don't kill opponents, you ransom them, you get the money. While in England, you know, they were always killing each other. If you captured a rival, you just killed him, or you plucked his eyes out, or something horrific like that. Uh and so the mixture of this kind of early, slightly romantic ideal with kind of extreme violence. And also they turn up everywhere, so they you know they they become very religious, they they become very interested in traveling. So, you know, these pilgrimages begin uh maybe as far back as the 10th century to the Holy Lands, and the Normans are very keen on that. So William the Conqueror's father was called known as Robert the Liberal. Um, I mean, that obviously not in other sense, but what it means is he was generous with with giving money to the church. So he wasn't like you know into LGBT roads or anything. But he died going to the Holy Land. He he came back, he died on the way back from you know one of the various diseases people die of. But while on one of their trips, those Normans on the way back from landed in Sicily, uh, and the locals were fighting a kind of war, local war, and they said, Oh, can you guys can you help us? And obviously that was a terrible mistake because then they turn back, come back with loads of them, and then eventually the Normans end up ruling not just Sicily but all of southern Italy, basically, which they conquer variously from the Byzantines and from uh, you know, there are there are various different groups fighting over that part of the world, um, you know, because it's a mixture of Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim. Uh, and that makes them very powerful with the church. At one point, they even capture the Pope, so that's the the church is very scared of them, basically. So that makes them very powerful, and that would have a huge impact when 1066 comes along uh because they get the backing of the church, which is terrible news for the English.
SPEAKER_01:Well, let's talk about the English then, and I don't want to go too far back in English history because the names just get too confusing.
SPEAKER_00:So many affelwigs and affelwigs and various, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I was actually I was speaking to Mark Morris about Edward I, uh, and we did uh we did a podcast on him, and his name comes, of course, because he his father was a huge fan of Edward the Edward the Confessor. And and his point was that was it not for the fact that uh that that Edward I had been brought in and became a hugely popular English name, we would still look on Edward as being this sort of another of these weird and fanciful names like Ethel ethel, whatever. But because but because Edward I was so successful, it sort of become anglicised and and become normalized.
SPEAKER_00:And that's why I'm in Edwards. Well, there aren't many Edwigs out there or Edwise or the other ones. But let's talk about Edward the Confessor then.
SPEAKER_01:Well, go back as far as you like.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so that's it. That's basically the origin story. Basically, the Vikings had returned back in the uh in the 11th century. Um Brit England had been ruled by Danish King Knutes. He was a pretty effective ruler. So I mean England was conquered in 1066, in 1016, this kind of precursor, but it didn't lead to the basically this huge wholesale change. Um the English ruling class weren't wiped down, lots of English lords would serve Knutes. Uh after Knut dies, he has two sons. This is all very complicated because the polygamy makes things extra base well. So he had Canute had two wives, despite being quite a Christian, uh, and he had two sons by two little wives, and they both ruled for not particularly long periods, and and they were fairly worth mentioning. So after the second one dies, basically the last member of the old ruling house of Wessex, the descendant of um Alfred the Great, is a guy called Edward, who becomes known as Edward Confessor, and he is the son of Esther Red the Unready by his second wife. He's half Norman. So that that's where the problems basically start. So his mother is Emma of Normandy, who's this kind of very just kind of quite frightening figure who's like very dominant. She marries Etherid, she marries Knutes. You know, two of her sons, two of her husbands are king. So Edward had been in exile in Normandy, so he comes back in 1042 and he rules, he rules England. So the old ruling house is restored. He seems to have a terrible relationship with his mother, he basically puts her in trial eventually. But the problem is there is a basically what we now you know later call a kind of overmighty lords called Godwin, who was whose origins are are known, we're not entirely sure, but he came to power under Canute. So he worked for Canudes, basically, as a kind of bug, basically. And he had a Danish wife, and he had become the Earl of Wessex, is basically the biggest landholder in the whole of England. So he was a big rival to Edward. Edward hated him for quite good reason that Godwin had probably killed Edward's brother. There was a kind of earlier Botch Norman invasion in which Edward's brother Alfred turned up and then Godwin's men arrested him and blinded him, and then that killed him. Uh, and so those two hate each other. Godwin has six sons and he has a daughter, and his daughter marries Edward the Professor's daughter Edith. Everyone seems to be called Edith, so that's another thing. It's the medieval problem of everyone having the same name. So there's this kind of uneasy settlement between Edward and the Godwins.
SPEAKER_01:Um but just to go back, because you said that uh Edward grows up in Normandy.
SPEAKER_00:He spends a lot of time in Normandy, yeah. He goes there exile for a lot of the time when when can you meet him in power?
SPEAKER_01:And and is that part of the problem as to why the Normans think they've got some kind of a stake in in England? Is is is is the genesis of that uh in Edward's time in Normandy?
SPEAKER_00:It's because Edward's mother was the sister of the Duke of Normandy. That then that was a basically uh political alliance to sort of counter the influence of the Vikings. And so, yes, William would be the great nephew of of Edward in that case, the great nephew of Emma. So he would use that connection as one of his is I mean I I should say generally I think William's claim to the throne is very, very dubious, if not non-existent. But you don't really you can't really argue with a man like that, so you know what can you do?
SPEAKER_01:So he um so so so Edward he has a miserable time. Well, he's he's been exiled, and then he comes back, and as you say, he's he's got the problem all these over mighty lords.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so Godwin in particular, so he has to marry Godwin's daughter, they don't produce children, no one's entirely sure why, and it's probably impossible to speculate. Edward seems to be a a very holy figure. Uh I mean we don't know, maybe he didn't consummate the marriage because he didn't want to form a dynasty. And so at some point the Godwins are exiled because they have a sort of they have a kind of conflict with the king. Uh and so Godwin has six sons. The the oldest is Sven. He's he sounds like he's a bit of a Roman. He he probably rapes a nun. He ends up, he's exiled, then he comes back, and I think he killed one of his cousins, uh and um he eventually dies. And so the next eldest son is Harold, Harold Godminson, who is to become the kind of hero of the story. He Harold's, I mean, what we know about him is that he was supposedly very good looking, he was very he was very adept and very effective. He, you know, both militarily and I suppose you want to say politically. So as Edwards gets older and he comes closer to his to his death, Harold is, you know, in his he's in his 30s, he's at the height of his power, everyone basically respects him as the most powerful leader in England. He has no royal blood, but that's that's not necessarily the end of the world because under the Anglo-Saxons, you know, the king was basically appointed by the leading elders of the of the of the state. It wasn't automatically hereditary, it wasn't passed on. So it, you know, whoever was the most you had to be sort of throne worthy. The problem is there weren't really any any real royals left in the House of Wessex, you know. So to make things another complicated, Edward Edward Edward had a a nephew that was out in Hungary, and he got called back. So he came all the way back from Hungary, took him a year, and then as soon as he got to England, he died within like three days or something. Um which no one was entirely sure. Well, it could just be people died of things, could have been things. So he's got a son called Edgar, but he Edgar's only 13 in 1066, he's still a child. He technically becomes king after Harold, but he's not recognised as a regular thing. So so basically, the options are when Edward is dying, Harold is basically appointed king. And there's one person, well, there's actually two people to make it worse. There are two people who are very upset about uh foreign rulers who believe they have been promised in some way the kingdom of England.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I was going to come on to that because had Harold not visited Normandy and got into some sort of uh entanglement with William and the Normans? And is that not part of why well why William claims he's got this is why William claimed it.
SPEAKER_00:So in 1064, two years before he becomes king, Harold went to Normandy. Uh, we're not entirely sure why. He had gone to France. One theory is that so he his youngest brother, who has like one of the most unfortunate roles in the story, and that he will spend all his life imprisoned by the Normans. He had been sent over basically as a hostage in an ear in the earlier dispute with the Godwins. He was still there. So the most likely story is Harold had gone over there to try to get him back. Uh, he had been captured by a sort of local lords. William had, you know, as the as the overlords had, so to his mind. Um the two men went hunting together and they fought together against local rivals. And you can see in the in the tapestry, their tapestry, that Harold's pulling a Norman knight out of quicksand. Like Harold was supposed to be incredibly strong. He fought very well. And by all accounts, the two men, the two men did get on. They um, you know, they were both very strong, kind of false figures. I mean, that's probably the only bit that's accurate in the new TV series. Although they, for some reason, they completely change it so they meet in England. But you know, they did meet in 1064, and at that point, Harold was supposed to have uh promised the kingdom to William when Edward dies. You know, the story has that he made this promise, and then the Normans they sort of take away a piece of cloth, and underneath it are some saints' bones, which makes the promise sacred.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I see. So he's so so the idea is that he's sort of he sort of swears on a piece of cloth and then haha, there's relics underneath the cloth.
SPEAKER_00:I suppose to a to later, certainly from a theological point of view, later observers will say, well, that makes it invalid because he didn't know. But the Normans presented it as oh, we're so clever, we've tricked him into making this oath. And like this just shows how devious and clever we are.
SPEAKER_01:And this is shown, I think, in the bio tapestry, is that right?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, it is. That's Williams basically uh rationale for it.
SPEAKER_01:But hang on, let's leave the relics to one side. If he does swear an oath, are oaths not supposed to be something that you give before God, irrespective of whether or not somebody's hidden, you know, a a saint's, you know, fingernail under under under the cloth.
SPEAKER_00:I think it adds yeah, I suppose it adds an added legal weight in the thinking of the time. Right. I mean it's it's it's kind of irrelevant though, because uh I mean whether William knew this or not, is the Witan, the Witten basically decides who's king. So even if Harold says I think I think this French bloke should be king, yeah, that they're just gonna say no, because no no one would want a foreigner ruling them. I mean, that's kind of a universal rule in most in most of the situations of the time. They just wanted an Englishman to to rule them because they didn't know this guy. He's doesn't speak English, he's a he's from across the sea, he's a complete stranger to the island, which makes the whole invasion plan so bizarre and registered. It seems so reckless and so ambitious, which is you know so typical of the Normans as a people. So they weren't seafaring people, particularly, even though they're Vikings in origin. They were land fighters, they were very good at land war, but they weren't the Norman lords were very anxious about going to the sea, and it's a very dangerous stretch of water. And if and in later centuries, you know, loads of Anglo-Norman lords would be killed trying to cross that stretch of water. It's very hazardous. And William himself had such you know, he was king from a very duke from a very early age, uh, after his son died, after his father died. So he had multiple attempts in his life. He had a very, very difficult upbringing, he's constantly under danger from his father's relatives. He had so much on his plate, but he decided, you know, he wanted to be a king, and you know, that would make him and partly his. Rivalry with the King of France, his overlords, this would make him an equal to uh the King of France in some ways. And so the the bold idea came into his head and you know they succeeded.
SPEAKER_01:So you said there were two people who were sort of looking for the throne, so I guess William is one of them. Who was the other?
SPEAKER_00:No, the other's Harold Hadrada, who's the he's a fantastic figure, because he sort of he's sort of like the lion. He's the last Viking, basically. After he dies, you know, it's all just sorts of you know human rights and ABBA and uh furniture from the Scandinavians. It's something obviously happens. So he had lived a remarkable life at the age of 15. He'd been his his half-brother had been killed in a battle. Uh he had just escaped, you know, hiding out in the wint woods in the winter. He'd gone to Constantinople, and there were loads of stories attached to him, and you know, I think most of them probably aren't true, but he was obviously a very frightening and incredibly he was very tall and obviously very, very charismatic. He he led kind of basically Viking mercenaries out in Constantinople where you know that there was a you know there was a long-running connection between the Norsemen down through what is you know now Russia and Ukraine towards Constantinople where they worked as as kind of tough guys, and he spent many years there, and he's apparently you know fought a dragon and blah blah blah and all these kind of stories. Uh and then he came back to um Norway to be he shared he shared the the uh throne uh and then he became the sole ruler and he became known as a hard ruler because he's you know if you came to him complaining about taxes, he'll sort of cut your head off. And even by the sands of the time, he was known as a very ferocious ruler, but he was he also had this Viking obsession with poetry and of being remembered as a great warrior. And it's almost like there's a certain sort of death-wish element to this that he thought, this is a bit of a mad idea, I'm gonna invade England.
SPEAKER_01:But it isn't his idea, is it? I mean, it comes from somebody else.
SPEAKER_00:It's a long-running under the Canudes, England and Norway were joined, basically, and there was kind of agreement with his nephew and one of the English kings that whoever dies first, the other person gets to rule both kingdoms. But it was almost like one of these kind of forgotten promises, like no one would just say that, it's not gonna happen. Already at this stage, understand is that England had been under the sway of Scandinavian influence for a long time, they'd been ruled by Scandinavians, you know, that much of the population was essentially Scandinavian, but that was already starting to change.
SPEAKER_01:This is the bit of the story I always find confusing because we all remember uh Alfred the Great, and he's the guy who defeats the Vikings, and yet hang on, we've got Canute, we've got others who say, hang on, there's Vikings everywhere.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they come back. What happened is the Viking the Vikings basically become Christianized, and that kind of makes them worse in many ways because they now have you know, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were one of the earliest countries to have state formation, along with England and France. And so during this the second Viking invasion become becomes more of a problem because all these states that they've become proper states now rather than sort of mini earldoms, and they can they can then have much bigger armies and and they're much more they're much more effective. So can you could call up all of Denmark for that reason, and you know, Norway, so they are becoming much more you know like real countries rather than kind of you know, the original Vikings were just kind of roving bands of kind of extra surplus men who were causing trouble. But you have to understand also that you know huge parts of eastern England are are still basically Viking. So Harold thinks, Harold had rather thinks that if he's told to make another make it extra complicated, so by this point, Harold's younger brother, his next youngest brother Tostig, he's fallen out with him.
SPEAKER_01:Now, this is this is where it gets very difficult because we got Harald and we got Harold, and so this is this is the English Harold's brother, Tostig, has fallen out with him.
SPEAKER_00:Harold still has four brothers left, and the next one is Tostig, and he was basically he was uh appointed the Earl of the North in Northumbria, but he was basically chased out. I mean, they hated him there for some reason. I mean, it he comes across as a bit of an unhinged figure and a bit too brutal, so he was driven out, and Harold, Harold Goldmanson, made a deal with the the kind of ruling aristocracy of Northumbria to back him. It was Edwin and Morcar they called, who are still quite young, and he marries their sister. He already has a bride, and they all called Edith, and it's all very complicated. So Tostig is outraged by this, he flees the country, you know, gets his avenge, he goes around all of northwest Europe saying, you know, I'm really popular in England, come with me and we'll invade it. And either I become king or you become king or whatever. Uh and everyone says no, they they know he's probably not very popular, he's actually quite a weak figure. But he gets as far as Norway, and Harold says, That's this great idea. And and one theory is that Norway Norway's so far away, he probably wasn't aware of the local politics. And so Tostig convinces him to invade. So he he then you know does the kind of trip where they go around, say go via Orkney. And bear in mind all these islands like the Orkney, Orkney, uh the Shetlands, they're all Viking at this point. So he can stop along the way, sing a few songs, have a piss up, um, recruit more men, and he just moves down the east coast of England where he invades in Yorkshire, and that's the first invasion of the year. Uh, so he arrives in Yorkshire with Tostig, and Tostig says, Everyone really loves me, it's great. He they go to York and no one comes up and no one talks to Tostig. That is actually everyone really hates me. So they defeat uh a sort of very ragtag English army at Fulford, the first battle of the year. Uh Edwin and Morker defeated. Meanwhile, in uh in the south, the English army has been spent the whole of the sort of summer, late summer, guarding the south coast, expecting a Norman invasion, because they know a Norman invasion's coming, but they have to they have to get back to their crops for the harvest. So it's a big problem with when you have a kind of cis and farmer army like that. So eventually they go back. You know, Harold says, Alright, it's too late in the year. Harold Godlinson, too late in the year, the Normans aren't going to invade now. So the men are released, and then he hears news. Oh no, the Vikings have invaded. So he has to send, he raises an army. It's always been a mystery how he manages to do it so quickly, because he he basically gets there in four or five days, much quicker than Harold Hodderada expected. We're not entirely sure how he did it. He must he might have raised more men in the north than we previously arrived. So he arrives in um in Yorkshire, and then there is this kind of set piece where he talks to his brother. And again, this this does sound a bit too convenient, the story.
SPEAKER_01:It's it's so it's it's the whole of history.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, I mean it's the thing about sixty six is what this is what annoys me about the recent dramas that it's the actual story is still amazing, it's got so many plot twists and so many turns and so many great characters that I don't know why you'd want to change that at all because you don't you can't make up something that's better than this. So at this point, before the before the meeting, the English army arrives and they kind of parlay, and Tostig says, Well, well, you're gonna give you know my friend Harold Roddy, he says, Well, give him six feet of of English soil, you know, i.e., a grave. Or he says, Well, he's a as a big man, so maybe seven foot. So the English and the Viking invaders, they the second battle happens based on the Stamp of Ridge, just outside York, and the English win. Harold Harold is killed, Tostik is killed. Harold apparently, according to as he's sort of bleeding, like the blood's pouring out of his mouth, he's you know, his last breath he says, Oh, it's time for one last poem. I'm not sure if it's probably true. He says, Let it be said, like I killed a thousand men in battle, blah blah blah, and then he's dead. And then hang on, hang on.
SPEAKER_01:How do the English man I mean, because the Vikings are terrifying in battle. Is the English army bigger? Is it is it luckier? Is it better led? Why does uh we just had God on our sides?
SPEAKER_00:I think that's just the the obvious explanation.
SPEAKER_01:He's he swapped size quickly.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, Harold was Harold had a long history, he had lots of military experience, he fought extensively in Wales. You know, he was very he was just a very good leader. So after the battle, you know, there are like 300 Viking ships turned up, there are enough men for 30. Harold Goodman's uh Godson, you know, in a remarkable gesture, really, he allows the Viking survivors to go home unmolested. He and he allows Harold's son to go home. He says, you know, I'm not gonna not gonna kill or slave you. And that actually much later, that will have a kind of small bearing on on his successes. So they they start to head home and he thinks, okay, by now it's late September. And then they hear the disastrous news. 28th of September, the Normans have arrived in in England, in Sussex. The wind had turned, William arrived. Uh, you know, there's a story that along the way his his clairvoyant dies, drowns. Um, he wasn't very clairvoyant, was he?
SPEAKER_01:Then they make his own lens. So they used to carry fortune tellers with them, even though they're nominally Christian. I like it.
SPEAKER_00:They they still they still had lots of um they had some remnants of the pagan past. But the thing about the the Normans is they were essentially basically French. I think the Viking elements probably slightly overplayed. The the actual Viking, the originators, the Viking population were very small in number. They had only a few low words. They weren't they were basically French. Although, you know, William the Conqueror, he would have been called like something more like Wilhelm than Guillaume. So, you know, there was a slight is it's a kind of complex mix. So he arrived, he he arrives basically in Harold's own county, Sussex, and he and they do what the Normans always do, they just start burning out villages, attacking locals.
SPEAKER_01:Hang on, hang on. You I want to go back a bit because because you mentioned somehow they've managed to get the Pope's blessing. So so number one question is what on earth has it got to do with the Pope?
SPEAKER_00:Well, this comes down to I mean, how much do you want to talk about ecclesiastical politics in the 11th century? I mean, we're I've got old days. That's lucky. We might need it. Basically, so this is like this is Tom Holland thoughts here. This is so there was a huge kind of change going on in the Catholic Church at the time uh in the 11th century. It was called Reformation originally, it was becoming much stricter about lots of things like priestly celibacy. The church was pretty corrupt before that. It was called the pornoprisy in the 9th and 10th century. It was kind of very common for bishops and priests to have children, sometimes openly married, they would hold multiple offices. There was this kind of purifying movement, and the English were quite bad at this. Like a lot of their a lot of their leading churchmen are pretty corrupt. Uh, and the worst of them was a guy called Stigand, who was kind of an Harold, he was Harold's uh ally, he was an ally of the Godmans. And also England is now as in Den, it is kind of isolated in Europe in many ways. The Norm the Normans were Italians and French were very influential in it, and as I say, the a previous Pope had basically been captured by the Normans, so they were very scared about that of them, and they wanted them on the side. But there was also a sense that the church in England had become pretty corrupt. So the you know, the Pope basically gives a papal blessing to William, which means anyone can join the fight. So all sorts of um lords from all over, you know, there are lots of Bretons, there were lots of sort of Flemings, there were even some Italians, there were soldiers coming from all over the place. Because once you give the church a blessing, everyone kind of joins in, you know, as was happened to the Crusades, which is absolutely disastrous news for Harold. And and you know, these lords they expect something in return, they expect land.
SPEAKER_01:Um but I still can't quite get over it. I mean, you've made the point, like the English Channel can be pretty hard to cross, particularly in winter when you get a storm, you can just all be killed. So he gets these lords, but but they must be pretty desperate to be invading, you know, across the sea a kingdom like England, which is presumably well, which we know is no pushover. So how does he persuade them to come? I mean, it just seems like I mean papal blessing or no papal blessing. It seems amazing he can get an army together.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I mean, one of the biggest drivers, especially of Norman expansion, was the younger son's problem. The Norman knight who who conquered William Strongarm, who conquered Sicily if I'm getting this correct, he had 12 sons. You know, your eldest son, your eldest son inherits the lands, your second son maybe joins the church. What are you going to do with the all these other sons? A lot of warfare in medieval Europe was driven by excess aristocratic young men whose only training had been in violence and who had nothing else to do but star wars. I mean, the crusades were in fact a way of kind of relieving that violent impulse. And you know, the idea was that send them to the east and they might conquer or they get killed, but either way, it's not a problem anymore. Job done. Yeah, so this is a time when you know everyone is basically close to the edge of starvation. You know, this the the desire for land is is absolutely a driver for many people. The problem is for William, his original idea was well, I'll I'll go I'll be proclaimed king and I'll I'll rule as their king. But as he makes more promises to all these other aristocrats who are coming with him, it's clear that he has to take the land from the English. He's not coming to just be the king, he is going to take away their lands and basically reduce them to you know serfdom, whatever. So by that stage, this is just a very, very hostile army. And the thing about England, England had a very, very sophisticated state system, its tax raising powers were very, very advanced. It was actually very culturally advanced uh in terms of its kind of vernacular literature. The Vikings raided it because they always had money to give them. So that was you know, that was that was the attraction. But they were also militarily much less advanced than than the French. And you know, this comes down to the idea that France was full of all these competing dukedoms, duchies, and and such like, who were constantly at war with each other, and that led to a basically uh an arms escalation. The Norman cavalry was way more uh effective than anything the English had. The English didn't even fight on horses, they would, you know, they rode the horses to battle, they fought on in infantry, their archery was much less advanced than the Normans. So, you know, the the Norman aristocracy, unlike that in England, they had fought they had an entire basically warrior caste whose entire purpose all they did was basically prepare for war. And the cavalry, which was what won the the war basically, that was a very complicated system that required a huge amount of training and huge amounts of coordination between men and horseback. And it's very hard to fight on horseback in a war like that. For a start, the horses get uh scared, and the Normans even bred a particularly aggressive type of horse, which was would sometimes bite people in battle, which would was better equipped to kind of deal with the stress of the whole thing. You know, it just shows that they were hard not to admire how you know driven they were to kind of do all this. In that sense, invading another country, yes, that's a huge risk. The advantage is always with the defenders, but they were a terrifying kind of group of people to have. I mean, it's the last people you want invading you in the 11th century, basically.
SPEAKER_01:I was speaking to uh Lord Sumption about the Hundred Years' War, and he said that one of the key English tactics which allowed them to win battle after a battle was that they dismounted from their horses and fought, and that it was only once the French started copying them, uh well actually the you th there were two things that the English did was that they stood on the defensive and let the French come at them, and that they had dismounted from their horses, and so it seems it seems that something well, I suppose the English then had great archery, which uh which you're saying they didn't they didn't have uh at the Battle of Hastings. But but it's quite interesting that that that in the Hundred Years' War the cavalry was not the decisive arm, but but you're saying we may as well talk about the battle. You're saying that Hastings, the cavalry is the decisive arm.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, you know, obviously war evolves uh a huge amount between the 11th and the 14th century. And by the 14th century, like the long you know the first the crossbows had come, and then the longbows in the 14th century, and if you had a longbow formation, then you could fire I can't remember this is obviously slightly irrelevant, but you know, the number of arrows the English were firing at Frissy and Poitiers was just enormous, and no amount of prancing around on cavalry could kind of do much about that. But in this earliest earlier stage, the so the you know the English and Vikings would just fight hand to hand in very close kind of combat, like a big sort of big rugby scrum. But once you have the Norman development of cavalry, which involved much more sophisticated, you know, they had developed a particular type of lance that was completely out of the depths of any kind of infantryman. You know, it wasn't just cavalry, but also, you know, what what finally did it on the actual day was, you know, they did they also developed things, you know, like the fake retreats, which was one reason they did it. They were able to coordinate in a way that the English just weren't. I mean, and that's why basically, you know, the Norman the Normans kind of won pretty much every battle they fought, really.
SPEAKER_01:But the battle itself, I think I saw somewhere that the Normans lose two and a half thousand men and the English lose four thousand men. So that's a pretty hard-fought battle, and it's not, you know, it's not like the usual thing where one side takes all the casualties. I mean, it must have been pretty grisly on both sides.
SPEAKER_00:What's interesting about Hastings is that, you know, as medieval historians always say, battles are very rare. I mean, most fighting was basically you you besiege a castle and hopefully they'll starve to death before you'll start to death or whatever. No one really liked if you fought a battle, anything can go wrong. And if like if your king gets killed, stray arrow, as uh maybe happened, we don't actually know that's true, um, then you know everything's over, you've lost everything. So it's a such a huge gamble. So that's why you know Hastings was very huge and unusual. It's probably like 9,000 men on each side, roughly, and you know, starting at the beginning of the day, going on till the very end of the day, basically. And the essential point of it was firstly, Harold dies. Most people I suppose think the arrow in the eye is probably a bit of a kind of just so story. You know, it's just as plausible that a sort of crack team of William's men had kind of basically hunted him down and managed to kill him. You know, both his brothers die, and then you know, the the Norman line starts to break. You know, the Normans are going up a hill, which even mean you know I'm not a military historian, military expert anyway. But obviously, if you're at the top of the hill, you have an advantage. And so the Normans are kind of trying to push up the hill, and then one of their lines starts to break a little bit, and then they notice that the English start running down for them, so they actually coordinate a fake retreat. And when you do a fake retreat, you can basically draw, you know, the English break their lines, and that makes it easier to to basically kind of like take them all on, and that kind of proves to be a crucial kind of error for the English. And you know, the fate fame retreat is an is uh a tactic that again was probably brought back from Byzantium, um, as was the castle building, you know. They they learned a lot from from their experiences of fighting different people, uh, and you know, that proved fatal. I mean, like Harold's in retrospect, it was very unwise. His mother had advised had advised him, uh, you know, send one of your brothers, you've got two brothers, two brothers left to fight with you, both gonna die. Send one of your brothers, stay back, and if he gets killed, you're still the king. And that would have been much more sensible advice because even if if William wins that battle, he's still surrounded by a totally hostile population, and he still has to get them to submit. So as long as there is a figurehead resisting them, they've really got no hope because there are a few thousand men in a country with a million or maybe two million people who all hate them. And as if if anything happens to William, then the whole thing's over. And in fact, after the Battle of Hastings, they they move east towards Kent, and at that point, William actually falls sick. Dysenter and Dysentery kills, you know, killed loads of people in that period. Henry V famously died of it. So he might have died, and the whole thing might have been for absolutely nothing, and in which case there would have been no Norman conquests anyway, because you know, those soldiers with him, I mean, they would just have to fight their way out of the country. But by this point, you know, there's no there's basically No leadership left, so he goes from town to town, burning it burning everything. In London, which is you know, then is now the biggest city, the kind of local leadership say, Well, Edgar is the rightful king, we'll proclaim him. But he's 13 and he can't do anything about it, really. And so eventually they go out to Wallingford's and they submit to William and say, You're the you know the king.
SPEAKER_01:And so he's won. I mean, it does seem like he was incredibly lucky then because if Harold chooses you know not to lead from the front, or if he or if he decides to to withdraw quicker than he does, you know, you know.
SPEAKER_00:There's so many. I mean, it's it's reckless in the sense that and also Harold could have waited until if he waited a little while, he could have got a much bigger army and changed the odds. But the argument is that he was they were attacking his own county, and you know, these were he's the local lord, and that is a sort of direct challenge to him. I mean, that's the thing in which case it just it seems very impetuous. You know, he's already won one battle, you know, he's killed like the biggest Viking, you know, leader of the D Age. He's already he's already done enough for a year, and then foolishly, so on October 14th, you know, it's basically it all ends for Anglo-Saxon England. You know, people don't realise here at the time, but you know, that's what's going to happen. Uh you know, William is installed king on Christmas Day, you know, it's uh Westminster Abbey, which is Edward's great project. And in the subsequent months and years, the Anglo-Saxon, the 5,000 strong upper class, they are all disinherited. Uh, anyone who even fought at Hastings has their land taken away. The Normans just take away huge amounts of land. William's two half-brothers, they're given kind of land in 20 or 25 different counties. Uh, it's part, you know, about 25% of the land goes to the crown, and another 25% to the church. And I think basically most of the rest goes to the Norman uh aristocracy. The whole of Essex is turned into Crown lands, as new forests becomes you know the a sort of playground for the Normans. You know, it's completely disastrous for the natives, and and there's no other way of putting it. It's uh it's a catastrophe for them because they've um you know they now find themselves completely totally reduced.
SPEAKER_01:I suppose their only role then becomes to provide brides for the conquerors, and then eventually, you know, the populations assimilate together just through through marriage, I guess.
SPEAKER_00:There are obviously lots of examples of that. William's own son, Henry, who becomes Henry I, he married Edgar's uh uh confused, is it a niece or sister, but he marries a woman from the old house of Wessex, and so within a couple of generations by the time of sort of Henry II's, the kings of England have the old Anglo-Saxon ruling house blood in their veins. And by you know, by the 12th century, by the end of the 12th century, people say, you know, it's basically impossible to determine if someone is a Saxon or Norman anymore, is too ambiguous. You know, originally there were there were explicit sort of, you know, I suppose you could sort of apartite style laws, um, in which uh if a Norman was murdered in a village, the whole village would be punished in some way. And because there was obviously a sense and a fear that given the chance that that the natives would just kill the Normans they could, but which is why the new rulers started establishing castles up and down the country. You know, there were some very basic castles before then, but it was basically you know, they were m uh of a much more sort of feeble construction. You know, they they build the Tower of London, they build you know new castles, they um dozens and dozens of these kind of fortresses because if you have a castle, then it's very hard for the kind of native population to rebel against you in any way. Uh and you know, William becomes more and more oppressive, basically, is he? He tries to learn English, but he gives up. The the locals they all hate him, they're kind of mini-uprightened, and then in 1069 it completely explodes in the north. The local people kill the local Normans, revolt against them, and invite they invite the Danes to come over because the people in Yorkshire are kind of very, very related. They still see themselves as sort of Viking. Um, this is you know mercilessly put down by William the harrowing of the north, is probably considered his greatest crime. I mean, probably probably about 200,000 people died as a result, maybe.
SPEAKER_01:Good god, outside of a population of what I mean in the north, a population of what, a million at most?
SPEAKER_00:That's probably the upper figure, but there was widespread starvation. They, you know, it was a purple, it was sort of like a terror famine of his time. They destroyed all the crops and the population was starved. And the north and that part of the country took a long time to recover. And after that, there was there was no other way of describing it. It was just basically rule by terror. But on the other hand, and Mark Morris, who who's you know, very I would say, yeah, he's quite pro-Norman, I suppose. He you know, he points to it's much more complicated than that, because you know, in some ways the Normans were they I say progressive, they were, you know, they they abolished slavery. Anglo-Saxon England, about 10% of the population least were slaves. The Normans disliked slavery for religious reasons. It was the church was very much turning against slavery, you couldn't enslave another Christian, and the Normans abolished it. Their system of chivalry was was introduced into England, so politics became much less violent.
SPEAKER_01:You know, and but is is chivalry less violent? I also thought it was an excuse for you know thugs to beat up peasants.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, am I well chivalry evolved? I mean uh obviously, you know, it's hard to shake out the 19th century idea of chivalry, which is uh you know associated with sort of gentleness towards women and children, but it does become much more like that as the med, you know, as the medieval period. It starts off as a basically a way you don't kill aristocrats in battle. You you know, you can kill the peasants, who cares about them? But it basically installs a series of rules about war, which we remain in, you know, Edward. I mean, William had one aristocrat executed his time, and he had rebelled against him like three times. He was really asking for it. Um, William was very, very uh he was against he was actually against quite against capital punishment. He was very sparing in use of it, and that's a boo against executing aristocrats that held holds up until Edward I for over 200 years. It never happens. The problem with all the boos is that once you break it, everyone starts breaking it. And where Edward I, once he starts doing it, that eventually leads to the War of the Roses, where the cry of the leadership is that kill kill the noblemen, spare the peasants. It's that becomes like the opposite. But under under William, you know, there was there was a certain civilizing is the wrong word, but it was some of these ideas we associate with courtliness do become much more installed. You know, Anglo-Saxon England was a bit rough and ready in many ways. Uh, and it's impossible to separate this from the basic kind of French influence on England, which then becomes very pronounced. And I I think still shapes English identity so much, you know. English, even English class attitudes, class ideas are so entwined with our idea of France. You know, the English middle class love France, the English world class hate them traditionally, and French ideas, French words, you know, all the words in the legal system in governments, they're all from French. France signifies government, order, sophistication. It's another kind of form of Latinization of England, and it can profoundly changes the country in so many ways, and including, I don't want to sound like that's sort of heartless libertarian here, but there is a lot of heartless libertarian. What are you talking about? I don't want to reveal myself too much here, but there is a lot of economic growth under the Normans. There is substantial evidence there's a big increase in trade with a constant. It brings us into the economic as well as the cultural spirit sphere of France and the low country and much more. Having said that, that was that was gonna happen anyway, I think, eventually, because just France had such a big Right. France was so important, you know. Its population was five times as big as England back then, and we were bound to start. And in fact, you know, I've written about this before, but many English loan words from French already arrived before the Norman Conquest, you know, why it's like bacon and ginger, and there are like dozens of words, and it and it kind of continues, but the Norman conquest basically accelerates that. You know, there's funny study, even if this century, people with Norman surnames uh are still wealthier by some degree than people with uh sort of old English surnames, and I think as far as the 19th century, people with Norman surnames were like eight times more likely to be a members of Parliament. The interesting thing about the Hundred Years' War was that the English army, which basically devastated France, just kind of especially Normandy, was very Anglo-Norman in structure. The army remained very Anglo-Norman. They they are sort of a kind of warrior caste, which can be seen in British military history, you know, right up until you know the 19th century. So Lord Lord Cardigan is a kind of of of um Crimea fame, was you know, from a kind of old Anglo-Norman family, you know, Montgomery who conquered Norm France in 1944, come from a Norman family. So there is that kind of sense that they from 1066 to sort of like rugger buggers, there's that kind of continuity within the English class system.
SPEAKER_01:And I think English politicians they all like to sort of look back to the sort of the Anglo-Saxon side of things, sort of the uh almost the mythologizing.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that's a that's a long, long the 17th century. There was constant refrain to that. It was very influential amongst the more radical elements in the parliamentary cause. The American revolutionaries were very again influenced by that. Thomas Jefferson he believed that the you know the the Saxons had a sort of this parliament sort of parliaments, proto-parliament, the Witten, it wasn't really a parliament, and the Normans stopped this, and he was the kind of continuation of the you know, you wanted to have Hawthorne and Hengus, the Anglo-Saxon founders, as statues of them in Congress. So, I mean that had a that myth, and it is a myth because if you were at the bottom of Anglo-Saxon slave uh society, you know, it was life was miserable. In fact, there are even one or two chronicles who record how English peasants uh under the Normans, one or two of them at least, said, Well, we're actually treated better by the Normans than we were by the by our own people. So, you know, there is a lot of uh myth attached, but it's a it's a powerful myth. That's why I think the story is so interesting because it's so essential to our sense of kind of national identity. It's why it it's still uh it's still remembered in the way that much else officially in the way that Salaf the Great isn't, for example, or you know, the the later medieval conflicts, which also helped form national identity to a certain extent.
SPEAKER_01:I mean I suppose the thing I think about uh 1066, and we've already said it, which is that it's it's so much a branching of the path, it could easily have gone the other way, and there's no reason to suppose the Normans would have been back next year. Whereas you take something like Constantinople, the follow Constantinople, where I think the Greeks still lament it, and you know, every year. Don't we all Don't we all, don't we all? But there's a sense of inevitability about it by that stage. Yeah. Whereas there's no sense of inevitability about uh about the Battle of Hastings.
SPEAKER_00:No, it was a complete toinkos. If Harold had followed his mother's advice, which uh you know the lesson for all men, you know, even if his brother had been killed, if he'd raised another army, I just find it very it would be very hard for William to win again. And the Normans would just have been so up against it at that point. And you know, if if their Duke was killed, it's very unlikely that you know his successor Robert wasn't much you know, none of his successors, I mean his youngest son Henry, but he hadn't been born yet, so he wouldn't have been around. They weren't they weren't anything like him in terms of you know, he was an unusual, scary, determined, very effective guy. And and I don't think anyone else would have done that. It's a fascinating thing to ponder how how things would have turned up. Because of course, you know, England's relationship with the the Celtic nations is very much formed by the Normans, because the Normans, you know, the Normans aren't gonna say, I'm we've got England, we're gonna stay there. They just well, there's somewhere else to evade. So they they accelerate the colonisation of Wales to a huge degree. So, you know, they they set up a basically a three-part kind of racial system in Wales with the Normans at the top and the English in the middle and the Welsh at the bottom, which I mean, even today, if you look at voting patterns in Wales, they match Norman settlement, which I find interesting. And obviously, the Normans in Scotland are a bit more complicated because they're sort of invited in there, which is in retrospect seems like a mad idea. But the um, you know, the the Stuarts and the Bruces, they uh originally Norman, they weren't so bloody, but the Norman conquest of Ireland had huge tragic consequences for everyone. So again, because England has just such a bigger population compared to the other countries in the Isles, I uh maybe that would happen anyway. It's it depends about whether you believe how much of these things are inevitable. You know, obviously Constance Lopel was totally on his knees by the end. There was j there is no way it does not get conquered by the Ottomans. But yes, this could have gone the other way completely.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, well, um, I guess we can leave it there. So uh Ed West, thank you very much indeed.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you very much, been a pleasure.
SPEAKER_01:I think that went rather well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's good. That was really fun. I love talking about Harold.