WEBVTT - How Did William the Conquerer Transform England? 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:07.960 Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren 0:00:08.000 --> 0:00:13.760 Vogelbaum here. Like other larger than life figures from world history, 0:00:14.160 --> 0:00:19.439 William the Conqueror was a man of paradoxes. While personally 0:00:19.560 --> 0:00:22.920 pious and deeply faithful to his church and his wife, 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:27.080 he was also a ruthless political aggressor, capable of brutal 0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:31.040 acts of violence to preserve his power, whether or not 0:00:31.120 --> 0:00:35.120 he was a good man. The French born William left 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:38.880 an indelible mark on the English speaking world by spearheading 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:43.400 the Norman conquest of England in ten sixty six. William's 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:46.479 victory at the Battle of Hastings ended six centuries of 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:49.840 Anglo Saxon rule in England and imposed French and Latin 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:53.960 words into Old English, creating the quirkily blended language we 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:58.760 speak today. Every English monarch since William is considered a 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:04.160 descendant of him. But how exactly did this illegitimate son 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:06.800 of a Norman duke rise to become the King of 0:01:06.840 --> 0:01:09.600 England and one of the most fearsome figures of the 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:14.800 eleventh century. William was born around ten twenty seven in 0:01:14.840 --> 0:01:19.039 the Normandy region of what's now France. His parents were 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:21.840 Duke Robert, the first of Normandy, and the daughter of 0:01:21.880 --> 0:01:24.720 a Tanner, a woman whose name has been recorded as 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:30.560 Arlev or Arlette. Robert and Arlette weren't married, but they 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:36.120 weren't exactly illicit lovers either. Arlette was Robert's longtime partner, 0:01:36.400 --> 0:01:40.679 a relationship that wasn't uncommon at the time. For the 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:43.280 article of this episode is based on how Stuffwork spoke 0:01:43.319 --> 0:01:46.480 with David Bates, the author of the Yale University Press 0:01:46.520 --> 0:01:52.800 biography William the Conqueror. Bates explained what constituted a Christian 0:01:52.880 --> 0:01:56.520 marriage wasn't actually made clear in canon law until the 0:01:56.560 --> 0:02:01.360 early thirteenth century. Their relationship was a bit unusual, but 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:07.600 not dramatically so. What is clear is that Robert, who 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:11.640 didn't have any other children, saw William as his legitimate heir, 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:15.960 an unusual step at the time, and when Robert died 0:02:16.000 --> 0:02:19.440 during a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, eight year old William became 0:02:19.600 --> 0:02:24.240 Duke of Normandy. The young Duke's enemies, who tried unsuccessfully 0:02:24.280 --> 0:02:28.000 to steal his land and title, insultingly called him William 0:02:28.000 --> 0:02:32.280 the Bastard. By the time William was in his early twenties, 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:37.040 he had quashed several internal rebellions and even captured neighboring territories. 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:41.440 A formidable fighter and political leader, he had a reputation 0:02:41.639 --> 0:02:44.720 as no one to mess with, so much so that 0:02:44.800 --> 0:02:47.520 he had no trouble recruiting thousands of men from Normandy 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:50.760 and other territories to sail with him on an incredibly 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:54.720 risky venture, the ten sixty six invasion of England to 0:02:54.800 --> 0:03:00.359 claim its throne for the Normans. But okay, who were 0:03:00.520 --> 0:03:04.640 the Normans? A Norman means men from the north, and 0:03:04.880 --> 0:03:08.200 that's exactly who they were. Viking invaders who settled in 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:13.040 what's now northern France in the nine hundred CE. Over time, 0:03:13.240 --> 0:03:17.480 they converted to Christianity and started speaking French, but they 0:03:17.480 --> 0:03:21.160 thought of themselves as a distinct group. What's now known 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:25.080 as England, meanwhile, had been ruled by Anglo Saxon kings 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:28.200 since the first Germanic tribes had conquered the area in 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:32.480 the four hundreds and five hundred CE. The Anglo Saxons 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:35.320 spoke what we now call Old English and lived in 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:40.360 shires ruled by aristocratic lords loyal to the king. William 0:03:40.400 --> 0:03:43.000 attested that he was hand picked to become the next 0:03:43.080 --> 0:03:46.160 King of England by Edward the Confessor, who died without 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:50.160 an heir in ten sixty six. But William was not 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:54.680 the only pretender to the throne. Various distant relatives claimed 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:59.120 that they were the rightful heirs, including Harold Godwinson, a 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:02.080 member of a Power family, who said that Edward had 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:06.840 chosen him as successor on the late king's deathbed. Bates 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:09.160 said it would have made for a good soap opera. 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:13.160 Since Edward was childless, everyone knew some terrible crisis was 0:04:13.240 --> 0:04:16.799 going to come. They had an awful long time to prepare, 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:20.039 without knowing exactly what form it was going to take. 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:26.200 Harold was crowned king on January sixth of ten sixty six, 0:04:26.839 --> 0:04:29.720 but his reign would last just nine months and end 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:33.760 with his death by Norman's sword. The Norman invasion of 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:38.159 England wasn't some rash whim. William took seven months to 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:42.320 plan his campaign, eventually transporting some seven thousand men and 0:04:42.360 --> 0:04:45.920 three thousand horses across the English Channel on six hundred 0:04:46.040 --> 0:04:51.159 Viking style longboats. His timing, it turned out, was perfect. 0:04:51.960 --> 0:04:55.320 His adversary, and now dubbed King Harold the Second, was 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:59.359 distracted by a Norwegian invasion of northern England, allowing the 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:04.280 Normans to land unchallenged in southern England. After Harold fought 0:05:04.279 --> 0:05:07.479 off the Norwegians, he marched his weary soldiers straight to 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:12.760 the aforementioned Hastings for battle against William's veteran cavalry and archers. 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:17.359 The English, who had the upper ground, formed a shield 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:20.840 line and repelled countless uphill attacks by the Norman cavalry. 0:05:21.520 --> 0:05:25.640 William himself had three horses killed under him. When a 0:05:25.720 --> 0:05:29.000 rumor spread that William was dead, he famously took off 0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:31.799 his helmet and rode through the ranks to rally his troops, 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:35.080 a scene that was captured in the historic Bayeux Tapestry, 0:05:35.480 --> 0:05:38.799 a massive embroideries that some two hundred and thirty feet long, 0:05:39.120 --> 0:05:43.800 which is seventy meters. Then, in a brilliant move, the 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:47.919 Normans feigned retreat, which tricked some of the less experienced 0:05:47.920 --> 0:05:51.400 English soldiers in two, breaking ranks and exposing holes in 0:05:51.440 --> 0:05:56.440 their defense. Hastuffworks also spoke with Hugh Thomas, a history 0:05:56.480 --> 0:06:01.080 professor at the University of Miami. He said, it's not 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:05.000 very bright chasing on foot people who are on horseback. 0:06:07.240 --> 0:06:10.279 The Normans circled back and broke through the English line, 0:06:10.520 --> 0:06:15.240 killing Harold and his two brothers. The then kingless English 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:19.040 scattered in a panic, and the grueling day long Battle 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:21.839 of Hastings went to William, who was crowned King of 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:26.520 England on Christmas Day of ten sixty six. As expected, 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:30.200 Harold's supporters didn't roll over and accept William the Conqueror 0:06:30.240 --> 0:06:34.040 as their king. During the first years of William's reign, 0:06:34.320 --> 0:06:38.159 his enemies mounted numerous rebellions and uprisings, but none so 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:41.960 sustained as those in northern England, centered around the Shire 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:45.839 of York. To put an end to the fighting, William 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:49.800 resorted to a scorched earth tactic known as harrying, that 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:54.000 was not uncommon in medieval times, but perhaps never executed 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:58.839 with such severity. To harry is to burn and destroy 0:06:58.920 --> 0:07:02.200 the land and its real versus so completely that nothing 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:06.440 is left to sustain a rebellion. According to one chronicle 0:07:06.480 --> 0:07:09.360 from the eleven hundreds, as many as one hundred thousand 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:12.560 peasants died from the famine that followed William's destruction of 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:17.760 the North. Bates said this episode shows William being capable 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:21.480 of extreme violence to achieve his ends. It's his ruthlessness 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:27.120 taken to extremes. When William took the throne, he left 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:30.000 much of the Anglo Saxon government in place, since it 0:07:30.160 --> 0:07:34.400 already had a sophisticated bureaucracy that included coinage and taxation, 0:07:35.840 --> 0:07:39.440 but he eventually took the dramatic step of dispossessing most 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:42.360 of the Anglo Saxon nobles and handing their lands over 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:47.160 to loyal Norman elites. Latin became the official language of 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:50.600 English government because it was a language that both English 0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:55.120 and Norman bureaucrats could understand. A while the lower social 0:07:55.160 --> 0:07:58.920 classes continued to speak Old English, the English elites and 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:02.600 their hangars on started speaking French, and that remained the 0:08:02.680 --> 0:08:05.800 language of the upper classes well into the twelve hundreds 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:10.480 as a result of the Norman invasion. Modern English contains 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:14.960 roughly ten thousand French words, and estimated fifty eight percent 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:19.360 of English words are derived from French or Latin. Interestingly, 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:23.560 Williams spoke no English and was illiterate, like many noblemen 0:08:23.640 --> 0:08:28.600 of the day. Once William installed loyal Normans as feudal lords, 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:32.480 he wanted to determine exactly how many resources were under 0:08:32.480 --> 0:08:38.600 his control, so he ordered a nationwide survey of every shire, farm, 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:41.920 shop and household, down to the number of sheep in 0:08:41.960 --> 0:08:46.480 a yard and bushels of grain in a storehouse. Thomas said, 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:49.839 it's this massive undertaking by the standards of the time. 0:08:50.440 --> 0:08:53.560 The local people compared it to the Last Judgment, when 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:59.280 every single sin and good deed would be counted. Later, 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:03.840 when this huge collection of demographic and economic information was published, 0:09:04.160 --> 0:09:08.800 it was dubbed the Doomsday Book. Thomas said, there's nothing 0:09:08.840 --> 0:09:12.320 else before or after that survives like that. It's this 0:09:12.440 --> 0:09:19.360 incredible snapshot of England's economy. Despite having installed himself as 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:23.800 the King of England, William mostly ruled from Normandy, where 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:28.720 he was also besieged by rebellions. In ten eighty seven, 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:32.439 a year after the completion of The Doomsday Book, William 0:09:32.520 --> 0:09:35.680 fell from a horse while leading an attack and died 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:39.600 from his injuries. He was buried in what's now known 0:09:39.679 --> 0:09:43.480 as the Abbey of Saint Etienne in Coln, Normandy, a 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:46.760 building that William constructed in ten seventy seven as a 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:50.440 favor of sorts to the church. Pope Leo the ninth 0:09:50.440 --> 0:09:53.400 had opposed William's marriage to his close cousin Matilda in 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:56.800 ten fifty so William promised to build a pair of 0:09:56.880 --> 0:10:00.000 abbeys Inkln if the Pope agreed to bless the union, 0:10:00.559 --> 0:10:04.959 which he did. A simple stone laid in the abbey 0:10:05.080 --> 0:10:09.800 is etched with this epitaph. Here lies the invincible William 0:10:09.840 --> 0:10:15.640 the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy and King of England. William 0:10:15.679 --> 0:10:19.079 and Matilda had ten children, including William the Second, who 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:23.040 succeeded his father as King of England. The current royal 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:25.720 family of the United Kingdom is related to William by 0:10:25.840 --> 0:10:30.439 way of a complicated and twisting pedigree. There have been 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:34.320 four English kings named William so far, and there will 0:10:34.360 --> 0:10:37.480 be a fifth if the heir apparent, Prince William, assumes 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:42.040 the throne as expected. Generally speaking, you can thank the 0:10:42.080 --> 0:10:44.920 Normans for popularizing some of the most common names in 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:50.640 the English language, including William, Robert, Henry, and Alice. Before 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:54.480 the Norman invasion, babies were given good Anglo Saxon names 0:10:54.720 --> 0:11:04.000 like Ethelred, Eadric and Leophran. Today's episode is based on 0:11:04.000 --> 0:11:06.920 the article from William the Bastard to William the Conqueror, 0:11:07.200 --> 0:11:10.640 the King who transformed England on HowStuffWorks dot Com written 0:11:10.640 --> 0:11:13.839 by Dave Ruse. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:16.679 partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler 0:11:16.760 --> 0:11:19.960 klang A. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio. Visit 0:11:20.000 --> 0:11:23.320 the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to 0:11:23.360 --> 0:11:24.319 your favorite shows.