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Between 1067 and 1075 William faced a sequence of serious revolts — some local, some backed by foreign invaders, and one led by the very earls he had appointed. Taken together they tell us almost everything we need to know about how Norman rule worked, why it survived, and what it cost. Lesson 4 examined the military narrative of 1066–71; this lesson looks again at that period, and extends it to 1075, with a focus on interpretation: what made each rebellion distinctive, why none succeeded, and what the pattern of rebellion reveals about the strengths and weaknesses of Norman government.
The broad picture is this. The south submitted quickly. The midlands and the north rose repeatedly between 1068 and 1070. The Fenland resistance of Hereward the Wake carried on into 1071. Even after apparent consolidation, the Revolt of the Earls in 1075 showed that Norman magnates themselves could rebel. Exam answers that handle this material well do three things: they get the chronology right, they name specific leaders and places, and they weigh causes against each other.
As lesson 4 established, after Hastings William did not march straight on London; instead he circled through Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire before receiving the submission of the English leadership at Berkhamsted in late November 1066. Edgar Atheling, Edwin and Morcar, Archbishop Ealdred and the leading Londoners all accepted William as king. He was crowned on Christmas Day.
For the first nine months, William governed as if an Anglo-Saxon king with a new dynasty rather than as a conqueror. Edwin, Morcar and Edgar were confirmed in their lands and retained at court. This conciliation was partly pragmatic — William did not have the manpower to govern purely through imported Normans — and partly dynastic: he wanted to be seen as Edward the Confessor's legitimate successor.
Resentment built during William's absence in Normandy (March–December 1067). Odo of Bayeux (Earl of Kent) and William fitzOsbern (Earl of Hereford) governed harshly. Norman garrisons were quartered on townspeople at their own expense. Castles were built with conscripted labour from English villages. Heavy geld payments were demanded. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle D text records that the Normans "oppressed the wretched people greatly" — a rare acknowledgement in the Chronicle that the new regime was less welcome than William had hoped.
The south submitted first and most completely for three reasons. First, it bore the brunt of William's post-Hastings march and of Norman castle-building (Dover, Canterbury, Rochester, Hastings, Pevensey, Winchester). Second, its great landholder, the Godwin family, was dead or in exile after Hastings. Third, its economic integration with the Channel made continued cross-Channel rule credible.
Exeter refused to swear fealty or pay William's increased geld. Harold's mother Gytha, his widow Edith Swan-neck, and various west-country thegns had taken refuge there. William marched west with an army of Norman and English troops. After an 18-day siege — during which, by one account, a defender dropped his trousers from the walls to mock the Normans — the city came to terms. William accepted a negotiated surrender (rather than sacking the city), spared its burghers' property, and built Rougemont Castle within the walls.
The Exeter campaign shows the early Norman pattern: speed, personal command, negotiated surrender where possible, castle afterwards.
Later in 1068 Edwin of Mercia and Morcar of Northumbria rebelled. The immediate cause was that William had not fulfilled a promise to let Edwin marry one of his daughters, and had reduced Edwin's earldom of Mercia by carving off new earldoms for Norman favourites. Edgar Atheling, who had fled to the Scottish court of Malcolm III, joined them. Bleddyn of Gwynedd contributed Welsh forces.
William marched north with his characteristic speed. He built castles at Warwick and Nottingham on the way. Faced with an advancing royal army, Edwin and Morcar submitted without battle. William reinstated them but built a castle at York and installed 500 Norman troops under William Malet. He built a second castle at Lincoln. The revolt was over without a major engagement — a demonstration that castles and rapid movement could preclude rebellion as effectively as they suppressed it.
In January 1069 William sent his newly appointed Earl of Northumbria, Robert Cumin, to take up his office. Cumin entered Durham with perhaps 700 men and quartered them on the townspeople. He was surprised at dawn in the bishop's house. Most of his men died in the streets or in the burning buildings. Cumin himself was killed as he tried to escape.
The murder was not a spontaneous affray. It was planned by leading Northumbrian thegns who saw Cumin's arrival as a direct threat to the traditional autonomy of the region north of the Humber, which had long been governed with a light hand.
In September 1069 a Danish fleet of perhaps 240 ships entered the Humber. It was commanded by Cnut and Harold, sons of King Svein Estrithson of Denmark, who had his own hereditary claim to England. They joined Edgar Atheling (again come south from Scotland), Waltheof of Northumbria, and Maerle-Sveinn of Lincoln.
The combined army marched on York. On 21 September they took the city. The Norman garrison of 3,000 — preparing to fire the outer city to clear fields of fire — was cut off and slaughtered. Both Norman castles at York were destroyed. Archbishop Ealdred of York, a key supporter of William's regime, died — according to one source of grief — in the city during the assault.
For a moment Norman rule in the north had collapsed. Had William himself been killed or decisively defeated at this point, the Conquest might have been reversed.
While the north was in rebellion, risings also broke out in Devon and Cornwall (led by Harold's sons from Ireland), in Shropshire (with Welsh support under Bleddyn and Rhiwallon), and in Dorset/Somerset (against the bishop of Coutances). Most of these were suppressed by local Norman commanders — fitzOsbern in the Marches, Brian of Brittany in the south-west. William himself dealt with the north.
William arrived in the north in December 1069. He first retook York (the Danes had withdrawn to winter quarters at the mouth of the Humber; William paid them a bribe to leave in spring). He then made the decision that would define his reign in English memory.
Over the winter of 1069–70, William's forces systematically devastated Yorkshire, Durham, parts of Cheshire, and parts of Staffordshire. The method was deliberate and extraordinary. Villages were burnt to the ground. Livestock was slaughtered in the fields. Ploughs were smashed, grain stores were set alight, and salt supplies (needed to preserve meat through the winter) were contaminated. Survivors — stripped of food and shelter — either fled south as refugees or starved. Severe famine followed.
Orderic Vitalis, writing about 60 years later, estimated that "more than 100,000" people of all ages died in the famine that followed. The figure is exaggerated — it is impossibly large for the region's population — but the principle is clear: contemporaries understood the Harrying as a disaster on a scale without parallel. Orderic went further and condemned the Harrying as exceeding the legitimate powers of kingship, writing that "for this I cannot commend him". This is striking: Orderic was himself of Norman background, writing in a Norman abbey, yet he classed the Harrying as a sin for which William would answer to God.
More reliable than the contemporary estimates is the Domesday Book of 1086. Sixteen years after the Harrying, large tracts of Yorkshire were still recorded as wasta (waste) — that is, returning no taxable value. This is quantitative evidence of systematic devastation and of long-term economic collapse. Yorkshire would not return to full agricultural productivity until the thirteenth century.
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