Securing the Kingdom 1066–71

Coronation made William king; it did not make him secure. Between Christmas 1066 and the spring of 1071, he faced at least four major revolts, a Danish invasion, and the permanent threat of Welsh and Scottish borderlands. The so-called Norman Conquest was in reality a five-year military consolidation in which William's choice of instruments — castles, redistributed land, calibrated brutality — set the pattern of government for a generation. The campaign culminated in the Harrying of the North, one of the most severe actions any English king ever took against his own kingdom.

This lesson follows the submission of the south in early 1067, the risings of 1068, the 1069–70 northern revolt and the Harrying, the Fenland resistance of Hereward the Wake, and the systematic use of castles to translate military presence into permanent control. It also sets out the interpretive debate: was William's success the product of superior method, or of the disunity of his enemies?

1. The Submission of the South, 1067

1.1 The politics of conciliation

In the months after his coronation William confirmed English landholders who had submitted — including Edwin, Morcar, and Edgar Atheling — in their lands and titles. This policy, partly pragmatic and partly dynastic, aimed to rule through existing Anglo-Saxon structures. William left England in March 1067, taking hostages (among them Edwin, Morcar, Edgar and Archbishop Stigand) with him to Normandy for a triumphal progress.

1.2 Regent government

In the king's absence, his half-brother Odo of Bayeux (Earl of Kent) and William fitzOsbern (Earl of Hereford) acted as regents. Their rule in the south and along the Welsh march was harsh: seizures of land, heavy fines, and construction of castles at Norman expense to Anglo-Saxon labour. Contemporary sources (the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle D text) record that the Normans "oppressed the wretched people greatly".

2. The Revolts of 1068

2.1 Exeter

The city of Exeter, a centre of resistance where Harold's mother Gytha had taken refuge, refused to swear fealty or pay the king's increased geld. William besieged Exeter for 18 days in early 1068, took the city on terms, and built Rougemont Castle within its walls.

2.2 Edwin and Morcar rise

Later in 1068, the brothers Edwin and Morcar — the last major English earls — rebelled in the Midlands and North. They were joined by Edgar Atheling, who had fled to Scotland, and by Welsh allies. William moved rapidly, building castles at Warwick and Nottingham. The rebels submitted without a battle; William reinstated them but with diminished power and continued construction at York (where he built a castle and installed Norman garrison troops) and Lincoln.

3. The Northern Revolt and the Harrying of the North, 1069–70

3.1 Murder of Robert Cumin

In January 1069 William's newly appointed Earl of Northumbria, Robert Cumin, entered Durham with a force of c. 700 and quartered on the townspeople. He was surprised and killed in the bishop's house; most of his men died in the streets or the burning buildings. This began a general northern rising.

3.2 The Danish landing

In September 1069 a Danish fleet of 240 ships under Cnut and Harold, sons of King Svein Estrithson, landed at the Humber. They joined Edgar Atheling, Waltheof of Northumbria, and local rebels. The combined army took York, slaughtered the Norman garrison of 3,000, and destroyed the two castles. For a moment Norman rule in the north had collapsed.

3.3 William's response

William paid the Danes a bribe to withdraw over the winter and marched into Yorkshire with his field army. He re-took York, then spent the winter of 1069–70 systematically devastating Yorkshire, Durham and parts of Cheshire and Staffordshire. Villages were burned, livestock slaughtered, ploughs and grain destroyed, salt supplies poisoned. Contemporaries were unambiguous: Orderic Vitalis, writing later, called it famine that killed "more than 100,000 persons of both sexes and all ages" and condemned it as exceeding the legitimate powers of kingship.

3.4 Scale and interpretation

The figures are exaggerated, but Domesday Book (compiled 16 years later) shows large tracts of Yorkshire still listed as wasta (waste). Some historians view the Harrying as calculated terror; others as a punitive campaign that ran out of control. For the exam it is enough to describe the campaign accurately, note its unprecedented severity, and recognise that it broke northern resistance for a generation.

graph TD
  A[Jan 1069: Cumin killed at Durham] --> B[Sept 1069: Danish fleet lands Humber]
  B --> C[York taken, Norman garrison killed]
  C --> D[William bribes Danes]
  D --> E[Winter 1069-70: Harrying of the North]
  E --> F[Villages burnt, livestock slaughtered, famine]
  F --> G[Yorkshire wasta in Domesday 1086]