3. The Unification of England
UNIT 3: THE UNIFICATION OF ENGLAND
1. THE FIRST KINGS OF THE ENGLISH
The ancient kingdom of West Saxons had been transformed into a kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons by King Alfred the Great, and during the 10th century, his successors extended their rule over the Danes and the Northumbrians. By about 900, the Scots had assimilated the Picts, and by the 11th century they had annexed the British Kingdom of Strathclyde and also won Lothian from England. Ireland, too, seemed to be moving towards greater political unity under the High King Brian Boru, but his hegemony collapsed after his death in battle against the Leinster (1014). In Wales, it proved difficult for any king to establish any sort of lasting authority over the others.
There was a process of political development throughout the ninth and tenth centuries, from the kingdom of the West Saxons to the Kingdom of the English. It is one of the most relevant periods in the history of the British Isles.
Alfred the Great promoted the new idea of ‘Englishness’ among all those whom he considered his followers. When he died, Wessex and Mercia were still separated.
Alfred’s kingdom spread across the river Thames as far as the ‘English’ Mercia, creating the ‘kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons’. Gloucester and Winchester were his new centres of power, and the heart of this prosperity was the restored city of London.
Alfred’s ‘kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons’ passed to his son Edward the Elder (899-924), who spread West Saxon control over the Danes of eastern England and the Mercians. The frontier had been taken up to the river Humber. The process was taken a step further by Edward’s son Aethelstan, who gained York in 927 and ruled over Northumbria, thereby bringing a unified ‘kingdom of the English’ into existence.
After the death of Aethelstan, in 939, the Dublin Norse re-established their links with York but it was not until the reign of King Edgar (959-975) that the unified kingdom of Britain was completed. In 973, Edgar had a second coronation in Bath to celebrate his kinship throughout Britain. When Edgar died in 975, the English were facing a constant external threat and, in the early eleventh century, the Danish invaded. Cnut (also known as Canute) took over the kingdom in 1016 and made it the centre of his ‘North Sea Empire’. He extended his rule over Denmark (1018), over Norway (1028), and into some parts of Sweden. The Kingdom of England survived Cnut’s death (1035) but not the North Sea Empire.
Cnut’s successors inherited a kingdom divided between two earls: Godwin of Wessex and Leofric of Mercia.
Edward the Confessor was the son of Ethelred II, in whose reign England was again deeply ravaged by the Scandinavians. He and his brother, Alfred, lived in exile in Normandy. He returned to England in 1041, and was recognised by Harthacnut, Cnut’s son, as heir to the throne (1042-1066). When Harthacnut died the following year, Edward was chosen king.
1.1.The Saintly King’s Legacy: Westminster Abbey
Edward lived in exile in Normandy. It was there that he first saw the architecture that was to inspire him to create a great abbey in his homeland. The Dukes of Normandy, kinsmen of his mother, were great builders, and he planned to create a work that would match their magnificence. But he was unable to fulfill his ambitions until he returned to England in 1041.
Edward the Confessor, who was King of England from 1042 to 1066, ordered the construction of a great abbey church at Westminster. It was not only to be a lasting memorial to Edward’s faith in God, but also an abiding legacy to the country over which he ruled. He wanted it to be spectacular. It was to be completely different from any other church in the kingdom and more magnificent.
The first task was to rebuild the monastery there, a short distance upstream from the thriving town of London. Then work commenced on the abbey itself. From all accounts, Edward’s church was a fine building in the Romanesque style he had come to admire in Normandy. It was vast, over 320 ft long, about the length of the present church, and the largest church in the realm. On December 28, the great abbey, although incomplete, was consecrated, but Edward was too ill to be present. He died on the eve of Epiphany (January 5, 1066) and was buried the next day beneath a magnificent tomb in Westminster Abbey.
A year after Edward was buried, another royal occasion occurred, William, conqueror of England was consecrated king on Christmas Day 1066.
1.2. British Society on the Eve of the Norman Conquest
Edward the Confessor left behind him a prosperous and flourishing kingdom that William was anxious to rule. Much of England's wealth came from its rich farmlands. Nobles lived on great manors or states and their duties were mostly of a military character. The bulk of the peasantry were not “unfree”. A man owed to his lord unpaid work and rent in money and kind. He also paid his hearthpenny, a tax on every dwelling to the Church. They were not allowed to bear arms and had limited legal rights.
Town life also flourished. London, the largest city of the kingdom, had over 15,000 inhabitants. And within the bustling towns, both great and small, men were organised into trading guilds. Demographically, England experienced growth in the period 800-1300, contrasting with the crisis of the great Death in the 500s and the Black Death in the 1300s.
Shires were divided into hundreds, and much of the routine legal work was transacted in the Hundred Courts. Freemen within the hundreds were arranged in “tithings”, groups of ten men who took corporate responsibility for the good behaviour of the men in their group.
England was a well-run country. The king was responsible for government, and he could consult powerful churchmen and laymen in his council, the witenagemot or witan. The king was wealthy, owning much land and profitable rights. He imposed gelds or land taxes on his people. The coinage was the most stable in Western Europe. Great penalties against fake coining or the issue of inferior coins were enforced.
By 1066, the organisation of local government was complete.
2. THE NORMANS
Norman culture is a crucial factor for the understanding of medieval England. The Normans were originally Vikings of Scandinavian origin. They were mainly Danes.
The Normans settled in northwest France in the early 10th century. They created a powerful state around the mouth of the river Seine. They became Counts and later Dukes of Normandy. This territory was called, and still is, Normandy. It quickly prospered and expanded and became very powerful. They adopted Frankish Law, with the idea of jury, and most of French ecclesiastical and secular structures. Thus, they received feudalism, military tactics and, most importantly for us, the French language.
By 1035, when William became duke, Normandy was efficiently ruled.
The first act of expansionism came when Robert created the Norman kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1061. the second was the claim to the English throne when Edward the Confessor, the last Anglo-Saxon king, died childless. The basis of the claim was that Edward was a second cousin of William. In 1042, Edward had been crowned king of England and filled the English court with Normans. When he died in 1066, Harold, son of Godwin, an Earl whose daughter married Edward, was elected king. Edward had promised him the throne of England an in a brief visit to England had forced Harold to acknowledge him as a successor. The Pope, moreover, had blessed his claim.
On an October morning in 1066, England was dragged into a new world, when William, Duke of Normandy (the Conqueror) defeated the English King Harold at the Battle of Hastings. As a result of this Norman victory, a small and isolated island became part of the European continent. The British gained from Europe new ideas in government, religion, art and war. They were prepared to contribute ideas of their own.
A foreign aristocracy was imposed upon more than two million English people. William subdued the local population by confiscating Anglo-Saxon estates and giving them to his Norman followers. He dispossessed many of the Anglo-Saxon landowners, pressed the peasantry into service on their new feudal territories and treated all their Anglo-Saxons subjects with contempt, but he also taught better farming, developed the economy, put an end to Viking raids, and built many monuments such as cathedrals and churches.
William the Conqueror embodied all the contrasts of medieval England. Though he was extremely religious, he nevertheless subjected England to a baptism of fire. It was he who taught the English that peace rested on violence, on revenge ruthlessly visited on all who dared to defy the will of the king.
Vast stone castles such as the Tower of London helped to consolidate William’s might. Great cathedrals and abbeys stood up as citadels of Norman Christianity, commanded by harsh, uncompromising prelates, in the heart of a hostile land. The line of kings planted on the English throne by William, Duke of Normandy, ruled by the sword. And they had another power at their command, the teaching of the church that a king’s authority came directly from god. The mystic ritual of the coronation service played a vital part in establishing this belief.
But William’s abilities were not inherited by his heir, William II Rufus. He reigned for 13 years, from 1087 to 1100 over a nation torn by aristocratic quarrels and trampled down by foreign mercenaries. After his death, the accession of Henry I to the throne was carried out.
2.1 The Norman Conquest and the Transformation of England.
The Norman conquest of England began in 1066 with the invasion of England by Duke of Normandy and his victory at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066. The invading Normans, led by their duke, William the Bastard, vanquished the Anglo-Saxons under Harold Godwineson. William the Conqueror won his throne by force and he defended it by force. Any opposition to his rule was brutally crushed. He not only made the English suffer, but he also dealt harshly with Normans who showed too much ambition or independence of mind.
Although William proclaimed himself king of England, not all England had accepted him as king. His dominion was primarily in the south (Wessex, Kent, Sussex and Essex) and some part of Mercia. The earls of Mercia and Northumbria (the brothers Edward and Morcar) accepted him because he had overthrown the Godwin family and they thought that he wanted to conquest only Wessex. They faced him but the old rivalries between Saxons families became their downfall and finally William became renowned.
William knew that final victory was a long way off. Saxon England’s leaders surrendered to William and he was crowned king of England in 1066. In 1068, a Norman army was massacred in Durham and weeks later the Normans fled from York, leaving it to be occupied by the rebels. This was the most serious defeat suffered by the Normans in England.
Hereward the Wake launched a campaign against the Normans. The Isle of Ely, Hereward’s chief refuge, was besieged by William’s army.
William was justly proud of having conquered England. He lost no opportunity to display his power, especially when he wanted to impress foreign ambassadors with his importance. During his reign, he made a point of solemnly wearing his crown in public to receive the veneration of his subjects. William’s appearance suited his personality. He was tall, broad and thick-ser, and was noted for his moroseness. His voice was harsh, and his manner of speaking clipped and concise. He spoke as if he expected and required instant obedience. He practised a strict piety and was a keen supporter of churches and monasteries.
William’s authority increased when he married Matilda, the daughter of Baldwin V, Count of Flanders, a powerful ruler whose acceptance of William as a suitable son-in-law showed that William had risen above the trials of his youth. William may also have seen in Matilda a further link with his claim on the throne of England, as she was a direct descendant of Alfred the Great. The pope apparently opposed this marriage for some years on the grounds of an earlier betrothal by Matilda, but it finally received his blessing in 1059.
The Norman Conquest certainly led to changes at the top of the hierarchy, in the way the country was policed (from castles), in landholding patterns, and in the monastic orders recruiting and developing in England. But there was also much continuity: the majority of the population carried on as before in their agricultural activities.
The Domesday Book is the record of the great national survey ordered by William I in order to discover the true wealth and probable future wealth of England, recording details of the property owned by everyone from the king downwards.
2.2 The Succession Problems
The Conqueror’s sons fought amongst themselves after his death. The warlike Rufus, William II (1087-1100), seemed to his father the most appropriate to rule rebellious England. His bellicose temperament and the dissolute court over that he presided, deserved him the hostility of the Church, but his skill as a soldier made him popular between the knightly classes. He patronized buildings such as the Westminster Hall, in which interior monarchs are usually laying in state after his death.
William’s brother, Henry ‘Beauclerk’, who was to rule as Henry I (1100-35), appealed more obviously to monkish sensibilities and intellectual qualities. Both Rufus and Henry I were hunting when Rufus was killed by an arrow. After William’s death, Henry tried to secure the throne, and in 1106 defeated another brother, Robert. Henry saw himself as a born commander rather than as an active warrior like Rufus.