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950 years ago today… 950 years ago today in 1066, after arriving in England a few days earlier, my ‘migrant’ ancestors rode up Senlac Hill to introduce themselves to the waiting locals 😀
“I say, chaps! Will you be voting IN or OUT today?”
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Ah yes. One of the survivors of that introduction was Alanus de Porter, Norman. Progenitor of my Mother’s line. A strange journey in that family tree, ending up in a Conestoga wagon going north from Texas into Oklahoma territory, adding Cherokee before settling down in what became the state of Oklahoma. Added in Scots-Irish (Clan McLeod) from the Appalacians to produce yours truly.
The war cry of the English at Senlac was “Out! Out! Out!” So I guess that answers the Norman’s question. 🙂
I knew someone would get the reference, Niall 😀
I’ve never really become informed about European history beyond my own reading, but it seems on a surface level that y’all have been arguing Brexit with various people since you were Rome’s Province.
Bloody Normans coming here taking our jobs and raping our wives
PeterT (October 14, 2016 at 10:18 am), you know you’re not allowed to say that kind of thing. And don’t even think about replying, “But it’s true; they did”; you are so not allowed to say that. 🙂
Is anyone calling for reparations?
The waiting locals were probably migrants from five centuries back.
I am so stealing this. Sorry, not sorry.
From what I know, which isn’t very much, it was by no means certain the Normans would win the Battle of Hastings. Suppose, then, it had gone the other way. Our world today would be unrecognisably different. It was truly a pivotal moment in history.
On a more prosaic level I’m surprised the 950th anniversary isn’t being commemorated. After all, a lot of people, like myself, were around for the 900th anniversary, but too young to appreciate what it was all about, but very probably won’t be around for the 1000th.
– Anglo-Norman chronicler Orderic Vitalis
I was named after my two grandfathers William (my first name) and Harold (my middle name), making me a walking, talking, blog-commenting commemoration of this event.
“fuck offe were fulle” – Anglo-Saxon bumper sticker
And Harald Hardrada was the third-party candidate.
And I bet he did not know where or what Aleppo was either 😛
thread winner 😆
Perry,
Harald spent quite some time in Miklagard (Constantinople); he probably did know where Aleppo was.
My understanding is that the big difference between the two sides was that the Normans had horses and the Anglo-Saxons did not. Also that horses meant castles and a class division between that have (horses) and the have-not (horses). So Norman England’s unpleasantness was all rather baked into the cake.
Horse-mounted troops only became possible with the stirrup so the whole of the Norman Conquest which was a Bad Thing (but not if you believe Marc Morris) was the consequence of new technology.
Now I’ll tell of
The Battle of ‘Astings
As happened
In days long gone by
When Duke William became
Kind of England
And Harold
Got shot
In ‘t eye.
Google ‘Stanley Holloway Battle of Hastings’ to hear the entire.
On ‘is ‘orse, with ‘is ‘awk, in ‘is ‘and.
llater,
llamas
Quite possibly, unlike another more contemporary third party candidate I actually had in mind 😛
Hardrada would get my support. He was the right sort of Viking, unlike William.
The Pict Liberation Organization (PLO) will have something to say.
At some point
Woad’s the stuff to show men; woad to scare your foemen.
Boil it to a brilliant blue and rub it on your chest and your abdomen …
Or something like that. And if I got it a bit wrong, it was a translator’s error. Besides, you can’t always trust those Picts to get it right. Except, of course, for the elite squad of Pict men.
And here I thought it was just another clash between a couple of bunches of Europeans… 😎
Look you. We Welsh were here for bloody ages before all you sodding foreigners turned up. One never ending procession of chancers, spivs and ne’er do well’s ever since the Romans! Nothing figgin changes does it?
And the “cute” part is that the “Normans” were themselves direct descendants of Viking types (Norsemen / Nor’men, geddit?), who had “visited” Gaul and liked it so much they “invested” (in) the place.
In doing so they absorbed a lot of the remnant Roman culture, including the local language, itself heavily influenced by centuries of Latin “contact”.
The “Nor’men” also left a clear mark on Russia, as well. Russia, from “Rus”, Norse for “red”. See also the old English word “russet”. Why “red”? It was the dominant and very distinctive hair colour of the roaming Scandinavians. Longships on the Volga? Yep.
Hm. I’m a half-Welsh, half English, redhead. I’m not sure who’s side I should be on here.
As far as I know, the Norman Conquest was a feudal war between William and Harold over who was the rightful heir of Edward the Confessor. The people were collateral casualties, and probably didn’t care much about who killed them.
One can argue about the long term till the cows come home – the truth is that we do not know how Anglo Saxon England would have turned out had the Normans (those French speaking Christian Vikings) had not invaded.
However at the time it was a disaster – a massive amount of murder (especially in the north of England long after Harold was dead), burning, looting, imposition of serfdom and so on.
Certainly serfdom was far from universal under the Normans – indeed it may never have been a majority of the population. True some Anglo Saxon landholders survived (one family in Staffordshire only lost its land a couple of years ago – to an misjudged theme park idea) and many Normans married into Anglo Saxon families – the thought being “no one will be able to say my son is a usurper as his mother’s family owned this land” (indeed William’s youngest son Henry did that – marrying a direct descendant of the Alfred the Great as part of his plan to use the “English card” against his elder brothers – along with the I-was-too-young-to-have-taken-part-in-any-of-the-atrocities-of-my-father-William which was true).
However, the invasion was still a disaster – the English became second class citizens in their own land. Ruthlessly taxed and plundered, foreign laws were imposed upon the (in spite of the William the Bastard’s oath not to do this) and even the law courts were now conducted in alien language – Norman French, not for a few years but for CENTURIES. The accused (even in a trial that involved the death penalty) was in a court where he DID NOT KNOW WHAT WAS BEING SAID.
King Edward III was the first king after Harold to support the English language in literature and law – and it was not till long after (the 15th century) that serfdom broke down. Even the Black Death did not destroy serfdom – as Parliament (under Edward III) passed the “Statute of Labourers” which, de facto, tried to impose serfdom (i.e. people not being allowed to leave their parish and seek different employers – at least some people, it is complicated) even in areas such as Kent that had never had serfdom (hence the Peasants Revolt under Richard II – it was not just a tax revolt, it was a revolt of people who suddenly found legal restrictions placed upon them that had not existed before).
Indeed it was only really in the “Wars of the Roses” that this nonsense finally stopped (in terms of enforcement) and there were even efforts in the time of Elizabeth (end of the 16th start of the 17th century) to impose restrictions on freedom of movement and force people to undertake the occupation of their parents (harking back to the Oriental Despot Diocletian who imposed this on the Late Roman Empire).
“Yes but Paul – it was trial by jury and the power of local unpaid J.P.s (landowners) who prevented the growth of such statist tyranny – and all this was introduced by the NORMANS”.
Well we are back to long term effects again – and one can counter that argument by pointing out that juries existed among the Norse (the Danelaw – and Norway) to, and 12 man village committees (juries in all but name) existed among the Saxons.
Be that as it may – the Norman Conquest was at-least-at-the-time-and-for-centuries-after a disaster – leading to terrible oppression of a people (it was not just a clash between William and Harold – it was a clash between a nation and invaders).
And there is a last factor to consider.
The Normans did not all come to England – many of them stayed in Normandy and the new Kings of England (in London) claimed to rule large areas of France, eventually they claimed (by right of female decent in their line) to be the rightful Kings of France.
We may not be able to predict everything about Anglo Saxon England – but it would not have claimed to rule France. It would not have got England involved in CENTURIES of warfare in France.
For both England and France the Norman Conquest was a disaster – it lead to Kings in London using the resources of England to wage war (for centuries) in France. And for the French to launch attacks on England also.
The actual “feudal” legal dispute was most likely in the favour of those Norman Kings in London (the rule that “you claim is from the female line – so it does to count” was invented AFTER those Kings claimed the throne of France) – but it was a hopeless claim. Kings in London could not rule a nation the size of France.
But the Norman Conquest meant that England was involved in war after war after war to claim the throne of France. Wars with famous battles most certainly – but still, truth be told, hopeless wars.
War to preserve the independence of France (to prevent a single power controlling the whole coast of Europe facing England) is one thing – war to CONQUER France (a nation many times bigger than England) is quite another.
I have not discussed Scotland, Wales and Ireland here – as that would take an essay on its own. Indeed different essays in each case.
Interesting stuff. One of my favourite books of years ago was “1066 and All That” by Sellar and Yeatman. In fact I think it still inhabits the dark recesses of my book cases.
My ancestors were into the “Cruising Culture” and made periodic visits to the UK [as it eventually became] in their well equipped tourist ships until one of them took a real fancy to a local girl in Eboracum and decided to “jump ship”. Twelve hundred years later we joined a cruise to the Antipodes – and not a drop of effete French blood despoils my veins.
I just do not understand all this fuss about “Bill the Bastard” who was in effect a dandified Norseman.
My name means “land owner” in archaic Norse, frogified at some point in the ninth century by sticking “de” in front of it 😛
Not convinced there was anything very “dandified” about the Normans 😆 Indeed if you stuck one next to a contemporary Viking, the only real difference would be the Norman was on a horse with a pudding bowl haircut and shaved so that there was no beard to get stuck in the mail coif (hate it when that happens!)
PdH horses are disgusting things. 🙄 They make a real mess of the deck boards on a Long Ship and are quite detrimental to the vessel’s stability.
Once read an interesting analysis of Senlac wherein the author maintained that if the Saxons had kept their line and shield wall the outcome would have been a lot different. But then history is full of “what ifs”.
I hope this time they put on some clothing first. They scare the horses.
“Yes but Paul – it was trial by jury and the power of local unpaid J.P.s (landowners) who prevented the growth of such statist tyranny – and all this was introduced by the NORMANS”.
Reluctantly, and at the insistence – the very pointed insistence (as in sword-point) – of their bannermen. Interesting question: how many of those barons were really earls, i.e., how much of the English nobility under the Normans was still Anglo-Saxon?
The various tribes fighting over Europe from Roman times on teamed up with mother nature to prevent the weak, stupid and lazy from breeding by killing them off wholesale as young as possible.
The current governments of Europe all subsidize the breeding of weak, stupid and lazy people of all tribes, including the ‘migrants’.
What could possibly go wrong?
The Normans depressed many English into serfs, and in the process (almost wholly by accident) elevated the slaves into serfs. If I follow the ‘logic’ of John Rawls’ difference principle aright, this benefit to the very lowest in society justifies the change regardless of the great dis-benefit to many more. If I take J.S.Mill “greatest good of the greatest number”, it would not. And if I take more moral views than either of these, I’m able to see that Paul’s remarks have content.
We were lucky that it all turned out so well in the end.
Dan Hannan seems to be broadly in agreement with Paul Marks.
They are probably right, and i like to think that they are right because i like to think that Britain should be ruled by real Vikings, not by effete Normans with pudding bowl haircuts. (Or was it the horses that had the haircuts? I myself have a skinhead/Paul Marks haircut.)
Though i am not sure about this, i disagree with Hannan that it was the Civil War that restored the Anglo-Saxon order: i think the Magna Carta and 1688 more important.
The Normans were the most prolific military conquerors of 10th and 11th centuries, so you must have a very strange definition of “effete” 😆
Without the Normans what had England ever been? A gluttonous
race of Jutes and Angles capable of no great combination; lumbering
about in pot-bellied equanimity; not dreaming of heroic toil and
silence and endurance, such as lead to the high places of the
Universe, and the golden mountain-tops where dwell the spirits of the
Dawn.
–Thomas Carlyle
The Sanity Inspector, October 17, 2016 at 5:15 pm: wow, is that Carlyle quote unfair! Thnk of Alfred the Great who repeatedly defeated the vikings (and practiced quite a bit of “silence and endurance” when hiding in the marshes). Think of his son Edward the Elder and daughter Aethelflaed (queen regnant of Mercia) who conquered the Danelaw between them up to York. Think of his grandson Athelstan whose victories created the kingdom of England. Think of his great-grandson Edgar the peaceful (think “peace through superior axe-wielding”) who was recognised suzerain of the whole British Isles.
Or, if your idea of ‘peaceful’ is a bit more intellectual than Edgar’s, there is still plenty to impress you. Think of King Alfred’s book. Want to know how far away the stars are? Alfred explains how to use parallax observations to show that in comparison to the distance to the stars, the earth itself is as a grain of sand to the whole earth. (Copies went to every diocese; the famous Alfred jewel is probably a bookmark for one of them.) And he was not unique. Literally for centuries on either side, you cannot find a historian in Christendom to match Bede in his care for sources and his analysis.
Carlyle is talking through a hole in his head on this one.
Quite right Niall Thomas Carlyle could be very wrong headed – although a powerful writer.
As for slavery – not common in Anglo Saxon England although it did exist. It continued to exist actually – but, yes, it eventually died out.
On haircuts – the Viking one (which is not often done by re enactors because it looks so odd, is to shave the back f the head.
This was done to show off the muscles in the neck caused by all that rowing.
@Patrick Crozier – October 14, 2016 at 5:49 pm:
Both the Normans and Saxons had horses. Harold’s elite force, the housecarles, were “mounted infantry”: that is, they traveled on horseback and fought on foot. That was why Harald Hardraade was surprised to meet them at Stamford Bridge; if Harold and the housecarles had marched on foot from the south, they could not have arrived till several days later.
The Normans (the knights among them) fought on horseback, which was different. They had stirrups, of course, but stirrups were not a new technology. The Goths had them at Adrianople, 700 years earlier.