1066 Country
- Marjorie
- Oct 20, 2019
- 5 min read
How many of you are familiar with the year 1066? It was possibly one of the most turbulent years in English history. But we will get to that in a moment.
From Canterbury we had hired a car to take us to Hever Castle as public transport would have been a major undertaking with our luggage. The car came with a terrific Italian driver by the name of Slim. Slim??? The next morning’s trip to Hove on the south coast was also not going to be easy, so we scheduled a car for that trip as well. Again we had Slim! So I had to ask him what his real name was as Slim just was not working for me. Alessandro. Much, much better! Alessandro is a typical Italian — he talks with his hands. But thankfully he is also a very good driver, so I enjoyed the conversation, even when I could not hear him well enough to understand.
We were dropped off in no time at the doorstep of our friends’ Bethan and Laurie. I went to Trinity College of Music in London with Bethan. Laurie’s jobs have taken him around the world, including to Texas, so we have gotten to visit them in England and they us in Colorado. Bethan is Welsh, and at first we had a difficult time understanding one another. Thankfully I have come to understand the Welsh accent, and I think hers has been ‘tamed’ a bit by her husband and their many moves. Anyway, it was wonderful to get to their home where we could enjoy their company, relax, and tour the south of England.
So, 1066. Have you looked it up yet? Perhaps you have heard of or seen pictures of the Bayeux Tapestry.
Anyway, it was the year that England went from being ruled by the English Anglo Saxons to being ruled by a Norman King. Very early in the year King Edward the Confessor died. A Norman Duke by the name of William the Bastard claimed that he had been promised the throne of England by King Edward. But on Edward‘s deathbed he named his close advisor Harold Godwinson to be his successor. That did not go over well with Duke William. Nor did it go over well with Harold’s brother Tostig. Tostig had been banished from England for trying to wreak havoc and attempting to usurp the throne.
Duke William was not about to go down without a fight, so he approached just about everyone, including the Pope for help in overthrowing Harold. He struggled getting support. Through some apparently devious means he managed to get the Pope’s support which included a Papal Relic, a Papal Banner and the Papal blessing. With these he set about building a fleet of ships to carry thousands of soldiers, knights, their horses and himself to England. The French were not sailors, so this was a big struggle. But he persisted. Harold heard about William’s intentions and set up an army and a large fleet of boats on the south coast of England to await the invasion. They waited. And waited. Finally the need for bringing in the harvest made him disband his army.
Meanwhile, Tostig went to Harald Hardrada, the King of Norway and a pretty active Viking, to seek help. Vikings were known for being crazy about fighting. In fact, they were known as berserkers as they just went wild at any opportunity to fight. Recognise that word ‘berserk?’ Anyway, they had not had a chance to fight in a while, and Tostig offered them the chance to go with him to attempt to overthrow his brother once again. In early October of 1066 Tostig and Harald Hardrada went ashore in northern England. When King Harold found out he gathered his army and marched in an amazingly quick five days to York where the English slaughtered Tostig, Harald Hardrada and the Viking invaders.
Darned if a couple of days after their victory Harold didn’t receive word that William had finally arrived. Exhausted from a long march and an hard-fought battle, Harold set forth to intercept William.
Miraculously, William’s flotilla had landed at Pevensey. It is said that William stepped out of the boat and fell flat on his face. Some say that he was kissing the English earth... He and his army began marching through the countryside, pillaging, raping and then burning down every village that they came to. They went though Hastings and up to a village now called Battle. There they met Harold and his army. Although King Harold had just had a major victory, the news that then Pope was completely behind Duke William apparently devastated Harold. He set his army of approximately 8 thousand foot soldiers with bows and arrows, swords and huge battle axes across the top of a hill, flanked by forest on either side. Harold, rather than being out front with his soldiers, stayed in the back centre of the meleé. The English set up their shields in an impenetrable wall.
William had three groups, the Bretons, the Normans and the French, all with archers, infantry and knights on horseback. The English had never fought with horses.
On horseback, William was able to command his troops easily according to what was happening. They started with arrows shot up the steep hill, then the infantry followed up the hill trying to penetrate the wall of Englishmen. The men with battle axes would come out swinging wildly, devastating anything in the axe’s arc, infantry, horses and knights alike. The French kept attacking, but Harold never gave a command to attack. The English were gradually whittled down so that the French could get around the ends of their line. William and some of his knights rode around and found King Harold, supposedly with an arrow in his eye. They immediately hacked him to pieces.
Apparently the English that were left faded into the forest, and the French were free to wind their way towards London, destroying everything in their path. Not wanting a foreign King, the English leaders chose 13 year-old Edgar to be King, and they holed up in London. William hung out on the outskirts of the city until an archbishop defected from London to his camp. At that point he took London, and had himself crowned on Christmas day of 1066. Now King William the Conqueror, he gave all of the English nobles’ land away to his Norman cronies, devastating the English economy and population. French became the language of the Court and of the nobility for many years to come, but the English, while absorbing some of the Norman culture, managed to keep a lot of their own, making them stronger in the long run. And the English never have liked the French since!
We visited Hastings and the castle that William built up on the cliff, and Battle, the site of the battle where William, perhaps feeling some remorse, built an abbey. The abbey is in ruins, but the spot where the high altar was is well marked. It is the spot where King Harold was killed. Standing before that stone was very moving, knowing that both Kings had been on that very spot. Sadly, by two days we missed the re-enactment which happened on 14 October, on the 953rd anniversary of the battle.
For some unknown reason my own photos are not showing up in my feed. Grrrrr.
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