How William Kept Control of England: Castles, Revolts and the Harrying of the North

The revolts, 1067-1075

• Kent and Herefordshire, 1067: trouble began in Kent and Herefordshire in 1067.
• Exeter, 1068: a rising at Exeter followed in 1068, which William ended with a siege.
• The northern risings, 1069-70: backed by a Danish fleet and joined by Edgar Ætheling, the surviving Anglo-Saxon royal claimant, these were the most dangerous.
• Hereward in the Fens, 1070-71: Hereward the Wake led a guerrilla campaign in the marshy Fens, holding out until he was crushed at Ely in 1071 after monks betrayed his position.
• Revolt of the Earls, 1075: the last was the Revolt of the Earls in 1075, led by the Norman earls Roger de Breteuil and Ralph de Gael.

Every rising failed for the same reasons: the rebels had no united leadership, while William struck back fast, held key areas with castles, and replaced rebel nobles with loyal Normans.

Castles: holding the ground

• The Normans' key innovation for holding conquered land was the castle, usually built to the motte-and-bailey design: a raised earth mound (the motte) topped by a timber tower, next to an enclosed courtyard (the bailey) for troops and stores.
• Built quickly and cheaply from timber, they could be thrown up in a matter of days to control a newly taken area.
• They worked both as garrisons for Norman soldiers and as visible symbols of authority that intimidated the local population.
• William also built them in networks: the Sussex Rapes divided Sussex into districts, each with a castle guarding the roads back to Normandy, so a small number of Normans could dominate a hostile country.

The Harrying of the North (1069-70)

• In the winter of 1069-70 William launched the Harrying of the North to crush the northern risings and deter any future ones.
• His forces carried out a scorched-earth campaign, burning villages, crops, livestock, and tools across a wide area from York to the Scottish border.
• The aim was to starve out any rebel army and cut the region's links to King Malcolm III of Scotland and his Danish allies.
• The result was famine and lasting depopulation across the north.
• One chronicler, Orderic Vitalis, put the dead at over 100,000, though historians think the true figure is uncertain and probably much lower.
• The Harrying ended large-scale resistance in the north for good.

Holding England down: the tools of government

• William rewarded loyalty and granted land using writs and charters, short official documents written in Latin.
• He held the families of leading Anglo-Saxon nobles as hostages to guarantee their good behaviour.
• Along the Welsh and Scottish frontiers he created the marcher borders, giving trusted lords wide powers to defend and control those regions.
• Marriages between Normans and Anglo-Saxons, and French settlers taking over land, slowly mixed the two peoples together.
• The royal treasury at Winchester gathered the geld (a national land tax inherited from the Anglo-Saxons) to pay for the army, while Archbishop Lanfranc appointed Norman bishops and used Church courts to reinforce royal authority.

The 1087 succession

• When William I died in 1087, his lands were split between his sons rather than passing whole to one heir.
• His eldest son Robert Curthose took Normandy, while William II (Rufus) inherited England and its treasury.
• The youngest son, Henry, was left silver but no land of his own.
• Rivalry followed at once: in 1088 Robert's supporters invaded England to unseat Rufus, but they failed and William II kept the throne.
• Splitting Normandy from England set up decades of conflict between the brothers, even though Norman rule inside England itself held firm.