William Peuerel - The Conqueror
Picture is from an Old English Book

Guillaume - William I (William the Conqueror) was born in Falaise, Normandy, between 1024 - 1028; died in Rouen, 9 Sep., 1087. He was the son of Robert the Devil, Duke of Normandy, and Arlette, daughter of Fulbert, a tanner of Falaise. Though an illegitimate son, William succeeded his father as Duke of Normandy in 1035, at the age of eight. He lived in obscurity for 12 years in the care of guardians until the Battle of Val-es-Dunes (1047), won for him against rebellious vassals by his overlord King Henry I of France, allowed him to consolidate his position and power.

Edward, son of the Conqueror's great aunt Emma, tried to displace Harold Harefoot (his half brother) from the throne in 1036. The attempt was unsuccessful and Edward escaped to Normandy where he most likely spent time with William. Edward was invited back to England in 1041, this time as co-ruler with his half-brother Harthacanute (son of his mother Emma and Canute), on whose death on June 8, 1042, he ascended the throne. Edward was crowned at Winchester Cathedral on April 3, 1043. William may have visited King Edward in England during this time. Ingelric, a British Saxon was the brother of Edward. William must have met Maud, his daughter, and briefly fell in love with her. This could have been before his first proposal to Matilda, although he knew that he loved Matilda. William and Maud had a son, William 'The Elder', born about 1043/1044. Maud later married William's half brother, Ranulph Peverel.

In 1053 William married Matilda, daughter of Baudouin V (Baldwin V), Count of Flanders, by whom he had four sons and six daughters. The Duke's marriage to Maud from England and Matilda from France was what he needed to unify the two countries.

He acquired Maine by force in 1063 and was even able to act independently of his lawful sovereign.

The lack of heirs to the English throne and Edward the Confessor's predilection for Normans (among whom he had been brought up) made it possible for William to put forward his candidature, though he was only Edward's cousin. Despite a promise made by Edward to William on his only visit to England in 1051, Harold Godwin (King Harold II) became king in 1066; his title seemed indisputable, and no Englishman supported William; William therefore submitted his claims to trial by battle, invading England in 1066, and, favored by good fortune, won the Battle of Hastings. This victory saw the death of Harold and every adult member of the Godwin family, leaving William as the only competent candidate for the throne. As such, the country accepted him, and he was crowned in London December 25, 1066.

William the Conqueror receiving the allegiance of his nephew Alain le Roux, to whom he granted land that had formerly belonged to Edwin, earl of Mercia, a prominent English rebel against Norman rule (Source: "Old England" book: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles"; pg. 206, edited by Anne Savage; 1995: Coombe Books, Surry, England. Illustration from 13th-century English history)

Since there was little native resistance, William left England for a nine months' visit to Normandy in March 1067; he was, indeed, to spend far more than a third of his reign out of England. By 1068 the English fyrrd (army) was fighting on his behalf. English resistance was incoherent and fitful; Edric the Wild on the borders of Wales; the earls Edwin of Mercia and Morcar of Northumbria in 1068 and 1069' Hereward the Wake, legendary hero of the common people, in 1070. The policy of terrorization, already used in the conquest of Maine, was applied to England, particularly in the frightful devastation of the northern parts between the North Sea and the Irish Sea in 1069. Furthermore, since there had to be close cooperation between William and his barons in defense of their common security and interest, William had no difficulty in suppressing occasional insurrections such as those of Eustace of Boulogne (1067), Ralph, earl of East Anglia, and Roger, ear of Hereford (1075), and Bishop Odo of Bayeux, Earl of Kent (1082). William was content to protect his new realm on the west by establishing marcher earldoms on the borders of Wales; and after extracting a vague promise of allegiance from Malcolm Canmore, King of Scots, in 1072, he constructed Newcastle as a permanent defense for the northern frontier. The new factor was that England was now directly involved in the politics of Europe, and most of William's later years and resources were spent in defeating machinations of Count Robert of Flanders, Count Fulk of Anjou, and Philip I of France against his Norman duchy.

No single fact in the history of England in the forty years after 1066 is more notable than the continuance of the old English state, it's institutions, and language, William regarded himself not as a conqueror, but as a legitimate heir. He was crowned with the ceremonial of old English kings, and swore their oath at his coronation. He inherited a paramount right to the allegiance of all his subjects; the Salisbury Oath of 1086, which asserted the precedence of fealty to the king over obligations to inferior lords, merely exhibited the king's right. The witan continued, though with an altered complexion, as the king's council. The revenues of the English kings became those of their Norman successors. The shire courts and hundred courts remained as the indispensable agents of local government, and manorial courts simply continued pre-Conquest tribunals. Thus the structure of the state was substantially the same as it had been before 1066, and the English way of life was not radically altered; for, in contrast with Normandy, England was an ordered polity, and neither in political concepts nor in administrative agencies did William know anything more advanced than what he found.

Williams addition to the stock of native institutions was not large; mainly a clumsy, ineffective, and short-lived organization of the military resources of the crown which brought in new elements of feudal law and a modest source of revenue through feudal incidents, Norman, that is French, feudalism differed little from the English variety; the mounted soldier was called by the English word 'knight' because he resembled the knight the English already knew, and the service owed by thegns (thanes) was easily transmuted into service owed by knights. The old English replaced by foreigners, but William made no redivision of land, merely confiscating the estates of his enemies and conferring them on his followers. In landholding, as in government, there was continuity.

Similarly, in the church, the higher clergy saw a growing infusion of foreign elements, and the monasteries were Gallicized, but the parochial clergy was necessarily left undisturbed. With the wholehearted cooperation of Lanfranc, who was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1170, William gave the church courts; but even this development must have come sooner or later, for it is inconceivable that England would have stood outside the organization of Latin Christianity.. Neither William nor Lanfranc was an ardent reformer or papalist, and relations with Rome, regulated in accordance with previous custom, evoked no serious problems.

William was ruthless and unscrupulous, masterful and indomitable; with no originality of mind, he was nevertheless a highly efficient ruler. The Domesday Book though a costly mistake, never finished and rarely used, survives as a memorial to the drive that he gave to administration in thus setting on foot a nationwide inquiry into the wealth of his kingdom.

On William's death, due to an injury on horseback during fighting in France, his inheritance, the duchy of Normandy, went by the rules of tenure to his eldest son, Robert; but he left his prize of war, England, to his second surviving son William. Had the terms of his will been maintained, England and Normandy would have gone their different ways, and the Norman Conquest would have been no more than a transient episode in English history.

(Written by Robby Robinson, edited by Marj Gisi)

Some information taken from:
Genealogy on Pat Patterson's Pages>
Encyclopedia Americana, International Edition - Volume 28
Published by: Americana Corporation, International Headquarters
575 Lexington Avenue, New York, New York 10022, Copyright 1966

DEED of KING WILLIAM the CONQUEROR

"This Deed of King William the Conquerors was written in the Saxon tongue 50 W.C. Ao 1070 and was put into English Ao 1587, 15o May Ao 27o R.R. Elizabethae, and remaynes in the Bishop of Winchesters custody. William King greetes Walkeselein Bishop and Hugan de Port, and Edward Knighte, Steward and Algesime, and Symon and Allfus Porveiour, and Cole, & Arderne and all the Barons in Hampshierr, aud Wiltshire freindly, And know ye that I giue vnto St. Peter and Walchelyne Bishop with all the Covent to be as free as Bishop Alsyme was in the dayes of King Edw. and to hold an enjoy all the priuiledges great and small. And I giue commaundement that uoe man for me or any other withstand or deny them the same, or disquiet that which I doe graunt in any wise vnto St Peter or Aacholyne Bishop or any his Successors.

This is in the Inspeximus Charters of Confirmacons made to Richard Fox and Peter Courtney Bishops of Winchester, as they are inrolled in the Chauncery 30 Janu. 2 H. 8 and 13 Novem. 4 H. 8.

From the Genealogies and Pedigree of Sir William Cole of Enniskillen,
County of Firmanaugh, Kingdom of Ireland, Knight, by Sir Wm. Segar and W. Pensom.

Accord of Winchester signed 1072 by William the Conqueror & his wife. This elevated Canterbury over York as to whose archbishop would be the highest primate in England. The large Xs are the 'signatures' of William & Matilda, the one under theirs is Lanfranc's, and the other bishops' are under his.

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