The Norman Conquest (33 page)

Leaving a garrison at Dover, as well as those too ill to continue, William set his sights on London. As he advanced, representatives of other cities approached him and offered their submission. The citizens of Canterbury did so, says Poitiers, fearful of total ruin if they resisted further. The
Carmen
, meanwhile, carries the uncorroborated but entirely credible story that the duke sent troops to demand the surrender of Winchester, the site of the royal treasury and hence a highly desirable prize. Since the start of the year the city had been held by Edward the Confessor’s widow, Edith, as part of her dower, and this, says the
Carmen
, meant that its inhabitants were treated leniently, with William requiring only a profession of fealty and a promise of future rent – terms which the former queen and the city fathers chose to accept. Other towns and cities evidently had to make their submission on such terms as they could get, which generally involved the payment of large tributes. ‘Just as hungry flies attack in swarms wounds brimming with blood’, says the
Carmen
, ‘so from all sides the English rush to dance attendance on the king. Nor do they come with hands empty of gifts. All bring presents, bow their necks to the yoke, and kiss his feet on bended knees.’
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But not the citizens of London. If he had not known before, by now William had heard about the election of Edgar Ætheling.’ When he learnt what had been done in London’, says the
Carmen
, ‘contrary to justice and by fools, he ordered his troops to approach the walls of the city.’ Unfortunately at this point the
Carmen
becomes an unreliable guide, describing a siege of London which is at odds with the accounts of all other writers. We seem to be on surer ground with William of Poitiers, who explains how the approach of an
advance party of Norman knights triggered an English sortie. Poitiers does not say so, but since the city lies on the north side of the Thames and the Normans were approaching from the south, the defenders must have crossed the river to meet their enemies, which presumably means they used London Bridge. The sortie was unsuccessful, with the English forced into a retreat, back across the bridge and inside the walls. The Normans vented their fury by torching all the houses on the south bank.
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With his army on one side of the Thames and London’s recalcitrant citizens safely ensconced on the other, William faced a major problem: how to induce a surrender without attempting a suicidal direct assault. The solution was the kind of terror campaign he had used in similar circumstances earlier in his career, most recently in the case of Le Mans. The Norman advance from Hastings to London can hardly have been the peaceful progress that some later chroniclers pretended; apart from anything else, the need to forage for food would have meant much violent appropriation. Even William of Poitiers, although he makes some prefatory noises about clemency and moderation, could not avoid mentioning the punishing of Romney and the burning of Dover. These actions, however, Poitiers evidently felt could be justified or excused as accidental; when, by contrast, he comes to describe the army’s actions after the confrontation on the south bank, he retreats into one of his telling silences, saying only that the duke proceeded ‘wherever he wished’. It is our English sources, despite their habitual terseness, that furnish us with a fuller picture. William, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘harried that part of the country through which he advanced’. From this moment, if not before, foraging became outright ravaging – wilful and deliberate destruction, intended to sow fear among those who had not yet submitted. Some idea of the extent of the campaign is provided by John of Worcester, who wrote that the Normans ‘laid waste Sussex, Kent, Hampshire, Middlesex and Hertfordshire, and did not cease from burning townships and slaying men’.
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As to precisely where they went, we cannot know. More than a century ago, a scholar called Francis Baring suggested that the route of William’s devastating march could be recovered by looking at the depreciation of land values recorded in the Domesday Book. It all seemed very clever and well substantiated, and one can still find books written in the not too distant past that cite Baring’s
reconstruction with approval. Latterly, however, the Baring method has been discredited, not least because even its staunchest advocates are unable to agree on the same conclusion.
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The truth is that we can only recover the general direction of the duke’s route from the information recorded in the chronicles. We can be fairly sure that, having decided against a direct assault on London, William headed west. If John of Worcester is right, the Normans harried into Hampshire, then turned north, burning their way through Berkshire and on into Oxfordshire, before coming to a stop at Wallingford. As its name implies, Wallingford was a convenient place for the Normans to cross the Thames (apparently the first place they could have crossed the river without recourse to boats or bridges). It may also have had an additional importance as a military target: the town’s entry in the Domesday Book contains a passing reference to land ‘where the housecarls lived’. To judge from the comments of the chroniclers, William stayed in Wallingford for several days – even the brief account of William of Jumièges says that the duke ordered his troops to pitch camp there – and one naturally suspects that during this time, as at Dover, work commenced on the town’s new castle.
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According to William of Poitiers, it was at Wallingford that the archbishop of Canterbury, Stigand, came and did homage to William, at the same time renouncing Edgar Ætheling. While we have no particular reason to doubt that this was the case, we might suspect that Poitiers exaggerates the archbishop’s role in the English resistance. In his account, Stigand is portrayed as the leader of the Londoners at the time of Edgar’s election; Ealdred, whom the English sources identify in that role, receives no mention. Very likely Poitiers is altering the past here, conscious of the subsequent fortunes of the two men, protecting Ealdred’s reputation by making Stigand the scapegoat. (He may have done much the same with the coronation of Harold at the start of the year.) The submission of the archbishop of Canterbury was, of course, significant. But the opposition in London, for the time being, continued.
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And so therefore did the harrying. Having crossed the Thames at Wallingford, the Norman army resumed its devastating progress, turning north-east so that the line of their march began to encircle the capital. Probably following the ancient path along the Chilterns known as the Icknield Way, William and his men passed through Buckinghamshire and on into Hertfordshire (as John of Worcester
indicates), where they established another camp (and possibly the great motte-and-bailey castle) at Berkhamsted.

By now the mood in London must have been quite despondent. Apart from the terrifying spectacle of the Norman progress, English spirits had been dealt a crushing blow by the desertion of Eadwine and Morcar. The two earls, says John of Worcester, ‘withdrew their support and returned home with their army’, presumably meaning that at some point during the autumn they had left London and gone north to their earldoms. As a result of this action, Eadwine and Morcar have long been cast, probably unfairly, in the role of arch traitors. In the early twelfth century, for example, William of Malmesbury described them as ‘two brothers of great ambition’, and stated, quite inaccurately, that they left London because the citizens had refused to elect one of them as king: as we have seen, our most closely contemporary source, the D Chronicle, indicates that the earls had initially promised to fight for Edgar Ætheling, and says nothing about their departure for the north. At the same time, the D Chronicle, brief as it is, conveys vividly the collapse of hope among the English in London in the weeks that followed, as they contemplated fighting in the name of a child king against the terrible enemy that was wasting the land beyond their walls. ‘Always when some initiative should have been shown, there was delay from day to day, until matters went from bad to worse, as everything did in the end.’
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And so the English in London – or at least those who had championed the cause of young Edgar – decided to surrender. As the darkest days of the year drew in, Edgar himself, accompanied by a delegation of magnates and bishops, began the thirty-mile journey from London to Berkhamsted in order to submit to William’s superior might. They went, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘out of necessity, after most damage had been done – and it was a great piece of folly that they had not done it earlier’. When at last they came before the Conqueror, ‘they gave hostages, and swore oaths to him, and he promised them that he would be a gracious lord’.

Did this mean that William was England’s new king? To English minds, the answer must have been yes. As we’ve seen, English kingship was elective: a ruler’s reign began the moment he was accepted by the magnates. This means, of course, that the ætheling must have been regarded as king as well. Although the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
is understandably very coy about saying so, Edgar’s rule had clearly been proclaimed in the days immediately after Hastings. We are told, for example, that after the death of their abbot from wounds sustained in the battle, the monks of Peterborough had sent his successor to Edgar for confirmation, and – more to the point – Edgar had ‘gladly consented’. William of Poitiers is even more explicit: ‘They had chosen Edgar Ætheling, of the noble stock of King Edward, as king.’ Evidently Edgar, like the Confessor before him, had not been crowned in the early days of his reign, but in English eyes this did not matter. Coronation, to repeat, was simply confirmation – it conferred God’s blessing, but not the kingship itself.
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The Normans, however, saw matters differently. On the Continent, a king was created at the moment of his coronation, not before. The Edgar episode, of course, gave them good reason for insisting on this point: the boy had not been crowned; ergo he was not king. The English may have thought this was rather irregular, but they were clearly in no position to debate constitutional practice, and so fell quickly into line with Norman thinking. At the same time, they realized that this new logic left the country in an anxious state of limbo: England would have no king until William was crowned. Hence, says William of Poitiers, ‘the bishops and other leading men begged him to take the crown, saying that they were accustomed to obey a king, and wished to have a king as their lord’. The Normans, too, urged their leader to take the throne quickly, albeit for different reasons. ‘They wished their gains and honours to be increased by his elevation.’
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But, according to Poitiers, William himself hesitated. It was not seemly, he said, to rush when climbing to the topmost pinnacle. Given that this had been the whole point of the Conquest, we might assume that this scene is Poitiers’ own invention – a conceit designed to emphasize his master’s thoughtfulness and modesty, and hence ultimately his suitability to rule. Yet unseemliness is not the only argument that the Conqueror is said to have put forward. What chiefly dissuaded him, he told his closest companions, was the confused situation in England: some people were still rebelling; also, he had wanted his wife to be crowned with him, and she, of course, was still in Normandy. These arguments seem quite credible. At this point only the south-eastern part of the country was under William’s control. It would have been perfectly understandable had he wished to
complete his military takeover, and to have all Englishmen submit to him, so that he and Matilda could experience an orderly coronation at some future date. In this respect at least, his attitude towards the ceremony was not so very different from that of his Anglo-Saxon predecessors.

Eventually, having put the matter to a meeting of his magnates, William was talked around. ‘After carefully reconsidering everything’, says Poitiers, ‘he gave way to all their requests and arguments.’ Apparently the key argument that persuaded him to change his mind was the military one. ‘Above all, he hoped that once he had begun to reign, any rebels would be less ready to challenge him and more easily put down.’ The decision taken, says Poitiers, William sent some of his men ahead to London to make the necessary preparations.
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By the time William himself reached London some days later, the situation there must have been incredibly tense. The city, as we have noted, had been swelled by the survivors of Hastings. They, and the relatives of the thousands who had fallen, can hardly have looked upon the arrival of the Normans with anything other than abhorrence. According to William of Jumièges, the advance guard that the Conqueror had sent ahead ‘found many rebels determined to offer every possible resistance. Fighting followed immediately and thus London was plunged into mourning for the loss of her sons and citizens.’ Jumièges may not be the most reliable witness here, but the resistance he describes is implicitly acknowledged by the better-informed William of Poitiers, who tells us that the advance guard had been ordered to build a fortress in the city, ‘as a defence against the inconstancy of the numerous and hostile inhabitants’.
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The coronation itself took place on Christmas Day. Given the situation in London, there can have been little appetite for the kind of processions through the streets that we know preceded later ceremonies. If the
Carmen
can be believed (and, sadly, most of its account of this episode has to be rejected), William may have taken up residence in Edward the Confessor’s palace at Westminster in the days immediately prior to the ceremony. We know that the ceremony took place in the Confessor’s new church at Westminster Abbey, and we also know that the audience included both English and Normans. Since there can only have been space inside for a few hundred people, the majority of London’s citizens must have remained at
home, and the bulk of the Norman army camped elsewhere (perhaps in the new castle in the city’s south-eastern corner). A number of armed and mounted Normans, however, were stationed outside the abbey as a precaution against ambush.
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