Norman Conquest

Invasion and settlement of England by the Normans, following the victory of William (I) the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The story of the conquest from the Norman point of view is told in the Bayeux Tapestry.

William, Duke of Normandy, claimed that the English throne had been promised to him by his maternal cousin Edward the Confessor (died January 1066), but the Witan (a council of high‐ranking Anglo‐Saxon advisors, churchmen, and landowners) elected Edward's brother‐in‐law Harold Godwinson as king. Harold II was killed at the Battle of Hastings in October 1066, and Edgar the Aetheling was immediately proclaimed king; he was never crowned, renouncing his claim in favour of William. There were several rebellions against William's rule, especially in the north, which he ruthlessly suppressed in the harrying of the north, when villages and crops were burned and livestock killed. Another notable rising was led by Hereward the Wake in the Isle of Ely. The construction of around 50 castles between 1066 and 1087 helped to establish Norman power in England.

Under Norman rule the English gradually lost their landed possessions and were excluded from administrative posts. In 1085 William ordered the compilation of the Domesday Book, a recorded survey of land and property in the English shires.

The opening years of William's English rule were insecure because he depended on the cooperation of men who had previously served Harold. However, by about 1072 the Norman hold on the kingdom was finally established and the affairs of church and state were completely in Norman hands. The Domesday Book shows the huge extent of Norman landholdings within only 20 years of the Battle of Hastings.

The break with the past was not complete, for William continued, or adopted, many established Anglo‐Saxon institutions and customs. One exception was the introduction of feudal land tenure, namely the granting of a definite piece of land in return for definite services, under the feudal system.

The Conquest turned England away from Scandinavia and towards France, and brought England more closely into the European stream of political thought.