After defeating Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings,

William of Normandy was crowned King of England on Christmas

Day 1066. Taking the crown didn’t mean everyone in England
supported him though, and he faced challenges in securing control
of England. He moved quickly to deal with those who opposed him
and provide protection for his soldiers and supporters.
William is remembered as a harsh king. During his reign, William
crushed rebellions, limited the freedoms of Anglo-Saxon women,
overhauled the Church and built a series of imposing castles across
England to establish control. Looking back on his reign, he is said to
have spoken the following words on his deathbed.
"I've persecuted the natives of England beyond all reason, whether
gentle or simple. I have cruelly oppressed them and unjustly
disinherited them, killed innumerable multitudes by famine or the
sword and become the barbarous murderer of many thousands both
young and old of that fine race of people."
A supposed account from William on his deathbed, recorded by
Orderic years later, translated into Modern English.
They were written down many years after William’s death by a
monk named Orderic who had mixed English and Norman heritage.
Even if these weren’t William’s exact words, they give an insight
into how people at the time thought he ruled England.

The Harrying of the North

Many Anglo-Saxons opposed the Norman Conquest and William
faced a series of rebellions. The biggest rebellion was in York in
1069. It was led by Edgar the Atheling, and he was joined by Danish
and Scottish armies. They were posing a real challenge to William’s
control of the north of England.
William defeated the rebellion, but he still didn't trust the rebels. He
came to an agreement with the Danes, paying them to leave the
country if they left without a fight. He was significantly less lenient
with the English. In the north-east of England, from 1069 to 1070,
William ordered villages to be burned to the ground, farm animals
to be slaughtered, and crops to be destroyed. This is called the
Harrying of the North. Thousands of people were killed and many
more died of starvation over the next few years. Edgar survived the
slaughter and fled to Scotland.
These events devastated the North and it took many years for some
areas to recover. There is some uncertainty over how many people
were killed, but the Domesday Book shows the population in the
North decreased by 75%. People were either killed, died of
starvation or moved away. William was sending out a clear message
that he was now in control and he would do anything to stop
opposition.

William and the Church

Faith was very important to William. He had been responsible for
beginning the building of new monasteries in Normandy in the
1060s and was devout in his religious practice. He had always been
a loyal follower of the
Pope

and placed great value on the Pope supporting his conquest of

England.
Having control of the Church also meant having access to power,
land and wealth. William waited until 1070 to make big changes to
the Church, beginning with replacing English
bishops

with Norman ones.

The
Archbishop of Canterbury

, Lanfranc, made the organisation of churches much tighter and

made sure that the local priests were kept under the control of the
central church bishops and archbishops.
The Normans also replaced the small, wooden Anglo-Saxon
churches with much larger stone churches. They built huge
cathedrals in major towns like London, Durham and York, which
could hold hundreds of people. These cathedrals were decorated
inside with impressive religious art. The scale of these buildings
gave a clear message about the power of the Church in people’s
lives, and the leaders of the Church were usually Norman.

William's use of castles

William rewarded his loyal supporters with large areas of land in
England, which helped him control the country. The Norman
conquerors were unpopular with many people in England, so they
quickly built
motte-and-bailey

castles all over the country to protect themselves and send out a
warning to people that they were here to stay and keep control.
Castles were built in prominent positions, on high ground
overlooking villages or towns. These imposing structures would
have been the largest buildings people in medieval England had ever
seen. William hoped the building of castles across England would
intimidate people into accepting the Norman conquest. Castle design
gradually changed over time. Castles would evolve and be improved
with new designs, sometimes over hundreds of years. The main
designs of castles were: motte-and-bailey, stone
keep and concentric.
Motte-and-bailey castles
Motte-and-bailey castles were built from wood and the
keep

was constructed on top of a small hill, called a motte. At the bottom

of the motte, was a bailey, which was an enclosed group of houses
and farmland for soldiers and workers to live in. These castles were
protected by a
palisade

, which was a tall wooden fence, and they usually had a ditch or
moat around them. The Normans built these castles on the tops of
hills so that they would look imposing and intimidating.
These castles weren’t built to last a long time, but they could be
built quickly within a few days and then were gradually replaced
with more elaborate and stronger stone castles over time. It is
estimated over five hundred motte-and-bailey castles were built in
the two years after the Norman conquest.

Stone keep castles

Stone keep castles were often built on the same site as motte-and-
bailey castles. Wooden keeps were slowly replaced with imposing
stone keeps, which were stronger and more difficult to attack. As
motte-and-bailey castles were wooden, they could easily be burned
down or would rot over time. Stone keeps didn’t have these
problems. The Tower of London is a good example of a wooden
castle that was replaced by this type of design.
However, due to their shape and weight, stone keep castles could be
attacked by mining underneath them to cause a corner to collapse.
Concentric castles
Concentric castles have two or more stone outer walls for
protection. Over time, further defences were added to castles, such
as stone walls, gatehouses and a
barbican

Square towers started to be replaced with round ones. These gave a

greater field of vision and were more difficult to attack by mining.

What is the feudal system?

Feudalism

is a way of looking at how society was organised in medieval times.

The phrase ‘feudal system’ wasn’t used at the time, but it started to
be used by historians from the 18th century onwards to try to
describe what life was like in the Middle Ages.
Feudalism is now thought to be quite a simplistic way of looking at
how medieval society worked, but it does give a starting point as to
how power was spread across different groups of people.
How was the feudal system organised?
The feudal system shows the
hierarchy of different groups of people in medieval society.
How was the feudal system organised?
The feudal system shows the
hierarchy of different groups of people in medieval society.
How do we know what medieval society
was like?
William needed to work out how much land and money people in
England owned, so he sent out his men to gather a complete record.
The Domesday Book was a detailed survey of what life was like in
medieval England in 1086. It gives an idea about how society was
structured and what life would have been like for different groups of
people.
The inequality of the feudal system
There was great
inequality

in medieval society because of the distribution of land and wealth.

The nobility was able to raise large amounts of money from
payments from peasants living on their land. Peasants were usually
villeins

. This meant they were legally tied to the land they worked on and
could only leave with their Lord’s permission. If they had a bad
harvest, they faced possible starvation.
Freemen

were a minority of peasants who were allowed to move around to

work on different land.
There was a belief in medieval England that you would stay at the
society level you were born into. So, if you were born a peasant, you
would almost always stay a peasant. Peasants' lives were heavily
controlled by those above them in society: the nobility, the Church
and the king.
Inequality was written into the law. If someone was murdered, the
compensation was called a
Weregild

. The higher someone was in society, the more compensation their

family would be paid.
Why did William need the Domesday
Book?
After establishing control in England with the
Harrying of the North

and the building of castles, William had secured his position as

king. But in 1085 he was concerned that England was under threat
from a Viking invasion. To defend his land, he needed a large army.
This would be expensive, so William needed to know who he could
tax and how much people could afford to pay. To do this, he needed
to
survey

the land and people of England. The Domesday Book also includes
information about a small number of places in Wales, which were
very close to the border with England. It doesn't include any
information about Scottish landowners, as William did not control
Scotland.
How was the information gathered?
William sent his men to find out detailed information about the
value of land and resources in England. They split the country up
into different regions based on existing county borders. Technically,
as William owned all land, everyone else in England was a tenant.
Landowners had to send in details of their land and who lived and
worked on it.
Commissioners

were then sent in to question the landowners and check the details.
The survey aimed to find out:
• Who owned the land and how much was it worth?
• How many people lived on the land?
• How much woodland was on the land?
• How many animals were on the land?
• What buildings were on the land?
• How much were the land and goods worth in 1066, when
William took over?
• How much were the land and goods worth in 1086, at the time
of the survey?
All of this information was then pulled together as a record of
wealth and land ownership for the whole country. It was written in
Latin and the first version was completed by August 1086. There
were two volumes of Domesday: Little Domesday and Great
Domesday. Little Domesday covered Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk in
great detail. Great Domesday covered the rest of the country and
was likely completed by a single scribe.

What does the Domesday Book tell us?

The completed book is an extremely detailed record of life in
England in medieval times. It contains over 13,000 records of places
across England, as well as a small amount of information about
places in Wales, just over the border. The Domesday Book shows
that:
• William directly controlled about 20% of the land
• Norman nobility

controlled about 50% of the land (which was ultimately

owned by William)
• The Church controlled about 25% of the land
• English nobility controlled about 5% of the land
This meant that a huge amount of the land was controlled by a small
number of powerful people. It also showed that the Normans had
overpowered the Anglo-Saxons, as only 5% of land was controlled
by English noblemen.

Consequences of the Domesday Book

The Domesday Book was finished in 1086, a year before William’s
death. The detailed records made it possible for taxes to be raised
and these helped William and future medieval monarchs
administer

and rule the country. The total value of land listed in the Domesday
Book is around £73,000. From this, William was earning income of
around £22,500 per year. In today’s money, William is calculated as
being one of the ten richest men of all time.
The Domesday Book was the most detailed account of life in
England, until the first national
census

was carried out in England in 1801.

The Domesday Book is an incredibly useful
primary source

and it provides a lot of information about what life was like in

England after the Norman Conquest. For example:
• It lists 45 vineyards, suggesting a large amount of wine was
produced in England.
• It shows how many Normans had moved to England to look
after land for William. Land that was owned by about 2000
Saxons in 1066 was now controlled by 200 Normans.
• It shows that a lot of buildings had been destroyed by
William’s invasion in 1066.
• It includes local laws that give an impression of how society
worked. For example, there are two references in entries from
 Kent about landowners having to provide bodyguards for the
king. There is also mention of cartage, which was a
requirement to provide the local sheriff

with an ox and sometimes a cart. Both of these suggest the

law was enforced.
The original copy of the Domesday Book is still held at the National
Archives in London. Individual records from the book can be
searched online, helping local historians find out more about the
history of where they live.