BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//InvisionCommunity Events 5.0.18//EN METHOD:PUBLISH CALSCALE:GREGORIAN REFRESH-INTERVAL:PT15M X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT15M X-WR-CALNAME:RMCommunityCalendar NAME:RMCommunityCalendar BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London TZURL:https://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20250330T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20251026T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Lucy Worsley on William the Conqueror - Janaury 18th 2025   DTSTAMP:20250118T221042Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:145-7-c3fe8195a3dde498d013e477e2142422@aalbc.com ORGANIZER;CN="richardmurray":noreply@aalbc.com DESCRIPTION:\n Lucy Worsley on William the Conqueror - Janaury 18th 2025  \n\n\n\n https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2830&a mp\;type=status\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n MY THOUGHTS\n\n\n\n The Bayeux Tapestry [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayeux_Tapestry ] was lovely t o see. The episode focuses on a truth we all know. Conquest is never as si mple as the history books put it. It usually far more bloodier and far mor e complicated. \n\n William is a conqueror not because the simplicity of hastings but because he destroyed the multiculturalism south of scotland o r the picts back then \, destroyed the allowance of the welsh or northumbr ians/scandanavian cultures and pushed the normans in. At the end of the da y the saxons wasn't all of england but just the south of england.  The sa xons on one side of the channel plus the normans on the other side were co usins. But the other regions of england were different\, welsh or northumb rian. William defeated the saxons but needed to defeat the other cultures in the land commonly called england\, and he did by fire and starvation. A nd thus made england two cultures\, Norman + Saxon \, with the saxon being a blend of welsh/saxon/northumbrian merged under a norman identity. The n ame of the child going from Tostig [ pronounced Tostee]  to Williams says it all.\n\n On a side note\, it is very interesting hearing how the welsh /saxon/northumbrian women went to convent\, tried to evade being married t o normans whose entire purpose in being with non norman women was making h alfbreeds\, ala the spanish conquistadors in central america/caribbean/sou th america/mexico. It explains a key point\, that the women of the various cultures the normans conquered worked hard to remain with the conquered p eoples. Willing to marry to any but a norman\, thus the multicultural set of women made the saxons\, and over time the saxons + normans became the e nglish.\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n TRANSCRIPT\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n ♪ Lucy Worsley\ , voice-over: Christmas Day\, 1069\, Northern England.\n\n♪ A warrior ki ng makes his way through the ruins of York Cathedral.\n\nThe king's name i s William I of England\, but you might know him better by his later name-- William the Conqueror.\n\n[Men shouting] Worsley\, voice-over: Most of us think the Norman Conquest of England happened in 1066 at the Battle of Ha stings-- one battle won\, and the defeated nation bent the knee-- but actu ally\, that was just the beginning\, so how do you go about taking over\, conquering an entire country?\n\nIn this series\, I'm reinvestigating some of the most dramatic and brutal chapters in British history.\n\nOh\, yes. \n\nHere we go\, Man: And now you're face to face with William the Conquer or.\n\nWoman\, voice-over: They know that sex sells and that violence sell s.\n\nWorsley\, voice-over: These stories form part of our national mythol ogy.\n\nThey harbor mysteries that have intrigued us for centuries... Wors ley: It turns very dark here.\n\nClearly showing us-- Refugees.\n\nThere's such graphic images of religious violence.\n\nWorsley\, voice-over: but w ith the passage of time\, we have new ways to unlock their secrets using s cientific advances and a modern perspective.\n\nHe was what we would now c all a foreign fighter.\n\nWorsley\, voice-over: I'm going to uncover forgo tten witnesses.\n\nI'm going to reexamine old evidence and follow new clue s...\n\nThe human hand.\n\nWorsley\, voice-over: to get closer to the trut h.\n\nIt's like fake news.\n\nWorsley: You're questioning whether we can a ctually take that seriously as a piece of evidence.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice -over: 1066 is one of the best-known years in British history.\n\nWe know this date because of the Battle of Hastings\, but very few of us know the whole story.\n\n♪ The Norman Conquest was the biggest land grab in Weste rn medieval history.\n\nThis prosperous\, stable country called England wa s just taken by William\, Duke of Normandy\, seemingly overnight\, and sto ne castles like this one sprang up all over the land.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voi ce-over: This is Pevensey Castle\, the first Norman castle on English soil \, but it's actually a repurposed Roman fort.\n\nOf course\, England had b een invaded before.\n\nThere were the Romans\, but they eventually left\; then the Vikings\, but they never gained complete control.\n\nBut when the Normans invaded in 1066\, they created a regime that lasted.\n\nThey tran sformed the country\, and they left traces that we can still see to this d ay.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: In fact\, we can trace a line from Willia m the Conqueror to our current monarch King Charles III\, but this belies the truth of how difficult the conquest really was.\n\nIt took two decades for William to cement Norman rule\, so how did he do it\, and was William a conqueror or a war criminal?\n\n♪ I think I'll begin my investigation in the place where William's master plan for conquest was originally form ed-- Normandy in Northwest France.\n\n[Bells tolling] Worsley: Duke Willia m built his castle here at Caen in 1060.\n\nHe did it to consolidate his c ontrol over all of this part of France here.\n\nHe was a Norman\, the word coming from \"Northman\" or even \"Norseman\" because William's ancestors were warlike Vikings from Scandinavia.\n\nThey came down here\, and they settled\, and once they'd made this their home\, they renamed it as Norman dy.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: At this point\, William wasn't known as W illiam the Conqueror\, but William the Bastard.\n\nHe'd risen a long way a s the illegitimate son of Robert I of Normandy.\n\nNow he wanted to expand his territory and conquer the lands across the English Channel.\n\nIf Wil liam ever came up here himself\, I think he'd have spent his time looking in that direction because a hundred miles over there is the English coast\ , and on the 5th of January 1066\, the English king Edward the Confessor d ied without leaving an obvious successor\, and William believed that he wa s the rightful heir to the English crown.\n\nWorsley\, voice-over: There's one astonishing historical artifact just a few miles away in the town of Bayeux which might explain exactly why William believed this.\n\nIt's not a book or a manuscript.\n\nIt's nearly 230 feet long\, and it's over 900 y ears old.\n\nIt's kept in the dark\, quite literally\, for its own protect ion.\n\nOh\, there it is-- the Bayeux Tapestry.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-ove r: This tapestry shows the invasion of England and the Battle of Hastings in 1066 as a heroic enterprise.\n\n♪ Worsley: It's basically a medieval movie.\n\nIt tells the story scene by scene from beginning to end\, and di d you know it's not actually a tapestry at all?\n\nThe pictures are stitch ed on\, which is embroidery.\n\nThis is women's work\, and I suspect that the men who give names to things like this don't necessarily know what the y're looking at\, but the first thing that strikes me is the sheer scale o f it.\n\nLook how long it is\, and it goes off right round the corner.\n\n It's just a stunning piece of work.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: And here' s the scene I'm looking for.\n\nIt depicts a pact which allegedly took pla ce between two of the main contenders for the English throne: the hero of the tapestry-- that's William-- and Harold\, King Edward the Confessor's b rother-in-law.\n\nWorsley: This is Harold\, and you can tell because of hi s ginger mustache-- the Anglo-Saxons have mustaches\; Normans are all clea n-shaven-- and what's happening here\, it says in the caption\, this is th e bit where Harold\, he fecit a sacramentum.\n\nHe makes an oath to Duke W illiam of Normandy\, who's that chap there\, and Harold is touching a cask et full of holy relics to make the oath even more powerful\, and in his oa th\, he swears he will support William's claim to be king.\n\nLet's see wh at happens next.\n\nWell--ah\, here we go-- Edward the Confessor dies.\n\n There's his dead body.\n\nHe's defunctus.\n\nHe's defunct\, and in this sc ene\, ah\, Harold has made himself king-- \"Rex: Anglorum\,\" \"King of th e English\,\" it says.\n\nHuh\, so--in this version of the story\, at leas t\, the Norman version of the story-- Harold has betrayed William.\n\nThis is why William is justified in invading England.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-o ver: But\, like all historical sources\, the tapestry has an agenda.\n\nIt was commissioned by William's half-brother Odo\, Bishop of Bayeux\, and i t was basically propaganda justifying William's invasion of England.\n\nOn the 28th of September 1066\, William's fleet of hundreds of ships carryin g thousands of men landed here at Pevensey on the south coast of England.\ n\n♪ This is the very beach where the Normans landed\, but the battle to ok place a few miles away in that direction at Hastings.\n\nIt was a bruta l fight.\n\nIt lasted for more than 9 hours.\n\n[Men shouting] [Swords cla nging] Worsley\, voice-over: You could be forgiven for thinking that\, alt hough William's victory was hard won\, it was basically inevitable.\n\nThe tapestry suggests that the Normans had enormous military superiority.\n\n [Shouting continues] [Horse neighs] Worsley: Here are the Norman knights\, and what's brilliant is the way that you see them moving off.\n\nThey're starting to gallop.\n\nThey're off.\n\nIt's really exciting\, and here are the Norman archers.\n\nIt's really striking that the Normans have got bet ter weapons.\n\nThey've got these horses.\n\nThey've got bows and arrows.\ n\nThe poor Anglo-Saxons have only got things like axes and clubs.\n\nYou do get the impression of this indomitable Norman war machine.\n\nThe storm troopers are coming.\n\n♪ [Men shouting] Worsley\, voice-over: The Bayeu x Tapestry famously ends with the death of Harold.\n\nAn arrow from a Norm an archer hits him in the eye.\n\n♪ It's a heroic end to the story.\n\nH arold is dead\, and William\, the rightful king\, is triumphant\, but is t his what really happened?\n\nThere's another source that historians now be lieve to be one of the earliest depictions of the Battle of Hastings.\n\nT his Latin poem\, probably dating from 1068\, has a very different story to tell about Harold's last moments.\n\nIt's called the \"Carmen\,\" or the \"Song of the Battle of Hastings\,\" written two years after the battle\, we think\, and\, according to this version\, it took 4 Norman soldiers to finish him off.\n\nIt's quite hard to read\, but I've got some notes here from the translation.\n\nIt says the first of them did the job of shatteri ng his breast through his shield.\n\nThe second\, by his sword\, severed t he head.\n\nThe third of them\, by his spear\, ooh\, poured forth the body 's entrails\, oof\, and then the fourth of them hewed off a leg-- some oth er translations say it was a different body part than that-- and then\, be ing removed\, he drove it afar.\n\nHe threw the body part away\, so that m akes it sound like Harold was really difficult to kill\, and there's no me ntion at all of the arrow going into his eye.\n\nWorsley\, voice-over: Unl ike the tapestry\, the poem is an unsanitized\, hyperviolent account of th e battle.\n\n[Men shouting] [Swords clanging] Harold's body was so mutilat ed\, it could only be identified by some marks on his skin.\n\nOne of thos e 4 Normans who killed Harold was William himself.\n\nI wonder if this poe m is the more accurate predictor of the violence still to come after the b attle.\n\nWorsley: When it was over and William had won\, he wasn't automa tically King of England.\n\nHe was kind of in limbo.\n\nHe waited for the English to formally surrender to him\, but nobody came.\n\nWorsley\, voice -over: Somebody was coming\, but they weren't coming to offer William the throne.\n\nThey were coming for a fight.\n\n♪ Hundreds of miles from Has tings in the North of England\, two brothers would play a significant part in this resistance.\n\nEdwin\, Earl of Mercia\, and Morcar\, Earl of Nort humbria\, saw William as a foreign aggressor who was trying to take over t heir country.\n\nTheir rightful king was the teenager Edgar AEtheling\, an d they were gearing up to lead the counteroffensive in his name.\n\nRrgh!\ n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: I'm meeting a medieval specialist to find out what happened next.\n\n♪ It's just after the Battle of Hastings in 1066 .\n\nWhat does William the Conqueror now need to do to consolidate his win ?\n\nThere's a lot of unrest still within the kingdom.\n\nPeople have fled the battlefield\, so there's still warriors around\, fled the battlefield .\n\npolitical elite gathering in London.\n\nHe's killed one king on the b attlefield\, but there is a contender still for the throne.\n\nIt's the te enage boy Edgar AEtheling\, and he is in London with Edwin and Morcar\, an d they come with the crucial thing-- military force\, so William needs to get himself to London\, and he needs to get the support of a bishop so tha t he can get himself crowned\, ideally an archbishop.\n\nHmm.\n\nHow is Wi lliam going to hold the land in Kent and Sussex that he's he's already gai ned control over once he sets off to London?\n\nSo part of that is through the castles that he builds\, so quick\, wooden castles put up really just to secure the area as a place of fortification and defense for his men\, and they are a way of holding power over the local area because you have y our garrison\, your troops\, positioned there in order to perhaps fight of f any disturbances that arise.\n\nWhat was in store for the local people l iving in Kent and Sussex?\n\nYeah.\n\nI think it must have been a really t errifying time for them.\n\nThey must have seen William's troops committin g atrocities around them-- burning houses\, taking crops\, livestock.\n\nT here's also the reinforcements that William calls from Normandy who come t o another part of the south coast\, possibly around Chichester.\n\nThose c ommunities en route are clearly having houses burnt.\n\nThere's pillaging of supplies and livestock in order to feed the army as they go.\n\nThere's a picture on the Bayeux Tapestry that actually we can have a little look at-- a mother and child fleeing from a burning building.\n\nOh.\n\nIt says \, \"Hic domus incenditur\,\" \"Here this building is being burnt\,\" so t his is probably depicting the scenes at Pevensey or Hastings.\n\nThe torch is setting alight to the roof\, where you can see the flames rising.\n\nA nd this poor\, little boy\, I think he's got his mouth open because he's c rying his eyes out.\n\nHe's being led away by his-- Do you think that's hi s mother?\n\nShe's saying\, \"Come on.\n\nGet out of here.\"\n\nYeah... \" It's really dangerous.\"\n\nand I think it's a really moving scene.\n\nIt' s clearly showing us...\n\nRefugees.\n\nyeah\, refugees\, the women and ch ildren who lost their homes as part of this conquest.\n\nI can understand why the Normans took the food\, but I can't understand why they burnt the houses.\n\nWas there also just an element of pure intimidation in doing th at and destroying the homes of people\, do you think?\n\nI think there mus t have been\, and I think William needs to use this kind of intimidating f actor in order to remove pockets of resistance and also as a warning to ot her communities and a clear statement that William means business\, that W illiam is not going to go lightly.\n\nIf there is opposition\, he's going to go in all guns blazing.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: What was meant to be a quick operation was becoming a brutal campaign of intimidation\, and these castles were key.\n\nThey were a way of crushing local resistance an d securing a strong supply line from Normandy.\n\nSo this is a map of Sout heast England.\n\nIt's not a brilliant map\, but you get the idea.\n\nYou' ll recognize it a bit better when I put in France and Normandy\, and this is the Channel\, and William landed pretty close to here and quickly built a castle at Pevensey\, where I am right now.\n\nIt was just over there.\n \nQuite quickly\, another castle sprang up at Hastings and then one at Dov er\, just along the coast there\, but where he really wanted to be was ove r here at London.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: London was the political he art of Anglo-Saxon England\, but getting there wasn't as simple as it look ed.\n\nWith Edwin and Morcar in London\, William realized a direct assault from the south was too difficult\, so he marched west\, devastating the l and as he went.\n\nHe secured the strategic crossing of the Thames at Wall ingford and advanced to Berkhamsted.\n\nThis was where he waited for the A nglo-Saxon earls\, Edgar\, and other leaders.\n\n♪ At this point\, Edwin and Morcar realized they'd been outmaneuvered.\n\n♪ William promised le niency and protection to those who submitted immediately\, so they surrend ered and bent the knee... ♪ for now.\n\n♪ William finally marched on L ondon in December 1066.\n\n♪ He was crowned William\, King of the Englis h\, on Christmas Day.\n\n♪ He then set about building his most notorious castle-- the Tower of London... ♪ but William only controlled the south east.\n\n♪ None of this made the whole of England his.\n\n♪ I want to examine William's next move\, and it wasn't a military one.\n\nThere's som ething that's nearly a thousand years old\, and I'm so eager to see it.\n\ nIt's a world-famous treasure\, and it lives in a super secure vault.\n\nI t's the Domesday Book.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: The Domesday Book was compiled later in William's reign\, but I think it might reveal his politi cal strategy after 1066.\n\n♪ Worsley: I'm about to see the most preciou s document in the National Archives that I think means it's the most preci ous document in British history\, and it's just in here.\n\n♪ Ah.\n\nOh\ , yes.\n\nHa ha ha!\n\nThere it is.\n\nIt's amazing to see it... ♪ not i n a case.\n\nIf it ever comes out of this strongroom\, it would be display ed with high security\, the real thing.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: This is the volume of what's called Great Domesday.\n\nIt's made up of more tha n 800 pages\, handwritten by just one scribe.\n\nI think a lot of people w ill have heard of the Domesday Book without being aware of what's actually in it\, and seeing it laid out like this in the columns is making me real ize that it's basically a spreadsheet detailing who owns all the land.\n\n ♪ Worsley\, voice-over: It's a survey of nearly every town and manor in England down to the last peasant\, plow\, and goat\, and the reason for do ing this--money.\n\nWilliam wanted to know how much tax he could get out o f his new country\, but the book also reveals something more sinister.\n\n I asked if I could see the entry for Grimsby\, the town my dad's from.\n\n Now\, at this point\, my medieval Latin is letting me down\, so I'm going to get a bit of help from the translation copy I've got here.\n\nThere is land for 4 1/2 plows.\n\nThere is a church and a priest.\n\nThere's a mill that produces 4 shillings\, and a ferry that renders 5 shillings\, and be fore the conquest\, it was owned by an Anglo-Saxon lady called Eadgifu.\n\ nAfter the conquest\, it's owned by a man called Richard.\n\nThat's a Norm an name\, so it's gone from an Anglo-Saxon lady to a Norman man\, and this incredible detail is replicated throughout the whole book.\n\nThere are 1 3\,000 settlements\, from little villages to towns\, and in each case\, th e story is the same-- the transfer of ownership from the Anglo-Saxons to t he Normans.\n\nWorsley\, voice-over: So it looks like William's confiscati ng people's land for at least a decade after 1066.\n\nAt first\, some of t he English had been able to keep their property by acknowledging William a s king\, but by 1086\, the majority of Anglo-Saxons were disinherited.\n\n Domesday means the Day of Judgment.\n\nThere's no arguing with this book.\ n\nThis is the last word in Norman power.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: Wil liam's brutal tactics are now becoming clearer to me.\n\n♪ Firstly\, the re was the military victory at Hastings.\n\nThen there was the building of castles to keep people under control\, and now\, by seizing Anglo-Saxon p roperty and assets\, William was further reducing their ability to resist. \n\nThe Domesday Book is more evidence of a conquest taking shape.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: But you can't conquer a country with hard power alon e.\n\nAs well as subjugating people\, you also have to win hearts and mind s... ♪ what's known as soft power.\n\nI'm meeting a specialist in mediev al women's history.\n\nShe's unearthed a source that reveals how the Norma ns used this power in ordinary daily life.\n\nDo you think it's possible t hat when William was looking at the future management of the country of En gland\, he saw marriage\, intermarriage\, as something that would be a too l at his disposal?\n\nI think he certainly at the start of the conquest ha d that plan\, but from the first\, say\, 10\, 15 years after the conquest\ , we don't have that many\, and the reason for that is\, we think\, that t he women were obviously very reluctant to be used as pawns in this game of the Conquest.\n\nFrom an Englishwoman's perspective\, if your parents had to arrange a marriage for you\, you much rather be married\, presumably\, to an Englishman\, than to one of these bullies who came from the other s ide of the Channel because\, you know\, you couldn't be sure that you woul d be safe.\n\nWhat did the Anglo-Saxon women who were in that position fee l about it?\n\nWhat did they do?\n\nThey obviously were very anxious about this\, and some of them took matters in their own hands\, and... Oh.\n\nI have here this absolutely fascinating piece of evidence\, which is a 12th -century manuscript\, and interestingly\, the text refers to women taking refuge in monasteries.\n\nIt refers to those women who\, not out of love f or the religion-- \"non amore religioni\, sed timore francigenaro\,\" but out of fear from the French\, have taken refuge in these institutions.\n\n So these poor women going to the nunneries\, they were feeling vulnerable sexually\, you know\, in the immediate physical sense and also perhaps vul nerable if they own land to being sucked into marriages so that the Norman s would be taking their land off them.\n\nAbsolutely.\n\nIt's really hard to hear the voices of women in the whole story of the Norman Conquest\, bu t here we've got a little echo\, and it's a chilling echo.\n\nYou're absol utely right.\n\nThat is what this very important document shows us\, and i t's not generally known.\n\nThe Norman Conquest is not only a story about soldiers and battles\, but it is about mothers and sisters and wives.\n\ n♪ Worsley: It's so distressing to think of these Anglo-Saxon women hidi ng themselves away out of fear of being forced to marry these Norman men.\ n\nThey would have understood that marriage was part and parcel of a wider strategy of conquest.\n\nAnglo-Norman marriages would lead to Anglo-Norma n children\, which would mean that the Normans' claims to the lands they'd taken would be legitimized forever.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: William tried this soft-power approach in his own court.\n\nIn 1067\, he brought E dwin and Morcar home with him to Normandy and promised Edwin a marriage to his daughter.\n\nIt was a strategy of \"keep your friends close but your enemies closer.\"\n\n♪ Outwardly\, they were guests\, but in truth\, the y were hostages.\n\nWilliam wanted a trouble-free takeover of England\, bu t the Anglo-Saxons were still mobilizing.\n\n♪ That same year\, a revolt began in the Welsh borders... ♪ and Exeter in the southwest rose up\, f orcing William to besiege the city for 18 days.\n\nIn the end\, Exeter sur rendered\, allowing William to build a castle in the city and consolidate his hold over the West Country.\n\n♪ The farther you ventured from the c enter of William's power in London\, the more the insurrection intensified .\n\n♪ In 1068\, sensing it was now or never\, Edwin and Morcar escaped William's court and raised rebellion in the Midlands.\n\nWilliams suppress ed this\, but by now\, the flames of revolt were spreading northward.\n\nM orcar and a growing gang of other English nobles started plotting another rebellion against William.\n\nOne of the English chronicles tells us that they were motivated by hatred of William for the injustice and the tyranny he inflicted upon the English.\n\n♪ I know that the northerners mounted a much tougher and more prolonged resistance against William\, but what w as it about their rebellion that made it so difficult to extinguish?\n\nHe llo.\n\nHi\, Lucy.\n\nYou'll be Katherine.\n\nYes.\n\nWorsley\, voice-over : I'm meeting a cultural historian in a village that Morcar used to own--M iddleton\, which in the 1060s was in his earldom of Northumbria.\n\n♪ Th ere's an ancient sculpture here that she wants to show me.\n\n♪ Gosh\, l ook at these.\n\nThey're amazing.\n\nThe shape of the cross is such a pote nt... symbol of kind of mystic power.\n\nSo this is a grave marker or some sort of commemorative monument for the person depicted on the front.\n\nW ho is this little person with the pointed hat?\n\nLook at that.\n\nIt migh t look cute\, but he's meant to look quite terrifying\, I think\, because if you look closely\, you can see that he is dressed in military gear.\n\n He's surrounded by weaponry\, so I think that this is somebody who might h ave been a Viking.\n\nIs that his sword I can see there?\n\nThat's his swo rd and shield here.\n\nAnd he's got a kind of a chopper here?\n\nSo that's his ax.\n\nWe can see he's got a knife\, as well\, that's slung up to his belt.\n\nWe can see somebody who comes from a military background\, power and strength are shown through military imagery.\n\nHe has settled here\, and he is now the lord of the local area.\n\n♪ Katherine\, what was our Viking warrior doing here in this part of England?\n\nWell\, we often thi nk of Vikings as raiders\, but from the middle of the ninth century\, they came to England in much larger armies.\n\nAnd did they settle down?\n\nYe s.\n\nThey conquered and settled the lands\, so if we think about it\, in 1066\, there had been 200 years of Scandinavian influence in the North of England\, and so we can see from lots of different kinds of evidence that they grew together and became one community\, so some of the words that we still use today come from Old Norse.\n\nA nice example is \"window.\"\n\n \"Window\"?\n\nIt means wind eye.\n\n\"Husband\" is another one that comes from the Old Norse \"husbondi\,\" which is sort of the master of the hous ehold\, and one that is quite well-known and really frequent\, is place na mes that end in -by\, which means\, really\, a farmstead\, so we can think of Whitby\, for example\, or Selby near York\, Grimsby.\n\nSo Grimsby is the farm of Mr.\n\nGrim from Scandinavia.\n\nYeah\, and we even see this i n\, like\, small landscape features\, as well\, like a beck or a fell or a dale.\n\nThese all come from Old Norse.\n\nSo is it fair to say\, then\, that when the Normans arrived in England\, this area of the North\, Yorksh ire and so on\, it had its own quite distinctive culture?\n\nYeah.\n\nI th ink that's definitely fair to say.\n\nI'm getting the impression\, Katheri ne\, then\, that these people would have been particularly not keen on the Normans coming in and taking over.\n\nIs that fair to say?\n\nYeah.\n\nI think that's true.\n\nI wonder if William the Conqueror knew what he was g etting into when he tried to subdue these folk up here.\n\n♪ Hmm\, so I' ve learned that the people who lived in Northumbria had a different center of gravity.\n\nIt wasn't London down south.\n\nIt was Scandinavia.\n\nThe region had its own separate identity\, and the English rulers before 1066 kind of went along with that.\n\nThey were happy to have a hands-off rela tionship with the North\, but when William\, Duke of Normandy\, came along \, he intended to change all that.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle\, the king was informed that the people in th e North had gathered together and planned to make a stand against him if h e came near.\n\n♪ In 1068\, William marched first to Mercia\, where he s uppressed all revolts\, and then on to York\, where he built a castle.\n\n Then he installed one of his Norman enforcers as Earl of Northumbria\, but his control was illusory.\n\n♪ In January 1069\, the Northumbrians kill ed William's Norman earl in Durham and marched to York.\n\nThen they broug ht in Danish reinforcements.\n\nIn September\, these combined forces storm ed York... [Men shouting] and torched William's two Norman castles were.\n \n♪ Almost all of the Norman garrison was slaughtered.\n\n♪ They then proclaimed Edgar AEtheling as the true King of the English.\n\nWilliam now faced a serious challenge to his conquest of England.\n\nHe was on the ba ck foot.\n\nWas this the moment to go hard or go home?\n\nI want to know h ow William is going to respond\, so I'm going to turn to one of the key ke y sources for the period.\n\nThis is the work of a monk called Orderic Vit alis.\n\nHe was one of these Anglo-Normans-- he had an English mum and a F rench dad-- and these pages are from his most famous book-- the Historia E cclesiastica.\n\nThe bit I want is about York\, so I'm looking in the Lati n text for \"Eboracum\,\" which is here.\n\nThat's what I want to read\, b ut for ease of reading\, let's go over to the translation.\n\nThey approac hed York looking for rebels.\n\nThe king-- that's William himself-- \"cut down many in his vengeance\; \"destroyed the lairs of others\; \"harried t he land\, \"and burned homes to ashes.\n\nNowhere else had William shown s uch cruelty\,\" so this is William's vengeance\, his punishment upon the N orth for having rebelled\, and this word \"harried\" is very significant.\ n\nIt means to lay waste\, to devastate\, and in this context\, it forms p art of one of the most resonant phrases in British history-- the Harrying of the North.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: But these are just words on a p age.\n\nI wonder what it was like to experience harrying as a weapon of wa r.\n\n♪ I've come to York Castle to meet a senior curator at Yorkshire M useum... Hi.\n\nNice to meet you\, Lucy.\n\nWorsley\, voice-over: who has some unusual archeological evidence.\n\nWorsley: Why did you suggest that we meet here at the top of the tower?\n\nWell\, the tower is perhaps the b est example of William the Conqueror's attempt to pacify York and across t he region\, really.\n\nThis building\, the motte underneath it was built i n 1068 for William to try and control this unruly part of the country\, so this is perhaps the best symbol of the Harrying of the North still standi ng.\n\nRebellious people in Yorkshire\, right?\n\nI mean\, hard to believe \, right\, but\, yes\, Yorkshire and most of the North is in open rebellio n against William for most of the late 1060s.\n\nAnd what have you brought here?\n\nThey look very precious.\n\nI have brought you 3 coins\, which a re the protagonists of 1066.\n\nOn the left here\, you have Edward the Con fessor\, so his death in early 1066 sparks all of the events that happen l ater.\n\nI do that.\n\nHopefully\, you get a good chance-- Ooh\, I can see his little face\, yes\, and is he wearing a crown\, Andy?\n\nHe is wearin g a crown\, so he's looking off to the right with a sort of pointy nose\, and he's wearing this rather elaborate crown and holding the scepter\, so the symbols of state.\n\nOK\, so that's the ruler before the Battle of Has tings.\n\nIt is.\n\nWhat's the other ones that you've got?\n\nSure.\n\nThi s is Harold Godwinson\, now\, slightly less clear portrait\, but hopefully \, you can see he's looking the other way.\n\nHe's looking the other way\, isn't he?\n\nHe's got quite chubby cheeks\, has Harold.\n\nHe has.\n\nIs that really rare?\n\nYeah.\n\nWe only have two of Harold Godwinson.\n\nWe don't often bring this one out\, so I'm pleased to be able to share it wit h you today\, actually.\n\nOh\, what a treat\, so who's this one?\n\nNow y ou're face to face with the man himself-- William\, Duke of Normandy.\n\nI have to say\, I feel intimidated by being face to face with William\, Duk e of Normandy.\n\nI think he's made a very clever choice there to be looki ng right at me.\n\nI find him more scary than Harold for that reason alone \, maybe because I know about the Harrying of the North and what he did-- I'm extrapolating here-- but I just don't like the look in his eyes.\n\n ♪ So did all of these 3 coins belong to the same person?\n\nNo\, so thes e are from different hoards\, so we get groups of coins buried in the grou nd\, and we call them a hoard.\n\nAnd why would they be burying their coin s in the ground?\n\nIn a world before banks\, you buried your money in tim es of challenge\, times of crisis\, and you come back and dig it up when t he crisis blows over\, but the crucial question in some ways is\, why didn 't they come and dig them back up again?\n\nAnd I guess if you're in York in the 1068 or '69\, you know\, there's an army coming towards you.\n\nYou bury your wealth.\n\nYou might escape town\, and you might not ever be ab le to come and dig it back up again.\n\nGosh\, that's horrifying to think of-- people in fear and panic thinking the Normans are coming\, and the pe ople who buried these little coins never came back to get them.\n\nYeah.\n \nIn some ways\, the evidence of the coins\, particularly the hoards from York\, is some of the best archeological evidence we actually have for the Harrying of the North and its effect upon the people.\n\nThere are more c oin hoards buried within the city walls of York than there are across the whole of Southern England at the same time.\n\nThe reason these were burie d in the ground\, the reason that we're looking at them today\, is all bec ause the person who had them was probably terrified of the arrival of the Norman army\, and may have lost their life to it.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-o ver: In times of conflict\, international alliances are forged and broken. \n\nIn late 1069\, William bought off the Danish allies who'd come to the aid of the northerners.\n\nHe then took back the city of York.\n\nOn Chris tmas Day\, exactly 3 years after his coronation\, he paraded through the r uins of York Cathedral... ♪ but William didn't want the northerners to b e able to use any of their lands to raise another army against him.\n\n♪ He ordered the systematic destruction of villagers' homes\, livestock\, a nd crops in all the land north of the Humber River.\n\n[People shouting] ♪ I'm going to one of the places that experienced William's wrath\, Lev isham in the Yorkshire Moors\, to see if I can glimpse the human impact of this.\n\n♪ I'd like to see what these different chronicles have to say. \n\nHere's my friend Orderic Vitalis\, oh\, but he says that in his anger he--that's William-- commanded that all the crops and food be burnt to ash es so that there was no food left in the whole of the region\, \"regione\, \" beyond\, \"trans\,\" the River Humber\, \"Umbrana\,\" my goodness\, and he says that 100\,000 people died in a famine.\n\n♪ This chronicle's by another monk\, Simeon of Durham\, and he says people were so desperate fo r food that they ate the flesh of horses and dogs and humans... ♪ and th is chronicle is from the Abbey of Evesham\, which is in Worcestershire\, s o that's not in the North at all\, but they were getting refugees from up here\, from Yorkshire\, and some of these refugees were so famished that w hen the monks gave them food\, \"cibum\,\" they ate it so ravenously that their bodies couldn't handle it\, and they died.\n\nI really feel that Wil liam has got blood on his hands for this.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: Wil liam had obliterated the rebellion in the North\, but he'd also engineered a famine.\n\n♪ Inflicting violence like this on people leaves a legacy\ , as I think the Domesday Book might be able to show us.\n\n♪ This page covers Eurvicsciure\, or Yorkshire\, the biggest county in the North\, one that was right in the firing line\, and I'm going to pick out this little place here within Yorkshire called Asulvesby.\n\nBefore the conquest\, it was worth 10 shillings and 8 pence\, but now\, after the conquest\, it's worth nothing\, nothing at all\, and that's because it's in waste.\n\nIt's been laid waste to\, and now I've spotted that tiny word \"waste\,\" it's catching my eye.\n\nI can see it's coming up again and again-- this place and this place and this one\, too.\n\nIt's like Yorkshire's been wiped of f the face of the earth.\n\nAt first sight\, you think that this book is a bout accountancy and taxation\, but actually\, there's also a story here a bout a huge amount of destruction and human suffering.\n\n♪ Worsley\, vo ice-over: The Harrying of the North marks the end of Edwin and Morcar's po wer.\n\nMorcar and other die-hard rebels joined the last desperate resista nce to the Normans at Ely in Cambridgeshire\, but it was quashed.\n\nAs fa r as we know\, it was in a Norman prison that he died.\n\n♪ As for his b rother Edwin\, he was ultimately betrayed by fellow Englishmen.\n\nThey to ok his head to William himself as a tribute to the Conqueror's power.\n\ n♪ For some\, the Harrying of the North was a step too far\, even by med ieval standards\, and many of William's supporters now turned on him.\n\nH ere's the monk Orderic Vitalis once again.\n\nNow\, Orderic's generally on William's side\, but not when it comes to the Harrying of the North.\n\nW here are my notes from the translation?\n\nHere we are.\n\nHe says\, \"But for this act\, which condemned innocent \"and guilty alike to die by slow starvation\, \"I cannot commend him.\n\nSuch brutal slaughter cannot rema in unpunished.\"\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: In the 1070s\, the concept o f war crimes as we understand them obviously didn't exist\, but there were early codes of conduct that guided how wars should be fought and how sold iers should make amends.\n\n♪ This giant book is from the 17th century\, but it's got in it a record of a much older document that was drawn up by Norman bishops just after the Battle of Hastings\, around 1067.\n\nIt's a list of penances for those who kill in bello\, in war.\n\nA penance is ki nd of like a punishment.\n\nIt's either praying or giving alms or fasting\ , and this is what you have to do if you've committed different sins.\n\nT his is if you kill somebody in the magno praelio\, which is the great batt le\, the Battle of Hastings.\n\nYou have to do one year\, but--this is int eresting-- if you fought in that battle as an archer\, as a Sagittariis\, then you might be ignorant of how many people you'd killed with your arrow s\, so your penance was less\, just a matter of months\, so there is some kind of a moral code that exists in Norman heads\, oh\, and this next one' s interesting.\n\nIf you killed somebody for praedandi-- so that's loot or for plunder-- then you got the worst punishment of all.\n\nYou had to do 3 years of penance\, tres annos.\n\nIt's fascinating.\n\nIt's like looking inside the minds of the Norman bishops who drew up this list of penances. \n\nYou get an insight into what they thought was acceptable\, what was go od\, what was bad.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: This code of conduct was w ritten before the Harrying of the North\, and William violated its accepte d standards.\n\n♪ It's become clear to me that William destroyed the Nor th because he failed politically.\n\n♪ Having utterly alienated the Angl o-Saxons\, he could only rule through violence.\n\n♪ The Harrying of the North didn't completely extinguish resistance.\n\nWilliam would face furt her invasion threats from the Danes\, but by 1071\, he was the Conqueror o f England.\n\n♪ Even today\, we still feel the impact of how the Normans took over England.\n\nWe see it in our landscape\, our laws\, and even in our names.\n\nThis is from the biography of a Norman celebrity-- a famous hermit\, actually-- but he started out in life as a little boy in Yorkshi re\, one of the bits of Yorkshire that had a very strong Viking influence\ , one of the parts that had been harried by the Normans\, actually\, and t he little boy's name was Tostig.\n\nYou pronounce it \"Tostee\,\" and that 's a very Anglo-Saxon\, Scandinavian-sounding name\, so what happened to T ostig?\n\nMy notes from the translation will tell me\, when his youthful c ompanions mocked the name Tostig\, \"Tostee\,\" his parents decided to cha nge it\, and what did they change it to?\n\nWell\, the very Norman name of William.\n\nIt's just a tiny\, little detail\, isn't it\, about a little boy\, but I think it speaks volumes.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: If the N ormans hadn't broken Yorkshire and Northumbria\, it's possible that the la nguage and culture of Northern England would be even more distinctive than it still is from the South.\n\n♪ William's conquest meant the North wou ld no longer look instinctively across the North Sea to Scandinavia.\n\nNo w it would look south and be part of a more tightly controlled England bou nd to Normandy for centuries.\n\n♪ Before I started investigating the No rman Conquest\, I think I'd assumed it was straightforward\, almost inevit able\, but I come to realize just how difficult it was for William to do i t\, and the human cost.\n\nNow\, England was invaded before the Normans ca me along but never successfully afterwards.\n\nPerhaps that's William's le gacy.\n\n♪\n\n\n\n  \n\n DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20250118 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR