InfoBritain

 

Norman Britain

Once William the Conqueror had defeated Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 he set about controlling his new kingdom financially and militarily. In 1086 William's agents scoured England and assessed the value of all landholdings. The findings of this survey are preserved in two huge volumes known as the Domesday Book. The volumes contain statistical, social and economic information that had no parallel in Europe for centuries to come. This book has survived and can be viewed in the National Archives at the Public Record Office, Kew.

 

 

 

Tonbridge Castle

As far as military control was concerned William used a simple method. The Normans would build a castle and use it as an impregnable base for controlling the surrounding area. Castles were fundamental to the Norman Conquest, and were both a symbol and means of oppression. The Anglo Saxon Chronicles' epitaph for William the Conqueror opens with the words: "He had castles built and poor men hard oppressed." The first Norman castles tended to be wooden enclosures on the top of artificially created mounds, with a further fortified area at the bottom of the mound controlling the approach. These were known as motte and bailey castles, with motte referring to the huge mound, and bailey being the term for the enclosure at the bottom. Later permanent stone castles were built on some of these sites, as at Tonbridge where a stone castle now sits on top of a particularly impressive motte reaching sixty feet in height. A reconstruction of an original wooden motte and bailey castle can be seen at Mountfitchet Castle and Norman Village in Suffolk. At a few sites William's men built castles in stone: Chepstow Castle, Monmouth Castle, and the White Tower at the Tower of London are examples. Of these Chepstow is probably the earliest, the Great Hall dating from 1067.

In 1093 Arnulf de Montgomery founded the castle at Pembroke, the most powerful Norman stronghold in Wales. Towns sprang up around military strongholds: Cardiff, Carmarthen and Haverfordwest grew in this way. In Scotland Malcolm the Third, or "Bighead", launched many invasion attempts against Norman England. The Normans counter-attacked. Two strongholds were built in the north, one by William's eldest son Robert at the New Castle (Newcastle), another by his younger son Rufus at Carlisle. These measures did not stop Malcolm's final invasion in 1093, during which he found time to lay the foundation stone of Durham Cathedral.

Over time William confirmed his hold on England. Ironically his conquest depended for its lasting nature on accepting the institutions of the country he had conquered. Stability could only be achieved through a high degree of continuity in the way the country was administered. As the historian Brian Golding has written in his book Conquest and Colonisation : "the traditional interpretation that the English ship of state sailed on, but after 1066 under a new, more vigorous crew, remains valid." William was successful in his conquest because he decided not to alter the way the country was run. What is often perceived as a huge change of government was only possible because government was not changed.

History focuses on the times of transformation, and often ignores the periods when things just rub along. But history also reveals that the biggest changes are only achieved when things stay the same. If there is a lesson to be learned from history then this is it: history cannot tell us what will happen in the future, but it does show us that no matter what happens the upheavals we face will alter things without changing them. In many ways people only change to keep their lives as they were. When oil runs out people will only think up revolutionary new technologies to keep driving their cars to the supermarket as usual. It has been like this since the beginning of history. The following words by the science writer Lynn Marguilis sum up my view of the nature of history:

"Life is extremely conservative. On whatever level - the individual organism, the species, the biota as a whole - life expends energy in an effort to preserve its past, even if, paradoxically, various threats force it to innovate... life will expend huge quantities of energy to preserve itself. It will change in order to stay the same." (From Microcosmos)

For information on the Norman period after William the Conqueror see our Norman Conquest page.