William the Conqueror

On 14 October 1066, on a ridge near Hastings, a Norman duke gambled everything he had on a single day of battle, and by nightfall he had won a kingdom. William had survived a childhood of feudal disorder, fought his own barons and the king of France for twenty years, and built the strongest power in northern France before he ever set foot in England. What he did there changed the country for good.¹

Early life

William was born at Falaise in Normandy, about 1028 according to Britannica and the New Catholic Encyclopedia, in 1027 according to Westminster Abbey. He was the illegitimate son of Duke Robert I and Herleva, the daughter of a tanner or undertaker of the town, and for much of his life he was known as William the Bastard.²

In 1035 his father died and the boy, still a child, became duke. Britannica describes the years that followed as a breakdown of authority, in which barons built private castles and waged private wars; the New Catholic Encyclopedia calls them the minority years of feudal disorder.³

Duke of Normandy, 1047 to 1065

The disorder ended in battle. In 1047, with the help of his overlord King Henry I of France, William defeated a coalition of rebel Norman barons at Val-ès-Dunes, southeast of Caen. More rebellions followed, and in the 1050s Henry turned against him in alliance with Geoffrey Martel, count of Anjou.⁴

William beat them both. He defeated the invading French and Angevins at Mortemer in 1054 and again at Varaville in 1057. In 1063 he conquered Maine. Britannica's verdict is that by then he was the most powerful ruler in northern France.⁵

He also married well. He wed Matilda, daughter of Count Baldwin V of Flanders, in the early 1050s; the New Catholic Encyclopedia gives about 1050 to 1053, Westminster Abbey 1053. They had four sons, among them two future kings of England, William Rufus and Henry I, and several daughters.⁶

The claim to England

Norman sources say that the childless English king Edward the Confessor named William his heir, probably in 1051, and that in 1064 or 1065 Harold, earl of Wessex, came to Normandy and swore an oath to support that claim; the New Catholic Encyclopedia accepts both the designation and Harold's oath. When Edward died on 5 January 1066, Harold was accepted as king by the English magnates and crowned. William decided on war.⁷

The Hastings campaign, 1066

Through the summer Harold guarded the south coast against William. Then the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada and Harold's own brother Tostig invaded the north, and on 25 September Harold destroyed them at Stamford Bridge near York. A few days later William crossed the Channel, landed unopposed at Pevensey and took Hastings.⁸

Harold marched south and on the evening of 13 October took up a position on the ridge where Battle Abbey now stands. English Heritage suggests that each army had between 5,000 and 7,000 men; Britannica gives William 4,000 to 7,000 cavalry and infantry. The battle the next day lasted from morning until dusk, unusually long for a medieval fight. The English fought on foot behind their shield wall and held it against repeated assaults by Norman archers and mounted knights.⁹ › Battle of Hastings, 1066

At one point the Norman cavalry broke and fled; William rallied them, and they turned on the English who had left the line to chase them. The Normans then feigned retreat twice more to draw more English down the hill. Toward nightfall Harold fell. How he died is disputed: Britannica gives the arrow in the eye of Norman accounts, while English Heritage notes that the written accounts nearest the battle have him hacked to death by four Norman knights and that the arrow on the Bayeux Tapestry was added in 19th-century repairs.¹⁰

William did not wait for England to choose a new king. He moved fast against the centers of resistance; at Berkhamsted, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says, Archbishop Ealdred, the young prince Edgar and the leading men of London came to submit. On Christmas Day 1066 Ealdred crowned him in Westminster Abbey.¹¹

Holding England, 1067 to 1085

The conquest took five more years. Rebellions broke out from 1067 and peaked in 1069, when a Danish fleet came into the Humber and York rose. William marched north, and the Chronicle says he went "despoiling and laying waste the shire" through the winter; Britannica writes that his measures shocked even contemporaries. By 1071 the risings were crushed.¹²

To hold the country he built castles on the Norman model, the Tower of London among them, and replaced the English upper aristocracy with Norman lords; the New Catholic Encyclopedia speaks of an alien feudal nobility that now formed the ruling class. In 1070 the Italian scholar Lanfranc became archbishop of Canterbury. William invaded Scotland in 1072, and the Scottish king submitted.¹³

The danger never quite went away. In 1075 the earls of Hereford and Norfolk rebelled, with a Danish fleet in support, and William crushed them. Even his own family turned against him: his eldest son, Robert Curthose, left Normandy in 1077 and intrigued with his father's enemies, and in 1082 William had his half-brother Odo, bishop of Bayeux and the mightiest man in England after the king, arrested and imprisoned. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle remembers that the king "confined him in prison".¹⁴

Command style

Britannica's portrait is of a commander who was ready to take calculated risks and fight a battle, but was not flamboyant: his plans were simple, his methods direct, and he exploited every opportunity, withdrawing at once if he found himself at a disadvantage. The New Catholic Encyclopedia calls him vigorous, ruthless and clear-sighted. At Hastings he combined archers and mounted knights against an English army that fought on foot, and kept attacking until the shield wall gave way.¹⁵

He was as hard in peace. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written by an Englishman who had lived at his court, remembers both the "good peace" he kept, in which a man could travel the kingdom with his bosom full of gold, and a king who was "so very rigid", who let men build castles and "miserably swink the poor". Britannica describes him as fierce, despotic and generally feared, but intelligent and shrewd.¹⁶

Domesday, last campaign and death

In 1085 a Danish invasion threatened. When it came to nothing, William held council at Christmas and ordered a survey of the kingdom. The National Archives describes Domesday Book as a detailed survey and valuation of landed property, carried out in 1086 by commissioners holding sworn inquests in every shire. The Chronicle complained that not an ox, nor a cow, nor a swine was left out. In August 1086 at Salisbury he took oaths of loyalty from the landholders of England.¹⁷

His last years were spent mostly in Normandy, fighting on its borders and quarreling with his eldest son, Robert Curthose. In July 1087 he took the town of Mantes from the king of France and, as it burned, either suffered an injury or fell fatally ill; the sources differ, and Westminster Abbey says he was thrown from his horse. He died at the priory of St. Gervais outside Rouen on 9 September 1087 (Westminster Abbey gives 8 or 9 September). Normandy went to Robert and England to William Rufus.¹⁸

He was buried in St. Stephen's church in Caen, which he had founded. Britannica adds that even the funeral went wrong, disturbed by a fire in the town and by a man who claimed the burial ground had been taken from his family.¹⁹

Legacy and memory

On the ridge where Harold fell, William founded Battle Abbey soon after the Conquest, English Heritage says in about 1071, as penance for the bloodshed, and insisted that its high altar stand on the spot where Harold had been killed.²⁰

The Norman Conquest gave England a new, French-speaking aristocracy, a Normanized church, new forms of landholding and military service, and castles across the landscape. English language and literature were transformed; English Heritage gives poor, letter, age and pork as examples of words of Norman French origin, and notes that names like William, Robert and Henry spread through the population. Britannica concludes that, as conqueror and king, William significantly shaped the history of England.²¹

See the battle among the decisive clashes of its age in the greatest medieval battles, see how he stands among history's captains in the greatest military commanders in history, or find your own match in the Which Commander Are You quiz.