William the Conqueror, Christmas King

William the Conqueror is considered the first King of England. But the road to his victory at the Battle of Hastings was strange and challenging, and it would take more than a coronation to get England to submit to him.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
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is Dana Schwartz, host of the podcast Noble Blood, just
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(00:22):
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(00:44):
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(01:06):
When Edward the Confessor, King of England died childless on
January fifth, ten sixty six, the Council had already determined
that his successor would be his brother in law, a
man named Harold Godwinson, the most powerful noble in the country.
Harold was crowned the very next day, January sixth, ten

(01:30):
sixty six. Holding a coronation so quickly after the last
king's death seems frankly a little suspicious. It's the sort
of thing that a historian might look back on and
double check the dates about smelling something akin to a coup.
There is a perfectly reasonable explanation that all of the

(01:54):
nobles in England were already at Westminster for the feast
of the Epiphany. But we would be naive to imagine
that Harold wasn't interested in securing his throne as officially
as he could, as quickly as he possibly could, because
even though the English nobles supported him, his claim to

(02:16):
the throne of England wasn't particularly air tight. He was
the brother of the dead king's wife, and the dead King,
Edward had allegedly chosen him as his successor on his deathbed.
But there were other men who wanted the throne of England.
In the north there was Harold Hadrada, Viking, King of Norway,

(02:40):
and in the south in Normandy there was William Harold
Godwinson knew that William was planning on invading England with
a fleet of ships, and so in the spring of
ten sixty six, Harold posted a standing army at the
southern coast of England. He and his men would be

(03:00):
ready when William, Duke of Normandy finally sailed across the
Channel to fight for England. But there was one problem.
William just wasn't coming. He was ready, don't be mistaken,
and he wanted to invade England. The problem was the weather.

(03:22):
For months, William and his large force of men and
mercenary soldiers, thousands of them, just sat in a field
in Normandy, waiting for the winds to change. William was
a strong and ambitious leader, ready to fight for a
throne that he believed was rightfully his, a claim that

(03:44):
the Pope himself backed up incidentally. But instead William had
to watch day by day and week by week as
his stores of supplies diminished gradually, and as his soldiers
began fighting illness and the loss of morale that came
from doing nothing. William didn't want to be worrying about

(04:09):
food supplies or sanitation in a Norman field. He wanted
to be winning battles, conquering a country, becoming a king.
But fate had other ideas, and as the soldiers began
to mumble to themselves as the weeks turned into months,
maybe Fate did not want William conquering England. In the

(04:34):
middle of September, William finally led his Norman fleet north
from the River Deef in Normandy, but rather than making
it across the Channel, the winds blew them east across
the French coast to Poitier, where they were forced to
spend another two weeks in terrible weather, trying to suppress
the growing certainty that the universe was sending them some

(04:59):
sort of sn But fate is tricky, and even trickier
when we're looking back on events a thousand years ago
through the narrative of propaganda and folklore. While William was
waiting with his rain soaked and weakened fleet in Poitier,
watching the weather vein every day, he could not have

(05:21):
known that the rain was protecting him, that the delay
in crossing the channel would prove to be a strategic
coup when it came to his ultimate battle with King
Harold at a place called Hastings, William, Duke of Normandy
is sometimes referred to as William the Bastard because of

(05:43):
his illegitimate birth, but he has another more famous nickname,
William the Conqueror. I hope it's not a spoiler, then,
to tell you that when William and his fleet ultimately
did make it to England, they would defeat Harold inarguably
the most famous and influential battle in all of English history.

(06:07):
But the journey to cross the Channel was not the
only challenge William faced. In fact, even after his victory
at the Battle of Hastings, his future as King of
England was far from secure. Like his predecessor, William would
put together a coronation as quickly as possibly. William knelt

(06:29):
in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day ten sixty six, where
he was anointed with oil and proclaimed King William the First.
He had won the Battle of Hastings, but William's battle
for the future of England was far from over. I'm
Dana Schwartz, and this is noble blood. Before William the Conqueror,

(06:59):
King of England was William the Conqueror, King of England.
He was the Duke of Normandy. And if you'll indulge me.
I think it's worth just a momentary detour to explain
historically exactly who the Normans were, because the Normans weren't French,
at least now. At the beginning the ninth century was

(07:21):
a time that pagan vikings from Denmark, Norway and Iceland
enjoyed plundering across the British Isles and France, and they
did so fairly successfully. So successfully in fact, that in
nine hundred and eleven, the King of the Franks, Charles
the Third, also given the unfortunate nickname Charles the Simple,

(07:43):
made a deal with the Viking king Rolo to give
him the land that eventually would become the Duchy of Normandy.
You can think of it as a take this land
and leave us alone deal, with the added bonus that
the Vikings or Northmen on the north coast of France
would protect the Franks from other Vikings, and so those

(08:06):
Vikings or Northmen became Normans. Over the next one hundred years,
the Normans converted to Christianity and intermarried with the French,
adopting the French language, but always remaining their own unique people,
known for their reputations as cunning and ruthless fighters, particularly

(08:29):
fast and brutal in war. William was probably born around
ten twenty seven, a direct descendant of the legendary Rollo himself.
William was the son of the Duke of Normandy, a
man given the pretty great nickname of Robert the Magnificent.
As you might have guessed by the fact that I

(08:51):
couldn't give you an accurate birthday for William, we don't
know a ton of details about his early life. We
do know, though, that his parents were not married. William's
father was the Duke of Normandy, but his mother was
usually identified as the daughter of a tanner, though that
sort of partnership out of wedlock wasn't uncommon in Normandy,

(09:14):
even among the noble class. William was, as everyone knew, illegitimate,
which brought about his first nickname, a nickname given by
his enemies that would appear in chronicles and history books
for centuries, William the Bastard. But illegitimate as he was,

(09:35):
William was his father's only son, and so he was
officially recognized as Robert's heir in ten thirty five, when
William was about eight years old. It was a designation
complete with a swearing in ceremony and the approval of
the French king. And it was a good move on
the part of William's father, because Robert the Magnificent died

(09:58):
before William ten years old. Even though it had been
established that William was his father's heir and he was
now Duke of Normandy, it didn't prevent the chaos and
breakdown of order that sometimes happens when a child becomes
a ruler. It would be generous to call William's early

(10:19):
years as Duke tumultuous. He was constantly surrounded by murder
and war, under constant threat of assassination. His tutor was murdered,
three of his guardians died violently. It's hard to try
to unpack the psychology of a historical figure, and even
more challenging when that figure lived a thousand years ago.

(10:42):
But we know that when William will grow up, when
he conquers England, he will rule with an iron fist.
He will build great towers that stand as monuments to
his power and control. He will crush his kingdom within
a vice of order and hierarchy. And so maybe it's

(11:02):
not too great of a leap to imagine that that
instinct might have been a perfectly natural response to a
childhood spent understanding viscerally the discomfort of anarchy, living in
a duchy tearing itself apart without a strong leader. At

(11:26):
fifteen years old, William was knighted and he finally began
his campaign as a young adult to bring order to
the anarchic lands he ruled over. He grew into a
striking figure, not tall, but taller than average and broad,
with red hair and a reputation as an incredibly level

(11:47):
headed leader who understood when to take risks in battle
and when to play defensively. And so, now, with a
young William squarely on the throne of the Duchy of Normandy,
let's pop back up across the channel over to England.
The King Edward the Confessor had no sons. Edward was

(12:08):
William's cousin. Edward's father had been married to William's grandfather's sister.
Not close cousins, but cousins, and Edward had been dealing
with his own challenges as a leader in England. Danish
vikings had invaded and taken the throne, and so for
a time Edward was actually in exile in Normandy. That

(12:32):
was still when William was a young man, but according
to Norman sources, the two cousins really connected. Edward knew
that soon he would return to England and become king,
and he promised young William that if he died without
a son, he would be his heir to the English throne.
At least that's the way William and the Normans tell it.

(12:56):
As an adult, William had his eyes set on England,
but a passing comment that an exiled king had made
to him back when William was a child wouldn't be
enough to claim the throne, and so when William was
in his early twenties, he married the daughter of the
Count of Flanders, which gave him more strength and firepower,

(13:18):
enough allegedly that he was able to strong arm the
still airless Edward into officially making William his heir in
ten fifty one. At least that's how the Normans tell it.
But over in England there were other nobles vying for control,
especially as King Edward began to weaken. The most powerful

(13:41):
nobleman in England at the time was a man named
Harold Godwinson, whose sister was married to King Edward. The
Confessor consider Harold like the English hometown hero. Earlier in
Edward's rule, when England lost some popularity for seemingly showing
owing favoritism to Normans, it was Godwin and his sons

(14:04):
who were able to rally forces and use the situation
to their advantage. Harold had fought campaigns subjugating Wales and
dealing with rebellious Northumbrians. He seemed like the natural choice
for a successor for the King of England, because well,
he was already sort of handling the job. The problem,

(14:26):
of course, was that he wasn't yet King Edward was,
and Edward was using his childlessness to his advantage as
a diplomatic tool, leading other people on, so no one
attacked him. Around ten sixty five, Edward sent Harold on
an embassy to Normandy. According to the Normans, the purpose

(14:50):
of that journey was for Harold to confirm that Edward
was naming William as heir to the throne of England.
But on the way to Normandy, Harold was captured off
the coast and ransomed. While he was being held as
something between a hostage and a guest, Harold was made
to swear on holy relics to promise that he would

(15:13):
uphold William as Edward's heir, and Harold did swear it,
at least according to the Normans. Whether it was under
duress or because they were threatening him is another question.
It was probably around a year later, January of ten

(15:36):
sixty six, that Edward the Confessor, still without a son
and having caused so much trouble, finally died. According to England,
on his deathbed, he turned to his brother in law
Harold and declared that he would be his heir. Harold
did not need to be told twice. The English written

(15:57):
or Council officially supported him, as did all the other nobles,
and so Harold quickly held a coronation at Westminster Abbey,
knowing probably that he would have to deal with William eventually,
but also probably correctly thinking that it would be easier
to deal with William from a secure place atop the

(16:18):
throne of England. William in Normandy was of course furious,
especially considering that Harold had sworn on holy relics that
he would respect William's claim to the throne. And so
William did the medieval European equivalent of going to the manager.

(16:40):
He petitioned the Pope. He told the Pope that Harold
had forsaken his oath, an oath sworn on holy relics,
and the Pope agreed with him and gave William his
blessing to invade England. Harold actually made the decision not
to send an emissary to the Pope to plead his case,

(17:00):
probably thinking that because he had already been coronated and
was a consecrated king, his position was secure and so
God was on William's side, even if the wind wasn't.
William assembled his fleet and soldiers on the northern coast,
ready to set sail and battle Harold in England. But

(17:24):
as I talked about in the introduction to this episode,
the weather was not cooperating. The wind wasn't right, and
so William had to wait, managing sanitation and food for
thousands of soldiers, doing nothing but losing morale by the day.
It might seem like this might have put William at

(17:45):
a disadvantage, but as luck would have it, he wasn't
the only person trying to conquer England. In the north
of England, Harold Hardrada, King of Norway, was invading, and Harold,
King of England had to march as soldiers up to
take care of that, and all the while, Harold, King

(18:06):
of England, had been funding a standing army on the
southern coast of England, just waiting for William and the
Normans to arrive. Well mid September, after months of paying
them to do nothing, Harold had to finally release the
men and dissolve the force, which meant that when William
and his men were finally able to sail up to England,

(18:31):
they faced surprisingly little resistance until they reached Hastings. How
many men did William have, simply put, we do not know.
One chronicle gives the number at fourteen thousand men, but
another says the force numbered one hundred and fifty thousand.
I've also seen fifty and sixty thousand. Like so many

(18:54):
things about William the Conqueror's famous invasion of England, the
stories have become a little distorted into legend. There are
a handful of legends specifically about William's crossing. As the
fleet set out from Saint Valerie. The ship that William

(19:16):
was on was of course the fastest and the sleekest,
and in the darkness of the night crossing the channel,
that ship accidentally sped ahead of its fellows, which meant
that the next morning William and his ship awoke to
find the rest of their fleet entirely out of sight.
According to a chaplain William of Poitier, who is biased

(19:39):
because he was so close to William the Conqueror, but
an incredibly useful source. While other lesser leaders might have
panicked in that situation, quote, like all great generals, William
apparently displayed nothing but sang froid in that period of stress,
and were told he just sat down to a hearty breakfast,
washed down with some spiced wine. End quote. One more legend,

(20:05):
too cute, in my opinion, to be anything but apocryphal.
When the ships finally reconnected and landed on the English shore,
William apparently tripped and broke his fall. With his poems,
the Norman poet Robert was wrote that William was quote
grabbing England with both hands. Meanwhile, King Harold had defeated

(20:29):
the Norwegian king in a particularly brutal battle at Samford Bridge,
but with William's invasion, Harold had only two weeks to
march his troops back down to counter the Normans. Harold
and his men arrived on October thirteenth and were able
to get themselves into a defensive position for William when

(20:52):
the Normans attacked the very next morning. The Normans had
archers and a cavalry, but the English had a shield
wall and the advantage of a position on a hill.
William sent charge after charge of cavalry riders up the hill,
but no matter how fearsome his Viking descended soldiers were,

(21:13):
the English shield wall did not break, and then after
several unsuccessful charges, a rumor spread among the Normans that
their leader, William was dead, killed in the fighting. One
of the flanks of the Norman cavalry retreated down the
hill in the confusion, and the English gleefully broke their

(21:33):
ranks to follow them, assuming that victory was all but inevitable.
But William wasn't dead, and according to the most common
narrative of the battle, the narrative that was embroidered onto
the famous Bayou tapestry, afterwards, William pulled off his helmet

(21:54):
to show his face to his men. Now with the
English wall broken, the Normans were able to turn their
cavalry around to surround the English and begin their slaughter.
King Harold was killed supposedly by an arrow through the eye,
and that was that the Battle of Hastings was over

(22:14):
and William, Duke of Normandy, had become William the Conqueror.
But winning a battle wasn't going to make William the
King of England just yet. He had helpfully reverse engineered
his claim to the throne by having had appealed to

(22:35):
the Pope and by reminding everyone that he was the
dead king Edward's second cousin. The idea was that he
was simply succeeding Edward rightfully, as opposed to how it
might look, which was that he was a duke from
Normandy who had led an invading force to conquer a
different country. After Hastings, William knew that he needed to

(22:58):
take London. His troops surround the city so that he
would be prepared in case he needed to starve it
into a surrender. But to his surprise, when he crossed
the Thames into the city, he found that London's most
powerful bishops and the next in the Saxon line, Edward's

(23:18):
great nephew, were already ready to submit to him. No
one was left to challenge William with any meaningful claim
to the throne, and so William made the same decision
that his predecessor Harold had made a quick coronation to
secure his claim while he could, rather than wait for

(23:39):
his wife Matilda to arrive in England to be crowned
alongside him, or rather than waiting to campaign around England
to secure the rest of the country first, William had
his coronation as soon as he could, at Westminster Abbey
on Christmas Day ten sixty six. The coronation was a

(24:00):
conscious hybrid of both Anglo Saxon and Norman traditions, read
in both English and French, with traditions lifted from both,
but the event didn't go as smoothly as William probably hoped.
He had posted knights outside of Westminster Abbey, probably to
deal with anyone who thought they would take the opportunity

(24:22):
to be an open rebel, but during the coronation itself,
when the people inside the abbey were loudly proclaiming and
celebrating William, the guards thought that some sort of assault
was underway. Their response was to set the local houses
around the abbey on fire. Because the Norman soldiers couldn't

(24:44):
understand the local Anglo Saxons and vice versa. The scene
became like something out of a grisly comedy. Almost everyone
who had been at the coronation in the abbey raced
outside to see what all the fuss was about. William
finished the ceremony with a skeleton crew inside. The chronicler

(25:05):
Orderic Vitalis wrote, as the fire spread rapidly through the houses,
the people who had been rejoicing in the church were
thrown into confusion, and a crowd of men and women
of every rank and status, compelled by this disaster, rushed
out of the church. Only the bishop and clergy, along
with the monks, stayed terrified in front of the altar,

(25:28):
and only just managed to complete the consecration rite over
the king, who was trembling violently. Nearly everyone else ran
toward the raging fire, some to fight bravely against the
force of the flames, but more hoping to grab loot
for themselves. Amid such great confusion, The English, believing there

(25:51):
was a plot behind something so completely unlooked for, were
extremely angry and afterward held the Normans in suspense, judging
them treacherous. End quote. It was a grim omen for
what the next few months of William's reign would look like.
His goal was complete and utter submission, and to that

(26:14):
end he constructed the central white tower of the Tower
of London, meant to project strength and domination to the city.
Williams spent the next few years dealing with rebels throughout England,
crushing them with a destructive violence that shocked contemporary chroniclers.
He undid the English aristocracy at the time and replaced

(26:37):
them with Normans, and they brought with them new systems
that we can identify today as the foundation for some
basic government practices. Even the English language itself is a
testament to William's power. Take the words we use for
animals and the words we use when those animals become meat.

(26:58):
There's swine, but there's all so pork. There's sheep, and
then there's mutton. There's cows, and then there's beef. The
former words swine, sheep, cow are Germanic Anglo Saxon words.
The latter pork, mutton, beef are Norman French words. It
was the Anglo Saxon who were the lower class farmers

(27:22):
taking care of livestock, and the new class of Norman
aristocracy who were enjoying delicacies at their table. William had
not just conquered Land, he conquered the future of what
England would become, remaking it in his image, clenched in

(27:42):
his fist. That's the story of William the conquerors, well conquering.
But keep listening after a brief sponsor break, to hear
a little bit about his slightly gruesome ending. If William's

(28:10):
coronation was a minor disaster, his funeral was a catastrophe.
Even conquerors are humbled in death. And after William died
in ten eighty seven while on a campaign outside Normandy,
his body was looted and he was left bare and
naked until a passing night brought his body to monks

(28:33):
in Cayenne for burial, in an eerie echo of his coronation.
Before William's body was prepared, a fire broke out nearby
in town. Because of the delay in his burial, William's
body became bloated and decomposed. There was a stone sarcophagus
that had been commissioned for him, but William's body was

(28:56):
simply too big. In the words of our favorite chronicler, Orderic,
as they tried to, for lack of a better word,
stuff him into the sarcophagus quote, the swollen bowels burst,
and an intolerable stench assailed the nostrils of the bystanders
and the whole crowd. An appropriately gross ending for an

(29:21):
episode of a podcast called Noble Blood. Noble Blood is
a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky.
Noble Blood is created and hosted by me Dana Schwartz,

(29:45):
with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, hannah's Wick,
Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is
edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima Il Kahali,
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(30:05):
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