GCSE-HISTORY-8145_2BA_NORMAN YORKSHIRE HE_RESOURCES PACK-2023-final

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A map of northern England and southern Scotland in the early Middle Ages Timeline of the Norman Conquest in the North January 1066 King Edward the Confessor dies; Harold is crowned King of Englan... d. September 1066 Harold defeats a Norwegian army at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire. October 1066 William of Normandy defeats Harold at the Battle of Hastings. December 1066 William crowned King of England in London on Christmas Day. March 1067 Copsig, appointed Earl of Northumbria (Northumberland) by William, is murdered. Autumn/winter 1067 William levies a new tax in the north. December 1067 Gospatrick is appointed Earl of Northumbria by William Spring 1068 Northern rebellion against William involves Gospatrick, the Mercians and Edgar Aetheling. Summer 1068 The revolt quickly collapses when William marches north; York surrenders to William: Gospatrick flees to Scotland. 1069 Another rebellion in the North. William’ s newly appointed Earl of Northumbria, Robert Commines, is murdered and the rebels take York but the city is swiftly retaken by William Autumn 1069 King Swein of Denmark invades, sails up the Humber and burns York: he returns to Denmark after being paid off by William. Winter 1069-70 The Harrying of the North: William lays waste to Yorkshire, and parts of Staffordshire and Cheshire 1070 Famine in Yorkshire. Summer 1070 An invasion of northern England by King Malcolm of Scotland is defeated: William leads a military campaign in Scotland 1072 The Scots submit to William and sign the Treaty of Abernathy 1075 A Danish fleet sacks York 1079 King Malcolm breaks his treaty with William to raid Northumbria. 5 IB/M/Jun23/8145/2B/A Turn over ► 1080 A rebellion in Northumbria is violently suppressed by William’s brother Odo: William’s son, Robert, carries out a military campaign against the Scots, who come to terms. 1086 Domesday Book compiled 1087 The death of William I. William II ‘Rufus’ becomes King of England He soon realised that strong local rivalries and alliances in the north of England posed a threat, as did insecure borders with Wales and Scotland and the ambitions of the Danish King. Even Ireland was dangerous, as he found out in 1068 and 1069 when Harold’s sons who had taken refuge there launched major raids in the south-west. Although these raids were defeated, they showed how fragile William’s conquest was. In addition, there was not enough land to satisfy both his followers and the surviving Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, while the aggressive attitude of William FitzOsbern, Odo of Bayeux and the new Norman aristocracy provoked further English resistance. In the years after 1066 these disgruntled survivors of the English aristocracy - along with the Danes - carried out guerrilla warfare against their Norman masters, with the first major rising occurring in Kent in the summer of 1067. Their attack on Dover failed but it was enough to persuade William to return to England where in the following year there was more trouble, this time at Exeter where Harold’s mother was based. Linked with the attack from Ireland by Harold’s sons, this rebellion was also defeated, but in the summer of 1069 the sons again raided Devon from Ireland, this time with over 60 ships. Exeter Castle, built after the events of 1068, held out against their siege and there were further unsuccessful uprisings in Dorset and Somerset. These rebellions in the south-west of England were led by Harold’s own family but depended on old loyalties which were gradually breaking down. With the south and west finally subdued William was able to move on to confront rebellions flaring up in the North and the Midlands. As he marched north he built castles to keep these areas under control. (Resource I). England and Scotland Although English kings in the tenth century had asserted their lordship over the north of England and had obtained some form of submission from the Scottish Kings, the region was by no means secure. Threats came from Scandinavia, and from Scotland itself where King Malcolm’s power was growing. The border between England and Scotland was disputed, and Malcolm had already extended his influence southwards into Lothian, even claiming Lordship as far south as Brough. He also sheltered rebels fleeing England and had married Margaret, the sister of Edgar Aetheling, a rival claimant to the English throne. Neither could the loyalty of the northern aristocracy always be relied on, as in the north-east it was the Northumbrian earls who wielded power along with other local families. Many of these had intermarried with the Scots, and were loyal to their local Northumbrian earls rather than any English king. Although William needed to reach an agreement with the Scottish King, it was just as important that he showed his authority and secured his northern border with an impressive show of military power. William ordered his barons to subdue Cumbria, while he himself led the expedition to assert his power over Yorkshire and north-east England. Rebellion in the North During the winter of 1067–68, while William was subduing the south and west of England, his opponents gathered at York and in the summer of 1068, launched a rebellion led by Gospatrick, the new earl of Northumbria. William marched north, took the city and, as he had done with others on the route north, built and garrisoned a castle (Resources B, C & D). At Christmas after he emphasised his authority as king by appearing in public at York Minster wearing his crown, William left for Normandy (Resource F). 6 IB/M/Jun23/8145/2B/A Gospatrick had fled to Scotland where he joined forces with Edgar Aetheling and in January 1069, taking advantage of William’s absence, they marched a rebel army south. After massacring William’s troops in Durham and killing the new Norman Earl of Northumbria, Robert of Commines, they headed further south and besieged William’s new castle at York. Faced with this rebellion, William quickly returned to England and travelled north to relieve York for a second time, where he built a second castle on the opposite bank of the River Ouse and left his most experienced commander, William FitzOsbern, in charge (Resource B & C). However, this was not the end of the threat to Norman control in the North as the Danish king, Swein, who claimed the English throne as the son of Cnut’s* sister, was planning to invade England. In the autumn of 1069, a Danish fleet of over 240 ships led by Swein’s brother and three of his sons crossed the North Sea and began working their way up the east coast of England. At the same time there was also an uprising of local Northumbrian nobles around York who were helped by soldiers sent by Malcolm of Scotland. When the Danish fleet landed on the banks of the River Humber they were able to join forces with the northern rebels to attack York. In September, this combined force massacred the Norman garrison in a battle during which the defenders set light to the houses nearest to the castle. This started a devastating fire which burnt for two days and destroyed a large part of the town. Fortunately for William, the Danes did not press home their advantage but retreated to plunder Lincolnshire. This anti-Norman coalition of Edgar Aetheling, the native Northumbrian aristocracy, King Malcolm of Scotland, and more seriously, King Swein of Denmark was a major threat to Norman control of England and could not be ignored. When William learned of the invasion, he marched north for a third time where he dealt with the Danes first. Surrounded by William’s troops and running short of supplies they were bought off and agreed to leave England in the spring of 1070. William then retook York and rebuilt the castles. This was the third time in 18 months that William had had to march north to deal with a rebellion and with the Danes now gone he decided that it was time to teach the North a decisive lesson. His troops were ordered to destroy the economic infrastructure of the north of England in what has become known as ‘The Harrying of the North’ (Resource G). It resulted in much of the region being systematically plundered, its fields sown with salt and its people killed. It has been argued that this response by William to the rebellions turned the Norman invasion of England into a full-blown Norman Conquest and led to a more systematic and brutal colonisation of the kingdom than had been intended. *Cnut had ruled England between 1016 and 1035. Further trouble in the North Although this Harrying of the North was designed to prevent further rebellions, it did not end the violence as there were to be further invasions by Danish and Scottish forces, sometimes helped by local lords. William might have brought Yorkshire under control and fought off the Scandinavian invaders in the short term but Northumbria and Cumbria remained vulnerable to attacks from Scotland. Malcolm still wanted to expand his kingdom to include the northern counties of England and in 1070 he again raided Cumberland. Having subdued Yorkshire, William was now free to take his army into southern Scotland where he defeated Malcolm’s army at Abernathy. In the treaty of 1072 that followed, Malcolm had to swear an oath of allegiance to William, give his son as hostage and expel Edgar Aetheling from the Scottish court. There were to be further raids in 1075 (when York Minster was destroyed by the Danes) and 1079, while Scottish raids continued into the reign of William II, with another rebellion led by the earl of Northumbria, Robert de Mowbray, occurring in 1095. 7 IB/M/Jun23/8145/2B/A Turn over ► The importance of York York, which was the capital (Resource A, B, C & M) of the ancient kingdom of Northumbria, was vitally important for anyone who wanted to control Northumbria. It was at the centre of the Vale of York, a large rural lowland area which was the main transport corridor between the south of England and Scotland (Resource A). This natural corridor stretched for over 60 miles from the Humber in the South to the Tees in the north, and was up to 40 miles wide between the Pennines in the west and the Yorkshire Moors and Wolds to the east. The River Ouse flowed through the centre of the Vale and through York itself, and was fed by a large system of tributaries which together drained much of the county of Yorkshire and also provided an essential system of water transport. Dominating the River Ouse at a point where it was also still tidal in the Middle Ages and standing at the centre of the widest part of the Vale, York was therefore in a strategic and accessible location. The fertile and lowlying agricultural lands which surrounded York also contributed to its strategic importance and continued prosperity while the whole Vale was bound to the city by ties of family, trade, property ownership, and culture (Resource A & M). As a result, it was not surprising that the Normans wanted to create a northern capital at York just as the Romans had done a thousand years before. They, too, had used York to control the North and this was exploited by the Normans to justify their own rule by stressing the continuity between Norman rule and the city’s Roman past. (Resource D & M). York was also an important religious centre and the Normans financed various religious institutions in the city as well as helping to rebuild the Minster (Cathedral) after it had been badly burnt in 1069. This was a way of showing their control of all aspects of life in the city and surrounding area (Resources B, E, & F). The Harrying of the North There has been much debate about the impact of William’s campaign in Yorkshire during the winter of 1069–70. The true level of destruction caused by this Harrying of the North will probably never be known. Writers at the time, however, had no doubt about the brutal slaughter, violence, and starvation carried out by William’s army (Resource G). The chronicler, William of Jumièges, wrote that most of York’s population ‘from the youngest to the oldest’ was killed. Similarly, the Domesday Book that was published in 1086 described large areas of Yorkshire as ‘waste’, which has also been seen as proof of the high death rate caused by the Norman army’s ‘scorched earth’ policy. However, some historians have doubted these claims (Resource J, K & L), arguing that contemporary accounts may have exaggerated the scale of destruction (Resource K & L). For example, no archaeological evidence of the 1069 fire in York has been found on the excavated Coppergate site between the castle and Minster (Resource M), while there may also have been a misunderstanding of the terms used in the Domesday Book. Later administrative records suggest that the Latin for ‘waste’ (vasta) used in the Book simply indicated a failure to find out the value of an estate rather than that it had been physically destroyed. The debate still continues, however, as recent re-examination (Resource H & L) of the sources, including Domesday Book, combined with additional chronicler accounts suggest that the original impression of the great brutality of William’s winter campaigns in 1069–70 was, in fact, not exaggerated (Resource J & M). 8 IB/M/Jun23/8145/2B/A Resources Resource A page 9 A map of medieval Yorkshire. Resource B page 10 A map of medieval York. Resource C page 11 An artist’s reconstruction of Medieval Yor [Show More]

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