William I (1027/8–87), king of England (1066–87) and duke of Normandy (1035–87), known as ‘the Conqueror’, was born at Falaise in Normandy. His father was Robert the Magnificent, duke of Normandy (1027–35), and his mother was Herleva, a woman about whose origins various theories have been developed, but who was certainly an established partner of the duke. William's succession to the duchy occurred when he was 8 and had the prior agreement of the Norman magnates and of his lord, the king of France. The first years of his rule in Normandy were turbulent and his survival at times precarious. He faced rival claimants from within his own family and his illegitimate birth was sometimes mocked by contemporaries—his other nickname (‘the Bastard’) was used in his own lifetime—but, after defeating Norman rebels in 1047 and 1053–4, he established a formidable control within the duchy which was never thereafter seriously threatened. For reasons which are not entirely clear, his overlord the French king turned against him in the early 1050s and he had to overcome invasions led by Henry I of France and the count of Anjou, Geoffrey Martel, in 1053–4 and 1057. William began to make territorial gains to the south of Normandy in the 1050s and in 1063 acquired the large county of Maine. In 1051 he received a promise of succession to the English kingdom from Edward the Confessor, apparently out of gratitude for the protection which Edward had been given while in exile in Normandy, and in 1066 he defeated Harold Godwineson at the battle of Hastings to make good his claim. William appears initially to have tried to rule conquered England with the support of an aristocracy which was a mixture of natives and Normans, but it is clear in retrospect that there was no trust between the two groups and that the policy was doomed to failure. Six years of often brutal campaigning, which included the notorious ‘harrying of the orth’ in the winter of 1069–70, were needed to complete the subjugation of William's new kingdom. He thereafter relied almost exclusively on his northern French followers, a new aristocracy whose dominance is clearly revealed by Domesday Book. After 1072 he visited England infrequently, usually to deal with crises such as the revolt of the earls in 1075 or the threatened invasion from Denmark in 1085. The last decade of his life was troubled by the revival of enemies in northern France, dissensions within the ruling group of Normans fomented by his eldest son Robert Curthose, and threats of invasion of England from Scandinavia. On his death-bed, he divided his lands between Robert Curthose, who received Normandy, and his second surviving son, William Rufus, who was given England. The reasons for this division are not definitively known; it is probable that years of conflict had made him distrust Robert, whose claims to Normandy were none the less undeniable, and that he was influenced by a long-standing custom whereby territorial provision was often made for the younger sons of the Norman ducal kindred.

William's achievement was based on a powerful personality, which appears to have overawed almost all who came into contact with him, and a strong physique which made him one of the most formidable warriors of his day. A capacity for often excessive cruelty and for leadership in war was combined with an unbending will and a shrewd political mind. His power base in Normandy was constructed around a small inner circle of kinsmen and associates who were ruthlessly advanced at the expense of rivals. Members of this group were also at the centre of Norman rule in England. His wife Matilda, to whom he was faithful in a way which is remarkable among contemporary medieval kings, often acted as his deputy in Normandy when he was in England. He cleverly ensnared Harold Godwineson in a web of perjury, by obliging him to swear the celebrated oath at either Bonneville or Bayeux, and he skilfully used his reputation as a religious reformer to secure the papacy's sponsorship of the war of conquest of 1066 and its co-operation in the reorganization of the English church which followed, in which Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury was a skilled and well-chosen collaborator. Intelligently and probably cynically, he used Edward the Confessor's promise of the succession to construct a framework of legality within which lands could be transferred from the dispossessed English to French newcomers; even if this was a disorderly process exacerbated by the rapacity of many of the conquerors (to which William himself seems at times to have turned a blind eye), the idea of legal continuity created a structure within which royal authority could sometimes operate effectively. He maintained English overlordship over Wales and Scotland. He enjoyed a measure of good fortune, most notably in the deaths in 1060 of his major rivals in France, the French king Henry I and Count Geoffrey Martel, which enabled him to intervene in England without having to be much concerned about possible threats to the duchy. He was also lucky in that Harold Godwineson's victory at the battle of Stamford Bridge over Harold Hardrada removed a contender whom William would otherwise have had to fight and in that Edgar the Atheling was not a credible alternative around whom the English could unite after 1066. William's death was followed by a civil war between his sons over his inheritance, which was not finally resolved until Henry I's reunification of Normandy and England in 1106. This struggle is testimony to the solidity of William's achievements, since his sons were basically fighting to continue them. Almost every aspect of the Norman Conquest is controversial. But there can be no doubt that it was William's formidable abilities which laid the foundations for its success.

David Richard Bates

Bibliography

Bates, D. , William the Conqueror (1989);
Douglas, D. C. , William the Conqueror (1964);
Fleming, R. , Kings and Lords in Conquest England (1991).