Who was William the Conqueror?

Rebellion against William's rule came to a head in 1046, led by Guy of Burgundy with support from two powerful viscounts. William escaped an attempt to seize him and fled to the French king, Henry I, who still backed him. The two returned with an army in 1047 and defeated the rebels at the Battle of Val-es-Dunes near Caen. Afterward William issued the Truce of God throughout the duchy, limiting the days on which fighting was permitted, but this victory did not end the struggle for dominance; near-constant warfare continued for several more years.

Through the 1050s William steadily extended his authority, besieging and exiling Guy of Burgundy, contesting the ambitious Count of Anjou over the county of Maine, and securing the strategically placed Bellême family strongholds of Alencon and Domfront for himself. His former ally King Henry turned against him in 1052 out of fear that William was becoming too powerful, launching invasions in 1054 and 1057, both of which William defeated, at Mortemer and Varaville respectively. The deaths of Henry and the Count of Anjou in 1060 removed William's two greatest rivals and left him the dominant power in northern France.

Sometime in the early 1050s William married Matilda of Flanders, daughter of Count Baldwin V, despite Pope Leo IX having initially forbidden the match. The marriage strengthened William's position by linking him to one of the more powerful territories in France, and the couple went on to have at least nine children. William also placed his own supporters into senior positions in the Norman church, including his half-brother Odo as Bishop of Bayeux, binding ecclesiastical power to his own household.

William's claim to the English throne rested on his kinship to Edward the Confessor, a childless king and William's first cousin once removed, who seems to have indicated as early as 1051 that William might succeed him. The claim was complicated by Harold Godwinson, head of England's most powerful noble family, whom Edward reportedly named as his successor on his deathbed in January 1066. Norman writers later claimed Harold had earlier sworn an oath to support William's claim, a story impossible to verify but one William used to justify his invasion.

Harold was crowned king in January 1066 and spent the summer guarding the English coast against William's anticipated invasion, only to disband his forces in September when the harvest season arrived. At almost the same moment, Harold's exiled brother Tostig joined the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada in an invasion of northern England. Harold marched north and crushed them at the Battle of Stamford Bridge on 25 September, killing both men, only to learn that William's fleet had landed at Pevensey two days later.

Harold rushed his exhausted army south to meet the new threat. On 14 October 1066 the two forces met at Senlac Hill near Hastings. William's combined cavalry and archers eventually broke the English shield wall after Harold was killed late in the battle, though accounts differ on exactly how he died. The English nobility briefly rallied around Edgar the Aetheling, a distant claimant, but William secured Dover, Canterbury, and Winchester, then marched on London, receiving the submission of the remaining English leaders before being crowned king at Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066.

William's early years as king were spent reconciling, then crushing, English resistance. He initially confirmed English earls in their lands and left native sheriffs in place, but revolts broke out repeatedly, including risings by Edwin and Morcar, an invasion by Edgar the Aetheling allied with the Danish king, and resistance centered on Exeter and the Isle of Ely under Hereward the Wake. William answered with a brutal campaign across northern England known as the Harrying of the North, burning the countryside between 1069 and 1070, and he built castles, including the Tower of London, across the kingdom to garrison his new territory.

William never merged England and Normandy into a single state, administering them as separate realms with their own courts, coinage, and legal customs, and he crossed the Channel at least nineteen times to manage both. He also reorganized the English church, replacing nearly all native bishops and abbots with continental appointees, most notably installing Lanfranc as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1070. His later years were further disrupted by a prolonged, bitter conflict with his eldest son Robert, who at one point unhorsed William himself during a siege, and by the death of his wife Matilda in 1083.

In 1085, facing the threat of a Danish invasion, William ordered a comprehensive survey of landholding across England, organized by county and recording ownership, value, and resources. Completed by August 1086 and later called the Domesday Book, it stands as one of the most detailed administrative records of medieval Europe and reveals how thoroughly Norman lords had replaced the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy in the two decades since the conquest.

William's final campaign took him back to the continent, where conflict with the French king over the Vexin region led him to attack and seize the town of Mantes in July 1087. During the campaign he was injured, by illness or by his saddle, and was carried to the priory of Saint Gervase at Rouen, where he died on 9 September 1087. On his deathbed he divided his territories, leaving Normandy to his rebellious son Robert and England to his second surviving son, also named William, while his youngest son Henry received a payment of money.

William's funeral at Caen was marred by disruption: a local man interrupted the service to claim the church had been built on land stolen from his family, a complaint that was verified and settled on the spot, and the king's body, too large for its stone coffin, burst open during burial. His tomb was disturbed repeatedly in later centuries, and today only a single thigh bone is believed to remain of his remains, under a marker dating from the early nineteenth century.

The conquest reshaped England permanently, replacing most of its aristocracy with Norman landholders, remaking its church hierarchy, and tying its politics closely to France for centuries afterward. William's death triggered a long contest between his sons for control of Normandy and England that was not resolved until his youngest son Henry defeated Robert at the Battle of Tinchebray in 1106. Historians have long disagreed about how radical the Norman Conquest truly was, but its mark on England's language, institutions, and ruling class is still visible in the historical record.