William I ('the Conqueror'), King of England 1066-1087

b. 1027/8; d.1087

William's father, Robert I of Normandy, left on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1035 and never returned. Even though he was technically illegitamate - hence the English chroniclers were able to call him William 'the bastard' - at the tender age of eight he inherited his father's estates in Normandy.

Exactly when William began to think of winning the English thrown is unknown. In 1053 he married Matilda, a descendant of Alfred the Great, and he may have been promised the English crown while Edward the Confessor was at the Norman court, or indeed when Harold Godwinson was in Normandy in 1064. When Harold declared himself king in 1066, William acted quickly. He received a papal blessing for his invasion, gathered together a fleet, sailed across the English Channel, and killed Harold at the Battle of Hastings. He was crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066 .

For the first few years of his reign William's position was insecure. Between 1068 and 1070 the most serious rebellion took place in Yorkshire. William marched north and destroyed the opposition in an operation known as the 'harrying of the north'; almost twenty years later much of the land was still described as a 'waste' and in some areas it was not recolonised for a hundred years. Wessex and Mercia continued guerilla warfare under such leaders as Hereward the Wake, who was based in the marshland around Ely and was only finally defeated in 1071. William now consolidated his power and in 1075 the last uprising was easily defeated. The rest of his reign in England was peaceful, but in France William's territorial neighbour had been plundering Normandy. He returned to France in 1086 and attacked the town of Mantes. One account states that as the flames rose, his horse stumbled and William was thrown against the pommel of his saddle. He died of internal injuries on 9 September 1087.

This article is based on material taken from A Traveller's History of England (© Christopher Daniell), published by The Windrush Press, and is by kind permission of its author Christopher Daniell.

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