History of England 1-6

One force of rebels has remained notorious because of its association with Hereward. He took refuge in the watery fenland around Ely, from where he launched sporadic but murderous raids against the Normans despatched to capture him. He joined with some Danish forces, who had landed on the coast, to attack Peterborough Abbey ostensibly to save its treasures from the Normans. He and his band were known as silvatici, men of the woods. He was joined on Ely by other leaders of the English revolt, who thus posed a distinct and recognizable threat to William’s regime. For over a year the Norman forces tried, and failed, to dislodge Hereward from the fastness. Some people say that he was compromised by the treachery of the monks of Ely, who pointed to a secret path. It is certainly true that it was only after a prolonged assault, by forces on land and water, that the stronghold was taken and Hereward chased into exile. From this time forward, William appointed only Norman lords and abbots.

The confiscation of land hitherto held by the English was accelerated. It was an accepted principle that, ultimately, the king possessed the entire land of England. It was his realm. William put this principle into practice. By 1086 only two English barons, Coleswain of Lincoln and Thurkill of Arden, survived; they had retained their position only by enthusiastic collaboration with the new regime. The rest of the great estates went to a small number of Norman magnates, who promised in return to provide knights for the king’s service. England had become a militarized state, supporting an army of occupation.

The smaller English landowners may have had a better chance of holding their estates, but only at a high price. Many of them became tenants on land they had previously owned. Some of them were roughly treated. Aelric had been a free tenant in Marsh Gibbon, Buckinghamshire, but by 1086 he paid rent to a new Norman lord ‘harshly and wretchedly’. It was said by one chronicler in the early twelfth century, Simeon of Durham, that ‘many men sold themselves into perpetual servitude, provided that they could maintain a certain miserable life’. Other Norman families emigrated to this newfound land of opportunity, and the pattern of colonization persisted well into the twelfth century.

Other changes can be documented. Novel forms of building were brought into the English landscape, most notably with the castles and the churches. By 1100 all the English cathedrals were either being rebuilt or newly constructed. They were larger, and more massive, than their predecessors; the nave was longer, and the side chapels proliferated. The Normans built well; they gloried in the strength and power of stone. The great round arches, borrowed from Roman pomp, were a sign of their triumphalism. The massive walls, and the ranges of pillars and arcades, tell the same story. The immensity of Durham Cathedral engulfs the wanderer within a great wilderness of towering stone.

The Norman castles are square masses of masonry, with extraordinarily thick walls and tiny windows. They crush the land beneath them. They are indomitable. They exude an air of gloom and even despair; according to the English chronicler of 1137, they were ‘filled with devils and wicked men’. They were at the same time prisons and fortresses, courthouses and barracks. The English hated them as the strongholds of their oppressors. Yet they are in their own fashion magnificent creations, born out of the will to power and control that the Normans possessed in full measure. It was said in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that William had provided such security in the land that ‘any honest man could travel over his kingdom without injury with his bosom full of gold; and no man dared kill another …’.

The English landscape was changed in other ways. Hundreds of monasteries were planted across the country. Deer parks and rabbit warrens were created. Great swathes of land came under the jurisdiction of ‘forest law’, a Norman invention, whereby all the fruit and the animals of the field became the property of the king. Anyone who hunted a hart, or a hind, was to be blinded; no one was to chase a wild boar or even a hare; no trees were to be felled, and no firewood was to be gathered. The law covered more than forest and eventually one-third of the country became the preserve of the monarch; the whole of Essex, for example, was enclosed. The New Forest, Epping Forest, Windsor Great Park, and the ‘forests’ of Dartmoor and Exmoor are part of that legacy.