William The Conquerer Essay, Research Paper

William the ConquererWilliam I ( of England ) , called The Conqueror ( 1027-87 ) , first Norman male monarch of England ( 1066-87 ) , who has been called one of the first modern male monarchs and is by and large regarded as one of the outstanding figures in western European history. Born in Falaise, France, William was the illicit boy of Robert I, duke of Normandy, and Arletta, a sixpence & # 8217 ; s girl, and is hence sometimes called William the Bastard. Upon the decease of his male parent, the Norman Lords, honouring their promise to Robert, accepted William as his replacement. Rebellion against the immature duke broke out about instantly, nevertheless, and his place did non go secure until 1047 when, with the assistance of Henry I, king of France, he won a decisive triumph over a rebel force near Caen. During a visit in 1051 to his childless cousin, Edward the Confessor, male monarch of England, William is said to hold obtained Edward & # 8217 ; s understanding that he should win to the English throne. In 1053, withstanding a apostolic prohibition, William married Matilda of Flanders, girl of Baldwin V, count of Flanders and a descendent of King Alfred the Great, thereby beef uping his claim to the Crown of England. Henry I, fearing the strong bond between Normandy and Flanders ensuing from the matrimony, attempted in 1054 and once more in 1058 to oppress the powerful duke, but on both occasions William defeated the Gallic male monarch & # 8217 ; s forces. Conquest of EnglandAbout 1064, the powerful English Lord, Harold, earl of Wessex, was shipwrecked on the Norman seashore and taken captive by William. He secured his release by cursing to back up William & # 8217 ; s claim to the English throne. When King Edward died, nevertheless, the witenagemot an consultative organic structure to the Anglo-Norman male monarchs elected Harold male monarch. was superseded by the Great Council, the Witenagemot ( & # 8221 ; meeting of the wise work forces & # 8221 ; ) , assembly of council members in Anglo-Saxon England that met to rede the male monarch of judicial and administrative affairs. Originally a assemblage of all the freewomans of a folk, it finally became an assembly composed of the ealdormen ( Old English, & # 8220 ; aldermen & # 8221 ; ) , or local captains, the bishops, other high civil and ecclesiastical functionaries, and sometimes friends and relations of the male monarch. The witenagemot may hold had the power to elect a male monarch, particularly if sequence was disputed, and it deliberated on all new Torahs, made pacts, served as a supreme tribunal of justness, authorized the levying of extraordinary revenue enhancement and the granting of land, and raised military forces. Each of the several Anglo-Saxon lands had its ain witenagemot until the subjection of them all by Egbert, male monarch of Wessex, between 825 and 829. Thereafter the witenagemot of Wessex bit by bit developed into a individual assembly for the whole state. After the Norman conquering of England in 1066, the witenagemot was superseded by the Great Council, Determined to do good his claim, William secured the countenance of Pope Alexander II for a Norman invasion of England. The duke and his ground forces landed at Pevensey on September 28, 1066. On October 14, the Normans defeated the English forces at the famed Battle of Hastings, one of the most fatal military battles in English history, fought on October 14, 1066, between a national ground forces led by Harold II, Saxon male monarch of England, and an invasion force led by William, duke of Normandy, subsequently William I ( the Conqueror ) . William was a claimant of the English throne, which he maintained had been promised to him antecedently by his cousin, King Edward the Confessor. William challenged the election of Harold as king on Edward & # 8217 ; s decease and, with the approval of Pope Alexander II ( reigned 1061-73 ) , prepared to occupy England. His seaborne forces, which included foot armed with crossbows and contingents of to a great extent armed horse, landed on the English seashore near Hastings on September 28, 1066. After a forced March from Yorkshire, where Harold had merely defeated and murder his rebellious brother, Tostig, earl of Northumbria, in the Battle of Stamford Bridge, the English ground forces, totaling about 7000 work forces, occupied a tallness ( subsequently called Senlac Hill ) on the Hastings-London main road about 10.5 kilometers ( about 6.5 myocardial infarction ) northwest of Hastings. The royal force was composed entirely of foot, armed with lances, blades, and battle-axes. The initial Norman onslaught, launched at 9:00 AM on October 14, failed to free the English, who met the bombardment of enemy pointers with interlocked shields. The English axmen turned back a Norman horse charge, whereupon a subdivision of the Norman foot turned and fled. At this occasion, several units of the English ground forces broke ranks, contrary to Harold & # 8217 ; s orders, and pursued the retreating Normans. Other Norman military personnels rapidly surrounded and annihilated these units. Taking advantage of the deficiency of subject among the English soldiers, William ordered a feigned retreat. The ploy led to the entrapment of another big organic structure of English military personnels. Badly weakened by these contraries and demoralized by the mortal wounding of Harold by an pointer, the English were forced to abandon their strategic place on the crest of Senlac Hill. Merely little leftovers of the supporting ground forces survived the subsequent onslaughts of the Norman horse. William & # 8217 ; s triumph at Hastings paved the manner for Norman subjection of all England. On Christmas Day he was crowned male monarch of England in Westminster Abbey. The English did non accept foreign regulation without a battle. William met the resistance, which was peculiarly violent in the North and West, with strong steps ; he was responsible for the desolation of great countries of the state, peculiarly in Yorkshire, where Danish forces had arrived to help the Saxon Rebels. By 1070 the Norman conquering of England was complete. William invaded Scotland in 1072 and forced the Scots male monarch Malcolm III MacDuncan to pay him homage. During the wining old ages the Conqueror crushed rebellions among his Norman followings, including that incited in 1075 by Ralph de Guader, 1st earl of Norfolk, and Roger Fitzwilliam, earl of Hereford, and a series of rebellions in Normandy led by his eldest boy Robert, who subsequently became Robert II, duke of Normandy. Jordan SmithEnglish 1 K William the ConquerorWilliam I ( of England ) , called The Conqueror ( 1027-87 ) , first Norman male monarch of England ( 1066-87 ) , who has been called one of the first modern male monarchs and is by and large regarded as one of the outstanding figures in western European history. Born in Falaise, France, William was the illicit boy of Robert I, duke of Normandy, and Arletta, a sixpence & # 8217 ; s girl, and is hence sometimes called William the Bastard. Upon the decease of his male parent, the Norman Lords, honouring their promise to Robert, accepted William as his replacement. Rebellion against the immature duke broke out about instantly, nevertheless, and his place did non go secure until 1047 when, with the assistance of Henry I, king of France, he won a decisive triumph over a rebel force near Caen. During a visit in 1051 to his childless cousin, Edward the Confessor, male monarch of England, William is said to hold obtained Edward & # 8217 ; s understanding that he should win to the English throne. In 1053, withstanding a apostolic prohibition, William married Matilda of Flanders, girl of Baldwin V, count of Flanders and a descendent of King Alfred the Great, thereby beef uping his claim to the Crown of England. Henry I, fearing the strong bond between Normandy and Flanders ensuing from the matrimony, attempted in 1054 and once more in 1058 to oppress the powerful duke, but on both occasions William defeated the Gallic male monarch & # 8217 ; s forces. Conquest of EnglandAbout 1064, the powerful English Lord, Harold, earl of Wessex, was shipwrecked on the Norman seashore and taken captive by William. He secured his release by cursing to back up William & # 8217 ; s claim to the English throne. When King Edward died, nevertheless, the witenagemot an consultative organic structure to the Anglo-Norman male monarchs elected Harold male monarch. was superseded by the Great Council, the Witenagemot ( & # 8221 ; meeting of the wise work forces & # 8221 ; ) , assembly of council members in Anglo-Saxon England that met to rede the male monarch of judicial and administrative affairs. Originally a assemblage of all the freewomans of a folk, it finally became an assembly composed of the ealdormen ( Old English, & # 8220 ; aldermen & # 8221 ; ) , or local captains, the bishops, other high civil and ecclesiastical functionaries, and sometimes friends and relations of the male monarch. The witenagemot may hold had the power to elect a male monarch, particularly if sequence was disputed, and it deliberated on all new Torahs, made pacts, served as a supreme tribunal of justness, authorized the levying of extraordinary revenue enhancement and the granting of land, and raised military forces. Each of the several Anglo-Saxon lands had its ain witenagemot until the subjection of them all by Egbert, male monarch of Wessex, between 825 and 829. Thereaft

er the witenagemot of Wessex bit by bit developed into a individual assembly for the whole state. After the Norman conquering of England in 1066, the witenagemot was superseded by the Great Council, Determined to do good his claim, William secured the countenance of Pope Alexander II for a Norman invasion of England. The duke and his ground forces landed at Pevensey on September 28, 1066. On October 14, the Normans defeated the English forces at the famed Battle of Hastings, one of the most fatal military battles in English history, fought on October 14, 1066, between a national ground forces led by Harold II, Saxon male monarch of England, and an invasion force led by William, duke of Normandy, subsequently William I ( the Conqueror ) . William was a claimant of the English throne, which he maintained had been promised to him antecedently by his cousin, King Edward the Confessor. William challenged the election of Harold as king on Edward’s decease and, with the approval of Pope Alexander II ( reigned 1061-73 ) , prepared to occupy England. His seaborne forces, which included foot armed with crossbows and contingents of to a great extent armed horse, landed on the English seashore near Hastings on September 28, 1066. After a forced March from Yorkshire, where Harold had merely defeated and murder his rebellious brother, Tostig, earl of Northumbria, in the Battle of Stamford Bridge, the English ground forces, totaling about 7000 work forces, occupied a tallness ( subsequently called Senlac Hill ) on the Hastings-London main road about 10.5 kilometers ( about 6.5 myocardial infarction ) northwest of Hastings. The royal force was composed entirely of foot, armed with lances, blades, and battle-axes.

The initial Norman onslaught, launched at 9:00 AM on October 14, failed to free the English, who met the bombardment of enemy pointers with interlocked shields. The English axmen turned back a Norman horse charge, whereupon a subdivision of the Norman foot turned and fled. At this occasion, several units of the English ground forces broke ranks, contrary to Harold & # 8217 ; s orders, and pursued the retreating Normans. Other Norman military personnels rapidly surrounded and annihilated these units. Taking advantage of the deficiency of subject among the English soldiers, William ordered a feigned retreat. The ploy led to the entrapment of another big organic structure of English military personnels. Badly weakened by these contraries and demoralized by the mortal wounding of Harold by an pointer, the English were forced to abandon their strategic place on the crest of Senlac Hill. Merely little leftovers of the supporting ground forces survived the subsequent onslaughts of the Norman horse. William & # 8217 ; s triumph at Hastings paved the manner for Norman subjection of all England. On Christmas Day he was crowned male monarch of England in Westminster Abbey. The English did non accept foreign regulation without a battle. William met the resistance, which was peculiarly violent in the North and West, with strong steps ; he was responsible for the desolation of great countries of the state, peculiarly in Yorkshire, where Danish forces had arrived to help the Saxon Rebels. By 1070 the Norman conquering of England was complete. William invaded Scotland in 1072 and forced the Scots male monarch Malcolm III MacDuncan to pay him homage. During the wining old ages the Conqueror crushed rebellions among his Norman followings, including that incited in 1075 by Ralph de Guader, 1st earl of Norfolk, and Roger Fitzwilliam, earl of Hereford, and a series of rebellions in Normandy led by his eldest boy Robert, who subsequently became Robert II, duke of Normandy. His AchievementsOne characteristic of William & # 8217 ; s reign as male monarch was his reorganisation of the English feudal and administrative systems. He dissolved the great earldoms, which had enjoyed practical independency under his Anglo-saxon predecessors, and distributed the lands confiscated from the English to his sure Norman followings. He introduced the Continental system of feudal system ; by the Oath of Salisbury of 1086 all landlords swore commitment to William, therefore set uping the case in point that a liege & # 8217 ; s trueness to the male monarch overrode his allegiance to his immediate Godhead. The feudal Godheads were compelled to admit the legal power of the local tribunals, which William retained along with many other Anglo-saxon establishments. The ecclesiastical and secular tribunals were separated, and the power of the pontificate in English personal businesss was greatly curtailed. Another outstanding achievement was the economic study undertaken and incorporated in the Domesday Book in 1086.Domesday Book, sometimes called merely Domesday, written record of a statistical study of England ordered by William the Conqueror. The study, made in 1086, was an effort to register the landed wealth of the state in a systematic manner, to find the grosss due to the male monarch. The old system of revenue enhancement was of ancient beginning and had become disused. By naming all feudal estates, both ballad and ecclesiastical, the Domesday Book enabled William to beef up his authorization by demanding curses of commitment from all renters on the land, every bit good as from the Lords and clerics on whose land the renters lived. The study was executed by groups of officers called legati, who visited each county and conducted a public enquiry. The set of inquiries that these officers asked of the town and county representatives constituted the Inquisitio Eliensis ; the replies supplied the information from which the Domesday Book was compiled. Domesday is a corruptness of Doomsday ( the twenty-four hours of the concluding judgement ) ; the work was so named because its judgements in footings of levies and appraisals were irrevokable. The original manuscript was made in two volumes. The first and larger one, sometimes called the Great Domesday, included information on all England, with the exclusion of three eastern counties ( Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk ) , several northern counties, London, and some other towns. The studies of the three eastern counties made up the 2nd volume, which was known as the Little Domesday. These paperss were often used in the medieval jurisprudence tribunals, and in their published signifier they are on occasion used today in instances affecting inquiries of topography or family tree. The two volumes were foremost published in 1783 ; an index was published in a separate volume in 1811 ; and an extra volume, incorporating the Inquisitio Eliensis with studies of the lands of Ely, was published in 1816. In 1087, during a run against King Philip I of France, William burned the town of Mantes ( now Mantes-la-Jolie ) . William & # 8217 ; s Equus caballus fell in the locality of Mantes, fatally wounding him. He died in Rouen on September 7 and was buried at Caen in Saint Stephen & # 8217 ; s, one of the abbeys he and Matilda had founded at the clip of their matrimony as repentance for their rebelliousness of the Catholic Pope. William was succeeded by his third-born boy, William II. His AchievementsOne characteristic of William & # 8217 ; s reign as male monarch was his reorganisation of the English feudal and administrative systems. He dissolved the great earldoms, which had enjoyed practical independency under his Anglo-saxon predecessors, and distributed the lands confiscated from the English to his sure Norman followings. He introduced the Continental system of feudal system ; by the Oath of Salisbury of 1086 all landlords swore commitment to William, therefore set uping the case in point that a liege & # 8217 ; s trueness to the male monarch overrode his allegiance to his immediate Godhead. The feudal Godheads were compelled to admit the legal power of the local tribunals, which William retained along with many other Anglo-saxon establishments. The ecclesiastical and secular tribunals were separated, and the power of the pontificate in English personal businesss was greatly curtailed. Another outstanding achievement was the economic study undertaken and incorporated in the Domesday Book in 1086.Domesday Book, sometimes called merely Domesday, written record of a statistical study of England ordered by William the Conqueror. The study, made in 1086, was an effort to register the landed wealth of the state in a systematic manner, to find the grosss due to the male monarch. The old system of revenue enhancement was of ancient beginning and had become disused. By naming all feudal estates, both ballad and ecclesiastical, the Domesday Book enabled William to beef up his authorization by demanding curses of commitment from all renters on the land, every bit good as from the Lords and clerics on whose land the renters lived. The study was executed by groups of officers called legati, who visited each county and conducted a public enquiry. The set of inquiries that these officers asked of the town and county representatives constituted the Inquisitio Eliensis ; the replies supplied the information from which the Domesday Book was compiled. Domesday is a corruptness of Doomsday ( the twenty-four hours of the concluding judgement ) ; the work was so named because its judgements in footings of levies and appraisals were irrevokable.