~The Bastard~

[Heathcliff]

During his lifetime William I was not known as the ‘Conqueror’, his nickname was ‘William the Bastard’, owing to the scandal of his birth when his father had an affair with a lowly tanner’s daughter. But since he was a ruler who thought nothing of having a man’s tongue ripped out and nailed to his front door, people didn’t call him that to his face. There was oppression in England after the conquest, but this was a consequence of the new king’s need for security as much as anything. William subdued the south and east easily, but the year after Hastings his former ally, Count Eustace of Boulogne (brother-in-law to Edward the Confessor), tried an invasion of his own and was only stopped by the formidable nature of Dover castle. Harold Godwinson’s sons tried a landing in 1068, and there were more attempts the following year.

The most dangerous of these saw a Viking army joining up with the northern earls. They seized York and declared independence, while in answer William took his own army north and began killing everyone who lived there.The ferocious ‘Harrying of the North’ in 1069 was designed to punish and deter, and it devastated the north of England in a broad swathe from York to Durham. Villages and crops were burnt and livestock slaughtered. Those who escaped a quick death at the hands of the royal army faced a slow one by starvation. During the winter of that year many people turned to cannibalism. The death toll has been estimated at 150,000, and the destruction left much of the area depopulated for generations.

From 1066 to 1204 most of the great Norman barons, including King William I, had estates on both sides of the Channel, and they frequently had to return to Normandy to put down rebellions. Whilst burning out the inhabitants of Mantes in 1087, the Conquerors horse shied at the flames and the pommel of his saddle inflicted a fatal rupture to an already sick man of sixty-one years. The King had a very corpulent figure when he died, and his corpse swelled even larger during its transit to the abbey of St Stephen in Caen for burial. It became so bloated that it wouldn’t fit the coffin prepared for it, and heavy-handed attempts to force the issue resulted in bursting his belly. It follows that William the Conquerors funeral was less than a sweet-smelling affair.

~credits to the source