What Happened to the Anglo-Saxons After the Norman Conquest? DOCUMENTARY

In the English-speaking world, the year 1066 is forever immortalized as the year that William, Duke of Normandy, defeated the Saxon King Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings, thereby ending centuries of Germanic Anglo-Saxon rule over the lowlands of Britain and ushering in a period in which England would be dominated by a French-speaking aristocracy. Of course, the Anglo-Saxon peoples did not simply vanish after the Norman conquest, nor did their customs or the Old English language they spoke. In this video, we will discuss what life was like for the Saxons under Norman rule, the relationship they had with their new Francophone overlords, and the linguistic and cultural intermixing between conquered and conqueror which played a seminal role in the creation of the modern English identity. 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There are also 15-minute guides to non-fiction books to get you clued up on complex topics quickly. Get advanced knowledge on psychology, philosophy, business, health, history, and a load more and get it fast at the times that best suit your schedule. And even better, get it all with a discount thanks to our special offer! The first 200 people to use our Imprint link in the description will get 20% off the annual membership cost, so get in there quick! Before we dive into the main topic of our video, let us first discuss the history of the Saxons and the events leading up to the Norman Conquest. In the 5th and 6th centuries, three distinct Germanic tribes from northern Germany and Denmark, the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes, began migrating to Britain. The Anglo-Saxon period saw Old English become the dominant language in Britain, and Saxon culture spread throughout the land. Around this time, the Old English epic Beowulf was written, although it is likely the story existed in oral tradition for some time prior. These tribes would remain separated into smaller groups and kingdoms until the reign of King Æthelstan from 924 to 939 AD. It was Æthelstan who first came to rule over all Anglo-Saxons, who he united into one realm, the Kingdom of England. By now, the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy had become the predominant power in Britain, but this was not to last. For thousands of years, people have believed that celestial bodies can govern the lives and events of mortal men. In March 1066, Halley's Comet appeared in the skies. The great-tailed star was perceived by many to be an omen of things to come. To the Anglo-Saxons, it was the harbinger of ill fortune. However, across the Channel, the Normans saw a more favourable omen, which would eventually give them their battle cry of Novostella novus rex, a new star, a new king. The year 1066 saw the death of King Edward the Confessor, and the beginning of a power struggle that would spell the end of Anglo-Saxon rule over Britain. King Edward, an extremely pious man, had fathered no children, and so the line of succession was cast into doubt. Harald Godwinson, the Earl of Wessex and brother of Edward's wife, succeeded Edward immediately following his death. However, across the seas to the south and east, there were other contenders to the throne. Duke William of Normandy, cousin of King Edward, asserted that Edward had promised the throne to him, and that the new King Harald had promised to support him. In Norway, King Harald Hardrada also claimed the English throne, citing his predecessor King Knut, who had been King of Denmark, Norway, and England until his death in 1035. In early September 1066, Hardrada set sail for England, stopping at the Norwegian-owned islands of Shetland and Orkney to strengthen his forces with Scottish soldiers supplied by his ally King Malcolm III of Scotland. On the 8th of September 1066, Hardrada met up with Tostig Godwinson at Tynemouth in north-east England. There, Hardrada began a campaign of looting and pillaging, defeating a small English force at the Battle of Fulford on the 20th of September. When word of Hardrada's invasion and the English defeat at Fulford reached King Harald on the south coast, he immediately gathered his army and marched north to meet them. Harald pushed his men hard and crossed the distance of 185 miles in just four days. The opposing armies met at the Battle of Stamford Bridge on the 25th of September. Harald's haste had taken Hardrada by surprise, and the ensuing battle saw the Norwegians routed and Hardrada killed. However, the tide of war would soon turn against the victorious King Harald. On the 28th of September, Duke William of Normandy landed his forces at Pevensey on the south coast of England. William began to burn the English estates in the south to force Harald into a confrontation as soon as possible, before his army could rest and reinforce. This tactic worked, and Harald marched out to confront William. The two sides met on the 14th of October, just outside the town of Hastings. There are various accounts of the battle that followed, although many are contradicting. What is known is that sunset that day was early, at 6.24pm, so much of the battle was fought in darkness. When the sun rose the next morning, Harald lay dead on the field, killed by a Norman arrow to the eye. The reign of the last Anglo-Saxon King was over. On Christmas Day of 1066, William would be crowned King of England, and immortalized throughout history as William the Conqueror. The Anglo-Saxon nobility had suffered heavily during the Norwegian and Norman invasions, and many fiefs were left without their lords, who William replaced with loyal Norman nobles. In many cases, the remaining family members of the former lords were married into Norman families, cementing Norman influence in the nobility. However, much of the remaining Anglo-Saxon nobility would not accept the new status quo without a fight. By 1068, Norman rule in England was under threat by rebellions. The city of Exeter had refused to swear fealty or to pay taxes to the new king. Exeter had become a center of resistance against the Normans, with Harald's mother Githa taking refuge there to gather support for an uprising after sending Harald's sons to Ireland to muster an army. William gathered a force of native English-fuelled militiamen and 500 Norman cavalrymen and marched to besiege the city, stopping along the way to smaller towns and villages thought to be supporting Exeter. When the king arrived, the city continued its defiance. William of Malnesbury, a prominent historian born nearly 30 years after these events in 1095, wrote that men on the city's wall removed their breeches, exposed themselves, and passed gas in the direction of the king's force. During the ensuing siege, which lasted 18 days, Githa was able to escape the siege by boat along the river Eks, before the siege ended with the city's conditional surrender. Exeter would swear fealty to William and in return would not pay the extra taxes levied after the conquest. It was also agreed that the city would be spared the looting which traditionally followed a city's surrender. Elsewhere in England, Aedric the Wild, an influential Anglo-Saxon who held lands in Herefordshire and Shropshire, allied himself with the Welsh princes Lleithyn ap Cynfin and Rhyrachlon ap Cynfin, co-rulers of the kingdoms of Gwynedd and Powys. After a failed siege of Hereford Castle, Aedric was forced back to Wales, from which he carried out multiple raids on Norman-held towns. With the assistance of his Welsh allies, Aedric would besiege Shrewsbury Castle, which William had ordered built in 1067. The siege failed, and Aedric and his allies were defeated by William in 1069. Aedric would later submit to William. William would continue to put down rebellions in the following years, including the Hurrying of the North, a campaign to pacify the rebellious northern English counties which had risen in support of Edgar Aetheling, the last remaining male heir to the House of Wessex and nephew of Edward the Confessor. After Gospatric, the Earl of Northumbria, rebelled and supported Edgar Aetheling, William was forced to march north to put down the rebellion. Edgar and many of the rebellious Anglo-Saxon lords fled to Scotland, and William replaced Gospatric with a Norman, Robert de Comene, who served as Earl of Northumbria only briefly, before a new rebellion killed him and many of his men. Edgar enlisted the support of Sfyne II, King of Denmark, who landed an army on the east coast, and with the help of the rebellious Anglo-Saxon lords, captured the city of York. William's fury at this rebellion would result in disaster for the native northern peasants and lords. After negotiations between the Normans and Danes, it was agreed that the invading Danish army would return to Denmark in return for a large payment. In the winter of 1069 to 1070, William conducted a scorched earth campaign to target the rebels' supplies and to ensure no opposing army could be fielded in the region. His army burned crops, barns, tools and homesteads, killing livestock and farmers alike. The Doomsday Book, a record of lands and land holdings across England and Wales, completed in 1086, lists almost two-thirds of all northern estates and holdings as wasted 16 years later, and English chronicler Aldric Vitalis wrote in in his Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy that as many as 100,000 people died of starvation following the hurrying. All Anglo-Saxon nobles in the north were replaced by Normans, cementing Norman control of the aristocracy. Edgar would again flee to Scotland, until William's invasion in 1072 forced him to flee yet again. However, after a two-year stay in Flanders with another of William's enemies, Count Robert the Frisian, Edgar returned to Scotland in 1074. Finally, after attempting to sail to France and becoming shipwrecked on the east coast of England, Edgar submitted to William. His dream of claiming the English throne ended there, although Edgar's niece, Matilda of Scotland, would eventually marry William's son Henry in 1100, becoming Queen of England. By 1080, almost all the Saxon nobility were replaced by Normans, and those who remained married into Norman families. However, some influential Saxon landowners who supported William had remained as tenants-in-chief, such as Thorkell of Ardennes, Earl of Warwick, who would later be known as Turchill de Ardernne in the Norman-French style. Norman French became the language of the royal court and the upper classes, while the lower classes continued to use Old English. One example of this language difference is in our modern English words for various meats. Norman nobility would have enjoyed meat for most meals, while it would be the lower classes who reared the animals. Because of this, we still use the Old English origin words for the animals, for example pigs, cows, and chickens. However, we use French origin words for the meats, for example pork from porc, beef from bouffe, and poultry from poulet. Many minor Saxon landowners fled England following the conquest. Many of these ended up in an unlikely place, Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Yudfather's Saga, a chronicle of Edward the Confessor's life and the Norman conquest, describes a great exodus of Anglo-Saxons in a fleet of 300 ships sailing to Miklagard, a Scandinavian word meaning great city, referring to Constantinople, widely regarded as the largest and most splendiferous city in Europe. The chronicle details the exploits of the Saxons on their journey, including the raiding of Menorca and Majorca and their eventual arrival in Constantinople, where they defended the city from a siege. The emperor is said to have rewarded the Saxons by gifting them land to the north across the sea, in the area we now know as Crimea, a land that had formerly been controlled by Byzantium. Many of the Saxons sailed to this land and conquered it from the heathens who inhabited it, establishing a colony that would become known as New England. However, it must be noted that the existence of the New England colony is impossible to verify, and the only references we have are from chronicles written hundreds of years after the fact. What can be verified is that many Saxon exiles joined a regiment of the Byzantine army, known as the Varangian Guard, which up until 1066 recruited mainly from Scandinavia. King Harald Hardrada himself had been its commander after joining it in 1034 while in exile from Norway. The unit served as both personal bodyguards of the Byzantine emperor and as elite troops for use in decisive moments in battle, and was known for their unwavering loyalty and dedication to duty. In the years following 1066, many Anglo-Saxons fleeing the Normans found their way to the Varangian Guard, and by the late 1070s were its most prominent ethnicity. The Varangian Guard would go on to fight in several campaigns for the Byzantine emperor, including fighting against their old enemies the Normans, when an army of the northern French knights, who previously had invaded southern Italy, led by the wily Duke Robert Guiscard, now led an invasion of Byzantium. Guiscard's force met a Byzantine army led by Emperor Alexios I Komnenos at the city of Dyrrhachium in 1081. Over the course of the battle, the 1,000-strong detachment of Varangians was separated from the rest of the army after charging Norman cavalry. The Varangians took heavy losses, and survivors were forced to retreat and find shelter in a church. Unfortunately for the Varangians, the pursuing Normans simply set the church alight, killing all inside. Anglo-Saxon exiles would not have another chance for vengeance against the Normans while in service to the Byzantine emperor. Back in Britain, the Norman rulers had established complete control over England, as well as parts of Wales and Scotland. The ruling nobles were almost exclusively Norman, speaking Norman French and practising Norman customs. However, over time a new identity and language would begin to emerge in the aristocracy, Anglo-Norman. With the merging of many Anglo-Saxon and Norman families by marriage, younger generations of Norman nobles were representative of both cultures, speaking both Anglo-Norman and Old English, and taking up some Saxon customs, such as wearing moustaches and long hair. The Anglo-Norman language diverged further from Continental French, incorporating English words and styles and growing into its own distinct dialect. By 1100, the confluence of Anglo-Norman French and Old English had developed into a hybrid language, Middle English, distinct from both of its parents. Latin and French vocabulary and spellings became common in Written English. Middle English continued to develop and became the primary language of both the peasantry and nobility, with Anglo-Norman more commonly becoming a learned second language for the aristocracy. The rising tensions between England and France during the Hundred Years' War put pressure on English nobility to further embrace their English identities rather than their Norman ones. By the 14th century, the Norman identity had been assimilated by English, which would once again become the language of royalty in 1399, when King Henry IV became the first monarch in centuries to speak English as his mother tongue. Although the Norman blood still rules the English throne, it can be said that linguistically and culturally, the Anglo-Saxons had lived to see the end of Norman Britain. So, to summarise an answer to the question what happened to the Saxons after 1066, they endured and evolved and incorporated the Norman customs and language into their own. With that in mind then, perhaps it would be fair to say that the true victors are those who came after, who experienced a culture enriched by both Anglo-Saxons and Normans. More videos on Medieval English history are on the way, so make sure you are subscribed and have pressed the bell button to see them. Please, consider liking, commenting, and sharing it helps immensely. Our videos would be impossible without our kind patrons and youtube channel members, whose ranks you can join via the links in the description to know our schedule, get early access to our videos, access our discord, and much more. This is the Kings and Generals channel, and we will catch you on the next one.