Norman Conquest Research Articles

Religion, politics and society in Britain, 800-1066

Introduction. 1 Church and Economy in the Long Twelfth Century 2 The Church and the Norman Conquest 3. Henry I and His Religion. 4 The Conflict Between Henry II and Thomas Becket. 5 Parishes and Parish Priests 6 The Monastic Century 1066-1216 7 Archbishop Hubert Walter and St Hugh of Lincoln: Church and King in the late Twelfth Century 8 Intellectual Life and Culture and How Related to Politics in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries 9 The Early English Franciscans 10 Changes and Continuities under Henry III

ELAINE TREHARNE. Living Through Conquest: The Politics of Early English, 1020-1220.

Elaine Treharne has done more than anyone to put the twelfth century back into English literary history. Her publications, from her 1997 edition of the Old English Life of St Nicholas to Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century, co-edited with Mary Swan in 2000, to a series of major articles over the past 15 years (surely worthy of collection in Ashgate’s Variorum series), have shown beyond all doubt that vernacular textual production continued unabated after the Norman Conquest. The publication of this book, her first monograph, is accordingly a major event. The central claim of the book is that writing in English (as opposed to Latin, Norse or French) was a statement of English identity; accordingly English writing constitutes ‘a literature of resistance’ to Danish, and later Norman, colonial overlordship. This position is explored over eight short chapters, organized broadly chronologically, and in stimulating readings of texts and manuscripts like the York Gospels, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a confraternity agreement between Worcester and nearby monasteries, homiliaries including CCCC 188, Cotton Vespasian D. xiv, Bodley 343 and Hatton 116 and the Eadwine Psalter. These are followed by a bibliography and index.

Why are there so few French place-names in England?

The Norman Conquest of 1066 has left a considerable mark on the English landscape (in the form of cathedrals, churches, and castles) and had a massive impact on the English language. Both of these are visible (and audible) today. It is well known that a very sizeable percentage of the vocabulary of Modern English is of French origin. What is generally realised less is the extent to which these are not loanwords in the conventional sense (that is, words incorporated from a foreign language) but terms taken over into English at a time of sustained language contact between English and French, when the two languages coexisted on English soil. Recent advances in lexicography, in the Oxford English Dictionary in particular, now make it possible to track much more precisely the processes which have led to this massive incursion of French terminology into English. Generally speaking, it is normally assumed that Anglo-Norman was a predominantly urban vernacular (Short, 2009), a view which some recent work has challenged (Rothwell 2008, 2009, 2012; Trotter 2012a, 2012b, 2013).

Medievalism in The Excursion

Wordsworth's comparison of Excursion to AntiChapel of a gothic sets up an implicit contrast between contemporary Anglican values in 1814, and medieval, Catholic, or pre-Reformation past. He continues analogy by explaining that his minor Pieces. . .when they shall be properly arranged, will be found by Reader to have such connection with main Work as may give them claim to be likened to little Cells, Oratories, and sepulchral Recesses, ordinarily included in those Edifices (1814 viii-ix; Cornell ed. 38) (1) His ideal or attentive readers included Bishop of London and Anglican clergy whose high commendations he cited in a letter to his brother Christopher (MY II 171). These readers would have noted Catholic allusions: Cells and Oratories were part of Catholic churches where monks and nuns had prayed for others' souls while for Anglicans, an oratory was simply a domestic chapel. Similarly, a Recluse would have been a celibate member of an enclosed monastic order. In a poem that was to help reclaim and renovate war-weary world of 1814, Wordsworth's simile reveals contradictions between Catholic or pre-Reformation past and contemporary Anglican culture as a source of ethical value. Medievalism was only defined as a style and state of mind in Victorian period, when Ruskin divided Western history into a trinity of ages that represented not only historical moments but also cultural perspectives, namely, classicism, medievalism, and modernism (Ruskin 153): indeed, when Wordsworth wrote Excursion word medieval was yet to enter English language. (2) Examples of medievalism nevertheless appear as soon as thinkers and artists detected difference and distance between themselves and Middle Ages. Medievalism is adoption of style and / or values of Middle Ages, usually prompted by a need to find a critical distance from present. Unlike Antiquarianism, where pastness is primary source of value, medievalism looks for value by contrasting style, ethics, and society of past with present. For Wordsworth and many of his contemporaries, problem with Middle Ages was domination of Roman Catholic Church. Histories of England, even David Hume's version which is largely unsympathetic towards religion, claimed that, after Norman Conquest, William I depressed English identity (I 248), allowing his archbishop Lanfranc to promote the interests of papacy (I 226). Yet perhaps values could still be found in Middle Ages, and each of four speakers in Excursion represents a slightly different interpretation of such values. Wanderer is associated with minstrel tradition, while Solitary's retreat from world connects him with recluse or Hermit. Pastor creates a more chivalric view of Middle Ages, especially his narrative of Sir Alfred Irthing. Finally, Poet's medievalism is less distinct, but he is attracted to ideas of tradition and nationhood. In combination, these perspectives contribute to a uniquely Wordsworthian, Reformed medievalism. full expression of Wordsworth's medievalism is Ecclesiastical Sketches (1822), a sonnet sequence on history of English Church begun around December, 1820, after a walk with Sir George Beaumont through different parts of his Estate, with a view to fix upon Site of a New Church which he intended to erect (Jackson 137). The Catholic Question, which was agitated in Parliament about that time, kept my thoughts in same course; and it struck me, that certain points in Ecclesiastical History of our Country might advantageously be presented to view in Verse (Jackson 135). Wordsworth's sonnets and his notes to Ecclesiastical Sketches reveal a new, or rather re-formed, narrative about history of English Church, which Robert Southey was also developing in Book of Church (1824). …

The Remarkable Life of Ansger, a Breton Monk and Poet from the Loire Valley Who Became Bishop of Catania in Sicily 1091–1124

A key figure in the establishment of the Latin church in Arabic Sicily after the Norman conquest was Bishop Ansger of Catania 1091-1124. Newly found information shows that, by origin a Breton, he first became a monk at St. Florent of Saumur in the Loire valley, then made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. After his return he entered the monastery of St. Eufemia in Calabria where his rise to the office of prior led Count Roger of Sicily to choose him, with the approval of Pope Urban II, as the first bishop of Catania and abbot of St. Agatha. In a distinguished career of thirty-three years he oversaw the construction of its great cathedral church, contributed to its cultural life - one of his monks, Geoffrey Malaterra, dedicated his famous history to Ansger - and in all probability was instrumental in the introduction of Latin abbeys from the Holy Land into Sicily. As a Latin poet he left a remarkable fifty-line testament of his life in rhymed verse.

The Anglo-Saxon World by Nicholas J. Higham and Martin J. Ryan (review)

Reviewed by: The Anglo-Saxon World by Nicholas J. Higham and Martin J. Ryan John Kennedy Higham, Nicholas J. and Martin J. Ryan, The Anglo-Saxon World, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2013; cloth; pp. xv, 477; 100 colour illustrations, 40 line drawings, 60 maps; R.R.P. US$45.00; ISBN 9780300125344. Chronologically, the scope of this this book is even broader than its title implies: Chapter 1, ‘Britain in and out of the Roman Empire’ treats the entire period of Roman rule in Britain, not just its final decades; while the final chapter, number 8, ‘The Transformation of Anglo-Saxon England’, is largely devoted to developments after the Norman Conquest. Both of these chapters are the work of Nicholas Higham, who is also responsible for Chapters 2 and 3, ‘The Origins of England’ and ‘From Tribal Chieftains to Christian Kings’. Chapters 4 to 7, in a book with a broadly chronological arrangement, are the work of Martin Ryan – ‘The Mercian Supremacies’, The Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings, c. 825–900’, ‘Conquest, Reform and the Making of England’ (dealing with the first three quarters of the tenth century), and ‘The Age of Æthelred’. Each chapter is followed by two essays, each normally six or seven pages long, with a general heading ‘Sources and Issues’. These deal with diverse topics – ‘Gildas’ and ‘King Arthur’ (here identified as probably originating in folklore) in the case of Chapter 1, for example, and ‘The Bayeux Tapestry’ and ‘Domesday Book’ at the end of the final chapter. Regrettably, these are not listed in the table of contents. Eleven of the essays are by Higham, the remaining five by Ryan. The only jointly authored section is an excellent and very readable ‘Introduction’ discussing the relevance of the Anglo-Saxons today and outlining developments in the study of the Anglo-Saxon period since 1066. As befits a one-volume survey, the work tends to steer a middle path when discussing the many obscure and contentious issues that arise, making clear when matters are in dispute. Regarding the ‘Adventus Saxonum’, for example, Higham concludes that ‘Overall … the evidence favours large-scale population continuity alongside significant migration’ (p. 104). His later observation that ‘Behind the rhetoric, the Normans had imposed an alien regime on an unwilling people by force … constructing a racially segregated state in which the minority treated the majority with contempt’ (p. 412) is a rare deviation from a measured tone. In a ‘blurb’ on the book’s back cover Michael Wood states that it ‘will be of value to specialists but accessible to the much wider range of readers who are fascinated by this formative period in British history’. However, some members of both groups will experience a little disappointment. Serious students will regret the absence of any footnotes in a work very frequently asserting that more recent scholarship has overturned or seriously challenged longstanding interpretations. (The detailed chapter bibliographies are a [End Page 172] valuable but not entirely satisfactory substitute.) The ‘general reader’ with a layman’s interest in the period may find the detailed discussion, particularly in the earlier chapters largely based on archaeology, somewhat arid in places. Though beautifully produced and richly illustrated with many impressive colour photographs this is no coffee table book. It requires careful reading of a text that occasionally makes demands on the reader. Its claim to cover the ‘world’ of the Anglo-Saxons is largely justified. Old English poetry and Anglo-Saxon visual arts receive little attention, but diverse disciplines, including history, archaeology, numismatics, environmental science, and genealogy, are brought to bear on illuminating many aspects of religious and secular life during the long period covered. Recent developments, such as the discovery of the Prittlewell Chambered Grave and the Staffordshire Hoard (both the subject of essays) are considered. This study is likely to replace the highly regarded The Anglo-Saxons (Penguin, 1982), edited by James Campbell, a work it resembles in scope and physical appearance, and may well establish itself as the standard one-volume study of Anglo-Saxon England for several years to come. John Kennedy Charles Sturt University Copyright © 2014 John Kennedy

Continuity and Discontinuity in the Anglo-American Historiography of the Norman Conquest of the Second Half of XX century

Continuity and Discontinuity in the Anglo-American Historiography of the Norman Conquest of the Second Half of XX century

Review: The English Castle, 1066–1650, by John Goodall

John Goodall. The English Castle, 1066–1650 New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2011, 480 pp., 250 color and 100 b/w illus. $75, ISBN 97803001105 John Goodall has written what is perhaps the most important, authoritative, and scholarly book on English castles for a generation. It is a large tome (weighing seven pounds) with an incredible amount of information, marshaled in great detail and presented with deep understanding, clarity, and command. Additionally, Goodall proposes a series of exciting new ideas here that, taken together, mark a watershed in castle studies. The author states his aim in The English Castle thus: “this book is an architectural study that aims to set this legion of buildings in historical context. … It is intended to be a provocative work, challenging received opinions, and, hopefully, formulating many new ones” (xiii). Goodall organizes the book chronologically: after an introductory discussion, we get successive chapters organized around royal reigns, with titles such as “The Early Angevin Castle: Henry II and Richard I” and “The Lion of England: Edward III.” Its chronological scope extends over six centuries, from buildings prior to the Norman Conquest to the English Civil War, and it examines buildings from across England and Wales and beyond (more on this below). Goodall’s ostensible objective is to focus on four great castles in particular: Dover, Durham, Kenilworth, and Windsor. Although he gives these four castles their own subsections in the bibliography, this claimed focus is not particularly noticeable as one reads through the text itself, so rich is the detail on literally hundreds of castles of all areas and periods. To understand the importance of Goodall’s arguments, one must …

Woven emotions

Following Forceville (2005, 2011), in this paper I show that the same conceptual models underlie the expression of Old English emotions in both the language and the visual modes. Kövecses (2000, 2005) and Stefanowitsch (2004, 2006) have shown that verbal expressions and idioms used to describe emotions can be traced back to a limited number of conceptual metaphors. In the light of these findings, I will analyze here the pictorial representations of emotions in the Bayeux Tapestry, an 11th century embroidered cloth that narrates and depicts the events that led up to the Norman Conquest of England and the invasion itself. The tapestry, which has been described as an example of early narrative art (McCloud, 1993, pp. 12–14), shows hundreds of human figures in an astounding range of poses and circumstances. My analysis of the set of pictorial signals used in the Anglo-Norman Bayeux Tapestry to represent emotion types such as ‘anger’, ‘grief’ and ‘fear’ shows that (1) Anglo-Norman artists used a well-organized set of visual stimuli to convey emotion-related meanings in a patterned way, that (2) the same idealised conceptual models are shared by verbal and visual modalities, and that (3) whereas verbal expressions of emotions regularly draw on non-embodied, behavioural concepts, visual representations show a clear preference for embodied container concepts.

Edward Wheatley Stumbling Blocks before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a DisabilityStumbling Blocks before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability. Edward Wheatley. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010. Pp. xiii+284.

<i>Edward Wheatley</i> Stumbling Blocks before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability<i>Stumbling Blocks before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability</i>. Edward Wheatley. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010. Pp. xiii+284.

The Norman conquest: the Battle of Hastings and the fall of Anglo-Saxon England

The Norman conquest: the Battle of Hastings and the fall of Anglo-Saxon England

Anglo-Saxon Prognostics: An Edition and Translation of Texts from London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius A.iii

Anglo-Saxon Prognostics: An Edition and Translation of Texts from London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius A.iii

Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Similarities in the Norman Influence, Contact and “Conquests” of Sicily, Southern Italy and England

abstractThe establishment of the so-called “Norman World” is a debated phenomenon. The influence of the Normans can be found throughout Europe in matters of politics, warfare, and cultural interaction. The empire established by the Normans from the tenth through the thirteenth centuries was based upon the fighting prowess and military might of a people led by notable men such as William the Conqueror and Robert Guiscard. The similarities and differences between the Norman conquests of the eleventh century reveal reciprocity in contact, influence, and exchange among Norman populations. Similarly, the autonomy and distinctness of Norman populations from England to the Mediterranean remained. This article explores the extent of Norman contact, areas of influence and methods of exchange during the most active Norman conquests of the Middle Ages.

Animals and Society: An Introduction to Human-Animal Studies. By Margo DeMello. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. xiv + 488 pp. Illustrations, suggested readings, bibliography, and index. Paper $34.50. Animal Encounters: Human and Animal Interactions in Britain from the Norman Conquest to World War One. By Arthur MacGregor. London: Reaktion Books, 2012. 552 pp. Illustrations, bibliography, and index. Cloth $60.00.

<i>Animals and Society: An Introduction to Human-Animal Studies</i>. By Margo DeMello. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. xiv + 488 pp. Illustrations, suggested readings, bibliography, and index. Paper $34.50. <i>Animal Encounters: Human and Animal Interactions in Britain from the Norman Conquest to World War One</i>. By Arthur MacGregor. London: Reaktion Books, 2012. 552 pp. Illustrations, bibliography, and index. Cloth $60.00.

Forest laws in England and Normandy in the twelfth century

One of the oldest ideas about the Norman conquest is that William the Conqueror introduced into England from Normandy the legal concept of ‘foresta’, land where hunting and the environment in which it took place were protected by draconian laws. The laws were not imposed on a blank canvas, and a combination of different factors, such as earlier extensive royal hunting rights, the king's will, the application of forest law to land ‘outside’ that organized in manors and assessed for geld, and the status of escheated land as temporary royal demesne, all worked towards a great expansion of the afforested area. In England a great deal of non-royal demesne was under forest law, whereas in Normandy ducal forests were broadly speaking ducal demesne. In England the competing interests of royal sport and revenue and those of the political elite combined with population pressure to make the forests a toxic political issue in a way not paralleled in Normandy.

Renée R. Trilling, The Aesthetics of Nostalgia: Historical Representation in Old English VerseThe Aesthetics of Nostalgia: Historical Representation in Old English Verse. Renée R. Trilling. Toronto and Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 2009. Pp. ix+296.

<i>Renée R. Trilling</i>, The Aesthetics of Nostalgia: Historical Representation in Old English Verse<i>The Aesthetics of Nostalgia: Historical Representation in Old English Verse</i>. Renée R. Trilling. Toronto and Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 2009. Pp. ix+296.

Historical Perspectives on the Anglo-Scottish Union Debate: Re-reading the Norman Conquest in the 1610s

SummaryThe article considers the development and the diversity of the understandings of the Norman Conquest in Jacobean England. In 1603, James VI of Scotland ascended the throne of England, and one of his first policies to unify the two kingdoms culminated in failure in face of English opposition. Modern historians have demonstrated that at the heart of this quick collapse lay a constitutional struggle—the English fear of the loss of their sovereignty. Taking this as the vantage point, the article examines a number of historical publications composed by English lawyers in the following decade. The Jacobean period witnessed a significant proliferation of historical literature, and modern historians have stressed that English common lawyers staunchly adhered to a belief in the ancient constitution, a belief in the antiquity of English law that was counter to royal policies. The article demonstrates how the Union debate, despite its eventual collapse, produced unparalleled interest in the meaning of conquest in the 1610s. It also considers the works of civil lawyers in comparison. By comparing the differing accounts of the Norman Conquest, the article ultimately demonstrates the contested nature of James's kingship in England.

‘Fause Frenche Enough’

The English language lesson scene in Shakespeare’s Henry V has attracted more critical attention for its sexual innuendoes than for its political significance even though King Henry was historically instrumental in the demise of French in medieval England. Closely modeled on early modern primers, the language lesson is a stage metaphor of the king’s language policy, and settles old ideological scores by canceling the effects of the Norman Conquest. Traces of insular French in Kate’s morphosyntactic idiosyncrasies serve the political agenda of a play chronicling the process that took the French tongue from authority to disempowerment. Keywords: Shakespeare; Henry V; language primers; French; Anglo-French

The Invention of St Mildburg of Wenlock: Community and Cult in an Anglo-Norman Shropshire Town

This article considers a particular episode in the history of Wenlock Priory, the Shropshire monastery where, in 1101, were discovered the relics of St Mildburg by a community of Cluniac monks from France who had colonized the abbey in the generation following the Norman Conquest. Building on recent invaluable work conducted on the subject by Paul Hayward, this article situates the invention of Mildburg’s relics in the larger history of religious life in Wenlock, and examines the problematical Miracula Inventionis Beatae Mylburge Virginis and related sources in order to reconstruct an image of the cult and assess the role the discovery of Mildburg’s relics played in the developing social and political microcosm of Wenlock and its environs. It will be argued that the invention of Milburg’s relics was an attempt by the Cluniac monks to consolidate their institutional position in the area that is likely to have met with mixed feelings.

The Danes and the Danish Language in England: An Anthroponymical Point of View

Evidence is provided by place names and personal names of Nordic origin for Danish settlement in England and Scotland in the Viking period and later. The names show that Danish settlement was densest in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Leicestershire but can also be traced outside the Danelaw. In the North, Danish settlers or their descendants moved across the Pennines to the Carlisle Plain, and from there along the coast of Cumberland and on across the sea to the Isle of Man, and perhaps back again to southern Lancashire and Cheshire before the middle of the tenth century. There,was also a spread of Danes around south-western England in the early eleventh century, reflecting the activities of Cnut the Great and his followers. After the Norman Conquest, Nordic influence spread into Dumfriesshire and the Central Lowlands of Scotland. It was in the more isolated, northern communities that Nordic linguistic influence continued to thrive.