Marc Morris - TMHistoryIcons 2019 - Bad Histories of the Norman Conquest

sorry we're just technical interruption so this is to record me yes and this was so people in the room can hear me if I just talk like that can you hear me at the back great because there's no you can't so you'd rather I did that right okay okay here we go right well it's nice to be in Yorkshire it feels very stand-up it's lovely to be back in the ocean last time I was in Yorkshire talking to a bunch of history teachers with the Historical Association conference in 2013 and with a nice large audience about 400 people the talk went very well you know how as when you do a good lesson and afterwards we all piled out into the corridor to go to another room where I could sign books so I was feeling pretty good about myself until I was walking along that corridor between two local ladies who were quite elderly and one of them turned to the other and said you were quite full of himself warranty so it's in all humility I come before you this afternoon to talk about bad histories of the Norman Conquest it's a talk of any given once before to a much smaller group of school teachers and I think they found it useful I think they also thought me very angry because it contains some ideas which is quite contentious and and some things I've obviously had on my chest for some time and undetermined to get off so in brief this talk is a response to the notion that the wrong side won in 1066 that the English of the good guys and the Normans are the bad guys that the anglo-saxons are us and the Normans of them now in my experience these these ideas are rarely found in academia and I don't even think I encountered them when I studied the conquest at school where my memory on that subject is somewhat fuzzy I can remember encountering them I think for the first time in 1995 when I took a group of fellow students down to Battle Abbey and that's my first slide whoever's got a clicker okay when I took a group of students down to battle Abbey to watch the annual reenactment of the Battle of Hastings and listening to the commentary over the tannoy I was left in no doubt that I was supposed to be supporting the team that was about to lose but since writing my own book on the conquest I've encountered this attitude more and more last year for example I gave a talk about 1066 as part of a double bill and I listened to another tool which might as well have been called Good King Harald so I set out to investigate this notion by reading popular books on the Norman Conquest I borrowed children's books and adult books from my local library and by and large the children's books were pretty commendable they were academically up-to-the-minute at least at the time they were published and usually given the once-over by academic historians the books aimed at adults to put it as mildly as I possibly can were not so good and for the purposes of this paper I've decided to limit my discussion to just three of them which seem to be the most popular so if we have the first one coincidentally they all share the same title they're all called 1066 though each has a different subtitle the first up is 1066 the year of the conquest by David Howe a--the published in 1977 the second is we go back one that the middle one yeah the second is 1066 the year of three battles by Frank McLin published in 1999 and the third is 1066 not 1066 a new history of the Norman Conquest by Peter Rex published in 2009 now it's not just a title that these books share by and large the story they tell is pretty much the same it's common themes are as follows theme one England before the conquest was an ideal state like Eden before the fall or perhaps Tolkien's Shire if we go into the next slide move back to David Howard's book and you can see where the illustrator was taking his cue from it had a kind of democracy its Kings were elected its army was part-time an amateur its people were happy and bucolic David Howard describing this pre-conquest paradise describes England as having quote an air of pastoral innocence point two if you want an embodiment of this English spirit no further than Earl Godwin father of the future King Harold Godwin is England incarnate a man of unimpeachable character possessed of integrity and humility but great as he is he is but a shadow compared to his son Harold next slide Harold I think this is from a cigarette card Harold is really nothing less than a superhero a supremely skilled politician he is popular with all ranks of men a great warrior he also understands the pity of war and tries to limit bloodshed whenever possible a man of passion he chooses his life partner for reasons of pure love selfless and guileless he is surprised when the English crown is offered to him in 1066 and accepts it only out of patriotic duty on the other side of the channel however is Normandy Normandy is a very different place in brief you wouldn't want to live there it's people are primitive even barbarous and as such Normandy tends forever towards anarchy every landowner has his castle and there is little or nothing in the way of law and order all that exists is the iron will of their autocratic Duke that Duke from 1035 to 1066 were should say 10 86 and 87 was William sometimes known as the Conqueror but we will be calling him the bastard unusually cruel and harsh William is forever hacking off people's limbs and gouging out their eyes when he and his fellow Normans go to war they do so with relish taking no prisoners raping and pillaging their way across the countryside indulging themselves in an orgy of it a few of the words from those three groups Delius deranged a / blind fanatic a man of southern wings and cruel humor a vindictive and irrational man these are some of the words used to describe him probably a closeted homosexual according to how earthing McLin edward grew up in normandy and favors the Normans you might think this would make the primary English because that would never promise the throne to William he can't have done he couldn't have done and if he did he didn't mean to man if he didn't mean if he did mean to he must have changed his mind because on his deathbed he unequivocally granted the kingdom to Harold this is not a matter of debate as a matter of fact Harold was not just nominated by Edward he was posed all of which real men shun they invade England and beat Harold but Harold can't really be blamed for losing because he was quite tired from having to find the Vikings three weeks earlier probably a bit depressed as well that's in haloth in normal circumstances Harold could have beaten the Normans easy next slide the end result is calamity disaster apocalypse England has fallen paradise is lost Sauron has the ring but if the book has a coda we go to the next slide we realize it will eventually all turn out okay ultimately good will prevail the English English language and English news survived and triumphs now in case I haven't laid it on too thickly with my trowel I think this is a bit of a travesty it's not history it's ideology ideology masquerading as history and worse it's a kind of eye cut for blanket for an unthinking in at times noxious form of English nationalism let's share for a moment the idea of pre-conquest England as an ideal state and focus instead on integrated citizens ie Earl Godwin and his son the government sense to remind you actually don't need reminding that just to refresh your memories of the salient facts Godwin rose from nowhere to become Earl of Wessex during the reign of King Canute he was the most important man in England after the king himself and maintained that position during the reigns of mutes two short-lived sons half the keynesian Herald and during the first half of the reign of Edward the Confessor he was in Howard's words the most English of Englishmen party pragmatic extrovert a man who displays remarkable patience and loyalty in dealing with it hugely irritating Edward the Confessor and politician a ring our political who gives sensible advice which Edward rejects how did these historians know this how did these authors compose such a vivid portrait of a man who has been dead for almost a millennium our sources for this period are generally visibly thin in the case of in the case of Harold hare foot who reigned ruled England for five years between 1035 and 1040 we don't even have so much as a single adjective the answer as to why these authors can produce such vivid pem portraits of Earl Godwin is because they are reliant on a source called the Vita eduarda regis which is my next slide you can obtain this from oxford medieval texts for having about 180 pounds and hardback so it's hard to come by the vita eduarda regis or as it's translated here the life of king edward in this document Godwin does indeed bestride the world like the benign Colossus he is moderate reasonable kind wise brave and selfless all the things that his latter-day admirers contain he is the problem is that the life of King Edward is far from being a dispassionate source it's not even a biography of Edward in any meaningful sense it's a political tract a piece of propaganda written between 1065 and 1066 Queen Edith who was also coincidentally Godwin's daughter almost certainly to justify the kind of transfer of power that eventually happened in January 1066 when Edward died and Harold Godwinson was crowned as his replacement so it should come as no surprise that a piece of writing created solely for the purpose of putting across the Godwin side of the story should portray the Pater familias as a benign demigod and all his children as Paragons of virtue not only is Godwin the savior and father of his nation in this book Edith his daughter AF Edwards Queen Edith is described as inferior to none superior to all recommended by the distinction of her family and the ineffable beauty of her surpassing youth her brother Tostig who became Earl of Northumbria and of course played a crucial role in the events of 1065 1066 toss ting is a man of great courage endowed with great wisdom and shrewdness of mind but of course it's his older brother Harold who outshines them all a true friend of his race and people says the life of King Edward he wielded his father's powers with even more activity and walked in the ways of patience and mercy when Harold succeeded his father of Essex in 1053 the whole english host breathed again and was consoled for its loss nor is it surprising that the author of the life should denigrate the Godwin's political opponents it's from its pages that we get the impression the Confessor as a volatile unreasonable and irascible qualities which are of course foregrounded when Edward forces the Godwin forces Godwin and his sons into exile in 1051 and banishes Edith to a nunnery what is surprising to me at least is that modern writers should parrot the views expressed in the life as if they were sober impartial reportage somehow representative of the views of all 11th century Englishman rather than the views of a particular family or clan quote from Frank McLean here it is important to be clear that it was Edward who precipitated the crisis of 1051 he says and that in the words of his biographer ie the life of King Edward he provoked Godwin beyond endurance when the life compares Godwin and Edward to the Biblical Kings David and Saul McKinney McLean concludes that a general consensus was forming that Godwin was a kind of David ranged against Edward Saul David haloth meanwhile cautions us that in assessing Harold Godwinson we have to steer a path between his Norman detractors and later English sources which heaped praise on Harold's head the middle path turns out to be the life of King Edward which quote leaves an impression of Harold which one can only think is much closer to the truth Harold is a very capable man patient friendly tolerant good-humoured and easygoing by nature the fact that McLean and House take the life story entirely at face value accounts not only for the sympathetic portrayal of the Godwin family it also accounts for their Roseate impression of life in England during Edward the confessors reign once Godwin and his sons have forced their way back from exile in 1052 and re imposed their will on Edward says the life there was deep joy both the court and in the whole country and so with the kingdom made safe on all sides by these Nobles the most kindly Edward passed his life in security and peace total credence of the life leaves both McLean and Howard to conclude that the Godwin's can do no wrong so their natural enemies must be the ones at fault the self guard the Earl of Mercia who objected to the rise of the Godwin's and during the 10 50s is too drive my health as a permanently troublesome Earl and is lambasted for his disgraceful behavior when toss dick Godwinson I love this one when toasted Godwinson provokes the people of Northumbria to rise up against him in 1065 Frank McLean is quick to equip the Earl of any blame tossed exprience urn was justice what irks them was that toss ting had an efficient system of Taxation based on equality tax reform a tawdry toasting most telling of all is the anxiety of both orders authors to absorb Godwin himself from any responsibility for the murder of Edward brother happened in others which leads me to a little here's the thing about propaganda in these three books it is a purely continental phenomenon in Franklin's for example the word proper this occurs over 20 times it is used once to describe a Danish source it is used another time to describe a French source at all other times the word propaganda or propagandists are accompanied by the word Norman the same is true in Harrisburg where we hear about Norman propaganda on nine occasions but not once is the term applied to describe in English sort like for example the piece of Rex's book is a last not searchable online so I can't provide you with any detail statistics and I'm certainly not going to read it again in order to reduce them but I think we can surmise his attitude when he describes our two principal Norman sources William of zuma-zuma pottier as dr. gurbles with two heads the simple truth is that all sources for this period are to some extent propaganda even the anglo-saxon Chronicle which is often treated like some impartial rolling news feed of events the facts of the reign are in the anglo-saxon Chronicle says David halluf at one point even the anglo-saxon Chronicle has pronounced political sympathies as you will remember the argument starts 15 years earlier in the year 10:51 according to northern sources it was this year that Edward the Confessor promised the English succession to the Future William the Conqueror and so doubt about William of Malmesbury another chronicler writing about half a century later after the event found it impossible to say for certain what had happened 10:51 I should like to warn the reader he says in his account of that year but here I perceived the course of my narrative to be somewhat in doubt because the truth of the fact is in suspense and uncertain to this day some very eminent scholars remain unconvinced by the Norman claim but I think it's fair to say but most of them accept that in that year Edward the Confessor did promise the succession of England this is census our three popular writers almost to the point of apoplexy unable to prove that it did not happen they spend pages trying to find themselves in logical knots trying to explain why it shouldn't have happened or why it couldn't have happened Peter wrecks for instance tries for legal president there was he claims a long-standing tradition tradition but only legitimately born claimants could be recognized in England citing the words of the Synod of 787 but ignoring the election of commutes bastard son Harold in 1035 elsewhere tries to construct an argument from silence there is no evidence that King Edward ever made any public decoration in favour of the do other than Norman assertions and had he done so nor was there a written will since had it existed William would surely have produced it I just can't even begin with the sort of logic of that statement an alternative approach is to admit that something may have been said about the throne in 1051 but to assume that it was vague and inconsequential a stupid mistake on the part of the soft brain confessor possibly Edward didn't did not mean to make a binding promise rights howarth he might have made some informal unbinding promise says Frank McLean the possibility that Edward did mean to make a binding promise in each case is left unexplored next slide please Harold's trip to Normandy which during which he reiterated Edwards promise generally dated to 1010 64 and famously depicted on the tapestry receives similar treatment we are invited to consider that it might not have happened at all in spite of overwhelming evidence in both English and Norman sources that it did we are assured that if it did happen Normandy was clearly not Harold's intended destination he was either on a fishing trip in the channel and flown off course or else engaged in the kind of cunning diplomacy that is attributed to him in the life of king edward i think we've got another slide when it comes to 1066 itself away but there is no doubt whatsoever Edward the Confessor unambiguously granted the throne to Harold Godwinson according to Peter Rex all the sources except that the King directly bequeathed the crown to Harold David how earth agrees the dying words of the King left no doubt whatever in the minds of the people who heard him there is no suggested in any Chronicle that the choice was not unanimous Frank McLean says all the English sources make it crystal clear that Edward named Harold as his successor but Williams apologists tried and some do so even today to deny the obvious well call me a Norman apologist but the obvious on inspection seems anything but in the first place we have an extended account of Earl Edwards deathbed scene in the life of King Edward in that scene the bequest of the kingdom is described in a remarkably casual and ambiguous way Edward is shown to be chiefly concerned with the welfare of his queen who let lest we forget commissioned this particular source having praised her for one last time he turns to Harold and says I commend this woman and the entire kingdom to your protection that's it that's his promise of the throne nor is the life alone in using shut such guarded language if I could have the next slide this is the anglo-saxon Chronicle II this is the pro Godwin version Earl haraldson ceded to the kingdom of England just as the King had granted it to him and also men chose him for it whereas the other versions of the chronicles say angels bought Edwards righteous soul within heavens light yet did the wise King entrust his kingdom to a man of high rank - Harold himself so no mention of election and a significant verbal weakening from granted to entrusting implying that Harold may have been empowered to take care of the kingdom as perhaps a temporary measure contrary what Frank to what Frank McLean says when we look closely at the events of Harold's succession it seems fairly obvious that what we are looking at is a coup albeit a coup supported by a very dominant faction within the kingdom I might skip a bit here because this looks very tedious well I think the most telling thing from my point of view if we've gone to the next slide is that Harold is crowned the very next day after Edward's death all previous coronations in England had been unhurried Affairs for example Edward the Confessor himself was elected king in June 1042 but not crowned until April 10 43 a full eight nine months later coronation prior to the conquest was simply confirmation it conferred it didn't confer the kingship it just gave you God's blessing as such they normally took place many months later as I've said Harold's rushed to have himself crowned the day after Edward's death is therefore the most obviously suspect act in the drama moreover it's simply not true to claim that all the sources are unanimous in endorsing the Godwin version of events going back to William of Malmesbury writing 50 or 60 years later he wrote that Harold had seized the throne having first exacta Dan oath of loyalty from the chief Nobles now just to be clear here marm spree is not an anti Harold sauce he is actually quite he's half English and half Norman William of Malmesbury he was hardly hostile in the same paragraph that he says this he praises Harold as a man of prudence and fortitude and notes that the English claimed the Earl had been granted the throne by Edward but I think he adds that this claim rests more on goodwill than judgment for it makes the Confessor pass on his inheritance to a man of whose influence he had always been suspicious more revealing still is an account written in the ten 90s for Baldwin Abbott Abbott of Baris and Edwin Edmonds who describes Harold's hasty coronation as sacrilegious and accused the earl of taking the throne with cunning force since Baldwin had been formally Edward become physician and was therefore likely to imprison tat his death this testimony ought to be accorded considerable weight I'm gonna skip the next bit because I think we're getting short of time so that's battle Abbey which I was going to rant about what we're going to the next thing I'm going to rant about what I do want to discuss to the remainder of the paper is the nature of the conquest that followed the Battle of Hastings and I think no we leave on that slide in each of our three books the conquest is a disaster for which no words are adequate now another parenthetical comment from me let me be clear England was transformed by the Norman Conquest it's aristocracy was completely removed even down to a very low level the hierarchy of the church was swept away so that no bishoprics or great monasteries remained in English hands the Turner aerial map of England was torn up and the country was filled with castles at least 500 castles are reckoned to have been constructed in the first generation after 1066 it was in the words of the bonafide historian George garnet professor George garnet a change of magnitude and at a speed unparalleled in English history for those who lived through the conquest it was both a terrifying experience and a tragedy and yet in describing this period of fascinating violent complex change all of our three authors contrived to miss the changes that really mattered preferring to dwell instead on aspects of the conquest which they imagined to be novel which in reality were not novel at all all three see retreat from the more civilised standards previously maintained in England the peaceful guileless English had been conquered by northern barbarians but in maintaining this line they betray their ignorance of both societies and a lack of wider historical of Wen's MacLean for instance describes how Williams invasion force after landing Bevin's he plundered the surrounding countryside before adding this was England's first taste of carrying a harrying mentality that had already made the Normans dreaded in Europe and would like to make their name a byword for barbarism and savagery this rather ignores the fact that harrying ie deliberately destroying the landed resources of your enemy was standard medieval practice when it came to making war in principle pointing war said the Roman author of the G in his military which was the standard the main aim was to secure plenty of provisions for oneself and to destroy the enemy by famine more to the point claim that the arrival of the Normans heralded the introduction of harrying ignores all the other parts of the conquest narrative such as for example half the canoes sending his cows cars to carry Worcestershire in 1041 or Edward the Confessor ordering Godwin to harried over in 1051 most of all it nor was the fact that England had already experienced long decades of carrying at the hands of the Vikings MacLean can try to see none of this all he sees is an army practising a new kind of warfare on the express orders of a grim tyrant William the Conqueror himself who he regards as an extraordinary cruelty another quote Williams troops often looted right to pillage their way through towns with his consent this was no question of licensure soldiery being out of control again well there's nothing new in any of this what was unique after the conquest was that William took steps to atone for and where necessary tried to limit the violence that his troops inflicted in the first place we have the so called penitential ordinance a document drawn up by the Norman Church in the immediate wake of the hastings campaign detailing the penances that those involved in the campaign were to perform depending on the amount of blood they have shed we also know that William took a stern line on right because the anglo-saxon Chronicle not a friendly source praises his pod see of castrating convicted rapists I just want to clarify because I know I'm reading from I'm not saying the Normans were nice at this point I'm just saying it's extraordinary that we have documents in which they sought to atone for shedding blood okay you can't find similar documents where the Vikings beat themselves up about the number of people they killed or raped MacLean is not alone in seeing William as unusually cruel and morally inferior to his English contemporaries he was a more barbarous and primitive man than either Edward or Harold says David haloth adding charitably but he's not to be blamed because he came from a more primitive barbarous country Peter wrecks me my lovers of the English would have been terrified of William because he had a reputation for treating those who he captured in war with great severity did he the significant point here missed by Rex himself is the word captured if we ask the question what did William do with those he defeated there are various answer one are so perhaps the most common in England after the conquest it was that he sold them back their lands in return from a foreign profession of obedience how magnanimous Peter Rex but because compared to what had normally happened in England before the conquest such a policy was both extraordinarily magnanimous and strikingly new the standard practice in pre-conquest England have been to lock people's heads off I always say this when I give them more general talk to schools and teachers on the conquest you know if you ever find yourself in the circumstances of thinking about surrendering to anglo-saxon don't we see in the multiple purges at the court of Ethelred the unready and in the aristocratic bloodbath that attended the start of Canute's reign we see in the way Earl Godwin did away with Edward the confessors brother Alfred and in the way his son tossed around the deaths of his enemies in Northumbria after promising them safe conduct we even the case of Harold Godwinson one of the funniest things in our three books it's the way they harp on the parents opposing restraint in prosecuting warfare but then he preys upon him for the way he deals with whales in 1063 Harold met violence with violence infused his Frank McLean in a typically daughter free passage every Welsh male who's resisted by so much as a flicker of an eyebrow was well now on to my next slide please the mutilation bit that's the best magnitude from mutilation the order of the Bayeux Tapestry now William it's true sometimes ordered the mutilation of those who rebelled against it most famously during his attack on an insolvent he's only Judith Normandy and later as king of England after the siege of Ely and naturally his modern detractors make much of this despite the fact that is contemporaries the ones I have just listed Godwin you tossed him etc did exactly the same but what the detractors again miss is the fact that William did not execute those he defeated sometimes he forgave them and restored them to power other times he imprisonment this last imprisonment it turns out is what Peter wrecks bases his estimate a comment by a contemporary French writer that the Duke never released his prisoners the fact that William imprisoned his enemies at all rather than locking their heads off escapes were exes attention the truth is England and Normandy did have quite different attitudes towards human life and as we would see it today it was the Normans who were more civilised in that they spared their opponents when they had them on their knees begging for mercy the Normans in short were chivalrous and the English were not in pre-conquest England killing was accepted as a matter of course a useful and necessary part of the political process this was not the same in pre-conquest Normandy where the practice had fallen out of fashion during Williams own lifetime and in England after the conquest it fell out of fashion to no man dared slay another said the anglo-saxon Chronicle in its obituary of William the Conqueror no matter what wrong might have done him only one man of consequence Earl wolfy off was deliberately killed after the Norman takeover and he is the exception that proves the rule Wolfie off was executed outside Winchester in 1076 the next Earl to be executed in England after that was the Earl of Atholl who was executed in 1306 the Norman Conquest in other words uttered in 230 years of chivalrous irony here is that whereas all three authors regardless barbarians right up to the eve of the conquest England had been a slave owning and slave trading society to be a slave was far far worse than being a servile post-conquest slaves were essentially human chattels they could be sold punished and even killed by their masters stoned to death if they were male burned to death if they were female and there were lots of them doomsday book suggests at pre-conquest england in capri court in pre-conquest england at least 10% of the population was slaves and one expert has recently suggested the number may in fact has been as high as 30% in normandy by contrast by 1066 slavery was a thing of the past back when the Normans have been Norseman Vikings they too had owned and traded slaves Rouen had been made as a great international slave market but in the early decades of the 11th century the practice had died out and by Williams day some Normans particularly churchmen were actively condemning it and accordingly we witnessed a state decline in slavery after the conquest where we can measure it in Doomsday Book there is a 25% drop in the number of slaves in England skip that bit once again this seismic social change the death of slavery is not something that any of our three authors dwell on at any length I can't recall any references to slavery and Peter Rex's book there certainly aren't any references to it in the index power--the has a sort of short section in which he tackles the subject using arguments employed and discredited since the 19th century slavery was probably in decline in England it was used as a punishment for criminals whenever he writes of slavery the examples are all non-english we are assured Pantanal evidence that slavery was still practiced in Normandy during Williams rain and clearly expected to record in horror his description of the Welsh attack on he referred in 1055 when women were raped and led off with their children into captivity curiously though MacLean describes how a Robinson's attack on Somerset in 1052 despite going into considerable detail he doesn't spot the anglo-saxons chronicles comment that the future king seems money men it doesn't say gosh was in slavery terrible it's just in their very deep it's unconscious you almost miss seized men now I'm gonna steer myself towards a conclusion I'm not here to pass judgment on me I always feel like I'm sort of saying the Normans they are great you know which isn't my intention I'm not here to pass judgment on the English or the Normans as they were in the 11th century it's enough to know that these were too markedly different societies with very different moral codes and that the Norman Conquest therefore created considerable friction and change but if I have my next slide I however more than happy to pass judgment on the quality of popular history that's produced about the conquest not least because its exponents so eager to pass sweeping judgments on the people in their stories David Howard says if I've been around at a time I would have liked King Harold and heartily disliked Edward the Confessor Frank McLean commenting on the three competitors for the throne in 1066 insists that William the Conqueror was the most cunning Harold Godwinson the most courageous and Harald Hardrada the most flamboyant as if such content qualities could be recovered a thousand years later and plotted on a graph Peter Rex meanwhile is quite convinced that the Norman Conquest would not have succeeded at all even after the Battle of Hastings if only the surviving English had shown a bit more backbone I confess another trait all three orders share is their belief that they are overturning a conspiracy of silence rewriting history from the point of view of the underdog and overturning myths about the conquest that have reigned since 1066 itself Rex for example writes of Norman propaganda so effective that it impresses the minds of modern historians who are unable to free themselves from this insidious influence they subscribe to the Hori misapprehension that history is always written by the victors ignoring the fact that they're contrary opinions are derived from the considerable mass of English sources that have survived after the conquest says how's Norman voices were strident and English voices were subdued which becomes a surprise to anyone who's ever read and of Canterbury John of Worcester or indeed the anglo-saxon Chronicle elsewhere powers the pines that Harold Godwinson has received about guide press because he had no one to sing extravagant praises a truly extraordinary assertion given that Harold's extensive eulogy in the life of King is the basis of house and rose yet altering the reality of time the reality is that the English have been telling the story of the Norman Conquest on their own terms since at least the early 12th century you may remember a few minutes ago I talked about william imams when he said the english say it's clear that the english have been telling the story of the conquest on their own terms since that time in the later Middle Ages when England was perpetually at war with France think of say from the 12 80s through to the 15th century 200 years or so during that time they would retell the story of the Normans through the distorting lens of their own franca folio the story was given a further twist in the 17th century when parliamentarians were looking for a golden age of English liberties and found it in the anglo-saxon period and concluded that the absolutism but the most influential retelling of the conquest narrative from the English point of view came in the late 19th century with my next slide when Edward or Gustus Freeman wrote his mammoth history of the Norman Conquest it is five volumes and niall 2,000 pages 3,000 pages freelance work was intended to be the last words you couldn't imagine on the subject it is still cited in serious academic discussion not least I say there's a Norse incident which all sincerity not least because the luminous dependency did go through all the Chronicles but the supreme was a man of his own fashionably anglo-saxon my queen and fiercely Protestant his writing betrays a virulent hatred of all things French and anything associated with Rome he was also racist to a degree that was exceptional even by Victorian standards writing home to a friend from elector in the US he said that America was a fine place but it would be fine the still if I'm quoting if every Irishman killed the Negro man was and for it the Freeman the Norman Conquest was about us how a superior Teutonic race and culture was defeated temporarily by a patently inferior French one the light motifs throughout this 3,000 word book our blood and language it's an astonishing reason if you have three months bit Edward the Confessor is condemned for favoring Norman's quote men utterly alien in language and feeling while the goblins are praised for their supposedly men men whose blood speech and manners had not wholly lost the traces of ancient Brotherhood when the Godwin's flee into exile in flanders friend Freeman explains that while the Count of Flanders himself was becoming rapidly French the land had by no means lost its Teutonic character and conversely when Harold is beaten up in Somerset in 1052 Freeman suspects that this was possibly due to the prevalence of Celtic blood in that district when in the Godwin's eventually returned to England in triumph their supporters rally from those purely Saxon lands whence Britain had vanished and whatever Dane had never suits a set foot all of which is to say if you're going to follow Edward or gustas Freeman please do so cautiously in my own book just for example I discuss his influence in the introduction of cycling four times thereafter twice to point out that his interpretation is that fault Frank the clean sites Freeman 39 times sometimes naming him with approval moreover there are also numerous occasions where the clean follows frequent without saying so his account of how Harold visited Yorkshire after his coronation for instance is not based on the original sources cited in his footnotes but lifted more or less verbatim from an extended description in Freeman's book the source for which is nothing more than Freeman's own fertile imagination we could just go back to your mind three shooting targets consciously or know the spirit of Freeman continues to inform popular understanding of the conquest to this day what resonates loudly through each of these three books and any number of other popular works on the Congress is it an unshakable belief in the superiority of anglo-saxon culture and society in each of these books we find the same equation what English is right from that's right is English thus in Howard's account Edward the confessors policy alters not according to whether or not the government of family have a hold on him but according to how English Edward happens to be feeling at any particular moment Peter Rex's sympathies can be adduced from the fact his book is dedicated to the memory of all those men and women who perished during the Norman conquest of England and from the titles of his many other books the English Resistance the underground war against the Normans William the Conqueror at the bastard of Normandy the last English King the life account of the second Harry wood the last Englishman the wrecks Cayley Englishness died in 1066 so to conclude it might seem unfair or at least disproportionate to have directed so much of his afternoon towards slamming these three books written by non-professionals [Laughter] these are books aiming to educate I see them cited a lot on reading list of teachers and yet they are written by amateurs for the at the same time with an agenda using language we would not tolerate the opinion in any period with any sources their agenda is the standard supplied - it's not a case of one view versus another alternative view facts versus alternative facts it's a case of good history versus bad history what all these books have in common are they are extremely bad history shoddily research ill-informed yet hyper opinionated speculative and partisan they all cherry-pick evidence to suit their preconceived prejudices and in the worst cases knowingly conflate or misrepresent their sources moreover what underpinned such books is an unthinking nationalism demonstrably informed by earlier generations of scholarship that was deeply racist I think that's dangerous and if you want to see the kind of thing it encourages Google endless English with a c on the end and see where you end up - most people I suspect and most students the Norman Conquest being a nearly a millennium in the past doesn't matter very much if at all who won or who lost is of little consequence but if you consider the anglo-saxons the English as they were a thousand years ago to be your people then naturally the conquest continues to matter a great deal if for you English this is not a matter of having a common law or a common identity or a common culture if for you like Edward or gustas Freeman Englishness is about blood and race and soil if you are a hundred percent certain that you are descended from those who were conquered in 1066 rather than the tens of thousands or conquerors of conquerors or any of the other hundreds of thousands of immigrants that come to England during the centuries that followed well then you are going to be very upset about the Norman Conquest indeed you can however find some consolation in having your warped worldview echoed in popular books about 1066 but not this one forward [Applause] oK we've got five minutes if you have any questions right can I just take this opportunity to thank Mark coming up to teach me his new iPhones today and a big round of applause thank you for illuminate we're obviously sort of noticing increasingly that we're focusing a lot or at least the media is on on centenares and other anniversaries and so on and often we see reinterpretations coming coming about you think that there is benefit in that happening for the Norman Conquest or do you think that arts are just going to cause further problems do you mean 2066 it's almost sort of you know it's the three hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary since I don't know whether they help I mean they're probably doing that they generate more they generate a certain amount of brouhaha but what whether that leads to sort of bring better academic scrutiny I don't know there was a lot of stuff with Magna Carta three or four years ago and there were several conferences so that produced some really good news scholarship on Magna Carta Edward the first died in 1307 he get anybody interested in when I had a book out and probe in there was one academic conference at University of Bangkok no Westminster Abbey you gonna mark the century of this man who helped build you is buried at the back now so I think you very much depends you know I think I think probably in general terms probably more noise is good as long as kind of historians don't yes I don't think I mean I think is to most academic medievalist I don't really think they bother with books that are under their radar you know I just don't think they would bother to read something like Peter existential to see if they've read how as good as was 40 years old he was about 75 when he wrote it so it's kind of like collecting dust on the sort of public library shelf but there is a gulf I think between popular history and academics and I think it's kind of regrettable that when his two books are review for example I mean some all of those books have plaudits from national newspapers on the front a splendid account of a difficult thing if they're just reviewed by you know some hack has been given a pile of books to get through the course to Caesarea blood thunder you know all good stuff they're not going to say this stinks of kind of 19th century basis of scholarship and I think but I think as I say I feel as a medievalist kind of my period is all kind of it's a long time ago and it's sort just kind of Monty Python I don't think they would behave that way with say something about socialism in the 30s you know so I think there's a tendency to give greater scrutiny in the popular press to history books the modern history books and maybe that's just my perception right people anxious to put me on not a good roommate yeah I mean I don't understand track but don't start with Franklin clean spoon I think this is the thing that if you start with secretary material that's so that it's inherited all the biases of the source material that's very hard if you take go and read this it will give you a rough idea of what we're talking about I mean obviously kind of reviewers and sensible adults don't spot that kind of bias so we've given it to 11 year olds they're just going to think I assume this is that this is I'm being given facts here in this book it is a great pity that the life of King Edward which is said we're all this Pro Godwin stuff comes from isn't available for less than 180 pounds it's only about 60 pages long what I really wish pops of many of your texts would do is put together a sort of teachers handbook of sources with all the best bits from although hugely expensive source material sorry I don't know if that answers your question me but I think it's just what I said at the beginning not to start from to start from the assumption that not to start with the assumption that these are the good guys and these are bad girls okay once again we just say thank you smart Morris for what was we are also historians and we'll study history and the fact that so many historians are willing to be so giving of their time to fear the contribute to what we're giving in terms of a diet to younger students is absolutely fantastic do you have to say like not like preaching GDP are here but markers come all the way from Plymouth for an hour folks then closer it's lower than the Scotch corner that's why my job just come all the way from there [Applause] so without further ado I'm going to introduce Jacqueline ridin you may or may not have seen a magnificent film which came up people knew and Jacqueline was the historian who was the consultant that film so she provided had the research for her and she's very kindly come today to give us her story about what she does and you know it's gonna be really really fantastic like licky

Channel: TeachMeet Icons

Views: 2,439

Keywords: history, historyteacher, teaching, tmhistoryicons

Id: PQ7upWC1_aI

Length: 57min 29sec (3449 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 31 2019