how did castles help william control england article

At Pevensey they created a castle by adapting 
a Roman fort, and at Hastings by customising an Iron Age hillfort, in each case hiving off 
a smaller section of the much larger original. Established by the Conqueror’s friend 
William fitz Osbern soon after 1066, 
Chepstow was acquired by the king in 1075, after which construction is reckoned to have started on its Great Tower. William used the methods of control that he was most familiar with: castles and the feudal system. Within a generation or two, it is possible to point to castles that did owe more to ideas of peaceful living than military deterrence. Thank you for subscribing to HistoryExtra, you now have unlimited access. It beggars belief to suppose that the Conqueror, having taken the city at such cost, would have commissioned a building that had no military capability, and was concerned only with the projection of what has been called ‘peaceable power’. How did William Duke of Normandy successfully rule England? Unfashionable though it may be among castle scholars, there is every reason to listen to the testimony of the half-English, half-Norman historian Orderic Vitalis, born 
in Shropshire within a decade of 1066, 
who attributed the success of the Conquest 
to one factor above all others. How did William take long-term control of England? The notion that castles had little military purpose also requires us to ignore the testimony of contemporary chroniclers. Exeter had fallen to William in 1068 after 
a bitter three-week siege that saw heavy casualties on both sides – and during which, 
if we believe the later chronicler William of Malmesbury, one of the English defenders signalled his defiance by dropping his trousers and farting in the king’s general direction. Describe the problems that William faced. A gigantic building, with close affinities to 
the Tower of London, Colchester illustrates William’s desire to be compared to the 
Romans before him. One of the remarkable things about the Norman conquest was how quickly the rift between the English and the Normans was healed. He owned all the land in the country and decided who he would lease land to. New lordships required new castles, and the rapes were named in each case after the fortresses that sprung up at Chichester, Hastings, Bramber, Arundel, Lewes and Pevensey. Of course, England had not been without defences before 1066. Everything you ever wanted to know about the history of Japan, but were afraid to ask. William crushed them all, marching in with his army and planting castles in major towns and cities. From their castles, the new. The lesson is aimed at KS3 students in Year 7 or 8 and looks at the earliest, Motte & Bailey, style of castle that William and his barons built around England to control the country. In each case these giant buildings, the like of which England had 
not seen since the time of the Romans, have strong Roman resonances and were partially constructed using the stone from nearby Roman ruins; not for nothing did 20th-century scholars christen the style ‘Romanesque’. In 1066, as everybody knows, the Normans invaded England. But … He therefore only allowed those men he could trust to lease land Castle Design To understand how strategic placement of castles maintained control. This was established shortly before Christmas 1066, “as a defence against the inconstancy of the numerous and hostile inhabitants” (wrote William of Poitiers). If you subscribe to BBC History Magazine Print or Digital Editions then you can unlock 10 years’ worth of archived history material fully searchable by Topic, Location, Period and Person. In 1069 the people of Northumbria overran Durham, massacring its Norman garrison, which tried and failed to hold out 
in the hall of the local bishop. It was quite possible to obtain the same advantage of height quickly and on a fraction of the budget by throwing up a great mound of earth and topping it with a tower of wood. That most engaging of all medieval sources, the Bayeux Tapestry, shows them landing their horses at Pevensey in Sussex and racing to occupy nearby Hastings, from where they would shortly set out to fight the most famous battle in English history. Before that, they paused to have an elaborate sit-down meal – barbecued chicken is on the menu – and attend to their own protection. Take, for example, the castle that 
William the Conqueror caused to be built at Exeter in 1068. from Normandy build over 100 castles all over the country. William built not one but two castles in York: the first (Clifford’s Tower) was constructed in the summer of 1068, the second (Baile Hill) early the following year. To listen to our podcast interview with Marc on the story and legacy of the Norman Conquest, click here. The official website for BBC History Magazine, BBC History Revealed and BBC World Histories Magazine, When William the Conqueror invaded England he introduced a startling new military tactic. The Conqueror’s great stone tower at Chepstow, for instance, has been plausibly reinterpreted in recent years as an audience chamber where the king or his representatives could receive and overawe the native rulers of Wales. In return for loyalty and taxes, they could use the land. As well as being smaller in area, castles were also taller. : the book was the end result of a survey of all of England by William to assess the value of the country. But when the Northumbrians attempted to take the town again in 1080 they failed, because they were unable to take its new castle. Norwich was begun before 1075; that year Ralph Guader, the rebellious earl of East 
Anglia, was besieged here for three months. Our best wishes for a productive day. The fact that they were often sited to command road and river routes, for example, meant that their owners were also well placed to control trade, and could both protect and exploit mercantile traffic. According to one conservative modern estimate, based on the number of surviving earthworks, at least 500, and possibly closer to 1,000, had been constructed by the end of the 11th century – barely two generations since the Normans’ initial landing. He is 
the author of The Norman Conquest (Hutchinson, 2012). The questions concerned the value of farms and animals which created England’s wealth at the time. Sussex, for example, was sliced up into half-a-dozen new lordships, known locally as rapes, which paid no heed to earlier patterns of ownership. The reorganisation of Sussex into continental-style, castle-centred lordships seems to have been a decision determined by cold military logic. The Normans’ decision to erect a castle 
at the very moment of their arrival might not strike us as particularly remarkable. You can unsubscribe at any time. To solve this, he lent parcels of his new lands to nobles, or barons, as they were called at the time. “This man,” says the caption of an important-looking Norman holding a pennant, “orders a castle to be dug at Hastings,” and to his right we see a group of men, armed with picks and shovels, setting to work. This most famous of English castles was created a short distance from an existing royal hunting lodge, probably before the council held at Windsor in 1070. After their victory at Hastings, as they set about crushing the remaining English resistance, the Normans continued to follow this method of construction. In these circumstances, a well-situated 
and well-stocked castle could be militarily decisive. In the two decades after 1066 the king rewarded his closest followers with extensive grants of land in England, and the first act of any sensible incoming lord was invariably to construct a castle. Read about our approach to external linking. Catherine of Aragon: Spain’s Virgin queen? There seems to be a problem, please try again. Who is the longest reigning WWE Champion of all time? In recent decades, however, the scholarly trend has been to emphasise that castles had other roles beyond the military. But in the years immediately after 1066, filled as they were with bloody rebellion and even bloodier repression – when a few thousand Normans lived among a population of two million English in the daily fear of violent death – in these circumstances castles have to be regarded first and foremost as military installations, introduced to subdue an unwilling population. They were built extremely quickly, some in just eight days! They added new fortifications to the ancient defences at Dover, and almost certainly created the castle at Wallingford by destroying a corner of the Anglo-Saxon borough. The need for quick constructions meant materials such as earth and wood were used and although this sped up the building process, it meant they didn’t last very long. Without the great stone-throwing machines known as trebuchets, there was not much an enemy 
at the gates could do, beyond mounting 
a blockade and trying to starve a garrison 
into submission. After 1066, England witnessed a massive castle building programme on the orders of William the Conqueror. : William could not be everywhere at the same time. … The foundation of castles, however, was far from being an exclusively royal affair. 9 surprising facts about William the Conqueror and the Norman conquest. In some instances it appears that these were planted on top of existing English seigneurial residences, to emphasise a continuity of lordship. What is boys name that is an instrument of measure? First, motte and bailey castles were built. How did William take long term control of England? Over time, the more important ones were rebuilt from stone. The book is still in existence today. When, late in 1066, the citizens of London at last submitted to William the Conqueror, his first thought was to plant a castle in the south-eastern angle of the city – the site that would soon become home to the Tower. The county had been the Normans’ beachhead, and also the former Godwin heartland. How long will the footprints on the moon last? But the fact is that Chepstow Castle was 
still a formidable building, situated high on 
a cliff above the river Wye, and defended at each end by ditches cut deep into the rock. Yet some scholars are curiously reluctant to allow that castles built after the Conquest served a similar military purpose. The king The king was in complete control under the feudal system. lords could control the local area, and the sight of them made it clear who was now in control. During the Conqueror’s reign, this was most obviously true in the case of the three great stone towers the king himself is known to have created at Chepstow, Colchester and (most famously) London. Marc Morris is a historian and broadcaster specialising in the Middle Ages. But he also adopted a new method in the form of the Domesday Book. The first group asked questions of the people. William gained control of England by building castles which insured that the locals didn't put up rebellions and if they did they were easily stopped by the soldiers. Its original gatehouse still survives, and has been judged defensively weak because it was originally entered at ground level. It was built on the highest point in the town, and was separated by a deep ditch and rampart. Some of the earliest French examples were great stone towers, such as 
the soaring donjon at Loches on the river Loire, built by the buccaneering Fulk Nerra, count of Anjou, around AD 1000, and still impressive 1,000 years later. You will shortly receive a receipt for your purchase via email. Much of the site has now vanished, but it occupied an area of around 185 metres by 
185 metres (600 by 600 feet); Domesday Book suggests that 48 houses were destroyed in order to make room for it. Afterwards it was entrusted to his half-brother Odo of Bayeux. Exeter, Nottingham, Warwick, York, Lincoln, Cambridge and Huntingdon all received new royal fortresses at this time, and further examples were added in the years that followed: Chester 
and Stafford in 1069–70, Ely in 1071 and Durham in 1072. Q&A: How did the Normans learn to build castles? The point about size and speed is reinforced by the Normans’ behaviour in England immediately after their arrival. Britain was successfully invaded by a Norman army from France in 1066. The Normans, wept 
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1067, “built castles far and wide throughout the land, oppressing the unhappy people, and things went ever from bad to worse”. There are no reports of rebellions or military action in Essex during William’s reign, but the great tower he created in Colchester was erected on the ruins of the town’s Roman temple. But at the time of the invasion in late September 1066, the Normans’ action was startlingly novel: prior to that point, castles had been virtually unknown in England. The pre-Conquest landscape was studded with, among other things, Iron Age hillforts, Roman legionary forts, and the fortified towns built by the Anglo-Saxons themselves, known as boroughs or burhs. We are reminded, too, that part of the reason for building a castle could be symbolic. How did building castles help William the Conqueror control England? Please enter your number below. 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