Poem- The Last Saxon Shieldwall

Saxon Shieldwall

Side by side they stood

A famous brotherhood

The Housecarls of the Wall

Held their shield and sword

Gave protection to their Lord

The Housecarls of the Wall

 

Brutal punishment they’d take

Saxon Shieldwall from the Bayeux Tapestry

Norman cavalry tried to shake

Those soldiers from the Wall

Sally forth and then retreat

Different tactics tried to beat

Those soldiers from the Wall

Norman destrier and Knight

Tried with all their might

To breach that Saxon Wall

Farmer, commoner and Thegn

Bound together and retained

That Anglo-Saxon Wall

 

For many hours it did stand

Parry, thrust and then backhand

Fought the soldiers of the Wall

Norman arrow, sword and lance

Took their aim for half a chance

To pierce that solid Wall

 

Norman infantry feigned retreat

William’s horse did him unseat

Loud cheers sang from the Wall

Saxons chased them down the hill

Norman cavalry them did kill

A hole appeared in the Wall

 

No quarter did they give

Their honour just to live

Those heroes of the Wall

Just survive the day

Reinforcements on their way

Those heroes of the Wall

 

Many hours did take its toll

Now fewer numbers on the knoll

Stood the finest Saxon Wall

The fittest and the brave

On their own did try to save

The finest Saxon Wall

 

Senlac Ridge was where

King Harold did prepare

That final Saxon Wall

In Hasting’s autumn sun

Died there one by one

The final Saxon Wall

 

Many corpses lay around

That final killing ground

Of Senlac’s Saxon Wall

Norman, Saxon and a King

Heaven’s Angels for them sing

A tribute to them all

 

So what did the Normans ever do for us?!!

Rochester Castle

By us I mean the Anglo-Saxons that had been gradually
subdued and beaten into submission by the Norman conquest of the 11^th
Century.

Let us reflect on the conquering achievements of the bastard
Duke of Normandy in his role as King of England. In his twenty-one years of
rule, what exactly did he achieve?

The first achievement that leaps to mind is castles. The
Normans knew how to throw up a mud hill, stick giant wooden stakes around it
and shelter behind this relatively secure construction. With the local area
secure, they then progressed to upgrade the Motte and Bailey to a stone
construction using stone from Norman quarries. These castles would then keep the
local population under control and discourage any further insurrection.

So apart from castles, what did the Normans ever do for us?

King Edward had spent many years in exile in Normandy before
his accession to the English throne in 1042. With his life experience and with
the Anglo-Saxon nobility, he created the Witan (Council) to advise and carry
out his instruction. When William became King he did not change the format of
this Council, but only its leaders from Anglo-Saxon to Norman. William realised
that for the invasion to succeed, he needed to keep as much continuity to
Anglo-Saxon life as possible. The administrative frameworks of England and
Normandy were run in very similar fashions, so there was little change required
to a country that was rich in agriculture, coin and population. England had
become the envy of most of Medieval Europe and was seen as a very rich prize.

Domesday Book in its chest

In December 1085, William commissioned an account of all the
lands, manors, crops and livestock that belonged to the Lords of England. These
Lords had sworn their fealty to William and paid him an annual tithe or tax.
William needed to know the extent of their property so he could tax them
accordingly. This account became known as the Domesday Book and was completed
in August 1086. It had taken seven months to gather the required information
from 13,148 settlements in England. It was published shortly before William’s
death. The fact that seven teams of scribes could travel England and ascertain
this quality of information was a testament to the organisation and
administration that was already in place before the Norman Conquest. The Norman
collation of this data into two volumes, The Great and Little Domesday book is
a legacy for us all to share 1000 years later.

So apart from castles and the Domesday Book, what did the
Normans ever do for us?

Apart from the scorched earth policy and famine metred out
to the Northern counties in the ‘Harrowing of the North’ in 1070 as punishment
for the rebellion in York, there is not much else to add to William’s glowing
list of achievements.

What is perceived as a Norman conquest of the
Anglo-Saxon people in power and mind can only be attributed to the fact that
the framework of a very successful race was already in place.

 

The Guilty Conscience Of William the Conqueror

After completing my novel 1066: Apocalyptic Visions
I had always wondered why William Duke of Normandy had to go to such lengths to
gain approval from the Pope to invade England and remove Harold Godwinson as
the rightful King. If William had a rightful claim to the English throne then
why did he need the Pope’s blessing?

Also, why did William build not one, but two abbeys in Caen?
This seems like an over zealous act of piety. To build one church in a town is
acceptable, but to build two Abbeys in the same town in 11^th Century
Normandy needs further investigation.

In 1050, William married his cousin called Matilda. She was
the daughter of Count Baldwin V of Flanders, but as she was a blood relative,
the Church did not acknowledge this marriage. William knew the consequences of
this arrangement but underestimated the Church’s response. As he was a pious
man, he could not cope with the mental anguish of being a ‘bastard’ son and his
marriage being declared immoral by the Church. One of these actions could be
rectified to aid his guilty conscience, so he petitioned the Pope and asked for
the marriage to be blessed on the proviso that he built an Abbey for men and
one for women in the capital of Normandy, Caen. After lengthy petitioning, the
Pope declared their marriage legal in 1059.

In 1067, the majestic Norman Romanesque Abbey aux Hommes was
completed in Caen at considerable expense to William. This church would become
the burial church of William and still stands as an imposing central point in
Caen today. The Abbey aux Dames was completed in 1130 and is where Matilda was
buried.

Therefore, William carried out an act against the Church
that he knew was wrong at the time and then begged for the Pope’s forgiveness.
Read on as there is a common theme developing here.

King Edward, known as the Confessor, was 38 when he became
the English King in 1042, and had spent 27 years of his life in exile. Most of
this exile was at the Court of the Duke of Normandy, as his mother was the
eldest daughter of Richard I, Duke of Normandy.

King Edward invited Norman Councillors to the Royal Court at
Gloucester to advise him at certain times during his reign, and therefore had
an affinity towards Normandy.

In 1051 Edward asked William, Duke of Normandy to be his
heir to the throne if he died without producing any children. It could be
argued that this discussion was a plausible one, as Edward felt threatened at
the time by the Earl of Wessex, Harold’s father. By giving the throne to a
Norman would deprive the most powerful man in England the only thing that he
could not buy.

Not content with a conversation some fifteen years previous,
William was then supposed to have received homage by Harold Godwinson in 1063.
Harold’s small sailing party had been swept by the English tides to the French
coastline and is taken prisoner by Guy Count of Ponthieu. They are then handed
over to William and became William’s “guests”. It was during this visit that
Harold was apparently to have sworn allegiance to William in the presence of a
Holy Relic. This oath was an agreement that William would become the King of
England if Edward the Confessor died without an heir. This homage is depicted
in the Bayeux tapestry and shows Harold talking to William with the Holy Relics
of Bayeux cathedral hidden beneath a cloth. Does this show that William had
tricked Harold into an oath that was religiously binding?  Swearing an oath in the presence of a Holy
Relic in the 11^th Century was the equivalent of swearing on the
Bible in modern times. Bearing in mind that the Bayeux tapestry was
commissioned by the half brother of William, Bishop Odo, it could be argued
that the deceitful depiction of this oath was deemed to be less of an issue for
the Norman’s because they had the Pope’s blessing for the invasion of England.

Even though William had supposedly received an invitation to
become the King of England from Edward, and had an allegiance oath sworn to him
by Harold, the most powerful man in England, William still felt it necessary to
gain a Papal decree to invade. For a man known for his paranoid control over
his Dukedom, this seems over the top to say the least. Did he need this Papal
blessing to rally his troops for the invasion? I would say not as he ruled with
an iron fist and demanded allegiance from his vassals. William was a very
religious man, so did he need to fight on the right hand side of God? Perhaps,
but the argument he placed before the Cardinals in Rome does not add up.
William vowed to bring England into line as a Papal fief if he were to become
King of England and restore Peter’s Pence. This was a payment to the Church
that England had stopped a few years before Edward the Confessor’s death.
England had no Vatican representative so William vowed to restore this as King
of England. Very pious of him, but he could have achieved this after he had
taken the Throne. Why was his argument to the Pope not based on the oath that
Harold had sworn on the Holy Relics or the fact that Edward had already
promised him the throne? One answer does spring to mind and that is that
William felt guilty of his trickery and could not base an invasion on a
conversation fifteen years previous. William needed a Papal blessing to aid his
conscience and nothing more.

In 1828, American Senator William L Macey declared ‘to the victor
belong the spoils’ when referring to the Presidential Election of Andrew
Jackson. After the Battle of Hastings and the creation of the Bayeux Tapestry,
William could have altered this saying and changed it to a Norman verse, ‘to
the victor belongs the propaganda’.

 

Ode to Senlac Ridge

Tis often said

King Harold was dead

Up on Senlac Ridge

Arrow from the sky

Took out it his eye

Up on Senlac Ridge

Tis more recently thought

Harold not thoroughly sought

Amongst the dead of Senlac Ridge

Saxon joy unfound

His body ne’er found

Amongst the dead of Senlac Ridge

Tis sometimes said

Another body was instead

The King of Senlac Ridge

That body was for sure

Buried at sea shore

The King of Senlac Ridge

Tis quietly spoke

By Anglo-Saxon folk

After Senlac Ridge

Harold escaped the fight

And put to flight

After Senlac Ridge

Tis often yearned

Of Harold’s return

In revenge for Senlac Ridge

Rebellion on his mind

Kick the Bastard’s behind

In revenge for Senlac Ridge

Tis sometimes spake

He became The Wake

Repaid William for Senlac Ridge

Evaded capture with skill

Normans he did kill

Repaid William for Senlac Ridge

Tis often told

The Wake grew old

Honour repaid for Senlac Ridge

A monk’s life he would keep

In Bosham he would weep

Honour repaid for Senlac Ridge