BATTLE OF HASTINGS

BATTLE OF HASTINGS

Fought on October 14, 1066

HASTINGS, BATTLE of, one of the most fateful military engagements in English history, fought on October 14, 1066, between a national army led by Harold II, Saxon king of England, and an invasion force led by William, Duke of Normandy, afterward William I (the Conqueror). William claimed the English throne had been promised to him by his cousin, Edward the Confessor, king of England between 1042 and 1066. William challenged the election of Harold as king upon Edward’s death and, with the blessing of Pope Alexander II (reigned 1061-1073), prepared to invade England. Harold’s brother, Tostig, Earl of Northumbria, supported William’s claim, and at the Battle of Stamford Bridge on September 25 in Yorkshire, was slain by Harold. The English army of about 7000 soldiers then marched from Yorkshire and occupied a height (later called Senlac Hill) on the Hastings-London highway about 10.5 km (about 6.5 mi) northwest of Hastings. The royal force composed exclusively of infantry, armed with spears, swords, and battle-axes. Meanwhile, William’s seaborne forces, which included infantry armed with crossbows and contingents of heavily armed cavalry, landed on the English coast near Hastings on September 28, 1066.

The initial Norman attack, launched in the morning of October 14, failed to dislodge the English, who met the barrage of enemy arrows with interlocked shields. The English axmen turned back a Norman cavalry charge, whereupon a section of of the Norman infantry turned and fled. At this juncture, several units of the English army broke ranks, contrary to Harold’s orders, and pursued the retreating Normans. Other Norman troops quickly surrounded and annihilated these units. Taking advantage of the lack of discipline among the English soldiers, William ordered another feigned retreat. The stratagem led to the entrapment of another large body of English troops. Severely weakened by these reverses and demorilized by the mortal wounding of Harold by an arrow, the English were forced to abandon their strategic position on the crest of the Senlac Hill. Only small remnants of the defending army survived the subsequent onslaughts of the Norman Cavalry. William’s victory at Hastings paved the way for Norman subjugation of all England.

WILLIAM I (of England)

About 1064, the powerful English noble, Harold, Earl of Wessex, was shipwrecked on the Norman coast and taken prisoner by William. He secured his release by swearing to support William’s claim to the English throne. When King Edward died, however, the witenagemot (royal council) elected Harold king. Determined to make good his claim, William secured the sanction on Pope Alexander II for a Norman invasion of England. The duke and his army landed at Pevensey on September 28, 1066. On October 14, the Normans defeated the English forces at the celebrated Battle of Hastings, in which Harold was slain. William then proceeded to London, crushing the resistance he encountered on the way. On Christmas Day he was crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey.

The English did not accept foreign rule without a struggle. William met the opposition, which was particularly violent in the north and west, with strong measures; he was responsible for the devastation of great area of the country, particularly in Yorkshire, where Danish forces had arrived to aid the Saxon rebels. By 1070 the Norman conquest of England was complete.

William invaded Scotland on 1072 and forced the Scottish king Malcolm III MacDuncan to pay him homage. During the succeeding years the Conqueror crushed insurrections among his Norman followers, including that incited in 1075 by Ralph de Guader, 1st Earl of Norfolk, and Roger Fitzwilliwm, Earl of Hereford, and a series of uprisings in Normandy led by his eldest son Robert, who later became Robert II, duke of Normandy.

WILLIAM’S ACHIEVEMENTS

One feature of William’s reign as king was his reorganization of the English feudal and administrative systems. He dissolved the great earldoms, which had enjoyed virtual independence under his Anglo-Saxon predecessors, and distributed the lands confiscated from the English to his trusted Norman followers. He introduced the Continental system of feudalism; by the Oath of Salisbury of 1086 all landlords swore allegience to William, thus establishing the precedant that a vassal’s loyalty to the king overrode his fealty to his immediate lord, The feudal lords were compelled to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the local cours, which William retained along with many other Anglo-Saxon institutions. The ecclesiastical and secular courts were separated, and the power of the papacy was greatly curtailed. Another outstanding accomplishment was the economic survey undertaken and incorporated in the Domesday Book in 1086.

In 1087, during a campaign against King Philip I of France, Willism burned the town of Mantes (now Mantes-la-Jolie). William’s horse fell in the vicinity of Mantesm fatally injuring him. He died in Rouen on September 7, and was buried at Caen in Saint Stephen’s, one of the abbeys he and Matilda had founded at the time of their marriage as penance for their defiance of the pope. William was succeeded by his third-born son, William II.William II

WILLIAM II (of England)

WILLIAM II, of England, called Rufus (1056?-1100), king of England (1087-1100), who extended his power into Normandy (Normandie) and Scotland. He was the third son of William the Conqueror, king of England, who on his deathbed named him as his successor in England, leaving the duchy of Normandy to his eldest son, Robert. William Rufus, as he was known because of his ruddy complexion, was crowned in Westminster Abbey in 1087. The followiing year William’s uncle Odo, bishop of Bayeux, led a rebellion of Norman barons who sought to unseat him in favor of Robert. William’s English subjects, believing his promises of less oppressive taxation and more liberal laws, helped him quell the revolt. The king, despite his promises, continued to pursue a domestic policy that was harssh and venal.

William invaded Normandy in 1089, 1091, and 1094, winning some concessions from his brother Robert II, duke of Normandy, each time. He forced the Scottish king Malcolm III MacDuncan to pay him homage and in 1092 seized the city of Carlisle and Westmorland. In 1096 Robert Mortgaged Normandy to William for funds to finance a Crusade. William then fought to recapture lands his brother had lost as duke of Normandy and returned the county of Maine to the rule of the duchy.

After the death in 1089 of Lanfranc, the archbishop of Canterbury, William delayed naming a successor. He held open vacant bishoprics and enriched himself with church monies, incurring the displeasure of many eccelesiastics. In 1093 he selected Anselm, abbot of Bec, as the new archbishop, but they quarreled over William’s authority to control church appointments.

William was killed on August 2, 1100, while on a hunting trip in the New Forest in Hampshire. It is not known whether the slaying, which is traditionally ascribed to a Norman named Walter Tirel (died after 1100), was accidental or intentional. William was buried at Winchester; he never married and had no children. His younger brother succeeded to the throne as King Henry I.

ANSELM, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

ANSELM, Saint (circa 1033-1109), theologian, philosopher, and church leader, who proposed an argument for God’s existence that is still being debated.

Anselm was born of a well-to-do family at aosta, in northern Italy; in 1060 he joined the Benedictine monastery at Bec, in Normandy (Normandie), where the English prelate Lanfranc was prior. Some time later, after Lafranc was called to England to England to become archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm was elected abbot of Bec. During these years he awuired a reputation for learning and pieeety, and his monks urged him to write out the meditations that were the basis of his instructions to them. Thus, he composed the Monologium (Soliloquy, 1077) in which--reflecting the influence of St. Augustine---he spoke of God as the highest being and investigated God’s attributes. Encouraged by its reception, in 1078 he continues his project of faith seeking understanding, completing the Proslogium (Discourse), the second chapter of which presents the original statement of what in the 18th century became known as the ontological argument.

Anselm argued that even those who doubt the existence of God would have to have some understanding of what they were doubting: Namely, they would understand God to be a being than which nothing greater can be thought. Given that it is greater to exist outside the rather than just in the mind, a doubter who denied God’s existence would be making a contradiction because he or she would be saying that it is possible to think of something greater than a being than

which nothing greater can be thought. Hence, by definition God exists necessarily.

The basic criticism of Anselm’s argument if that one cannot infer the extramental existence of anything by analyzing its definition. In Anselm’s own time a fellow monk, Gaunili of Marmoutier, challenged his argument, as did the later philosophers Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant. Nonetheless, Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibnitz, and some contempory philosophers have offered similar arguments.

In 1093 Anselm was called to succeed Lanfranc as the archbishop of Canterbury. As archbishop, Anselm entered into a time of great strife with King William II, the successor of William the Conqueror, over the church’s independance of the king’s control. In and out of England, in exile in Italy, Anselm led a life of conflict with the secular powers. Despite these power struggles, he continued his theological speculations, writing Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man), a study of the incarnation and crucifixion of Christ as a way of atoning for sin.

In 1100 when Henry I succeeded to the English throne, Anselm returned to Canterbury. Controversy with the king continued over investiture, with another period of exile for Anselm. Anselm returned to Canterbury in 1106, where he died on April 21, 1109. He was canonized in 1163 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1720. His feast day is April 21.

Information taken from Encarta Encyclopedia ‘99