William E. Kapelle - The Norman Conquest of the North, The Region and Its Transformation,

TheRepon and Its Transformation,
1000-1135
O 1979 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights resewed
Manufactured in the United States of America
ISBN 0-8078-1371-0
Library of Congress CatalogCard Number 79-10200
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Kapelle, WilliamE
TheNorman Conquestof the north.
Bibliography:p.
Includes index.
I. Great Britain-History-Anglo-Saxon period,
499-1 066. 2. Great Britain-History -Norman
period, 1066-1 154. 3. Peasantry-England-
History. I. Title.
DA154.7.K36 942.02 79-10200
ISBN 0-8078-1371-0
1. TheDanes of York
and the House of Barnburgh
2. Earl Siward and the Scots
3. The Structure of Northern Society
4. The Rule of Tostig and the
Destruction of the Nobles of York
5. Government by Punitive Expedition
6. The Impact of the Normans
on the Northern Village
7.Henry I's New Men in the North
8. Conclusion
Abbreviations and
Selected Short References
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
1. Genealogy of the Earls
of Northumberland, part 1 [I81
2. Genealogy of the Earls
of Northumberland, part 2 1301
3. The Kings of Scotlandfrom 1005 to 1153 [401
4. The composition of
Large Territorial Sokes in Yorkshire [801
5 . Overstocked Manors and Functioning Churches
in Yorkshire in 1086 [1721
6 . Bovate Rates in the Vicinity of Buttercrambe 11801
Political Divisions of the North in 1000
Northern GeographicalNames
Sketch Map of the Terrain of the North
Political Divisions of the North in 1056
TheNormans in the North
Distribution of Overstocked Manors
in Yorkshirein 1086
Distribution $Functioning Churches
in Yorkshire in 1086
Manorial Types in Durham
at the Time of Boldon Book
Crop Sequences in the WestRiding in 1297
The Populated Estates of Ilbert de Lacy
Henry de Ferrers's Estates in Derbyshire
AND THE
HOUSEOF BAMBURGH
The Norman Conquest of the North has never been adequately
explained even though the resistance of the northerners was one of
the most dramatic episodes of the Conquest. The reasons for this
neglect are uncertain. It may be merely a side effect of the convic-
tion that the South was the more important part of England. Al-
ternatively, northern history threatens to complicate our picture of
the Conquest. A close study of the northern resistance to William
the Conqueror inevitably discloses that he made at least two blun-
ders in dealing with the North and that he rescued himself from
the results of these mistakes by committing genocide. Emphasis on
these events fits poorly into the current appraisal of the Norman
impact on England. The behavior of the northerners in the face of
the Conquest may also reveal a distressing exception to the pre-
cocious unity of Anglo-Saxon England. The idea of backwoods
northerners being so impertinent as not to appreciate the splendid
unity offered them by the West Saxon kings with their shires, fyrd,
and Danegeld is undoubtedly as unpalatable to some historians as
the picture of William the Bastard making mistakes is to others. In
any case, in most accounts of the Norman Conquest, the men from
beyond the Humber come on stage long enough to revolt a few
times out of conservatism; the establishment of Norman rule in the
North immediately follows their failure.
This view is false. It is a creation of the prominence we give
to the Norman Conquest. The behavior of the Northumbrians and
Political Divisions of the North in 1000
the Yorkshire men during the reign of William the Conqueror is
inexplicable if it is separated from their pre-Conquest history-
William's victory at Hastings did not wipe out the past. In the 1060s
and 10'70s,the men of the North acted as much in response to past
realities as in reaction to the coming of the Normans. This chapter
will begin the difficult task of determining the political experience
and traditional concerns of the nobilities of Northumberland and
Yorkshire. 1 will discuss the more important aspects of northern
geopolitics and reconstruct the history of the North from the sec-
ond period of Danish invasions to the reign of Edward the Con-
fessor. Such an early beginning is necessary because the history of
the North has never been properly understood and the insights of
earlier northern scholars have been largely ignored in the court-
centered political narratives that dominate our picture of the Con-
quest.' The basic question to be answered is whether there was a
political side in Anglo-Saxon times to the cultural regionalism of
the North or, stated more traditionally, whether northern separat-
ism was a serious political force in the eleventh century.
The first necessity is to define the extent of the North. To
the unwary, this may seem a straightforward task. In the eleventh
century, the North consisted, more or less, of the present counties
of Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumberland on the east and Lan-
cashire with the southern parts of Cumberland and Westmorland
on the west. Except for one brief period, the northern parts of the
latter two counties were included in the kingdom of Strathclyde o...