The Rebellion of 1069
The English Earls certainly felt that William's new sheriffs were exceeding their authority and muscling-in on areas which had once been the jurisdiction of the Earls alone. By 1069, three years after the Conquest, the situation had become intolerable. Until then, uprisings against the new Norman régime had been confined to local spats prompted mainly by the heavy-handed actions of overzealous castellans. The sons of Harold had tried two abortive raids against Exeter from Ireland, but now they had given up.
'...there was no central figure around which the English could rally...'
A Herefordshire thegn called Eadric the Wild had rebelled when the castellan of Hereford expropriated his lands and was fighting an equally unsuccessful guerrilla war on the Welsh Marches. Yet there was no central figure around which the English could rally, and so these uprisings were limited to a little local difficulty. In addition, as Orderic explains, the main obstacle to a successful English resistance was the castles themselves:
The fortifications called castles by the Normans were scarcely known in the English provinces, and so the English - despite their courage and love of fighting - could put up only a weak resistance to their enemies.
All this changed in 1069 when the people of Northumbria made a bid to throw off the English yoke. Northumbria had long resented English rule, and their revolts against Tostig in 1065 and Harold in 1066 had been part of an ongoing history of continuous rebellion. So, despite being centred around the 'Bonnie Prince Charlie' figure of Edgar Aetheling, this was not so much an English revolt against William as a Northumbrian revolt against the English. Making common cause with their traditional allies, the King of Scotland and the King of Denmark, they surprised the Norman garrison of Durham outside its new castle and massacred it to a man. Then they moved south and laid siege to York.
'The whole of northern Britain was in revolt...'
This proved the spark to ignite the flame. Smouldering with resentment over the way they had been treated by William, Earls Edwin, Morcar and Waltheof declared their independence. In the same year, the men of Shrewsbury joined a raid on the town by Eadric the Wild to rise up against the new castle built there by Roger de Montgomery, and the men of Peterborough under the command of Hereward the Wake raided the cathedral, carrying off its treasures. The whole of northern Britain was in revolt, uncoordinated and opportunistic, but nonetheless united in its opposition to the Norman king. It was the most dangerous threat to King William's rule so far.
Published: 2001-05-01
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