General Notes

[1700591.ged]
from Columbia Encyclopedia:
William the Conqueror, 1027?-1087, king of England (1066-87). known to
his contemporaries as "the bastard" Earnest and resourceful, William was
not only one of the greatest of English monarchs but a pivotal figure in
European history as well.  Duke of
Normandy
The illegitimate son of Robert I, duke of Normandy, and Arletta, daughter
of a tanner, he is sometimes called William the Bastard. He succeeded to
the dukedom on his father's death in 1035. He was grandson from Rollo the
Viking who signed a treaty in
911 with Charles the Simple of France, giving Norseman permanent land
rights for that which they had seized the century before.  William and
his guardians were hard pressed to keep down recurrent rebellions during
his minority, and at least once the
young duke barely escaped death.
In 1047, with the aid of Henry I of France, he solidly established his
power. William is said to have visited England in 1051 or 1052, when his
cousin Edward the Confessor probably promised that William would succeed
him as king of England. Despite a
papal prohibition, William married Matilda, daughter of Baldwin, count of
Flanders, in 1053. The union, which greatly increased the duke's
prestige, did not receive papal dispensation until 1059.
William's growing power brought him into conflict with King Henry of
France, whose invading armies he defeated in 1054 and 1058. The accession
(1060) of the child Philip I of France, whose guardian was William's
father-in-law, improved his position,
and in 1063 William conquered the county of Maine. Soon afterward Harold
Godwinson, then earl of Wessex, was shipwrecked on the French coast and
was turned over to William, who apparently extracted Harold's oath to
support the duke's interests in
England.
The Norman Conquest
Upon hearing that Harold  had been crowned (1066) king of England
(Saxony), William secured the sanction of the pope, raised an army and
transport fleet, sailed for England with 8000 men, and defeated and slew
Harold at the battle of Hastings (1066),
Harold just having returned from a march north and fierce battle with
invading vikings and a march south. Overcoming what little resistance
remained in SE England, he led his army to London, received the city's
submission, and was crowned king on
Christmas Day.
Although William immediately began to build and garrison castles around
the country, he apparently hoped to maintain continuity of rule; many of
the English nobility had fallen at Hastings, but most of those who
survived were permitted to keep their
lands for the time being. The English, however, did not so readily accept
him as their king.
A series of rebellions broke out, and William suppressed them harshly,
ravaging great sections of the country. Titles to the lands of the now
decimated native nobility were called in and redistributed on a strictly
feudal basis (see feudalism), to the
king's Norman followers. By 1072 the adherents of Edgar Atheling and
their Scottish and Danish allies had been defeated and the military part
of the Norman Conquest virtually completed. In the only major rebellion
that came thereafter (1075), the chief
rebels were Normans, led by his half brother Odo.
Later Reign
William undertook church reform, appointed Lanfranc archbishop of
Canterbury, substituted foreign prelates for many of the English bishops,
took command over the administration of church affairs, and established
(1076) separate ecclesiastical courts.
In 1085-86 at his orders a survey of England was taken, the results of
which were embodied in the Domesday Book. By the Oath of Salisbury in
1086, William established the important precedent that loyalty to the
king is superior to loyalty to any
subordinate feudal lord of the kingdom. William fought with his factious
son Robert II, duke of Normandy, in 1079 and quarreled intermittently
with France fr