General Notes

* Title: King of England
* Note:
William I (of England), called The Conqueror(1027-87), first Norman king
of England (1066-87), who has been called one of the first modern kings
and is generally regarded as one of the outstanding figures in western
European history.
Born in Falaise, France, William was the illegitimate son of Robert I,
duke of Normandy, and Arletta, a tanner's daughter, and is therefore
sometimes called William the Bastard. Upon the death of his father, the
Norman nobles, honoring their promise to Robert, accepted William as his
successor. Rebellion against the young duke broke out almost immediately,
however, and his position did not become secure until 1047 when, with the
aid of Henry I, king of France, he won a decisive victory over a rebel
force near Caen.
During a visit in 1051 to his childless cousin, Edward the Confessor,
king of England, William is said to have obtained Edward's agreement that
he should succeed to the English throne. In 1053, defying a papal ban,
William married Matilda of Flanders, daughter of Baldwin V, count of
Flanders and a descendant of King Alfred the Great, thereby strengthening
his claim to the crown of England. Henry I, fearing the strong bond
between Normandy and Flanders resulting from the marriage, attempted in
1054 and again in 1058 to crush the powerful duke, but on both occasions
William defeated the French king's forces.
Conquest 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 of 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
areas 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 in 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 Fitzwilliam,
earl of Hereford, and a series of uprisings in Normandy led by his eldest
son Robert, who later became Robert II, duke of Normandy.
His Achievements
Onefeature 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
allegiance to William, thus establishing the precedent 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 courts,
which William retained along with many other Anglo-Saxon institutions.
The ecclesiastical and secular courts were separated, and the power of
the papacy in English affairs was greatly curtailed. Another outstanding
accomplishment was the economic survey undertaken a