Christmas Special 2023
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Transcript:
The Crowning of William the Bastard:
Merry Christmas, I hope you’re all ready for a new Christmas Special. When this is released I should be enjoying a lovely, warm Christmas morning with my children, and Philip, and my lovely in-laws. I hope all of you are enjoying the season no matter what you celebrate. Today I’m going to discuss Christmas day 1066, in England specifically. Last year I discussed the crowning of Charlemagne in 800, this coronation is a bit different.
You might remember from last year that Charlemagne enjoyed a bit of political theatre, pretending that he had no idea he was going to be crowned when Pope Leo offered him the crown. This crowing in 1066 was planned by the man being crowned, William of Normandy, whom I like to call William the Bastard, but who most of you know as William the Conqueror. While William couldn’t claim that he didn’t want to be king of England, his attack on England was due to his claim that his cousin, Edward the Confessor, supposedly naming William his heir, he did go through the theatre of asking his nobility if he should be crowned. He bowed (see what I did there?) to their urging that he become king to stabilise the political situation in England. He was crowned in Westminster Abbey on the 25th of December 1066.
While working on my Patron special episode about William Adelin I spent a great deal of time reading Oderic Vitalis. Oderic was an English chronicler who I last looked at while researching Robert Curthose. He, unlike the Norman chroniclers, doesn’t appear to have been a fan of William, so his account of William’s coronation is not flattering. In fact, it appears that Edgard the Aetheling may have Oderic’s choice for king. And this actually gives us a bit of an interesting moment in history. Oderic wrote his History Ecclesiastica in the early 1100s, 40 years after the coronation and he wasn’t even alive in 1066, he wasn’t born until 1075. He was basing his work off of stories that he had been told and the two other works I’ll be sharing. But we also have contemporary Norman sources for this coronation. While history is often written by the victors sometimes we end up with the words of the defeated and seeing the two sides is always worth a look.
Oderic’s direct quote from the coronation was, in modern English of course:
“he was crowned at Westminster by Aldred archbishop of York, with the acclamations of both Normans and English, and governed the kingdom of England with a strong hand twenty years, eight months and sixteen days”
But then he continues with:
“Under his rule the native inhabitants were crushed, imprisoned, disinherited, banished and scattered beyond the limits of their own country ; while his own vassals and adherents were exalted to wealth and honours and raised to all the offices of the state.”
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In an earlier part of his work Oderic describes the events outside of the Abbey. The Archbishop of York, Aldred, asked the assembled notables, both English and Norman, to confirm their assent to William being their king. Their cheers lead the Norman guards outside of the Abbey, hearing shouts in English, which they didn’t understand, to apparently light nearby buildings on fire because they thought the English inside the Abbey were betraying William. Not the best start to a reign. William himself was rather shaken up by this. If you’re curious the full description can be found on page 491 of Volume 1 of Oderic Vitalisas work at archive.org. I’ll include a link to the first volume.
Now the Norman source, written by Guy, who was the Bishop of Amiens. He wrote Carmen Widonis, Windon’s Song, usually referred to today as Carmen de Hastingae Proelio, Song of the Battle of Hastings. This is an epic poem, I mean it is epic, but it follows the mould of the Illiad. In this Guy claims that the English offered William the crown, you know, after the Battle of Hastings where their previously crowned king died, and after the Witan had elected Edgar the Aethling. I’ll be including a link to the archive.org copy of an English translation, with annotations by Catherine Morton and Hope Muntz. So what does Guy say about William’s coronation? Well, his description is of an orderly and organised crowning. It has William being escorted to the church by the two English Archbishops. Once preceding had started the Norman Bishop, Geoffrey of Coutances tells the assembled magnates and nobles, both English and Norman, ‘If the king presented please you, declare it to us, for it is fitting that this be done by your free choice.’ Guy then goes on to say the Witan and the clergy approved, they clapped because they didn’t speak French (or possibly Latin). No fires from confused guards, just an orderly coronation. There is a possibility that this was in the poem at one point, but that it’s since been lost, this is discussed Morton and Muniz’s translation and analysis.
There is a third source, but this one should be judged with an even more critical eye than our previous two. This source, William of Poitiers, who wrote Gesta Willelmi ducis Normannorum et regis Anglorum (The Deeds of William Duke of Normandy and King of the English), was William’s personal chaplain, so far from unbiased. I do want to defend William of Poitiers though, he mentions the fire that we heard earlier in Orderic’s telling. In fact, Ordered likely got the note about the fire through William of Poitiers’ work.
‘the archbishop of York,' a great lover of justice and a man of mature years, wise, good, and eloquent, addressed the English, and asked them in the appropriate words whether they would consent to him being crowned as their lord. They all shouted their joyful assent, with no hesitation, as if heaven had granted them one mind and one voice.’
And further:
‘But the men who, armed and mounted, had been placed as a guard round the minster, on hearing the loud clamour in an unknown tongue, thought that some treachery was afoot and rashly set fire to houses near to the city.’
It sounds like a coronation most kings would want to avoid. I find it interesting because William likely selected Christmas day due to the positive associations of that day, both the supposed birth of Jesus and Charlemagne’s crowning. Sadly for him it was a coronation to remember for all the wrong reasons. It appears that it was a bit of a portent for his rule, due to the long struggle of his English subjects to throw off his rule. In the end, as we know, William would succeed and maintain his new, to him, kingdom. With that I hope you all enjoy your Christmas a great deal more than William did in 1066.
Sources:
https://archive.org/details/carmendehastinga0000wido/page/n67/mode/2up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/gestaguillelmiof0000guli/page/n7/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/chibnall-orderic-vitalis-vol-1 (Volume 1)
https://archive.org/details/ecclesiasticalh00fragoog/mode/2up (Volume 2)
https://archive.org/details/ecclesiasticalh03fragoog/page/n14/mode/2up (Volume 3)
https://archive.org/details/chibnall-orderic-vitalis-vol-4 (Volume 4)
Davis, R. H. C. “The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio.” The English Historical Review, vol. 93, no. 367, 1978, pp. 241–61. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/567060. Accessed 15 Dec. 2023.
