How did William respond to Edwin and Morcar's rebellion in 1068 - 1069? William responded to the rebellion swiftly, with a show of great force. â– He went north with his army, building castles as they marched. â– They went to Warwick, a key town in Mercia, and built a castle there.
The biggest rebellion after the Normans conquered was in the north of England in 1069 - led by Edgar the Atheling and others (see more on him here) - being the half-brother of Edward the Confessor, he had a blood-claim to the throne, so was a threat to William's claim!
The most notable example was the “Harrying of the North†which really did put an end to the rebellion against William in the north of England, but only as a result of him more or less exterminating every living thing north of the River Humber. The Harrying was William's third trip to the north in as many years.
HARRYING OF THE NORTH (1069-70)stop them rebelling again. William's troops destroyed villages, burned crops, killed animals and even salted the earth.
King Sweyn joined up with English rebels who were also based at Ely led by a rebel leader named Hereward the Wake, he was a local thegn (local lord), he'd been exiled under Edward the Confessor and when he came back in 1069 he found his land had been given to a Norman.
The army he sent was not large enough to restart the northern rebellion but it was large enough for King William to pay the Danes a large amount of money to leave. Hereward fought a guerrilla war against the Normans until King William captured his base on the Isle of Ely.
William dealt with unhappy troops by offering them more rewards for their service. He raised the money and land for this by further taxation and land confiscation.
What caused Edwin (Mercia) and Morcar (Northumbria) to revolt in 1068? William had promised to let Edwin marry his daughter and went back on his word. This annoyed Edwin. William's geld tax (tax to the King) annoyed Anglo Saxon Earls, especially when William took it back to Normandy in spring 1067.
3. Harold Godwinson's embassy to Normandy. Harold Godwinson went to Normandy in the early summer of 1064 on an embassy (mission) for King Edward, in order to give an unknown message to William of Normandy. Harold travelled to France, but was shipwrecked and landed on the coast of Normandy.
Roger was also deprived of his lands and earldom, but unlike Ralph he was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. He was briefly released along with other political prisoners, but was promptly beheaded after William's death in 1087. On 31 May 1076 Waltheof was beheaded, on St Giles's Hill near Winchester.
In the summer of 1071 CE, an army was mustered and a fleet assembled for a two-pronged attack on the rebels. The fleet approached from the east coast through the Wash and then sailed down the River Ouse, cutting off the abbey of Ely. The abbey was built of stone and presented a formidable challenge to the attackers.
This law was called murdrum - it forced the Anglo-Saxon villagers to prove that any corpse found near their village was not a Norman. If it was a Norman then the whole village was responsible for finding the culprit and had to pay a heavy fine after the murderer was executed.
Whatever Edward's wishes, it was likely that any claim by William would be opposed by Godwin, Earl of Wessex, a member of the most powerful family in England. Edward had married Edith, Godwin's daughter, in 1043, and Godwin appears to have been one of the main supporters of Edward's claim to the throne.
The Harrying of the North refers to a series of campaigns waged by William the Conqueror in the winter of 1069–70 to subjugate northern England, where the presence of the last Wessex claimant, Edgar Atheling, had encouraged Anglo-Danish rebellions.
After his victory at the Battle of Hastings, William marched on London and received the city's submission. On Christmas Day, 1066, he was crowned the first Norman king of England, in Westminster Abbey, and the Anglo-Saxon phase of English history came to an end.
What nationality was Hereward the Wake?
