Scottish King David I hoped to exploit the unpopularity of the Normans by trading on his own English heritage.
Arguably, David I of Scotland’s invasion of England in 1138 was a legitimate attempt to keep England English, after the Kings of the House of Wessex were usurped in the Norman invasion of 1066. David certainly argued it that way, but his rabble of an army had less lofty goals in mind.
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William the Conqueror’s purge of the English Church was halted by a humble bishop and a dead king.
After the Conquest in 1066, William of Normandy appointed an Italian, Lanfranc, as Archbishop of Canterbury, and set about clearing out the English bishops. Wulfstan was the last, stubbornly protecting the English from their new masters, and it seemed God was on the side of the old religion, too.
William the Conqueror’s chaplain used to tell this story to those who doubted his master’s claim to the English crown.
In 1063, against the advice of King Edward the Confessor, Harold, son of Earl Godwin, crossed the Channel to Normandy. There, young Duke William welcomed him with a degree of warmth that was faintly troubling. William made of Harold his especial friend, and shared with him his ambition to be named Edward’s heir. Would Harold help him? William asked, and Harold mumbled something vague.
Embarrassed by the behaviour of his Norman bishops and abbots, King William I asked monk Guitmond to come over and set an example.
After seizing the English crown in 1066, William the Conqueror appointed French clergyman as bishops and abbots across England. Many were contemptuous and greedy, few spoke English and some used gendarmes to enforce their French ways. William begged Guitmond of the Abbey of St Leufroi in Normandy to set a better example, but Guitmond said the problem went deeper than that.
Two monks vying for the abbot’s chair at one of England’s prestigious monasteries each promised King William Rufus handsome rewards for his favour.
William II Rufus became King of England following the death of his father William the Conqueror in 1087. Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, prevailed on the Norman barons to crown William instead of his brother Robert, and thereafter kept William on a short leash. The death of his mentor in 1089 marked a sharp decline in William’s character, but memories of better days remained.
Kings of Norway educated in England drew on the experience of English clergy to establish Christianity in their own land.
In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Norway’s Christian kings had close ties to Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire, to Novgorod and Kiev, the chief cities of Rus’, and above all to England. The authorities in Rome chafed at it, wanting Norway to look to Germany and France instead; but for over two hundred years the bond with England was too strong to break.
When Malcolm III, King of Scots, met Princess Margaret of Wessex, he knew at once that he had found a woman capable of setting an example to a whole nation.
Following the Norman Invasion in 1066, Prince Edgar, whose claim to the throne was at least as strong as William of Normandy’s, allied with King Sweyn II of Denmark (who also had a decent claim) to unseat William. However, the crafty William bought Sweyn off at the last moment, leaving Edgar and his sisters little option but to flee into Scotland.
Back in the eleventh century English refugees founded New York, but it wasn’t in North America.
After the Norman Conquest in 1066, a group of English noblemen sold their estates and set sail for anywhere not ruled by Normans. Their wanderings took them to Constantinople (or Micklegarth), at that time beset by another overbearing Norman, Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia, and the Seljuk Turks.