Norman Era
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Norman Era’
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.
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.
After the Norman Conquest, thousands of disappointed Englishmen departed for a new life in the Byzantine world.
When William, Duke of Normandy, seized the English crown from Harold Godwinson in 1066, many Englishmen were unwilling to recognise their new Norman overlords. They turned first to friends in Scandinavia; when that failed, some set sail for Constantinople in the hope of enlisting the support of the Roman Empire.
The strange-but-true story of a Lady Day tradition.
In the days of King Stephen (r. 1135-1154), Lady Tichborne in Hampshire warned her heirs never to fail in their charity to the poor. To do so, she said, would be bring the family line to an abrupt end, and six hundred years and one meddlesome magistrate later, her unlikely fears came true.